Tony looked at Jess, and very slightly cocked his head to the side. He raised an eyebrow and gave her a small nod. She frowned and looked at the group gathered around her. Tony was about to say something when she put her hand up to stop him.
"It was my junior year," Jess began, so softly Gibbs had to strain to hear. "Tony's senior year." She sighed.
"William Thompson Delray III – a/k/a 'Trey' –" she looked back at McGee, "was big man on campus that spring – captain of the basketball team, star of the lacrosse team. His dad was a business associate of my dad's, and I ended up tutoring him in physics. He needed a 'B' average in the course and he wasn't even close."
"Jess had this weird triple major," Tony cut in. "Physics, math and music…"
"Oh my God!" said Abby, jumping up from the table. "You're THAT Jessica Kennedy? I knew I recognized your name. I read your thesis on the relationships between mathematical chords and musical chords – where you tied it all to the circle of fifths and developed a theorem that reduced Beethoven's 9th to a math equation. That was brilliant!"
"Abs?" Gibbs said. "We need to hear the rest of this. You guys can compare notes later okay?"
McGee chuckled. Gibbs raised an eyebrow. McGee began to stammer. "'Compare notes' … music … I thought it was an intentional pun. It … um … wasn't, was it? Sorry … Boss …" He shrunk under Gibbs' gaze. Jess gave him a sympathetic smile.
"ANYway …" said Tony, moving them back to topic. "Jess had it pretty bad for this guy, much to the total delight of her parents, who were thrilled that she was spending more time with him than with 'that strange DiNozzo kid'." He prompted her on.
"Trey and I started dating – pretty heavily. Tony and I had just had this … thing … go wrong between us…" Tony and Jess exchanged a glance, "and so I loved the fact that I had this great guy to be with. I'm sure I totally threw myself at him." She shook her head.
"Anyway … a few weeks into this, Trey invited me to a dinner at the frat house. It was just the officers of the fraternity – Trey and the three other guys – and their girlfriends. Cocktail attire; catered; private. They did this a couple of times a year, and it was always a big deal. I had the perfect black cocktail dress, killer shoes, Prada shawl, Victoria's Secret underwear, the whole nine yards." Ziva rolled her eyes.
"It's important later," Jess said. Ziva blushed a bit and cleared her throat.
"She looked amazing," Tony said quietly.
"Really," Jess said with a bit of surprise in her voice. "I didn't realize you saw me leave." She looked at Tony for a second. Then she took a deep breath and continued.
"As it turned out, there wasn't really a dinner at all. Apparently, every time one of the officers started getting serious about someone new, there was a little fraternal 'initiation' that took place. The new girl was brought over to the house and introduced to the other officers and their girlfriends. Then, the other girlfriends left, and the new girlfriend …"
Her voice took on a more clinical tone, as if she were testifying as an expert witness.
"The other girlfriends left, and the new girlfriend and the officer-in-question would consummate their relationship in front of the other guys. And then, any of the other officers who wanted to were given free reign with the new girl. The idea was that once every guy had their turn, then the girl was off limits to anyone but her boyfriend. No flirting, no seductions, no trying to steal her away. They'd all had their chance, and that was that."
She looked around the room. No one was moving.
"As you might imagine," Jess continued, "I didn't think this was such a great idea. And I opted out. I got pissed and told them I was going to tell the national office what was going on, and that their secret was most definitely NOT safe with me." She looked at Tony, then back at Gibbs. "Which, of course, isn't the best thing to say to four guys with powerful friends and lots of motivation to not get caught."
She walked across the room and back, shaking out her hands to use up some nervous energy.
"I tried to leave, but Trey grabbed me and said that 'tradition was tradition', and he forced me down on the couch. He raped me, in front of the other three guys, who helped hold me down. Then, all three of them joined in, each taking their turn, with me screaming until I was hoarse and fighting all the way."
"The doctors in the emergency room said that the majority of her injuries that night were defensive," Tony said. "They'd never seen anyone fight back an attack like she had."
"Didn't do any good," she said, quietly. "When they were finally done, they loaded me into Trey's Jag and drove about five miles outside of town. They unceremoniously dumped me on the side of the road in only the dress. No shawl, no shoes, no stockings, no … underwear." She glanced at Ziva. "It was late March, in Ohio. 58 degrees, I think."
"I started walking back into town, looking for a phone booth, a house, anything." She looked over at McGee and Abby. "Not everyone had cellphones yet," she said with a shrug.
"I was out that night," Tony said. "It was, after all, a Saturday …" Gibbs shot him a look and Jess kind of laughed. He did an apologetic shrug and continued. "When I got home … fairly late, there were over a dozen messages on my answering machine, all from a waitress at a diner outside of town. The waitress was a little freaked. It took a while to piece it all together and figure out what was going on." He looked at Gibbs and then Ziva. "Jess had walked nearly three miles – barefoot with no coat, in 58 degree weather – before she found a diner with a phone she could use."
"By the time I got there," Tony continued, "Jess was huddled in a back booth, wrapped in a sweater from one of the waitresses and wearing a pair of socks that some customer had had in a bag in her car. She was in shock … wouldn't let anyone touch her. She was crying and begging them to not call the police until I got there."
Jess picked up the story. "Tony walked in and saw me and then it gets a little fuzzy. I remember him carrying me out and promising the waitress he'd buy her a new sweater … I remember him being in the room when they did the rape kit." She looked at Abby. "Forensics." Abby nodded, with a sympathetic smile.
"Jess was in the hospital for ten days," Tony said. "She had some … internal … injuries, a broken hand, concussion; all sorts of bruises and cuts on her face, and her feet were a mess. Once they released her, she was home for the rest of the semester."
"Tony stayed there the whole time," Jess said. "My parents, on the other hand, chose not to address it. They stayed away – didn't come to the hospital, the apartment, nothing. They were horrified that I had caused this rift between them and Trey's parents. The only positive thing was that Trey failed physics and got pulled from regionals. The lacrosse team lost in the first round."
"I'm sorry," Jess said, with an apologetic smile. "This is turning out to be a longer story than I'd anticipated."
"Oh, we're used to those," Abby said, glancing over at Ducky. The laugh the comment brought broke the tension for a moment. Jess sat down on one of the tall lab stools. Tony walked over and stood behind her, leaning against a table.
Tony took up the story, "When we went down to press charges, we discovered that Trey's father had already been there, taking out a restraining order on Jess."
"On Jess?" McGee said, with a shocked look. "What did she do?"
"I had raked a fairly decent swath of scratches across his handsome little boy's face," Jess said. "They were planning on charging me with assault. I pressed charges against Trey and the other three for rape, false imprisonment, assault, kidnapping, and … a few other things. Tony's father found out that I couldn't afford a decent lawyer, and he actually sent his own."
Everyone turned to look at Tony. Even Gibbs couldn't mask his shock at that statement. Tony shrugged.
"My father knew that I wouldn't let Jess do this alone, and he figured if a DiNozzo was going to sit in the plaintiff's chair in court, then that DiNozzo better have a damn good chance of winning. Plus, I think he was a little pissed that Jess' parents thought I was a bad influence."
"Wait a second," Abby interrupted. She looked at Jess. "You said that you and Tony were going through a … thing … during all this. Did that get solved?"
"The second I walked in the diner," Tony said. "Nothing else mattered after that."
Jess looked back at Tony. "I didn't know what I was going to do if you didn't come for me."
"Any time, anywhere," Tony said, softly. "We had a deal." Abby smiled.
"So, what happened in court?" Ziva asked. "Was justice dished up?"
Jess looked over her shoulder at Tony with a confused expression.
"Served," Ducky offered. "Was justice served."
"Ah …" said Jess. "Well, as it turned out, it was my word against the four of them."
Tony continued, his voice taking on a sarcastic edge. "The guys maintained that all of the bruises and the broken hand were unrelated to the 'dinner experience', and happened when they were all out joy-riding in Trey's Jag that night after a bout of rough group sex."
"Tony's dad's lawyer said that we needed to find someone else this had happened to, and so Tony started spending all his time researching who else these guys had dated," Jess said. "He'd spend hours trying to find connections between people. We had a wall of charts in the living room of the apartment, and he was constantly following leads. It nearly cost him his scholarship."
"But turned him into a damn fine investigator," Gibbs said, under his breath.
"Witnesses!" Tony exclaimed, hands pumping the air. "I have witnesses!"
Jess let a small laugh escape and looked at Gibbs with a twinkle in her eye. "Did you hear something? I didn't hear anything." Gibbs grinned back at her.
"Nice try, darlin', but I know he said it, and I know you all heard it," Tony said smugly, resuming his place behind to her. The mood became serious again. Tony squeezed Jess' shoulders. "Tell them the rest," he prompted.
"Thanks to Tony's investigations," Jess continued, with a nod towards Gibbs, "we came up with six other women that Trey or one of the guys had brought to these little initiation dinners. Two of them didn't think it was that big of a deal; one of them wouldn't even let us in the door, and the other three wouldn't come forward."
"Jess totally talked two of them into it," Tony said.
"Well," Jess corrected, "I convinced one, you brought in the other."
"But they testified, yes?" Ziva asked, a little impatiently.
"Yes," Jess said, "they did. And we got convictions on Trey and two others. One of them – Adam Carmichael – turned state's evidence and got off with probation."
"But apparently, Trey is out now," Gibbs said, looking at Tony with a 'you should have told me sooner' expression on his face. "How long did he get?"
"He got 18 to 24, Boss," Tony said, physically moving out of Gibbs' gaze. "Out in 18. Due in part to a shiny new medical clinic donated by daddy. He got out last week; showed up at Jess' place in Alaska two days later."
"But …" McGee looked confused. "In a case like this, wouldn't it be automatic to put a restraining order on him as a condition of parole?"
"Yes, Probie, it would," Tony said, acknowledging McGee's line of reasoning. "But Trey's not a big one for following directions. He's one of those 'the rules don't apply to me' kind of guys."
"OK," said Gibbs, providing a quick summary. "We know Trey is out there, and apparently looking to settle a score. What happened to the other guys? Could they be helping him?"
"That's what we were working on," said Jess, as she looked at Tony. Three pictures came up on the plasma as Tony started to speak.
"Mark Torrington got 15 years, but ended up with an extended sentence – he tried to escape a couple of times. He's still inside. Neil …"
"Jacobs," supplied Jess.
"Right. Neil Jacobs died in prison. Wrong place, wrong time – gang fight," Tony said.
"What about Carmichael?" asked Gibbs.
Jess spoke up before Tony had a chance. "He displayed a lot of bravado about being the guy who didn't go to jail. He'd brag at parties about our little 'sex party' and about how he was going to drag my name through the mud to avenge his friends. I lost a scholarship because of all the talk and rumors. And I was …," she looked at Tony. "What's the word I'm looking for?"
Tony shook his head, not knowing what to say.
"Shunned?" said Ziva. Jess looked at Ziva and nodded.
"Yes," she said. "Shunned."
She continued. "Adam was walking home from a football game that fall, when somebody jumped him. Knocked him out, broke his legs, beat him up pretty badly. He was in the hospital for six weeks and in a wheelchair for two months after. I think he lives in Michigan now. Sells insurance or something."
"Who attacked him?" Ducky asked, stealing a glance at Tony, who suddenly felt the urge to work a kink out of his neck.
"Don't know," said Jess, also glancing Tony's way. "They were never caught."
Everyone looked at Tony, who took a deep breath and reddened slightly. Gibbs broke the silence.
"All right, then," Gibbs said. "McGee – you find this Carmichael guy in Michigan and see if he's heard from his buddy Trey."
"You got it, Boss," McGee said as he turned to one of Abby's computers.
"Abby – I want a full check of everything Tony and Jess brought in from Tony's place. If there's a fingerprint that doesn't belong to Tony, Jess or one of us, I want it run."
"On it!" Abby said.
"Ziva – you stay with Jess. She doesn't go to the bathroom without you there, you got me?"
Ziva began to protest. "Gibbs … are you sure my talents aren't of more use … elsewhere?"
"Problem, Ziva?" Gibbs said, glancing at Jess, who shrugged.
"Fine," Ziva said. "I'll stick to her like paste."
"Glue," said McGee, Tony and Jess in unison.
"Whatever," Ziva muttered.
"Tony, you're with me," Gibbs ordered.
"Um … Boss?" Tony said, as he followed him to the elevator.
"What's the problem, DiNozzo? We've got a case," said Gibbs, as the elevator doors closed.
