The team rolled to a stop in front of a single floor duplex where the Staff Sergeant and his son had been murdered.
"This place look familiar, Kitty?" Gibbs asked in a sympathetic tone.
"Nope." Kitty said hopefully. "What was the Staff Sergeant's name?"
"Charles Hickey." DiNozzo said walking through the front door of the house to see the bodies.
Kitty crouched by the door frame with Ziva to learn from the older agent.
"No sign of forced entry." Ziva stated after examining the frame for tool marks. She checked the lock. "Lock hasn't been picked."
"So, either the door was unlocked or someone inside let the killer in." Kitty said standing up.
"Hey, boss, you sure these guys are father and son?" DiNozzo called out from the kitchen.
"Yeah, why?"
"Might wanna come see this."
Gibbs, Kitty and Ziva entered the kitchen. From the doorway you could see down the hallway heading to the bedrooms. A middle-aged, ashy skinned man lay with a knife protruding for his chest. His US Navy T-shirt was soaked in his own blood.
There was a divider between the kitchen table and the side door which led outside. From behind the divider a pair of socked feet protruded on the end of large, strong looking, khaki-clad legs.
Gibbs walked to where he could look over the waist high divider to see the supposed son. A flash of annoyed confusion crossed his face.
"He's white!" he exclaimed.
"It's not unheard of, boss. Some kids have biracial parents and take solely after one skin tone. My friend Kevin Carlisle is white but his biological father… is… black…" she slowed her speech as the whole team realized what she had said. "Dear God." She whispered.
Gibbs beckoned for her to come look at the body. Slowly, very slowly, she approached the divider to look over. She started when she saw the dead green eyes staring at the ceiling, the sandy hair matted with blood. The strong, heavy frame laying unmoving on the floor struck a sadness into her heart that could not even begin to be understood by the team members who surrounded her now.
She gulped to keep the tears from flowing. "It's Kevin."
DiNozzo sighed and looked down at Kevin Carlisle's body, which he was crouched next to.
"Why doesn't he share his father's last name?"
"His parents were never married. He took his mother's name." she looked sadly into those glassy, green, unseeing eyes. "He was my best friend…"
DiNozzo took out a pair of tweezers and pulled a blonde hair from where it lay on Kevin's chest. "Anyone in his family blonde, Kit?"
She thought for a moment. His mother had short dark hair. His brother and brother-in-law both had short dark hair. His sisters' hair was red. He had four nieces: two with long dark hair. Then Annette and Anya…
"Only his three-year-old nieces. But there's no way they did this." She glanced unwillingly at the identical steak knives impaling the two men's chests. "We can probably run the hair through CODIS, might bring up a match." Kitty suggested.
"Kevin? Charlie?" A woman's voice called from the front.
Gibbs looked at Kitty sideways with his take-care-of-it look. She nodded and went outside to see who was trying to get into their crime scene.
"Kitty? What are you doing here? Where's Kevin and Charlie? Why are all these trucks here?" a tall red-headed woman Kitty knew to be Kevin's older sister, Terri, asked her while looking nervously at Ducky's truck which had just pulled in. Through the windshield Kitty could see Palmer in the drivers' seat apologizing with full gesticulations to Ducky for obviously getting them lost again.
"Terri, I'm sorry to have to tell you this." Kitty looked into the deep green eyes of Kevin's sister apologetically. "Kevin and Charlie were murdered."
Terri stammered for a moment. Kitty now knew why it was so hard to tell family members that their loved ones were killed. It was like you were the murderer; killing the family with bad news. Especially like this when she knew the deceased and the deceased's sister, whom she was now killing with the news.
"How?" Terri finally whimpered.
"I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to tell you or not." Kitty admitted. She glanced over Terri's shoulder quickly into Terri's Chevy Malibu to see her two three-year-old twin daughters watching their mother intently whilst munching on graham crackers.
"Terri, would you please allow a member of my team to take hair samples from Annette and Anya?"
"Why?"
"We found a blonde hair inside and if we can cross check the DNA with your daughters' we might be able to…"
"To see if my three-year-old daughters killed my brother and Charlie?"
"No, no! But if we can figure out whether the hair is theirs or not we may be able to know more about our murderer. We have nothing else, Terri, if we can label this hair as the killer's we are one step closer to figuring out who they are. If this is the same person who killed my parents, then the DNA won't be in the system.
Terri sighed. "Fine. I'll go get them."
"Thank you, Terri, I'll go get an agent."
Kitty walked through the door. "That was the sister. I managed to convince her to give us a hair sample from her daughters. The blondes. They're outside." She reported to Gibbs.
"Have I ever told you I'm glad I got to you first?"
"Nope, but I'm happy to be of service. This place is way better than hanging around with Agent Fornell or the guys in Area 51, boss." She grinned at him widely.
Gibbs smiled back. "DiNozzo go get the girls' hair samples.
Kitty stopped Tony on his way out. "No flirting, she's married."
"Thanks for that." DiNozzo replied disappointedly.
******************************************************************************************
"Abbs?" Gibbs called as he led Tony and Ziva into the lab.
Kitty and Abby stood by the computer. Abby was trying to force some Caf-Pow into the depressed teenager. She looked up.
"Gibbs! Good news, which is also kind of bad news." She pulled up a window on her computer monitor. "The hair found at the scene does not belong to Kevin's nieces. However, it also doesn't show up in CODIS."
"So we've still got nothing?"
"Well you could talk to Tony. I mean, he was trying to connect the two victims…"
"Nothing. Their only connection is you, McKinnon." Gibbs said in an irritated tone.
Kitty looked at the toes of her leather flats and furrowed her brow.
Her face suddenly lit up. "We've been looking in the wrong direction!" She started pacing much like Abby usually did. "We've been looking at people who would want revenge on my father and Kevin's father. But no… we should have been looking at someone who wants revenge on me!
"Momentary tangent, but it has a point, I promise, boss. Last year my school registered fingerprints as passwords for a new round of computers they bought. There's an entire database full of student fingerprints. I think that someone wants revenge on me for killing Spencer. And, considering what a good job you guys did of making sure my name didn't hit tabloids, I'd say, ten to one, that the person goes to the high school.
"Abby can you access the school's fingerprint database and run the…"
"Kitty!" McGee came running into the lab carrying a brown leather wallet Kitty knew to be Kevin's. McGee showed her a photograph inside.
It had been taken outside a local church, two school years ago, for middle school graduation. Kitty remembered the photo well, her mother had taken it. She'd had a copy in her locker that had gone missing a few weeks ago when she went to clean out her locker, as she was no longer going to regular school but taking online classes so she could stay with the team and be safe.
In the photo Kevin stood tall and proud in the middle with one arm around Kitty's shoulders and the other around a tall, thin girl with wild hair. The girl was Kitty's best girlfriend, Liz.
A big black 'X' was covering Kevin's smiling face, and a red dot was in between Liz's eyes. Kitty put on a pair of gloves and took the photo and turned it over. A tidy, feminine print spelled out a deadly message on the back.
She's next 3
Kitty blinked and furrowed her brow. "McGee I need you to bring me my mother's wallet please. We may have seen this coming without realizing it…"
He nodded and ran off to the evidence locker.
"I'm having trouble accessing the system, I'll have to wait for McGee to get back." Abby said in an annoyed tone.
"Then wait. Boss," Kitty turned and stared into her supervisor's eyes, "I need to relocate Liz Ardone and her family, I have to get them out of town."
"We'll keep them here."
"No! This killer is smart, she'll find them here. I'm sending them to Seattle."
"McKinnon…"
"Gibbs, five people's lives are at stake this time!"
"We. Will. Keep. Them. Safe." He said bluntly. "Is she still okay?"
Kitty let her attention fall to her friend.
"Boss, Kitty was right the same photo was in her mom's wallet. Red dot was on Carlisle…" McGee's voice faded as Kitty watched her surviving best friend typing out an essay slowly on her computer.
She looked at Liz's brothers Isaiah and Brent. They were playing a Playstation game in the living room. Her parents were at an Albertson's grocery shopping. No sign of danger anywhere. Kitty pulled her attention to her friend one last time. A blinking light in the periphery of her minds eye caught her attention in the small computer room. She focused in on it and started back to reality, a sharp squeak escaping her throat.
She grabbed for the cell phone in her pocket and dialed speed dial 9. She ignored the worried questions from her co-workers. It rang twice.
"Hello?" came a high-pitched boy's voice from the other end.
"Isaiah? It's Kitty give me to Liz now!"
"Okay, okay. LIZ!"
A moment passed before Liz's airy voice came on the other end.
"Hey-low?" she enunciated oddly as she usually did.
"Liz! You need to get your brothers and get out of the house and run somewhere where you can be safe."
"Why? Kit, what's wrong?"
"There's a bomb in your computer room. Someone is coming after the people I love. I didn't save Kevin but I can save you!" Kitty was running to the parking garage ignoring the yells from her colleagues demanding clarification.
"Kevin, what?! He's… he's…"
"Dead, Liz. He's dead. Get the hell out of that house and go somewhere! I'll be there as soon as possible and please, please! Take care of yourself."
"I will. Hurry." As Liz hung up Kitty could hear Isaiah and Brent protesting the turning off of their game machine.
Over the roar of her engine she heard McGee and Tony turning on the Porsche to follow her.