Acts of Hubris - Part 3
by: Tamsin Bailey
Monday morning Gibbs woke to darkness and the sound of a clock marking each second with a self important little tock. He decided he resented being so smugly reminded of the passing time.
It had been 28 hours.
Not that it really mattered. Kidnappings, murders; they had to be solved quickly. Rape cases were a different beast. An endurance test of carefully collected evidence and meticulous forensics. Everything collated and cross-referenced to not only put the suspect and the victim in the same place, but to prove their collision course.
But for more than a day the scumbag had been roaming free while Abby suffered for his actions. It was intolerable.
Gibbs took a breath against the ache in his chest, rubbing at it. Obviously sleep was done with. He heaved himself out of the couch, twisting most of the kinks out. After three rounds of I-get-the-bed-you-get-the-couch he had excellent technique.
He made coffee and organized what needed to be done. First have someone collect the rape kit from the hospital. Then start tracking the warehouse owner. Interview whoever they found. Go from there.
He looked at the clock. Still to early to start making calls, but time for another round of pills.
He rapped lightly on Abby's bedroom door, pushing it open enough to peer through. Seeing she was awake he walked over to the bed. "Hey Abbs, I've got some food and your pills." He jounced an applesauce cup with three pills balanced on top of the foil lid.
She looked at the food and signed, No.
He squeezed a blanket covered foot. "Gotta eat in order to take the pills."
She stared. He stared back. Stalemate.
A good Marine knew never to compromise the objective. A good father learned there was more than one path to every end point. Gibbs made a trip to the kitchen and returned holding a glass of crushed pills in applesauce that had been thinned with juice.
He held it out. "Compromise. The other option involves alternative methods of entry. Trust me, I know."
She drank.
He sat nearby until she fell back asleep, sitting in a chair upholstered in deep blue satin that looked like it could have been ripped straight out of some coffin. Knowing Abby, it might have. From the vantage he could see that the nurse had been perfunctory in helping her get cleaned up. Dirt was smudged across her skin in places, and a rill of dried blood threaded along the curve of her ear.
When she woke up he would see if she wanted to get cleaned up. Then maybe they would talk.
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
Tony was already driving towards the Navy Yard when Gibbs called his cell. It hurt like a bitch, actually knowing. A tumbled knot of sorrow and creeping shame. Guilt by mutual association of a Y chromosome.
"I wish I didn't have to be doing this, Boss."
"Not more than Abby." Gibbs voice was soft.
"Yeah."
He disconnected, pulling a U-turn that made the tires gasp for pavement. Racing down the pre-dawn roads, 60 in a 35 zone. No lights or sirens chased him, which was really too bad. Being an asshole to some street cop would have been okay.
He flashed his NCIS badge at the hospital and they gave him the evidence box in return. He signed the receipt and the chain of evidence chit without comment and the nurse wished him a good day. Like it was completely reasonable to be picking up the derailment of someone's life and tucking it under your arm.
As a rookie cop, working shifts in the evidence locker, he had marveled at the way pain and suffering could be sealed into a box. Violence neatly labeled and stacked floor to ceiling. So much that the shelves should have creaked under the weight. It had been a long time since he had felt like that.
He put it in the back seat.
The Navy Yard was still quiet when he pulled up to the gate, but McGee's public show of wealth was in the lot, and Ziva's smug little zoom-zoom chick car.
Both Autopsy and Forensics were locked tight, dark and neglected feeling. Which was frustrating because they had nothing right now. Only the name and address of the warehouse owner who had enough money for a bulldogish secretary and a weekend ticket to Vegas. He would be back mid-morning thank you very much.
So he had to take the box up to the bullpen. Ziva sagged back in her chair when he rounded the corner from the elevator. McGee surged forward, eager for the box sealed with evidence tape, only to look stricken when he realized.
They watched him set the box down next to his desk. "New lab rat's not here yet. Any luck on the fingerprints?"
Ziva tore her eyes away from the box, shaking her head. "No hits in AFIS or in the Metro Sex Offender's Database. She looked back at her paperwork, but her pen stayed flat on her desktop. McGee just blinked into space. Tony booted his computer and idly watched the splash screen flick. The ringing of the phone made them all jump. Security, calling in the new lab technician.
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
Tony stood halfway through the lab door, staring at the inhabitant. Abby was going to be pissed when she found out whatever experiment she had been running in the back room had hatched while she was away. Broken out of incubation to wander around her laboratorium dressed primly in a starched white coat.
The man, or whatever, stood at the computer desk, leaning forward to touch one of Abby's little goth figures next to the monitor. He caught sight of Tony and started abruptly sideways, snatching his hand away with a little hop. Tony watched the sudden motion judder through the guy's joints. Up the arm and down the back and out through the toes. Like he was some high-school biology class skeleton, tied together with wire and magicked into life by some kid with a really crappy magic wand and a poor understanding of musculature.
The man eventually worked out how his arm should hang from the shoulder joint, looking at Tony with a crinkle between his eyebrows. "Hello, are you one of the lab techs? I'm Larkin Jones. The FBI sent me over to temp for you guys."
"Ichabod," Tony whispered, followed by a ghostly whap to the skull that jump started him all the way into the lab. He smoothed a hand against his hair and forced a smile that hopefully made it at least to ingratiating. "I mean, no, sorry. I'm Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo." He set the box down next to the three from the alley and stuck out his hand.
Shaking was a little like having his hand engulfed by the mother of all daddy long legs. He ended it as soon as possible. "Welcome to NCIS."
Larkin smiled uncertainly. "Thanks." His eyes slid to the boxes on the counter. "Looks like you guys keep busy."
Tony turned his head, pulled in by the boxes' gravity. "Yeah."
Larkin shuffled his feet, looking like a broke leg stork. "Uh, you want me to get started on the box you brought down?"
"Yes. It's a rape kit. Start with anything that might have some DNA evidence." He had to say it. This guy needed to know what he was looking for. Still, he had to force it out.
Larkin nodded, fingers fluttering down towards the sealing tape. Tony turned to leave, but swiveled back around at Larkin's call. For a freakishly tall scarecrow he managed to pull off lost puppy very convincingly. "Do you know when the other techs usually get in?"
"This is NCIS. You are the tech."
"Oh," His adamsapple bobbed. "In that case, do you know where the gel sequencer is?"
The pressure of how wrong this all was squashed the air out of Tony's lungs. It hurt.
"No."
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
Tim listened to DiNozzo update Gibbs about the new lab tech and the utter lack of fingerprint matches. Then something about pumpkins and horsemen that made Gibbs bark hard enough that Tony jerked his ear away from the static overload on the microphone. But it was all background to the knowledge pressing down on his brain.
He had suspected. Now he knew and it was...it was....
Middle-school, high-school. He knew what it was to be pinned down. To fight with every ounce and still loose. Standing up full of rage that you didn't have enough power to make it stop. But nothing like this. Never this. Someone had held Abby down and...and....
It wouldn't fit, like one of those tangle puzzles, the facts endlessly sliding past each other and refusing to come into alignment. His thoughts spun endlessly, refusing to settle.
He startled away from the fingers snapping inches from his ear. "Probie! You with us?" From Tony, who had somehow come to be standing by his chair.
He craned to look at the other man. "What?"
Tony returned the look, concerned. "I was saying; Boss wants you at Abby's. Presumably he wants your brain, too, since we know he didn't hire you for looks."
McGee pushed his chair back from the desk. "Sorry. I was thinking."
Tony gave him room to stand. "Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple of thinking to precisely on th' event?"
Tim stopped mid jacket grab to stare at DiNozzo. "What's that supposed to mean?"
DiNozzo went back to his desk, leaning back in his chair. "It's Shakespeare, Probie. It doesn't have to mean anything."
He shoved his arms into his jacket, walking to the elevator. "Whatever. I'm leaving."
From behind him Ziva said "Irving and Shakespeare all in one morning. Someone has been civilizing you, Tony." But the doors dinged shut on DiNozzo's reply.
Traffic was light and Tim let the trip to Abby's building slide by on autopilot. He knocked on her door; plain, black, punctuating a long hall of plain, white. The Super had had an absolute fit, but Abby had smiled pretty, gravely promising to repaint it if she moved. He had sputtered, and she had dimpled, until he had walked away, won over by the unstoppable force that was Abby.
Gibbs opened the door, and he looked so solid standing there, so competent and familiar that Tim felt a desperate wave of longing for him to make everything okay. Make Abby be fine. Make the swirling thoughts in his head settle. He squashed it. This wasn't a bedtime story and Gibbs the hero of wishful thinking. This was about as adult as it got.
"Hey, Boss." If his voice sounded strangled, Gibbs had the compassion not to notice. "How's Abby?"
"Sleeping. She'll probably wake up in a little while. If not, you'll have to. Pills are in half an hour. Crush them up into some applesauce and make sure she eats it all. She needs the calories. Get some water into her too."
"Okay."
Gibbs put his hand on the doorknob, but didn't open it. "Abby had her license and credit card on her the other night. If he saw them, then this guy know where she lives."
Tim absorbed the information. "I've got my weapon, Boss. I'll keep an eye out, call you if I see anything."
Gibbs glanced back over his shoulder. "I wouldn't have expected otherwise, McGee." He paused. "Just remember, questions are second."
Gibbs eyes were direct, and if there was any extra weight to the look Tim would deny it to God himself. Just a joke in stressful times, Lord. "I understand."
Gibbs nodded and shut the door with a soft click.
Tim made some coffee and read pill packets while it brewed. An antibiotic, an anti-inflammatory, and some impressive painkillers. Gibbs had written down the times she had taken them on a scrap of paper. The antibiotic and painkillers were due.
He knocked on Abby's door, awake as predicted. He clenched the applesauce cup as shock worked down into his bones. In the light, with time to fully form, the bruising was terrible. Her eyes moved over him and her fingers moved in a sequence.
"Are you asking about Gibbs?"
She nodded.
"He went to go get a shower and change. He'll be back in a while. I've got your pills. Gibbs said they were easier to take in the applesauce."
She looked mulish. Tim felt the opening trickle of dread. Gibbs had made it pretty clear that she was to take the pills, but no one could push Abby into something she didn't want.
Hard on the heels of that thought was remembering that someone had.
"Bathroom first. Bath." A rusty rasp, sounding nothing like Abby. Clearly painful.
"You up to that?"
She nodded emphatically. He helped her out of bed and across the hall. She moved in a stiff shuffle, trying to avoid bending in the middle. They had to take a break half way there, to breath and wipe away the sweat beading on her forehead.
Finally they reached the bathroom and he eased her down onto the closed toilet lid, where she sat looking at the floor while he twisted the taps. Eventually he found the right temperature and set the plug. He touched her shoulder. "Abby...will you be able to get the shirt off?"
She bit her lip and went ridged.
He pulled his hand back, the words spilling over. "It's going to hurt you. To lift the shirt up. We'll cut it off. I know where the scissors are. We'll cut it off." He rummaged, finding the scissors and a set of pajamas with buttons up the front.
She stood while he ran the scissors up the back of the sweatshirt. It sagged open, mortally wounded, to show the cross on her back. Once, a long time ago he had traced the filigree and she had shivered under his touch. Now she shivered from it.
He left her to slip off the mutilated shirt, retreating to the couch with burning eyes and something acidic churning in the bottom of his stomach. He returned to the couch, listening to the water run and tried very hard to think about nothing.
The pills were close to an hour late.