Acts of Hubris - Part 5
by: Tamsin Bailey
A/N: Many apologies for not getting this update out sooner. I could blame the Internet, but it was actually the 60' seas that delayed things. If you're one of those people who thinks being seasick is connected to poor moral rectitude and personal weakness, I don't want to hear about it. Otherwise, enjoy!
"Our rapist mixed his metaphors."
Both Tony and McGee looked up from their computers, neither sure where to start with that one.
Ziva rolled her eyes, tapping a finger on the close up of one of Abby's lacerated arms. "These are not defensive wounds. They were made on purpose, and judging by the straight edges it was after he subdued her.
"A ritualistic rapist might have made these kinds of cuts, but he would not have stopped there, and he would have taken her to some other location where he could play out his fantasy without risk of interruption. He would have stalked her and planned every step in order to draw the whole thing out.
"This man is an opportunist. Impulsive. Catching who he could and using a nearby alley. He cared about gratification, and would have wanted to finish quickly in such an exposed location." Ziva looked up at Tony and McGee. "So why did he take the time to cut open not one, but both her arms?"
Tony cocked his head. "Officer David, have you been studying your Junior Profiler flashcards again?"
Ziva shot him a narrow eyed look. He came around the front of his desk, hitching a hip against the front ledge, and even as she glared at him for being Tony he became the man he had been while Gibbs was gone. "Could it be a calling card?"
"Yes. Or he could be moving from opportunist towards something more elaborate."
"Maybe he just has a thing for blood."
McGee jerked his head towards Tony, looking pole-axed. Ziva just grimaced. "Any of those scenarios would mean that he is going to try again."
McGee had abandoned Tony and Ziva's back and forth in favor of clicking furiously through photos on his computer. "Guys, I just thought of something – the blood."
He brought up the now familiar picture of the alley onto the plasma screen. "We all missed it, because we didn't see the pictures of Abby until after we processed the scene. None of us noticed it, because it wasn't there."
Tony squinted into the screen, trying to see what wasn't visible. Then he caught himself, twisting around to glare at McGee.
"No blood!" Excitement was making his ears flush pink.
Ziva caught the idea. "You are right, McGee. The blood on her collar was from her face, but there is nothing like the volume that would come from the cuts on her arms."
The three shared an uneasy look, and Tony made a disbelieving little sound through his nose. "Which one of us is going to tell Gibbs that NCIS is chasing an escalating serial rapist who takes his victim's blood as a souvenir?"
"The FBI would be here in ten seconds." McGee's voice was the low tone of awed wonder and dread.
Tony leveled a finger at him."You called the Devil's name, Probie. Just for that I should make you call Gibbs."
A look of tension flashed across McGee's face, but Tony continued before he could protest. "Except I'm going to make Ziva call Gibbs." He craned his neck around towards her. "Think of it as a reward for such an astute profile."
She gave him a level stare, sorting ridicule from complement, stalking over to her desk without a hint of her decision. He grinned hard as he watched her sit down, then went back to McGee. "You and I are going to go interview the party dude."
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
The owner of the party company had a tiny office in a large building on a block with terrible parking. He was dressed in neatly pressed chinos with a button down shirt. His hair was sandy blond, and there was absolutely no trace of eyeliner.
He looked up when they entered. "Yeah? Can I help you?"
McGee said, "Are you Arron Forrest?"
"Yes." Clean Pressed Guy nodded.
"Who runs Underground Parties Inc?" Just to be sure. The guy looked so normal.
They had made him uneasy. He stood up, fingers braced on the desktop. "Yes, I'm Arron Forrest; and yes, I own Underground Parties. Is there something I can help you with?"
"Special Agents McGee and DiNozzo." They flash their badges and shields. Unless you specifically said otherwise everyone just assumed FBI. McGee had learned to accept the twinges of conscience as a fair trade for the time saved by not having to endlessly explain what NCIS was.
Arron's eyebrows rose. "Woah, Federales. Something happen at one of my parties?"
"A woman was attacked early Sunday morning at your party in the warehouse district. We're trying to find the guy who hurt her."
"That's it?"
The open skepticism made Tony twitch. McGee glanced at him before looking back at Arron, puzzled. "Yes." He said.
The blond man scoffed. "No way man. Fed's don't waste time on chicks who get stupid. She'd have to be holding the nuclear codes or something."
Tony moved faster than McGee could catch him. Arron sat down hard as a man with four inches and thirty pounds on him leaned across the desk, mimicking his earlier pose with more menace than Arron could ever hope for.
"Hear that McGee? Genius boy doesn't sound like he respects women much. Callin' em stupid and all. Makes him sound a little bit misogynistic."
McGee, watching how the smile on Tony's face did nothing but hone the bright glint of malice, said slowly, "Yeah, Tony. I heard him."
"Well, lets give him the benefit of the doubt here McGee. Lets not label him unfairly. Maybe he was absent the day they taught that being bigger and stronger doesn't mean you get to just take whatever you want."
Tony wrapped his fingers around the edge of the desk, heaving it up an inch just to drop it back down in a clash of metal. Arron shrank back. "Maybe he needs a make-up lesson on why the inviolate right to ownership of your own body is one of the things that makes this nation so great."
Arron escaped by rolling his chair back until he could sit up straight. "Okay, jeez, I'm sorry. I thought you were trying to shut me down. Cause of drugs, or under-aged kids, or whatever the hell those vampires do down there. What do you want to know?"
Tony backed off. "Names. Who attended; who DJ'ed; who was in charge of security."
"I can tell you who does the music and security, but I can't give you a list of who went."
Tony shifted feet. Arron flinched back. "Because it doesn't exist! People come, they pay the cover, they get a stamp. No one takes names at a thing like that."
"Fine." Tony said, moving to lounge against a wall. "We'll just wait for you to print that information off."
Outside McGee held tight to the lists and watched Tony. "Did that come from a movie?"
"Did what come from a movie?"
"What you said to Forrest."
Tony slipped on his shades. "Probie, sometimes you just have to ad-lib."
McGee knew he should let that be the end, but the hatred he saw on Tony's face was something he couldn't stop probing. "Inviolate right?" he asked.
DiNozzo shot him with a thumb and forefinger before walking away quickly enough that McGee had to trot to catch up.
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
Ziva was sitting in the bullpen, watching the phone and feeling the loneliness of the usually vibrant space. Tony and McGee were out interviewing party security. Gibbs was at Abby's. Around her the hum of the building grew louder as the other agents filtered out, headed for somewhere else.
The phone proved to be fairly boring. She switched to looking out the window. The moon was full, the silver light making everything outside strange and flat. She watched it, and thought that 28 nights from now the Solstice moon would rise and millions would kneel before the figure of a man dying on a cross.
Abby loved Easter. The pageantry and the ritual, not to mention the gruesome death, were right up her road. Personally, it left Ziva cold. How much difference could there be between a man who sought redemption for his people on a cross, and one who used a suicide bomber's vest?
Saying that to Abby had been...unwise. Ziva smiled to remember how Abby's eyes had slitted and her finger had poked. That first year in America, when the woman had still hated her for a list of reasons that started with Kate and ended with dead.
Ziva sighed. She needed to be calling Gibbs, not reliving memories and letting the words of the Kaddish run through her mind. Abby was not dead.
She picked up the phone, told Gibbs about the missing blood and the team's suspicion that they were dealing with an escalating serial rapist.
He summed it up in one word: "Shit."
Ziva tended to agree.
Gibbs sighed something long and complicated. "Put out a BOLO with a note to contact NCIS about anything unusual associated with a rape case."
"That is very vague," Ziva protested. "How will they know what to look for if we do not tell them?"
"You want the local LEO's crawling up our asses on this, Ziva?" There was an element of tight control in his question. "Or the FBI?"
"No, but I do not want to miss him because we failed to share information." Ziva's voice was not so carefully modulated.
"Metro can't do anything we can't, except get in the way."
"And speak to Abby." The quality of silence on the other end told her the barb had set. "Gibbs, Abby is a witness. Our only witness. To a crime that the perpetrator shows every sign of committing again. You are trying to protect her at the expense of the case."
There was a deadly silence, then Gibbs' chill voice asked: "Is that something I'm only supposed to do for you, Officer David?"
Ziva caught her breath against the surprise of it. "It is not the same."
"The Hell it isn't." Gibbs said, before the click of his phone disconnecting clearly signaled the end of the debate. Ziva set her own handset down gently, as if care now could erase the harshness behind the words.
That Georgetown bomb may have been designed to splatter chunks of a Syrian war criminal, but she was the one who had been left flayed. Suddenly stripped of all the things that made this unexpected American life so good – friends, a job, trust. She had run from the embassy, reeling in terror of a future without Tony or McGee, Ducky or Abby. Of going back to being a bringer of destruction.
Then Gibbs had come, and the clatter of his feet on his own basement stairs had been a liquid flow of hope. He would hide her. Protect her. Make everything okay again.
Who was she, to deny Abby the same comfort?
Ziva slapped her hand down onto the top of her desk. Swearing at the sting and the whole terrible situation. Gibbs would protect Abby, shelter her as best he knew how. But who would be there for the next victim, or the one after that?
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
Gibbs pinched the bridge of his nose. Against the smell of Abby's incense and the last fading sting of anger. Talking to Ziva had made it rise up, and now it was slow to drain away. Once it had, he retrieved the phone he had thrown across the room, rueful when the bastard thing still worked.
"Ah, Jethro. I've been expecting your call." In the background was the barking of dogs and what sounded like a woman yodeling.
"You at home, Duck?" A door thudded shut and the noise cut off abruptly.
"However did you guess?"
Gibbs' lips quirked. "Oh I dunno. How's your mother?"
"Mother is doing well, but I'm guessing you did not call to inquire after her health."
Gibbs let his head loll against the back of his chair. Abby had not wanted to go back to her room after taking her pain killers, and now lay deeply asleep on the couch. Immune to voices, and apparently projectiles. Watching her made him feel his own deep weariness. "I talked with Abby. She doesn't remember much about the night."
"I can't help but see that as a mercy." Ducky said.
"Doesn't help catch him."
"No, I suppose not. However, I am not surprised. Faulty or missing memory is often part of the acute phase of Rape Trauma Syndrome."
"That like PTSD?"
"A sub-category, yes."
"Will they come back?" Gibbs asked.
Ducky sighed. "Most probably, but I cannot predict the extent. She may eventually be able to recall the whole sequence of events, or it might just be nightmares. Plus, there is the complication of a head injury."
Gibbs squeezed his eyes shut then forced them wide. "I don't know how long I can wait, Duck. There are signs this guy is some kind of serial rapist." He told Ducky about Ziva's conclusions.
There was a pause where Gibbs could clearly see Ducky tucking his chin down with a frown of deliberation. "I agree with Ziva that the cuts are troubling. We can infer from Abby's physical state that he was more concerned with power than pain. An Anger-Excitation or Sadistic rapist would make those cuts, but such men are aroused by pain and never fail to inflict great physical damage on their victims. Your man used enough force to subdue her, then appears to have moved onto what he really wanted."
Gibbs had seen enough in his career to understand what 'great physical damage' meant. He gritted his teeth. "Not my man, Doctor."
"Yes, well," Ducky's tone was apologetic "the point is Jethro, that the Power-Assertive rapist is not interested in inflicting pain, and does not take souvenirs. To him the victim is a means to an end, with no significance beyond the act."
"So why did he cut her? And where the hell did the blood go?"
"All I can give you is conjecture. He could indeed be escalating from one paradigm to another, though it is exceedingly rare. Young Anthony's idea of a calling card could also be correct."
"All right, what kind of conjecture can you give me?"
"He is most likely Caucasian, between 22 and 30 years of age. Probably athletic and considered by himself and others to be quite masculine. He will use a con of some type to lure victims into trusting him, then turn violent to keep them under control. During the attack he will use a great deal of profanity, demeaning and threatening the victim to maintain her compliance. He is both impulsive, choosing victims nearly at random, and organized enough to rarely leave physical evidence. He commits his crimes well away from familiar places, maintaining a strict buffer around his home and business. Once he is finished with his victim he simply leaves."
Gibbs listened to what amounted to a concise and well researched briefing. "You know that off the top of your head?" he asked.
"We all do what we can, Jethro." There was a little gap where Gibbs let the other man work towards whatever he still wanted to say. On the couch Abby twitched, making a nearly sub-vocal whine.
"Jethro, from what I have read this type of rapist is almost always a repeat offender."
It settled like a weight. "Damn."
They said their good-byes, and Gibbs was once again left sitting in the quiet of Abby's apartment. He stared into space, letting the rise and fall of her breathing make a white noise that blanked out thought. After a while he roused enough to consider, then decide against leaving her there for the night.
Standing next to the couch, he called her name. She woke suddenly and completely, looking up at him with taunt attention and a blank face.
"Abby?" he asked, uncertainly. She took a breath, recognition easing some of the tension around her eyes. "Time for bed."
Later he stared into the dark of her living room, thinking about the Marines he had served with in theater. How the good ones, had learned the hyper vigilance of a prey animal. Restless eyes always scanning for a danger they could not predict.
He had never thought to live in a world where Abby's eyes looked at him with that same wary suspicion.
He was still awake when she started to cry, shaking off the blankets to sit by her bed and talk about nothing.