Acts of Hubris - Part 6
by: Tamsin Bailey
A/N: Credit where credit is due. This chapter has lyrics from The Beatles I am the Walrus, and Matt Nathanson's Come on Get Higher (though Sugarland's cover is better IMO). Can you spot them?
leelee0474 - as requested. Hope it lives up to expectation.
Tuesday for DiNozzo and McGee started exactly the same way Monday had ended; interviewing party security and support personnel. So far the guys from today knew exactly as much as the ones from yesterday. Exactly nothing.
They worked the list in a spiral pattern. McGee argued for a lineal progression, but Tony pointed out that there was a great burger place right near Third Guy's address and in the end McGee had acquiesced. Mostly because Tony was driving and he had no choice.
Now it was after lunch, and the two men were ringing the 18th doorbell of the day. When the door opened McGee felt the subtle click of something he hadn't known he'd been waiting for slide home. Because if Arron Forrest was too normal to run a Goth party, Ryan Banks made up for the debt. Scars creased his face, sinuous across the angular planes of his cheekbones, and his syllabants hissed through a split tongue. Then there were the piercings and tattoos. Lots of piercings and tattoos.
Arron Forrest was nothing but a user, taking the money of people who just wanted a couple hours of fitting in, of being the majority. Ryan Banks though, he was a full citizen of Abby's world. Maybe a ranking member. And for whatever reason, that was a comfort.
For his part, Tony leaned against the door jam, waiting for McGee to take care of the introductions.
"Mr. Banks, did you do security for a party in the warehouse district Saturday night?" he asked.
"Yeah, I was there." Wary, but not unreasonably so.
McGee brought out a picture. It showed Abby glowering against a height backdrop. Taken on a day when she insisted on knowing what being booked was like. Somehow it had become the only picture any of them could come up with on short notice. "Did you see this woman?"
Ryan took it, studying carefully. Hair, eyes, mouth. Tony watched the man's eyes flick over the picture and thought that even though he had pushed himself so far into the borderland that he was almost another species, he still looked kind.
"Hey look," he said gently, "she isn't in any trouble. She's our friend. She was at that party and some guy hurt her. We're just trying to find out who."
Ryan offered the picture back. "No, sorry. I don't remember seeing her."
When they followed up with the standard questions about seeing anything strange or suspicious, he spread his hands in a helpless gesture and smiled wryly, which was both human and gruesome. "It was a Goth party, man. Normal looking people don't get in."
They gave him a card, told him to call, turned to leave. Interview number 18: Over.
Except there was something circling uncomfortably around inside Tony's head. Howling an alert about something he was not quite bright enough to catch. Don't judge a book by its cover; it nattered, refusing to shake loose. Don't judge, don't judge, don't judge.
Well fine, he snapped peevishly at his own brain. No judging. Check. Not a book but its cover, or a Goth by his tattoos. In fact, never again would he, Anthony DiNozzo, judge a single solitary part before understanding the whole. Which of course made it all snap into place.
Goth. Abby was a Goth. This guy was a Goth. The party had probably been chocked full of Gothy hijinks. Except, Death was just one of the horsemen. A single perspective. There was also Dominance, Power, and Pain. Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.
And Blood.
He remembered now. Way back when he first started at NCIS and thought Abby was a freak of the first order. He called her a blood sucker and she had pouted, rambling on about organization – phyla and genres and sub-groupings of people all happily romping together in the dark.
He had listened, sort of, because she could back up her punches with Gibbs, who Tony may have still been a little...wary of.
He turned back to Banks. "What do you know about vampires?" Turned out he knew enough.
They sat at his kitchen table with coffee and a little rectangular incense burner where the stick jutted out at an angle that Tony had to step on himself very hard not to make a joke about.
But he left it alone because he was enjoying how well McGee could mix reverence with envy, and a comment would have ruined it.
"Vampires," Ryan expounded, stirring a distressing amount of sugar into his coffee, "started from the Goth scene but branched off, like, maybe a decade ago. Basically, they believe their bodies are incapable of absorbing vital energy. Pranic energy, they call it. So instead they get it by feeding off someone who can. Some can drain the energy psychically, others need blood. The blood drinkers are called Sanguines."
"Latin for blood," McGee chimed in. Tony shot him a look, but Ryan nodded eagerly.
"Right. Exactly."
"Is it common for these guys to attack people in order to drink their blood?" Tony asked.
Ryan looked surprised. "No. Vampire doesn't mean crazy or sadistic, no matter what Anne Rice likes to say. Besides, it's pretty dangerous to take blood from someone you don't know. Most Sanguines' vet their donors really carefully, cause of AIDS and Hepatitis."
"Okay, so how would we go about finding an emissary into the world of night?"
"Well, it's not really my thing. I don't know anyone personally, but I've got a few friends of friends, and there's a pretty extensive blog for Sang vamps in the Metro area."
Tony flicked a finger at McGee, who obediently slid his notebook across the table. "Write down the names and URLs," he prompted. Ryan obliged, and this time when he ushered them to the door, they made it past the porch.
As they stepped onto the sidewalk Tony said, "And here I thought today wasn't going to go well."
There was that look again. Tony snapped his phone open. Gibbs was gonna love this. Sanguinarians indeed.
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
Gibbs had poured two cups of coffee.
His step hitched when he realized, his wrist nearly tipping to dump the extra cup out. Instead he plunked both cups down at the register. Caffeine and results. Abby believed in their fundamental connection and now her faith had made space inside him. The extra cup was the only kind of prayer he knew how to make.
Inside the lab Larkin Jones appeared to have wilted in place. He sat at the central work station, sharp creases marching up the back of his lab coat, chin resting against the heel of one hand. Only his eyes move to watch the coffee cup being nudged his way.
"Agent Gibbs," he said slowly, exhaustion apparently overcoming nervousness. He took a gulp of coffee and managed to look more alert. One long finger tapped against the cardboard cup in a tattoo of consideration. "I have test results for you."
Gibbs took a sip of his own drink, refusing to acknowledge any foreboding. Larkin seemed to take it as permission to continue. He clicked rapidly at the keyboard and the monitor split to show four separate DNA sequences.
"First the DNA. I analyzed all the uh, well, discarded butts, all of which turned out to be marijuana by the way, and hit the jackpot with four of them. Unfortunately none of those four matched the six loci I sequenced from the foreign skin cells I found in the fingernail scrapings." More keyboard rattling, and a single image popped up. This one had fewer than half the stripes as each of the previous four.
Gibbs studied the image. "What about the hair samples?"
"None of the hairs had attached follicles. I wasn't able to harvest any DNA." After a beat he added, "I'm sorry."
Yes, Gibbs thought. Sorry. He rasped a hand across the stubble on his chin. All of the razors at Abby's place had involved strips of pink flowery smelling goo above the blades. Probably benign, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let any near his face. "And the bodily fluid swabs?"
"Nothing but donor cells. This guy is either very lucky, or very careful."
"Six," Gibbs said. He thought about the extra coffee and felt a faint and ridiculous betrayal. He had brought the offering, but some trickster god had only delivered half of what he needed. Six out of the thirteen loci needed to crush reasonable doubt.
His cell phone chirped and he answered with a curt, "Yeah, Gibbs." Larkin watched as the excited jabbering on the other end ratcheted the tension in the man's shoulders tighter and tighter, until it finally broke into a bellowed: "What?"
Another short bust of words, and Gibbs snapped, "DiNozzo, I'll kill you," in a tone that was really very convincing.
Larkin decided very firmly not to ask. Ever.
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
The bruises in the mirror were even better this time. Growing up. Leaving the safe confines of monochromatic purple to experiment with reds and blues, even yellow. But maybe it wasn't the best idea to push the metaphor so far. Maybe it wasn't the best way to cope.
Besides, the mirror wasn't to look at bruises. She wanted to know. Inside or outside?
Inside: the ecstasy of the music, the frenetic energy, how the glory of it pressed down until she was more than herself. Like church, like praying, In Him, with Him, through Him. In the unity of the Holy Spirit, until I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Some fundamental part of her reaching out to brush against whatever was broken inside him.
Or outside: the ink on her skin, the tip of her head bringing him near. The curve of her throat, the twist of her hips driving him higher. Dancing making the unbearable pressure surge inside him.
Which one?
The mirror wasn't talking. It would have to be trial and error, then. Controlled experiments, one independent variable. The work of a real scientist.
She pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her sweat pants. Put there by Ziva, who, having extracted her promise to follow a list of dont's that stopped just short of not touching the stove knobs, had gone for food. She pressed send and Ziva returned with take out Chinese and a pair of barber clippers.
She leaned against the jam of the bathroom door, hip cocked to brace the box against. "Why am I doing this?"
Abby watched her in the mirror. "Because Tony pays 80 bucks a pop to have a woman named Erin cut his hair, and nobody wants a repeat of McGee's q-tip experiment."
Ziva pushed herself upright, and returned with a chair. In the mirror her gaze was impassive. "In Islam, pilgrims going to Mecca cut their hair. To show that they are on a sacred journey."
Abby met Ziva's reflected eyes, and felt the barrier that had always been between them sublimate to a layer of smoke. She nodded,"Yeah."
Ziva thumbed on the clippers.
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
After Larkin's DNA death knell and Dinozzo's fantastically weird lead, it only seemed fitting to find Jennifer Shepard sitting at his desk. Legs crossed, glasses on, reading a file. He raised his eyebrows.
"Visiting the front lines, Director?"
"Jethro," she said evenly. "How is Abby?"
"How do you think?"
Her expression rebuked, and because she hadn't actually given him any reason to be a complete asshole, he added, "Hurting. Scared. Doctor's have her doped up, mostly."
Jen leaned forward in his chair, snapping the file in her hands closed. "I'd be lying if I said this case didn't concern me. Something like this could send the city into a panic."
He almost fell for it. She was so good, better than he could claim credit for. A natural talent, even in the early days when her ambition had far outweighed her caution. "Something like what?"
Infuriatingly enough, she smiled. "How about a rapist who takes his victim's blood? That factor alone will be enough to work people up." She watched his face, leaning forward with an air of amused placation. "Don't worry, none of your agents tattled. I even threatened McGee. Nothing."
He smiled without humor, and thought: Ducky. She wouldn't know then. About DiNozzo's idea. "No matching M.O. in the tri-state area. No hits on the fingerprints. DNA evidence is looking like a strike out. No reason to treat this like the work of a serial rapist."
If she noticed the lack of humor, it didn't seem to bother her. "Nevertheless, NCIS must be proactive in mitigating any risk of a repeat offense."
"I'm sorry Madam Director, I have a hard time interpreting political bullshit," Gibbs shot back with narrowed eyes.
"Then let me be perfectly clear, Agent Gibbs. I am seriously considering sharing jurisdiction for this case with the D.C. Metro Police force."
Gibbs glared. "No."
Jen stood. "Excuse me?"
"You questioning my team's ability, Jen? You think we need Metros help to crack this?" His voice snapped with anger, but her expression only hardened under it. Gibbs reminded himself, again, that her position was not exactly unearned.
"No, I'm questioning your objectivity."
Gibbs recanted his previous take on not being an asshole. "Care to explain why?"
She huffed a sarcastic noise. "Come on, Jethro. Abby herself kept information about that stalker from you because she didn't want you to beat him to death with a baseball bat."
"Yeah, and this time she came to me. Hell if I'm going to hand her over to some Metro detective who cares more about his next donut than catching the bastard who hurt her."
She looked at him with appraisal. Gibbs realized that his last sentence had not exactly helped prove his objectivity. "Jen," he said softly, "she's already talked to me. You want them digging around, making her start all over again?"
Her forward stance relaxed back a little and Gibbs knew he had won. "All right." She moved to stand across from him. "I'm willing to keep this in house for now, since Abby's attack is the only one on record with this M.O. But Jethro, if another victim turns up I'll have to alert Metro."
He met her eyes and nodded. "I'll give them the file myself."
Her eyes swept over him, and there was nothing of Jen in the long evaluation. "Deal."
As soon as she left, Tony and McGee returned to the Yard. Gibbs watched them settle back into their desks, intent on their tasks. Tim navigating through the website Ryan Banks had given them; Tony looking up the names. They both sagged under a weight Gibbs could feel in his own bones.
When Tony's gaze moved idly across the space between their desks Gibbs caught his eye and smiled a little, saying, "That was some kind of detective work, Tony." Because it was true, and because it was deserved. Definitely not because Tony's surprised smile eased some of the terrible twisting in his gut.