Acts of Hubris - Part 10
by: Tamsin Bailey
The next set of footsteps across his ceiling were lighter, lithe and smooth. Gibbs listened to them and wished that he had locked the damn door.
"Gibbs?" she called from the doorway.
"Ziva," he answered back. She seemed to take it as permission to come down the stairs.
"I just came from Abby's."
"Uh huh."
Ziva shifted, uncomfortable at having to lead this conversation. "She told me she remembers following her attacker into the alley."
The sanding block rasped to a stop. Gibbs looked directly at the small patch of boat in front of his face. He wanted to press his nose against the smoothness. Let the sharp scent of the wood help keep a grasp on the calm that had finally come.
"She thinks it is her fault. For being careless." Ziva shifted onto the balls of her feet, mass balanced over her center of gravity. She was nervous about what she was about to say. "Gibbs. Please. Let Metro talk to her. Do not make it worse by forcing her to tell you every mistake she made that evening."
Gibbs' voice was strangled, throat tight from all the things in Abby's mind that he could not shake loose. "You think I blame Abby for any of this?"
"No. Of course not. But Gibbs, this is not about what you think. It is about what Abby thinks. And you must admit she might be more comfortable talking to someone who's opinion does not matter to her so much."
He expected defensiveness, and this rational compassion was upsetting. "Must I?" Clipped and cold, designed to force her back towards her typical vehemence. Instead she just shifted again, refusing to be goaded. The failed tactic made him realize how committed she was to swaying him. Ziva liked few things better than pitting her will against another, but here she was, refusing to allow either of them the distraction of an argument.
All he could do now was throw her out, and that would only reinforce her position by proving he had no actual rebuttal. His original argument with Jen, about not forcing Abby to tell her story twice was no longer viable. Not after she had admitted to remembering more.
Ziva's strategy drove past the immediate denial that Abby was his. No one, not even a Metro cop was going to challenge his connection to Abby. So, if that was true, why did it matter so much if she told someone else?
Because, he realized, he wanted it to be a tautology. Abby hid from her friends and family the things she was ashamed of. Therefore if she talked to him, she wouldn't be ashamed. Wishful thinking. An unconscious pipe dream that was never going to come true.
Behind him Ziva drew a breath, ready to begin whatever sweet and reasonable speech she had come prepared with. He cut her off by turning to lean his shoulder against the curve of the hull.
"Maybe Abby should decide."
She looked at him with her mouth open. "What?"
"Abby should decide who she wants to talk to."
Ziva closed her mouth with a click, her sharp stare clearly waffling between surprise and anger. Gibbs almost smiled.
He went back to his boat, sanding away any hint of roughness with a lazier stroke that lacked the heat of before. This time when the phone rang his hissed out breath lacked conviction. His muscles burned, and the bourbon had been gone since before Ziva. Maybe it was time to stop anyway.
The caller display was too blurred to read, but he wasn't surprised to hear Tony's voice after his gruff greeting. It was the words that sent the white static fizzing through his head.
"Okay. You and McGee go to the house. Passive surveillance only, see if you can sight him." It would give him enough time to visit Larkin Jones, press him for more. Something that would force this guy into a confession.
He was done working on the boat, but sleep sure as hell wasn't going to come now. If he showered and dressed now, he would be at the Yard less than an hour ahead of the early morning commuters.
When he came back down, barefoot and belt hanging unbuckled to tuck in his undershirt, it wasn't too surprising to find Abby sitting on his couch.
"Abbs," he said, "it's early."
She tracked him carefully across the room. "Or late. Depending on how you look at it."
He fixed his belt, pulled on his top shirt. He had no idea why she was here. Finally he said, "Ziva was here. She said you two talked."
He meant it as an opening, an offer to get her whoever she wanted to talk to, but her eyes slid away from him, teeth sinking into her lower lip and her shoulders rounding against his voice. Mute. It pushed a stab of frustration through him. Why was she stonewalling him? "Abby," he said reproachfully.
"I got scared," she blurted out into her lap. "In my apartment. I got scared, and called Tony, and he said he could talk on the phone, but couldn't come over because he and Ziva and McGee would be busy for the rest of the night." She looked up at him. "That means you found him, right? They're busy because you guys found him?"
She watched him, and even through the best in the country had taught him how to keep his thoughts to himself, the color began draining out of her face. There was no point in lying.
"Yeah, we found him."
"But I didn't want you to." She nearly whispered it, and Gibbs knew it was the truth behind the evasion.
"Why, Abbs?" He tried, but he couldn't fully keep the hurt from his voice.
Abby felt it spike through her. She ran the back of a hand under her nose, feeling the inevitability of the next while pressing down. Heavy and irreversible as the capstone of a pyramid. "Because I...", she started, but the words wouldn't come.
Defending his feudal property was Gibbs honor and his natural law. A grass knight, he would force her predator to the ground and then haul him, naked and shaking, up to the gallows. An extravagant display of tailored justice designed to make her feel safe again. But the drop would be for Gibbs alone. Revenge for harming something he had laid claim to.
Except it didn't work like that. The solitary noose had been edged out by 12 thin strands of opinion. It would be her testimony that would lay each one across his neck; her public recitation that would make the jurors pull each one tight. Only they never would. Then never would. Not with her clothes, and her parties, and how she had followedhim into the alley.
And if she told Gibbs this: that she couldn't stand up and tell complete strangers all the things that had been taken from her? Well, then he would hug her tight, kiss the side of her head, and say okay. Then he would wait for a late night. A dark place. One less bad man in the world. He would never tell and she would always know.
Either way she would hurt. So it was better, far better if he was never found at all. Except it was too late for that.
Even in the absence of words, Gibbs was far from being a stupid man; he understood a least part of it. He crouched down until their faces were level. "If you help me Abbs, I can press him for a full confession. Trip him up with some detail so that he knows we've got him cold. No court. No jury. But I can't do any of that unless you tell me what happened that night."
His face had regained compassion and sincerity. She looked over his shoulder, eyes wide to keep the tears from spilling over, and said nothing. He sighed,"Abby, if it would be easier, you could make your statement to Ziva. Or a female detective from Metro. It doesn't have to be me."
The monumental fight, and the larger concession hiding behind his statement was clearly visible in the line of Gibbs body. Everyone knew he didn't share, but here he was offering just that. She was grateful, but it still couldn't make the words form. She shook her head, small and tight. "I can't."
He ran a finger under her un-bruised eye. "Can't, or won't?"
The despair rose up, so hard she had to clench her fists against it, until a line of blood uncurled lazily from her fist and made fat drops on her pants. The air felt rarefied and she sucked hard trying to get enough. Gibbs' fingers prised against her own, his lips making words she couldn't hear over the rising buzz in her ears.
"Stop," she said.
He didn't.
"Stop." Again. This time his fingers stilled, his face suddenly wary, but it was too late. The room was fading into a buzzing darkness and Gibbs was pressing a hand against her neck, forcing her head down.
The pressure on her neck stayed until the static faded out. Then he pulled her against his shoulder and she rode limply against the rise and fall of his chest while his hand soothed against the column of her spine. Eventually there was his shower, and his bed. Then something incredibly alcoholic and a crashing wave of sleep.
)()()()()()()()()()()()(
Gibbs watched Abby sleep for a little while, listening to the quiet hush of his mid-morning house. It wasn't a normal time for him to be here, and everything felt strangely light and airy. The atmosphere was a bad match for his mood, and when he finally returned to the Navy Yard, the site of her lab pulled the vacuum in his stomach a little tighter.
Things had changed position subtly. It no longer looked like hers and he felt the absence keenly. He had even had his head shrunk enough to understand it wasn't her physical presence he missed. He wanted to see the woman who had existed before last Saturday night.
Larkin greeted him as he strode through the lab door, but Gibbs skipped the preliminaries, slapping a picture down on the counter. "I need a way to match this guy with Abby's attacker."
"Who is he?"
"Would it help?"
Larkin let a fingertip touch the photo. "No. Sorry. I can run the standard DNA comparison, but we both know with only 6 alleles it won't do you much good. I could also match the sample hairs to ones harvested from him, prove that composition-wise they are the same. And of course, there are the fingerprint from the collar. None of it will equal the weight of a full DNA match, but with everything put together it might be enough to convince a judge."
Evidence. Court. Gibbs slapped the counter top. "Not good enough. I need something airtight."
Drawn up to his full height, Larkin let a long moment stretch by. "Agent Gibbs. I'm good at what I do. Maybe not a genius, but I'm careful and I'm thorough, and I can assure you that I have not overlooked or neglected anything. So barging in here and banging things around like a child is not going to make forensics appear out of thin air. I suggest you find another alternative."
Gibbs lifted his stinging palm from the lab bench, the man in front of him undergoing a rapid reassessment. Skinny, yes, and fragile looking. But obviously a mistake to think the physical traits extended to the personal ones. And when exactly, in his decade long observation of Abby, had he decided lab geeks were meek?
"Not many people around here who talk to me like that."
Larkin shrugged. "I'm a temp. At the end of this I scuttle back to the FBI. What's the worst you could do? Yell at me?"
"Seems to work for most people." Gibbs said, mostly for his own benefit.
Larkin waved his hands over himself elaborately, with all the associated juddering and the not-too-faint suggestion of clacking bones. "As you can see Agent Gibbs, I am somewhat outside one sigma on the normalcy curve." He peered at the irate agent with overly correct solemnity – sympathy for the obviously slow.
Gibbs gave into a small smile. "A forensics geek that can't be intimidated. Bet your helpful in court."
Larkin smiled with a gracious self modesty. "My fierceness is legendary."
Gibbs huffed something that hovered between acknowledgment and amusement. "All right. You guarantee you can get me results from matching hairs?"
Larkin nodded, "Yes. You bring me a sample, I can analyze it for similar amounts of pigment, coarseness, trace elements, etcetera and so on. Like I said, DNA is the gold standard, but the courts still accept composition matching as evidence."
Gibbs sighed at the word 'court'. Matching hairs. Fingerprints. It was what they had. Maybe it would be enough to pressure him into a confession.
He snapped his phone open.