"Sister Rosita, you have to make arrangements to send her to Ducky," Abby said through her tears.
"Abigail," Sister Rosita said. "This is not a Navy related incident."
"It doesn't matter," Abby said. "Ducky does civilian consults all the time."
"Abigail, she had a stroke from the overdose," the nun said. "What more can an autopsy find?"
"They could find out exactly what happened," Abby said. "Sister, someone forced those medicines on Sister Margaret. We know someone tried to hurt her. Dr. White had her stabilized and she suddenly has a fatal stroke?"
Sister Rosita began weeping in earnest. As her shoulders shook with her sobs, Abby consoled her. The realization that Abigail was right overwhelmed her sadness over losing another close friend and colleague. From Sister Theresa through Sister Margaret, there were too many coincidences. Margaret was still critical last night when she came home to freshen up, but as Dr. White said, she was stable. As her sobbing subsided, Rosita began sitting up straighter. After a few moments, she wiped away the last of her tears and turned a determined look towards Abby.
"Abigail" she said, her voice just a little hoarse. "You are right. Something is going on. I trust you to find out what as long as you are careful."
"Don't worry Sister," Abby said as tears continued down her cheeks. "Ziva won't let anything happen to anyone else here."
_.-~=]})*({[=~-._
For her part, Ziva was already hard at work on the investigation. She began her morning by surreptitiously gathering items that she witnessed or cajoled various people to touch. She collected and labeled papers handed to some of the nuns, picture frames, drinking glasses, knick-knacks, and a wide variety of other items for analysis. With luck, she could use the fingerprints and any possible DNA lifted from these items to build profiles for each person involved with the convent.
Ziva chose not to let Abby know she also intended to investigate the nuns to whom the younger woman was closest. She did not know how Abby would take that news. According to her list, the only two sets of prints Ziva had yet to collect were those of Sister Rosita and Father Thomas. Both of whom would have to wait. Rosita was conferring with Abby now and Father Thomas went to the hospital to arrange for Sister Margaret's remains. She decided that rather than wait to collect from the two of them, she could start with the rest and do some research over the next couple of hours.
She gathered all of the samples she had on hand and slipped out of the orphanage. It took her fifteen minutes to walk to where she parked her car. Thanks to the traffic, it took Ziva an additional half an hour to get to NCIS. Once there, however, she grabbed her spare clothing and the samples and headed directly for Abby's lab.
"Hi Ziva," Carol said as she walked into the lab. "I'm sorry, Sister Ziva," she amended. "How's the investigation going?"
"Well," Ziva said sitting the box of samples on the workbench. "We have only just established our cover, but I have some samples here. I need you to pull the fingerprints off them. I circled the areas you should focus on. You may be able to pull DNA from some of them. I need anything you can get me."
"Ok," Carol said as Ziva carried her change of clothes to Abby's office.
"Oh, and Ducky may be getting a body later today," Ziva said as she started closing the blinds in the office. "If you can, we need you to check the tissue samples he sends you for any drug, poison, and venom that can mimic the symptoms of a stroke." Once she closed all of the blinds, it occurred to her that this is not an NCIS investigation. "Of course, make sure you give official assignments priority, but anything you can get us will help," she said as she closed the door. She opened her dry cleaning bag and pulled her clothes out. Just as she removed her headwear, a voice from Abby's desk startled her.
"Would you like for me to give you some privacy?" Marty asked, smiling from Abby's chair. "Or do you trust me not to put everything on the internet."
"Marty," She said with a slight gasp. "I am not used to more than one person being in this lab." She politely told him she had forgotten about him.
"So…" he said.
"Privacy please," she said with a smile as she opened the door for him. The smile became a short laugh as she heard Carol ask him "Did you use anything interesting?" before closing the door.
_.-~=]})*({[=~-._
Abby pulled the trigger on the bottle of Bluestar Forensic reagent. Sister Rosita had spent more than an hour this morning sharing with Abby everything she remembered about the events surrounding the deaths over the past few months. From Sister Theresa's hit and run to Sister Elizabeth's fall down the stairs, to the mugging of Sister Angela, through the individual strokes of Sisters Agnes and Margaret.
The death of Sister Elizabeth quickly caught Abby's attention since it occurred here at the convent. This was why she was spraying the Bluestar on a wide area at the foot of the stairs in the library. Abby chose this chemical because it was faster and easier to prepare than luminol and it did not require complete darkness to highlight trace amounts of blood. The latter fact was definitely a factor as it would be too difficult to throw the library into complete darkness at 11:30 in the morning without drawing attention.
Once she saturated a large area at the foot of the stairs, Abby donned a pair of red ALS glasses and turned on her black light. As she suspected, she found trace amounts of blood in the area, but not as much as she would have expected considering everything Sister Rosita told her. After she took swab samples of the blood she found, she began spraying and scanning the stairs themselves, looking for anything that could tell her how Sister Elizabeth fell. By the time she got to the top of the stairs, she was entirely frustrated. She found absolutely no blood trace on any of the steps leading up to the second level.
Not one to give up easily, Abby went down the stairs and mixed up another batch of the Bluestar before returning and spraying down the area in front of the bookshelves. She was halfway across the second floor landing when she saw something that made her stop dead in her tracks.
_.-~=]})*({[=~-._
Ziva sat at her desk dialing yet another number to get the information she wanted. Metro PD lowered the priority of two of the incidents to cold case status, so Ziva had to get the information and evidence sent to her from their archives and property clerk. This would normally be a routine practice, but since these cases were not Navy related, she had to pull some strings and call in some favors to avoid having the transfers land on Vance's desk.
Fortunately, the detectives on one of the cases agreed to send her the case files and their notes via email, and would get the detectives on the other case to do the same. She still needed the physical evidence, but this would give her a running head start. As she was going through the files on the mugging, she noticed that the attack occurred just two days after nun who had died at the convent. She was just pondering that coincidence when she heard her name called.
"Agent David," Director Vance called as he came around the corner. "I was under the impression that you were on vacation."
"Officially yes," Ziva said. "However, I wanted to check a couple of things out while I had some up time."
"Down time," Vance corrected her. "And I hope you aren't using NCIS resources for personal use."
"Just clearing up a case," Ziva said, hoping the half-truth would satisfy him.
"Mm-hm," he said as he continued to the other side of the divider.
Within an hour, she got the files for the hit-and-run case and went through the details and detective notes looking for anything that would indicate a connection to the convent. Once she had hard copies of both files, a messenger arrived with the physical evidence, for which she signed the chain of custody release. She took the evidence down to the lab and asked Marty and Carol to go through it when they could. From there, she headed to autopsy to check with Ducky.
"Ah Sister Ziva," the medical examiner said as she enter.
"Please Ducky," Ziva said with a slight smile.
Ducky chuckled as he leaned back down to examine the body on his table with a magnifying glass. "You now my dear," he said as he pored over the body. "Back during World War II, many nuns in occupied areas disguised countless Jews as members of their order to afford them safe passage. I recall a story I once heard about a group of thirty nuns who convinced the Gestapo to transport them and offer them security from Poland, through Germany and into Belgium where they eventually made their way to the coast and acquired safe transport into England."
"Ducky," Ziva said. "I am not disguised as a nun to escape Nazis."
"Oh of course not my dear," Ducky said. "I was just musing on the irony of the situation. Oh." He said pausing in his investigation. "This is interesting."
"What is it?"
"A puncture wound on her arm."
"How old is it?"
"I would say not more than an hour or so prior to death." Ducky delicately cut the tissue surrounding the wound and removed the tissue to examine it more closely. After carefully dissecting the tissue and examining it under the microscope, Ducky looked up to Ziva. "It appears as though this young lady had a shot of something," he said.
"Like what?" Ziva asked.
"Well, I'm not sure, but based on the damage to the tissue, I would guess that she was injected with something using a 25 gauge needle about a half an inch long. I need to send this tissue to Abby's lab."
"I've already asked Carol to scan the tissue samples for anything that might mimic the symptoms of a stroke."
"Yes," Ducky said thoughtfully. "Perhaps I can narrow it down some more for her."
"Narrow it down to what?"
"Based on what I found in Sister Margaret's brain," Ducky began. "I am reminded of the deaths of Commander Trapp and Major Kerry."
"Who are they?"
"Oh, uh several years ago, just before Caitlin joined NCIS, we were tasked to investigate the death of a Naval Commander assigned to carry the President's Emergency Satchel, also known as the "football". He had apparently died of a stroke after dining with the President. However, we later discovered particularly nasty snake venom caused the deaths of the Commander as well as that of the Marine Corps Major he replaced for that mission. Our young nun here has similar brain damage as those two men."
"So we should look specifically for this venom?"
"Well, snake venom in general," Ducky clarified. "But I would suggest starting with those snakes whose venom has the most lethal LD50 score."
"I will make sure they know," Ziva said as she took the tissue samples from Ducky.
_.-~=]})*({[=~-._
The eyes watched Sister Rosita as she went through the records. It was troubling that the sister requested an autopsy of Sister Margaret. Rosita obviously suspected something. These damned nuns were such a tight group. It really is not surprising so many of the women shared this secret. No doubt, they all know something of what was happening. The question at hand became what to do now. Would killing all of them bring a final resolution to the problem? Would it cause more problems? What would happen with the business? Would it be possible to take the entire inventory and relocate? It is time to plan the next move.
_.-~=]})*({[=~-._
Father Miguel Perez watched as Sister Abigail sprayed the floor of the library. He knew when he arrived at the bus station that the young nun seemed familiar, now he remembered where he had seen her before. Sister Rosita was quite fond of bowling. She and some of the other nuns belonged to a league along with the young woman from some federal agency he could not remember. Nevertheless, the young nun on her hands and knees wearing red glasses and shining a black light on the floor was the same young woman in a picture that Sister Rosita displayed in the orphanage's common room.
It seems that someone else suspected foul play regarding the deaths of the nuns. He had a choice to make now. He could assist in the investigation and lead it away from his own activities, or he could play ignorant and work to hide his true work from her. He slipped out of the library and made his way to the rectory. Now was the time to plan his next move.
_.-~=]})*({[=~-._
Abby was getting more excited with each pull of the trigger. This must be how Gibbs feels when he fires his sig at a bad guy, she thought. Every time I pull this trigger, it's one more shot against whoever did this. Her chemiluminescence showed that someone bled a lot in this area, directly below the balcony on the second level. She found some cast off further out, but this is where the body landed. She was inspired to look here after finding scratch marks in the floor upstairs. After measuring the scratches, she determined that something with four legs received a strike from the left side that knocked it off-balance. A couple of dents further down indicated that the something bore similar features to a small ladder. She also found some dents in the railing that indicated someone had banged on it recently. One of those dents had a blood smear that she collected. Now she had so much more from which to gather samples. She desperately hoped that there was enough DNA in the samples to prove useful.
_.-~=]})*({[=~-._