A/N - thanks for the reviews – Madame Director does seem to be kicking Gibbs around a bit in this part, but I promise he'll stage an impressive fight back.
Seeing Red – part 2
Day 2
Her heels clicked on the tiles as she approached the doors to the autopsy suite. The noise was overly loud in the silence of the hallway, almost disrespectful; though there was not the slightest chance that she would wake anyone from their final rest.
She felt guilty, like an intruder; though she had every right to be here. But she was very aware that, under these circumstances, a visit to autopsy was evidence of a weakness she would rather not confess to. Which was why she'd waited until Gibbs was safely out of the building.
She paused when the door to the autopsy suite came into sight, her first visit here, years ago now, had been a spectacular failure. It was difficult to believe that she had ever been that young or that inexperienced – though given half a chance Jethro was more than capable of reminding her.
But she wasn't a probie anymore, she was the Director of NCIS, and in her time she had seen far worse things than the inside of an autopsy suite.
She increased her pace, ensuring that she strode purposefully through the doors, even though the only person on the other side was Ducky, and he was unlikely to be impressed by her show of confidence – he saw far too much of what went on beneath the surface.
"Director," Doctor Mallard looked up from the terminal he was seated at, "I'd like to say I'm surprised to see you, but actually I've been expecting you."
"It's disappointing to be so predictable."
"We'll make it our secret then," he smiled. "I thought you might want to see a copy of my autopsy report. I sent it up to Gibbs a little earlier, but I kept a copy – just for you." He handed her the file and she flicked through it, even though experience told her he'd likely walk her through the content anyway. "As I suspected, she was drugged, her system contained a significant amount of a rather strong sleeping tablet – which unfortunately is very commonly prescribed. Not enough to kill her, but certainly enough to render her unconscious. The other two victims had similar amounts of same drug in their system – I believe Abby is checking prescriptions now, but as I said, it is very common."
"And if you know where to look you can probably buy it without a prescription."
"Indeed – there were no signs of sexual assault, and the cause of death was definitely strangulation. I'm trying to extrapolate some physical characteristics from the marks on her throat and the indentations from his knees on her chest – but it's not an exact process."
"There doesn't seem to be a great deal to go on, does there?"
"Honestly – I'd hoped for more." He sighed, "I fear Gibbs is going to be disappointed. Unless Abby comes up with something."
Jen leant back against the autopsy table, there were no pictures in the file and she wondered if that was deliberate. "Did she really look like me Ducky?"
"Yes my dear, I'm afraid she did. It gave us all quite a shock, young Antony was silent for all of 45 seconds." She smiled, trying to appreciate his attempt at humour.
"Can I see her?"
"Are you sure you want to?"
"I think I need to."
"That wasn't what I asked. Director – this wasn't your fault."
"I know that Dr Mallard." The slight edge of command in her voice was unmistakable, a reminder that she was after all, 'the Director'. She thought about telling him that it wasn't a misplaced sense of guilt that made her want to see the body. Guilt was too simple an emotion, too uncomplicated. Instead she held his gaze with her own and when it was Ducky who looked away first she knew that she'd won, though it was hardly a victory to be proud of.
Looking at the body was like looking into a mirror – although she suspected she would ever again look so, fresh and clean. There was something very disturbing about seeing in a murder victim something that you knew you'd lost long ago. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she'd been hoping that this would all turn out to be a mistake, Gibbs being over-cautious or a screw up by the FBI. But the similarity was just too marked. At least she understood now why the team had been so affected by the sight of the victim, why even Jethro had been convinced – for at least as long as it took him to blink.
"Thank you." She whispered the words, taking one last look at that face before he closed the drawer.
"Director," Ducky looked as though he was going to say something more – probably something wise and insightful, though there was always the possibility that the message would be lost in the obscurity of the story it was wrapped up in. Either way, she had absolutely no wish to hear it.
They'd found some answers – and a whole lot more questions. They'd identified their victim, correctly this time; Chloe Sanders had been 35, a grade school teacher from Richmond, who had been reported missing three days earlier when she hadn't turned up to collect her kids from the woman who looked after them during the day.
Gibbs had taken McGee with him to talk to her husband and to interview the staff at the store where she'd last been seen. Which had left Tony and Ziva with the unenviable task of going back through old cases to see if there was anyone who'd been recently released from prison who might wish the Director harm.
Of the Director herself – there had been no sign. Though if the increased security at all entrances and exits was anything to go by, she was definitely in the building.
"Did they have to solve so many cases?" Tony asked, leaning back in his chair and watching as a stack of folders on his desk wobbled precariously – but didn't actually fall. He had been through computer records, pulled the files of the ones that looked promising and come to the alarming realisation that the Gibbs /Sheppard partnership had been extremely successful.
"You aren't concentrating," Ziva responded, from behind an equally large stack of files.
"I'm thinking." He leaned back further in the chair, "is someone she put away really doing this?"
"I don't know Tony, isn't that what we're trying to find out."
"OK, but just think about it, how crazy would you have to be to bear a grudge like that – and at the same time how organised and careful would you have to be to not leave much in the way of evidence at three different crime scenes? We don't know how he abducted the women, we don't know where he killed them and we don't know how he dumped their bodies without being seen."
"So, what's your point DiNozzo?" They both jumped at the sound of Gibbs' voice coming from behind them. He didn't wait for their answer, but then he never did, just crossed to his desk and started looking through the papers. Tony answered him anyway,
"Is it possible to be both crazy and organised?"
"You tell me."
"Tony is not organised," Ziva pointed out, "but it is a question worth considering."
"So, we'll consider it. Have the two of you found any crazy but organised ex cons with a grudge against the Director?" Tony and Ziva exchanged glances, and again it was DiNozzo who answered.
"So far – there are three possible candidates, all released in the last six months. One of them is still on the west coast, we're using someone local to check him out, the other two are closer."
"Anything from your contacts?" Gibbs looked at Ziva, but she shook her head,
"Nothing on the anti-terror angle, so far, but they have flagged a former Serbian Captain." She handed him a file, "you and Director Sheppard caught him eight years ago while you were in Europe, it was a criminal case – not a war crime. He was convicted and served six years. He,"
"Liked to torture women, I remember. He was released?"
"A year ago, some sort of amnesty. Interpol flagged him, they think he's here somewhere – possibly running with the Russian mob." Gibbs shook his head for a moment, remembering the case and the details of what he had done to the women he'd hurt. Remembering the threats made in court against all those who had given evidence against him.
"Talk to the gangs unit, DiNozzo you know them, use whatever connections you have. Find him!" She nodded and he waved a hand at both of them, "go!"
He watched them leave and turned his attention back to the images of the dead women. Tony's comments had given him a question of his own. "This guy is not walking the streets hoping to find women who look like the Director of NCIS. Not in Richmond, DC and Nashua – so how is he finding them?" McGee rounded his desk and came to stand beside his boss.
"I've been thinking about that, boss, facial recognition software – it's got to be, we've used it ourselves on cases. He searches for some specific characteristics; he could get them from a photo – eye colour or shape, cheekbones, jaw line. All he'd need is the software and access to a database so he could search for anyone who matches the characteristics – and when he finds them, he uses the information to track them down and abduct them." Gibbs nodded,
"That's good McGee."
"The bad news is that he could have legitimate access to a database, or he could hack into it. We don't know which – and the software is pretty widely available."
"Check to see if any of our suspects have jobs that give them access to the kind of databases we're talking about, or the skills to hack into one. Check known associates too, maybe a friend is helping him."
"On it boss."
Abby hugged him – and not just because he had brought a Caff Pow with him. He suspected it was because she was worried about him, because she believed he and the Director were 'close'. But he didn't say anything and neither did she. She was Abby and she frequently managed to make him feel better without saying anything; and this wasn't the moment to debate the word 'close' as it related to him and Jen.
"Is the Director OK? He wasn't sure about how to answer that and he was too wary to make the attempt.
"You can ask her yourself, I'm pretty sure she'll be down for a progress report sooner or later. Do you have anything for me Abs?"
"Yes – and no." He sighed, it was turning out to be that kind of a case.
"Let's start with the 'yes'"
"The wig is custom-made, I should be able to track down whoever made it – I'm on it now."
"That's good. What's the no?"
"Pretty much everything else. I'm sorry Gibbs, the painkillers are too common to trace to a particular pharmacy, I'm trying to identify the hair dye he used on victim one, but I think it's going to turn out to be a very common brand. He certainly isn't a hairdresser, he made a lousey job of cutting the hair of the first two victims – which I guess explains why he used a wig for victim 3. He moved the bodies using black sacks – but you can buy them everywhere. This guy is smart Gibbs and very careful."
"Let me know when you get something on the wig maker and give McGee a hand, he thinks our guy is using facial recognition software to find his victims."
"You got it!"
"Agent Gibbs," Cynthia approached him just outside Abby's lab, "the Director wanted me to give you this." He opened the envelope she handed him and glanced over the surprisingly short list of names on the paper inside.
"Where is she?"
"She's In MTAC, but she…" he didn't wait to hear the rest of whatever she had been about to tell him.
She was sitting on her own, in the front row of the tiered seating. There were a couple of technicians monitoring the data feeds and other communication systems and she was leafing through some folders, the head set round her neck a sign that her schedule had been re-worked so she could hold some of her 'meetings' in the relative safety of MTAC.
"I hear you have some suspects," she said as he sat down beside her.
He knew she'd seen the autopsy report and clearly she'd been kept informed about what his team was up to. The conversation about her not interfering in this case seemed overdue, but the piece of paper he held was probably more of an issue right now.
"We're checking out a couple of faces from your past. I don't know if they're suspects yet." He told her who they were and only the name of the Serbian surprised her,
"He isn't still locked up in a prison somewhere?"
"Apparently not – Interpol have him with the Russian mob over here."
"Well, I feel much safer knowing that."
"We're checking it out." He turned his head to look at her, seeing the edge of shadows under her eyes. They might have been there before this started, he was almost sure they had been – but he couldn't be certain. "I got your list, there seem to be a few names missing from it."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Jen – my name isn't on the list." When he'd asked her to provide him a list of her former lovers, he hadn't really expected her to include him. It would have been far too risky to commit to paper what almost everyone speculated about, but very few people knew the truth of. But that didn't mean she could omit some other names out of the same sense of caution.
"I thought if you wanted to kill me you wouldn't resort to such indirect measures." She had a point, but experience had taught him to recognise her evasions a mile off and right now she was definitely not being straight with him.
"I know you," her eyes met his, eyebrow raised in a question that he refused to respond to; though if he had answered, it would be to remind her that in all the years they'd known each other men had been drawn to her, himself included, like moths to a flame. "Who are you trying to protect?"
"Is it inconceivable that I might just want to protect my privacy?" He looked straight back at her, not speaking and waited for her to remember that once he had taught her there was no privacy when it came to murder, which meant her privacy had been shot to hell the moment she had been connected to the dead women. As far as he was concerned the Director of NCIS should know better than to hope she'd been able to keep too many of her secrets.
For a long moment she didn't budge, he had no doubt that if she decided to dig her heels in this conversation could easily become messy. But, something shifted in her expression, the emotion flickering across her face far too rapidly for him to hope to identify.
"Fine," her voice was frosty, but she held out her hand and he passed over the paper. While he waited she wrote on it once more and handed it back to him. He was a little surprised to see she'd only added three names.
"Jen,"
"Perhaps you don't know me as well as you think you do." It was possible; it was also possible that he knew her exactly as well as he thought he did.
"You slept with my Doctor!" He had suddenly realised why one of the names she'd added to the list was familiar. "While I was in a coma, or did you wait until I'd woken up?" He remembered the neurologist, who'd treated him on both of the occasions he'd been in a coma. Up until that moment he'd actually been feeling quietly grateful to him.
"Be quiet!" His voice had been a little too loud, and they were getting some curious looks from the technicians still in the room. "I met him at the hospital while you were unconscious – he asked me out after you'd discharged yourself to go off to Mexico, and who I see is none of your business."
"I'm glad my life threatening injury gave you an opportunity to improve your social life. Why did it end? You trade him in for a politician?"
"He's in the Gulf, we decided a long-distance relationship wouldn't work for us."
"So, the Congressman was before?"
"Are you enjoying this Jethro?" He wasn't going to answer that; he also wasn't going to think about the fact that part of him had been expecting to see the name of one of his own agents on that list; thought that was what she had been hiding. And he didn't mean McGee – or Ziva. He stifled his relief and looking at the list instead asked,
"Who is Adam Peres?" At the question, she went still, just for a fraction of a second, and then leant towards him and hissed,
"You're the investigator, you figure it out!"
"Jen…" He wasn't going to back off in the face of her anger, but before he could continue they both became aware of the figure standing in the aisle, looking as though she wished she was anywhere but here.
"What it is Cynthia?"
"Director, you wanted to remind me about your call to Sec Nav."
"Thank you, I'll be right there." She turned back towards him, he could see she was calmer now – but he had no doubt that the fury was still there. It was rare that he'd get her to react so ferociously, he must have really struck a nerve. "However much you're enjoying digging through my private life, this isn't right Jethro, and you know it. It isn't an ex lover, it isn't any of the people you're checking out and, as much as I hate to admit it, it isn't the Serbian either. If it were, he wouldn't be killing them while they were unconscious, he'd be raping and hurting them first – and then he'd send them back to me in very small bits to make certain he had my attention."
He sighed, because his gut told him she was right, that they were missing something vital. This wasn't about revenge – it was more personal than that, it was about her, maybe even about some of those secrets she had tucked away.
She'd started to get up, but he caught hold of her wrist. "Jenny – is there anything you aren't telling me?"
"There are lots of things I'm not telling you Agent Gibbs." She shook him off and got to her feet, heading up the stairs. But before she'd gone too far she paused, turned back and lean towards him; close enough to whisper in his ear. "And if you wanted to know if I'd slept with DiNozzo, you only had to ask." And then she was gone, leaving only a faint hint of her perfume behind – exotic, subtle and expensive.
"Damn," he breathed, because she'd known what he'd been thinking, but mostly because he hated letting her have the last word.
TBC