Chapter 5: Paradox
~ Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong ~ Lao-Tzu
The drive to the crime scene was the usual way: Gibbs in the Dodge going ahead leaving the four agents to figure out how to organize themselves in the truck. Before McGee even started to fight for the right of seating in the front Buchanan took McGee's hand and lead him into the back of the truck, quietly asking him to jump in so they could have a moment alone.
Ziva and Tony sat in the front, planning to drill the profiler for information. But their plans were frustrated when she, once in the back of the van, simply broke a pencil and stuck it in the rail of the small window, effectively shutting it down so it couldn't be opened from the front.
"Hey, open it up! I want to talk to you guys."
Joy sat dejectedly on the floor of the truck, supporting her back on the cabinets, tapping lightly the floor so McGee could sit beside her.
"I'm not in a talking mood, DiNozzo!" Joy shouted back.
McGee sat beside her and they stayed in silence while Ziva drove the van after Gibbs' Dodge, her maniac driving throwing them to one side or the other but, as they were both sitting on the floor, they weren't jostled as much as if they were sitting on the small bench of the back of the van.
"Wanna talk about it?" McGee's voice was almost a whisper, as he noticed the desolated look on Buchanan's face as she stared at her unpolished nails.
"There's nothing to talk about." Joy's voice was quivering, "They're already dead."
"You can't be sure of that."
"Oh, I can." She turned to him, showing all her hurt on her face. "We were never able to retrieve any living victims from Lizzie. We were never even able to find their bodies. We just knew that they were dead."
"How?"
"She kept..." Joy closed her eyes as her mind was assaulted by horrid images, "She kept their heads in glass jars, perfectly preserved in her basement. We found twelve heads, but we were investigating eight missing people reports. We have never been able to identify who the other four were." She sighed, leaning her head so she could rest it on McGee's shoulder. He put an arm over her shoulders, feeling her talking against his chest. "We never found all their pieces."
NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS
They arrive at the crime scene, which was like any other before. Gibbs barked his orders, which the agents scurried around to fulfill them. However, Ducky noticed the glares Gibbs occasionally would throw towards his profiler, who would simply flinch and step away from the team leader.
After the third harsh cut Gibbs sent to his agent, she simply stared at him with inscrutable eyes for a whole minute, before giving her camera to McGee and going back to the truck, literally walking away from the crime scene.
McGee just looked disappointed at Gibbs before going to another spot to document the scene, while Tony and Ziva just lowered their heads and kept doing their jobs.
"Jethro, a moment of your time, please."
"Not now, Ducky, we have to..."
"Now, Jethro. Please follow me," Ducky gave a nod to Palmer, who had noticed the strange tension between the agents but had thought it would be better not to say anything about it.
"Why exactly Gibbs is angry at Buchanan?" Ziva asked out of the blue, just to receive a glare from Tony.
"Receiving a request of help and denying it is very serious in Gibbs' book." Tony glanced to where Ducky was talking in hushed tones to Gibbs, obviously angry.
"Is it one of the rules? I've never heard of that rule." Ziva looked confused at Tony, who glances to the direction where Buchanan went.
"It's one of the unwritten rules, Ziverrrr."
Meanwhile, Ducky was giving Gibbs an earful for his treatment of his team mate.
"What is wrong with you, Jethro? Is it really necessary to be so harsh with your agent, who is obviously not herself today?"
"Ducky, you don't know..."
"Then tell me what sin she has committed that gave you the right to belittle her so grievously that would reduce her to tears. Yes, tears, as I saw her eyes when she turned and left. Please, enlighten me."
"I've found out about a deal she cut with the Director..."
"And that's your reason to treat her like trash?"
Gibbs rolled his eyes and glanced in the direction of the truck, where he knew the younger agent was. His phone started ringing and he immediately answered when he saw the ID.
"Gibbs, finish processing the scene and return immediately to NCIS."
"Why, Leon?"
"Don't question me. I've spent the last three hours on the phone and my patience is very limited right now. Return immediately."
NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS
After processing the scene they ride the elevator back into the bullpen and there is still a chilly atmosphere between the agents. Buchanan was stubbornly ignoring Gibbs, who was doing his best to glare at the profiler's back. The silence in the elevator was heavy and they all sighed relived when the doors opened in the bullpen floor.
However all of them froze before stepping out of the elevator when they found Director Leon Vance standing right outside the door, as if waiting to jump in an unwary prey.
"Leon."
"Gibbs," Vance said in salutation and immediately glanced at Buchanan, who was frozen looking at him warily. "Give Gibbs your things on this case and pack your bags. You have a go."
His words spurred her in action, as she ran out of the elevator towards her desk and immediately started dialing on her cell phone. Vance followed her in a more sedate pace, with Gibbs and the team following behind "You are to go to Louisiana and join the task force to apprehend the escapee Elizabeth Boyd. Until she is under custody you will be on loan to the FBI, working with the local office to apprehend the suspect."
"What about her banishment?" asked Gibbs, glancing at Joy packing her stuff in a hurry.
"Temporarily lifted until the end of this case. All will be the same once it's over."
"What banishment?" McGee looked at Joy nervously before turning to Gibbs, who shook his head, indicating that now wasn't the time or the place.
Joy chuckled as she stuffed her laptop and the cables in her backpack, "I really don't wanna know whose ass you had to kiss to get me into that investigation."
"Good, 'cause I'm not gonna tell you." Vance shook his head, observing his profiler, "But after some pushing and shoving, it wasn't my intervention that tipped the scales."
Joy frowned as she heard that, glancing nervously at Gibbs before turning to the director, silently asking him to explain himself.
"The FBI Brass was quite insistent in keeping you out of the case, but they had to relent half an hour ago when they had their hand forced by someone much stronger than them."
Vance took one second to prepare before dropped his bomb, noticing how the agent slowly became pale with the news. "Senator Gordon S. Meland's niece is missing and all evidence points that Boyd has her. Once the suspicion was raised he immediately contacted the task force and when he was informed that the profiler who solved the case in the first place was being kept out of the investigation due to internal power squabbles, he overrode them and ordered you to be part of the investigation."
"And as Senator Meland is part of the Defense Budget committee in the Congress..." Joy completed shaking her head just to receive the confirmation from Vance.
"Checkmate."
"So it's all about politics again," said Gibbs, noticing the shaking shoulders of his profiler, whose face was hidden by her hair as she stared at the floor frozen on her spot.
"Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just a player in this game." To Buchanan, Vance said before he started to walk towards the stairs, "Your plane leaves in half an hour."
"You do know what you are doing, don't you?" Joy finally asked, lifting her head and staring at Vance, who stopped and glared at his agent.
"Are you questioning my actions? I've spent half of the afternoon on the phone trying to get you back onto the case which is what you've wanted in the first place and now you are questioning my actions?"
Joy shook her head, sighing loudly "I'm not questioning your actions. I'm questioning your motivation." She left her backpack fall on the floor, before taking a step towards Vance, her voice quivering with anger, "Because you know exactly what's going to happen when I get there."
Vance turned around and approached Joy, glaring at her with his full Director's pose, "Yes, I do. You will do your job, offer your assistance until the killer is arrested and in custody. Case closed. You get some local celebrity status, save the Governor's niece and everything is good again in the world."
"That's not how it works, Director."
"Really, so how does it work, Agent Buchanan. Clarify it for me."
"She's already dead." Joy said, eliciting surprised looks from Tony, Ziva and McGee, who were all watching the discussion like people in a tennis court. "She's been dead from the moment Liz kidnapped her."
"You have no way of knowing that."
"Oh... I have. You see, it took a team of three profilers three weeks of hardcore investigation in order to identify Liz and arrest her and still we lost eight victims. At least, those were the ones we were aware of. The body count wasn't ever... officially closed. When I get there, they will crucify me on the altar of their ignorance, expecting false promises of a happy ending which I won't be able to give them. And when your precious governor's niece is found dead - if she is ever found - they will blame it on the out of town cop who didn't do her job well."
"But you've worked with them before. You know that's the way things are." Vance tried to argue, but Joy shook her head, remembering how it was working with the people down South.
"They literally hate my guts there. And you're sending me alone, throwing me to the wolves. It's one thing to face a precinct full of chauvinistic pigs when you have the backup of a team; it's another to walk into it on your own. I won't last a day."
"You're not being reasonable."
"Not reasonable? Not reasonable? She murdered a federal agent in cold blood." By now, Joy's voice was just a whisper, as she remembered the nightmare that the Boyd's case was eight years before. "She cut him into pieces using a meat ax and dispatched his body parts to the agents involved in the investigation. I've received the upper part of his thigh. Still, we've never recovered all parts in order to give him a proper burial. Don't ask me to be reasonable about that."
Vance shook his head, uncaring of the passionate speech given by the agent, "The deal is sealed. You're going alone. Time is wasting."
"She has a team," said Gibbs, surprising Buchanan who glanced at him before looking at Vance, who studied Gibbs with a frown.
"Agent Gibbs, I won't reassign MCRT in order to clean up a mess the Bureau has created."
"She's part of my team, Vance. She's right. Either send all of us or you're not sending any of us. Regardless of the deals you might have cut with the FBI."
Vance glared at Gibbs at the others: Tony just folded his eyes waiting for Vance's verdict; Ziva grabbed her backpack and put one strap on her shoulder, ready to go and McGee just looked at Gibbs, waiting for any sign from the team leader.
Vance looked back at Buchanan, who was looking at Gibbs with relief. Finally he gave in, "Give your findings of your case to Balboa, I'll redo your transport arrangements."
"Don't bother," Joy said as she opened her vibrating cell phone, "Faith, we're ready to roll. Be ready in five."
She approached Gibbs, looking at him with newfound respect in her eyes, "There's a fuelled jet ready waiting for us."
"I won't pay for that." Vance was ready to start arguing, but Joy lifted a hand to calm him down.
"No need, we'll use one of the Bureau jets. I've called my sister - she's a section chief in the Bureau and they've got their own transport - and requested her to have it ready as soon as I heard about this case." She approached the Director, "In cases like this, I don't fly economic."