Chapter 17
When Tony and Gibbs returned to the bullpen, McGee had filled the plasma with enough documents to make Tony dizzy.
"Please tell me you found something in all that digging, McTerrier." He shed his jacket and stowed his gun as he spoke.
"We have determined that if it is the biographer, he has not been working alone." Ziva spoke from her seat at her desk. "He does not have clearance to be on some of the bases where the murders took place."
"I said earlier — last night? — not that we've been to sleep — that our guy was probably working with somebody." Tony wished he'd gotten coffee, too. "If it's not the writer freak, who else is this obsessed with Boone?"
"That's what I've been working on, Tony." McGee clicked some buttons and the files on screen rearranged. "Boone's only known family was his mother."
"Who he killed." Tony retorted.
"Right." McGee rolled his eyes. "His mother was a prostitute, so Boone's birth certificate doesn't list a father."
"Great news, McGeek. A john out of thousands of possible men is a suspect. Like that narrows it down." Tony really needed that coffee now.
McGee just kept going, not even rolling his eyes that time. Tony spared a second to remember the probie who would have stuttered and shut up when Tony jabbed him like that, back when Boone was alive and insane.
"But if his father was that obsessed with Boone and his work, or wanted to take his revenge that badly, he should have turned up before now. Even if it was just in the book the guy wrote after Boone fried." McGee waved a hand toward the back elevator. "Dorneget's been working his way through the book looking for any mention of Boone's father and nothing's turned up."
"So if it's not Papa Psycho, who have we got?" Tony resisted growling. That was Gibbs' department, and he could tell from the stony expression on the team leader's face that he wasn't far off that. "Tell me you have something."
"If it's not Boone's family — and we have no evidence of a girlfriend or any woman in his life — that leaves people connected to his victims."
"Wait." Tony held up a hand. "Are we sure it would have been a girlfriend? Boone was seriously whacked in the head about women. Any chance he liked to get his rocks off with men?"
"Why would you throw a rock at somebody?" Ziva's question made Tony's jaw drop.
"Not..." He wasn't actually sure how to explain that one in the middle of a bullpen. "It's an expression Ziva. How do we know Boone was straight, not bent? Well, more bent."
"All his victims were raped, Tony." McGee's voice was quiet. "He was a sick bastard when it came to women, but that's the only way he swung that we can find evidence of."
"So we have to find all the people attached to 27 victims and figure out which one might have admired the killer of their loved one?" Tony dropped his head back to stare up at the skylight. "You're kidding, right?"
"I'm thinking an ex-boyfriend of one of the women, somebody who hated the woman and thought Boone gave her what she deserved." McGee leaned on his desk. "It makes sense, and since there's no apparent connection between that person and Boone, there's no reason it would have been flagged on any kind of security clearance review."
"Right, because whoever this is has base access." Tony walked over to his desk and pulled out the chair. "Did you get as far as pulling names of evil exes from the files before we got back?"
McGee shook his head.
"On it, Boss." Tony didn't even wait for Gibbs to tell him.
"Ziva." Gibbs headed for the back elevator, Ziva on his six. Once they were gone, Tony looked over at McGee.
"We need to get this bastard, soon."
McGee nodded. "Gibbs?"
"Silently pissed."
"I remember last time as well as you do. We're going to get him, Tony."
"Yeah." Tony started sifting through the files McGee sent him, making notes of names.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Gibbs walked into the elevator, hit the button for Autopsy.
"They are in the lab." Ziva leaned over and pressed the button for Abby's floor.
Gibbs just lifted an eyebrow.
"Tony thought they would be more effective paired with Abby and whatever she and Dorneget could find. And Dorneget is their protective detail."
Gibbs nodded. He didn't expect this bastard to pull an Ari, but the lab was a better place to keep all of them, even if Dorneget wasn't exactly his idea of adequate protection.
They walked into the lab to find Palmer and Dorneget bent over the lab table, each with half a paperback book, the binding ragged where somebody had split it. Abby and Ducky were visible in the inner office. Gibbs motioned for Ziva to stay with Palmer and Dorneget while he headed through the sliding door.
"Ah, Jethro. I am glad to see Anthony managed to keep you from going lone wolf on us this time." Ducky didn't even glance up from the table where documents papered the surface. "Did you know, it was Mr. Boone who piqued my interest in this sort of work? When I first learned of the science, I wondered how much earlier he could have been stopped had more people had these skills. After his admittedly brief resurgence through his surrogate, I stepped up my efforts to finish my degree so I would be able to help should we encounter another madman of his ilk."
"Talk to me, Duck." Gibbs stood at the end of the table, back to Abby.
The medical examiner straightened up. "We are not looking for a typical copycat killer. Our new killer does not try to replicate Boone's methods, nor his choice in victims. While his signature is reminiscent of Boone's in retrospect, it is not a match. Indeed, I believe he deliberately chose to switch signatures midway through his killing spree. In doing so, he created a break between his earlier victims and the most recent ones, a break that made it more difficult for those of us investigating the cases to realize they were in fact a single case. And yet, he made sure there was enough present at each case to link it to the others." Ducky looked over at him, and Gibbs nodded.
"Right. He is obviously skilled in a number of areas to have done each of these crimes himself."
"No accomplices?" Gibbs thought of Tony's theory about the baseball game vendor.
"I would think not." Ducky frowned. "This is a killer who seems to relish the chase. He is deliberately taunting you and your team. The timing of the earliest kills, all set for times when your team was occupied with other high-profile cases, suggests that he did not want you on the case too soon. Combined with his choice in victims, I believe he is targeting you and your team. Given your role in Boone's capture, incarceration and death, that is hardly surprising. But a man who thinks like that is apt to act alone. He does not trust others to be as smart and clever as he believes himself to be."
"Why now?"
"Now that is pure speculation." Ducky frowned. "Based on the cases that Abby has collected, the first kill was about six months after Boone was put to death, and was a victim designed to represent Agent Cassidy. But it seems unlikely that this man's obsession with Boone began then. Rather, I think he was aware of Boone while he was actually killing, but he held off on his own killing spree until later."
Gibbs tried to think back to the days when Boone was at large, back when he was still a fairly green NCIS agent. More than 15 years ago. "Why wait until Boone was dead, then? If he was targeting us, why not start earlier?"
"Now that is a puzzle I do not know the answer to." Ducky pointed to the submariner's file. "Knowing what we now know, it seems likely he was in fact already obsessed with the team while Caitlin was alive. But I have found nothing to tell me why he might have waited as long as he did to start killing."
"He?"
"Yes, I'm fairly certain this is a man."
"Why?"
Ducky eased himself onto the lab chair near the table. "As I said, I believe he is acting alone, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a woman to have killed our SEAL last night. Also, given Boone's choice of victims, I rather suspect that that madman's obsession with young women would not appeal to a female killer."
"McGee thinks it could be an ex- of one of the victims, somebody who approved of what Boone did."
"Quite possible." Ducky held up a finger. "In fact, quite probable."
"He and DiNozzo are looking at suspects in each of the deaths who might fit that profile." Gibbs could feel an itch under his skin, a need to be out doing something besides poring over papers from 15 or 20 years ago.
"While they do that, I shall endeavor to examine the victims. Once the authorities knew there was a serial killer at work, they likely did not examine the life of the victims in any great detail. Perhaps I can find something they might have missed, some man who would feel enough wronged by one of the girls to appreciate what Boone did."
"Duckman, that's just creepy." Abby walked over from her spot behind the desk. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time to create those social networks you are so fond of to see what the victims' private lives looked like." Ducky frowned. "However, perhaps you can find the various points of contact online for the names Timothy and Anthony have compiled. Looking at Facebook and the other sites for these men will help me assess their mindset."
"You got it." Abby nodded and headed back to her desk.
Gibbs hesitated, not sure why he doubted himself right now.
"Jethro, we will catch him." Ducky looked at him, waiting. Only when Gibbs nodded did the medical examiner return to his work.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
This one was easy, and it will distract them from my goal. The gunny never stood a chance, not against me. The great Leroy Jethro Gibbs and his team aren't as smart as they think they are, or they would have figured more out by now. They would have asked some of the right questions, talked to some of the right people. And within 18 hours, they will not be thinking of those questions or those people. They will be cut adrift again, lost in recriminations and all those things people care about too much. Not me. This is clean, quick. The killing is just the means to my end, the goal that none of them have realized yet. One body, 10 bodies, 23 bodies. All pieces, pawns in the bigger game. The hour draws near for the final phase.