Chapter Three
Vigil
'Why do hospitals always have to smell so sterile? How can sterile even have a smell?'
How can it be so silent at three in the morning when Gibbs' soul is raging? He wants answers, wants to rip them from Nurses who pass back and forth, in and out from and to the MedStar Medical Center's Emergency Room behind the double doors. Every time someone enters or leaves they don't look at him or the silent woman seated on the bench beside him.
It's been over an hour since the ambulance rushed the unconscious Tony DiNozzo from McMillan Park and thus far his only way of keeping track of time has been the intermittent loudspeaker calls for specific doctors to aid in completely irrelevant cases.
Normally he'd appreciate Ziva's silence but tonight he needs more than silence. And because he's been clear for a very long time about his preferences he expects to get no more.
x
Another Nurse comes out from the left side door and he almost rises but she walks past without a glance at him or Ziva, and grabbing her and ripping answers out of her won't help. Watching her retreating form, he tells himself again that he'll have to–
"Gibbs." Ziva's already up, his rise is half automatic and he's on his feet even before he completely processes the white coated man with the fake reassuring expression.
"How is he?" Gibbs demands before the man has released the swinging door.
"At the moment he's stable, but until we know from the Lab what your Agent DiNozzo has been injected with, all we can do is use saline solution and blood transfusions to try to flush whatever it is from his system."
Gibbs had used the resources of the EMT Ambulance to split the contents of the bag roughly evenly, half to MedStar and half to NCIS' lab, and that fill-in Forensic Scientist Ruby Rae had better be in and hard at work on it.
"Can I see him?"
"He hasn't recovered consciousness. I don't know when that will be."
He turns to Ziva. No point in both of them exhausting themselves; the ones who know what was used on DiNozzo are at NCIS. "Go back. I don't care how you get the answer to what they used so long as you get it."
"I shall get it."
"That's enough of that, Officer David," Director Jennifer Shepherd's voice breaks in sharply. They turn, neither happy to see the boss. "I've assigned Special Agent Paulsen's team to interrogate those women."
"Director–" Ziva knows she's breaking protocol but she expects it's not going to matter which of them voices the protest.
"On account that at this moment you are both too personally involved in this case. We don't want anyone to mishandle this case like in violating their Constitutional Rights without getting the answers to what they used on Special Agent DiNozzo."
Ziva looks from Shepherd to Gibbs and sees in his eyes that he has no intention of letting the prisoners slip out of any legal loophole. Those women will be broken and will answer for their crimes.
"Now I suggest you each get some rest. It's 0337 and you're going to need to be sharp to deal with this. Those two are in good hands."
Ziva can virtually read Gibbs' mind.
xxx
'Four thirty in the morning,' Michelle Palmer thinks bitterly as she throws her white robe over the cushioned backless chair before her round mirrored bureau. The plush robe feels better under her than the cushioned chair would as she sits down. The touch lamp on Jimmy's side of the bed behind her is only at two thirds, just bright enough to see by as it reflects over her right shoulder off the mirror onto her bare chest and face.
She looks at her mirrored husband snoring softly, sound asleep, and feels another stab of resentment. 'Yeah, snore, go ahead, your life isn't coming apart.'
She looks to herself, over-exhausted eyes bloodshot and haunted, face carved deep with fear, misery and lack of sleep. 'Fifty-eight fracking minutes.' That's how long had passed from the last time she'd lain awake on the bed and stared at the red digits on her clock radio until she looked again and realized she had slept.
She'd tried to make herself sleep again, to force herself to sleep, to batter her teeming mind into submission to let her sleep, and finally she gave up.
She'd left Jimmy asleep on the bed - 'yeah, he can sleep' -. She fights the bitterness. He had stayed awake, had held her while she cried, had done everything a male could do for her but he'd dozed off and left her alone.
x
Okay, she'd gone still and he probably thought she'd gone off, but the truth is she'd been too miserable to move. So, his arm draped over her from behind, she'd stayed still and watched the red numbers on her radio change from one to another to another, minutes to tens of minutes to hours to eternity until she'd given up, slipped out from under his arm, unable to stand his soft breathing and occasional snores for one more second, clenched her fist about her robe and had gone in search of another way to fall asleep.
She'd showered and shampooed and conditioned and body washed and showered and shampooed and conditioned and body washed and showered and shampooed and ran out of conditioner and body washed and dried herself and lotioned and moisturized - someday she'll make someone explain that idiocy to her - and only brought the robe back out with her because her chair padding would stick uncomfortably if she didn't protect herself. She'd turned on the touch lamp just enough not to wake Jimmy but then she'd sat here on the chair instead of on the bed because a hot triple shower hadn't relaxed her one bit...
x
Behind her she sees, in the mirror, Jimmy turn over more to her side - 'why can't he stay on his own? Now I can't get back on.' - but his arm reaches for her, up and down the mattress. Even asleep he reaches for her and her heart softens. He loves her so much.
'If you were awake like you're supposed to be you'd find me.'
She rips her attention from him in the mirror back to herself. Exhaustion is chiseled onto her face where it can find room between misery and fear. Even in the dim reflected light the sterling silver circled star and cross emblem glistens between her breasts. A little more than an inch in diameter, the five pointed star within the circle, perhaps the best publicly known Wiccan emblem, is unique for the passion cross within the inverted pentagon, the emblem of her dual faiths.
Jimmy had designed and given it to her as a token of his eternal love, and from that moment she'd never removed it. Twice blessed, once by herself and once by Kendra Little - and once, she thinks reluctantly, by Mother McGee - it's her most precious symbol of faith and love. She remembers the day he gave it to her. He'd designed it; there's nothing like it in the world, and from that moment she knew, beyond all possible doubt, that he was the one.
She'll keep it on forever, this symbol of Jimmy's love.
She recalls with as much of a smile as her depression will allow how he'd asked, in the early days before that, when he was coming to terms with her rather complicated viewpoint of faith, 'an Episcopalian Witch. How do you reconcile that?' 'It gives me headaches,' she'd replied.
She still hasn't 'reconciled' it.
x
She picks up her brush, knowing if she doesn't start to brush out her long hair while it's still wet she'll have to start over again and Jimmy will have to content himself with a cold shower.
Pulling the brush through her black locks, blacker now for being wet in the dim light, she encounters a snag and tries to fight her way through, the pain making her grimace more sharply as she pulls harder and harder until she wins. She continues brushing, grateful to find no more snags though the stinging in her scalp only gradually fades as she runs the bristles hard over the spot again and again.
Finally it's done and she sets the brush down and considers her make-up. What can she do to disguise the ravages of misery and exhaustion? What moisturizer and base and complexion cream and powder and blush will combine to cast a spell to make her forget that she's killed her partner?
She sees the clock radio reflected past her and turns around so she can correctly interpret the time. The radio will go off in 23 minutes and wake them to start a fresh new day. Does she lie down, try to squeeze in a twenty minute nap or just continue to try to make herself look...?
'Oh, the hell with it!' She pulls the star and cross necklace up over her head, sets the silver emblem and chain in the left corner of her bureau, gets up and crosses the room, slaps the lamp twice, up to full, then off and lays down on Jimmy's vacated side.
At least the mattress is warm.
xxx
Tim McGee steps off the elevator and crosses into the bullpen in the huge Operations Division, and though the skylight above their heads proclaims a brightly sunlit morning with no clouds in sight, inside it's murky and grim.
Every Agent he sees who sees him greets him with the same expression. Everyone knows. Tony's plight made ZNN and other news channels - what can be expected when the four witnesses to the kidnapping were Reporters? - but no one has answers.
He and Shav had woken to prayer, of course, and her assurance that Tony would be remembered at Services today both at Saint Mary the Virgin and in Tony's own parish - she'll see to that notification - but now that he's here he's less interested in prayer than he is in answers.
He's already spoken once to Gibbs and once to Ziva and the old adage about 'no news' still doesn't apply. The doctors are doing what they can, if that's how one describes 'nothing' these days. No one seems to know what Tony's been poisoned with, though they, NCIS, FBI and Metro all have samples of the stuff on the theory that four labs will get an answer faster than one. Maybe they're right, but none of them are Abby.
But Abby's over a thousand miles away as the jet flies and there are no Navy-fast jets between them so she'll have to rely on commercial flights.
He doesn't even know her status, there's no answer on her cell phone and their illustrious Director, in her wisdom, has given Tony's case over to Paulsen's team, thinking - probably rightly - that Gibbs will interrogate their prisoners to death to get his answers.
He wonders again what was on her mind. There's following the rules, and then there's nonsense. Paulsen should have caught Scalici's accomplice; this is what's important!
He suspects that though they've been restricted to the Scalici 'Puppet Master' investigation, that'll last only an hour more.
x
His only partner here is Michelle, and as he boosts himself a few inches out of his chair to look past the low partition between their desks she's on the phone. Her posture shrieks tension.
Considering the state she was in when he'd dropped her off last night, he holds himself to a wave that she sees and ignores and he sits back down. Now he can just see down to her forehead; he always has to straighten high to talk to her.
He turns on his computer; regardless of how many safeguards he has he doesn't keep it on overnight, and calls up the most recent–
"Suo you de zhe xie chun shi! Zhen shi ge wu nao de bai chi!"
Tim glances to his right. Another boost out of his seat and he can see the sharp anger on Michelle's face. He can't understand her angry Chinese epithets but he knows the tone so well.
Shav uses a similar tone, though hers is much milder than the rage that batters the partition. His wife only uses it and restricts herself to Gaelic when she's expressing thoughts she considers beneath her dignity to speak of even in the privacy of their apartment. She occasionally exhibits some of 'the classic traits of a redhead' and to date he's never been foolish enough as to ask for a translation.
x
"Ben dan!" The sharp epithet startles him. "Ta mei zai xiao xue li, zai chang deng shang zou shen me?"
He stands up, the better to see her over the partition. She's gripping the phone handset as though trying to strangle it, and slams it down onto its cradle hard enough to break it. "Michelle?"
She pivots toward him at warp speed. "WHAT!"
'Okay, past time to rein it in.' He considers himself the most patient and understanding man on the team, but she is not going to yell at him. "What's wrong?"
She stands up, a small hill of fury. She'd come in this morning in brown skirt and matching vest over cream blouse, but there's nothing soft about her. "Grekor Kanyicska made bail."
He restrains himself from saying 'what?' By the look in her brown eyes she's ready to tear someone's throat out and he likes his where it is. "How much was it?"
"A million dollars."
"For an Arms Dealer?" Now he appreciates her frustration; and this on top of their worry over Tony. "He probably keeps ten times that much cash in his basement."
"Yes. And now that he's out he's probably already on his way to California."
"They're letting him-"
"He couldn't be held on anything related to the Uranium because he never had it and we had no proof that he was going to buy it. He was held on Attempted Murder charges of you and Special Agent Nell Jones, but bail was granted."
She snatches up a semi-spherical paperweight and cocks her hand back, aiming for her monitor.
"MICHELLE!"
She glares at him, arm still cocked and he's not sure if she hasn't just changed targets. "Take a break."
"I just got here."
"How much sleep did you get?" Even with Shav's help he'd gotten very little.
"Fine." She slams the paperweight down on her desk and the metal rings through Operations, but better than through the monitor and assaulting the phone again. This is shaping up to potentially be a very expensive morning for her, but he's relieved when she leaves her cubical and stalks toward the rear door. Her gait telegraphs her rage and Special Agent Stenberg, approaching from the opposite direction, veers aside to stay clear of her.
x
Tim moves out from behind his desk to a position where he can watch her until she shoves the rear door out of her way and disappears through it.
He glances around Operations in time to catch heads disappearing behind other partitions.
He feels very relieved when the elevator's chime signals the car's arrival and he turns to see Gibbs and Ziva approach. But then he realizes the first thing Gibbs is likely to want to know is about the absent Palmer. "Boss, Grekor Kanyicska made bail.
"So what're you doing just standing there, McGee?"
McGee hurries around his desk and picks up his phone, grateful for the power of distraction. "Calling the Office of Special Projects."
"Special Agent Jones will be crapped," Ziva says. No one tries to correct her.
"Well, yeah, Ziver. Made to run around almost naked for three days in a Princess Leia slave outfit in front of 15,000 fans and service three guys Undercover; yeah she'll be pissed. Where's Palmer?"
Okay, so much for distraction. "She's, er, she's–"
"Right here, sir." Her brisk and cheerful voice makes him nearly wrench his neck in the turn. She's entering the rear of the bullpen and the placidity in her eyes nearly makes his own eyes bulge. "How is Special Agent DiNozzo?"
x
Motion stops throughout the bullpen, but though Gibbs stands staring at Palmer, accusation thick in the air between them, he says nothing. McGee holds his breath, more concerned about the conflict between them than the answer to the question.
It's David that breaks the silence. "We do not know. His Doctors do not even know yet what those women used on him. They are treating him with several poison control methods but he has not regained consciousness."
"Palmer," Gibbs' voice is controlled, held steady by chains of iron, "Paulsen's people on the interrogation of those women?"
"Yes, sir, in I's 1 and 2. I gave instructions Special Agent Paulsen is to notify you as soon as they have answers."
"Who are these two?"
She steps to her desk. Tim is about to answer, phone ringing in his ear - he'd begun researching them at home, linked to NCIS' secure files - but his forwarded call to LA's OSP connects and he's locked out, for the moment, from this conversation. Too late he recalls the sun hasn't even risen for their California counterparts. What a time to deliver bad news to, of all people, Henrietta Lange.
x
"Andrea Harper." Michelle says as she directs the blonde woman's picture to the plasma screen on the other side of Tim's desk as Gibbs and David approach it. A moment later Ziva's phone rings and she crosses back to answer it. She'll stay where she is, the images on her monitor. The longer she can stay out of Gibbs' reach, the safer she feels. "She seems to have led a somewhat privileged life; third generation Bostonian money. Her grandfather made a vast fortune in the liquor business following, and very likely before and throughout, Prohibition, and his daughter married up in the ship building industry. Her husband's family built the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeths 1 and 2 and a whole fleet of very profitable vessels under too many different companies. I'm betting Daddy gets her bailed out long before it's set."
She looks to the group, sees Gibbs' glare and decides opinions, especially negative or pessimistic ones, are particularly unwelcome this morning. In fact, even if the rest of the day goes perfectly, she's probably flirting with being fired by lunchtime.
"Educated in Harvard, she was a highly placed member of the Zeta Phi Chapter of the Delta Gamma Sorority and still maintains a major force in Alumni activities."
"What's she doing trying to kill a Federal Agent?" Gibbs sounds like he doesn't expect a ready answer, for which she's relieved because she doesn't have one other than
"Whatever she's doing, she's doing it with Janette - born Janet - Vancer," the brunette suspect's face appears on the screen, probably taken from another Society column, "who's only a Second Generation Heiress. She had the name legally changed two years ago. Vancer's father Harold made his money in the Paper Industry, raping forests before it became gauche." Gibbs turns to her, an interesting expression on his face. She doesn't care about it.
"Vancer is in everything from Newspapers to being a major stockholder in Hammermill Paper. She too has more money than anyone deserves, but the early connection I found so far between these two is that she's also a Harvard alumni and a member of Zeta Phi."
x
"McGee," Gibbs cuts in on him the moment he hangs up his phone, somewhat relieved that OSP has their Analyst's safety and the renewed threat both in hand. "What update on John Scalici and that Puppet Mistress?"
"Nothing new, boss." Has it only been a few hours before this nightmare began, Tony was attacked and they began a second major case? He can well understand Gibbs' sudden course change. If they can't work on there two suspects until Paulsen's people have made enough progress - or not enough - for Gibbs to invoke his Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge status to bulldoze his way into the case, they might as well continue work on their 'current' case.
"But we do have something on Tony," Ziva says, returning to Gibbs' side. "I have received a call from Doctor Beniot. She heard about Tony's attack on the news."
Gibbs considers this no surprise. You can't get four Reporters, Newspaper reporters though they are, together as witnesses to a kidnapping and expect to keep it quiet. That's why he hadn't even tried. "What did she say?"
"She was, understandably, displeased at not being informed, but that she is proceeding to MedStar."
"Hopefully she'll be able to help. McGee, what about Scalici?"
McGee figures that the 'pulling of rank' will occur within the next fifteen seconds, so for that time he'll focus on the loud 'Puppet Master'.
"He hasn't called for a Lawyer. The parents contacted one, I got a call, but when I told Scalici he refused. Said he doesn't need one."
"He thinks he's smarter than we are."
"He does."
"You just let him keep thinking that for now. You and Palmer stay on him and ID that girl. You contact the other people on that hit list?"
"Barely begun."
"By the time we get back."
"Yes, sir."
But when Gibbs turns around, Ziva is not there.
"That took about as long as I thought it would," Tim says.
xxx
Ziva steps into Ob 2, the dimly lit Observation Room for whatever transpires through the large one-way mirror as seen from I2. Through the glass, in the lighted room where only a mirror is seen with this room's lights down, brunette Socialite Janet 'Janette' Vancer is getting a crash course in the consequences of a life of crime.
The woman, shackled and cuffed with a chain binding the restraints to her waist, still wears the scarlet, button-less half-blouse loosely tied under her breasts and the scorching hot pants that she'd been captured in.
Special Agent Darrhonn is talking to her, but not very forcefully. She decides the man needs a course in 'Interrogation 901'.
Under other circumstances, Ziva might address the man at the controls to her left cordially. This time she just gives a slashing motion across her throat and walks out. She doesn't care if the man correctly interprets the gesture as a signal to stop recording what transpires inside or whether he takes it as a threat of what will happen to him if he fails to comply.
She moves a few feet down the orange cinder-block hall and opens the door. Agent Darrhonn looks to her, doubtlessly surprised by the intrusion. "Take a break."
x
He stands, approaches her closely, tall enough that his lips are beside her ear. "Ziva, I know how you feel, believe me I do, but the Director said she wants our team to do this one."
She pitches her own voice as low. This is not an enemy, this is a friend, but she takes his arm firmly. "Ben, the break can be wherever you wish."
He pulls back, and in his eyes she sees his understanding. He nods and walks out, closes the door behind him. She feels a pang of regret, but it vanishes when she turns to Vancer.
The woman looks up at her and quite obviously struggles for a brave mask, but Ziva's known the brave and the fearful and this woman has no ometz lev.
"There's been a mistake."
"If by mistake you mean you did not know who you attacked and expected to be in a DC Metro Police Station with their rules and courtesies and lawyers and not deep under a Federal Investigation Headquarters, then you are correct. You have made a tragic mistake. But do not worry, it shall be one of your very last."
"I'm not confessing anything."
"I am not interested in your confession," she says as she slowly rounds the table; her manner, her gait, that of a lioness with prey that's already been brought down, never to escape.
"You're not?"
x
Ziva knows Vasser has felt the first almost teasing sting of claws. There will be more before this prey succumbs. She steps out of the woman's sight. Vasser looks to her right, but Ziva's not there.
"The man you attacked is a Federal Special Agent." Vasser is still trying to find her. Ziva bends low, her lips to Vasser's left ear and her quiet words make the woman jump. "He is my partner."
Ziva's tone was weighted with death and still she stands just barely in sight. Vasser must strain in her restraints to see a portion of her. Whichever way Vasser turns, Ziva leans slightly to the opposite side.
"You shall tell me what you used on Special Agent DiNozzo." She bends close again. "And you shall tell me now."
She grabs Vasser's left arm and forces it out and onto the table, leans onto it, the woman's right one dragged with it by the short chain. Ziva's left thumb presses upon a nerve cluster in Vasser's forearm.
"What are you doing?" Vasser demands, wincing.
x
"You are a sad little debutant," Ziva says into her right ear. "I know all about you, Janet. Newspapers, Hammermill Paper, Harvard, Zeta Phi, none of which has prepared you for the trouble you are in." She applies a little more pressure with her thumb. It doesn't take much for Vasser to cry out and try to pull away, but Ziva keeps her arms locked to the tabletop, "or the methods that we shall use to break you."
"Let me go! You can't do this. You're not allowed to hurt me!"
"It is a pity for you that I am not an American Agent. I am Mossad." She reaches with her right hand for Vasser's side, her fingers seeking the woman's ribs.
"What's that? Leave me alone. Don't touch me. Let me go."
"Israeli Secret Service. The ones who protect Israel." She presses hard into Vasser's ribs and onto her forearm. The pain is so intense the woman can't draw breath to scream. "We fought off the Hezbollah, the Arab nations, cowed Egypt into an alliance, we have our own way of doing things."
She doesn't believe Vasser spent much time paying attention in College. Vasser's face is reddening and Ziva switches her right hand to the woman's shoulder, seeks the proper point on her clavicle. "There will be no marks, you will never be able to prove I did anything," she increases pressure on her arm, "but you will tell me what you used and the antidote."
She squeezes hard and Vasser's shriek nearly deafens her.