Chapter Four
Rule 34
Gibbs watches the Interrogation of Janet Vasser from the Observation Room. He has given Ziva twenty minutes, as much as he can risk without bringing official notice of the halted recording. Satisfied that she's gotten as much as Vasser is able to give, he crosses between the rooms and opens the Interrogation Room door.
Janet 'Jannette' Vasser is seated, elbows propped up onto the table, sobbing into her hands. Ziva stands behind her and she turns to the open door. No words need pass between them. The only sound is pitiful sobbing.
Gibbs signals for her to come out. Ziva lays a hand upon a well worked spot on Vasser's shoulder and the trembling woman flinches, her cry a bleat of abject terror. Ziva bends to whisper something and the woman goes stiff as the color drains from her face.
When Ziva steps out and closes the door behind her, she snaps the rarely used lock in place and knows how it will work on her victim.
"She claims not to know the poison."
"I know."
"I shall break her."
"I've got someone you can break."
x
He's holding a large bulging black plastic bag but, aside from size and shape, she can determine nothing about it's contents and shows him her 'I do not care what it is' face. But she follows him - no one ever precedes Gibbs - toward the Holding Cells. "Scalici?"
The matter of John Scalici is far less satisfying because, under the watered down American Legal system she's now to be forced to endure - no more friendly and cooperative monitor, the Holding Cells have automatic systems - they actually have very little provable information they can use against Scalici for the murders of Margaret Tragule and Seaman Recruit Julia Hennessy or for the attempted murder of Paula Massey or for conspiracy to murder Corporal Juliette Spencer.
It seems evident that Scalici, whether the prime mover or not, worked with an equally young or younger blonde girl. And while his role, so far as McGee's investigation of Scalici's computer seems to indicate, is to impersonate lonely and harmless men to lure in the victims, it's the unknown 'Puppet Mistress' who sent the multitude of emails designed to manipulate the unknown Stooges into believing they are communicating with suicidal women bent upon being raped and beaten to death as a condition of their first dates.
Scalici played the role of the innocent man seeking a date with the unwitting victims, and if NCIS goes to an ADA with the evidence on the seized computer, all they can prosecute him for is, at best, conspiracy.
Ziva grants that she knows no one is as careful as they think they are 100 percent of the time, and McGee will ultimately find much to be used in evidence as he delves deeper into the computer - and psyche - of their main suspect, but short-handed as they are, stressed and pressed for time as they are, she wishes Tony were here and safe.
x
Tony, as often as he may play the disarming fool - and occasionally may be the fool with women - understands the psychology of dating, if only of American woman and not Israeli, and what it takes to charm women into that first date.
But Tony, whom she has to admit, and is willing to do so when not in his presence or in circumstances where he will hear about it later, is the best Investigator on the team short of Gibbs, who's now leading her down the long orange corridor. But Tony is in MedStar hospital, poisoned by those two klavtas whose throats she cannot even rip out.
"What is in the bag?" She has given him all the show of patience she intends. If she is to be removed from obtaining useful answers that will potentially save Tony, she intends to show no more.
He opens the bag, pulls out enough of a pink stretch top for her to recognize it as being evidence in another case. She pulls the bag from his hand, opens it fully and finds a not-quite-matching pair of pink slacks. So far as she can recall, these are not from the same case, quite evidently came from Evidence Holding, and his thoughts are as obvious as the Nike swoosh embroidered over the left breast.
"I do not know which I find more disturbing, that you believe I would wear this or that you would take it from Evidence just to -."
"Rule 34."
"'Never torture a prisoner physically, do it to his head'." She removes the offensive garments from the bag. They are more distasteful in the whole than they'd been in part. She doesn't bother to try to stare him down, she's never won such a contest. "Very well." She shoves them back in. "But if McGee or Tony ever see this footage, you will think your Recruit Training was a honeymoon."
"Already had one that was worse."
xxx
John Scalici's Holding Cell is on the same lower level, far left rear, but Ziva had to make a detour before they could continue the short journey. This cell, like the others, is dull black concrete walls, floor and ceiling with a single bulb recessed deep into the ceiling. Designed for 100 percent gloominess, it's the first line of psychological intimidation. After several hours in this black steel doored cell, suspects are occasionally grateful for the Interrogation to begin.
Gibbs is in a mood to not let John Scalici be grateful. In fact, he has very definite intent to make the manipulative young man very unhappy indeed.
One of the ways he will do so is to place the chauvinistic man not under his own mercy, but under a weak, insignificant and unimpressive woman - Ziva David.
But it is a Ziva David who initially had intense motive for being in a bad mood. The outfit she must now wear, too small on the top and too stretchy skin tight on the lower half, puts her in a worse mood than she'd been at her failure to obtain the antidote to the poison used on her partner.
x
Ziva walks into the midnight black cell. When Scalici sees her in the too snug pink that accents every inch of her body his eyes open to three consecutive widths.
"Is something wrong?" she asks, playing oblivious as she sits in the only black folding chair. Scalici had been caught on his feet, now he must stand as she sits before him. Usually their positions would be reversed, she taking the dominant position, but this is more effective. By sitting down, she forces him to stand like an errant schoolboy dragged down to the Principal's office.
Sometimes Rule 34 can be fun. This time the fun will be in how well she can torture this bastard even prior to using her hands.
"No," he says and tries to look away, but can manage less than three seconds. The cloth shirt is not particularly low cut but since she doesn't have it tucked down but allows it to mold under her breasts, even without a cuff she can watch his blood pressure rise.
"What do you want?" Scalici demands.
"Your testicles on a skillet and your penis in a meat grinder." He'd tried for and immediately lost any perceived upper hand. "But if I must I shall settle for a complete confession and the identity and location of your accomplice."
She could not have derailed him any harder with C4 under his tracks and she enjoys watching the wreckage of his mind pile high.
"F*ck you."
It's an attempt at bravado that doesn't even seem good for Summer Stock. "You are unlikely to get a firm enough erection or sustain it long enough to get my attention."
xx
"Ohhhh, that was narsty," Tom Gordon says as he adjusts the controls on the Security system. Gibbs, standing behind him in Ob 1 down the hall, laughs silently behind Gordon's back. Even in black and white display they can see the color rise in Scalici's face.
/Listen, you bitch, you don't ever insult John's manhood or John will rip you apart./
"Does he always refer to himself in the third person?" Gordon wants to know. Gibbs only nods, the motion unseen. It had been slightly disconcerting in yesterday's interrogation. "Must get a bit confusing."
"Not really. Both of him are bastards."
xx
"You'd better let me out of here. You have no right to kidnap me."
Ziva doesn't bother to point out 'we did not kidnap you, we arrested you'. The man has been playing the kidnap card since they took him down yesterday on his own front lawn and it is getting tiring.
Actually, the agents had not taken him down upon his family's front lawn, they'd picked him up from it. The man, seeing himself confronted by four Agents positioned to cut off any escape attempt, had charged Michelle Palmer, being a woman and the smallest of them. She'd met the bull rush with a classic Tomoe Nage judo move that had left him flat upon his back attempting to remember how to breathe.
"You and your accomplice impersonated men and women on Dating sites. While you pretended to be men communicating with your victims in the hopes of establishing romantic liaisons, your counterpart sent messages to gullible men that indicated the women you targeted wanted to be raped and beaten to death."
"I must be a very bad man."
"You then maneuvered the men into being dupes who murdered the women."
"That sounds like quite a fantasy."
"If so, it is a fantasy scenario you have played out numerous times, leaving an irregular trail of dead women throughout the District."
"Fascinating. And why would John do that?"
"You will tell me."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." She won't answer. Now that she's laid out the knowledge they have, she remains silent.
She's known this boy/man's kind so often. He's a boaster and boasters have to boast, even when they insist they have no idea what the subject is about. She's known some to talk themselves into a Conviction.
She keeps the silence until finally he can stand it no longer.
"Why don't I make it easy for you? If I'm doing all this, and I'm not about to admit I am, why don't you just meet me on-line and I'll scare up a really gruesome death for you at the hands of one of your bastard partners?"
x
Unfortunately, this is useless. He's only rephrasing the information she's already given him. "Who is your accomplice?"
"Eat me."
"I doubt very much that you would enjoy the experience." But she puts the bloody yet satisfying image on hold for later. She leans forward, letting her breasts lead the way. Watching his face, she thinks Tony would have something to say about shooting carp in a basket. "We have your computer, we have your email records -"
"What email records?"
She wants to put her fist through his smirk. "- and we will learn, from you, everything we wish to know."
"Nope. You won't. You're letting me out of this hell hole and then the next knock you hear at your door, bitch, is going to be a stranger with a steel pipe who's going to shatter every bone in your body and leave pieces of you on each of your partners' doorsteps, so get your moldy cunt out of here."
xx
Ziva leans back again, shoulders well back. Scalici very likely thinks her smile is for him, it's actually for the camera high to her left side.
In the monitor room, Gibbs smiles back to the image.
"I love the stupid ones," he assures Gordon.
xx
Ziva doesn't fight Scalici's stare on her breasts. She wants it there. Breasts have sent more strong willed and intelligent men down in flames than anything else in history and Scalici is neither of these. In fact, she has her doubts he can even lay claim to the title of man.
She allows herself slightly deeper than normal breaths, pacing herself on holding each intake for a moment so that the motion is neither excessive nor one that will ultimately make her light-headed. She allows the stare, and the thoughts so evident behind them, because in the end the fall will be that much harder.
"What does it get you to hurt these women?" she asks after ten calculated breaths.
"What?" he asks a few seconds too late. She looks down, apparently for the first time noticing the attention of his eyes. The shirt was too tight for her to allow her to keep her bra, and tucked under her breasts the material molds so well she might as well have body-painted her breasts pink. She even allows, by technique of will long mastered, her nipples to firm enough to poke against the material.
If he were that carp in a basket and she were armed with a bazooka, it would be a fairer fight.
"Why do you do it?"
"Do what?" he asks too late, his stare locked on her nipples. She can virtually hear the material in his pants straining.
This is not her normal technique, certainly not a preferred one, but it is starting to be fun.
She must be careful, however. The spell she is allowing him to weave upon himself is a fragile thing. She would have asked 'why do you kill?', but his natural reaction would jump start his brain, and that is not the head she wants him to think with.
"Work with a girl, when it is so clear what you truly want."
"What's that?"
She takes a breath the designer of the shirt had conceived it for best effect, leans forward and hunches her shoulders slightly. His eyes look like they want to jump out and plaster themselves upon her breasts. Her long breath nearly sets off the fire sprinklers. "A woman."
xx
Gibbs enjoys watching an artist at work. Despite her protestations, Ziva is clearly taking Rule 34 to heart and he settles in to enjoy the show.
His cell phone rings.
He looks with masked regret at the screen; this call he can't click off. "Yes, Director?" There are several titles he could have chosen, he'll keep to the formal one.
/What news do you have?/
"I'll be right up." He bluffs better face to face. No matter which case she'll ask him about, Scalici or DiNozzo, it's the wrong one.
Casting a look at the turkey shoot, he departs. He'll watch the tape, though it never compares well with live theater.
xxx
Ruby Rae sets the last of the samples in the centrifuge which will rotate the tubes so quickly it will force separate any microscopic particles present in the liquid Andrea Harper and Janet Vancer were forcing into Special Agent DiNozzo's veins. She wishes Abby Sciuto were here, but all the numbers the woman left her with go immediately to voice-mail. The scientist's certainly already on her way, she knows that Abby's devotion to her friends is legendary, but until Abby arrives she's on her own.
She presses the activation button and the six secured test tubes spin about the central axis so fast the individual vials disappear into a blurred disk.
"What have you got?" comes from two inches behind her, well above her head and her scream barely gets held down to an 'eeek!' She whirls into the tie of a tall man and when she looks up its into the Mount Rushmore face of her least pleasant nightmare.
It's one thing to be the shortest person in the room, she's accepted that long ago, but this man's habit of being right on her makes her feel she far too often turns to bump her nose on a cliff.
"Oh, Asian Gebbs - I mean Agent Gibbs." She takes a step back, right into the centrifuge, and tries to compose herself. "The Gas Chromatascope was inconclusive-" she raises her hands defensively, tries to edit out the gaff. "I mean I couldn't identify the poison with it. I'm hoping an Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay test will yield a better answer. I'm preparing the next sample for the Mass Spectrometer; I'm hoping I can - I mean it can - identify the particles."
"How long?"
Why is this his favorite question? And what was Abby thinking? Edenvale has car thefts, not exotic poisons. She'd done well on those two bullet tests last time but really. Okay, she knows Tim McGee recommended her over the Forensic Scientist Abby'd chosen the last time she took a Leave more than a year ago - and she's happy to see Tim again - even though he is married now - but why does the whole McGee package have to come with this man?
"Well, that's a bit hard to say. It's not like the elements are distinct; they're pretty well - that is whatever this is - is pretty well homogenized into the mix -."
"Try."
"About an hour?" She tries to make it sound unlike an utterly vague guess and utterly fails.
Thank God his cell phone takes just this moment to ring! He pulls it out of his pocket, flips it open. "Yeah, it's Gibbs."
The half-distorted voice barely carries the foot between them but she can just make out /This is Doctor Kramer at MedStar. You wanted me to call you when Mr. DiNozzo regained consciousness./
"I'll be right there." He closes the phone but she's not safe yet. "Have answers by the time I get back."
"Yes, sir," she answers with very dry mouth, but he's already walking away.
When he's gone and the room is quiet save for the whirring of the spinning centrifuge, she leans back against the substantial machine with a whoosh of relief. "Thank you, Ma Bell."
xxx
Fifteen minutes after Special Agent Gibbs had left the building Michelle Palmer steps off the elevator on the Autopsy level, relieved to be on her break. Gibbs had left Ziva with what will likely be a several hours long interrogation of John Scalici and updated them by phone that Special Agent DiNozzo is awake - tremendous relief - but he'd taken no one with him.
She's sure Ziva must have been aggravated. Tim was definitely annoyed to hear the update indirectly. He'd wanted to go, but she doesn't want to consider being trapped in the limited space of a car with Gibbs until DiNozzo's back at his desk and aggravating her.
'Maybe Jimmy and I can grab an early lunch upstairs.' But that hope is crushed as the large metal and glass pneumatic doors slide apart and she finds her husband and Dr. Maura Isles clad shoulder to foot in blue scrubs, faces covered by masks and plastic head shields, their gloved hands wrist deep in the chest of a naked man.
Nonetheless, she tries for a bright tone that in no way suits her mood. "Hi, honey. Doctor Isles."
Jimmy, facing toward her across the corpse, looks up, evidently quite surprised. "'Chelle?"
Isles looks back over her shoulder. Though a clear plastic shield covers her face, a spatter of something off-red that she doesn't want to consider had evidently squirted under it and onto the woman's blue cloth mask and had been smeared aside. "Special Agent Palmer?" She doesn't sound thrilled to see her. "Is there something we can do for you?"
Her tone says clearly 'I'm not ready with a report and this isn't your team's case.'
"No. Just visiting." She doesn't want to go into what happened upstairs earlier. Jimmy's eyes show that he understands what stresses burden her. Last night she'd cried in his arms, she's not going to today.
"Oh." Isles turns back, but not quite to the body. Apparently there's a communication with her husband that she can't see, but though Jimmy looks a bit uncomfortable he doesn't say anything.
x
Emboldened, Michelle steps closer, peers from the head of the table into the well lighted body by aid of the large lamp directly over the spread torso.
It's not at all pleasant to look into a chest lacking heart and lungs and soon to lack a great deal more. This is why she doesn't like to visit Jimmy while he's working. Then again, Gibbs normally obtains his reports in person, sparing her - and likely the others as well - the risk of losing their lunch. She'd actually come down hoping to go to lunch with Jimmy, but now no longer feels particularly hungry.
Then, looking anywhere but into the corpse, her eyes light upon the tray of surgical instruments laid out on the white cloth covered tray to Jimmy's right near the corpse's long haired head. The silver tools gleam in the bright lamplight.
Isles looks at her again and, before she can be told to move away - or to vacate the room completely, something Ducky wouldn't be so rude as to do - she crosses the room to where more sterile instruments are laid out beside the sterilizer. She looks over the implements for a moment and picks up one of three scalpels. She removes the plastic safety cap that covered the blade, sets it with the other blades, turns and crosses the room again, the razor-sharp silver tool pointed toward Jimmy's back.
x
As she draws close, Maura Isles looks up. "What are you doing?"
"Oh," she steps around her husband, stops beside him and tells him "I noticed you didn't have a scalpel. I was just bringing you one."
Jimmy lifts his right hand from deep in the thoracic cavity of the still man, wiggles the tool tipped with blood. Under the clear plastic shield she can read his smile in his cheekbones beyond his cloth covered mouth and nose.
"Oh." She looks to the tray on his other side, trying not to look as foolish as she feels. Like he'd forget a scalpel.
"We can't use that," Isles tells her through her own mask and face shield.
"Why not?"
"Because you're holding it in your bare hand. It's no longer sterile."
She glances at the open body - as though she has to check? - then back up to the woman. "But isn't he dead?"
It's a strange look Isles gives her. "We may have to send more samples up to the lab. We can't have any foreign germs added."
"Oh. Okay." She glances about, uncertain what to do with the tool. "Sorry."
She crosses back to the table, picks up the plastic cover and slips it back over the razor sharp blade.
x
"Honey?" Jimmy calls.
She turns. He's looking back over his shoulder. "Yes?"
"What do you want?"
She knows what's behind this question. She rarely visits, and never stays when he and Ducky are working. This is, in fact, the longest she's ever stayed here with an open body being worked upon. Usually they're sewn up by the time she...
She crosses back, slipping the protected blade into the pocket of her brown vest. "I was hoping we could have an early lunch together." But she can see, looking into the half eviscerated body, how likely this is. He rarely talks in detail about his work and most times she doesn't want details, but this doesn't look like they're nearly finished.
"I'm sorry, honey." She looks up through the mask into his hazel eyes, sees real regret there. "It's probably going to have to be a late lunch. Sorry."
"No, that's okay." She goes around the table, heads for the door.
"Honey?" She turns back just before her proximity would open the doors. "You okay?"
"Fine. Sorry, I didn't mean to bother you. I'll see you later." She escapes through the sliding doors and presses the elevator call button before she can feel anything.
xxx
Gibbs enters MedStar's Intensive Care Unit, shield case in hand. This shift doesn't know him and he doesn't intend to allow any delay in seeing DiNozzo. There are three Nurses in the room, two at patients' beds but he spots DiNozzo on a bed at the left wall, possibly asleep, before the women see him. When Tony had been near death from Yersinia Pestis Plague he hadn't looked this bad.
There's a Doctors/Nurses' Station a few feet in from the door and he makes a direct line for the woman who, in this moment, isn't working with a patient. "Nurse," he shows his IDs, "Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS. You have one of our Agents here, Anthony DiNozzo." With a tilt of his head, he indicates the agent.
"Yes. One moment." She looks back to where DiNozzo lies surrounded by beeping monitors and tethered to two IV tubes into which drip clear liquids. It's too reminiscent of last night, but Gibbs knows these concoctions won't hurt Tony. The white garbed woman gets up, steps out of the enclave through the open left side and leads him across the room.
"What's his condition?" he asks as they reach the foot of the bed. Tony's covered to his chest, the white blanket not interfering with the IV tubes or monitor leads, but Tony's too still.
"I'm sorry; I'm not at liberty to say." Her tone tells him the rest; 'I won't answer so don't ask again.'
It's okay, he'll get the answer from DiNozzo.
DiNozzo looks pale in his light blue gown and Gibbs is uncertain about disturbing the man's rest, but the nurse has no such hesitation and gently touches his left shoulder.
"Mister DiNozzo, can you hear me?" Tony turns his head toward the voice. "You have a visitor."
Tony doesn't open his eyes. "Touch me again, I'll rip your damn arm off and shove it down your throat."
x
The woman looks up to Gibbs, her eyes say the response wasn't unexpected.
Gibbs, however, is quite surprised by his partner's shocking words and surly tone. He can't remember DiNozzo ever addressing an attractive woman in any way not designed to increase attraction. "Hey, Tony, how you feeling?"
Tony opens his eyes, fixes him with a glare.
"Great; another nosy bastard." Gibbs stares, unable to believe his friend's anger. "Well? What the fuck are you staring at?"