Lethal Fractures: Chapter 4

While Ducky and Gracy were a few floors away in Autopsy spending some quality time with Captain Jessa Rodriguez, Gibbs was up at his desk, spending some less-than-quality time on the phone with the CID special agent in charge of the investigation. "I know you think this case might be related to some others you've had," he said, irate at the young-sounding agent on the other side of the phone line. "But what I want to know is why it is that a US Marine was found murdered, and I had to find out about it from an Army pathologist."

There was a pause at the other end before the CID agent replied, "Dr. Gracy shouldn't have said anything to you about the case."

"Well, she didn't really have a choice, seeing as she showed up in my morgue to do the autopsy."

It was clear that the CID agent was pretty far out of the loop when it came to the autopsies and the pathologist he requested perform them. "What was she doing at NCIS?"

"Well, Agent Wang—"

"It's pronounced 'Wong', Agent Gibbs."

"—All of these medical examiners talk to each other, and when Dr. Gracy saw that one of your victims was a Marine staff sergeant, she called my medical examiner. Besides, you requested a medical examiner who's still on leave. You been working at CID long?"

"I transferred from the FBI seven months ago." He sounded defensive at that.

"You'll learn pretty quickly that when someone in the Army is on leave, she's not going to show up at work, no matter who's asking. If you wanted the autopsy done at AFIP, you should have asked for another medical examiner."

"Dr. Gracy is the pathologist on record for the first two cases—"

"Yeah, I know. She told me."

There was a pause at the other end. "What do you want?" Wang finally asked, his voice resigned.

"The Jasper case," Gibbs replied.

"Can't do it. It's part of our case."

"Your case? Hell, you've only been at CID for seven months! How did you end up with a serial killer who started eight years ago?"

"The previous special agent in charge has since retired, Agent Gibbs."

Of course he did. That was one of the problems with serial killers—or, as the FBI liked to call them now, pattern killers. Their careers often out-lasted those of the investigators tracking them. "At the very least, I want my team in on this. We'll run a joint investigation."

There was another pause. "No offense, Agent Gibbs, but I've been warned about how you run 'joint investigations'. This is a CID case, and that's that."

Gibbs smiled suddenly as he remembered how he kept a different case from the FBI many years ago. "I don't know how much of a case you have without the bodies, Wang." His words were met with silence. "In case you've forgotten, they're currently in my morgue."

There was another stretch of silence before: "You're a real bastard, Gibbs."

This time, he laughed out loud. "You're not the first to say that." He didn't mention that the pathologist that Wang had sent his way was on that list.

"I'd be surprised if I were. Fine. You share the bodies, we'll share the information. I have a bad feeling about this already. Like I've just sold my soul to the devil."

"I'm not interested in your soul, Wang. Just your case."

Although Ducky and Gracy had started the autopsies on Staff Sergeant Jasper and Captain Rodriguez around 0900, neither had returned to the bullpen or called Gibbs by 1600, prompting him to head down to Autopsy to see what they were up to. He found both pathologists and Jimmy Palmer gathered by the lightbox, an x-ray of a neck the only film up for display. On a nearby desk and on two rolling tables, they had placed laptops that Gibbs hadn't realized Ducky had, each of which had another x-ray of another neck. Neither Ducky nor Gracy was wearing their full autopsy gear—both were just wearing simple blue scrubs, with Gracy also sporting a sturdy black wrist-brace that extended halfway up to her elbow—and there were no bodies in sight, telling Gibbs that they were already done with the dirty work.

"What about Macintosh?" Gracy was asking, and Gibbs wondered for a second why they were talking about computers.

"On visual inspection, it does look very similar to the others," Ducky commented, leaning close to one of the computer screens. Gibbs guessed that Macintosh was one of the previous victims.

"What does the forensic anthropologist's report say?" There was a shuffling of papers before Ducky spoke again.

"I'm not seeing a report, my dear."

"I know there's a report," Gracy replied, turning her attention from the diagram she was studying to the file in front of Ducky. "I may have just been a second-year resident, but I know I sent the bones to the anthropologist at AFIP." So Macintosh was the first victim.

"That may be true, but I still don't see a report."

"Scheisse," she muttered under her breath. Gibbs smiled thinly as he remembered her tendency to swear in German. "It must have been displaced. It was more than eight years ago. Let's see, in 2003, our anthropologist was... Bennett? No, he didn't come until the next year. I wonder if that was in the period where we didn't have an in-house forensic anthropologist, in which case, we would have consulted with the Smithsonian. I'll have to ask Lester if he has copies of our records from back then."

"Lester?"

Both Ducky and Gracy turned to face Gibbs, still standing by the door. "Dr. Van Lester," Gracy replied. "Forensic anthropologist at AFIP. He does nothing but study bones. If he can't find the report, he can probably still read the x-rays we have, but I feel more confident knowing an expert has actually laid hands on the bones themselves."

"You can't analyze them yourself?"

"I can tell you that Captain Rodriguez, like Captain Macintosh, Second Lieutenant Hamilton, and First Lieutenant Olafsen, was killed when her spinal cord was severed in the cervical region due to a violent twisting motion," she informed him before shrugging. "But that's just about all I can tell you. Lester would be able to give you an approximate amount of force used, angle of the force—which would help us figure out how tall our assailant is—the direction, where the assailant was facing in relation to the victim, and probably some other random facts that I couldn't begin to guess."

"What do you have from the previous victims?"

Gracy pointed at the monitor Ducky had been studying. "Captain Irene Macintosh, twenty-seven years old, nurse in the physical medicine and rehabilitation unit at Walter Reed. Died on January 7, 2003, cause of death is atlanto-axial dislocation leading to acute neurogenic shock. Until I find that anthropology report, that's all I can tell you. Second Lieutenant Amanda Hamilton," another monitor, "twenty-three, quartermaster at Ft. Belvoir. Died October 1, 2005, atlanto-axial dislocation leading to acute neurogenic shock. Dr. Bennett concluded that it was counter-clockwise motion that broke her neck. And finally, First Lieutenant Annaliese Olafsen, thirty years old, instructor at the Armed Forces School of Music. Died December 24, 2007 of—"

"Atlanto-axial dislocation leading to acute neurogenic shock."

"It would be kinda funny if it weren't, but yes. Dr. Lester was the forensic anthropologist on that one, and concluded that it was, like Hamilton, a counter-clockwise motion." She paused as she studied the x-rays. "These fractures, Gibbs, the way their necks were broken... do you know how to do that?"

He sensed that she had a reason for asking, and it wasn't morbid curiosity or unease at his abilities to take a life. That was a conversation that they had already had once, years before. "Yeah," he finally confirmed.

"Is it something a lot people can do?"

"It's something that a lot of people are trained to do," he replied. "Whether or not they can usually isn't tested." She nodded; hand-to-hand combat, being close enough to your enemy to literally snap his neck, was something that was taught in the hopes that it wouldn't have to be used. Being that close to somebody who was just as willing to kill you as you were to kill him was never that good of an idea.

"Can you demonstrate?"

He looked amused at the question. "On you?"

She made a dismissive sound. "Of course not. My neck is far too valuable." She bolted a thumb in the direction of the young autopsy assistant. "Use Palmer."

"What? No!" he protested, his hands covering his neck protectively. Now it was Gracy's turn to be amused.

"I'm just kidding, Palmer. Ducky, do you have a CPR dummy handy?" Ducky pointed to the back room, and Palmer rushed to get it, probably thinking that failure to find it would result in his neck—literally. He returned with it a moment later, and Gracy set the armless torso up as if it were sitting on the autopsy table. "Okay, Gibbs. I don't want you to actually break its neck, but I want to see how it's done."

He positioned himself behind the dummy, but when he reached for it, knocked it over. After setting it up again, he did the same thing. He shook his head. "This isn't going to work."

"Okay, fine," Gracy replied with a sigh. "You can use my neck. But like I said, don't break it. The Army would not be happy with you if you do. They still own it for another year."

He stood behind her, placing his right hand on her jaw and left on the back of her head. "And then twist." He turned her head gently to the left, just as the victims' heads would have turned.

"So our assailant was right-handed," Palmer said excitedly.

"Not necessarily," Gracy said in a warning tone as Gibbs took a step back. "I did a study on stabbing victims and the handedness of the stabbers and found that only ninety-two percent of right-handed stabbers used their right-hands. In stabbers who are left-handed, only eighty-six percent actually used their left hands."

"But most of the people still used the hand they would write with," Palmer pointed out.

"If fingerprint analysis were only eighty-six, or even ninety-two, percent accurate, do you think it would be used in court?" she asked. "That paper's been used on both sides of the aisle in criminal cases. Pathologists now can only say that stabbings are 'consistent' with the handedness of the suspect. Besides, I imagine everyone who was taught this technique was taught by a right-handed instructor, or a left-handed instructor who was taught by a right-handed instructor. Most people copy what they've been taught exactly, especially lefties, who find that they often have to compensate to fit a right-handed world. Nate's left-handed, but he uses the mouse on the computer with his right-hand, because that's what he's seen Maddie and me do. But back to the point. There's something that's been bothering me about this since the first case. That technique requires the assailant to be standing behind the victim, but everything about these crimes seems a lot more personal that that. Gibbs." She turned her attention back to the NCIS agent. "Is there any way to break someone's neck while facing them?"

"I would think so," he replied. He stepped up to her again, his face less than a foot from hers, and she found herself looking right into his blue eyes. This time, it was his right hand at the back of her head, and his left on her chin, so when her head turned, it was to the right.

"But that's the opposite direction as before," Palmer needlessly pointed out. Gibbs was slow about lowering his hands, and even slower about moving away. "So we either have someone who used a right-handed technique from the back, or a left-handed technique from the front."

"Right," Gracy replied once she had regained her bearings, feeling oddly flustered, which, for someone who has testified in court countless times, been shot at in war, and faced the prospect of raising two children alone, didn't happen often. She found herself unable to pay attention to the conversation around her, her mind replayed a quasi-leading line spoken more than a year before: I think DC has much more to offer me. That and the conversation with Ducky only a few hours before had her mind going in places she rarely let it go. She blinked to hear Jimmy Palmer speaking again.

"So that gets us nowhere."

"More information is always better than less, Mr. Palmer," Ducky rebuked him gently before turning back to Gracy. "Do you think your Dr. Lester would be able to tell if our ladies were killed from the front or the back?"

"I'll ask," Gracy said, shrugging slightly. She glanced down at her watch and made a face. "But I'm afraid that's going to have to wait until Monday. I've got a pair of bratty kids I have to get ready to take down to Norfolk in the morning. I am still on leave, after all."

"What's in Norfolk?"

"Swim meet," she said, rolling her eyes. "I remember them being a lot more fun than they really are. I guess that's the difference between being a competitor and being a parent." She shoved the last of the folders into her backpack before swinging it over her shoulder. She gave the three men a small wave. "I'll see you guys later. Have fun."