Lethal Fractures: Chapter 19
Tony DiNozzo woke to the sound of rain hitting the window of Ziva David's bedroom and smiled slightly as he rolled over in bed. "It's raining," he announced matter-of-factly.
"I can still run in the rain, Tony," Ziva murmured in reply, her eyes still closed. If it were a weekday, he'd have no doubt that that's what she'd do, but over the last couple of years, he had managed to convince her of the need to enjoy a rainy weekend morning every once in awhile. And by 'enjoy', he meant activities that didn't involve getting out of bed. Sometimes that was sleep, sometimes it was something else entirely.
This morning it looked like it was going to be sleep, as she promptly rolled over in bed, taking the covers with her. DiNozzo gave a half-hearted tug in attempt to get some of them back, but gave up the effort when she muttered, "I would be careful if I were you. You know there is a gun under my pillow."
"I need to stop making a habit of sleeping with trained assassins," DiNozzo said to himself.
"I do not think one constitutes a habit, Tony."
"One that you know of."
She snorted, not rising to the bait. "You keep forgetting that I was a spy. If you were having sex with anyone else, I would know."
"You underestimate me."
"You are not as sneaky and you think you are. Now be quiet. If I am not running this morning, I want to sleep." She loosened her grip on the blankets as a conciliatory gesture.
"Ziva?" DiNozzo asked a few minutes later.
"I cannot sleep and talk at the same time, Tony."
"Actually, you can. I've heard it a number of times. Don't know what you were saying, though, on account of it being in foreign languages."
She sighed. "What is it?"
"The language you were speaking?"
"What you were going to ask me."
"Oh. When is your lease up?"
She had to think about that for a minute. "Two months. Why?"
"Mine's up in three."
"So?"
"Are you being intentionally dense so I'll spell it out for you?"
There was a small smile on her face as she rolled back over to face him. "Maybe," she admitted.
"Do you want to start looking for a new place? Together, I mean?"
Part of her wanted to give an enthusiastic 'yes' and jump out of bed and start an apartment search immediately, but a larger part of her was much more cautious. They practically lived together as it was; it was a rare occasion when they slept alone in their separate apartments, and sharing rent on one place would be cheaper than continuing to pay for two. Still, it was a nice security blanket, to know that her apartment was hers, and if need be, she had a place where she could be away from Tony for even a few hours before seeing him at work again the next morning.
So she sighed. "I do not know," she admitted. "You still have not heard if Vance is going to give you your own team. We could be leaving at any point." They had already decided that a move, no matter where in the world it would be, she would be going with him. There was no shortage of international agencies who would accept her if she asked for a position.
He sighed as well, dropping his head to rest his forehead against hers. "That could be tomorrow, or next month, or years from now," he said. "I'm tired of putting everything on hold for something that might not happen." It was ironic how much he found himself wanting this, considering how much he fought being removed from Gibbs' team every time that came up in the past. A relationship with the same woman for more than two years, ready for a promotion and being his own boss—maybe he was finally growing up.
She opened her mouth to reply, but the ringing of a cell phone distracted her. "David," she answered without breaking eye contact.
"Not quite who I was expecting, but I guess that works." Ziva glanced down at the phone in her hand to realize that it was Tony's. "Get DiNozzo and get to CID."
"We are not on call this weekend, Gibbs."
"I know that." Judging by the annoyance in her boss' voice, he was just about as pleased to be called in as she was. "Wang seems to think we've made a break in the case."
"Did Abby get a match on the fingerprints?" she asked.
"I don't know. He wouldn't say. Just said he needed to see us ASAP." He hung up without saying anything further.
"Next weekend," Ziva declared decisively as she pulled back the covers and got out of bed.
"Next weekend?" DiNozzo echoed.
"We will look for an apartment next weekend."
---
"Chris got a match on the bootprints," CID Special Agent Wang said excitedly as the last of the NCIS agents filed into the conference room. The entire CID team looked as if they had been there for hours already; maybe they had.
"A bootprint." DiNozzo said flatly. "You called us in on a Sunday when we're not on call about a bootprint. What is it? One that's been issued to thousands of soldiers on every military base in the world?"
"No," Wang replied, not about to let a disgruntled NCIS agent damper his excitement. "It's a Danner Fort Lewis 200g black boot."
They all looked at him, waiting for him to explain, but nothing else came. "So?" DiNozzo finally asked.
"So, Danner boots aren't sold in every military base in the world," Wang said. "Most models have one component that was made overseas, and the DoD makes it a policy to only issue boots that were entirely made in the USA. Danner is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. There are only a few base clothing and supply stores in the country that carry Danner boots, and they're all in the Northwest."
"Rodriguez had Danner boots," Mann said, suddenly remembering. Wang nodded.
"The TFX Rough Out tan boot," Wang confirmed with a nod. "She went to veterinary school at Washington State University and did one of her active duty training months at Ft. Lewis, in Tacoma, Washington. That's the largest of the bases that carry Danner boots. McChord Air Force Base also sells them, as does Fairchild Air Force Base and a few of the other smaller bases and posts in the area."
"So for our killer to have gotten Danner boots, he would have had to have gone through one of those bases at some point," Gibbs said before shaking his head. "That's still hundreds of thousands of soldiers."
"Fort Lewis alone has thirty thousand soldiers stationed there at a time," Mann confirmed, her good mood from a moment ago slipping away. "We can't search the records of everyone ever stationed there. It would take years."
"This particular model of boot was introduced in 2000," Wang said. "What about doing a search for everyone who had been stationed in Washington or Oregon after 2000, prior to being stationed in the greater DC area?" Wang suggested. "That's possible, right?"
"Well, yes—" McGee began.
"Yes or no, Agent McGee. That's all I'm interested in hearing."
"It's possible," McGee said. "But just because he's in DC now doesn't mean he was ever stationed here. He could have been born here and moved back home after leaving the Army, he could have gotten a job with the federal government, or he could have just decided to relocate here for no other reason."
Wang frowned at the pessimism before rising from his chair and adding "Stationed in NW after 2000" to the white board. "This narrows it down," he stubbornly insisted.
"Yeah, from hundreds of thousands of soldiers to tens of thousands," DiNozzo said dryly.
"We can see if the bases have records of who bought what boots," McGee suggested suddenly.
"You're only encouraging him," DiNozzo scolded.
"No. That's good," Wang said eagerly, making DiNozzo sigh in exasperation and shake his head. "And check with Danner, too, in case he bought them directly from them."
"And don't forget to check every surplus store and seller of second-hand boots," DiNozzo added sarcastically.
"It's something, Tony. It's better than sitting around complaining," McGee finally shot back.
"You're right, Probie. Chasing down pointless leads is something. It's fun, too," DiNozzo said, sarcasm still in full force. Gibbs had finally had enough.
"Unless you can think of something else, DiNozzo, you're with McGee. Ziva, go back to NCIS and check with Abby, see if she has anything else from the fingerprints." Gibbs rose from the table and headed for the door.
"Where are you going, Gibbs?" Wang asked.
"Home, Agent Wang. DiNozzo's right; this is pointless."
---
Gibbs was in his kitchen making a fresh pot of coffee when his front door opened suddenly. "Oh," Major Sonja Gracy said in surprise. "I thought you'd be in the basement."
"Needed a refill," he said, pointing at the coffee maker. "You're in uniform today."
"Well, I figured if I was going to be going to the office on a Sunday on the whim of your ex-girlfriend, I might as well be there officially." She tossed her beret, followed by her uniform jacket, on the table. "Sorry. That was unnecessarily bitchy." He wordlessly handed her a bottle of beer from the fridge. "Thanks."
"The kids?"
"One of Maddie's classmates lives down the street. She has a brother Nate's age. I arranged a play date for them today, which means I'm at the mercy of a suburban soccer mom until she decides to call in the favor. I said I probably won't be done before five, which means I have a couple more hours to be pissed off before picking them up." She took a long pull from the bottle, then made a face. "God, Gibbs, you give someone with German blood a cheap beer?"
"There's bourbon in the basement."
"I'll stick with the cheap beer, thanks." She took another drink. "So Maddie has it in her head that she should start taking piano lessons. I'm trying to figure out where she's going to find the time to practice and have her lessons, given that there are a finite number of hours in a day, but she keeps saying that she needs to learn how to play the piano. I think I should wait this one out for awhile, and if she's still talking about it in a few months, maybe I'll try to work something out."
He remembered a tape of a piano recital sent to him while he was deployed, but quickly pushed that thought aside. "Ziva plays the piano, always bugging DiNozzo about lessons. I'm sure she'd like having someone to teach."
She shook her head. "I know first-hand how hard your agents work, Gibbs. There's no way I'm asking one of them to give up one of their few free hours in a week."
He smiled slightly. "Find anything interesting at work?"
Another shake of the head. "I spent a few hours going over all four autopsy reports in detail, hoping that something would jump out at me, but just as I remembered, there didn't seem to be anything remarkable about the bruises around their necks. They're indistinct, perimortem, and right where you'd expect them to be for someone to grab them and twist their necks until they broke. I had taken swabs of the bruises, just to be thorough, I guess, and ran it through the GC-MS. Both Macintosh and Hamilton had cotton fibers from their tee-shirts, starch from their BDU jackets—I was impressed with that, actually, as I never starched my BDUs—almost undetectable traces of aluminum from their dogtags, and latex powder, which I'm assuming was from the killer's gloves. Rodriguez didn't have the latex powder. Or the starch. You can't starch ACUs."
"The CID agent said the prints on the CACs were consistent with synthetic gloves. He said probably nitrile."
She nodded. "Makes sense. More and more places are switching to non-latex gloves because of allergies and contact dermatitis. All of the DoD's MTFs now use non-latex gloves."
"MTF?"
"Medical treatment facility."
He frowned; there was something about her words that he couldn't quite put his finger on. "What about Olafsen? Any latex powder?"
Gracy shrugged. "Far as I can tell, Dr. Gordon didn't check."
"Dr. Gordon?"
"The Air Force pathologist who did the autopsy." He nodded; he kept forgetting that she hadn't done that one.
"So at some point between 2005 and now, our killer switched from latex to non-latex gloves."
"It sure looks that way," Gracy agreed.
Gibbs felt like this was all belonging to a giant jigsaw puzzle, and he couldn't quite find a corner piece. "The first victim was a nurse." "Captain Irene Macintosh, twenty-seven years old, nurse in the physical medicine and rehabilitation unit at Walter Reed." "All of the DoD's MTFs now use non-latex gloves." "When did the DoD switch to non-latex gloves?"
She looked bewildered at the question. "I honestly have no idea, Gibbs."
"Was it after 2005?"
She shrugged. "Probably, but don't quote me on that. I've used nitrile gloves since medical school. I developed contact dermatitis from latex gloves after gross anatomy." She frowned, following his line of thought. "Are you thinking the killer might work at one of the MTFs?"
"I don't know. How many doctors do you think are capable of breaking someone's neck?"
She actually smiled at the thought. "I'm sure a few orthopods have done it," she joked, "just to see if they could. It doesn't have to be an employee, thought. It could also be a long-term patient. Macintosh was a PM&R nurse, which is where the amputees are treated and get their follow-up. Many of them keep coming back for years for aches and pains and to get fitted with the newest and best prosthetics."
"How hard is it to take a pair of gloves out of the hospital?"
"Are you kidding?" she scoffed. She gestured down at her pants. "We have endless pockets in these uniforms. I bet I could stick an entire box of gloves in the big cargo pockets. And as long as you look like you know what you're supposed to be doing, you could walk out with a whole carton of glove boxes and nobody would give you a second glance."
Gibbs was about to pull out his phone to tell DiNozzo to check with Walter Reed's registry of amputees when the front door opened unexpectedly for the second time that afternoon. Hollis Mann stopped just inside the doorway at the sight of Gibbs standing by the kitchen counter and Gracy seated at the kitchen table in half a uniform, her beret and ACU jacket on the table and a beer in her hand. "Oh," she finally said. "I thought you'd be in the basement."
"I have an entire house. I'm not always in the basement."
Gracy smiled slightly at his defensive words as she glanced at her watch. "I should probably go rescue the kids from the Joneses. Or rescue the Joneses from my kids, whatever." She finished the beer as she stood and handed Gibbs the empty bottle. "I trust you'll fill Colonel Mann in on what I found?"
"Sure," he said. She nodded and stepped toward the door, but his outstretched hand stopped her. "Beret and jacket."
"Ah, thanks." She grabbed the loose pieces of her uniform, then leaned over and gave Gibbs a lingering kiss. If questioned about it later, she'd never admit that her first kiss in two and a half years was prompted by annoyance with Mann. "Let me know if you find anything interesting." She smiled thinly at Mann before leaving the house.
The retired lieutenant colonel waited until she heard the sound of Gracy's car starting before she commented, "I don't think she likes me much."
Gibbs chuckled at her words as he headed toward the basement stairs, a mug full of fresh Hawaiian coffee in hand. "Don't blame that one on me, Holly. You're the one who made her deal with the suburban soccer mom."
She didn't even bother asking what that was supposed to mean.