Lethal Fractures: Chapter 22

Special Agent Tony DiNozzo's eyebrows rose at the sight of who walked into the conference room at CID headquarters. Although Hollis Mann had left to inform Gibbs of the meeting, Gibbs beat her back. That was no surprise, considering the way the supervisory field agent drove. What was surprising was who followed closely behind Gibbs: Major Sonja Gracy, obviously off-duty in khakis and a tee-shirt, her auburn hair loose past her shoulders. As to why a casually-dressed medical examiner had arrived with his boss in the middle of the night, well, he figured there couldn't have been too many explanations to that one. He decided that that was a good thing; when Gracy had worked with the team more than two years before, she had devoted everything she had to the job with an intensity that had only been rivaled by Gibbs--and that was only because she still had children to go home to--but didn't seem to enjoy any of it. He didn't think he had even seen her smile in those three months. Now she seemed much more relaxed, with a light sense of humor, and if her presence here with Gibbs was any indication, was beginning to move on. He wondered if he was getting a glimpse at what Sonja Gracy had been like before her husband was killed.

"I heard we got a hit on the fingerprints," Gibbs said without preamble as he took a seat, forcing DiNozzo to return his attention to the briefing. Wang, clearly taken aback by the presence of the pathologist and Gibbs' manner, took a minute to answer.

"Why don't we wait for Colonel Mann to return?" he finally suggested.

"Colonel Mann seems to already know what's going on," Gibbs replied. "Why don't you fill Major Gracy and me in." The way he said it made it more of a command than a question.

Abby Sciuto didn't need any further prompting. "Gibbs, Gracy, I'd like you to meet Sergeant Russell Masters," she said, gesturing toward the display screen. "Sergeant Masters left his left thumbprint on the floor right next to the area that had been cleaned off. I'm guessing he used his hand to balance himself as he got up."

"And we're sure this is our guy?" Gibbs asked. "He's not with the construction crew?"

Abby shook her head definitively, her black pigtails swinging. "Nope," she declared. "At least, he doesn't have a construction permit, and everyone else who left fingerprints in that office does. So unless our construction manager hired only one person without a permit, who just happened to be a former Army soldier, this is our guy. It took me awhile to determine that, though, because of the way the thumbprint was smudged, which makes sense, when you thinking about it. I mean, have you ever tried to use your hand to help yourself up from a seated position and not moved your hand? I tried it after I found the print, and—"

"Abby," Gibbs interrupted. "Is this really relevant?"

"Well, it is and it isn't, Gibbs," she replied. "Because of how much it was smudged, I was only able to get a partial print, so the odds of the print belonging to Masters is only a million to one, instead of like, a hundred billion to one, which a full match would be. A million to one still sounds pretty good, but that means that there are about three hundred people in the United States who could have left that print. In others words, it might not stand up in court, but I seriously doubt this guy will go to court."

Gibbs frowned at that last part, not knowing what to make of his scientist's words. Instead of asking her to explain, however, he asked no one in particular, "What do we know about Sergeant Masters?"

"He signed an early decision contract with the Army after his junior year of high school, Boss," McGee jumped in. "After graduating in 1996, he went through basic training and then onto Ft. Rucker for airborne training. Uh, spent a couple of years as a specialist with the 82nd Airborne before entering ranger training. Made it through the training and was stationed at Ft. Lewis as part of the 2nd Ranger Battalion."

"He was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in 2001 with his unit," one of the CID agents jumped in, "but according to his personnel jacket, he was instead transferred to WTB at Walter Reed. No record of why."

"WTB?"

"Warrior Transition Brigade," Gracy said, her first words since entering the room. "It's for injured and sick soldiers as they go through rehab and wait for decisions from the medical board regarding retention."

The CID agent gave a quick nod. "There's no record of any injury or hospitalization, though, just the notation of WTB until his medical discharge in late 2002. Dropped off the radar for awhile, then reappeared in a couple of arrest records over the years. No records of trials or incarceration."

"Psych unit," Gracy muttered, realization dawning. Maybe she hadn't been as far off as she had thought when she pointed the finger at Devlin Grady.

"Major?" Wang asked, confused.

"There's no record of injury because he didn't have one. There's no record of hospitalization because psych records are sealed in the military. There's no record of criminal trials because he never had one, and there's no record of incarceration because he was kept in psychiatric hospitals. Our killer isn't a hardened criminal with a vendetta against female Army officers. He's a paranoid schizophrenic with a fixation on female Army officers, or, rather, one female Army officer, and he can't figure out why she keeps coming back to life."

"So this all about Macintosh," Wang stated. "He must have met her while he was at Walter Reed."

Gracy shook her head. "Not Captain Macintosh. He was assigned an Army psychiatrist when he was admitted, a second or third year resident. In his case, I would be willing to bet my board-certification specialty pay--which is what I use to pay my kids' tuition--that he was assigned to Captain Shaena Grady."

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Unlike former Sergeant First Class Thomas Emerson, Jr, there was little resemblance between the man who now sat in the CID interrogation room and a hardened Army soldier. The former Sergeant Russell Masters was also tall and lean, but unlike Emerson, his lack of girth appeared to be more from scrounging meals and surviving on the streets than any intention. His hair had grown long and shaggy, his clothes dirty and torn. He was in constant motion, his eyes never resting on anything for longer than a few seconds, his mouth always moving—sometimes audibly, sometimes not—in response to whatever he was hearing in his head. The only thing that gave this clearly mentally ill man away as someone who once had direction and purpose in life was the tattoo that was revealed through the tatters of his right sleeve: crossbones and a skull wearing a beret, from a time when only the Army's best-trained combat soldiers wore that particular headpiece, with the words "Rangers Lead The Way!" scripted beneath. It was hard to imagine that the man who sat before them now was once dedicated enough and strong enough to earn that tattoo.

The interrogation, run by CID Agent Wang, was anything but routine. Masters barely looked at the CID special agent and only occasionally answered his questions, often murmuring things such as, "You know I can't do that" and "Not now!", sometimes holding his hands over his ears in an attempt to block the voices that only he could hear. It wasn't until Wang had neatly arranged the official Department of the Army photographs of the four women Masters had killed that they got a reaction.

"Do you know who these women are?" Wang demanded. Masters glanced at the photos for seconds at a time, quickly looking away before looking back down, for several long minutes.

"Captain Grady, Captain Grady, Captain Grady, Captain Grady," he replied, his voice flat and robotic. "Always Captain Grady. Don't touch Captain Grady. Can't touch Captain Grady. Nobody can touch Captain Grady. She let him touch her. No!" The last word seemed to be directed at someone nobody else could see. "I won't hurt Captain Grady! I won't! Just trying to help, she said. My job to help, she said. Sometimes I think she worked with them. She was in on it. I could hear her laughing as they planned their evil plans. It's her fault. It's her fault. It's all her fault. It would be different now if she weren't here, if she weren't there. Life would be different if Captain Grady wasn't in it. Life would be better. Better if she was gone. No! Just relax. Relax. Relax. Don't get angry. Relax." His monologue—or internal dialogue—continued for several more minutes, alternating between trying to protect Captain Grady and wanting her dead. Wang seemed lost about what to do, and just let Masters continue.

Major Sonja Gracy didn't glance over as the door to Observation opened, although she was aware of the presence of NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. "Sonja," he finally said, touching her arm.

She turned to him, and instead of the expression of anger he half-expected to see, the only thing in her eyes was pity. "During OBC, we had this full day of introductions to the various medical specialties in the Army. At the end of the day, this one colonel, I forget who, stood up and said that you shouldn't pick your specialty based on the glamors of your life or as a way to try to avoid being deployed. He said that as we go through medical school, we should keep our eyes open for the worst things we can imagine, and go into the specialty that deals with whatever that is and try to make it better. For Shaena, that was always schizophrenia." She paused and looked back at Masters, still muttering to himself about her best friend and the things that she had done. "She said there wasn't anything she could imagine worse than a disease that took young men and women in the primes of their lives, at the height of their education, at the beginning of their careers, and reduced them to empty shells with barely even an external resemblance to the person they had been. It's almost impossible to treat, because when they have a break, there are voices telling them they can't trust anyone and the medicine is poison. When they're stable, they don't take the medicine because they either think they don't need it or they don't like the way it makes them feel—or it just doesn't work and they still hear those voices. They can't hold jobs, they can't do complex tasks, they can't form a thought that is completely linear. The suicide rate is astronomical, because they either hear voices that tell them to kill themselves or they realize in a lucid moment what has become of them and the promises their lives once held." He didn't need to be reminded of the discovery of Lieutenant Devlin Grady's suicide, a man who once had a promising career as an Army medical officer ripped from his grasp. "I have only heard of one person who was able to lead a successful life with schizophrenia, and that was John Nash." She paused, then a ghost of a smile appeared on her lips. "Oh, come on, Gibbs, you haven't even seen A Beautiful Mind?"

"Nope."

She nodded; that wasn't unexpected. "He was a mathematician, an economist, but he began to believe that newspapers, magazines, novels, radio—that everything was containing coded Soviet messages, and he was the only one capable of figuring them out. He lost years of his life, but somehow learned to have control over the visions and the voices and was rewarded a Nobel prize for his work. For most, that's impossible." She gestured toward Masters again. "For most, those voices and the people and demons they see control them, and they always will."

He didn't respond to that as he joined her in silently watching Wang attempt to speak to Masters. "What about you?" he finally asked. "What do you consider to be the worst thing there is?"

She turned back to face him, her again the determined mask he had seen her wear multiple times, and she answered him with one simple word: "Murder."