Disclaimer: We doth not own NCIS, nor doth we own that which was writ by Shakespeare.

A C T III

s c e n e i

To say Gibbs was angry would have been a grave understatement. They were no closer to solving the case and Ducky would soon have five bodies down in autopsy for this case alone – one of them a twelve-year-old boy. His interview with Freddie Banks had not gone very well. The boy was only four and clearly traumatized, able to tell Gibbs very little about what he may or may not have witnessed at his father's house.

The one thing he was able to identify was that neither of Duncan King's sons had been there, and that was something Gibbs felt in his gut he could agree with. So why had they run?

He stalked into Abby's lab and set a Caf-Pow on her desk expectantly.

"Gibbs!" she squealed, "You remembered! You are so much better than Tony."

Gibbs really didn't have time for this, and he did his best to convey this to her by fixing her with his sternest glare. That, and yanking the Caf-Pow out of her reach when she went to grab it.

Abby pouted, but immediately launched into an explanation of all she had found out about the admiral so far. "I went through his computer records again, since Logan's team obviously didn't do a thorough job, and sure enough there are at least three months worth of threatening emails clogging up his inbox. They get increasingly squicky too, listen to this one—"

"Can you tell who sent them?" Gibbs prompted.

"Well, no," said Abby, but she quickly amended, "But of course I can tell you the email address that sent them, and since this person is such an amateur, I can track that address straight back to the computer it was sent from. Now, you'll never guess where it came from."

Gibbs's glare was steely.

"But, of course, I'm going to tell you so you don't have to guess," Abby amended cheerfully, "The emails were sent from Captain Mac Scott's home computer, and you know what else – get this, this is really spooky. His wife's name is Beth. Did you know that? Mac and Beth, and Admiral King dies in their home. Isn't that weird?"

She waited for Gibbs's reaction but there was none. He had already left the lab.

A C T III

s c e n e ii

McGee, Tony and Ziva arrived at Captain's Scott's house after Lieutenant Duff's had been been cleared and marked as a crime scene. Ducky's autposy van had arrived just as they'd been leaving, although for some reason Palmer hadn't been there. Something about having had to run an errand with Agent Lee.

Like the lieutenant's house, Captain Scott's driveway was empty, and no one answered when the agents knocked on the door.

"This is not our time," Ziva muttered darkly.

"Not our day, Ziva," Tony corrected irritably, "This is not our day."

A crash from within the house interrupted them, and they glanced up searching for its source.

"Captain Scott!" Ziva shouted. "This is NCIS!"

"We have a warrant!" Tony added.

Ziva turned to him, one eyebrow raised quizzically. "When did we have time to get a warrant?"

But another crash came from inside the house, and instead of answering her Tony pushed her aside and kicked down the door. The three agents filed into the house, guns drawn, and followed the source of the noise up to the second floor bedroom – the same room where Admiral King's body had been found.

There they found Beth Scott, lady of the house, dressed in only a thin nightgown. She paced back and forth in front of them, wringing her hands. The dresser across the room had been overturned and pieces of shattered glass from a broken mirror littered the floor. Beth walked over them as if they weren't there, her feet bloody from hundreds of tiny cuts.

"Out! OUT!" she shrieked, clutching one hand in the other.

"Mrs. Scott? We are from NCIS," Ziva called, trying to get her attention. "We are not here to harm you. You must calm down."

"Get out!"

"I'm Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo," Tony called, "Remember me? Special Agent Gibbs and I talked to you and your husband."

At this Mrs. Scott let out a high-pitched wail, and fell toward her bed, grabbing fistfuls of bedsheets and ripping them out. "They're not clean! I have to clean them! Oh, they'll never be clean. . . so much blood. . . who would have thought the old man would have so much blood in him?"

Tony lowered his gun and took a few tentative steps forward. "Mrs. Scott, I just want you to listen to me, okay?" He reached out to touch her shoulder, but this appeared to be a mistake. Mrs. Scott jerked back from him.

"No! They're dead! The king's dead. The banker's dead. All's dead. Mac killed them. We killed them. No one knows but me. . . and now. . . here's a spot!" She rubbed her hands furiously on her nightgown as if trying to rub something off.

"You admit that you and your husband killed Admiral King?" Ziva asked.

"Out damned spot!"

"Okay then, why don't you come with us and we can sort this all out," Tony offered apprehensively, still inching toward the woman. "We can stop him before anyone else gets hurt. You can still help us."

"I do not think she can help herself right now, Tony," Ziva muttered.

"He should have listened! I wrote to him he should have listened it wouldn't have come to this he should have listened. . ."

"Where is your husband?" Ziva asked.

Mrs. Scott shook her head violently, sending her red hair whipping across her face. Without any warning she turned and ran toward the window.

"NO! Stop!" Tony shouted, dropping his gun and chasing after her.

He wasn't quite fast enough.

With a spectacular smash of glass, Beth Scott went straight through the floor-length bedroom window. She fell from view with a million tiny shards of glass caught up in her long red hair. By the time McGee and Ziva had caught up with Tony at the edge of the room, her broken body was a crumpled, bloody mess amongst the rose bushes in the garden below.

Tony blew out a heavy breath. "You were right Ziva," he said in tired voice, "This is so not our day."

A C T III

s c e n e iii

Gibbs was about three blocks from Captain Scott's house when a gunshot was fired. He turned the car around in a sweeping swerve of screeching tires just as another shot sounded. By the time a third had gone off, Gibbs had pulled up in front of Tsukisuki's Asian Style Cuisine.

He climbed out of the car, his own gun drawn, and made his way carefully toward the building. A silver sedan matching the description of Lieutenant Duff's vehicle was parked across the street, as was a green SUV that looked much like Captain Scott's. Hearing a man's shouts coming from inside the restaurant, Gibbs picked up his pace and nearly collided with a young man hurrying out of the building.

"Malcolm?" Gibbs demanded.

The man's head jolted up and Gibbs's suspicions were confirmed. Seeing his vest and weapon, the kid backed up slightly, rambling. "Duff contacted me – he said Mac Scott was the killer and asked where'd he'd go and I didn't believe it 'cuz Mac – h-he used to come hang out with me and Dad all the time but I told him, Lieutenant Duff that he started taking us out here for lunch sometimes and it was creepy and I don't know why I thought I'd come here but they – someone shot that girl and—"

"Are they in there?" Gibbs interrupted him sternly. "Are Lieutenant Duff and Captain Scott inside?"

Malcolm nodded uneasily.

"Okay. I want you to stay out here," Gibbs ordered him, "Do not come in, no matter what you hear. If I do not come back out in ten minutes, I want you to head over to the NCIS office and tell them what happened. Your brother is already there."

Something like relief passed over the kid's face. "Don's there? Is he okay—"

Gibbs didn't have time. He left the kid and hurried inside the restaurant, hoping to catch the lieutenant and the captain before it was too late.

The hostess by the door had been shot in the head. Her glassy black eyes staring sightlessly at Gibbs were the first things he saw as came through the door. He followed the shouting to the kitchens in the back where he found Captain Scott and Lieutenant Duff in a face off, each pointing his service weapon at the other. Two more dead women lay between them, similarly dressed in waitress uniforms. They looked like twins.

Scott had a mad gleam in his eye and a feral grin on his face, and when he spoke he listed drunkenly. "You can't kill me. . ."

"I will!" Lieutenant Duff screamed, though he merely jerked the gun forward and did not fire it.

Gibbs approached and announced his presence. "Lieutenant Duff! Captain Scott! This is NCIS. Drop your weapons!"

Scott grinned even wider, and tossed his gun lazily to the floor. "See? Don't need to do nothing. . . fortune said. . . Higher authorities will take care of it."

Lieutenant Duff glanced briefly around at Gibb's, but kept his gaze locked on Scott. "He killed my family, sir! He murdered them. . ." His voice broke and Gibbs could see his eyes fill up with unshed tears.

"We know that, lieutenant," Gibbs assured him, "We know what he did. We're here to arrest him, so he can pay for what he's done to your family, but first you need to put your weapon down."

"But that's not all he did!" Lieutenant Duff shouted, gripping his weapon tighter. "He killed the admiral and Banks too! Why? Why did you do it?"

Scott threw back his head and laughed. Then he pointed at the dead women. "Ask them. . ."

"YOU SHOT THEM!" Duff roared.

"No," Scott shook his head, "They told me the future. . . my future. . . they said I would be Admiral! They're the witches!"

"They're not witches, they're waitresses," Duff cried.

"You can't reason with him, lieutenant," Gibbs called. "He needs to be brought in so he can face justice."

But Lieutenant Duff shook his head. In that instant, Gibbs knew exactly what was coming, what Duff was about to do.

"No!" he shouted.

Before Gibbs could stop him, Lieutenant Duff fired. He shot Mac Scott six times in the chest, until the Captain's body crumpled in a bloody heap on the kitchen floor.

"He killed my family," Duff murmured as Gibbs took his weapon from his limp hands and lead him out the building. "He killed my family. . ."

As they passed by Malcolm just outside the building, Lieutenant Duff suddenly dropped to his knees. "Your father's murderer is dead," he addressed Malcolm, almost reverently.

"I see," Malcolm said, in a strangely flat voice.

If Gibbs thought anything of this odd exchange, he chose not to say so. He hoisted Duff back to his feet and lead him on to the NCIS sedan, then called Ducky and the rest of his team to arrive on the scene and tend to the bodies. Their day wasn't over yet.

A C T III

s c e n e iv

Ducky really had his doubts about this plan. In fact, he still wasn't entirely sure how he had been roped into it in the first place, but Miss Abigail Sciuto was a very persuasive young woman.

Well, scratch that euphemism – she was downright manipulative.

And so now here he stood, very far from the comfort of his autopsy room and his silent, long-dead companions, on the landing just outside the director's office. He leaned over the railing overlooking the bullpen, and was satisfied to see it for once, completely empty. Not even Gibbs was in sight.

Ducky hoped very dearly that Gibbs was not in the building at all.

At that moment, as if on cue, Jenny Shepard exited her office and entered the landing where Ducky was standing. Her red hair was combed back stiffly and she looked rather weary from the day's work.

This was likely going to make Ducky's task all the harder, but he did not shrink away from the challenge.

"Why, good evening Director," he said pleasantly, fixing her with a warm smile.

She smiled, albeit tiredly, back at him. "Good evening to yourself as well, Ducky. Is there something I can help you with?"

"Oh, no, not at all," Ducky said innocently. "It seems we are the last ones to leave, though, doesn't it? Well, one can sometimes get rather involved in one's work. I once had an aunt who—"

Director Shepard was clearly in no such mood for one of his intriguing tales. She held up a hand and he could almost have sworn she shushed him. "That's alright, Ducky. We've all had a long day."

Ducky smiled peaceably, however, he now had a renewed vigor in seeing his role in this little plan through. Abby may have set him upon it, but he was beginning to see that it might do the director some good.

Yes, perhaps it would. "Shall I walk you to your car, Jenny?" he asked, holding out his hand in offer to take her briefcase.

She regarded him at first, it seemed, with suspicion, but finally nodded. "Lead on," she said, though she refused to hand over the briefcase. Ducky was not bothered by this, he carried on cheerfully toward the parking lot with Jenny Shepard in tow.

"So," Jenny said breaking the silence that had fallen between them once the reached the elevator. "Perhaps you would like to tell me what this is about?"

Ducky graced the director with his most innocent smile – it might not be as effective as DiNozzo's, but Ducky had used it effectively in the past. "I just so happened to be working late," Ducky replied again, "But now that you mention it, I have been meaning to talk with you."

"Oh, of course," Jenny replied with a knowing look, that clearly said she did not believe him.

"You see," Ducky continued, ignoring her look, "I find my self in the unfortunate position of not having the ability to be in two places at once, and though I do dearly love the theatrical world, I must ensure Mother has the proper care."

"Doctor?" Jenny said, interrupting his rambling with a confused expression. "I'm really not sure what your talking about."

Ducky blinked momentarily losing his train of though. "Hmm? Oh why Shakespeare, of course." He replied. "A Mid Summer's Night Dream, to be precise," he added producing a ticket. "You see, I was supposed to attend, but the aide isn't available that night, and I will have to stay home with Mother."

"That's too bad Ducky," Jenny told him, confusion still evident in her tone.

"Well, yes," Ducky said wistfully, briefly wondering again why he was giving up his tickets to people he just knew would not appreciate the intricacies of Shakespeare as he would, "But I thought perhaps, that you might enjoy the production. It would certainly be a nice way to relax, we have all had so many long days lately."

Jenny blinked at him, "You wondered if I might want your ticket?" she repeated blankly, as though he had started speaking in some foreign language or something.

Ducky nodded, holding out the aforementioned ticket to her. "It really is a wonderful piece of literature," he said. Seeing the look in the director's face that suggested she was going to, very politely refuse him, he hurriedly continued. "I really can't stand to think of it going to waste, and really, I just could not imagine Mr. Palmer enjoying such an event."

Jenny smiled tightly at him, but Ducky could already see that he had won. "I really don't think I would have the time, perhaps someone else–"

"Oh nonsense," Ducky replied handing her the ticket, though she accepted it with reluctance. "I am quite sure the agency will still be functioning should you, our fine madam director, take an evening off."

"Yes," Jenny finally agreed, as they came to a stop next to her vehicle, "I suppose it would."

"Well, good night, Jenny." Ducky said cordially. "I do hope you enjoy the theatre."

"I'm sure I will. Thank you Ducky," she replied, clearly not sure exactly how she had come out of the conversation with a ticket to a Shakesperian performance.

Ducky watched as she drove away, and with a satisfied smile, headed towards his own car. His little part in young Abigail's latest whim now complete.

~tbc~