Chapter Three
The Secret Room
Leroy Jethro Gibbs arrives at the McGregor Mansion, home of the famed Saunders family, having summoned his team along the way. That Jennifer Shepherd had reactivated them in defiance of NCIS Regulations is odd enough, but as he parks at the apex of the curving drive and gives detailed instructions to the somewhat bemused Valet who approaches to take control of his yellow and black Hemi, he finds things far odder.
Upon entering the three story, overly ornate building, he's waved to the right rear corner of the opulent foyer, easily half again as big as the bullpen and too ornate for any living man's taste, by Abby Sciuto.
He's happy to see her and walks past a wide marble staircase and past a man of about twenty five years who wears a black tuxedo that sports a third degree Knight of Columbus pin. The young man is posted to keep anyone from following down a blue hallway and Gibbs feels his confidence that the situation is under control peak. It crashes into rubble as she reveals that everyone in the gala had been kept away from the scene but had been otherwise uncontrolled.
"I'm the only one here with a badge, though I've flashed it like once since I got it. I kept them away and probably stretched my authority, such as it is, in doing that."
"We'll see. Where's Metro?" This is the first time in months, the Pacific Princess excepted, where NCIS had come on a Crime Scene not crowded with local LEOs. He also doesn't want to ask what she's doing with her badge pinned beside a far too generous and low plunging neckline that he'd seen most recently on the Princess. Save that for Lab talk.
"I didn't call them." The look he gives her is usually enough to make a heavyweight boxer back off, so of course it has no effect upon the scientist. "Like I said when I banished a house full of people, including the owner, from this hall, I was the only one with a badge and I was calling in the proper authorities."
He considers having her call them in, but decides that "They can wait."
"That's what I thought."
"But you kept these people together anyway?" In fact, she's restricted them not at all. He's trying to decide if she needs a whack on general principle, but he never has and doubts he ever will – at least not on her head.
"Most of these people are here for the unveiling of a restored historic mansion and, when you see the scene, you'll see how unlikely it is that anyone here did the deed."
"Then let's see it."
"I thought you'd never ask, Sahib. Right over here."
xx
She leads him through the hall which, in his opinion, could double as an Art Gallery for the number of paintings painted directly upon the long walls, the marble pillars with strings of bas relief pearls hanging white on royal blue and the painted vaulted ceiling. He sees Samantha Sky, clothed in a blue dress with matching silk shawl, guarding the far end.
She turns at their approach and her face alights. "Hi, Gi– Agent Gibbs." He's heard she occasionally refers to him as 'Gibbsie' but she's smart enough never to dare say it to his face. This time it had been close.
"What are you doing here, Sky?"
"Well, Bill invited me, then I invited Abby. She didn't invite anyone so it kind of fell apart then." She points behind him. "That's Bill." He looks back to see the young man has followed them into the hall. "William Marsters, meet my other boss' boss, Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Leroy Jethro Gibbs." Their greeting is cordial rather than his sharp inquisition of Sky. "Bill's an Artist and we're here to see the opening of this place. We met at NCIS and he–" Gibbs' upraised hand silences her.
He'd learned a great deal in the past two weeks. The man had stood up under the thorough background check he gives to everyone who has access to someone who has access to NCIS and its agents. He could tell Sky a wealth of information she never imagined.
Let her find out for herself.
For now he only wants to know from her "What do you have to do with this Crime Scene?"
"I found it."
For the moment he's satisfied with this. "You know the rules?"
"Uh, enough of them, I guess. Sir."
"I'll talk to you later."
"Gibbs–" Abby starts to protest but is silenced by his look. No unauthorized non-agents this close to a Crime Scene. He doesn't refer to Sky, who has worked many over the past months. She's to keep Marsters away and occupied, yet he does know they three discovered the scene so he and his team will debrief all three - after he's seen the site and examined the evidence without interruption. "Go back to guarding this hall."
"Yes, sir," Sky says. A glance back shows Marsters knows enough to comply as well.
x
He turns to Abby. "Where?"
She gives him the kind of smile that warns him he's going to have a bad night. "This way," she invites and heads for the blue wall with the painting of Orpheus and Eurydice leaving, or trying to leave, the Underworld, set between white Corinthian columns midway between the hall ends. There are several images painted upon the walls over the strings of pearls between each of the columns.
When she bumps her shoulder hard against the left side of the wall a double wide door he hadn't seen between the columns opens. He waves her away and lets the wide door close again. The edges extend to the columns and he sees that the light from the widely spaced chandeliers above their heads causes inch wide shadows to lay upon the blue wall flush with each column, effectively obscuring the tight seams unless someone knows to look for them. He bangs the wall with the heel of his hand, has to hit harder before it pops open and he's certain he's going to regret the night.
"Sammy will have to hold it," Abby tells him as they look into the dim room. "This can't be opened from the inside."
"Latch will be on the inside," he counters as he pulls a thin penlight from his jacket pocket. "They didn't build rooms that couldn't be opened, too dangerous. Someone could die if trapped in here." He finds the latch in the upper right corner of the tall portal, eight and a half feet up. Sky couldn't have reached it.
"Oh, yeah." Comes from getting involved in a Scene and having to fight to defend it. The light falls upon the woman's body more than halfway to the back wall. "Well, someone did die."
Perhaps this woman couldn't reach it either?
xx
Gibbs uses his penlight to examine the mummified body of the Navy Lieutenant, grayed by a thin layer of dust and shrink wrapped by her own skin. It's impossible to guess her original coloring or complexion, her skin is dark as parchment and wrinkled, squeezed to the bone, thoroughly dried out over what could be months or years in the arid, dusty chamber. It's clear that none of tonight's guests had killed this woman today, but had anyone who's here tonight done so in the past? For tonight he'll gather contact information and let each person go in turn.
No one can be ruled out. The call he'd gotten from Jennifer Shepherd had related that Samantha Sky had fallen into a secret room and discovered the body by accident.
The only thing he can be sure of, and this from the dust that has settled upon and around the corpse in the evidently very still room, is that the woman had not been moved in a considerable time.
x
He steps back out, looks to the young woman at the end of the hall. "Sky."
She approaches and he can see she's making an effort to maintain a serious expression. That she's the happiest person he's ever met, though Ducky had proven that she derives no help from artificial means to maintain a state of perpetual ecstasy, makes him appreciate the effort. She is, at least, learning appropriate Crime Scene gravitas, undoubtedly under Ducky's and Maura Isles' tutorage. While banter and often bad jokes are the norm in dealing with stressful situations, Sky's normal is other people's extreme. "Tell me what happened."
"Abby and I were talking when a bunch of kids, maybe five to eight years old, came barreling down the hall. I jumped back out of the way, hit the wall and kept on going. Inside it was pitch black, all I could see was a really thin border, almost thin as paper. I could hear Bill and Abby when I pressed my ear to the wall, they barely heard me when I screamed at them."
"You screamed at them?"
"I wanted out," she answers with the inevitable grin. He'd known she couldn't hold it for long. "You can get in easy, but getting out is a bitch."
He steps back inside and examines the inner side of the door. The latch in the upper corner above his head will allow the door to be pushed in from the outside but then it has to be pulled down from the jam to allow the portal to be pulled. At six one this is no obstacle now that he knows it's there but Sky, at five two, even if she could have found it in the dark she wouldn't have been able to reach it.
Sky looks to Abby holding the wall open. "I could get something to hold it," she offers. Gibbs doesn't answer. "I'll get something to hold it open." She steps to the other side of the hall. There are two doors on each side of this length of hall, and a moment later she returns with a chair, which she places against the disguised door. Since there is little closing pressure, the weight of the chair is quite sufficient as Abby relinquishes her burden.
"All right," Gibbs tells her, "when DiNozzo or whoever gets here first, you two go somewhere and keep your ears open."
"Yes, sir."
xx
It doesn't take long for Ziva to arrive, and she's brought a roll of yellow 'Crime Scene' tape to stretch across both ends of the hallway, so he sends Sky and Marsters away to wait in the Drawing Room.
Many of the guests at the opening gala who have not left have congregated in the Drawing Room to the left of the Foyer, a space normally adequate for about ten people. When the couple enters, they can't depend upon anonymity as another pair of guests as everyone in the room has encountered them as the ones who have staked out a portion of the building as a 'No Entry Zone', refusing all explanations and reason. Now several people turn to them and the questions come too quickly from too many sides until Bill Marsters calls for silence so they can answer the first.
"What's happening?"
"I'm sorry, I wish I could tell you but I'm not allowed."
"What do you mean you're not allowed?"
"When are we going to get out of here?" another man demands before that answer can be started.
Sammy shrugs. "There are Federal Agents out there. It's out of all of our hands. I'm sorry."
"Federal Agents?" Another woman demands. "What Federal Agents? From what Agency?"
"NCIS."
"Cattle Inspectors?"
"Navy Police," Bill says, unable to understand this jump in logic.
The woman turns to the assembled guests. "Is anyone here Navy?"
x
Samantha turns away and makes a bee line for an unoccupied chair, hands pressed to her head, feeling the headache that had been building for half an hour go from kettle drums to hammer on anvil.
She sits down but looks up to find Bill standing beside her, looking about the room, anywhere but at her. He hasn't looked at her much and when he did his eyes had that same stunned discomforted look they do now. "You're freaked."
He waves it off. "No, I'm not freaked." But then his eyes meet hers. "I'm freaked."
"I'm sorry." They'd guarded the Crime Scene, not an intended part of their date, for 45 minutes and hadn't been able to say much to one another. The knowledge there was a corpse on the other side of the wall they'd protected had been a heavy weight. "This is the left side of my life."
"I was happy with your right side." She plays Fifth Violin with the Washington Renaissance Orchestra, a very normal and reasonable lifestyle. "You told me about this, but it's still taking a bit to process."
She'd thought, she realizes now that it was naively, that her sexual preferences would be the sticking point in their relationship. She knows now that it's a far cry from his knowing her as a Doctor and Apprentice Medical Examiner to encountering the dead body she's going to autopsy in the morning because Jimmy Palmer has Friday off. She tries so hard not to let her tone be as plaintive as she feels. "I love you."
It's too many seconds without an answer.
xx
Gibbs has called his team in based upon distance, McGee and David from Silver Spring across the Maryland border, Palmer from Georgetown and DiNozzo from a few miles distant, so it's with considerable annoyance that he sees his Senior Field Agent arrive last. "Get lost, DiNozzo?"
"Had a bit of trouble getting out, boss. Won't happen again."
"No, it won't."
x
The agents normally travel with duplicate Investigation kits suitable for gathering evidence on scenes when they don't leave from Headquarters (Rule Number 29). "David, you and Palmer photograph and record. DiNozzo, sketch."
He examines the body as closely as he can for the distance. There are two sets of footprints approaching and leaving the body but "You see what's missing?"
"You mean besides the really, really thin layer of dust for a room with no air currents?" Abby asks with a wry smile.
"No footprints," DiNozzo acknowledges. The prints that Abby and Sammy had made are the only ones to disturb the smoothness. He reaches down, takes the closest tip of the hem of her skirt and lifts it an inch to expose the clean floor. "This room was well cared for, swept at least once, before she was put in here."
"If this is a secret room," Gibbs says, "who had the secret?"
x
The room is dim from the indirect light from the hallway chandeliers yet with every flash of the large camera the body stands out in sharp detail. Michelle stands beside Ziva, notepad in her hand, making a log of every shot based on Ziva's words; time, shot number, flash details, aperture, shutter speed, distance and all the other essential details that will guide the investigation in the days to come.
The body cannot be moved until DiNozzo has sketched the scene to provide perspective that film cannot but even with Jimmy on site they must wait until Ducky comes to examine it. Even in the presence of his Deputy, and coincidentally with his Apprentice as well, the Senior ME has the legal obligation to make the Official Determination of the death.
Gibbs, of course, has his own ideas of priorities and he examines the uniform jacket draped / dropped across the woman's legs. Any examination of this will in no way affect the body or the Examiner's determinations. Ninety nine percent of Active Duty Sailors carry their Navy ID cards clipped to the inner breast pocket and Saunders is no exception. From the laminated card he identifies 'A Saunders' as Annette and he hadn't been far wrong about her appearance. Her assignment is, or was, Norfolk.
"McGee. Annette Saunders of Norfolk. Look her up."
The man is their walking electronic encyclopedia, his hand held PADD connected to most Military databases and websites. He doesn't have to wait too much longer than a 'try my patience' period.
"Lieutenant Annette Saunders was reported AWOL twenty one years ago," he announces.
Twenty one years ago the Military hadn't switched to UA and the Agency was NIS before the clarifying 'Criminal' was added. He'll have to read the Lead Agent's report to determine what, if anything, was known back then. With any luck, the Lead Agent is still around or alive to shed some light.
x
"Gibbs?"
"What is it, Abs?"
"There's a Saunders in the Drawing Room. I didn't pull him out because I was trying to keep anyone from getting any clues to what happened." She tenses, her whole body tight, eyes clenched and she holds her breath.
"I'll talk to him," he says, stepping to the disguised door. "McGee, you're with me."
"Where to, boss?"
"To cull the herd." Jimmy Palmer will remain with the corpse. Once the body and everything else in the room has been photographed and measured in situ he can start such determinations as he can.
Abby relaxes so profoundly she's not sure if she'd fainted and hadn't realized it.
x
He is two seconds in the Drawing Room to the left of the Foyer when a blond man in a black tuxedo and matching mood confronts him. "You the boss of these idiots? What are they doing? What the hell is going on here?"
"This is a Crime Scene, Mister..."
"Paul Saunders. And as I already told your minions this is my house and not a Crime Scene. We've been too patient but now I want you and your trained seals out of my house."
"Saunders, do you know an Annette Saunders?"
He blinks, halted. "I... I know only one, my sister, but she's – she - she disappeared years ago. No one's heard from her in years. I don't even..."
"Come with me." He starts to turn.
"Wait. What does... how does any of this have anything to do with my sister?"
Gibbs has no intention of answering this in a crowded room. Those around him have heard entirely too much already. He turns and leaves, glancing back to McGee who is taking the first of the guest's statements. "Take names and contacts, then cut them loose."
In the foyer he turns to the confused man, all senses alert. "We found your sister."
"What? Where? I don't understand. She's been missing for twenty years and you just come in and say you found her? Where?"
He glances to the door to the right of the marble staircase. "Down that hall."
x
When Gibbs leads Saunders under the Crime Scene tape and to the open wall, their key witness looks as though he's about to faint, even though from this angle they cannot see into the unlit room.
"What the hell is this?"
He makes sure he can see Saunders' eyes. "You don't know?"
"No, I don't know. What the hell happened to the wall?"
He immediately leads the man in the opposite direction and brings him through the first door he comes to, which by the furnishings he takes to be a den. Rather than the desk directly in from the door, the Investigator brings him to the chair set by the right side wall, seeing from the empty space that the other chair had been taken from there to hold the hidden door open.
Even in the moments of activity, Paul Saunders has regained none of his original color.
"What happened back there?" is the first thing he can ask.
"You didn't know there was a room behind that wall?"
"No!"
"That's where we found your sister."
"What?" He still isn't in the room with the Investigator. "You mean she's been here all this time? Twenty years?"
Gibbs gives no answer, being more interested in what Saunders will reveal.
x
Paul puts his hands to his face, seemingly to try to hide from the reality. "Oh my God. This is... I don't know what this is."
"What do you remember?"
The face he pulls from his hands is blank. "Remember?"
"Your sister was reported AWOL from the Navy. What happened?"
"I... I don't know." It takes him several moments to recover well enough to speak coherently. "I was ten, I think. No, I was nine. I knew then something was happening, but I didn't know until my father... my father explained it to me. Back then I didn't understand. I knew she was gone, missing, but it never dawned on me until I got used to the idea–."
He'd appeared horrified before, this is worse.
"My God. I just said I got used to the idea that my sister was gone. How horrible is that? But... but it's true, I guess. I knew her for... for a few years, and now she's gone for more than twice that long. After a while... I got older... I started to forget the de– the details. How she sounded. How she looked. How..." He launches himself out of the chair, paces rapidly around the room and then turns back to Gibbs. "This is a nightmare. I don't know what to think. I can't think." His expression changes, locks onto desperate hope. "Are you sure it's her? Could there be a mistake?"
"She's wearing her Naval uniform. Our Medical Examiner and Forensic Scientist will confirm her identity, but for now we're pretty certain."
"Can I see her?"
"You sure you want to?" He tries to make his voice convey the warning and the spirit to go out of the man. Saunders slumps into that lost soul he'd been moments before.
"I don't know."
x
"Come on."
Gibbs has decided that if Saunders can make a positive Identification, they can proceed. He leads the younger man out of the room and down the short hall with its large paintings each between a white marble half column to where the opening in the decorated blue wall stands stark, black within as though a door to the Underworld from which Orpheus and Eurydice seek escape. They stop at the threshold. Jimmy and Abby, partially blocking the door as they await the completion of the photos, stand aside. The women stop their work as they perceive the man's presence.
"My God," Saunders whispers, unable to tear his eyes from the dark corpse. The years have turned the woman's flesh to the color of dried leather, her skin deeply wrinkled and squeezed to the bones. Her face is the worst of all, withered to her skull, lips drawn back in a hideous grimace.
Saunders breaks away out of the room, hurries across the hall, grips the wall as though he would climb into it. Gibbs stands at his side and waits.
"This can't be happening. This can't be happening! Can't be..."
Gibbs can appreciate the wish. He's heard it expressed so many times, has felt it too many times himself though he'd kept the expression of it within. He also knows he's going to get little more out of the man tonight.
"You have a place to stay?"
The question brings Saunders back into the house and he looks back, bewildered. "I can't–?"
"No, you can't."
He thinks for a few moments and Gibbs can see his mind starting to resume its function when called upon to fulfill this demand. "A hotel, I guess."
From his shield case Gibbs pulls out a business card. "I'll have an Agent drive you." By no stretch is the man fit to drive, and DiNozzo may glean additional information once Saunders' mind comes back. "Call me when you get checked in. This way we'll be able to keep you up to date."
He doesn't reveal now that the flow of information will be in the opposite direction from what Saunders thinks.