Chapter Four
No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition
Abby and Samantha had gone home to change, and for Sammy to be sure a very disconcerted Bill Marsters got back to his home before Abby drove her on the last leg back. Now, as the sun lightens the eastern sky, Abby parks the 'Forenzchic', her extra souped up red 1931 Ford Coupe Hot Rod, in the underground garage. Sammy Sky slides her silver Nissan Altima into place next to her and touches the control to slide the sun roof closed.
"I'm not sure if it was worth the extra breeze," she says as she gets out to join her tall friend, brushing the bangs of her pale blonde pixie hair back into place.
"You're the one who wanted to be a hot chick," Abby tells her with a suggestive smile.
"Hot chick, yes. Air cooked, no."
"Well, when you get to Autopsy you can always slip into one of the coolers." She checks her watch. It's 6:17 but "Gibbs is going to want answers before he asks the questions."
"Then I guess we'd both better get to work. Ducky and Jimmy did bring the body in overnight but Jennifer wants me to sub for Jimmy today and–."
"I thought you didn't do Scenes with a man you know, especially a married one."
"I'll see you later," she says archly, walking away from her broiled friend.
xx
Abby inspects her lab minutely and critically, seeking something to aggravate her but Ruby Rae is not William Cesario, who had substituted for her last year during her Hawaiian vacation and had rearranged everything, requiring her to spend her first two hours back, even with McGee's help, putting the room in order again. Ruby knows where everything belongs and the fate of those who make changes to her Sanctum Sanctorum. People have learned, to their great pain, the consequences of messing it up. Tony, Tim and Ziva only made that mistake once, and to their credit and fortune they are fast learners.
But there's nothing out of place, no reason to take her substitute of this past week to task.
Said substitute does, coincidently, walk in at that very moment, her arrival heralded by the rapid series of beeps from the clear sliding door. The petite redhead halts, quite surprised to see her lab coated counterpart. "Abby?"
"Surprise."
"Surprise is right." 'And not a pleasant one', Abby can read in her eyes. She can't blame her. "I thought you were out for at least another week."
She has no idea how long her Suspension and Evaluation will last, but this is the woman's nice way of saying she isn't supposed to be here.
"The reports of my vacation are exaggerated."
"What's going on?"
Ruby had been called in all the way from Edenvale last Wednesday morning to cover her for two weeks until the results of her revised Evaluation - which she hopes will be taken without delay but she hasn't heard a word - come in. So far, she hasn't even been scheduled to be tested yet and will brain the first person who takes a philosophical tone about that.
"Gibbs, through the Director, put me back to work. Last night we stumbled on a Crime Scene. Well, actually Sammy Sky stumbled onto it - literally."
"Why am I always the last to know these things?"
"Don't sweat it. I don't think many people do. In the meantime how many cases do you have?"
"Eleven."
"Eleven! What's been going on while I was at sea?"
"NCIS has been sinking."
"Never mind. We'll work it out. What's the most pressing?"
"The first nine." Abby watches her valiantly fight a flinch. "Everyone wants their reports the previous day. This place is so not Edenvale."
"No, I spoil them. Comes from working 80 hours a week when I don't do weekends." This week she certainly will, even with two Scientists to get through everything. "Let's look at the load."
xxx
When the glass and steel pneumatic doors sigh open and Jimmy looks back, expecting to see Agent Gibbs on one of his too early rush Report runs, he's surprised to see Samantha Sky enter. She stops short under the back-lit white sign she'd given to Ducky some months ago, the three foot long wooden framed white frosted glass rectangle rendering black Latin words HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE: 'This is where death rejoices to teach the living.'
"What are you doing here?" he demands.
"Mister Palmer," Ducky says reprovingly from the other side of the silver table, the still clothed dessicated body of Annette Saunders between them.
He turns back, aware now how his tone had sounded. "I'm sorry, Doctor."
x
"What's going on?" she asks, looking from her mentor to Jimmy, putting her distress at the sight of the man into every syllable. The white uniformed body between the men gleams under the intense directed light and the portable X-ray machine stands at the head of the table, ready for use.
"I'm sorry," Jimmy says. "It's just that I wasn't expecting you."
"'No one expects the Spanish Inquisition'," she quips, recollecting Monty Python. "But I wasn't expecting you. Isn't this your last day off?" Even with yesterday's discovery, there was no reason for him to cancel his day off. She's perfectly capable–
"Oh, yeah." He and 'Chelle and the McGees were supposed to be enjoying a picnic and an afternoon of fun - until this. Today was supposed to have been their last relaxing day before the weekend and their official return to work on the 30th.
"I fear that is my fault," Ducky confesses. "When we received this case last night, after you and Abby had left with your friend, both the Palmers' Leaves were terminated early and I forgot to alert you. My apologies."
"No harm; I had no plans if not being here other than to stay four feet from an air conditioner." She looks to the mummified corpse, particularly noting the emaciated legs in loose hose and loose white socks over shrunken feet. There had been so much lost with all the moisture in the body that the white socks hang loose about her feet, but she tries not to consider that. "You've a full crew to work on you today," she tells the woman.
"You can make yourself useful," the older man assures her, gesturing to the mirrored store room beside his desk. "Get undressed–"
"Finally something I'm good at."
Ducky looks like this is going to be a very long morning. "Get dressed in your scrubs and then grab the clipboard. Today's work will be slow and quite a tedious process."
xxx
Gibbs and his team do not have the luxury of beginning their day with the dawn, having driven their cars in from the Crime Scene and being able to do little more than make time for breakfast before they must delve into a two decade old case. Since breakfast for him is usually coffee while a large breakfast is an extra coffee, Gibbs is already at his desk when the bell, loud in the sparsely populated Operations Division, announces the deposit of his four agents.
"What do you have?" he asks as they file into the Bullpen. They exchange glances, none willing to be the one to announce the obvious.
Michelle holds up a confection box. "An extra croissant. Want?"
"What I want is information on our mummy."
They collectively look to their Senior Field Agent, who sometimes dislikes the perks that come with the job. "This point, I don't even have a puppy." Gibbs' glare reveals how bad an idea the Rock and Roll pun had been as the agents reach their desks. "Come on, boss, we have an ID and a decade. The woman was AWOL because they didn't use UA way back then."
Fortunately his stall lasted long enough for Ziva to call up some initial information. "Lieutenant Annette Saunders was reported AWOL 21 years, 3 months and 5 days ago. When the family reported she had not returned home after her shift at Norfolk, her CO made an initial attempt to contact her, then notified NIS. There has been no Final Disposition on her case."
"I can tell you something about the Saunders family back then," Tony says, "which you already guessed from the house. They were loaded plus dripping in it."
"Paul Saunders heads up a company affiliated with Canon," McGee says.
This Gibbs already knows. He'd gleaned that information last night before DiNozzo drove the man out to a hotel. "What's his company do?"
"Still researching that. Canon started out making copiers but expanded widely a long time ago."
"According to Saunders," Tony continues, "the Renovation and Open House were about keeping a place in the Society Circuit. Apparently it's good for business. He didn't have to make the place into a showplace and charge admission for tours, that's just for pocket change and to give the staff something to do. He maintains a Butler, Cook and all-around Maid, but if not for the extra work plus docents to guide the tourists that this project is going to bring he'd've had to trim things. It's a big place but apparently tooling around a three story mansion can get boring."
"You should know. What else?"
DiNozzo looks to the rest of the team, each of whom has been in the building for a half hour, most of that time taken up by breakfast. "That's about it, boss."
Gibbs gets up, comes around his desk and heads for the opening between Tony and Ziva's desks. "When I get back from Abby."
xx
When Gibbs enters the Forensics Lab through the back entrance Abby stands bent over her free standing workstation; why he doesn't know because what's before her is on display on the plasma screen mounted on the wall beyond the station.
It's part of Abby's continuing mystique that she can be old school and cutting edge simultaneously. In fact, a cutting edge is what she's using on the evidence as she continues, her back to him.
"Be right with you, Gibbs," she announces though she hasn't looked up or away from her meticulous work.
The sample is an irregularly shaped, age browned strip, quite thin yet she's carefully creating layers and separating one from another.
She's wearing her black miniskirt festooned with dozens of large safety pins and a black tee shirt with two large wings displayed on her back, a bat's wing on her left, a white dove's wing on her right.
"Hello, Agent Gibbs."
He does a double take to his left to the young redhead at the Evidence table, surprised to see Ruby Rae in her white lab coat. "Good morning."
"Ruby's assisting today," Abby says, not looking away from the strip which consumes her attention, "because no one told her we're back. Come to think of it, no one from HR told me either."
"You're back."
"Thank you. And because we have an even dozen cases to solve before lunch. Since she's scheduled to spend next week here too, since I'm not back, she's staying."
Focused on his case, all he can say to the young woman is "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Abby stops now and puts the implement down beside the desiccated flesh. "So, Gibbs, what's new?"
x
Since she rarely asks this, he decides it's a bad sign. She turns and he sees the rest of the tee shirt is a white halo that rests upon her right breast while a pair of red horns seem to spring from her left breast. Arched over them, starting from white and gradually turning to red, is the question 'Dare you turn this Angel into a Devil?'
He decides that, as usual, the best thing to do with one of her outrageous shirts is to ignore it.
He can tell she's disappointed as she turns to the plasma screen where the piece is still displayed. "What's that?"
"A sample from Lieutenant Saunders' left arm. I'm going to see if I can run a DNA analysis to lock in a positive ID but don't get your hopes up. It's only slightly moister than the Café's meat loaf."
"I have every faith."
"Awww, Gibbs, that's so sweet." She looks to Ruby. "Isn't he sweet?"
Since sweet doesn't characterize her interactions several months ago with the towering agent, she elects to say nothing.
When he steps beside Abby and Rae joins them, he sees that the section of flesh that had appeared to be more than a square foot is less than two inches across. "What've you got?"
"Not a whole heck of a lot, not until I hydrate this, which is why I'm separating the layers."
"How long will that take?"
"NCIS isn't television; not even I get results during the Station Breaks. I'm splitting the initial samples Ducky sent up between General Gas Chromatograph and Major Mass Spectrometer but it's a pot so don't stare at it waiting for it to boil."
"Montgomery Scott always doubled his estimates so he'd look like a miracle worker."
She gapes at him. "Gibbs! Ten thousand points for the obscure cultural reference." That reference had been from a single 'Next Generation' episode, not from the Classic series or a movie.
"Credit Hollis. What've you got?"
"Hours of work before my first answer."
"I always thought you were our Miracle Worker."
"I don't look good with a mustache."
"Abby."
"Gibbs, right now all I have is performance anxiety. While we were at the McGregor mansion – and by the way I really have to tease McGee all day today – I got a callback from the Director putting me back to work and screw the Evaluation for today but I haven't even said 'hello' to half my team. I've told you more than once 'you cannot rush Science'. You can yell at it, you can argue with it, you can spank it if you're into that and I know someone on your team who is–"
"So do I."
"What are you doing knowing? But you cannot rush it. I promise, when I know, you'll know." He's halfway to the door. "Gibbs?" makes him turn back. "What's the story with our Evaluations? I spent a week thinking I was Suspended, now we're all back but by the rules we're still not."
"When I know," he watches her frustration peak, "you'll know."
xxx
Gibbs steps through the glass and metal pneumatic doors, displeased to see Palmer and Sky working on the stripped corpse of Lieutenant Saunders and Ducky nowhere in sight. Getting answers from a mummified corpse takes so much longer than from a fresh one; the team could be most of the week on this.
The smaller of the two still wears the pink ballet slippers cross tied at her ankles to hold the blue scrubs pants bunched. Apparently they still don't make scrubs in her size, too long in the pants, too tight in the shirt. He suspects she's going to continue wearing this eye searing fashion until Ducky stops her – which may be never since she's not even supposed to be here today. She turns and pushes up the clear plastic face shield.
"Hi Gibbsi–." Her cut-off isn't fast enough this time. "Special Agent Gibbs."
He looks past her, over her head in fact, to Palmer, a new source of annoyance. How dare the man be grinning at him as though able to read his desire to put distance between himself and Sky, preferably several States?
x
He fixes his glare on Palmer, mentally pushing Sky aside even as he steps next to her near the corpse's head. "What can you tell me about Saunders?" he asks over the woman's dessicated body.
The white on white uniform had been removed and rests in individual plastic Evidence bags in a plastic bucket, the load ready to be brought up to Abby. All that is left is parchment dry flesh pulled tight about the bones.
Sky smiles up at him. "She's dead."
He hadn't had much patience with her overnight and this morning he's tired, so he lets his stare silently tell her that though she did find the woman she'd scored no points with him in doing so. One of the perks to Suspension is being able to sleep in, so being here this morning isn't the joy it usually is. "What are you doing here, Sky?"
"Simple. Jimmy's off today with his wife and the McGees."
Yes, that had been the plan, but as soon as she discovered plans have changed she should have turned around and gone home. True, she found the corpse but Ducky – where is Ducky? – and Palmer are well capable of dealing with it.
But Ducky probably had her stay, having a use for her, yet he's sure the man will soon return to impose order. If he can't get through to her since she knows he can't inflict head slaps and is nonetheless too damned cheerful, at least she respects Ducky.
No, he decides, that's neither true nor fair. She does respect him, she's just proven she's not intimidated by him.
However, she wisely erases the smile from her face.
"We can definitely confirm that this is Annette Saunders," she says.
"How?"
"Well, aside from the name tag and the ID card and the epaulets with the oak leaves with acorns sitting on them and the other things, even her bra is 3501.6ed and her underwear is 3501.100ed, her name and initials. It's her."
"Thank you." Very soon he intends to teach her the meaning of 'too much information'.
x
Palmer raises his shield. "X-rays," he begins, using the pause to lead Gibbs over to the light board where four dark x-ray exposures are attached. They show straight and curved bones in white upon black, "show that Lieutenant Saunders had a fractured and healed fourth left rib and right radius."
"How long ago?"
"That's hard to say. You can see the spots, here and here, where the breaks were because of the buildup of calcium surrounding the breaks." The bones have a raised portion, almost like a football seen in cross section, about the areas but the breaks themselves are hardly discernible even with the best of effort due to the shielding effect of the extra calcium. "Each is fully healed. Perhaps Abby can tell how old the calcium deposits are. Then again, when we get inside we may be able to tell."
"But these didn't have anything to do with whatever killed her?"
"Not really." He leads Gibbs back to the table. "But I can tell you, show you actually, that she also has over forty burns on various parts of her torso." He indicates irregularly shaped small discolorations on her already discolored flesh, dark spots from one to two inches in size, starting near her collar bone and spotting her down to the bottom of her ribs. The marks, which he already knows are deceptively smaller than they had originally been, are spaced in no pattern he can discern, have no particular shape and he can't even figure their original color on the dried out, contracted and then stretched skin.
As the body lost moisture two decades ago it had started to shrink and contract, then some of the skin stretched over the bones, in particular the ribs, in unnatural manners. Of the breasts there is nothing left but skin condensed flat against and indented between the ribs. In fact, if not for the hair and the size and shape of the hips, had he not seen the body clothed (and that clothing had hung loose in the secret room) as he looks now he cannot say with certainty if this was a man or a woman.
In fact, he can't even say if the body had been large and heavy or extraordinarily thin in life.
When they get into the torso they'll find little left to inform them. The lungs will be, from what he recalls of Ducky's lectures, thin collapsed sacks and the heart less than a fifth its normal size and weighing only a few ounces.
x
"What caused the burns?" he asks, grateful to work with someone who can answer questions. They're like collections of dots, each one a different pattern, if pattern can even be the word to be used.
"We're not entirely sure," Palmer confesses.
"Because of the shrinkage and then stretching of the skin," Sammy puts in, "we're not even sure of the shape of whatever was used, or if there was more than one thing in different shapes."
"Thank you," he says without kindness.
"You're welcome," she assures him with a broad smile and enough kindness for them both.
He has a policy of not head slapping anyone not on his own team but considers bringing the girl on board for two seconds.
Palmer occasionally cuts in on his conversations with Ducky but he at least has sense enough for self-preservation. He doubts Sky has as much sense, or ability to be intimidated, so he doesn't even try.
"If these marks are an inch or two, how big were they originally?"
"I'd rather not guess."
He cannot fault Palmer for that caution, such detail can direct the investigation and will depend upon the original dimensions of the body, but they know better than to leave him with as little as they are. "What does Ducky say?"
"Doctor Mallard is in the lounge."
Gibbs' lips form 'he's in the lounge' but he's so astonished he can't get any breath behind it.
x
"He says we're to do the initial evaluation and have a report for him when he gets back from his break."
He double checks his watch, certain he hadn't misread it. No, it's right. Eight sixteen. "So what's your report?"
"Someone tortured her to death," Sammy declares, her voice harder than he'd ever heard it. For someone who spends her life between thrilled and ecstatic, who's fluent in the language of emphatics, this is unexpected.
"What do you have to back that up?"
The question silences her, never a good alternative even if it's the one he'd hoped for. He knows this hesitation is from her weeks of working with Maura Isles of Boston while the pair had womanned Autopsy. Ducky had been on a planned vacation and the Palmers on an enforced one which, technically, they still have three more days of, so Maura Isles had been brought in to replace Ducky and Sky to replace Palmer.
Isles never committed herself to anything until it had been thoroughly examined, researched, evaluated, proven – and even then she included provisions. He's only interested in answers, and if Sky's going to apprentice here she'd better learn to give them on command.
For now, in lieu of the head slaps he doesn't give in Ducky's domain, he'll settle for a glare that usually makes other Gunnies back away.
"Well, the burns are scattered unevenly over her torso," Jimmy says, perhaps thinking to rescue her, "but due to shrinkage and stretching of the skin I can't tell you what the original shape of whatever was used on her was, elliptical, round, oval, square or what." This he can see for himself. The flesh, as it dried and molded itself around the body in ever tightening constriction, was distorted by unyielding ribs, and the small marks are not smooth but consist of collections of dots which literally shrank together over the years.
He's reminded of Charles Bright, found in Puller High School at Quantico after being trapped in a chimney, so smoked that stab wounds resembled pin pricks visible only with two magnifiers.
"How many burns are there?"
"Including those on her feet and right hand," he says, "forty three."
"The burns follow no pattern," Sky says, "which is why I think she was tortured, but not sexually."
"Why not?" He knows but won't discuss why she'd be familiar with this, not in front of Palmer. He'd given her his word, but she'd been a valuable source of insight on this issue on a previous case.
"The pattern doesn't focus on the common spots for sexual torture; the breasts, bum and genitals. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a focus at all."