Chapter Seventeen
Legendary

The Washington and New Orleans teams are assembled in their adjacent bullpens, for Pride and his agents it's borrowed space beyond the partition shared with Gibbs and David. When Gibbs comes down the stairs to the panoramic window from his morning report to the Director on what they don't have and enters with his ubiquitous large coffee it's the signal for the teams to merge to determine what, if any, progress can been made. It's a bright Monday, forecast to be another scorcher - today might actually hit 100 - and there's too little progress.

"We've gone over the list of potential people who could have known about the secret room," Tony reports.

"It's a short list," LaSalle confirms. "When you get past the parents and grandmother – grandfather Harold passed when Robert was 19 – all that's left are the Staff and the Contractors who did the work on the restoration. We still have to interview the staff, that'll be this morning, but the butler has been there the longest and he's nine years. If what Saunders said was true, that the work the Contractors did on the hall was cosmetic, they may not have known. They certainly didn't report finding anything."

x

"The plans for the house show the middle room," he continues, "as we found before, in the 1780's but there's nothing on the 1940's plan so sometime in that Century and a half someone changed things." He sees Gibbs' ongoing opinion of that issue but the senior Agent doesn't interrupt. "I know what you said, that anyone who went into the rooms on either side and paid even a bit of attention should've figured out what something was up, but the only thing I can think is that it was a real secret that for one reason or another the Saunders elders took to their graves."

"Under the body," Ziva reminds them, "the floor was immaculate. Someone was using it."

"I don't think Annette Saunders used it as a love hutch," Meredith says. "Not with her bedroom upstairs and Devlin's prints all over it."

"Someone put that woman in there and then never opened it again. Palmer, did you get in touch with Devlin's Lawyer?"

"Yes, sir. He's due within the hour."

"Where's Saunders?"

McGee says "Still at the hotel. It's not 0800 yet," he says half cautiously. Sometimes it's not a good idea to remind Gibbs about Overtime, on either end of the shift. "Dorneget is supposed to bring him in when he comes on duty."

"No. Tail him and keep us updated." He only has the Devlins for a few more hours and wants to make progress on them before he has to release them after their 24th hour.

"Pinning the tail," McGee confirms, picking up his phone. Crack of dawn days are fine for the agents, but as long as they know where their witness is he can stay there.

"What do we have on the wife?"

x

Tony steps out from behind his desk, takes up the remote control for the plasma and brings up the feed from his computer, a copy of the woman's DC Driver's License. Gibbs and Pride step up next to him and the others fit in on the second tier, McGee the last to join the group. "Debbie Devlin, twenty five, treated in the past six months for everything from fractured wrist to vaginal tearing. She's had several bruised ribs, contusions–."

"Gibbs, she is a walking punching bag," Ziva declares from behind his right side, "who will not say a bad word against her husband. Ducky came in extra early to have a talk with her, but," she checks her watch, "it might even be going on."

"What about the fingerprints from that wall?"

"Abby emailed her report before she left yesterday," Ziva says. "The inner side of the door is too rough to get any prints, but on the outer side she isolated her own, Sky's and ten other distinct sets. She's going to isolate the family's and Sammy's boyfriend but she doesn't have any of those prints yet. She says she called Marsters to come in to be fingerprinted–"

"Bet that went over well," Chris LaSalle quips.

"She is focusing not on the outer wall as much as the edge of the door, but must go through the existing staff from those years. She says give her three hours and not in 'Scott time', whatever she means by that."

"It means it won't be an hour and a half."

x

"Hi!" a too cheerful voice calls from behind them.

Gibbs looks back with several of the others to see Samantha Sky step into the bullpen. "What are you doing here?" The joie de vivre of the blue scrubbed, pink ballet slippered, perennially too happy blonde imp isn't someone he wants to deal with before his second coffee.

"Good morning, all," she says with her usual elation, acting as though she hadn't heard Gibbs' testy tone. The broken chorus of 'good mornings' is by no means as enthusiastic. She focuses the bright lights of her pale blue eyes on Gibbs. "Ducky says he's done consulting with your client - his words, not mine - but he wants a little while to put his thoughts into words. He'll send you a report as soon as he can."

Gibbs' stare is his 'you could have done that with a phone call, now go away' version. "Thank you." He won't be uncivil to the sprite just because he feels uncivil.

"So, this is Team Gibbs and Team Pride?"

"Team NCIS," Gibbs corrects.

"With a lot of pride." Meredith's quip earns her a thumbs up from DiNozzo.

"You still here on business, or are you just hanging around in case Abby shows up?"

The agents disperse back to their respective desks, more to get out of the firing zone.

"You know," she says, scanning their faces left to right, her expression as bright as ever. "I'm sensing a lot of tension up here this morning."

"That's because there is a lot of tension," McGee tells her, sitting down behind his desk. Much as he likes the spritely imp, she's a bit much to deal with before 0800, or day three of a case that's going nowhere at the speed of molasses.

"I know!" she declares with unabated enthusiasm. "How about if I go upstairs to the Café and bring you all down a couple cups of shit..."

x

Sammy is not given to gratuitous obscenity, particularly not in such a fall-off-the-cliff tone. It pulls every eye to her, but hers are locked on the plasma screen between Tony and Tim's desks.

Tony is the first able to put his astonishment into words. "What?"

"Debbie Devlin. What's she doing up there?"

Gibbs is partially behind his desk and his glare fixes her as a butterfly to a screen. "You know her." He makes it clear it's not a question and he expects an explanation.

"Sure I know her," she says, her voice bright again. "She's Legendary." She looks again at all the eyes locked on her and the light vanishes from hers. "Er, no," she says, voice dropping to the second floor. "No, I'm sorry. On second thought I – I don't know her. My mistake. Excuse me." She turns to hurry away but doesn't reach the bullpen exit before Gibbs, around his desk in near record time, catches up, his hand tight about her arm as he propels her out. "You're hurting me!"

The pressure eases but he quick marches her down the corridor to the elevator, presses the button as Pride arrives behind them. The chime rings and the doors open a moment later; he pulls her aboard and pushes her deep into the car. The doors close behind Pride and Gibbs slaps the Emergency Stop switch.

The car shakes as the locks engage and the lights dim to blue emergency.

The two men turn on her. She backs against the wall and now the light shining from her eyes is all fear.

"I don't have claustrophobia but you could give me Gibbstrophobia."

"How do you know her?"

"Oh, Lord," she appeals quietly, looking left and right, mostly low so she doesn't have to see their faces.

x

"Miss Sky," Pride says, deciding since having looked in his old partner's eyes that he has more patience with the Apprentice M.E., "Mrs. Devlin is not only a victim of Domestic Abuse but is likely to be very helpful in our case. We think Jerry Devlin is doing the same thing to his wife as he might have done to Annette Saunders." He's not sure what to make of her expression but "Since you so obviously know her, and were so concerned about what was done to Saunders, we have to know what you know. What did you mean by 'she's legendary'?"

The look she turns to him is all candor and sincerity. "Agent Pride, you have to understand that I can't just blurt out what I know – despite the fact that I blurted out what I know. It's a matter of Confidentiality, but I can tell you that she is not being abused. Not by her husband at least. Not abused."

Gibbs is almost on her feet. Pressed back to the wall, she looks up the foot distance between their eyes. "Tell me."

Pride watches her fear spike. He touches Gibbs' arm and the man backs away but tells her "I brought you here to allow you privacy, because I thought I recognized why you didn't say anything out there." He knows she's not ashamed of her private life, she's told others about herself but he's kept the confidentiality she'd asked for when they'd first discussed this so many months ago. "But we can go down to Interrogation and record everything you say if that's what you want."

"No," she whispers, recovering. She looks up to Pride, but "I have to start at the beginning. It's not a crime, but it's very, very private. I have to keep discretion and I have to ask you to respect this."

Pride looks to Gibbs, gets a nod. "Anything that doesn't pertain to that mummy downstairs I'll keep to myself until the law requires otherwise."

x

She still fidgets, and when she looks up and meets his eyes it's obvious she's forcing herself to. "I'm part of, well, call it a sub-culture. A fancy name, I admit, since we're all part of one sub-culture or another and–."

"Sky." Gibbs' tone declares she's run out of leeway.

"An Adult sub-culture - of those who enjoy doing things differently. There are several places where we, well, where we congregate, but the most famous ones, the ones the public has heard of, are 'Taiwan On' and 'Sodom and Gomorrah'."

Pride holds up his hand. "I think I understand."

"There are several..." She looks down and away, whispering "Oh, how can I put this?" She looks back up to him, voice forced back to normal. "Flavors. People have different likes, and even in them there are different levels of intensity. I like to be tied up. I like to be spanked - in the right way. And to submit – to be submissive." Her expression hardens. "There is nothing wrong with it, we are not weird and we are not perv–!" she stops again at his raised hand.

"I wasn't making any judgment."

"Just making sure. Not everyone admits that it's my business and not theirs."

"Your business."

"Devlin," Gibbs says.

x

Her expression begins to return, not to her normal pixie-like joie de vivre but rather a working shadow of it that she constructs as she speaks. "Anyway, if I'm on the mild side, she is EX – TREEM. Her satisfaction is bought at extreme violence, intense pain, brutality of a sort... One day, a month or so ago, she'd been with two guys. There's a well padded room in the basement of Sodom and Gomorrah where you can't hurt yourself, and Gold members can even rent a lock for the realism, but only with Gold members. There's a gimmick button on the lock so all you have to do is press the back and it opens. I've seen the room but never needed it, but the padding's everywhere and three layers thick.

"Anyway, they brought her up from the basement but she had to be helped up the stairs with one of them on each arm, and I could see on her face that though she was covered in developing bruises she'd had a really good time.

"They put her down in an easy chair, very carefully. Now I'm a Doctor, so when I saw her like that I had to go over and check her out. According to her she was okay, that she had asked for everything that had been done to her and had enjoyed every second. Left up to me I would have called an ambulance and brought her to an ER, but she'd have nothing to do with that. She said it was only a mild Scene."

She takes a deep breath, visibly tries to get over the point. "If that was the result of a mild Scene I never want to know her version of an intense one, but I've seen her around often enough to know that she enjoys them, that she wants them. She says she can't have a good time without them."

"What about her husband?"

"One of my first questions. She does do vanilla; no one could do the things she does to get off every time, she'd never survive it. She says he helps, but she usually goes there alone. He doesn't get as intense as she needs. He'll hit her because he knows she likes it, needs it, but he loves her too much to really give her the intensity she wants. She can't enjoy sex enough without being forced and hurt, and only really gets off well from the really brutal stuff, the stuff that should put her in a hospital.

"Now I like a bit of force – a bit of force – to be tied and made helpless so I can't resist, but to hear her, getting the hell beaten out of her is just the first part of foreplay."

Pride looks to Gibbs. "He doesn't abuse her."

That's what both Devlins had repeatedly said.

x

Gibbs turns and reaches for the Emergency Stop switch, but Sammy gets around him quickly and grasps his wrist in both hands, then looks to the other man. "Special Agent Pride, Special Agent Gibbs knows who I am and what I like. I'm not going to deny what I am to anyone, and I'm not going to apologize to anyone for who or what I like or do. I don't wear masks. I'm a Bi Sub and I don't give a damn who knows, so long as they leave me to myself and my free choices. But Sodom and Gomorrah, and virtually everywhere else, has a Policy of Discretion. If they know I yapped about someone without that person's permission, possibly Outed someone who didn't want to be Outed, I wouldn't be able to show my face again."

"I haven't heard a word you said."

But as the doors open, both Investigators know that they no longer have any handle on their case.

x

The Supervisors return to their teams after Sammy has retreated to the forward stairs. "Devlin hasn't been abusing his wife," Gibbs declares and lets the outraged looks slide off him. "David, Palmer, cut them loose. Let's bring in Saunders. This time we're pulling his life story out through his ears."

"Boss, I was going to call you while you were in Conference. Ned Dorneget called, Paul Saunders left the hotel and he followed him."

"Where is he?" Galvanized, he looks to Pride.

"Glenwood Cemetery. Records show his grandparents and parents are buried there."

The two men are gone.