Chapter Eleven
The Horror that Never Ends
Lieutenant Christine Martinka lay on her back on the white linoleum, hands crossed high over her head. Her wrists were encased in thick silver electrical tape, which bound her to the leg of the heavy table that dominated the room. She had been beaten severely, her housedress shredded from her bruised and bloody body. Her legs were spread, her ankles taped to the ends of a long handled broom. The livid bruises that mottled her body contrasted sickeningly with her white skin, that terrible paleness of flesh that comes with almost total exsanguination. Her blood, all of it that was not upon several wounds on the front of her body or splattered about the room rested in a three foot wide pool between her spread legs.
She stared at the ceiling, face fixed in terror. There were numerous and deep lacerations to both her breasts.
There was relatively little lividity and it was already fixed. The back of her body was blue/purple from her disheveled red hair to her heels, giving a terrible contrast with her white skin and red stained flesh.
Ducky and Jimmy donned blue elastic coverings over their shoes, more to protect the integrity of the blood than to guard their shoes. Ducky turned to Ziva. "Are you finished?"
"Go ahead," she said, looking back over her shoulder at him from where she crouched near the door across the room, camera held at ready. She had carefully circled the body first, taking a score of pictures from every angle, before the others could do their work. "I am finished."
Mallard and Palmer stepped carefully with wide paces, trying to disturb as little of the potential evidence as possible. Palmer held the black medical bag containing what Mallard would need. Gibbs watched them for a few moments and then approached David. "What have you got?"
x
There was a pair of silver framed glasses laying half closed near the refrigerator to their left. The thick lenses were not damaged, but the frame was badly bent; the left side was open and would not close properly again. The left side of the frame was broken, and the lens would probably not survive the glasses being moved. "Very thick lenses. They look like they were knocked off."
"I'd say she was washing the dishes, heard a noise, turned to her left and was struck from behind." Tim theorized. "The impact would then wind them up in this corner."
"Quite right." Ducky confirmed from behind them. "The skin behind her left ear is scraped, and there is a bruise on her left temple." This wound, like so many others, had been formed before death.
"If these were knocked off," Ziva speculated, noting the thickness of the lenses, "she would have been pretty well blind. I am sure Abby can tell us how much vision she would have had, but she would have been very much at a disadvantage."
"She was a teacher," Gibbs reminds them. Vision is less an issue for her continued service than if she were shipboard.
Tim stood above the crouching Agents, his eyes taking in the entire room. "It looks as though she was knocked all about the room, but it doesn't look like she put up a fight."
"Again, quite right," Ducky confirmed. "There are no defensive wounds on the hands. While I'm sure our Lieutenant would have been well trained, that only accounts for so much in a fight if you cannot see your opponent."
"Any idea how she died?" Gibbs asked, rising and turning to the Medical Examiner. Before Ducky could answer, he turned to McGee. "Check the back, find some tracks."
"Right, boss."
"If he did come in and out there, we can hope he was in enough of a hurry this time to leave some trace."
He turned back to Mallard and Palmer. "I'd like you to check all the blood in this room. Is it all hers?"
"Right, Jethro."
Gibbs did not believe he would get so lucky. The perp had worn latex gloves at both of the previous assaults, so it would not be very likely they would get any evidence off offensive wounds. They could hope….
"At the moment," Ducky replied to the earlier question, withdrawing a long sharp thermometer from the side of the woman's body, "I can put the time of death at approximately eight to twelve hours ago." That concurs with witness testimony. "I also know how she died."
His old friend's tone made Gibbs sure he didn't want to ask.
"She died from a single gunshot wound. The gun," Ducky lowered his hand toward her hips, "was forcibly inserted into her vagina and fired."
He glanced up at the team, and the distress in his eyes told them far too clearly that the horror was yet to be told. When he caught a glimpse of Ziva, holding herself stonily unresponsive, he did not want to continue. "Apparently she was aware, for her body was arched slightly. The bullet," he raised his hand above her abdomen; then continued an inexorable upward path, "passed through her pelvis and exited the small of her back. It then traveled roughly parallel to the floor. When convulsed, pressure from the back of her head raised her upper body. The bullet re-entered at the base of her skull, destroyed the medulla oblongata, that area of the brain that controls autonomic functions such as respiration and heartbeat. It then tore through her brain," he inspected her red haired scalp, "and I think we shall find it lodged in the interior of her skull."
He looked over his shoulder at them, his eyes haunted. "Death would have been instantaneous."
xxx
Abby Sciuto parked her car outside the white trimmed blue bungalow and paused. There had been little time to alert her friend that she was coming. It would have been cruel to call her from the road and then not be able to see her, so it was only since leaving the Administration building's parking lot that she knew for certain that she was coming here directly. Immediately she rejected the thought of honking the horn as well as going to the door and knocking. She knew all too well the many forms of trauma suffered by rape victims; the time she'd spent last night on the phone with her sobbing friend had been illustration enough of the young woman's condition. She didn't want to make matters worse by scaring her.
Getting out of the car, she crossed the lawn to the screen door blocking the white wooden one, and from her purse she drew out her cell phone. Through the door before her as well as through the windows she could hear the filtered strains of Tchaikovsky.
She listened to the buzzing in her ear and the simultaneous ringing of the phone near the door. The dual signals sounded for a long time before she heard movement from within. The motion stopped by the door, but it was five more rings before the connection was made.
/Hello?/ Dawn's small voice was as flooded with apprehension as any horror movie heroine's.
"Sunshine, it's me."
/Abby?/ she gasped, desperate hope in her breath. /You promised you'd call this morning!/ Abby glanced at her watch. It was barely 11:00. She wondered how long her friend had been up for 11:00 to seem so late. Probably she had not gone back to bed either.
"Sorry, girlfriend, I couldn't get to a phone before this, so I did the next best thing."
/What?/ Dawn asked, her voice flooded with fear.
"Open your door."
x
There was a long pause before the odd instruction registered, and she heard the lock turn both through the phone and in real time. The door slid open with a sigh and Dawn stood staring at her, dumbfounded. /Abby?/ she asked into the phone.
"Hi, Sunshine." Abby answered her in kind. "Can I come in?"
Dawn backed up, letting her open the screen door and cross into the house. Dawn stared at her as though seeing a ghost and this alone would be enough to tell her how devastated her friend was. Her eyes were haunted, her face drawn, her long blonde hair a disheveled mess and blue/grey bags weighted each eye. Her pink pajamas were rumpled about her body.
"Girl, you're a mess." Abby chided her, closing and putting her phone back into her black purse.
"Abby?" Dawn asked in a tiny voice drowning in disbelief.
"Yes, it's me," she assured her with a smile. "In the Goth flesh."
"ABBY!" She shrieked, dropped the phone with a clatter and threw her arms about her, clung so tightly Abby could barely breathe as she worked her jaw to help clear her half-deafened ears. Dawn embraced her as though she were the drowning woman's life-ring, starting to sob in mixed grief and relief.
Abby let her have about twenty seconds of this, about the time when oxygen was becoming an issue, then gently but firmly pushed her back, holding her at arms' length.
From the stereo in the living room the soft melody of Dvorak's String Quartet #12 in F major, opus 96 began. She recognized the work by name as well as Dawn would. She could not remember a time when her friend was not surrounded by such works.
Dawn's eyes were red from tears and lack of sleep, her body trembling in her wrinkled pink pajamas. "Girl, you are a mess," she told her again. "When's the last time you ate or slept?"
"What's today?"
She didn't like that question. "Wednesday."
"I ate Monday morning before … but I threw that up when I got myself untied." she admitted shamefully. "I slept that night on your couch – for a few minutes."
"All right. First thing; get out of this junk and into a shower. I'll not have you going about looking like the walking dead; that's my job. Come on." She pushed her toward the bathroom to their left, next to the porch door. "Meantime, I'm making breakfast."
The manner was so familiar, so deeply engrained into each of them, that Dawn automatically started to obey the firm orders before she stopped, coming back to herself, turning to her old friend. "Abby?"
"Get moving, kid," she ordered as firmly. "Remember, I'm still getting $7 an hour."
x
While she waited, Abby searched the cupboards and refrigerator, assembling a suitable breakfast of eggs, sausage and juice. When she closed the refrigerator door, she noticed a card standing upon the white appliance. It was hand drawn, created from a folded sheet of construction paper, the front done in crayon. It depicted a red heart with unknown decorations curling about it. Curious, Abby took it off the refrigerator and opened it. Inside, it was addressed, in multihued crayons, to 'Miss Caldwell, St. Alphonsus School, K1' Across the 'splash page' it said, in all the colors of the rainbow: 'I love you. Jimmy.'
It didn't need to say more.
Abby put it back atop the refrigerator, and when she turned around she noticed something that had escaped her attention earlier, intent as she had been on her friend. On tables, on bookcases, on the stereo, the television, on speakers, on apparently every horizontal surface in the large room stood a folded card. All stood freely, some portrait, some landscape, in construction paper of every hue, done in crayon, paint, pencil, marker, brush, finger and the free imagination of the uninhibited young.
Picking up the closest, she read it, then another, and another, slowly traversing the room. They were from Francine and Christopher and Alexandra and Nicole and Robert and Terry and Matthew and Brenda and Katie Rose and Michael and Rachael and Rosemary and … and each one of them was the simple, heartfelt words of a child to his or her favorite teacher. Those that were dated were from the last day of school, the last day they would see their beloved teacher, or so they thought. Some contained happy faces, some tear stains, and Abby had a lump in her throat and vision blurred by moist eyes long before she was done.
These were the utterly unreserved expressions of love and affection, in the way only a small child could offer them.
Holding the last one in her hand, Abby turned around as she heard the bathroom door open, seeing Dawn come out wearing a red robe, toweling her hair dry. "You are so lucky!" Dawn stopped, surprised until she realized the meaning behind Abby's words. "They love you so much."
"And I love them. Two years at St. Al's; two sets of twenty. I hated to have it end. It was like I was saying goodbye to my own When I have any some day."
"You will."
"Yeah, right." And in that Abby heard 'You have to have sex for that.'
This has got to stop.
Dawn picked up one of the cards, opened and read it for a very long time, tracing her fingertip over the words. "But when I get back in September they'll be in first and second grades, and I'll have a new set of children to love."
"I think I'd love to have children," Abby said, watching her friend. "What's it like to have forty?"
Dawn turned to her, and her smile was more radiant than Abby had seen it in a long time.
"Heaven on Earth."
xx
When Dawn, her still damp hair turban wrapped in a red towel, faced her across a table set half way between the kitchen and living room, she looked far more normal than she had half an hour before.
She now wore blue slacks and a white blouse buttoned tight to her neck but left out of her waistband so that it would help to hide her figure. The younger woman seemed to be going out of her way to choose attire that would not only cover her from neck to toe, but hide her charms as well.
It was rather warm for so much clothing, especially without an air conditioner, but Abby refrained from pointing this out. She'd tried leaving the front and back doors open to let in the nature scented breeze, but Dawn had closed and locked them without a word as soon as she'd noticed them.
The table was directly inward from the front door and was laden with scrambled eggs, sausage and juice. On the stereo the comforting piano melody of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' formed a relaxing background and the two women simply ate, listened and tried to forget horror.
Abby didn't know how hard it had been for her friend to leave the stereo on, to force herself to hear beauty rather than torment, to feel joy rather than terror, to force herself to recapture the joy that was hers, not to allow him to steal this from her.
This music was hers. Hers. She would not give it up. She would die before she gave it up.
x
Partway through the five minute interlude, Dawn reached across the table and took her dark friend's hand. "Abby, thank you. Really."
"I told you, don't thank me." Sciuto grinned. "Between gas, sitting charges and professional fees, you're going to go bankrupt."
"Abby, please stop," she implored, her voice threatening to break.
"Okay, honey, you want the truth?" She reached across the table, taking her friend's hand now in both of hers. "You're my sister. I would drop everything in a heartbeat to help you." She squeezed Dawn's hand. "I love you, Sunshine."
"And I love you too," she said, but then sighed deeply. "And I'm really sorry I called you all those horrible names, insulted you so terribly and cursed at you so much."
Abby was slightly lost. "You didn't curse at me or call me any–"
"You weren't here," she admitted sheepishly. Abby patted her hands.
"All is forgiven."
x
"But what are you doing here? I mean, you must have the most incredible boss in the world who lets you drop everything three times in a row just to take care of me."
"Oh, he's something else, all right." She smiled, but couldn't hold it. "Unfortunately, I'm not 'dropping' anything this time. The truth, honey, is that we're here on business. All of us."
The momentary pleasure Dawn felt was obliterated by the realization of the import of her friend's words. "Tell me," she said, steeling herself.
Abby didn't want to, but there was no way to hide the news. "He's struck again, on the other side of the lake. This time it was a Navy Lieutenant, so that's got us out here officially. No more worries about Jurisdiction."
"Is she okay?" Dawn asked in a small voice, horror robbing her.
Abby shook her head sadly.
"He killed her."
Dawn stared at Abby for several moments, motionless, the blood draining from her face. Abby watched a sheen of perspiration appear on the girl's pale face and suddenly Dawn leaped to her feet, her chair crashed to the floor as she clamped her hand over her mouth and ran past Abby, charged for the bathroom door several feet away. She got inside, slammed the door shut, and the horrible sounds of violent retching cut through the wood.
Abby stared at the door for several moments, every violent eruption tearing at her conscience. Ave Maria faded away, leaving only the sounds of sickness and torment. She turned to the half empty plates before her, wishing she had kept her mouth shut.
"Gibbs, the next time you smack me," she whispered, feeling more guilty that he never does, "you use a hammer!"
xxx
It was after two in the afternoon when Gibbs' Charger and the black and white NCIS truck climbed the eight foot rise to the driveway to the Administration building. The 'Black Mariah', as DiNozzo was wont to call it, continued on the road toward the Interstate. The work of the Medical Examiners would continue in Washington, but the Field Agents would need something more local.
When Gibbs, David, McGee and DiNozzo entered the white building, it cannot be said that Thomas Magnum was happy to see them. "What can I do for you?" he asked, approaching the partition. He really wanted to ask about the crime scene and was going out of his way to avoid, as much as possible, doing so. He really didn't want to know.
Unlike his fictional namesake, he wanted to leave the detective work to these people and to Tom Selleck.
"We'll need a place to set up a temporary Headquarters. One of your 'Time Share' properties."
"Any particular one?"
Gibbs shook his head. It was all the same to him. "Somewhere between the sites."
Magnum refrained from pointing out that that covered a lot of territory. He went over to his desk and called up a program on his screen. After a few moments he looked up at the four. "I can let you have G19; it's not booked for another week."
"Fine."
"I'll need a high speed Internet connection," McGee interjected. Magnum hesitated.
"This isn't Washington. I don't know if that place is cable-ready. If by 'high speed' you mean 50MPS through a phone jack I can help you."
McGee tried not to let his thoughts show past his affable smile. 50MB was an electronic Galápagos turtle. "Fine."
Magnum came out from behind his desk. "G19 it is then. That usually rents for four hundred a week, but I can…" his voice trailed off as he caught Gibbs' look. When he'd woken this morning, he'd known this was going to be a rotten day. "Not renting?"
"It's called 'commandeering of resources'." Seeing the man's barely contained distress, he didn't have the heart to continue. "Of course it's a rental – but since the voucher will have to come through the government…."
"I'll be old and gray before I see the money."
"Not really, but you could get a good start on a beard." But even as he said it, he shook his head. "Don't worry, you'll get the money. Now, I need a list of your tenants, starting with the first three and working up from there. Everything you can give me."
Magnum hesitated. 'Everything' could run into a lot of privacy issues. But…. "You'll have it. Just catch this guy. People are getting scared; word's spreading like wildfire. I'm getting calls from people asking what we're doing to stop this bastard. People are demanding we call a special meeting of all the property owners, come clean on everything."
"Where would you have it?"
"The Club House." He indicated on the map a single property on the road which ran next to the stream that connected both lakes. "It's the only place big enough."
"Call it." Gibbs advised without hesitation. "If there are any more women living alone out here, they deserve to know, so they can make plans to protect themselves."
It felt good to make such a call without having Director Shepherd or NCIS policy makers second guessing him in the field.
"Is this going to get worse?" Magnum asked apprehensively.
"Ya think?" Normally he wouldn't give out details, but Magnum would learn them and will be more cooperative if he knew that "Monday morning he assaulted a young woman and raped her, but didn't do too much damage otherwise. Yesterday he not only raped a woman, using an identical M.O., but beat her so badly he put her in the hospital. This morning he used a nearly blind woman as a punching bag, raped her, shoved a gun between her legs and blew her brains out. So you tell me: Think it's gonna get worse?"