Chapter Fifteen
A Blast of Thunder
Twenty minutes after the last employee of the CLPOA reached his desk, Gibbs' dark blue Charger ascended the hill, turned left and slotted into one of the six remaining spaces in the elevated parking area. The sun was already high above the eastern hills, spreading its warm glow upon everything.
"You're sure about this, boss?" DiNozzo asked, hardly feeling there was a point. Everything had clicked so well that it would amaze him immensely if Gibbs wasn't right.
"Ya think? Our perp knows there are three women, each living alone, even one that just arrived on Saturday, all three of them teachers and you have to ask if he's in there?"
"Not really."
"Right. Even if he hacked in, the information came from that computer," he said, pointing at the building. "McGee can rule out, or trace, a hack job; which might have us looking elsewhere, but my gut says he's in there."
"The famous Gibbs gut," DiNozzo quipped. "Who can challenge that?"
"It's got a track record you'd be proud of, DiNozzo." Gibbs wouldn't openly admit that he was, though if asked he certainly wouldn't deny it either. "Ducky and Abby will let us know which one of those four did it, but I want more than that. I want the bastard to confess."
They had been over the details of the case for hours, and eliminating every conclusion left just this one. Gibbs didn't need Sherlock Holmes' credo 'when you have eliminated all the other possibilities, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.' His own credo was simpler.
He turned to include the others in the back seat. "So while McGee does the fingerprinting, I want you to watch everybody. Ziva, you're at the front door. No matter how smart this guy may think he is, when he feels the noose tighten around his throat, he'll give himself away."
x
Getting out of the car, the four Agents checked not only their guns but the other tools of their Investigation; cameras, fingerprinting kit, sketch pad and assorted minutia. On DiNozzo's sketch pad, among other things, was an imprint obtained from the plaster cast safely packed in a strongbox in the trunk. Gibbs wasn't about to take any chances with their most valuable piece of evidence.
Each wore their gold shields displayed at their belts. Today was not a day for subtlety. Today was the day for getting answers.
When they entered the cottage they found all four men working at their desks. Gibbs had especially asked last night that on this Thursday morning all four be present, so the Agents could accomplish their investigation in the most efficient manner. Thomas Magnum stood up to meet them. "Good morning madam, gentlemen. Did you sleep well?"
"As well as can be expected," Gibbs answered. A night without any incidents would be a good one for him. He only hoped that it had been a quiet one.
"How goes the Investigation?"
"That's why we're here," he replied as, with neither invitation nor permission, he led his fellows into the employee section beyond the partition counter. Though McGee and DiNozzo accompanied him, David stayed out front, leaning casually on the counter, making it entirely obvious that she stood closest to the front door.
x
A brief look about showed no changes to the office since yesterday, not that they had expected any. The air conditioner was still off, as the weather hadn't grown particularly warm yet. All the windows were open from top and bottom, both panes in the center, providing sufficient ventilation. The computer on Magnum's desk was on. McGee's search program was running invisibly from the laptop in the rented cottage.
Though Gibbs addressed Magnum, his attention was as much on the three younger men at the other desks, particularly the one in the forward left desk, who hadn't been present the day before. Sam Essman and Mike Parale were already known; the last, Joe Burke, was a younger man still, 5'11", 170 pounds with wiry black hair and a drawn expression. In fact, none of the men were comfortable around the four Investigators who capitalized on that by invading their territory. All three were apprehensive, perhaps equally so. Essman, in particular, kept his eyes darting in what he obviously thought was an inconspicuous manner among the four Agents.
As he passed the large map set upon the wall, Gibbs took note of the footwear on Essman and Burke, as well as Magnum. None of them were wearing sneakers. There would be time to check Parale, whose desk was to the far rear behind Burke's. Parale's eyes flickered toward the door leading to the rest of the cottage. He'd tried not to be noticed, but the Agents missed nothing.
x
"We've got quite a bit of evidence that will lead us to the suspect, but we want to begin here," Gibbs told Magnum. As he spoke, McGee proceeded to set up a small fingerprinting kit on the corner of Magnum's desk, closest to the map. "We want to compare your fingerprints to those we have, to rule each of you out as suspects."
"Well, I have nothing to hide," Magnum said. "We've each been in the Lieutenant's Time Share, checking things over during the winter, but I doubt you need comparisons from lamps, inner locks, inner windows and so forth."
"No." He glanced around at the others, moving only his eyes. "We have evidence from the rapes themselves. Our suspect thought he was smart, but he made a lot of mistakes."
All this was carefully planned to undermine confidence, if the guilty party was actually in their midst. His words were indeed having effects, but upon all of them. Was it possible that they had ….
No, it was no time to leap to unsubstantiated conclusions. Only one of the men was guilty. It was only a matter of narrowing that one down.
Conversely, there was always the chance they were all innocent, but Gibbs' gut told him otherwise. Still, there was the possibility that the records could have been hacked in the same way Gibbs had ordered McGee to do, in which case the four were just showing understandable apprehension based on Gibbs' plan to make each of them shake in their shoes.
If such was the case, it was better to rule them out now.
"Okay," Magnum said, offering his hand to McGee. As the Agent proceeded to fingerprint the man, rolling his inked fingertips onto two pieces of stiff paper held in a tray, Gibbs subtlety watched the others. DiNozzo and David were not so subtle.
As McGee finished, the front door next to Ziva swung open, and Abby Sciuto stepped in. "Hi, Gibbs; everyone." Dawn Caldwell followed her in. Gibbs glared at her – he didn't like surprises. "Look, I know we said we'd see you later, but–"
xoxoxoxoxoxox
Five minutes earlier, a green Impala parked next to Gibbs' blue Charger, and Dawn Caldwell turned off the motor, cutting off Desprez's 'Missa Pange Lingua' in mid-Sanctus. "I'm sorry," she told her friend for the tenth time. "I know I said I'd wait, but I can't stand one more minute in that house. I had to do it."
"I understand," Abby said in a carefully neutral voice, also for the tenth time. The trunk and rear seat were stuffed with the younger woman's luggage, all she had brought with her for a summer vacation alone. She was not coming back.
Abby, unable to get her friend to change her mind, had at least managed the compromise of having Dawn fly back home, lay over at her apartment in Washington before catching a later flight back to Louisiana. She would return the car to the local Hertz office at the airport and the shattered woman would spend time getting her nerves back in order before facing her family. In the meantime, they could accomplish what Gibbs had wanted, more detailed evidence gathering and testimony.
Dawn reached for the door handle, but then withdrew her hand. "I don't know how I let you talk me into this," she muttered, looking down at herself. She was dressed in a light pink halter that was tied below her breasts, but with no upper buttons it left a gap of four inches between her shapely breasts, providing an altogether too generous view. The blue hot pants she was wearing barely felt like they covered anything at all. "This is the kind of stuff I was wearing when he–"
"They're your clothes," Abby interrupted, reminding her firmly. "You packed them."
"Yeah, for sunbathing in the back yard or strolling through town, seeing if I can find someone I'd like to spend an afternoon, or more, with on my first summer without mom and dad here. Now I just feel naked!"
"What can I say? These are what you wanted to wear up here." She wouldn't ease the pressure on her friend, having grown more irritated with her by the hour.
"Not anymore. Now I prefer to cover up, use a bit more decorum. If I'd been dressed more appropriately on Monday –."
"That's Crap And You Know It!" Abby will not let her fall back upon such guilty garbage. "Besides, remember we've found out this guy's targeting teachers. It's as much to say you wouldn't have been raped if you didn't teach kindergarten." She saw the sudden speculative look in Dawn's eyes. "Think it and I will slap every tooth out of your mouth! You love those kids as much as they do you."
Dawn looked away from her friend, staring out the windshield for several seconds, unable to deny the truth and not wanting to hear it. She hasn't heard such tones from her former sitter for years and they sting worse than when she was that little girl. But this is her friend, they're no longer sitter and charge in New Orleans. "Can we just not fight?"
"Sure. And if you'd rather stay covered from head to toe for the rest of the summer – or the rest of your life – I've some Nun friends, I could smuggle you a habit." Dawn turned to her, astonishment overcoming her embarrassed annoyance, but Abby gave her no time to ask. "Look, every time you change your routine or your lifestyle or how you dress or anything else, that bastard wins. The only way to take back your life is to take it back. Look at me."
"Kind of hard not to," Dawn quipped, looking her friend over. The twin pigtails and black lipstick the blonde woman was fairly used to, but in addition to a sharp spike studded black leather choker about her throat, she wore a black tee shirt emblazoned with a silver coffin at the level of her breasts, above which was printed in blood red letters 'Would you like to see what's under the lid?'
Abby had told her that she kept several changes of clothing in her convertible, either for when she went out Clubbing or for when she got lucky at clubs; but Dawn had never expected the extent of the preparation.
Below a pair of black leather shorts that were actually briefer than Dawn's, black fishnet stockings were held up by an inch of blood red garter straps that disappeared provocatively into the shiny leather shorts to a scarlet garter belt she wore under her panties. Black calf high leather boots, polished to a mirror sheen, hugged her legs. She'd put the fishnet stockings, this time a more provocative style, on when she knew she was going to encounter Tim McGee one last time up here. "I don't let anyone dictate what I like to wear."
"I'll say." Dawn thought about it, and finally couldn't hold back from asking. "All right, what is under the lid?" The tee shirt was designed in two layers, a top over-layer bearing the lettering and the 'lid' of the coffin, the rest of the coffin printed on the bottom half of the shirt. Abby tucked her fingers under the upper layer and lifted the lid.
"Abby!" Dawn exclaimed with a shriek of astonished laughter. Along with a very generous swell of feminine pulchritude, she could see two double curved spots of lighter flesh, almost like the tops of two hearts, offsetting the normally pink, now tanned, flesh surrounding them. The 'lower' shirt barely covered the tips of her nipples, but not the pinker surrounding areolas. Abby lowered the 'lid' again, adjusting the fit of the two halves.
"Absolutely no one tells me what I can and cannot wear," she maintained emphatically. "No one takes my life away from me, and no one should take yours."
Dawn stared at her, trying to come up with something to say to justify her choice, but finally gave up. She wrenched the handle up, shoved the door open. "Let's just get this over with," she muttered.
x
Closing the car, they walked toward the Administration building, but after a second Abby paused, causing Dawn to walk alone ahead of her for a few steps before she stopped and turned around. Abby looked her over, appraising her from head to toe; the brief pink halter and briefer denim scorch pants withheld no secrets at all. "Damn, you're one sexy bitch," she said with a grin.
"Will you stop?" Dawn implored, blushing deeply. She knew what her friend was doing, appreciated it, but was unable to endure it. There was already another car coming up the slight incline from the main road, and Dawn absolutely did not want to feel any more on display. "I'm freaked out enough. Let's get this over with so we can get on the road, okay?"
"Okay. I'll give my keys to Tim, he'll drive the 'Batmobile' back home for me." They continued, Abby leading Dawn to the door. When she opened it, Ziva stood near the door, Gibbs, Tony and Tim were near the front desk to their right, near a huge map of the two lakes. Everybody looked toward the door as the astonishing pair entered.
"Hi, Gibbs; everyone," She saw her boss' face darken and spoke quickly to head him off. "Look, I know we said we'd see you later, but–"
x
Dawn, glancing about the room, felt her eyes drawn to the desk in front of her, to the stranger's panicked recognition. She had never seen his face before, not even on that afternoon, but at his withdrawal she knew.
Her piercing shriek was the signal for bedlam.
x
Joseph Burke bolted from his chair, running for the rear door. DiNozzo, in his way but distracted for an instant by the startling screech, couldn't get into position in time and was knocked aside to slam into the wall. Burke was gone before the scream ended. McGee and DiNozzo, Sigs drawn, charged after him.
Gibbs took a step to pursue but Magnum stopped him, incredulous but thinking. "His car's out front!"
Brushing past the startled man, he ran for the front door as Abby shoved Dawn out of the way and Gibbs and Ziva burst out of the building. The entire calamity took less than eight seconds before the latter pair leaped off the low porch, running for the parked cars, but it was already too late.
x
Burke had reached the cars first, panic fueling his speed, but there was a woman and a young girl, no more than ten, coming toward him from their car. He aimed his frantic charge headlong into the woman, slammed her off her feet as he grabbed the child, yanked her to him and turned to meet his pursuers.
Holding the girl up, her body shielding his, he put the barrel of his gun to her head as Gibbs and Ziva angled wide to cut off his escape as Tim and Tony reached the lot from the side of the building, taking positions far enough apart to prevent interfering with each other. The four Agents blocked Burke off in a wide arc, all sighting down their guns to his head.
x
"Back off!" Burke screamed, pressing the gun harder to the terrified girl's head as she screamed and her panicked mother, still on the ground, cried out, reaching for her daughter. "Stay away!" he yelled, jerking the small girl's body about to keep her between himself and the widely separated Agents, gun pressed to her head as she cried,
"Put the gun down," Gibbs, furthest to his left, commanded. Ziva was eight feet to Gibbs' left, DiNozzo further away and McGee completing the long arc, all guns trained on Burke's head. This would not be a body shot. With a hostage in danger of death if any of them got a clear target, this was to kill.
"NO! You put your guns down or I blow this kid's head off!" She cringed at his shout, cried louder. Her mother, still on the ground, was too scared for her child's life to try to snatch her to safety. Burke twisted sharply, whirling the child's body with him, ever twisting to block all four of the widely spaced Agents. He kept the child's head close to his own.
"Put it down, son," Gibbs commanded compellingly, sighting down his gun at the young man's head, but the target was moving so suddenly, so jerkily, that Gibbs couldn't get a clear shot past the child's head. "No reason we can't all walk away from this."
"No way!" Burke shouted. "You let me go or this kid's dead." The woman on the ground screamed piteously. "SHUT UP!" he yelled at her. "SHUT UP!" He twisted again to block DiNozzo and McGee's aim, but then had to move to block Ziva and Gibbs, the child's body thrown about by the sharp twists as he used her to block the two men on his right again.
Gibbs noted, out of the corner of his eyes, that Magnum, Essman and Parale were on the porch, Abby beside them, riveted by the drama. He knew she would prevent the others from interfering, leaving him free to concentrate on Burke. "Give it up, son. You can't win." The man turned to him so sharply the child's body was flung violently.
"Back off!" Burke yelled, making the girl scream as he moved again to block McGee and DiNozzo.
"Not going to happen."
He swung the girl back. "I'll kill her. I swear I'll kill her!"
"Our way you get a lawyer, your day in court and a chance to bargain. Kill her and we blow you to Hell."
"NO. Put those guns down, I drive out of here with the kid – or I blow her away now! You got three seconds! Three!" He pressed the gun harder to the child's head as she and her mother both shrieked in panic. "Two! One!"
"Put 'em up!" Gibbs commanded his team, raising his own gun skyward, the others doing the same.
This was a bluff they dared not call.
Burke pressed the gun harder to the girl's skull, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Zero!"
Gibbs brought his gun down but it was far too late.
x
The explosion echoed through the hills as the skull exploded in a wash of red blood and the mother's piercing shriek seared itself onto Gibbs conscience where it will haunt him through all eternity.
The child's body fell to the ground, driven to the side, bathed in gore, Burke going down as well.
The woman crawled forward, wailing hysterically, clutched and dragged the blood drenched body of her daughter away from him and they clung to each other, weeping in terror and relief.
The shaken Agents, having been an instant away from the worst horror of their collective lives, stared down at the crumpled body of Joseph Burke. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky, the left side of his head covering the ground in a red and viscous splatter, his skull in a wide pool of blood. The bullet had entered over his right ear and blew his head apart from crown to left earlobe.
Gibbs looked at the two men far to his left. DiNozzo met his eyes and shook his head. McGee swallowed hard. "Not me, boss."
x
In the quiet that had followed the thunderous explosion, punctuated only by weeping, Abby Sciuto's voice was as penetrating as it was quiet. "Gibbs? Gang?" They turned to her, but she was looking to her left, beyond the front door to where the long barrel of a rifle protruded from the open window. Through the open portal they could see a pale face framed by long blonde hair.
As Gibbs and DiNozzo started to approach, going past the utterly shocked employees clustered on the porch staring at the corpse of their friend, Abby entered the building. Dawn Caldwell stood motionless at the window, sighting down the telescopic attachment on the rifle that had been secured nine feet above the floor, and which was now steadied upon the top of the lowered upper window. There was a chair pushed under the spot where the gun had been mounted.
"Dawn?" Abby spoke so softly she could barely hear herself but slowly, very, very slowly, Dawn straightened, took a slow step back. The rifle slipped off its rest on the window and out of her nerveless fingers to fall with a loud clatter to the floor. "Dawn?"
She didn't move, didn't react. She barely breathed. Abby was aware of a growing crowd behind her, aware that Gibbs was closest to her. Slowly, heartsick, Abby approached her friend, gently took her arm and turned her. Dawn was staring straight ahead, eyes unfocused, her face utterly blank, deep in shock. "Oh, Sunshine," she grieved, fighting back tears her friend couldn't shed. She looked back at Gibbs, but there could be no comfort from him.
x
She turned back, searching the woman before her for any trace of her friend. Dawn's eyes were blank. "Dawnie, I am so sorry," she whispered, her voice breaking. She drew the girl closer, gently kissed her left cheek, a long lingering touch filled with soul-sick grief. Then she stepped back, gaze locked on the black lipstick upon the pale cheek, drew back her hand and slapped her.
x
The crack reverberated in the room as Dawn's head snapped to the side, then she was back in the room with them, looking astonished at her friend as she held her stinging, reddening cheek. Then the searing pain consumed her soul, horror more poignant than any she'd ever imagined.
Both women clung to one another, weeping soul wracking sobs of grief, Dawn with the horror of what she had been forced to do to protect that child, and for a revenge she could never deny wanting; Abby for the purity of innocence lost forever in a wash of tainted blood.
xxx
Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Timothy McGee spread the large white sheet from the trunk of the blue Charger over the body where it lay in the parking lot. Such was the copious volume of blood lost in a head shot, always the goriest of wounds though this time, with immediate death, the flow of a previously racing heart, that it was immediately stained bright red.
Gibbs felt no regret for the death of the monster. If anything, Burke had gotten off far more cleanly than anything Gibbs would have chosen.
There was work to do, and he would bury himself, and his team, in that. There was the usual collection of evidence and photos, the establishment of the scene; there was 'mop up' work to do, though he was sure a search warrant of the man's home and car would turn up the tape, the latex gloves, the condoms with which he'd thought to cheat forensics and the phony teeth that were the mark of his sickness.
Results of Ducky's examination, now put on 'slo-mo' following his call to HQ, along with everything the State Police had on the first two cases, would close the book on this nightmare.
His report, and those of his team, would serve to exonerate Dawn Caldwell, at least legally. The first principle of use of Deadly Force was that it was considered justified only to save one's own life or that of a third person. So his report would read, so the State Police would hear.
With the testimony of ten eyewitnesses all bearing the tale of how there had been no choice in that final climactic moment, he doubted she would face arrest.
No. The penalty Dawn Caldwell would suffer she suffered right now, and she would continue to suffer it for the rest of her life. That was the fate of people of conscience.
x
Hearing the door to the white building open, he turned to see Abby Sciuto steadying her pale friend down the steps, guiding her to her car, shielding her from the sight of the white shrouded corpse with her own body. There would be no leaving for her now, at least not until the State Police formally declared the case closed. Gibbs had managed only a small concession.
Through a series of calls to NCIS Director Jenny Shepherd, then from her onward to Virginia's main Police HQ and thence to the local barracks, he'd managed to arrange for Dawn to go to Washington for a brief stay, in the 'custody' of NCIS as a Material Witness in the murder of Lt. Christine Martinka. Rather than flying back to Louisiana, she would stay with Abby until her family could fly up, and then the three would return to Clarkston Lakes to face the inevitable heartache.
It was stretching the law and jurisdiction beyond the breaking point, but Gibbs did it anyway. He'd laid out a lot of markers for this, but he was willing to do so in the name of friendship.
He had to wonder how things would have been different if he had followed his initial impulses and cared less about jurisdiction.
x
He watched Abby ease Dawn into the green Impala's passenger seat, then go around to let herself in. Abby looked up to him with a smile and a wave, neither of which were cheerful. He could only bring himself to nod in return.
"I guess we'll never really know," Tim muttered from behind him, and he turned around.
"What was that?"
McGee looked up from the shroud. "I was just thinking out loud, boss. I was thinking we'll probably never really know now why he was targeting teachers."
Motivation? Why teachers?
Gibbs thought of the woman and child in a rear room of the building behind them with Ziva and Tony, awaiting whatever meager aid the Rescue Squad, Police and others might provide to help them through their trauma; as well as of the three shocked and appalled men who had to live with the fact that one of their own had orchestrated this tragedy. He looked at the green Impala pulling out behind him, at the blonde beauty who kept her face hidden in her hands so she couldn't see the bloody sheet. He thought about Dorothy Higgins lying alone on her hospital bed and Christine Martinka inside one of Ducky's morgue coolers, and then turned back to McGee.
"You know what, McGee? I don't care."