A/N: Tag to "Check" (12x11). A ton of dialogue from the episode is used, which I normally hate to read, but it really couldn't be helped with this chapter. This had pivotal Jenny mention moments and reactions from Gibbs that I wanted to put into words.
"There's something about this one, isn't there?" Palmer asked. "It's familiar somehow."
Gibbs looked at the body on the autopsy table, feeling the same. Something just wasn't right about this, the entire last few days felt off. His gut was churning.
"I had the same feeling when I saw the murder weapon," Ducky commented.
"You've got the murder weapon?" Gibbs asked in surprise, looking at Ducky.
"Maybe," Palmer answered as Ducky pointed in his direction, drawing Gibbs attention to the young man. "Paramedics just dropped this off. A trainee accidentally grabbed it during the resuscitation attempt," Palmer said, holding up a scalpel, "thought it was part of their field kit."
Gibbs suddenly started to feel a familiar and sinister vibe, the wheels in his head turning.
"It matches the wound, both in shape and size," Ducky said while Palmer held the end of the scalpel towards the wound to demonstrate.
Instantly Gibbs was taken back—that rainy, cold, and dreadful night...his friend and mentor, Mike Franks, laying in the middle of the road. The way the rain poured on his dying friend...the sound of thunder piercing the skies...the handle of that scalpel protruding from Mike's chest.
"Mike," Gibbs said quietly, feeling completely winded.
"Mike Franks. He was wounded in the exact same manner," Ducky said in realization.
"About the same age, too," Palmer noted.
"Also, he was left to die in the middle of the street," Ducky pointed out while Gibbs silently stared him, hardly daring to talk.
"That's a lot of coincidences," Palmer said.
Gibbs looked over to him, wanting to point out Rule 39, but not trusting his emotions enough to speak.
"No, it's not," Abby Sciuto spoke up as she entered the Autopsy room, drawing the attention of the three men.
"Jimmy had told me that something felt familiar about this victim," she said gesturing towards the body, and then pointing towards herself with her next words. "And I've had the same nagging feeling about the fake shootout at the diner." She held up her index fingers and walked towards the computer screens off to Gibbs' side, pulling something up.
"Look familiar?" She asked, the picture of the crime scene sketch up on the left screen.
"It's our crime scene sketch," Gibbs replied.
"Yes. But not from yesterday," she said seriously.
He looked over at her for an explanation.
"This..." she said as she pointed to the screen, "is from the diner where Director Shepard was killed."
He instantly felt even more winded, the nagging feeling in his gut suddenly making sense.
"This..." Abby continued, pulling up another very similar crime scene sketch on the right screen, "is our latest crime sketch." She merged the two sketches together on one screen, both of them fitting over each other almost perfectly.
He could hardly breathe, could hardly comprehend why all of this was happening. Abby began talking, her voice distant as she began reciting what had gone down in the latest crime scene sketch, taking him back to when he had walked through that diner—when Leon had pretty much recited the same exact thing.
"Our male victims surrounded our female victim," Abby's faraway voice said.
Jenny's face flashed through his mind.
"She was here."
He could see the blood on the floor where she had been...those little yellow markers on the floor, the one that had a note that simply said "Shepard" placed on it. He could remember how sick he had felt when he had seen it...how sick he felt now just thinking about it.
"She got off the first shot. Male number one never even fired his weapon. She took on heavy fire after that, one to the shoulder, one to the arm."
He had never liked imagining what those last minutes of Jenny's life had been like, what it had looked like when those bullets ripped through her small frame.
"She kept firing. Took out male number two and male number three. Then she dropped to one knee, fired three more shots, took out male number four. And by then she had lost too much blood."
He didn't like imagining her lifeless body in a pool of blood on that cold diner floor. He remembered what Mike had told him...how the last thing she had said had been his name...how she had gone unconscious and bled out after that.
His mind started to focus again, coming back to the present as Ducky began to speak.
"Well, that is most certainly not a coincidence," Ducky stated.
"Someone is recreating murders from your past, Gibbs," Abby said as Gibbs took a small breath, feeling suddenly claustrophobic.
"Why?" Palmer asked.
Gibbs gazed at the crime scene sketches, realizing that he couldn't stand to be in this room another damn second. Not in the room where he remembered Jenny's body bag laying on a slab, or where Mike had lain after his death—where currently the crime scene sketch of Jenny's death and the body that had been staged like Mike resided.
He cleared his throat and turned on his heel, brushing past Ducky as he left the room.
"Jethro?" Ducky called out in concern before the Autopsy doors closed behind Gibbs.
He slammed the elevator button, feeling dizzy and nauseous, stepping in and pressing the button to close the doors. He gave the elevator half a second to move before he flipped the switch and surrounded himself in darkness.
He closed his eyes for a minute and took a steadying breath, trying to will the wave of nausea away.
He didn't need all of this on top of everything else. He thought the caffeine restriction was torture, and then he had to deal with Diane and Rebecca which made everything more unpleasant. Now, things had taken a sharp turn towards being much, much worse.
This was some sick game to someone...staging murders to be a just like ones that had brutally affected him.
He leaned against the wall and rubbed his jaw, feeling angry, sad, and confused.
That had been the first time he had seen the crime scene sketch from Jen's murder.
When he had gone down to Autopsy that horrible day...saw that body bag laying on the slab...when he couldn't bring himself to open it—he had made sure to completely avoid looking at any of the crime scene photos and the sketch. Seeing the blood and evidence markers in that diner had been bad enough...he couldn't face looking at actual proof that she was, indeed, gone forever. He had let Leon and his team take care of those aspects, since Leon insisted it was his crime scene anyways.
He took another breath, trying to ready himself to face all of this. He didn't have time to waste now that things had gotten so serious, they needed to get to the bottom of everything before things continued to escalate.
He could feel tears stinging the back of his eyes, his mind heavy on Jenny and Mike, but he kept them back. He slammed his palm against the elevator wall, ready to kill whoever was messing with him like this, and aching for a good cup of coffee.
Gibbs and his team were all in the bullpen, doing a sitrep.
"Five bodies turn up," Tony said, pulling up the four crime scene photos of the bodies from the other day, "staged to mirror the gunfight that killed Director Shepard in California." Gibbs couldn't help but wince a little hearing her name, as Tony pulled up the crime scene photos from that California diner underneath the other ones.
Gibbs eyes scanned from left to right, his eyes going from the three dead men who she had faced off with, landing on the last picture of her. His breath caught and he had to blink a bit, taking in the photo of Jen laying dead in a pool of her own blood. She had always been pale, but it was nothing compared to the almost white tone of her lifeless skin in the photo.
He remembered that blue shirt, stained in her blood. Remembered when Abby had to process it...when she had held it up and burst into tears, giving him a comforting hug.
His eyebrows furrowed and he blinked a bit again, feeling sick to his stomach again, feeling the sting of threatening tears again.
"Then another body appears," McGee said, pulling up two large photos which mercifully covered the eight small ones, "this time mirroring Mike Franks' murder."
He tilted his head and tried to keep a straight face as he stared at the photos, squinting a little, glad they were of the body downstairs in autopsy and that there wasn't one of Mike on the screen.
"Both were NCIS. Both pivotal figures in your life," Bishop stated.
"Somebody's gaslighting you, boss," Tony said.
"You think?" Gibbs snapped, feeling exhausted and on edge emotionally. "I want to know why," he demanded.
"Uh, no theories yet but we have a few angles on suspects," Bishop replied nervously.
"The record from Director Shepard's murder was sealed," McGee said, Gibbs wincing from the name drop again as he turned his head to listen to him. "Only a small group of people had the details."
Gibbs walked out of the elevator towards Autopsy—more tired, angry, and sad than he had been earlier.
After the sitrep that morning, he had dealt with Rebecca and her impending idiotic husband in interrogation, then he had gone out into the field with his team and discovered that Diane was being targeted, and then he had met with Diane on that rooftop...and had witnessed her get shot through the head as he held her in his arms.
He had wondered earlier that day how things could possibly get worse, and now he had his answer.
The flashes of Kate that had gone through his mind the moment it had happened were almost paralyzing. He had been driven by pure adrenaline and shock to leave Diane's body there and try to pursue Sergei.
And then it had taken every ounce of willpower he possessed to not cry in the bullpen as that bastard's video message to him played. Sergei was right...he left the clues, Gibbs should have seen it coming...
Now Gibbs stood at the Autopsy doors, watching as Palmer stood on one end of that ominous black body bag, looking defeated.
"But most of all, I don't want to cut open another friend," Palmer said, looking straight at Gibbs.
It was silent for a moment, Gibbs glancing over towards Ducky uncertainly.
"I think I've had my limit," Palmer said shakily, heading over to the computer chair on the other side of the room.
Gibbs walked over to where Ducky was, looking at the body bag that held the body of another woman that he had let down in his life.
"I don't remember the moment when I reached my limit, but I do remember never being the same," Ducky mused. Gibbs looked over at Palmer's back, feeling more empathetic than he had ever felt towards Palmer before.
He could understand the young man's feelings entirely, because he knew how it felt to reach his limit. He had been through so much death so many times, and every time he felt like he had reached a limit—and now he felt like the limit had long been overstepped. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to exact the most brutal revenge possible on Sergei—and he also just wanted to give up.
How was he supposed to keep going on with life when so many people he cared about just ended up dead?
He glanced down at the black bag, once again remembering the last time he had faced one that contained the body of a redheaded woman he had been in a relationship with.
"Would you like to see her?" Ducky asked.
Gibbs swallowed and shifted a little, not sure he could do it. He had already seen her die in front of his eyes, but it didn't make seeing her lifeless body—devoid of her snappy attitude and fierce glare—any easier.
Ducky went ahead and opened the body bag anyway, pulling it apart to reveal Diane's ashen face, the bloody gunshot wound right in the middle of her forehead.
He flashed back to that night in his basement, when Diane had stated that he never loved her.
"But the only woman you'll ever love is Shannon."
He remembered he had to keep himself from saying, "And Jenny" at that moment. Shannon would always be his first love, but Jenny had been the only woman since to succeed in claiming part of his heart.
"You were my Shannon, Leroy."
He felt guilty staring at her body, she had deserved better.
He wondered how the hell he was supposed to tell Fornell, and how Emily was supposed to cope. He knew he would need to be there for them, and one of these nights he would need to let Fornell grieve and drink while he watched over him, let him cry on his shoulder if he needed—just like Mike had done for him many years ago.
He didn't know how he was supposed to forgive himself for letting this happen.
He had failed Diane, just like he had failed Shannon, Kelly, Kate, Jenny, and Mike. He should have been able to prevent all of their deaths, he should have been able to protect them.
He didn't want to see another friend, colleague, or redheaded lover laying in Autopsy ever again.