You trusted him and gave him your love
A love he proved unworthy of
Oh baby, oh baby all you've got to do
Is dry your eyes long enough to see

Baby, baby don't cry
Baby, baby here's why
Love is here standing by
Love is here standing by

Smokey Robinson


BABY DON'T CRY

Chapter 1: A Trip to Annapolis

On an ordinary morning at NCIS headquarters, the top investigative team was doing routine work. Because it had been several days since the team had had a new case, they had time to process clues and evidence from several open cases, write reports, and do any leftover cleanup work. They were working hard, concentrating without any of the usual cross-talk and banter they often indulged in.

Mossad Officer Ziva David, on temporary liaison assignment to NCIS, was writing reports from transcribed interrogation notes. At one side of her desk was the American Heritage Dictionary of Idiom, which Tony had given her as a present. Although she was touched by Tony's patient, continual correction of her lapses, it would be unfair to ask him every time she encountered a quirky phrase in the transcript of an interrogation of a suspect whose thick southern accent and colorful, slang-filled language almost completely defeated her ability to understand what he was saying. She was sincerely grateful for the dictionary and used it constantly

At another desk, NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee, his entire face pursed with concentration, stared intently at a monitor and clacked away on his keyboard, trying to ferret out damaged files from a group of disks retrieved from the apartment of a young petty officer who was suspected of being involved in a drug smuggling ring. It appeared to McGee the files had been deliberately damaged, but whoever had done so was apparently not computer literate enough to do a thorough job. This didn't mean that it was easy to restore the data.

The third desk was occupied by Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, who leaned back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, giving a telephone interview to a very young Naval Judge Advocate General about a case on which he was scheduled to testify at a court martial in several days' time. He had already met with her several times, which from his conversation seemed to entitle him to try to seduce her over the telephone, or at the very least make a date with her.

At the fourth desk sat Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the leader of the team. He was occupied with a sheaf of papers that contained almost nothing but numbers—his budget. He was struggling to find a way to justify the expenses he and his team had incurred on a recent joint investigation with the FBI. His director insisted that, because the FBI had primary jurisdiction in the matter, they should be bearing the bulk of the cost of the investigation. Gibbs agreed, but he was having some difficulty making the appropriate allocations.

The phone on Gibbs' desk rang suddenly, startling all four investigators. Gibbs answered, listened for several seconds, then hung up.

With relief evident in his voice, he looked up at his team and announced, "Time to go. We've got a case."

The other three agents jumped up with alacrity, thinking that any task, especially outside the building, would be better than having to do all this paperwork. DiNozzo uttered a hasty "Gotta go; talk to you later" to his JAG lieutenant, grabbed his backpack, and ran after Gibbs with his colleagues.

"Where're we going, boss?" he asked as they stepped into the elevator.

"Annapolis," replied McGee.

"Hey, a road trip," DiNozzo said with glee.

McGee and David exchanged rolled-eye glances that said it took so little to amuse him.

Down in the vehicle compound, they encountered Dr. Donald Mallard, the medical examiner, and his young assistant, Jimmy Palmer, loading up their van.

"What kind of mayhem are we investigating today, Jethro?" asked Dr. Mallard.

Gibbs replied, "A young woman was found dead in a motel room near the Naval Academy. The room was apparently rented by a sailor, which is why we were called instead of the local police."

McGee was assigned to drive the truck with DiNozzo riding shotgun, while Gibbs and David took an NCIS sedan.

DiNozzo spent a good part of the drive swearing gratitude that he was not riding in the sedan with two wild drivers, but still urging McGee to pick up the pace. The younger agent steadfastly refused, pointing out that Gibbs was not that far ahead of them because the mid-morning traffic was heavy and congested just enough that nobody, including Gibbs, could speed or weave in and out.

As they reached the motel, they saw that Gibbs and David had also just pulled up. The ME's van wasn't far behind. The team was met by an older man standing outside one of the rooms on the ground floor of the two-story building. He was wearing a white button-down shirt open at the collar and with the sleeves rolled up, topping dark brown dress slacks. He was at least as tall as Gibbs but considerably beefier; his face was lined; his salt-and-pepper hair—more pepper than salt—was cut short, military style

"Pete Woodley; I'm the owner," the man introduced himself, sticking out of a hand toward Gibbs, whom he accurately discerned was the guy in charge. As they shook, he squinted at Gibbs. "You a marine?"

"Gunnery sergeant. Now special agent Gibbs of NCIS," Gibbs confirmed.

"No shit," Woodley said with a broad smile. "A gunny? Me, too." Still grinning, Woodley continued to grip Gibbs' hand and reached over his other hand to take hold of his arm. "Good to see NCIS has the best on the case."

Gibbs allowed himself a smile in return and began introducing his team as he released the other man's hands.

"You wanna tell us what's going on?" he asked.

"Well, last night this guy came in, about eight o'clock, I think. I don't think he was a midshipman, just a seaman. He was wearing his whites, but he wasn't sporting any ranks or ratings. He was pretty young, and he looked scared or nervous, or maybe both. He said he just wanted a room for the night, was all, and he paid cash for it."

The motel keeper paused for a moment. "We get a lot of academy business, especially when families can come and visit at the Academy. Every motel in town is usually booked then, but nothing's going on right now, so we weren't too busy.

He swept his arm toward the façade of the building, inviting the team to inspect it. It wasn't bad; the paint was fresh, there were shrubs planted around the building, and window boxes sporting a cheerful array of plants. The parking lot was swept clean.

"So, anyway," Woodley went on, "I didn't see him again, but this morning, when my housekeeper was doing her rounds, she found something in the room. You wanna see it?"

"That would be good, gunny," Gibbs said with patience.

Woodley led them to the open room door, and slowly the team filed into the room. For a moment they stood without speaking, studying the scene.

"This is just the way my housekeeper found her," Woodley added.

The room itself was standard issue motel: not overly large, with slightly drab décor, and most of the space taken up by a double bed and a shelf-and-drawer unit attached to the wall with a mirror over it. The only window in the room was next to the door. The bed was still made, a flower-patterned spread still in place. The carpet was a dusty beige in color. In the middle of what little open floor space there was, they saw the naked body of a young woman.

The corpse was lying face down, with her head turned to her right. Her arms were splayed straight out at a slight angle to her torso, palms up, and her knees were drawn up under her hips. A white towel had been placed under her hips. It and the carpet beneath it were stained a deep brownish-red. Dried blood was smeared on the woman's pudenda, and it seemed obvious the blood on the towel and the carpet had spilled out of one of her lower bodily openings.

"Oh, dear," Dr. Mallard breathed. "I'd hoped never to see another sight such as this."

"What do you mean, Ducky?" asked Gibbs.

"Unless I miss my guess, Jethro," the ME answered, "this young woman died of a botched abortion."

The heads of everyone in the room turned to him in surprise, and for a moment, no one spoke.

David was the first one to say something. "I thought abortion is legal in this country."

"It is," Ducky said. "But sometimes, for various reasons, women who want abortions choose not to go to a legal clinic, where they'll get compassionate, competent, *legal* medical care." He looked at the victim's body sorrowfully. "It looks as though something like that happened here."

"I'm not running an abortion mill here," Mr. Woodley protested.

"I'm sure you're not, Mr. Woodley," Dr. Mallard responded. His voice hardened. "But a young woman is dead in suspicious circumstances, and we will be investigating thoroughly."

The rest of the team had been staring at the body almost as if in a trance. They had all seen much worse sights than this, but somehow, after Dr. Mallard's speculation, they had been caught up by something approaching amazement. Gibbs glanced at each of them quickly. He would never admit it, but he was proud of them. Despite all the terrible sights they had seen in their work, they still had the capacity to be horrified by the lengths to which human beings could go to inflict mayhem on other humans.

It was time to put philosophy aside, though, and begin the investigation. "All right, then," Gibbs ordered briskly. "Mr. Woodley, let's go outside and talk. David, with me. McGee, tag and bag. DiNozzo, shoot and sketch."

Once more out in the parking lot, Gibbs told Mr. Woodley that the team needed to know who else had been staying at the motel that night, how many might still be in residence, and where the housekeeper was. Woodley led Gibbs and David to the office, where he gave them the guest register. Gibbs told David to make a copy of the register page showing last night's guests and then go find as many of them as might still be in residence and interview them. He also asked Woodley for the pen guests had used to sign the register, which he dropped into a plastic evidence bag, even though he knew his talented forensic scientist, Abby Scuito, probably would not be able to find many clear fingerprints except for those of the final guest to register. He also told Woodley that the investigators would need to remove a substantial portion of the carpet in Room 112.

Woodley sighed and said, "Not a problem, I got to replace it anyway, if I'm gonna use that room again."

Woodley led Gibbs into the living quarters behind the office, where they found two women sitting on a sofa, one holding the other. The second woman's face was streaked with tears, and she was hiccupping as if she had been sobbing hard for a long while and was only now catching her breath. Mr. Woodley introduced the first woman as his wife, who looked like a blonde, female version of Woodley himself, and the obviously distressed woman as Mrs. Ribeiro, the housekeeper. Both women were dressed in casual slacks and tops.

Gibbs pulled a chair up to the sofa in front of Mrs. Ribeiro.

"Mrs. Ribeiro," he said softly, taking one of her hands in his, "my name is Jethro Gibbs. I'm a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, and I need to ask you a couple of questions about what just happened. Are you going to be able to answer my questions now, or should we wait a while?"

For a moment Mrs. Ribeiro studied his hand on hers. She looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and still welling with tears. She hiccupped again but apologized in an almost inaudible voice. "Sorry. I can talk now."

Gibbs was not surprised to hear that she had an accent, slightly Spanish, he thought. She was in her thirties, a woman handsome rather than beautiful, with soft black eyes and black hair pulled severely into a large bun at the back of her neck. Her hands were coarse and reddened, showing the effects of the hard work she did.

"If you're not up to it right now," Gibbs reiterated, "we can wait."

"No, it's all right," she replied. "I would just as soon do it now."

"All right." Gibbs pulled his hand away and took a PDA out of his NCIS jacket pocket.

"What time did you arrive this morning?"

"It was six thirty," she replied. "I come plenty early to put supplies on my cart and get ready. Then I have a cup of coffee while I wait for someone to check out. As soon as there is a room open, I go into it and start cleaning."

"Do you check the guest register?" Gibbs asked her.

"Yes, I take it with me on the cart," Mrs. Ribeiro answered. "At nine o'clock I go around and knock on the doors. Sometimes people leave and I don't know about it. So I check, you know?"

She looked down at her hands and gave a shuddering half sigh, half sob.

"So I knocked on the door of Room 112," she went on. "I don't hear anything. So I took my key and opened the door. And there she was."

She looked up again at Gibbs, her face crumpling with the memory of the dreadful sight. "I didn't scream," she said as if it were a matter of pride not to have reacted. "But I had trouble breathing. So I go to Mr. Woodley and he makes me sit down. And he goes to see. And when he comes back, he calls somebody."

"Yeah," confirmed Woodley. "I called you ‘cause the kid that registered for the room was Navy, you know."

Gibbs nodded. "Mrs. Ribeiro, at any time while you were doing your rounds this morning, did you see anyone else come in or out of that room?"

"No, sir." By now she was wringing her hands, and her face had taken on an anxious expression. "Mr. Agent, am I in trouble?"

"Why would you be in trouble?"

"I'm an immigrant," the woman said in almost a whisper.

Mrs. Woodley spoke up at this point. "She has her green card. We're very careful about that."

Gibbs looked at Mrs. Ribeiro with something akin to sympathy. "Mrs. Ribeiro, if all you did was find the body, you are not in trouble. In fact, if you had found the body and not reported it, you would have been in a lot of trouble."

Mrs. Ribeiro relaxed slightly and said, "Thank you, sir."

Gibbs went on. "Mrs. Woodley, did you see or hear anything in or around that room after it was occupied last night?"

"No, Agent Gibbs," she replied. "We usually go to bed around 11:30 at night, after the late news, and if someone comes in for a room after that, Pete always gets up to register them."

"And no one registered last night after eleven," Pete added, "and I didn't see or hear anything either."

"All right," Gibbs told them. "We're going to need to get fingerprint samples from each of you. My agents have a field kit for that, and they'll be around shortly. In the meantime, keep yourselves available if we have any more questions for you, but that's all for right now."

Pete said, "I'm gonna send Mrs. Ribeiro home, and me and the wife'll clean the rest of the rooms." He put his hand on Mrs. Ribeiro's shoulder. "That all right, Lena? Hell, I'll drive you home myself."

Gibbs nodded to the group to indicate he agreed with the plan. "I'll need your address and telephone number," he told Mrs. Ribeiro." He turned to Woodley. "If you want to continue renting out other rooms today, that's up to you, but 112 is a crime scene now, and it will be taped off."

"Do what you gotta do, Gunny," Woodley answered.

Back in the parking lot, Gibbs encountered David, who had finished her interviews as well. "A total of eight rooms out of twenty were rented last night," she reported, consulting the copy of the register. "Five rooms are already vacant. I talked to the people in the two other rooms, but nobody heard or saw anything. None of the rented rooms were adjacent to each other, and there was no one in the one above Room 112, so it's unlikely that, even if there had been a disturbance there, anyone would have heard it. One couple went out to dinner at 11:00 o'clock and got back to the room a little after twelve. They said they didn't see any cars parked near Room 112. I got addresses and phone numbers from them in case we have any other questions, and the register lists the addresses and phone numbers of the ones who left already."

Gibbs nodded. "Did you say there was no car parked outside Room 112 after midnight?"

"That's right." Ziva checked her notes.

"Let me see the guest register," he asked. Glancing at it, he noted that the sailor who had registered for Room 112 had given his name as Joe Smith and indicated he was driving a 1992 Nissan but neglected to write down the plate number.

"Come with me." Gibbs said to Ziva, striding back to the living quarters, where he found Mr. and Mrs. Woodley helping Mrs. Ribeiro get ready to go home.

"Mr. Woodley, when that sailor checked in, did you see a car?"

Woodley looked back at him with wide eyes. "Well, yeah, it was parked in the driveway right out there."

"Did you see anyone else in the car?"

Woodley squinted in thought for a moment. "I don't remember for sure. Maybe."

"Did you happen to notice what kind of car it was and what the license plate was?"

"No," Woodley said emphatically. "They're supposed to write that information down in the register."

Gibbs spoke to Ziva. "Get fingerprints from these people before Mrs. Ribeiro leaves."

Gibbs returned to the parking lot, observing that the ME van was now pulled up to the door of the unit, and Ducky and Jimmy were in the process of moving the loaded gurney out the door.

"Anything yet?" Gibbs inquired of Dr. Mallard.

"Nothing substantial, except that a quick check of rigor and the liver temperature indicates that death occurred about 10:30 last night. I will, of course, be able to tell you more once we get her home and begin the autopsy. She is quite pale, and I suspect she lost a substantial portion of her life's blood."

Gibbs stepped into Room 112 to find DiNozzo and McGee still working on physical evidence.

"Look at this, boss," DiNozzo said, holding up several evidence bags full of bloodied towels. "I found these in the bathroom. It looks like someone tried to stop the bleeding but couldn't."

Gibbs' jaw tightened involuntarily. "Any speculation, DiNozzo?"

"Well, if it was an abortion, and for some reason she couldn't go to a clinic, like Ducky said, someone brought her here and tried to do it, probably without knowing what they were doing. And of course it went bad, and when whoever saw that she was dying or dead, they took off."

"Any thoughts on why she couldn't or wouldn't go to a clinic?"

"A couple of possibilities. Maybe she didn't want anyone she knew to find out she was pregnant. Or maybe she felt she couldn't afford to use a clinic. I don't know exactly what an abortion costs now, but I assume it's pretty expensive."

"All right," Gibbs said. "Cut samples of the bloody carpet from different spots. It's unlikely there's anyone else's blood on it, but let's check it anyway. Are you going to be done soon?"

"Couple more minutes, boss," McGee replied from the bathroom.

"All right, let's get back to the office and start acting like investigators."

"On it, boss," two voices responded simultaneously.

Back at NCIS the team deposited their evidence in the lab with Abby and returned to the bullpen. Ordering Ziva to begin trying to reach the other motel guests, Gibbs took off for the morgue to observe the beginning of the autopsy. The other three agents were quiet for the most part, only occasionally making brief comments about the case in between Ziva's phone calls.

Finally, DiNozzo looked at McGee and asked him, "You ever go through an abortion?"

McGee managed an indignant look. "I'm not female, Tony, just in case you hadn't noticed."

"No, I mean, have you ever knocked someone up so they had to have an abortion?"

"No, Tony, I have never ‘knocked anyone up' who needed an abortion." The quotation marks were clearly audible in his voice. After a moment, he returned the question. "How about you? You ever had to help someone get an abortion?"

Tony took the time to lean back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. His face had a serious, thoughtful expression. "Yeah, when I was in college," he answered. "Well, I think so. Maybe."

"What do you mean?" McGee pressed.

"Well, this girl I'd been dating came to me and said she was pregnant and it was mine. I wasn't so sure about that because I knew she dated a lot of guys, and we hadn't been together for a while. It could've been anybody's, you know? But she asked me for help, and I decided to do it anyway, because I wasn't sure and it could've been mine."

"What happened?" McGee asked.

Tony glanced at McGee. "I had to get the money from my dad. I was really scared. I thought he'd ream my butt six ways from Sunday, but instead he acted like he was almost proud of me. That was unusual. He never acted like he was proud of me before, even when I was voted MVP of our championship team. I guess maybe he thought it proved I could provide him with more little DiNozzos and that made him happy.

"Anyway, when I got the money, I told Annette to set up the appointment and that I would go with her." He paused, remembering. "We were at the clinic for almost four hours. They took her somewhere else and left me sitting in the waiting room. After a while, this woman came and took me into another room and she talked to me about how I felt about the whole thing. She was really nice, but I was kinda numb ‘cause I just wasn't sure."

Tony was quiet for a moment, finally swinging his legs off his desk. "Anyway, I hadn't thought about it in years. Just another adolescent escapade." Flashing his trademarked goofball grin, he leaned over to address Officer David.

"How about you, Ziva? You ever have an abortion?"

To the surprise of both men, she replied, "Yes, two, actually."

DiNozzo and McGee exchanged surprised glances. DiNozzo asked, "Anything you'd care to talk about?"

She shrugged. "Not much to tell. There are people in Israel who I guess you could consider—what is the term?—pro-life, just like here, and they try to restrict it. A woman who wants an abortion has to get approval from two doctors, but it's usually pretty easy. I was sixteen when I had my first one, which made it easier to justify. Anyone under age 18 usually gets approval."

McGee asked, "And the second?"

"It was in the line of duty," she responded shortly.

Again the two men looked at each other. "The line of duty?" DiNozzo asked.

"Yes," she said. "I was ordered to seduce someone suspected of treason."

"You had sex for your job?" McGee's eyes were round with amazement.

Ziva smiled slightly. "McGee, it's what spies do. Whatever's necessary to accomplish the mission."

Neither DiNozzo or McGee knew whether to be impressed or disgusted by Ziva's devotion to Mossad's version of spycraft. They had no time to speculate further, as DiNozzo's phone rang. After a brief conversation, he hung up and turned to his colleagues. "That was Gibbs. He wants us down in the lab. We're starting to get some results."

As they trooped into the lab, Abby the lab tech spared them a brief glance and a breezy "Hi, guys."

"What've you got, Abs?" asked Gibbs.

Abby took a sip of her CafPow! before beginning the recital of findings. "Well, for starters, we now know that the victim's name is Midshipman Prissy Newman. She's a second-classman at the academy, same as junior year of college." Abby pulled up the cadet's ID photo and fingerprints on the plasma screen. "There wasn't much blood left in her body, but the duckman got enough to do a blood pregnancy test, and she was definitely pregnant, in about the 13th to the 15th week"

"Anything else?" Gibbs asked her.

"I've got lots of fingerprints from the room, most of which appear to be Mrs. Ribeiro's, but there's some others that I haven't identified yet, including the ones on the pen from the guest register. I'll get back to you on those."

"Soon, Abs," ordered Gibbs. "All right, let's go see what Ducky has."

Once in Autopsy, the team found Ducky and his assistant Jimmy bent over the victim's body.

"Ah, Jethro," Ducky said, looking up. "Did you talk to Abby?"

"Yeah," replied Gibbs. "She told us the victim was about 13 to 15 weeks pregnant."

"Yes," Ducky continued. "I did a manual examination of Cadet Newman's uterus. Its size is consistent with the hormonal age. There is one thing you will be interested in."

He broke off to examine a photograph placed on the light box. "I also did an ultrasound of her uterus, just to verify its condition. Whoever attempted the abortion was not terribly efficient. Most of the fetus is still intact."

Dr. Mallard pointed to the ultrasound photograph as the team gathered around it. "Here is the fetus's head and here is its rump. The measurement of the distance between those two features is consistent with the pregnancy test and the pelvic exam—about 14 weeks' gestation."

Dr. Mallard had relayed his information in a neutral tone of voice, but now his face began to flush as he expressed his feelings.

"When done by a competent practitioner, abortion is one of the safest of all medical procedures. It's not even necessary for a medical doctor to perform it. A well-trained medical assistant is more than capable of handling it. It's not even true surgery, with incisions and stitches, although it is considered surgery because instruments are placed in the woman's body.

"There are risks involved, however, as there are with any medical treatment of any kind. One risk is that in the hands of someone who doesn't know what he's doing, an instrument can be put through the uterine wall. We call that a perforation. The seriousness of it depends on exactly what portion of the uterine wall is perforated and how deeply. It used to be a very common cause of serious injury or death in the days when abortion was illegal in this country and women were forced to resort to hacks and quacks to have abortions.

"I haven't removed the uterus yet to examine it closely, but I believe that it has been perforated near one of the blood vessels. Whoever attempted this abortion not only didn't know how to accomplish the procedure itself in a safe manner, but also didn't know what to do to deal with the problem when it occurred."

Ducky's face was bright red with indignation by now. He paused in his lecture, taking off his glasses and wiping them. "Whoever did this," he concluded, looking around at the team, "is guilty of nothing less than manslaughter and possibly negligent homicide. It might even be possible to call this homicide in the first degree.

"There's another consideration, and that is, while an abortion can be performed at any time during pregnancy, the vast majority of legal abortions are completed in the first trimester."

"What's a trimester?" McGee asked.

"Well," Dr. Mallard continued, "you all know that normal pregnancies last for approximately nine months. Pregnancy is divided into three time periods, called trimesters, each of which lasts 12 weeks, or three months. The first trimester, obviously, ends with the 12th week, the second trimester is from week 13 through week 24, and so on. Obstetricians begin counting the pregnancy from the first day of the woman's last menstrual period, which, if her cycles are regular, is usually 14 days before the day of conception."

Although Ducky's lecture was becoming lengthy, the team was fascinated and, besides, it was pertinent to the case. No one was ready to cut him off.

"We've determined that the cadet's pregnancy was in the 14th week, or near the beginning of her second trimester. Most people who perform abortions usually don't go any further than the first trimester. Once the second trimester begins and the fetus has been growing larger, the procedure naturally becomes a little more risky, and some different techniques are required to accomplish it."

Ducky's recitation had become a little more calm, but now he began to become agitated again. "Even though a first-trimester abortion is safe, imagine that someone who doesn't know what they're doing to begin with tries to perform it in the second trimester."

His face twisted into something resembling rage. "It's sheer butchery," he almost shouted.

"Don't worry, Duck," Gibbs said quietly. "We'll find out who's responsible."

Chapter 2: Return to Annapolis


The team returned to their bullpen, considering soberly the information Dr. Mallard had given them. Gibbs made a call to the superintendent of the Naval Academy to inform him of the death of one of his cadets and that agents from NCIS would need to question anyone who knew the dead cadet.

After completing his call, Gibbs told DiNozzo and David to return to the Academy to begin interviewing Midshipman Prissy Newman's classmates and friends. McGee began a search of computer records on the murdered cadet to determine if there was any information that might lead to a perpetrator.

On their way back to Annapolis, DiNozzo and David continued to be immersed in their own thoughts.

DiNozzo glanced briefly at David and asked, "Birth control?"

"What?" she replied.

"Weren't you using birth control when you were having sex on the job?"

"It failed," she said shortly.

"Yeah," Tony said with a sigh," that's what Annette told me."

"Tony, there's no form of birth control that's 100%," Ziva answered. "I do know that. Even abstinence doesn't work if you don't use it."

"Right," he answered, and they fell silent again for the remainder of the drive.

Once on the Academy's campus, they were ushered into a small office near the infirmary. The superintendent had left instructions with the chief health officer, who had in the meantime pulled Midshipman Newman's student records for them and set up a schedule for the interviews.

The investigators found that Prissy Newman had been a good student both in high school and at the Academy, with a solid A- average. She had been a middle-distance runner while in high school, consistently finishing in the top three at every meet she participated in. Newman had also competed in three marathons, again placing high in her age group, and someone had noted that she was training for a triathlon during her next break from the Academy. She had played French horn in the school band. The essay she had written for her application to the Academy was on the politics leading up to the War of 1812, with particular emphasis on the preparations of both the British and American navies. Each of the three people who had reviewed the paper praised it for the solidity of the research the student had done and the original conclusions she had come to.

After reading the file, Tony asked Ziva when the cadet had had time to get pregnant.

Ziva grinned mischievously. "You should know, Tony."

Tony's reply was cut short by the appearance of the first of Prissy Newman's fellow students, her roommate Midshipman Alicia Kossman. She had obviously been crying.

"Is it true?" she wanted to know, after introductions were completed. "Prissy's dead?"

"Yes," Tony told her. "Go ahead and sit down." Opening his PDA, he created a file for the interview.

"I can't believe it," Kossman said, flopping ungracefully into the indicated chair with her tears starting again. "She loved being here. She was looking forward to being an officer. She had so much to live for. I don't understand."

Tony handed her a tissue. "Cadet Kossman," he addressed her. "Has anyone told you how she died?"

The cadet looked up, her eyes still brimming. "N-no," she stammered. "I guess I just assumed she…well…killed herself?"

"Why would you assume that?" Tony pressed.

"Well, she told me yesterday she had a…um…a problem."

"What kind of problem, cadet?" Tony asked quietly.

"She's pregnant." The cadet almost wailed the answer and began crying heavily again. Tony and Ziva glanced at each other and waited for Kossman to recover.

When Kossman's sobs had abated somewhat, Tony continued, "How did she feel about that?"

The cadet sniffled. "She was scared. She thought if anyone found out, she'd be kicked out of the Academy. Like I said, she loved it here." She stopped to sniffle again before asking, "So how did she die?"

"She was the victim of an amateur and botched abortion," Tony responded.

"Oh, god," Kossman whispered.

Ziva asked her, "Did you know she was planning that?"

"No. No, no. If she'd talked to me about it, I'd have helped her."

"When did you find out she was pregnant?" Ziva asked.

"Night before last," replied Kossman. "We were studying, but she seemed to be having a hard time concentrating. Finally, she said she wanted to talk, and that's when she told me."

Ziva said, "Did she tell you who the father was?"

Kossman shook her head. "She didn't say, but she's been going out with this guy, Josh. He's a sailor, just finished his training. There's a lot of places in Annapolis where you can meet Navy people, and Prissy liked to hang out at this one place, The Rack. I'm pretty sure she met him there."

Tony asked, "Do you know anything more about him, like the rest of his name?"

"Josh Wills, I think," Kossman answered. "She really liked him."

"Obviously," Tony muttered quietly to Ziva. He asked Kossman, "When was the last time you saw Seaman Wills?"

"Oh, it's been a few days. They had a date for dinner on Saturday. Prissy's top of her class so she gets weekend liberty all the time." Cadet Kossman looked a little sheepish, and it was not hard to infer that she didn't get liberty quite so often.

DiNozzo handed the cadet his business card, telling her, "If you happen to run into Seaman Wills, give me a call back."

DiNozzo thanked Kossman for her cooperation, advising her that he and his partner would be inspecting her and Midshipman Newman's quarters once the interviews were completed and that, in the meantime, she should remain available in case there might be other questions they needed to ask her.

When Kossman had left, he took out his cell phone and dialed Abby's number. "Hey, Abs, look up a sailor named Josh Wills for us, would you?" He paused, listening. "Yeah, the cadet's roommate told us he was her boyfriend. According to the roomie, he just finished basic." He listened some more before asking, "You got any test results we can use?" Pause. "Okay, we'll see you when we get back."

As he hung up, the next interviewee entered the office, but that person had no new information to add. In all DiNozzo and David talked to six cadets and two instructors, including the track coach, who had known Cadet Prissy Newman, but all of these interviews were non-productive, except that each of them confirmed that Prissy was an excellent student, an ardent athlete, and an all-around good person, someone fun to be with but never wild. One or two of the cadets were aware of the presence of Seaman Wills in Prissy's life, but she had never confided where he lived or where he was stationed.

As the last cadet left, Abby called back. "Got the file on Seaman Wills for you," she told Tony. "You want me to send it to you?"

When Abby rang off, Tony suggested to Ziva that she contact the health office to see if Cadet Newman had gone there for her pregnancy test. As they discussed the various cadets to whom they had just talked, Tony's PDA reported it had received Wills' file. While Ziva wandered off to the health office, Tony reviewed the file. When Ziva returned, he told her they had an address for the young seaman.

"He's just 19, two years younger than the cadet. He has a local address. I called Gibbs to suggest we go pay him a visit on our way back to the office."

"Good," Ziva replied. "The health office doesn't have a record of Newman coming in for anything except a flu shot last fall. She probably took a home pregnancy test."

Before leaving to visit Seaman Wills, the investigators found their way to Cadet Newman's quarters. Cadet Kossman was there with several other cadets, a couple of whom were as teary-eyed as Kossman. After introductions, DiNozzo asked for and received Kossman's permission to search the premises. The cadets watched in awed silence as DiNozzo and David pulled on gloves and began an inspection that rivaled in its thoroughness those performed by their superior officers. The search, however, revealed nothing that appeared to be relevant to Cadet Newman's death.

DiNozzo spoke to Kossman again, asking if she knew how Newman had found out she was pregnant.

"She said she took a home pregnancy test."

"Is the test still around?" he queried.

"Oh, no," Kossman replied. "She did it weeks ago. She just wanted to keep it a secret for a while, until she decided what she was going to do about it."



Seaman Josh Wills, it turned out, lived with his father. As the two NCIS officers pulled up in front of the house, they saw a man mowing the front yard. He was middle height, running to lard, with grizzled, messy hair. He was wearing nothing but running shoes and baggy shorts that were riding down his torso, displaying more of it than was prudent considering it was not very attractive.

Upon seeing the investigators approach, he shut down the lawnmower, taking a large, soiled handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe the sweat from his face.

Showing their identification, DiNozzo asked to speak to Seaman Josh Wills.

"I'm Joe Wills, Josh's dad. U.S. Navy, retired. What kind of trouble is he in?"

"We don't know if he's in trouble," Ziva told him, "but a young woman is dead in suspicious circumstances, and several people have identified him as her boy friend."

"Whoa," the elder Wills puffed. "He ain't here right now, and I don't know where he is."

"Does he have a post basic training assignment yet?" Tony asked.

"No," Wills answered. "He's s'posed to get it by the end of the week, ‘n' ‘till then he's just been kinda hanging out."

Ziva asked, "Where does he usually hang out?"

"Don't know that, neither."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

The elder Wills screwed his face up, rubbing his chin with one hand. "Geez, it's been a coupla days, I think."

Tony handed Wills a business card. "When he shows up here, or if he calls, have him give me a call."

"What about this dead woman?" Wills asked, taking the card.

Tony and Ziva exchanged glances. "Do you know a Cadet Prissy Newman?" he asked.

"Prissy? A cadet, you say? Noooo, can't say I ever heard of her. If she's s'posed to be Josh's girl friend, it's news to me."

Thanking Wills for his cooperation, DiNozzo and Ziva returned to their car. Before turning the key in the ignition, Tony sat watching Mr. Wills, who had started his lawn mower again. Tony turned to Ziva to ask, "Shall we go check out that bar where Kossman told us Newman and Wills supposedly met? Maybe somebody there will know something."

Getting David's consent, he set off. Along the way, he muttered, "I wish you were Kate."

"Excuse me?" Ziva replied, startled.

Tony glanced at her. "Kate was a profiler," he explained. "I got the feeling the guy was lying about not knowing Cadet Newman. If Kate was here, she'd probably be able to confirm that."

"If it's any help," Ziva stated, "I thought he was lying, too."

Tony looked quickly at Ziva. "GMTA," he told her.

"GMTA? What does that mean?"

"'Great Minds Think Alike,'" he said with a smile.

The Rack turned out to be a large place with trendy, modern décor and loud music pulsing through a sound system pushed to full volume and then some. Even in the early afternoon, it was full of young people, drinking, dancing, and making connections. Tony led Ziva to the huge bar in the center of the room, where he ordered soft drinks for the two of them. As the bartender set their drinks down, Tony pulled up Josh Wills's picture on his laptop.

"Uh, say…Jamie," Tony said, reading the bartender's name tag, "ever see this guy before?"

Squinting, the bartender examined the picture. "Yeah," he said, "that looks like Josh."

"Last name?" queried Ziva.

The bartender gave a rather harsh laugh. "This isn't the kind of place where people share last names."

"Doesn't look like a dive to me," Tony told him.

"People here are just looking for a good time, not a commitment. Hook-ups, y'know?"

Tony's eyebrow lifted as he pulled up Cadet Prissy Newman's photo on the PDA.

"Ever see her?"

Once again Jamie peered at the photo. "She looks sorta familiar, but I couldn't place her."

"Ever see the two of them together?"

"Why are you asking?" the bartender asked, a hint of suspicion in his voice.

Tony pulled out his ID. "We're investigating a murder. We have eyewitness accounts that these two people were in a relationship and that they might have met here."

"Man, I know Josh comes here, but I don't remember ever seeing him with this girl."

Tony closed the laptop. "Is Josh friends with any of your other customers?"

"Well, I don't know as you'd call ‘em friends, but there are some guys he talks to when he's here."

"Are you aware," Tony continued, "that Josh is only 19 years old?"

"The door people are the ones that're supposed to screen customers. If someone makes it through the door, I assume he's legal."

Tony turned to speak to Ziva. "Make a note of that," he ordered.

"Of what?" she asked with puzzlement.

"That this place may be serving alcohol to minors."

"Oh," she replied and pulled out her PDA.

By now, Jamie was squirming slightly. "Man, like I said…."

"Is Josh here right now?" Tony interrupted.

"No."

Tony gave Jamie his card. "The next time you see Josh in here, give me a call."

"Yeah, sure," the barman, looking from the card to Tony, who smiled his patented "we're all friends here" smile. Tony was pretty certain Jamie would call if Josh Wills showed up if only to cooperate with someone who, with one call, could shut the place down for serving to minors.

Finishing their drinks, the investigators set off again.

"Are we going to go by the motel and show Josh's photo to Mr. Woodley?" Ziva asked Tony.

Tony grinned. "GMTA."

*******

At the motel Pete Woodley confirmed immediately that the sailor he'd rented Room 112 to was indeed Josh Wills.

Back in the office, Tony asked Tim to pull up the records on Joe Wills, USN (ret.). It took just a very few seconds. Just as McGee was putting Wills' record up on the plasma screen, Gibbs walked in.

"You get anything useful?" he asked.

"Just looking at part of it," Tony responded, turning to the screen. "Joe Wills, father of Josh Wills, boy friend to Prissy Newman, and presumed sire of her pregnancy."

The group silently read through the file.

"Well, well, well, isn't that interesting?" Tony commented. "Chief Petty Officer Wills spent 20 years in the Navy as a hospital corpsman. Fifteen years on various ships, and five years at Bethesda."

"Could he have tried to perform the abortion?" Ziva queried.

Gibbs replied, "Wouldn't surprise me."

"Look at this," McGee pointed out. "He's had at least three reprimands for insubordination, specifically for trying to perform procedures outside the scope of his training and experience."

"Sounds like we have a suspect," Gibbs said.

"Should we bring him in?" DiNozzo asked Gibbs.

"Let's get the son in first," Gibbs decided. "If Joe was the cutter, he was probably recruited by his son to do the job."

"Slight problem there," Tony reported. "Nobody we talked to, including his dad, knows where Josh is right now. But we know a couple of places he's likely to be."

"If he goes home," Ziva pointed out, "his dad will tell him we've been around investigating his girl friend's death. He may do a hop on us."

"Skip, Ziva," DiNozzo corrected her. "He may do a skip. In any case, the bartender at The Rack might see him first. Especially if he's staying in touch with his friends."

Gibbs asked DiNozzo and David to report on the rest of their investigations, including the questioning of Cadet Newman's associates at the Academy, after which he led them to Abby's lab. She greeted them with enthusiasm.

"Gibbs! DiNozzo! David! McGee! My slavish dedication to my work has yielded results. I have names attached to fingerprints."

"Would two of them be Wills, Joe and Josh?" Tony asked her.

The expression on Abby's face went from elation to pouty disappointment. "How did you know?" she asked, flouncing her ponytails.

Gibbs soothed her. "You did good, Abs. You have confirmed that a couple of persons of interest should be considered suspects."

Briefly Abby reported on the rest of her findings. As expected, the only blood present in the motel room had been that of Prissy Newman. Ducky had provided her with samples of both maternal and fetal blood to set up a DNA test, but she needed to get a sample from the putative father before running it. Gibbs informed her that it would be a while before the team could provide it.

The team headed down to the morgue to see what else Dr. Mallard had found.

"Ah, yes," Ducky greeted them as they entered. "Ready for show and tell?"

With a gesture of his hand, he indicated the cadet's body. "Miss Newman was in excellent health, excellent condition. Of course, all cadets at the Academy are required to participate in competitive sports, and I gather from her file that she was a runner of some talent.

He moved to the sink, which contained two stainless steel pans that he put on the counter so the team could examine their contents. One held a mass of tissue.

"I removed Ms. Newman's uterus," he told them, "and as I suspected it, it has a rather large perforation on the right side." As he held the tissue up from the pan, he inserted one gloved finger into the uterine muscle to demonstrate the hole there. "Whatever the instrument was that was being used, probably a curette, as you can see, the perforation is quite large and goes through both the inner and outer walls of the uterus. It went through several blood vessels and further perforated the large intestine. Without proper equipment to repair the perforation, Ms. Newman would have bled out in very short order, and without a sufficient supply of blood to pump, the heart would have eventually failed. Essentially, she died of heart failure due to sudden, severe exsanguination."

He paused to replace the tattered uterus in its pan. "And even if the bleeding had been stopped in time and she survived, she would have been subject to severe infection because the interior of the uterus was exposed to the abdominal cavity, especially the large intestine."

He picked up the second pan, which contained a very small but recognizably human body.

"Ms. Newman's fetus. Very healthy at this point in her pregnancy, but you can see a couple of bruises, as if it had been poked with something."

The others gazed with fascinated reverence at the tiny thing.

"Was that how it died?" Ziva asked. "Being poked?"

"No," Ducky explained. "When the perforation occurred, Ms. Newman began to exsanguinate rather rapidly. Without blood to carry oxygen through the umbilical cord, the fetus would have died of suffocation."

Gibbs asked, "Is that what happens in a legal abortion? The fetus dies from lack of oxygen?"

"More or less," replied Ducky. "When the abortion is done in the first trimester, the fetus is suctioned out of the uterus using a vacuum apparatus. The umbilical cord is removed also, and of course when it is severed, it can no longer carry oxygen from the mother's blood to the infant's."

At this point McGee suddenly turned around and bolted out of the room.

"Oh, dear," Ducky commented. "It appears Mr. McGee may have issues."

DiNozzo, who was himself looking a little pale, offered to go after McGee and make sure he was all right.

Ducky turned back to Gibbs and David. "Not everyone is comfortable with the sight of blood, let alone the removal of various body parts, even for therapeutic purposes," he explained. "And in the case of abortion…well, it's a very emotional thing."

Ziva was thinking privately that emotion was not always a good thing. "Ducky, you mentioned that the fetus is bruised. Can you tell what kind of instrument might have made those bruises? Would the person doing this abortion have had access to vacuum suction in a motel room?"

Dr. Mallard looked over the top of his glasses at her. "Very good questions, my dear," he said. The suction apparatus isn't terribly large, but it's unlikely that the perpetrator would have been able to go to the nearest Rent-All to get one. No, I think more likely that he or she had some surgical instruments such as forceps and curettes of various kinds. While he or she was manipulating the instrument inside the uterus, more pressure than was really necessary was applied, and that's when the perforation occurred."

DiNozzo and McGee returned at that moment. "You okay?" asked Gibbs.

Both younger men nodded and muttered, "Yeah."

DiNozzo's cell went off. After answering, he was silent while listening to the caller.

As he closed the cell, he said, "That was Jamie, the bartender at The Rack. Josh Wills just came in."

"Well, what're you waiting for?" Gibbs asked.

Tony sighed and turned to leave, feeling a great deal less enthusiastic about a third trip to Annapolis in one day than he had earlier in the morning about the first.

Gibbs stopped him. "Take McGee with you this time. Ziva still needs to finish calling the other motel guests."

Chapter 3: Back to Annapolis

Once back in the car, DiNozzo and McGee were silent until DiNozzo turned to check on McGee. Tim was not a chatterbox at any time, but since they'd realized the case involved abortion, he'd turned into a sphinx.

"What're you thinking?" DiNozzo asked him.

"I'm just not very comfortable," Tim replied.

"Comfortable with what?" DiNozzo pressed.

"Abortion," said Tim.

"You have some scruples?"

"Yeah, well, it's pretty much murder, isn't it? You're killing a human being, only it's way earlier in their life."

Tony didn't say anything at first. Then he reached out to squeeze Tim's shoulder.

"I've thought about it some," Tony admitted. "I've had my problems coming to terms with it myself."

"And how do you feel about it now?" asked Tim.

"I think it's a necessary evil. Things happen. We have hormones, and sometimes they're so strong we can't help ourselves, we just give in and do what the hormones tell us to do, whether it's right or wrong.
We have sex. And in our society we're not supposed to have sex unless we want kids. Most reasonable people agree abstinence from sex is best if you don't want kids, but the hormones don't know that.

"And once a woman is pregnant, there are three things she can do. She can continue the pregnancy and deal with having a kid she may not necessarily want or be able to take care of. She can keep the kid or give it up for adoption. Or she can end the pregnancy."

Tim sighed. "Don't you think adopting a kid out if you don't want it would be best?"

"Tim, remember what you said this morning? You've never had to face a pregnancy because you're not a woman. In my opinion, you're entitled to *your* opinion, but in the end you're not the person who gets to make the decision."

Tim's lower lip protruded slightly as he thought about that. "Well, maybe," he conceded, "but I still think abortion is wrong."

Tony answered, "Well, like I said, you're entitled. But is that going to affect your performance on this case?"

"No," Tim responded firmly, "no, not at all. Someone has died at someone else's hand, and we need to find out who the doer was, regardless of the circumstances, because that's our job."

"Good man," Tony said, reaching out again to squeeze Tim's shoulder.

Silence fell over them once more and continued for the remainder of the drive.

At the Rack, they had barely entered when Jamie the bartender jerked a thumb in the direction of a table at which sat several young men. "Josh Wills is the one in the white t shirt," he told DiNozzo.

DiNozzo looked, then turned back to Jamie. "Is that a beer in front of him?" he asked.

Even in the dim light of the bar, the two agents could see Jamie's blush.

"Tell you what," DiNozzo told him, "I'm not here to bust you for serving minors, but don't be surprised if someone else shows up to do that. In the meantime, thanks for calling."

The two agents turned and began walking toward the table, while Jamie nodded with a miserable expression on his face. As the agents approached the table, its occupants looked up with varying expressions on their faces.

"Josh?" queried DiNozzo.

For a long moment there was no response. Suddenly one of the young men jumped out of his chair, apparently trying to escape. Unfortunately, his feet became tangled in the legs of the chair, and he stumbled and would have fallen had not DiNozzo grabbed his shirt and held him up.

"What's your rush?" DiNozzo said with his nose almost touching the young man's.

DiNozzo set him on his feet while the young Wills looked back and forth from agent to agent with frantic eyes. Young Wills, no longer in uniform and dressed in hip-hop shorts and a baggy t-shirt, with a cap turned backward on his head, was considerably taller and thinner than his father. He stood with slumped shoulders very much at odds with the military cut of his very blond hair, and his face showed the effects of fairly severe acne in the recent past.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

DiNozzo unhanded him in order to pull out his badge and ID. "Special agents DiNozzo and McGee from NCIS."

"I didn't do anything," Wills said.

One of DiNozzo's eyebrows went up. "Now did I say anything about you doing something? We just want to talk to you about something."

"What?" asked Wills.

"Prissy Newman," McGee told him.

Wills repeated himself, "I didn't do anything."

"Then you won't mind coming with us over to Washington to talk about what you didn't do," DiNozzo suggested.

"Am I under arrest?"

"Not now," replied McGee, "but if you don't want to come with us voluntarily, then we will arrest you."

Wills shrugged and held out his hands in appeal to his companions. They had been watching the exchange warily without saying anything. Their only reply to him was to shrug their own shoulders and look away. Finding no support, he sighed and gave up.

As McGee escorted the young Wills into the car, DiNozzo called Gibbs. "We've got Josh Wills in custody, and we're bringing him back for questioning. Do you want us to stop by and pick up his dad, too?"

"No," Gibbs said, "we don't want them together so they can cook up some story. Ziva and I will pick up Joe."

On the way back to NCIS headquarters, Tony snapped on the radio. From time to time, he slapped the steering wheel in rhythm with the tunes. Josh Wills sat in misery in the back seat, staring out the window at the passing scenery, not aware that Tony was keeping him under close observation in the rearview mirror.

In the meantime, Gibbs and Ziva were paying a visit to Joe Wills, who had finished mowing his lawn and was sitting in a lawn chair with a cooler next to him. He held a tall can of beer in one hand as he surveyed his handiwork.

"Well, hello, again, pretty lady," he said to Ziva. "Where's your other pal?"

"He's questioning your son about the events of last night," Gibbs replied.

"And who the hell are you?" Wills demanded.

"Special Agent Jethro Gibbs, NCIS, and we're here to arrest you on suspicion of murder."

Wills attempted to jump out of his chair but was prevented from doing so because his hips were too wide. He started yelling. "You can't do that. I don't know nuthin' about no murder, and I don't know no girl that's been murdered, and you can't prove I do."

Once he had gained his feet, Ziva stepped behind him to cuff him, which set him off again. "You can't do this to me. I got my rights. I wanna a lawyer. Goddamn, get these cuffs offa me."

At Gibbs' nod, Ziva calmly read him his rights and frog-marched him to the car, while he kept up his rant, full of invective and curses.

He continued to yell at them throughout their journey back to NCIS headquarters. The agents found themselves wishing they had a police squad car with a window closing off the back seat from the front.
At one point Gibbs could stand it no longer, telling Wills to pipe down. The glare that Gibbs shot him over the back of the seat shut him up for a couple of minutes, but it wasn't long before he began again.

Ziva looked at Gibbs. "I can…." She said. Gibbs nodded. She turned around to look at Wills. "If you don't shut up right now, I'll make you."

"Yeah, and how're you gonna do that, bitch?" Wills challenged her.

In answer, she reached across to find the right spot on the side of his neck, applied a little pressure, and, finally, he was quiet.

"Thank you," Gibbs told her in a fervent whisper.

When DiNozzo and McGee had arrived at NCIS with the younger Wills, McGee had taken him to an interrogation room. They found that Gibbs had left a message for them not to begin interrogating Josh until he and Ziva returned with Josh's father. McGee watched him from the observation room while Tony returned to the morgue to see if Dr. Mallard had any further findings from his autopsy of Prissy Newman's body. As there was nothing new, Tony checked into the lab. Abby had nothing new either; she was waiting for Josh Wills' DNA sample.

Tony lingered a while watching Abby work. She looked up at him, saying "What?"

The two were long-time friends, but Tony wasn't sure if she would be willing to answer the question he had for her; it was personal. Taking a deep "now or never" breath, he said, "Abs, do you use birth control?"

"Is this some kind of back-handed proposition?" she answered, cocking her head and propping her hands on her hips. "Are you saying that you're finally going to break down and ravish me on the spot? Or do you want to make a baby with me?"

He had to laugh, but shook his head. "I dunno," he told her. "It just seems like, if you're having sex, you should be using some kind of protection."

"What makes you think I'm having sex?" she retorted.

"Well, if you were…" he stammered.

She stepped toward him, taking his face in both of her hands. "What's wrong?"

"Tim is pretty much against abortion, and I…well…I'm not sure how I feel about it."

Abby looked intently at Tony, thinking of how to respond. "Tony, I think everybody is against abortion, even people who are pro-choice. It would be better if there were never any need for it, but things happen. Sometimes, people do want to have children, but it's not a good time. Sometimes people are really making an effort and using birth control. And sometimes people do stupid things. And, ya know, there really is only one effective means of birth control—but things happen."

"Yeah, that's sort of what I told Tim."

"Okay," she said, "fair enough. To answer your question, yes, I've used two or three different kinds of birth control through the years, but if I did become pregnant anyway, and thought I needed to, I would not hesitate to have an abortion." She looked into his eyes. "So sue me."

"Nah, no need for that," he answered, turning to go. He turned back to her for a moment. "That bit about me ravishing you, though," he said with a grin. "Hold that thought and take your pills."

"Tony!" she exclaimed as the door closed behind him.

Chapter 4: Wills and Son

Tony checked back with Tim, who reported Josh Wills was sitting in the interrogation room with his head in his hands.

"I'll watch him for a while if you'll do me a favor," DiNozzo told McGee. "Look up the Academy's policy on pregnant midshipmen,"

By the time McGee returned with the print-out, Gibbs and Ziva returned, dragging Joe Wills with them. He was just recovering from Ziva's earlier attention; his attitude now was bewildered more than belligerent. After placing Joe Wills in a second interrogation room, Gibbs outlined the strategy for the questioning for the team. "DiNozzo and I will talk with Josh while McGee and David observe. Then Ziva and I will interrogate Joe."

When the two agents walked into the room with Josh, he looked up with reddened eyes still brimming with tears.

Gibbs said, "Do you want to tell us what happened to Prissy?"

The young man sobbed slightly as he took a breath before beginning to speak.

"She told me last week she was pregnant," he said. "She said she wanted to get an abortion, and I had to help her. I didn't want her to. I told her she wouldn't be kicked out of the Academy for being pregnant, but she didn't want to believe me."

"Was she aware of the Academy's policy on pregnancy?" Tony queried.

"She said they kinda went over that when they talked about ethics ‘n' that," Josh replied. "But she'd have to drop out for a year, and she couldn't go back unless she got someone else to take the kid. She said if she was going to have a kid, she would want to take care of it herself. But she really didn't want to have a kid right now. She wanted to graduate and get a good assignment before she was ready to be pregnant."

Tony held up the print-out on Academy regulations concerning midshipman pregnancy or contribution to pregnancy. "It's true," he pointed out to Gibbs. "Unless they get an abortion, female cadets are required to drop out for a year, and if they want to return, they have to make arrangements for someone else to take care of the child until they graduate. Once they're commissioned officers, Navy regs are pretty liberal, and they can get the kid back."

Gibbs nodded his understanding, then turned back to Josh.

"Are you sure you were the father of the child?"

"Oh, yeah. Prissy took this oath at her church before she entered the Academy—you know, that she wouldn't have sex until she got married."

"And so she was a virgin until you came along and made her break the oath?" Tony asked.

"Yeah," young Wills replied in a whisper, hanging his head in shame.

"What kind of help did she want from you?" Gibbs asked.

"She wanted me to check with some abortion clinics and see how much it would cost. So I did that. The cheapest one was at least $500 dollars before the end of the 12th week of the pregnancy. She counted and figured she was about that far along. But it didn't make any difference. She's from a poor family. She wanted to go to the Academy so her education would be completely paid for, and she didn't have any extra money. And I just finished training so I didn't have any money either."

"What about her parents?" asked Gibbs. "Wouldn't they have helped her?"

"No, they belong to some kind of weird Christian church that doesn't believe in abortion. She couldn't go to them for that."

"And your father?" Tony asked.

"Prissy doesn't…didn't really like him, but we talked it over and decided he was the only one who could help us. He was career Navy. He worked as a hospital corpsman, so he knows a lot about medical stuff."

"Whose idea was it for him to try to do an abortion?" Gibbs asked.

"Well, first we asked if he would loan us the money, but he said he didn't have enough loose cash, and then he said, ‘Well, I can do it.'"

Gibbs asked, "Did you and Prissy think he could?"

Josh looked down at his hands, twisting them together. "Prissy wasn't sure," he told them, "but dad said he'd assisted at lots of D&C procedures while he worked at Bethesda." Josh looked up again. "D&C—you know, that's where women have their wombs scraped out. Dad said it was exactly what an abortion doctor would do. And he said it was really easy—you didn't even have to be a medical doctor to do it."

"So you let him go ahead?" Tony said in a soft voice.

"Well, not at first," Josh replied. "Prissy had to think about it for a couple of days. I mean, she wanted the abortion, but she wasn't sure about dad doing it. Anyway, dad told her it would take some time for him to get the right instruments, and they're kind of expensive, so he didn't want to buy them, which he'd have to do because they're not something you just have lying around the house."

"So where did he get the instruments?" Gibbs pressed.

"He has a buddy, John, who still works at Bethesda. John was able to borrow a set of instruments from the OB-GYN department that was already wrapped and sterilized. The arrangement was John would take them back and sterilize them again and put them back and no one would ever know."

Tony next asked, "Why the motel? Was there some reason your dad didn't want to do the procedure at his house?"

Josh looked as though he might start crying again. "I don't know. He made us pay for it, though. And we went there and dad made Prissy take off her clothes and lie down on the floor with a couple of towels underneath her."

Gibbs asked his next question. "What happened when things started going wrong?"

Now Josh's face scrunched up and tears began sliding down his cheeks. "It happened as soon as dad put the one instrument into her womb. He kinda said, ‘Unh!" and she screamed, and the next thing I knew there was all this blood running out of her…her…uh…her thing down there. And dad got all kinda panicky looking. There were some gauze pads in the pack of instruments, so he tried putting them into her to keep the blood from coming out, and I got a bunch of towels from the bathroom, but there was just too much of it, and it kept coming and coming."

Josh was crying in earnest now. "And I was screaming, ‘Dad, what's wrong?' And he said, ‘I think I might have poked a hole in the wall of her uterus.'" And I said, ‘What are we going to do?' And he said, ‘I don't know. I've never seen this happen before, and besides I don't think I have the right instruments for it.' And Prissy was screaming and screaming. He was afraid someone might hear it, so he got a wet washcloth and put it in her mouth so she couldn't scream out loud. And all this time blood is just pouring out of her. He told me to help him turn her over on her stomach with her butt in the air and maybe the blood wouldn't come out quite so fast."

Josh stopped talking; he was sobbing harder and harder. The two agents said nothing, waiting for him to continue. Finally, catching his breath, he went on, "A few minutes later, Prissy started to quiet down, and she was looking real pale. And then, I don't know how long it was, she started to have a seizure. And dad said, ‘She's lost so much blood her heart's failing.' And a while after that she was dead. And all we could do was watch her die."

Josh broke down completely at that point, sobbing as though he would never stop. Again Gibbs and DiNozzo waited for him to recover, although it took several minutes. He finally looked up to see that someone had set a bottle of water and a box of tissues on the table. He gratefully used both.

"I really loved Prissy. I would give anything if this had never happened." He paused to blow his nose and wipe his eyes again. "What's going to happen to me now?"

Gibbs answered, "That will be up to the Judge Advocate General to decide, but I would say at the very least you'd be considered an accessory to manslaughter. In the meantime, we need to get a tissue sample from you for a DNA test. Then we're going to take you to a holding cell while we question your father.

Tony spoke up. "Will you be all right? Not try to do anything foolish?"

"No, I won't do anything like that." Josh replied firmly. "It won't bring Prissy back. I know I have to take my punishment like a man."

Leaving the interrogation room, Gibbs called Abby to come and swab Seaman Wills' cheek. Having made this request, Gibbs said to the space around him, "I need coffee."

"On it, boss," McGee responded," and rushed off to the break room.

Gibbs turned to Tony. "DiNozzo, you okay?"

"Yeah," Tony replied. "Pretty gruesome story, but I'm okay. Think I'll get some coffee too, before you start questioning Joe." And he was off down the hall as well.

While Gibbs waited for his coffee, he leaned against the corridor wall, staring into space. Ziva stood with her arms crossed, watching him. "Tony said he was okay, but how about you?" she asked Gibbs.

Gibbs thought for several seconds before answering. "Like DiNozzo said, it's a pretty gruesome story."

DiNozzo and McGee returned together bearing four coffees. The team took time for several bracing swallows of the hot beverage. Then Gibbs spoke to Ziva.

"Joe Wills lied about knowing Prissy Newman. He's going to resist answering our questions."

"That's all right," Ziva responded with a slight mirthless smile. "Between the two of us, I think we can persuade him that it's in his best interests to tell the truth this time."

Gibbs and David entered the interrogation room to find Wills senior sitting with his hands clasped together on the table and looking around.

"Hey, is that coffee you got?" he asked brightly. "I could sure use some right about now."

"Maybe later," Gibbs told him. "Right now, we have some questions you need to answer."

"Hey," Wills said, "I told you I want a lawyer before you ask me any questions. And I don't have a clue why you want me here."

Gibbs said, "If you don't know why you're here, then you shouldn't have a problem answering our questions." Gibbs sat down at the table. "We've just spent some time with your son. He was very forthcoming. First of all, he confirmed that, in spite of what you told my agents earlier, you not only knew his girl friend, Prissy Newman, but you tried to perform an abortion on her."

"Hey," Wills protested, "if this is about abortion, it ain't illegal, you know."

"But performing one without knowing how to do it properly and causing the woman to die is a criminal act," Gibbs replied evenly.

Wills leaned back against the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, I don't know this Prissy person, and I certainly never did an abortion on her."

"And of course, you never obtained a sterile pack of instruments from your friend John over at Bethesda, either."

A flash of worry crossed Wills' face. "What do you mean?"

"We haven't checked with him yet, but I'm sure he'll tell us when we ask him about it."

"He'll never tell," Wills said defiantly, and then deflated as he realized that he had almost confessed. "I think I'm not gonna talk to you anymore until I get a lawyer."

"Fine," Gibbs told him. "We'll get you a lawyer. In the meantime, let me tell you what your son told us, and you can tell us if he's telling the truth."

As Gibbs recited Josh Wills's description of the failed abortion, Joe's face began to shine with a coat of sweat.

When Gibbs finished, Wills protested, "That ain't what happened."

Gibbs said in a reasonable voice, "But you told us you didn't know what happened."

Ziva spoke up. "Mr. Wills, there are a lot of inconsistencies in what you're saying to us. Why don't you just save us all some time and confess?"

Gibbs added, "If you confess to us now, it'll probably help when you come to be sentenced. And not only that, if you don't confess, you're making your son a liar. Is that what you want?"

His body stiff as though he were going to protest again, Wills stared at Gibbs with wide eyes for a long minute. Then his body crumpled, and he put his hands on the table and his head on his hands. "I thought I could do it. I seen it done lotsa times. It's easy. It's s'posed to be easy."

He looked up with tears showing in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I liked her. I never wanted to do anything to hurt her, but it was s'posed to be easy."

"Tell us," Ziva requested.

Joe Wills confirmed he had refused to give Josh and Prissy money for an abortion at a clinic. "That's a lotta cash," he said. "Even if I coulda put my hands on that kind of wad at one time, I didn't want to do it. That's my retirement money."

"I doubt you're going to need it where you're going," Gibbs interjected.

"Yeah, yeah," Wills said dejectedly. "I asked John Sager, he's my buddy over at Bethesda, to borrow a pack of instruments for a D&C. I told Josh to rent a motel room ‘cause I figured there might be blood, and I didn't want to mess up my house. Josh had enough money to pay for the room. I told him to make up a name and pay cash so nobody could trace us."

Ziva spoke. "Perhaps you should have taken Prissy's body with you afterward so no one could identify her from her fingerprints. And perhaps you should have policed the room for your own prints and Josh's before you left.

Wills rubbed his face. "Yeah, you're right. I guess I panicked. It wasn't s'posed ta happen like that."

"Go on," Gibbs urged.

"I didn't have any trouble finding the os." He looked up at them. "That's the canal through the cervix that goes up into the womb. Then I put in the dilators. They're the instruments that open up the os so's you can put the curette into the uterus. But when I put the curette in, it kinda bounced around, so I pushed on it a little, ‘n' then I felt it give. And the next thing I knew, she was bleeding like hell. And I didn't know what to do to stop it."

"Did you try to stop it?" Gibbs asked.

"Yeah, but where she was bleeding from, I couldn't reach. There was nothing I could do but watch her die."

Wills fell silent for a few seconds. "I guess you got me on murder, huh? Or manslaughter?"

Gibbs stood up. "I told your son I didn't know how JAG will want to plead it." He paused. "You're probably also looking at charges for lying to federal agents and practicing medicine without a license and maybe a few other things as well."

At the end, Joe Wills' bravado had completely disappeared. His face was grey with weariness as the agents escorted him to a detention cell next to the one occupied by his son.

Returning to the bull pen and seeing the clock, Gibbs realized it was already well into the evening. It had been a very long day from the time they had headed out earlier in the morning for the motel in Annapolis. It wasn't often that they were able to wrap up a felony case in one day, and the nature of the case was highly emotional and therefore exhausting.

"Okay, people," Gibbs addressed his team. "It's late; the reports and picking up Joe's friend John can wait until morning. Go home, get some rest." He paused. "Good work, everybody."

Tony said, "Thank you, thank you, boss. My butt is vibrating from making three car trips to Annapolis today."

As they gathered up their things, the team chattered lightly, looking forward to some well-earned down time, doing their best to put thoughts of a dead cadet and her dead baby out of mind.

But none of them really slept well that night.