Chapter 4 – Practice
Time passed too quickly for Gibbs and his team. They had nothing. Nothing to tell them where to go, or what to do from here – sitting at their own desks poring over the only solid thing they had – Vinnie Grey's records – and even that meant nothing if they couldn't find a lead. One by one Gibbs sent the members of his team home, and by the midnight bell he was the only soul left in the entire building. Slowly, without much thought as to where he was going, he drifted throughout the narrow corridors, paced around the steel tables in the morgue, went up and down the second-floor stairs and somehow ended up back in the bullpen, leaning back against the windowpane from a sitting position on the floor, running his sweaty fingers over the smooth, cool surface of the silver flask in which he kept his bourbon, and his memory of the last family he failed to protect.
The darkness ate away at his determination, and time withered on into the late hours of the night. Gibbs ran a hand over his face and through his ruffled hair, gripped his shoulder, fingered his NCIS badge as he held it up to his face. It reflected the light from the street lamp outside. Swiftly, he stood and pivoted, feeling empty but looking for something....anything to give him the spark he needed to continue with his investigation. Nothing but "nowhere" could describe where he was with the case, and he felt his goddaughter's frantic, jarring essence chewing up his intellect and leaving him dissecting his own thoughts about the exact point in time when Joey called him about the air conditioning – there was a fifteen-minute gap between that call and him arriving on the scene...and then there was Vincent Grey.
Gibbs, with a little undercover help from Fornell, had put the bastard away a little over eight years ago for manslaughter, but he had escaped while being taken into custody. They caught up with him again in Virginia, where he was arrested and convicted of torturing and killing three little girls after kidnapping them and forcing them to ingest, inhale, and mix different varieties of narcotics. That was his sanctuary – narcotics. He was a cop once, found dirty, and convicted of trafficking drugs, but he got away that time, too. The famous Vinnie Grey – Child Killer....Joey's father's estranged younger brother, her uncle. This fact just about tore the final string of hope out of Gibb's heart. Joey's parents were murdered when she was just four years old – Gibbs had been a friend of the family, but he always figured it had been mutual. Joey's father was Navy-bred and FBI-occupied...after they died and the will was read, Gibbs discovered he had been made the little girl's godfather, "just in case we aren't always around," were James Grey's exact words on paper. The rest of her family were members of a bad lot – what could he do except take her in?
As he paced up and down the bullpen, Gibbs recalled the interrogation after he and Fornell had him for the second time here, at NCIS.
[flashback]
"Where'd you put the bodies, Vinnie?" Fornell leaned across the table with both of his hands and arms resting there for support, looking Grey right in his cold, grey eyes. The man didn't answer, didn't even make eye contact. His expression was placid. Gibbs cocked his head at him, unusually calm. He licked his lips and came around to stand behind him.
"Vinnie," Fornell continued, pulling up a chair, "we have all the time in the world to lock you up and put you six feet under, evidence, testimony, your drugs, everything."
The intimidation tactic wasn't working. Gibbs leaned forward, stole a fleeting, aggravated glance at Fornell, and whispered hoarse, broken words into Vincent Grey's ear.
"You tortured and killed three girls the exact same way. Why'd you stop? Run out of drugs to experiment with?"
A quiet, maniacally-laced grin crossed Vinnie's face, and he bowed his head in silent fits of laughter that shook his entire body.
[end flashback]
Gibbs reached behind his cubicle wall and lifted a cardboard box out from the small enclosed space. He seemed calmer, but it was a fluctuating type of calm that only came from his contemplation of a possible lead, which, it seemed, was so obvious he was almost angry at himself for missing it. Whipping out his pocketknife he cut the red evidence tape that sealed the box and pulled the lid off, tossing it down at his desk. At the bottom of the box laid a single manila folder stuffed with crime scene photos and every hard record FBI and NCIS had ever had on Vincent Grey – everything from the police report describing his first burglary, descriptions of narcotics paraphernalia, photos of the bruises on his aggravated assault victim....Gibbs flipped through the documents, paused when he went farther than his destination, and turned back four pages to Grey's first murder – eleven-year-old girl from downtown D.C. – he had left them mounds of evidence, his work was messy and unprofessional....
Gibbs almost had to force back the sting of his own morbid thoughts about Joey as he flipped a few more pages to his second murder – eleven-year-old girl, snatched from Langley Park. They found her a week later dead in a hidden lower compartment of a yacht that had been abandoned in a parking lot. This time, there was less evidence – enough, though, to draw conclusion and put Vinnie behind bars. But they didn't get him that time either. The original crime scene was compromised and Vinnie's original site – where he held the girl hostage – was never uncovered. Because of no drug or incriminating evidence being found on the boat, FBI had justifiably assumed that he had killed her somewhere else and dumped her body on the boat.
It seemed odd at the time, though – the question as to why Vinnie wouldn't just dump the body where no one would have found it. Morbid....but it would have bought him a lot of time.
He flipped to the final thing in the folder – Grey's last documented murder of an eleven-year-old girl in Quantico. Very minimal evidence. Two things was perfectly clear throughout the entirety of this folder – Vinnie was escalating in crime, and he was becoming more methodical in nature – a perfectionist, if you will – the only evidence left at the third scene was a single strand of hair and a small, plastic bag of cocaine. The hair wasn't enough to get a profile match, so circumstantial evidence surrounding general description of Vinnie's M.O. – killing girls by way of torture and drugs – was all they had to wrap up the case with.
Then, for the first time since he even ever first heard of Vinnie Grey, it struck Gibbs: he was experimenting.
All his victims were eleven-year-old girls – the pain of torture escalated as the murders progressed. The drugs were designed to be tested – Grey wanted to play with their effect on children....but no....it was more sinister than that...he took Joey...why does he want Joey? Joey is eleven years old...another experiment? No – he's related to her – this one's more personal. He was experimenting with all the others...it was practice for what he's going to do to Joey. But why?
Gibbs heard a faint chuckle behind him and he turned abruptly, one hand on his gun. But there was no one there.
"You tortured and killed three girls the exact same way. Why'd you stop? Run out of drugs to experiment with?"
Vinnie had never answered the question. But now Gibbs knew the answer.
"No," Gibbs couldn't stop the words coming out his own mouth, "I just didn't need any more practice."
Author's Chapter Notes:
Gibbs reflects on the possibility that one of the most notorious child-killers has kidnapped Joey. The fact that the man is Joey's uncle doesn't help the situation, either.