D.C. Metro Crime Report
Victim’s Statement
Victim’s Name: Caitlin Todd
Victim’s Address: [the writing is smudged but readable]
Victim’s Telephone Number: [Kate’s home telephone]
Crime: Felony Sexual Assault, Breaking & Entering, Unlawful Restraint, Kidnapping, Assault & Battery, Petty Larceny.
Victim states she was awakened around 2:00 a.m. with an unknown male in the process of physically restraining her wrists by tying them to the headboard of her bed. Victim states that the assailant retrieved her service weapon from under her pillow when she attempted to scream and cocked it, pressing the muzzle of the weapon against her jaw under her ear. Victim states that the assailant used a large knife, possibly a hunting knife, to remove her clothing, blindfolded her with her shirt, and then sexually assaulted her.
Victim states that the assailant remained in her apartment for approximately two hours and raped and sodomized her several times before rendering her unconscious with a blow to the head, possibly using the butt of her service weapon to do so. Victim regained consciousness around 6:30 a.m. and found herself unbound. Upon cursory inspection, victim states several personal items were missing from her home when she awoke, the value of which does not exceed $300.
Victim transported herself to Georgetown University Hospital for treatment, whereupon D.C. Metro P.D. was called to take this report.
Victim is unable to make visual I.D. of any suspect. At no time was she able to view the face of her assailant. The assailant did not speak at any time during the assault. Victim is a law enforcement officer and states that there are any number of people who might have a grudge against her due to the functions of her employment. Victim is unable to make an educated guess as to the identity of her assailant.
Victim believes assailant may have been wearing latex gloves; lack of fingerprints lifted from the crime scene seems to substantiate this suspicion. Unknown why the assailant might wear latex gloves but not use a condom.
The report was barely a page and a half long, giving the dry particulars of the assault on Kate and the bleak, unfeeling report of what had been done to her. Gibbs had read it over enough times that the words felt branded into his head, and he felt his gorge rise every time. Rape was a disgusting act, second only to child molestation on his list of most heinous crimes. That it should be done to a member of his team, someone he cared about, made it even worse. That it should be done to Kate had him ready to kill.
Gibbs had not felt this driving demand for justice, for vengeance, since the murder of his own wife and child. He had gotten his revenge then, and he would have it now. She may not be his wife, but she was his all the same, a woman under his protection, and he would not allow her to be used in such a fashion without payback. He would bring her the head of the man who had violated her and lay it at her feet, his own penance for being unable to prevent what had been done to her.
It was about two in the morning when the phone on his desk rang. He’d been reading over the report again, wondering what if anything there was in it that might give him some kind of clue, without having to ask Kate to relive the experience, and the sound of the ring startled him. Who would be calling him here at this hour? He picked up the phone. "Yeah. Gibbs."
"I got a match," Abby’s voice came to him through the line, sounding strangled. "You’d better get down here."
"Abs, what are you doing here at this hour?" he asked as he strode into her lab. "You oughtta be at home getting some rest."
"I knew my results should be coming in soon," Abby replied, staring at the computer screen. "I’ve been napping here." She gestured to her desk, where her futon was spread out in the floor, Bert laying on it where she had been using him for a pillow.
He came up to her side. "What did you find out?"
She swallowed hard. "I ran the DNA from the rape kit against all the national databases - organ donors, bone marrow donors, crime databases, everything - and didn’t get any matches. But I decided for the sake of being thorough to run it against the internal NCIS database, just in case this was somebody we’d dealt with before that might not be in one of the national databases for some reason. And I got a match. One I put into the database myself."
"Well, who is the son of a bitch, Abby?" Gibbs demanded.
She looked at him, her eyes huge and full of tears. Then she pressed a button on her keyboard and pointed up at the plasma, where she had displayed a photograph of the man who had raped Kate and fathered her child.
It was Ari Haswari.
Gibbs stood silently for a full two minutes, fighting not to lose control. He didn’t want to frighten Abby, which he would most assuredly do if he unleashed his fury and his grief. He fought to keep himself under wraps and ultimately succeeded, except for the dangerous reddening of his face. When at last he was sure he could speak without screaming, he turned to her and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Lock these results up tight," he said in a deadly quiet voice, "and do not tell Kate anything. Don’t tell anyone. I’ll take care of that. All right?"
She nodded. He started to turn away, but her voice stopped him. "Gibbs?"
He turned back, and his voice was hoarse when he responded. "Yeah, Abs?"
"Are we… Is he… after us? All of us?"
Gibbs sighed. "Not exactly," he said quietly. "I think he’s after me. But he’s going after all of you to hurt me." He paused, then pointed a finger at her. "Until this is over, you don’t go home alone. When Tony comes in tomorrow, have him take you home. Pack a bag. If he’s going after my girls, he’s gonna come after you next. I’m not leaving you where he can find you."
Abby nodded. "Where am I going to stay?"
His mouth firmed. "You and Kate are coming to stay with me."
The lights in Kate’s apartment were all blazing, and he knew she was up. He rapped on the door and called out, "It’s me, Kate."
She opened the door and let him in, dressed as she had been two nights ago, in her pajamas. Her feet were bare, her toenails unpainted. She went into the kitchen, leaving him to shut the door, and poured a cup of coffee. "I had a feeling you were going to be coming by," she said by way of explanation as she offered him the cup.
"Yeah," he said simply, sitting down on the couch and studying the drink.
She sat down in her chair, curling her legs up under her and studying him. "You found something." It wasn’t a question, but he answered her anyway.
"Yeah, we did."
The silence stretched out for a long few minutes before she spoke again. "I’m not gonna like this, am I?"
"Nope," he said softly. He searched for the words. "Before I tell you this… I need you to understand that I am gonna find this bastard, and I am gonna kill him with my bare hands if I have to."
She nodded. "I kinda knew that already," she agreed. "Just tell me, Gibbs. Who is he?"
Gibbs swallowed against the bitterness of his own failure and spoke the word. "Ari."
The world opened up and swallowed Caitlin Todd. Her hands clenched on the arms of her chair as, behind her eyes, she saw again the darkness of her bedroom, felt the silk of her nightshirt being tied around her head. She felt the press of her own gun against her carotid artery, warning her not to scream, and heard his harsh, heavy breathing as he pushed her legs apart and violated her. Only this time, she could hear his voice overlaid on his breathing and her whimpers of pain: that cultured, mocking voice, saying her name as he had said it in Autopsy and over that picnic table at that farm. "Caitlin," he had called her, holding her name in his mouth as if he owned it. "Caitlin."
She would never be safe as long as he lived. That was what he was telling her when he violated her home and her body. He could get her anywhere, and there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t stop him, wouldn’t hear him, would never know he was there until it was too late.
He had worn latex gloves, but not a condom. He didn’t want his fingerprints on file with law enforcement - wouldn’t want a search of them to tip off the spooks he was supposedly working with - but he didn’t care about his DNA. Had possibly been deliberately attempting to impregnate her.
She blinked and focused on Gibbs. "I want his head," she said clearly.
"I’ll bring it to you on a pike," he promised.
"I believe you."
She packed a bag without protest, understanding as he did - perhaps better than he did - that she was no longer safe in her own home. She wasn’t sure she was any safer at Gibbs’s home, but she would feel safer, and that meant a lot. Gibbs would also feel safer, and that meant a lot, too. She dressed in the bedroom with him in the kitchen, turning off the coffee pot and washing it out. When she came out, carrying a bulging duffle bag, she was wearing a sour expression. "My favorite jeans are starting to not fit," she complained.
Gibbs laughed. "Gonna get worse before it gets better."
"Don’t remind me," she grumbled. They left the apartment together, and he handed her up into his truck like a gentleman before moving around to the driver’s side. She studied him as they drove and felt the question fall out of her mouth before she even realized she was going to ask. "How come you never had kids, Gibbs?"
He blinked, glancing over at her. "What?"
She shrugged. "I just mean… you’re so good with kids. Every time we have a case involving kids, I see it. I think you’d make a great dad. So I was curious why you never had any kids."
His hands clenched on the steering wheel for a moment as he considered her question. It was a valid question, brought on by her current situation. She wasn’t trying to be nosy or prying, and she had no idea how the question would affect him. There was no way she could know.
She had just about decided that she wasn’t going to get an answer when he spoke, and his voice was softer than she’d ever heard it before. "I had a daughter once."
She blinked, stared, and swallowed hard. "Once?" she whispered.
He nodded, cleared his throat, and began to speak. "There aren’t many people who know about this," he began, and she understood it for what it was: a plea for her silence. She nodded in acknowledgement and he went on. "When I was in the Marines, I was married to my first wife, and we had a daughter. While I was on my second tour in Desert Storm, they…" He paused, cleared his throat again, and forced the words out. "They were murdered."
She gasped. "Oh, no." Her hand came up to rest over her mouth. "I’m so sorry."
He sighed. "It was a long time ago."
The conversation was clearly over, but she reached out and squeezed his shoulder softly anyway. They finished the drive back to his house in silence, and he installed her in his second bedroom before retreating to his basement and his boat.
He thought she would have gone to bed, but she didn’t, coming instead to sit on the basement steps, wrapped in a quilt, and watch him. They did not speak, but when he looked up at her once, he saw that the rhythmic sound of his sandpaper on the wood had lulled her to sleep.
The next morning, he called Fornell from his desk phone. "Meet me at the Lincoln Memorial," he demanded. "Forty-five minutes. Come alone."
He turned to DiNozzo, who was just returning from taking Abby to her apartment. "Anything?"
"She said nothing looked disturbed, Boss," Tony replied.
"Good. I’m gonna be gone for a little while. You and McGee are on protection detail. They’re down in the lab. We catch a case, you call me. Otherwise I’ll be back soon." He grabbed his coat and was gone.
The two men headed down to Abby’s lab, where they found Abby holding a weeping Kate tightly. The two women looked up as the men entered, and Kate tried to dry her eyes. Abby handed her a box of tissue as Tony and McGee approached to find out what was wrong. She waited for Kate, who nodded once. "Go ahead and tell them."
"We found out who the guy was," Abby said softly.
"Is that where Gibbs went?" McGee inquired.
Abby shrugged. "Maybe. It’s not gonna be easy to get this guy."
"Well, who is he, Abby?" Tony asked.
Abby swallowed. "Ari."
A shocked silence fell over the room. "Are you sure?" Tony finally asked, his voice low and dangerous.
"I’m sure," Abby replied. "After he took Kate hostage that time, Gibbs arranged a meeting with him down in Autopsy, and he shot him. I took a sample of the blood after he left, and I made a DNA profile in our internal database. When I ran the sample…" she trailed off, waving an eloquent hand toward Kate.
"He won’t get away this time," McGee said softly.
"Probie’s right, Kate," Tony agreed. "It doesn’t matter who’s protecting him; Gibbs is gonna kill him."
Fornell met Gibbs as directed, and Gibbs got straight to the point. "I want Haswari," Gibbs said, "and if you don’t give him to me, I’ll leak him and let Al Qaeda kill him."
"That’s not gonna happen, Jethro, and you know it," Fornell replied, shaking his head. "The CIA -"
"I don’t give a fuck about the CIA!" Gibbs snarled, getting right up in Fornell’s face. "That son of a bitch got Kate, and I’m gonna rip his fucking head off!"
Fornell stared at him. "Kate? Kate’s dead? When did this happen?"
"No, she’s not dead," Gibbs replied softly, his voice deadly. "He broke into her apartment about four months ago and threw himself a little party, and left her something to remember him by for the rest of her life."
Fornell stared at him. "Oh, no."
"Yeah, Tobias," Gibbs said sarcastically. "She’s due in about five months. I bet if you asked her, she might even think about naming the baby after you."
Fornell studied him, looking sick. "Are you a hundred percent sure about this?" he asked quietly.
"Abby took a DNA sample when I shot him," Gibbs replied. "It matches the sample the hospital took in the rape kit."
"I’ll get him for you." Fornell held up a cautionary hand. "It’s not gonna be today, Jethro. In fact, it may take a while. But I’ll do it."
"Let me know," Gibbs replied. "I’ve got Kate and Abby both under protective custody and I need to be able to tell them when they’re gonna be able to go home."
Fornell raised an eyebrow. "Staying with you, I assume? Never took you for the sorority mom type."
He snarled. "Not like I have many alternatives, Tobias. He could come back for Kate; he might go after Abby next. I have to keep them safe. If I could move them both onto the Navy Yard permanently, I’d do it."
Fornell nodded. "Do you need any help?"
"No," Gibbs replied. "The less people know where they are, the happier I’ll be."
"I’ll be in touch, Jethro," Fornell said before slipping away into the crowd.
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