1.
A soft rhythmic noise disturbed the silence of the room. The source was a very handsome man in khakis and a T-shirt who was leaning against the wall beside the door banging his head against said wall, his eyes closed, his lips moving. Two of the three other occupants of the room were eying him dubiously and keeping their distance as if whatever made him act like a lunatic could infect them too. The only one who didn’t seem to mind was a tall gray haired man who was sitting in front of the desk in the middle of the office.
Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs wasn’t happy with their situation either. He was staring mournfully into his empty coffee cup, ignoring the picture of misery beside the door in favor of covertly observing the reactions of the people he would have to work with.
Inspektor Brenner wasn’t a rookie, she had the aura of a grizzled veteran. She had indeed been the lead criminologist in her region for nearly ten years and had encountered a lot of strange things in her career. She hadn’t been happy when the ministry insisted on her working together with two American Agents but had nevertheless shown them professional courtesy. Now she surely had to question the sanity of her superiors and their fitness to make important decisions. “Ah, Agent Gibbs? Don’t you think…?” An embarrassed nod in the direction of the man beside her office door gave a clue as to what she didn’t want to voice aloud.
“For goodness sake, DiNozzo, stop it before you crack that dense head of yours.”
The banging stopped and was replaced by a fierce glare aimed scorchingly in Gibb's direction. “Yeah, Boss, I know. A Marine has been killed and we're the ones on hand to help solve the mystery. I should show some respect. But we're on vacation!” Tony dropped his head and half muttered, "And I thought nothing could go wrong this time."
Gibbs couldn’t fault him for his frustrated reaction, it was understandable and he would have liked to rage against the unfairness of it too but that wasn’t his nature. Not that there was any need for him to voice his discontent. Tony was very able (and willing) to do it for them both.
They really didn’t seem to have any luck with their private time. Going on vacation together as a family, just the three of them, had sounded like such a wonderful idea. They had selected the destination in the belief that nothing could go wrong. Somewhere far enough away that their boss, Director Vance, couldn’t call them back easily (Walt Disney World, Florida hadn’t been far enough). Somewhere with no military base (why did Petty Officers seem to drop dead whenever they were in the vicinity?). Somewhere nobody would know them or have a grudge against them (better not think about New Orleans). Austria was in Europe and was a neutral country. It didn’t have even one measly harbor. It didn’t have a connection to the ocean at all! American armed forces weren’t allowed to have bases here so they should have been safe. None of them ever had been here before. And still trouble had found them.
Gibbs rubbed with his hands over his face and then glared at the item that had started this mess. Maybe he should send copies of the crime scene photos to Abby as postcards: a pile of painted and artfully inscribed skulls with one cuckoo one among them that didn’t belong there. It still eluded Gibbs why the locals at Hallstatt felt the need to dig up their dead after - how had the guide put it " worms and other little wrigglies did their job and ate everything but the bones and why these people felt the need to display what was left at their Gebeinhaus*. And the fact that the curator could spot the one among hundreds that didn’t belong? Super creepy, to borrow one of Abby’s favorite phrases.
“The sooner we solve this, the sooner we'll be able to go back to being just tourists.” DiNozzo murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. A few steps of his long legs ate the distance between the entrance to the squad room and the desk and what lay on it.
After all the gruesome scenes they'd seen working at NCIS, the object Tony bent to examine was relatively tame. A very clean, polished human skull, gleaming in a very pretty pale ivory, grinned up at them sightlessly. Someone had etched a name into it’s forehead and used elaborate black calligraphy to boot. Very pretty in an old fashioned way. On each side two teeth were missing, one on the upper, one on the lower jaw. A chain had been woven through, efficiently tying the mouth shut.
It was a very familiar kind of chain and Gibbs didn’t need a fortune teller to know that if he upend the macabre piece he would find dog tags in it’s mouth, probably repeating the name displayed on its forehead.
“Petty Officer Simon Grant. 1985-2013. I can’t say he had good timing.” Tony still sounded annoyed but his eyes were focused on the skull, cataloging its every nuance.
Gibbs looked at the Inspector. “Do we even know if the name is correct?”
Brenner handed him a file. “We sent detailed scans of the skull to your office in DC, the results came back fast enough. The dental records match. This should indeed be Grant. He was officially on leave and should have reported back on the USS Enterprise on the first of August.”
Gibbs opened the file and spotted something that didn't make him at all happy. "His father is Brigadier General Jeffrey Grant.” It wouldn’t take long for the news to reach the man and then the shit would hit the fan. The grief of a parent was something Gibbs could relate to, but the grief of a General had the potential to make this one hell of a case to solve.
“Boss?”
He looked up. “Yeah.”
“The next time we visit somewhere and we see police standing around, using one of our military ranks in their sentences and the word murder, we will turn around and walk away, not barge in and demand to know what's happened.” Tony was massaging his neck, his smile half fond, half exasperated. “But I know the perfect punishment for you. You get to be the one who has to explain this … clusterfuck to Sam.”
.-#-.
Story Notes:
Some of it wont make sense without knowing my fic Always Faithful (which is still a WIP, just a warning, 10/20 chapters written).
This is my Haiti fic for tinlizzie82. Thank you for bidding on and winning my fic, I hope you will find the outcome to your satisfaction, it was a lot of fun to write. I used nearly all of your prompts but mainly your wish to see our boys plus Sam on vacation.
It was first posted to my live journal (kathanagrey) and I added links to pictures of the locations they visited.
Author's Chapter Notes:
"Austrians are really, really morbid. But at least the landscape is beautiful.” A family vacation turns turbulent. Story in 6 parts.
Chapter End Notes:
Some of it wont make sense without knowing my fic Always Faithful (which is still a WIP, just a warning, 10/20 chapters written).
This is my Haiti fic for tinlizzie82. Thank you for bidding on and winning my fic, I hope you will find the outcome to your satisfaction, it was a lot of fun to write. I used nearly all of your prompts but mainly your wish to see our boys plus Sam on vacation.
It was first posted to my live journal (kathanagrey) and I added links to pictures of the locations they visited.
This is my Haiti fic for tinlizzie82. Thank you for bidding on and winning my fic, I hope you will find the outcome to your satisfaction, it was a lot of fun to write. I used nearly all of your prompts but mainly your wish to see our boys plus Sam on vacation.
It was first posted to my live journal (kathanagrey) and I added links to pictures of the locations they visited.