Maya gasped. "Uncle Gibbs left, he really left?! It was so sudden, so unexpected. He didn't even say why."
Tony leant over and gently kissed her on the forehead. "He did what he thought was best for him and we had to respect that."
"But…" Maya stuttered not knowing what to say. "He's Gibbs, he's always there."
"Even the almighty Gibbs deserves a break every now and then." He pointed out. "We missed him, it was the hardest few months we ever faced as a team but we carried on…
* * *
Tony glanced around the bullpen, even though so much had changed in the past three months it still looked the same as it had before Gibbs had left. But instead of his boss's desk being full with paper work from various cases it was empty.
He sighed and tried to go back to typing up the case files on two of the cases they had solved lately. The latest had been simple an embezzlement case where they soon found who did it and put him away. Other than that all the cases had been routine dead marines and not so smart killers. He did like being the boss but solving cases had been a lot more interesting when Gibbs was there.
His thoughts were interrupted by McGee who was standing over his desk looking anxious to tell him something.
Tony sighed again. He really missed the good old days. "What is it, Probie?"
McGee gulped. The young agent had certainly grown up since Gibbs had left but still seemed slightly unsure of himself. "Uhh Boss, Tony, we have a case."
Tony suddenly sprang into action. He quickly grabbed his gear and headed for the elevator motioning for McGee to follow him.
"So McGee," Tony asked as they entered the elevator, "What have we got this time?"
"A Lieutenant who just returned from a three month tour was found dead in her house in Maryland this morning." McGee explained. "I already asked Ducky and Palmer to meet us there."
Tony was impressed. "Well done, McGee. One more thing, where's Ziva?"
"Oh she's meeting us by the car. Said something about you saying whoever gets there first gets to drive."
Maya laughed. "That's sounds exactly like the kind of rule you would make. Serves you right then, doesn't it?"
"I didn't expect her to take it literally. But then it's Ziva we're talking about." Tony sighed. "Anyway after a very bumpy ride we arrived to find a very gruesome crime scene…
* * *
Tony felt bile rise in his throat as he looked at the mutilated body of the dead Lieutenant. Jemma Andrews had just returned from her three month tour and while her parents were out someone came in and murdered the young woman who had her whole life ahead of her.
He couldn't stand it anymore, he had seen some horrible things since joining NCIS but for some reason this was the worst. He called out to his partner who he had instructed to interview the mother and asked her to take his place taking photos while he went to interview the mother.
He expected an argument, even simple mockery from her but instead she seemed to know what he was thinking and did what he asked without any question. Things had changed between them during the past three months, ever since she had cried in his arms that fateful day in the hospital, she seemed more comfortable around him and he noticed that she had let down some of the shield that seemed built up around her.
He found the hysterical parents sitting at the dining room table holding a recent photo of their beloved daughter. He knew this probably wasn't the right time to ask them the questions he had to ask but it was crucial to the investigation to get as much information about the victim and what the witness saw and found.
He sat down in the chair opposite them and quickly introduced himself. "Mr and Mrs Andrews I'm NCIS, Special Agent Tony DiNozzo. I'm running this investigation."
Mr Andrews looked up at him slowly. "Will you help us find who did this to our baby girl?"
"I'll try my best sir. But first I need to know what exactly happened. I know it's hard to think about but the more I know will help me solve who did this to your daughter." Tony explained.
Mr Andrews nodded and turned to his wife who was sobbing softly onto his shoulder. "My wife is the one who found the body."
Mrs Andrews glanced up at Tony with tears in her eyes. No parent should ever have to bury their child let alone witness what this poor woman had. She took a deep breath, "Robert could you get me a cup of tea please?" She asked her husband.
Robert nodded, stood up and after kissing his wife gently on the forehead moved out of the room and through to the kitchen where he couldn't hear what his wife and Tony were saying.
Once he was gone Mrs Andrews turned back to face him. "Sorry I didn't think he should have to hear this."
Tony nodded. "It's okay, Mrs Andrews, I understand."
She smiled weakly. "Please Mrs Andrews was my mother in Law. Call me Catherine."
"Catherine, what happened this afternoon?"
She took another deep breath. "Robert and I had gone out to do some grocery shopping, we asked Jemma if she wanted to come but she said she had things here to do. She looked like she was tired and needed some rest so I decided to leave her be. I called her to from the grocery store to see if she wanted anything for lunch."
"What time roughly would all this have been?" Tony asked.
"We left here at around 11.30 this morning and when I tried to call her it would have been around 12.30." Catherine replied before carrying on. "Jemma normally answers her phone right away so I started to worry when it went straight to voice mail. Robert said not to worry; she was probably in the shower or having a nap. But a mother just knows when something's wrong and I knew that something wasn't right but I let Robert make me think my instincts were wrong, that I was just panicking over nothing. We left the store after that maybe ten, fifteen minutes later. So we arrived home at about one, once we had put the groceries away I went upstairs to check on her because she hadn't come downstairs to greet us like she normally would. That's when I knocked on her bedroom door and after not hearing anything I entered the room to find…to find my beautiful young daughter, who was just beginning her life, lying in the middle of the room in…" She trailed off starting to cry as she thought about what horrible state her daughter was in.
Tony gently patted her hand. "It's okay Catherine. We know the rest."
She smiled weakly but before she could say anything they were interrupted by Robert re-entering the room with two steaming mugs and handed one to his wife.
"Was there anything else you needed to ask Mr DiNozzo?" He asked Tony.
Tony nodded. "Did your daughter have anyone who wanted to hurt her, a jealous ex or an enemy, perhaps?"
Catherine who had been staring silently at her cup of tea since her husband's return glanced back up at him with fresh tears in her eyes. "My little Jemma was the kindest person in town, everyone loved her she didn't have any enemies."
"Are you sure? There was no one who wanted to hurt her?"
Mrs Andrews suddenly sprung to her feet and began yelling angrily at him. "NO! EVERYONE LOVED HER! WHY WOULD SOME MONSTER WANT TO HURT MY BABY GIRL?!"
"I'm sorry Ma'am-" Tony started to say but he was interrupted by her husband.
"Catherine calm down he's only trying to help." He paused as he wrapped his arm around his wife, "what about that boy she was seeing the one she broke up with before she went back to active duty?"
"Matt Henderson? He was a bit strange but surely he wouldn't hurt Jemma. He loved her."
Maya suddenly grasped his arm. "So then what happened? Did Uncle Gibbs bust in and solve the case, you went out celebrating with the team, have a little too much to drink and wake up next to Ziva the next morning?"
"Well actually…"
Maya gasped.
"No, nothing like that happened. I asked McGee to report back to Abby, Ziva to escort the body back with Ducky and then go home and get a good rest because this case was bound to test every single one of us. Then as soon as I got to work the next morning I went straight down to Ducky…
* * *
"Ahh Anthony." Ducky greeted him as he entered autopsy. "I suppose you are here to find how this poor beautiful lieutenant met such a gruesome ending."
Tony nodded and headed over towards the slab where the dead lieutenant lay. Ducky quickly followed and proceeded to show Tony his findings.
"Our poor lieutenant here suffered 216 stab wounds to her body." He pointed to all the wounds he had stitched up, "there are clusters of stab wounds to both eyes, her genitals, her breasts, her left cheek, her left temple and her left ear and the left side of her neck. I also found 45 wounds to the front of her throat. Her ears and the tip of her nose were cut off and several pieces of her hair were also cut."
Tony had heard enough he rushed over to an empty bin and threw up. Sure they had had plenty of cases like this before but this time it just seemed different. This time they didn't have Gibbs to shelter them from the details. This time they were doing it on their own. He took a deep breath as he regained his composure.
"My dear Anthony," Ducky looked at him with concern. "Are you okay?"
Tony wiped his mouth and tried not to look at the victim who had suffered so much for one so young. "I'm fine, Duck." He insisted. "Who could have done this?"
Ducky sighed. "Her beauty or attractiveness were being targeted which indicates that this was a persistent, focused and determined attack on our victim."
"So she knew her attacker?"
"Most certainly."
* * *
"Abby it's not that I don't like your cooking, I just don't like black pudding." McGee was saying to the Goth as Tony entered the lab.
"You don't like my black pudding!" Abby gasped.
"I don't like any black pudding! It's not just your black pudding Abs, it's all black pudding."
Tony cleared his throat stopping the Goth from saying something she would probably regret later. "Abs, what yah got?"
She glared at McGee before looking expectantly at Tony. He sighed and handed her a Caf-Pow, she grinned before turning back to what she had been doing. "I ran the sperm sample Ducky took from our victim through AFIS, no hits yet but hopefully I'll get something soon."
"What about the scissors we found at the crime scene?"
"I found traces of blood on them that match our victim but I also found…"
"Abby!"
"You know you're starting to get that look again."
"Abby!"
She rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath that sounded strangely like, 'even starting to sound like him' before bringing a photo of the scissors up on her screen.
"I found two fingerprints on the handlers which I matched to…"
"Abby!"
"You could at least give me a drum roll or something."
"Abby!"
She sighed dramatically. "Fine, but you owe me a drum roll." She paused as she brought up the results on the screen. "The first fingerprint belonged to a Mr Robert Andrews."
"The victim's father?"
"Exactly."
Tony made a quick note in his head. "What about the second fingerprint?"
The Goth shook her head sadly. "No matches. But I plan to go through the victim's laptop later today so I'll have something for you later today."
"So her father did it?" Maya asked. "How could a father do that to his own daughter?"
"I have no idea but it certainly looked like Mr Andrews did it so Ziva and I went back to ask him a few questions…
* * *
"This is absurd!" Robert Andrews exclaimed after Tony and Ziva had explained how his fingerprint had been found on the murder weapon. "She was my daughter, why, how, would I do something like that to her?"
"We need you to come with us for questioning." Ziva explained calmly.
"I haven't done anything wrong!" Robert insisted.
"We're not saying you have we just need to ask you some questions." Tony told him.
Robert pointed to the empty seats opposite him and his wife. "Ask away."
Tony sighed and indicated for his partner to take a seat. She eyed him curiously before sitting down. He pulled out the crime scene photo of the scissors and the print out of Abby's results and pushed them across the table to the Andrews.
"Do you recognise these Mr Andrews?"
Robert closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he answered. "Yes, those were mine. I leant them to Jemma for a project she was working on."
"Do you have any idea what that project was?" Ziva asked.
"A birthday present for her mother." Robert replied as he glanced lovingly at his wife. "It's her birthday in a week.
Tony shared a glance with Ziva before he stood up. "Thank you for your time. We'll let you know if there is anything else."
"Mr Andrews doesn't sound like the type of man who would do something like that to his daughter." Maya said.
"To tell you the truth I had to agree with you. But my gut wasn't as good as your Uncle Gibb's so we had to face what the evidence told us. So we went back to Abby to check the security tapes from the grocery store to see if Mr Andrews could've slipped away from his wife to drive back home to kill his daughter…
* * *
"Oooh your back," The Goth greeted them with hugs as soon as Tony and Ziva entered the lab after picking up the security videos from the grocery store. "Whatcha got for me this time?"
Tony quickly explained to McGee and the Goth what had happened when they went to interview the victim's father and how they brought back the tapes to verify if the father had been with the mother at the time of the murder.
Once they were finished Abby squeezed him again before swiping the tapes from his hands and putting them in her video machine to watch them. "Okay so what time did you say the parents got there?" She asked going through the tape.
"They arrived around 11.30 that morning." Tony replied and Abby quickly found the right date and time.
"There they are arriving." Ziva pointed the couple out and while the rest of the team squinted to find the couple Tony wasn't surprised that the Mossad Assassin spotted the couple right away.
"Okay," The Goth nodded. "So there they arrive. Here they are shopping for an hour. He stays by her side the entire time, and while I can't say I agree with their unsavoury eating habits, it looks like your main suspect has a solid alibi."
"Check out what happened around 12.30. That's when the mother claimed to ring the daughter." Tony ordered.
Abby pulled her arm up to solute him. "Yes Boss! Okay there is the mother on the phone. She actually looks generally concerned, look she turns to her husband and asks him something. He seemed to shrug it off, she snaps at him, and then he grabs the phone and hangs it up before shoving it into his pocket."
"So he could still somehow be involved?" Ziva pondered aloud.
Tony nodded. "Abby, McGee see if you can find who that print belongs to or at least who else our victim talked to on the day she died. Ziva you're with me."
"Where are we going?" Ziva asked him as they headed back to the elevator as the Geek and Goth turned back to continue their work.
"Mr Andrews might not have killed his daughter but he may know who did. We, my friend, are going to find out who that may be."
"So you and your ever faithful partner were on the hunt for the killer," Maya grinned. "What did you discover?"
"We interviewed the victim's neighbours and friends and discovered that just before she was deployed she broke up with her high school sweetheart Matt Henderson and he hadn't taken the break up well. So we decided to pay Matt a visit…
* * *
"Are you certain this is the right address?" Ziva asked him as the stood at the door of the rusty old house that if he drove past, Tony would have mistook it for an old abandoned tool shed.
"This is the address Jemma's best friend gave us. She said she used to drop her here all the time when they were in high school." Tony replied.
"How would she know for certain? She could have just got her friend to park here and walk over to one of the nicer houses on the street."
Tony sighed; she did have a point but then again… "Look when your best friend's with someone that person shares everything you do. Especially woman so if Jemma was dating this guy then her 'bestie' would know every inmiate secret they shared â€" including where he lived."
"So in that perspective we are 'besties' yet you do not know everything about me," Ziva said smiling slyly as they knocked on the door of the house and had their guns and badges at the ready for when the door was answered.
Suddenly a loud banging and barking came from the opposite side of the door making Tony and Ziva both jump back in fright.
As he jumped backward Tony tripped over the step and landed flat on his back, which was when he noticed the form jumping the old fence separating the property from its neighbour. "Ziva, suspect, jumped, fence!" He panted as he slowly got to his feet. Luckily she understood the message and took off in the direction the suspect had gone. Tony hoisted his gun and put his badge away before seeing another path to the neighbour's property and he ran towards it.
He saw the suspect running down the street with Ziva hot on his heels. She grabbed her gun and raised it but he swerved to avoid it as the bullet scraped his arm. She glanced away to put her away but didn't see the bullet heading straight for her. Tony watched as it hit her in the stomach and she instantly dropped to the ground.
Author's Chapter Notes:
The team must carry on without Gibbs in the hunt for a Marine’s killer. The gruesome details of the case may prove too much for one team member while another puts their life on the line.
Chapter End Notes:
The case this chapter is loosely based on is one of my countries most gruesome and famous murders. This one is based on the murder of 22 year old Sophie Elliot who was murdered in her home in 2008 by her ex-boyfriend. The gruesome details of this are real if you want to learn more about her or what shocking things happened in the murder trial I suggest you Google her. It is an interesting case and it is important to me that people know what happened to her as it affected almost everyone in the country. I know it's weird but this is just my way of dealing with the hurt in anger at what happened to her.