CHAPTER IV: Numbers 1 and 2
Precisely on the dot of 2:00 p.m. that afternoon, the elevator doors slid open, and Detective Delbart stepped out.
Going to greet him, Tony outlined the agenda for the meeting. "If it's okay with you, first I'll take you upstairs to meet the director. Did you get the word that she's setting up a formal liaison with your office?"
"Yeah, sure did," Delbart said. "Thanks. Looking forward to working with you."
"Me, too. Once you've met her, we'll go down to the morgue to see if our M.E. has found anything significant. Then we'll visit with our forensic expert. Then we'll settle in here and brainstorm. Okay?"
"Sounds good to me."
Upstairs, they waited briefly while Director Shepard finished a phone call. It was a brief visit—Shepard shook hands with the Metro detective, welcoming him to NCIS, and assured him that she hoped the formal liaison between the two agencies would prove effective in resolving the two cases speedily.
As the two investigators retraced their path down the stairs, DiNozzo raised his eyebrow quizzically and gave Delbart a conspiratorial smile.
Delbart understood exactly what he was being asked for—"Bit of a bitch on wheels, is she?" DiNozzo answered his question with a laugh.
They made their way to the morgue, where Dr. Mallard and Palmer were bent over the body of the unfortunate petty officer. They nodded toward Delbart, acknowledging his presence.
"What can you tell us, Ducky," DiNozzo asked.
Ducky began his report." I can assure you that Ms. Adamovsky was in excellent physical condition and generally very healthy. If she had not been shot, she probably would have lived to a ripe old age."
"Anything else at all?"
"Both the entry and the exit wounds indicate a small caliber bullet, but we'll have to wait for Abigail to extract it from the mattress before coming to any other conclusions," the doctor responded. "As we know from finding it in the mattress, it probably went through the brain at reasonably high velocity without causing much other damage. Just enough, though, to kill the victim instantly."
Having learned nothing they didn't already know, the detectives proceeded to the lab, where DiNozzo introduced his companion to Abby. He could see the look of speculation in Delbart's eyes as he observed the goth chick before him. After the introduction, though, Abby whipped around with a flip of her extremely short skirt, which Delbart obviously appreciated. She put up the ballistics findings on the plasma screen.
"Generic .22 calibre slug," she announced. "No brand name. The markings are distinctive, but I need to analyze the gun itself."
"We don't have the weapon," DiNozzo told her. "Could it be a Saturday night special?"
"Good boy," she said, turning to smile at him. "I had that very thought. Now just go out and find it."
"Have you found anything else on the other forensic evidence.?"
"LOTS of fingerprints from the apartment," she said. "but, other than those of the vic and her Navy friends, I haven't been able to find any matches in any database. The good detective's people already sent over copies of all the ones they got at the first scene; nothing there either. We have some more to get, I gather?"
"Yeah" DiNozzo said with a sigh. "We need to talk with her roommate and her running partner, see who else might have been in the apartment."
Delbart commented, "They probably won't tell us anything. If someone is going around killing folks according to some sort of plan, he's probably also planned to wear gloves. Especially since Algawid's scene was clean too."
DiNozzo agreed. "But we'll keep trying. Ya never know."
He turned back to the forensics expert. "Anything on the Bible pages?"
"They're from the same copy," she told them. "You know, of course, that, although the paper for bibles is made to be very thin, it's also made to last for a long time. I can tell you this particular copy has been around for a while because of the color of the pages—very slightly yellowed Other than that, it's not special in any way. The two pages are consecutive—number 13-14 and 15-16. It's Genesis, beginning in the middle of Chapter 15 through 19. The story of Abram becoming Abraham. Oh, and it's King James version."
"Are you going to be able to identify it? Could it have been one of the Bibles in use at the soup kitchen Homer Algawid patronized?"
"Possibly, if I could get a copy from them to compare."
"I'll see what I can do." Delbart assured her, pulling out his notebook and writing a note to himself.
DiNozzo went on. "Have you been able to identify any fingerprints on the pages?"
"Oh, there are fingerprints galore," she told him. "Unfortunately, it seems someone wiped them pretty thoroughly before leaving them with the victims, and all that's left are blurry, very faint impressions."
DiNozzo and Delbart exchanged grimaces of disappointment.
"I will do my best to enhance them," said Abby," but I'm not going to make any promises."
DiNozzo thanked Abby, promising her at least one more Caf-Pow! before the end of the day. To Delbart he suggested they return to his desk for the remainder of their discussion.
Once seated at DiNozzo's desk, Delbart nodded at Ziva.
"What's her story?" he wanted to know.
"She's Israeli," DiNozzo said. "An agent of Mossad."
Delbart's eyebrows flew up. "What's she doing here?"
"Sometimes I wonder that myself. She was apparently sent here to learn our investigative techniques. She's supposedly very good at counter-terrorism and assassination and torturing suspects to get information, if you believe everything she says."
"Do you?"
"Believe her? I've seen her in action, and she is very good at getting information from people who don't want to give it. She's also a fast learner."
Delbart voiced his opinion. "Interesting bunch of women you got here. The bitch, the sadistic Israeli, and the weirdo in the lab."
"Don't let their appearances fool you," DiNozzo told him with a grin. "The director's a very experienced agent, the Israeli is a trained assassin, and the weirdo is probably the smartest person in the building."
"Mmph" was the other man's only comment.
"You know," DiNozzo continued, bringing the conversation back to business. "There's something that's puzzling me."
"About the case?"
"Yeah."
"Only one thing?"
"Well, yeah, the whole case really. But what strikes me is that apparently the killer or killers used a very sharp knife for the first killing and then resorted to a Saturday night special for the next one. What kind of message is he trying to send by using two different types of weapon? Or is it a message? Is he maybe just trying to keep us guessing? And where are those weapons?"
"And what about the Bible pages?" Delbart commented. "What do they signify?"
"What about the victims? There doesn't seem to be any apparent connection between them? Is there some method for selecting them, or were they just random folks whose paths crossed that of the killer?"
"There's still a lot of evidence to be processed," Delbart pointed out. "In fact, I think I'll head back to my office for now. I'll check in with you in the morning at the latest."
"Right," DiNozzo replied. "Thanks for coming over."
After seeing the detective to the elevator, DiNozzo returned to his desk. Abby had sent the ballistics report to his computer, which he studied that for a while, making notes on that and various other pieces of information. Looking at the time on the computer screen, he discovered that he'd been with Delbart a lot longer than he realized—it was almost 5:00 p.m. He wasn't getting anywhere.
"You guys got anything that can't wait?" he asked David and McGee. "If you don't, let's call it a day and come back tomorrow with some fresh ideas."
They all left with alacrity.
When he got home, Tony grabbed a beer from the fridge and a TV dinner from the freezer. While he waited for the dinner to heat up, he watched the news on TV. He'd noticed the camera crew at the scene earlier that morning, but had managed to avoid being interviewed by them. Instead, Johnny Delbart stood stolidly in front of the camera, reciting the facts they had known at that time and asking for members of the public to come forward if they had any information on either murder. As the piece finished, Tony nodded with approval. Delbart might look like a frump, but he was good at his job, no doubt about it, and Tony was glad they were working the case together.
When the microwave dinged, Tony took the hot TV dinner into his living room. Once the tray was empty, he looked through the TV listings to see if there any good movies being shown that evening. Nothing. He'd already watched all his DVDs at least once and wasn't really interested in rerunning anything. He picked up the most recent issue of Gentleman's Quarterly from the coffee table to glance through it, but nothing there held his interest either. Sports Illustrated likewise failed to satisfy. He knew it was going to be a bad night.
Once again he picked up the remote for the TV and began to channel surf. Several hours later, he sighed and gave up. In bed, though, he tossed and turned. Occasionally he dropped into a restless doze, but then the vision of the two beautiful, dark-haired women with holes in their foreheads would wake him up.
Once, when he woke up, he could have sworn that Kate was standing beside his bed, watching him. He flopped over onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillow with a loud groan. "Kate, dammit, leave me alone. I need some sleep."
The next thing he knew, the alarm went off. He woke almost in a panic, his heart racing and his hand automatically reaching out for a gun. When he realized it was just 5:00 in the morning and he needed to get moving, he calmed down. He was sorely tempted to try to grab a few more minutes of sleep, but years of discipline pulled him out of bed. He padded over to the window, only to see a leaden gray sky that was oozing drizzle.
He pulled on sweat pants and a hooded sweatshirt and headed out. Many people used their morning runs to contemplate the things they needed to accomplish during the coming day, but for Tony, the run was a Zen experience. His mind emptied so that he could concentrate only on putting one foot in front of the other.
Half an hour later, he returned home, slightly sweaty in spite of the chill but with his head cleared of the visions that had disturbed his sleep. A hot shower warmed him, and once dressed, he went to the kitchen where the automatic coffeemaker had done its job. He dropped a Pop-Tart into the toaster and ate his breakfast standing over the sink.
He was just ready to put on his Burberry raincoat and take off for work when his cell rang.
"DiNozzo."
"Morning, Tony, it's Johnny Delbart. We just found another one."
Chapter End Notes:
I forgot to mention that there will be some offensive language coming up in a future chapter.