You trusted him and gave him your love
A love he proved unworthy of
Oh baby, oh baby all you've got to do
Is dry your eyes long enough to see
Baby, baby don't cry
Baby, baby here's why
Love is here standing by
Love is here standing by
Smokey Robinson
BABY DON'T CRY
Chapter 1: A Trip to Annapolis
On an ordinary morning at NCIS headquarters, the top investigative team was doing routine work. Because it had been several days since the team had had a new case, they had time to process clues and evidence from several open cases, write reports, and do any leftover cleanup work. They were working hard, concentrating without any of the usual cross-talk and banter they often indulged in.
Mossad Officer Ziva David, on temporary liaison assignment to NCIS, was writing reports from transcribed interrogation notes. At one side of her desk was the American Heritage Dictionary of Idiom, which Tony had given her as a present. Although she was touched by Tony's patient, continual correction of her lapses, it would be unfair to ask him every time she encountered a quirky phrase in the transcript of an interrogation of a suspect whose thick southern accent and colorful, slang-filled language almost completely defeated her ability to understand what he was saying. She was sincerely grateful for the dictionary and used it constantly
At another desk, NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee, his entire face pursed with concentration, stared intently at a monitor and clacked away on his keyboard, trying to ferret out damaged files from a group of disks retrieved from the apartment of a young petty officer who was suspected of being involved in a drug smuggling ring. It appeared to McGee the files had been deliberately damaged, but whoever had done so was apparently not computer literate enough to do a thorough job. This didn't mean that it was easy to restore the data.
The third desk was occupied by Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, who leaned back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, giving a telephone interview to a very young Naval Judge Advocate General about a case on which he was scheduled to testify at a court martial in several days' time. He had already met with her several times, which from his conversation seemed to entitle him to try to seduce her over the telephone, or at the very least make a date with her.
At the fourth desk sat Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the leader of the team. He was occupied with a sheaf of papers that contained almost nothing but numbers—his budget. He was struggling to find a way to justify the expenses he and his team had incurred on a recent joint investigation with the FBI. His director insisted that, because the FBI had primary jurisdiction in the matter, they should be bearing the bulk of the cost of the investigation. Gibbs agreed, but he was having some difficulty making the appropriate allocations.
The phone on Gibbs' desk rang suddenly, startling all four investigators. Gibbs answered, listened for several seconds, then hung up.
With relief evident in his voice, he looked up at his team and announced, "Time to go. We've got a case."
The other three agents jumped up with alacrity, thinking that any task, especially outside the building, would be better than having to do all this paperwork. DiNozzo uttered a hasty "Gotta go; talk to you later" to his JAG lieutenant, grabbed his backpack, and ran after Gibbs with his colleagues.
"Where're we going, boss?" he asked as they stepped into the elevator.
"Annapolis," replied McGee.
"Hey, a road trip," DiNozzo said with glee.
McGee and David exchanged rolled-eye glances that said it took so little to amuse him.
Down in the vehicle compound, they encountered Dr. Donald Mallard, the medical examiner, and his young assistant, Jimmy Palmer, loading up their van.
"What kind of mayhem are we investigating today, Jethro?" asked Dr. Mallard.
Gibbs replied, "A young woman was found dead in a motel room near the Naval Academy. The room was apparently rented by a sailor, which is why we were called instead of the local police."
McGee was assigned to drive the truck with DiNozzo riding shotgun, while Gibbs and David took an NCIS sedan.
DiNozzo spent a good part of the drive swearing gratitude that he was not riding in the sedan with two wild drivers, but still urging McGee to pick up the pace. The younger agent steadfastly refused, pointing out that Gibbs was not that far ahead of them because the mid-morning traffic was heavy and congested just enough that nobody, including Gibbs, could speed or weave in and out.
As they reached the motel, they saw that Gibbs and David had also just pulled up. The ME's van wasn't far behind. The team was met by an older man standing outside one of the rooms on the ground floor of the two-story building. He was wearing a white button-down shirt open at the collar and with the sleeves rolled up, topping dark brown dress slacks. He was at least as tall as Gibbs but considerably beefier; his face was lined; his salt-and-pepper hair—more pepper than salt—was cut short, military style
"Pete Woodley; I'm the owner," the man introduced himself, sticking out of a hand toward Gibbs, whom he accurately discerned was the guy in charge. As they shook, he squinted at Gibbs. "You a marine?"
"Gunnery sergeant. Now special agent Gibbs of NCIS," Gibbs confirmed.
"No shit," Woodley said with a broad smile. "A gunny? Me, too." Still grinning, Woodley continued to grip Gibbs' hand and reached over his other hand to take hold of his arm. "Good to see NCIS has the best on the case."
Gibbs allowed himself a smile in return and began introducing his team as he released the other man's hands.
"You wanna tell us what's going on?" he asked.
"Well, last night this guy came in, about eight o'clock, I think. I don't think he was a midshipman, just a seaman. He was wearing his whites, but he wasn't sporting any ranks or ratings. He was pretty young, and he looked scared or nervous, or maybe both. He said he just wanted a room for the night, was all, and he paid cash for it."
The motel keeper paused for a moment. "We get a lot of academy business, especially when families can come and visit at the Academy. Every motel in town is usually booked then, but nothing's going on right now, so we weren't too busy.
He swept his arm toward the façade of the building, inviting the team to inspect it. It wasn't bad; the paint was fresh, there were shrubs planted around the building, and window boxes sporting a cheerful array of plants. The parking lot was swept clean.
"So, anyway," Woodley went on, "I didn't see him again, but this morning, when my housekeeper was doing her rounds, she found something in the room. You wanna see it?"
"That would be good, gunny," Gibbs said with patience.
Woodley led them to the open room door, and slowly the team filed into the room. For a moment they stood without speaking, studying the scene.
"This is just the way my housekeeper found her," Woodley added.
The room itself was standard issue motel: not overly large, with slightly drab décor, and most of the space taken up by a double bed and a shelf-and-drawer unit attached to the wall with a mirror over it. The only window in the room was next to the door. The bed was still made, a flower-patterned spread still in place. The carpet was a dusty beige in color. In the middle of what little open floor space there was, they saw the naked body of a young woman.
The corpse was lying face down, with her head turned to her right. Her arms were splayed straight out at a slight angle to her torso, palms up, and her knees were drawn up under her hips. A white towel had been placed under her hips. It and the carpet beneath it were stained a deep brownish-red. Dried blood was smeared on the woman's pudenda, and it seemed obvious the blood on the towel and the carpet had spilled out of one of her lower bodily openings.
"Oh, dear," Dr. Mallard breathed. "I'd hoped never to see another sight such as this."
"What do you mean, Ducky?" asked Gibbs.
"Unless I miss my guess, Jethro," the ME answered, "this young woman died of a botched abortion."
The heads of everyone in the room turned to him in surprise, and for a moment, no one spoke.
David was the first one to say something. "I thought abortion is legal in this country."
"It is," Ducky said. "But sometimes, for various reasons, women who want abortions choose not to go to a legal clinic, where they'll get compassionate, competent, *legal* medical care." He looked at the victim's body sorrowfully. "It looks as though something like that happened here."
"I'm not running an abortion mill here," Mr. Woodley protested.
"I'm sure you're not, Mr. Woodley," Dr. Mallard responded. His voice hardened. "But a young woman is dead in suspicious circumstances, and we will be investigating thoroughly."
The rest of the team had been staring at the body almost as if in a trance. They had all seen much worse sights than this, but somehow, after Dr. Mallard's speculation, they had been caught up by something approaching amazement. Gibbs glanced at each of them quickly. He would never admit it, but he was proud of them. Despite all the terrible sights they had seen in their work, they still had the capacity to be horrified by the lengths to which human beings could go to inflict mayhem on other humans.
It was time to put philosophy aside, though, and begin the investigation. "All right, then," Gibbs ordered briskly. "Mr. Woodley, let's go outside and talk. David, with me. McGee, tag and bag. DiNozzo, shoot and sketch."
Once more out in the parking lot, Gibbs told Mr. Woodley that the team needed to know who else had been staying at the motel that night, how many might still be in residence, and where the housekeeper was. Woodley led Gibbs and David to the office, where he gave them the guest register. Gibbs told David to make a copy of the register page showing last night's guests and then go find as many of them as might still be in residence and interview them. He also asked Woodley for the pen guests had used to sign the register, which he dropped into a plastic evidence bag, even though he knew his talented forensic scientist, Abby Scuito, probably would not be able to find many clear fingerprints except for those of the final guest to register. He also told Woodley that the investigators would need to remove a substantial portion of the carpet in Room 112.
Woodley sighed and said, "Not a problem, I got to replace it anyway, if I'm gonna use that room again."
Woodley led Gibbs into the living quarters behind the office, where they found two women sitting on a sofa, one holding the other. The second woman's face was streaked with tears, and she was hiccupping as if she had been sobbing hard for a long while and was only now catching her breath. Mr. Woodley introduced the first woman as his wife, who looked like a blonde, female version of Woodley himself, and the obviously distressed woman as Mrs. Ribeiro, the housekeeper. Both women were dressed in casual slacks and tops.
Gibbs pulled a chair up to the sofa in front of Mrs. Ribeiro.
"Mrs. Ribeiro," he said softly, taking one of her hands in his, "my name is Jethro Gibbs. I'm a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, and I need to ask you a couple of questions about what just happened. Are you going to be able to answer my questions now, or should we wait a while?"
For a moment Mrs. Ribeiro studied his hand on hers. She looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and still welling with tears. She hiccupped again but apologized in an almost inaudible voice. "Sorry. I can talk now."
Gibbs was not surprised to hear that she had an accent, slightly Spanish, he thought. She was in her thirties, a woman handsome rather than beautiful, with soft black eyes and black hair pulled severely into a large bun at the back of her neck. Her hands were coarse and reddened, showing the effects of the hard work she did.
"If you're not up to it right now," Gibbs reiterated, "we can wait."
"No, it's all right," she replied. "I would just as soon do it now."
"All right." Gibbs pulled his hand away and took a PDA out of his NCIS jacket pocket.
"What time did you arrive this morning?"
"It was six thirty," she replied. "I come plenty early to put supplies on my cart and get ready. Then I have a cup of coffee while I wait for someone to check out. As soon as there is a room open, I go into it and start cleaning."
"Do you check the guest register?" Gibbs asked her.
"Yes, I take it with me on the cart," Mrs. Ribeiro answered. "At nine o'clock I go around and knock on the doors. Sometimes people leave and I don't know about it. So I check, you know?"
She looked down at her hands and gave a shuddering half sigh, half sob.
"So I knocked on the door of Room 112," she went on. "I don't hear anything. So I took my key and opened the door. And there she was."
She looked up again at Gibbs, her face crumpling with the memory of the dreadful sight. "I didn't scream," she said as if it were a matter of pride not to have reacted. "But I had trouble breathing. So I go to Mr. Woodley and he makes me sit down. And he goes to see. And when he comes back, he calls somebody."
"Yeah," confirmed Woodley. "I called you ‘cause the kid that registered for the room was Navy, you know."
Gibbs nodded. "Mrs. Ribeiro, at any time while you were doing your rounds this morning, did you see anyone else come in or out of that room?"
"No, sir." By now she was wringing her hands, and her face had taken on an anxious expression. "Mr. Agent, am I in trouble?"
"Why would you be in trouble?"
"I'm an immigrant," the woman said in almost a whisper.
Mrs. Woodley spoke up at this point. "She has her green card. We're very careful about that."
Gibbs looked at Mrs. Ribeiro with something akin to sympathy. "Mrs. Ribeiro, if all you did was find the body, you are not in trouble. In fact, if you had found the body and not reported it, you would have been in a lot of trouble."
Mrs. Ribeiro relaxed slightly and said, "Thank you, sir."
Gibbs went on. "Mrs. Woodley, did you see or hear anything in or around that room after it was occupied last night?"
"No, Agent Gibbs," she replied. "We usually go to bed around 11:30 at night, after the late news, and if someone comes in for a room after that, Pete always gets up to register them."
"And no one registered last night after eleven," Pete added, "and I didn't see or hear anything either."
"All right," Gibbs told them. "We're going to need to get fingerprint samples from each of you. My agents have a field kit for that, and they'll be around shortly. In the meantime, keep yourselves available if we have any more questions for you, but that's all for right now."
Pete said, "I'm gonna send Mrs. Ribeiro home, and me and the wife'll clean the rest of the rooms." He put his hand on Mrs. Ribeiro's shoulder. "That all right, Lena? Hell, I'll drive you home myself."
Gibbs nodded to the group to indicate he agreed with the plan. "I'll need your address and telephone number," he told Mrs. Ribeiro." He turned to Woodley. "If you want to continue renting out other rooms today, that's up to you, but 112 is a crime scene now, and it will be taped off."
"Do what you gotta do, Gunny," Woodley answered.
Back in the parking lot, Gibbs encountered David, who had finished her interviews as well. "A total of eight rooms out of twenty were rented last night," she reported, consulting the copy of the register. "Five rooms are already vacant. I talked to the people in the two other rooms, but nobody heard or saw anything. None of the rented rooms were adjacent to each other, and there was no one in the one above Room 112, so it's unlikely that, even if there had been a disturbance there, anyone would have heard it. One couple went out to dinner at 11:00 o'clock and got back to the room a little after twelve. They said they didn't see any cars parked near Room 112. I got addresses and phone numbers from them in case we have any other questions, and the register lists the addresses and phone numbers of the ones who left already."
Gibbs nodded. "Did you say there was no car parked outside Room 112 after midnight?"
"That's right." Ziva checked her notes.
"Let me see the guest register," he asked. Glancing at it, he noted that the sailor who had registered for Room 112 had given his name as Joe Smith and indicated he was driving a 1992 Nissan but neglected to write down the plate number.
"Come with me." Gibbs said to Ziva, striding back to the living quarters, where he found Mr. and Mrs. Woodley helping Mrs. Ribeiro get ready to go home.
"Mr. Woodley, when that sailor checked in, did you see a car?"
Woodley looked back at him with wide eyes. "Well, yeah, it was parked in the driveway right out there."
"Did you see anyone else in the car?"
Woodley squinted in thought for a moment. "I don't remember for sure. Maybe."
"Did you happen to notice what kind of car it was and what the license plate was?"
"No," Woodley said emphatically. "They're supposed to write that information down in the register."
Gibbs spoke to Ziva. "Get fingerprints from these people before Mrs. Ribeiro leaves."
Gibbs returned to the parking lot, observing that the ME van was now pulled up to the door of the unit, and Ducky and Jimmy were in the process of moving the loaded gurney out the door.
"Anything yet?" Gibbs inquired of Dr. Mallard.
"Nothing substantial, except that a quick check of rigor and the liver temperature indicates that death occurred about 10:30 last night. I will, of course, be able to tell you more once we get her home and begin the autopsy. She is quite pale, and I suspect she lost a substantial portion of her life's blood."
Gibbs stepped into Room 112 to find DiNozzo and McGee still working on physical evidence.
"Look at this, boss," DiNozzo said, holding up several evidence bags full of bloodied towels. "I found these in the bathroom. It looks like someone tried to stop the bleeding but couldn't."
Gibbs' jaw tightened involuntarily. "Any speculation, DiNozzo?"
"Well, if it was an abortion, and for some reason she couldn't go to a clinic, like Ducky said, someone brought her here and tried to do it, probably without knowing what they were doing. And of course it went bad, and when whoever saw that she was dying or dead, they took off."
"Any thoughts on why she couldn't or wouldn't go to a clinic?"
"A couple of possibilities. Maybe she didn't want anyone she knew to find out she was pregnant. Or maybe she felt she couldn't afford to use a clinic. I don't know exactly what an abortion costs now, but I assume it's pretty expensive."
"All right," Gibbs said. "Cut samples of the bloody carpet from different spots. It's unlikely there's anyone else's blood on it, but let's check it anyway. Are you going to be done soon?"
"Couple more minutes, boss," McGee replied from the bathroom.
"All right, let's get back to the office and start acting like investigators."
"On it, boss," two voices responded simultaneously.
Back at NCIS the team deposited their evidence in the lab with Abby and returned to the bullpen. Ordering Ziva to begin trying to reach the other motel guests, Gibbs took off for the morgue to observe the beginning of the autopsy. The other three agents were quiet for the most part, only occasionally making brief comments about the case in between Ziva's phone calls.
Finally, DiNozzo looked at McGee and asked him, "You ever go through an abortion?"
McGee managed an indignant look. "I'm not female, Tony, just in case you hadn't noticed."
"No, I mean, have you ever knocked someone up so they had to have an abortion?"
"No, Tony, I have never ‘knocked anyone up' who needed an abortion." The quotation marks were clearly audible in his voice. After a moment, he returned the question. "How about you? You ever had to help someone get an abortion?"
Tony took the time to lean back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. His face had a serious, thoughtful expression. "Yeah, when I was in college," he answered. "Well, I think so. Maybe."
"What do you mean?" McGee pressed.
"Well, this girl I'd been dating came to me and said she was pregnant and it was mine. I wasn't so sure about that because I knew she dated a lot of guys, and we hadn't been together for a while. It could've been anybody's, you know? But she asked me for help, and I decided to do it anyway, because I wasn't sure and it could've been mine."
"What happened?" McGee asked.
Tony glanced at McGee. "I had to get the money from my dad. I was really scared. I thought he'd ream my butt six ways from Sunday, but instead he acted like he was almost proud of me. That was unusual. He never acted like he was proud of me before, even when I was voted MVP of our championship team. I guess maybe he thought it proved I could provide him with more little DiNozzos and that made him happy.
"Anyway, when I got the money, I told Annette to set up the appointment and that I would go with her." He paused, remembering. "We were at the clinic for almost four hours. They took her somewhere else and left me sitting in the waiting room. After a while, this woman came and took me into another room and she talked to me about how I felt about the whole thing. She was really nice, but I was kinda numb ‘cause I just wasn't sure."
Tony was quiet for a moment, finally swinging his legs off his desk. "Anyway, I hadn't thought about it in years. Just another adolescent escapade." Flashing his trademarked goofball grin, he leaned over to address Officer David.
"How about you, Ziva? You ever have an abortion?"
To the surprise of both men, she replied, "Yes, two, actually."
DiNozzo and McGee exchanged surprised glances. DiNozzo asked, "Anything you'd care to talk about?"
She shrugged. "Not much to tell. There are people in Israel who I guess you could consider—what is the term?—pro-life, just like here, and they try to restrict it. A woman who wants an abortion has to get approval from two doctors, but it's usually pretty easy. I was sixteen when I had my first one, which made it easier to justify. Anyone under age 18 usually gets approval."
McGee asked, "And the second?"
"It was in the line of duty," she responded shortly.
Again the two men looked at each other. "The line of duty?" DiNozzo asked.
"Yes," she said. "I was ordered to seduce someone suspected of treason."
"You had sex for your job?" McGee's eyes were round with amazement.
Ziva smiled slightly. "McGee, it's what spies do. Whatever's necessary to accomplish the mission."
Neither DiNozzo or McGee knew whether to be impressed or disgusted by Ziva's devotion to Mossad's version of spycraft. They had no time to speculate further, as DiNozzo's phone rang. After a brief conversation, he hung up and turned to his colleagues. "That was Gibbs. He wants us down in the lab. We're starting to get some results."
As they trooped into the lab, Abby the lab tech spared them a brief glance and a breezy "Hi, guys."
"What've you got, Abs?" asked Gibbs.
Abby took a sip of her CafPow! before beginning the recital of findings. "Well, for starters, we now know that the victim's name is Midshipman Prissy Newman. She's a second-classman at the academy, same as junior year of college." Abby pulled up the cadet's ID photo and fingerprints on the plasma screen. "There wasn't much blood left in her body, but the duckman got enough to do a blood pregnancy test, and she was definitely pregnant, in about the 13th to the 15th week"
"Anything else?" Gibbs asked her.
"I've got lots of fingerprints from the room, most of which appear to be Mrs. Ribeiro's, but there's some others that I haven't identified yet, including the ones on the pen from the guest register. I'll get back to you on those."
"Soon, Abs," ordered Gibbs. "All right, let's go see what Ducky has."
Once in Autopsy, the team found Ducky and his assistant Jimmy bent over the victim's body.
"Ah, Jethro," Ducky said, looking up. "Did you talk to Abby?"
"Yeah," replied Gibbs. "She told us the victim was about 13 to 15 weeks pregnant."
"Yes," Ducky continued. "I did a manual examination of Cadet Newman's uterus. Its size is consistent with the hormonal age. There is one thing you will be interested in."
He broke off to examine a photograph placed on the light box. "I also did an ultrasound of her uterus, just to verify its condition. Whoever attempted the abortion was not terribly efficient. Most of the fetus is still intact."
Dr. Mallard pointed to the ultrasound photograph as the team gathered around it. "Here is the fetus's head and here is its rump. The measurement of the distance between those two features is consistent with the pregnancy test and the pelvic exam—about 14 weeks' gestation."
Dr. Mallard had relayed his information in a neutral tone of voice, but now his face began to flush as he expressed his feelings.
"When done by a competent practitioner, abortion is one of the safest of all medical procedures. It's not even necessary for a medical doctor to perform it. A well-trained medical assistant is more than capable of handling it. It's not even true surgery, with incisions and stitches, although it is considered surgery because instruments are placed in the woman's body.
"There are risks involved, however, as there are with any medical treatment of any kind. One risk is that in the hands of someone who doesn't know what he's doing, an instrument can be put through the uterine wall. We call that a perforation. The seriousness of it depends on exactly what portion of the uterine wall is perforated and how deeply. It used to be a very common cause of serious injury or death in the days when abortion was illegal in this country and women were forced to resort to hacks and quacks to have abortions.
"I haven't removed the uterus yet to examine it closely, but I believe that it has been perforated near one of the blood vessels. Whoever attempted this abortion not only didn't know how to accomplish the procedure itself in a safe manner, but also didn't know what to do to deal with the problem when it occurred."
Ducky's face was bright red with indignation by now. He paused in his lecture, taking off his glasses and wiping them. "Whoever did this," he concluded, looking around at the team, "is guilty of nothing less than manslaughter and possibly negligent homicide. It might even be possible to call this homicide in the first degree.
"There's another consideration, and that is, while an abortion can be performed at any time during pregnancy, the vast majority of legal abortions are completed in the first trimester."
"What's a trimester?" McGee asked.
"Well," Dr. Mallard continued, "you all know that normal pregnancies last for approximately nine months. Pregnancy is divided into three time periods, called trimesters, each of which lasts 12 weeks, or three months. The first trimester, obviously, ends with the 12th week, the second trimester is from week 13 through week 24, and so on. Obstetricians begin counting the pregnancy from the first day of the woman's last menstrual period, which, if her cycles are regular, is usually 14 days before the day of conception."
Although Ducky's lecture was becoming lengthy, the team was fascinated and, besides, it was pertinent to the case. No one was ready to cut him off.
"We've determined that the cadet's pregnancy was in the 14th week, or near the beginning of her second trimester. Most people who perform abortions usually don't go any further than the first trimester. Once the second trimester begins and the fetus has been growing larger, the procedure naturally becomes a little more risky, and some different techniques are required to accomplish it."
Ducky's recitation had become a little more calm, but now he began to become agitated again. "Even though a first-trimester abortion is safe, imagine that someone who doesn't know what they're doing to begin with tries to perform it in the second trimester."
His face twisted into something resembling rage. "It's sheer butchery," he almost shouted.
"Don't worry, Duck," Gibbs said quietly. "We'll find out who's responsible."
Story Notes:
!!!WARNING!!! The subject of this story is very controversial, and some readers may be uncomfortable with it. Remember--I'm not forcing you to read it.
The photo that inspired this story can be at
http://www.lifeandlibertyforwomen.org/abortion_pictorial.html
The story came before the song.
Author's Chapter Notes:
The team investigates a disturbing death.
Chapter End Notes:
!!!WARNING!!! The subject of this story is very controversial, and some readers may be uncomfortable with it. Remember--I'm not forcing you to read it.
The photo that inspired this story can be at
http://www.lifeandlibertyforwomen.org/abortion_pictorial.html
The story came before the song.
Usual disclaimers
The photo that inspired this story can be at
http://www.lifeandlibertyforwomen.org/abortion_pictorial.html
The story came before the song.
Usual disclaimers