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"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music."
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Tony practically fell through the door to Abby's lab. The floor was polished to a high shine, and Italian loafers, while being clearly superior footwear, didn't have the best grip. In the cage in the back of his mind he heard the clicking sound his claws would make, all that coiled muscle scrabbling for grip, instead of the slip and slide of thin rubber soles on linoleum. He crashed to a stop by the stereo, and started searching through the stacks of cd's frantically.
"Uh...Tony?" Abby eyed him warily. "What are you doing?"
"We have been stupid, Abby," he announced, not looking up from his search. "Stupid! You and me. I'm disappointed in us. It's so. Fucking. OBVIOUS!" His fingers closed on the right cd, finally, and the cover, as always, made him think merry psychotic late-night expressionistic art class christmas to you, too, and it really was a bad cover, because the record was summer nights and sticky cloying heat to him, not suffocating snow and the kind of moon people used to put unwanted children out under in the hopes that something like him would come along, and he fumbled with the disc, barely getting it in the tray.
"Tony?" He could smell Abby's confusion, could certainly feel it in the tentative touch to his shoulder. "Tony, not to be an alarmist or anything but you're acting really hinky. Really. And you're doing this odd flickering thing with your eyes." Of course he was. Eye flickering was to be expected. The wolf was excited; it hated botched hunts, and now that he had finally, finally found a new trail, it enthusiastically filled his mind with dreams of the chase, of him in silent pursuit, of his teeth sinking deep, breaking skin and tearing muscle, blood spilling rich and coppery into his mouth, of him shaking his head violently and then pulling. his prey. down... And damn if that wasn't the sweetest image he had seen in a long time. His teeth itched.
On the other hand the trail was one he should have smelled from moment one, and he was quite pissed off at himself for missing it, for not from the start making the connection that could have, maybe, possibly, helped save these people - no, that wasn't quite right - could have, maybe, possibly, led him closer to his prey. In the end it amounted to the same thing but... Stuck between cold and calm anger and breathless bubbly giddiness, this dualistic nature thing he had going didn't seem to be getting much easier to handle as the years went by. He felt like a can of Coke that someone had shaken vigorously. If he'd been changed he'd probably have jumped around excitedly and yipped. In a very menacing and macho way, of course. He wasn't a poodle.
He was bloody well going to save the next one. And then, he was going to bite something.
"Shh." He pressed play, then fast-forwarded track 01 three minutes and fifty-five seconds. If his hands were shaking slightly from tension – well, Abby seemed unlikely to notice so he wouldn't worry about it. "Listen."
'Joy had been bound with electrical tape
In her mouth a gag
She'd been stabbed repeatedly and stuffed
Into a sleeping bag...'
As Nick Cave droned out a perfect description of the first crime scene, Abby's eyes widened. "Oh my god."
'...Quotes John Milton on the walls in the victim's blood
The police are investigating at tremendous cost
In my house he wrote "his red right hand"
That, I'm told, is from Paradise Lost...'
Tony pressed next-next-next for the words that had bashed him over the head up in the bull pen.
'...Through the night, through the night
The wind lashed and it whipped me
When I got home my creature
Was no longer with me
Somewhere she lies, this lovely creature
Beneath the slow drifting sands
With her hair full of ribbons
And green gloves on her hands'
Abby was practically vibrating. "Oh. My. God." Tony pressed next.
'...On the third day he took me to the river
He showed me the roses, and we kissed
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he knelt above me with a rock in his fist
On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
She lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief
And I kissed her goodbye, said "All beauty must die"
And I leant down and planted a rose between her teeth...'
"Ohmygod!"
"That about sums it up, yeah," Tony said with forced nonchalance.
"But...but...but..." Abby looked outraged. "...but I LOVE this album!"
So did he.
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Lottie had never learned to type properly. There had been no need. As the world became digitalized and everything you could possibly need was just a press of a button away, she had evolved a rather fast three finger typing technique, however.
The J-key was stuck. She had to hit it harder than the others, throwing her rhythm off. There were crumbs under it, she could hear them crunch. Who eats in a library, anyway? Peasants.
#Alright, Mary. We'll pick you up at the bus station. It will be marvellous to finally meet you.#
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"You think that the killer is committing these murders because of a cd?" Ziva was sceptical. Tony sighed. He had realized, after observing her closely for quite some time, (Assess potential threats carefully, his sire's voice lectured), that in her heart of hearts, Ziva wanted all murders to be devious plots and grand political intrigue, for power or money. Freedom-fighting or terrorism, depending on from which side you looked at it. In Ziva's ideal world, nobody killed for love, or jealousy, or petty spite, or because they were feeling pissy that morning and they got the wrong order at Starbucks, or because they were just plain insane. It was innocent, in a way, to want to believe that it took a cause to kill someone, be that cause good or bad. He supposed it would make it easier for her, easier to reconcile herself with the things she had had to do for her country.
It was also kind of annoying.
He wondered what statement her twisted little spy-mind secretly thought these murders were supposed to make. For his part, he was going with the rabid fangirl angle. Or fanboy. Or both. He thought of the couple Josie had described – the ‘quite shapely' (which in Josie-speak translated to ‘built like Bettie Page') girl, and the shy boy with the emo hair.
"Well, the lyrics do describe all our crime scenes in detail. I think it's fairly safe to say they have some relevance to the case. Of course, it could all be just a happy coincidence." Sarcasm may well be the lowest form of wit, but it was damn satisfying.
"'There's no such thing as coincidence'," Abby said, in her best Gibbsian impression, and then smiled hugely and innocently at Gibbs himself, who raised a sardonic eyebrow. That's my girl! You tell them. Ziva scoffed. McGee shifted uncomfortably, unable to decide which woman to back up.
"So," Gibbs spoke up, ending any further argument before it could start. "Next song, DiNozzo?"
" I'm not sure," he admitted. "They haven't been in order, so far. My best guess is lucky number seven."
"Why?"
"Well...the songs used up until now have all been ones with just one or a few victims. Which is something to be thankful for, because in quite a few of these songs there's literally droves of people keeling over. I don't even want to think about the killer reenacting ‘O'Malley's Bar'." He shuddered. Abby nodded empathically in agreement. "If they keep to the pattern, we're down to three songs that aren't massacres. Two of them have only one victim. All the victims so far have been female. Only one of those songs is about a female. Number seven." The logic held. But killers weren't always logical, were they? Yet now that he'd reasoned it out out loud, he felt sure he was right.
"Alright. Best lead we've got so far. And the lyrics to song number seven?"
"'They found Mary Bellows, cuffed to the bed, a rag in her mouth, and a bullet in her head. Oh poor Mary Bellows.'"
"Lovely. I don't suppose it says where the bed in question is going to be?" Gibbs was deceptively calm. It made Ziva and McGee visibly nervous, but Tony knew he was just waiting to see exactly where Tony's instincts would lead them, before using that to come to his own conclusions, cock his gun and launch off like a bat out of hell. Gibbs trusted him on things like this. It was why he'd been hired in the first place, after all.
"'She checked into a cheap little place...' The story goes, Mary Bellows is a poor young girl from Arkansas, who packs up her life and goes to see the ocean and hopefully find a better life for herself. On the way there, she meets a man. When they arrive, he helps her in with her suitcase and she goes ‘I'm a good girl sir, she said to him, I couldn't possibly permit you in' but then later, she gets homesick and lonely and unlocks the front door hoping maybe he'll come, and then...well. Bang." Tony explained. "Nothing more detailed than that."
"Well, that was helpful. Not. And I can't believe you know the lyrics by heart," McGee said. "I don't see why anyone wants to listen to it. It's sick." Abby looked insulted, but Tony beat her to the reply.
"Says Mr. Big-Time-Thriller-Writer. I'll have you know that murder ballads are a very old folk tradition. Goes back hundreds of years. Picked up by the blues singers later. Come to a glorious conclusion with a crappy cover, here. If you use this for your next book I want credit for explaining it to you."
"I've told you, I don't use things from real life!"
"Uh-huh."
"DiNozzo! McGee!"
"McGee is right, Gibbs," Ziva interjected, shooting Tony a triumphant look. "It's not helpful. There are hundreds of ‘cheap little places'-" you could hear the quotation marks "-in DC alone."
There was a ding! from Abby's computer. She spun around and bounced over to it. "And the marvellous Abby has done it again! Or, rather, Bertha did. With the help of AFIS. But I pressed the button!" And with that, she pressed another button, making a file pop up on the plasma. "Miss Lovely Creature has a name!"
Amanda Jennings wasn't wearing quite as much make-up on her driver's license photo as she had done when she died, but she was still mainly green. The dreads were just black, but held back with a green scarf, and he guessed the green ones were for the weekend, when she didn't need to normalize herself for work. She was twenty three years old, just like Ducky had guessed.
"Why's she in the system?"
"She was an animal rights activist," Abby answered promptly. "Broke into a mink farm and let loose hundreds of them, it says." She brought up the part of the file that corroborated her words.
"What's her Navy connection?" Tony asked.
"Uh...from her file, I can't see one. If there is one, it's not official." She bit her lip. "People like her generally aren't too fond of the military, though, any branch of it...I can't really see her being chummy with a jarhead."
He could almost see the shape of it, now. He still didn't see the great overhanging why, but he could see small whys, leading him forward bit by bit. He had been wondering about the lovely creature, about Amanda Jennings, why she was buried in a small sand box on a Navy base when there were long beaches and big sandpits elsewhere that would match the lyrics much better – it did say desert after all – and now, now he knew. He had no proof of course, other than his gut...but then, his gut was just as reliable as that belonging to Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
"I think we can narrow down those cheap little places a bit," he said slowly, making Gibbs look at him intently. If there is no Navy connection, then you make one. "Cheap little places on or very close to Naval bases. The person or persons responsible seem very determined to keep this a case for NCIS."
To be continued.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Tony explains it all. :P well. not all. but a fair bit.
Chapter End Notes:
i'm EVER so sorry to have kept you waiting so long. real life demanded a visit to my mother with the accompanying weddings to go to and siblings to corrupt...you know how it is. normally, this wouldn't have been a problem, because my mother DOES have a computer, albeit a rather old and crappy one. unfortunately, it decided that it would not open my .doc. it wouldn't open my .txt, either. it was just dastardly and evil and mean and BLEH. but now i have chapter ten for you. enjoy.
i still don't own either ncis or nick cave. and nobody's giving me any money, either.
i still don't own either ncis or nick cave. and nobody's giving me any money, either.