Mission #41: Let There Be Blood, part one
The lost daughter and wife returns.
A/N: Protectors of the Plot Continuum was founded by Jay and Acacia. Excerpts in italics taken from Let there be Blood by LaurenWozzie.
-oOo-
"Why are we here?"
Allison gave her partner a puzzled look. "Isn't that supposed to be my question?"
"This is NCIS." Tasmin waved her arm at the open plan office. "That's an organisation mostly made up of civilians. We deal with military based fandoms."
"And 80s based," Allison muttered. "Doesn't the N stand for Naval? That's probably military enough for Upstairs to send us here."
"That's probably it. So what kind of Sue have we got?"
"Daughter, wife, best friend."
"You don't know yet?"
"No, she's all three according to the intelligence report."
Tasmin rolled her eyes. "Great, an overachiever."
"And presumed dead at the moment."
Tasmin sighed loudly and hung her head. "This job just doesn't get any easier over time."
Tony walked in with coffee in one hand and his bag over his shoulder. He tried to avoid his colleagues, but they were having none of it.
“What’s the matter Tony you get up on the wrong side of someone else’s bed this morning?” She wondered with a smug grin on her face.
"I don't know what's more painful: the complete lack of commas in that sentence, or the subtle character bashing." Tasmin shivered.
"You know this canon? Enough to know this character was portrayed unfairly?" Allison pointed at Kate.
"I have a passing knowledge."
"And you wonder why we are sent into this fandom?"
"Well, if we could possibly be sent into any fandom I have a passing knowledge for, I'd be in Floaters. Don't know where you'd be, though."
Allison made a small cross-sign with her fingers and quickly turned her attention back to the characters.
Gibbs walked in, stole Tony's coffee and revealed the latter man had an ex-wife.
“Wait, you had a wife?” Kate laughed thinking to herself that this must be some type of joke. “Tell me was she blind or just stupid to have married you?”
"Very, very out of character. I think she could have joked about drunk and a Vegas wedding. I don't think she would have said blind. Blind is not the same as stupid."
"I'll make a note of it," Allison said and fished her notepad and pen from her jacket pocket.
Kate continued to yank Tony's chain. He yelled at her to stop it and then stormed out, leaving a frozen and scared Kate behind.
"I guess Kate is not this Sue's favourite character," Tasmin said. "She's a former secret agent. They don't freeze up like that."
"Character bashing and out-of-characterness."
Gibbs set his coffee down and went after Tony. McGee saw a tear escape Kate's eye and explained to her what was going on.
“She was murdered Kate, three years ago by a navy seal. Tony was really broken up about it, she was everything her ever wanted smart, beautiful, kind, and she was Gibbs’ best worker.”
"If she was everything he ever wanted, then why did he divorce her?" Allison asked.
"Don't know. I doubt Gibbs is confused about the difference between an ex-wife and a late wife."
"Perhaps he's wishing she was not married to Tony. She was his daughter."
"His daughter, his subordinate, Tony's wife. NCIS is not a family business. If she had joined NCIS after Gibbs she would have been stationed at a different office than he was. Whoever was in charge of the hiring would have wanted to avoid actual or apparent preferential treatment by putting a daughter in the team her father was supervisor of."
"So, if she wasn't a field agent, you would be okay with her being Gibbs's daughter ánd Tony's wife?"
"For the time being. Let's catch up with them in that elevator."
The PPC agents made a dash for it and managed to jump in just before the doors closed. The lift started to descend.
Tony was sitting in the corner, hugging his chest. Gibbs rammed a button that made the lift stop its decent.
"I don't know why elevators have that button," Tasmin said. "What could possibly be the purpose of having an emergency stop if you can't get out of the thing if it's in between floors?"
"Apparently, it is for private conversations."
"Utility cupboards are grossly underused. And they're much safer. You don't risk getting stuck in one when a fire breaks out."
"You do, if someone decides to block the door with a broom."
Tasmin gave her partner a weary look.
Both men were silent, each preoccupied with his own thoughts.
Allison looked from one to the other. "Okay, I concede that this lift is used for a private brooding session. What I'd like to know is, why I am more uncomfortable with that than these two men?"
"Because you have an instinctive grasp of character, and these characters are supposed to behave as the author tells them to."
Finally, Tony spoke up and said he was sorry.
“Don’t be?”
"That's not a question; that's a statement," Tasmin said.
Gibbs said that Kate was out of line.
"For what? For taking the micky?"
"Must be. 'Cause it can't be that Tony's out of line for yelling at a co-worker and storming out."
Tony confessed that he was still hurting and that he saw her face everywhere. Gibbs admitted to having the same problems. Then his phone rang. It was McGee telling them there was a body. Gibbs started up the lift again.
Tasmin stared up into the distance where the Words were giving off their soft glow. "We're missing out on some exposition with Kate and McGee."
“How did you know that?” Kate asked McGee. She was in shock that someone who hadn’t been there much longer than her knew more than she did about the private lives of her colleagues that turned out to be not so private.
"That is grammatically wrong, convoluted, and a bad case of not resisting the urge to explain."
Allison made a note. "How else were we going to find out that McGee knew the Sue too?"
"That's another thing: 'I was at MIT with her' is not really a good answer to 'how do you know all this?' I was at school with a lot of people, but I wouldn't know if any of them married a co-worker."
"Doesn't your school have an alumni newsletter?"
Tasmin growled in reply.
The lift reached the car park floor and Gibbs and Tony walked out to the van. A moment later, a second lift carrying Kate and McGee arrived. They went to the van too. No one said anything and they all tried to avoid eye contact.
"I think Kate has more sense than to let a bad situation simmer," Tasmin said. "She would have apologised for upsetting him."
"Are we going with them?" Allison nodded to the van.
"Not enough room." Tasmin grabbed the remote activator and opened a portal.
-oOo-
The PPC agents arrived at the crime scene only a moment before the NCIS agents. A female runner, who was now escorted by her husband and father -- Allison sensed a theme in the story -- had stumbled over a body in naval uniform on her morning run.
Gibbs and McGee went to question the woman, while Tony started an inspection of the body. The PPC agents went with him.
The body showed no obvious signs of violence and Tony wondered how it had ended up in the woods. He thought he recognised the face, but he couldn't put a name to it. Just sticking out underneath the body he saw something white. He decided to pull it out.
"It's good to know that at least one of his hands was gloved," Tasmin said.
"I still think this is tampering with evidence," Allison said. "He should have taken pictures, and left the envelope there until forensics had moved the body."
Tony called for Gibbs to come over. The envelope was addressed to Gibbs, and Tony recognised the handwriting.
On the front of the envelope in unmistakable handwriting which he had seen many times, were the words.
He believed it was a hoax and would ask Abby to fingerprint the envelope.
"Test for fingerprints," Allison mumbled, "not put extra fingerprints on it."
Gibbs arrived and Tony handed him the envelope.
Gibbs snatched it from him and looked down at the words written on the envelope.
"I think Gibbs is doing the fingerprinting now," Allison said.
"Rule number two: always wear gloves at the crime scene."
"What?"
"Gibbs has a set of rules for being a good field agent. Number two is 'always wear gloves at the crime scene'."
"The narrative so far has been pretty detailed about these things. It doesn't say he's wearing gloves, so, he's not wearing gloves."
"Okay, write them both up for tampering with evidence. Or at least, uncharacteristic, unprofessional behaviour."
Gibbs tore open the letter. It contained a single sheet of Navy stationary with the same handwriting. He quickly read the letter twice. Then he put it in his pocket.
Tony was confused, but he got no other explanation than that Gibbs wanted them to get back to the office.
The PPC agents were left alone with the body.
"It would have been nice if Gibbs had even shown a cursory interest in the body. Asked a question like, who is he, or how the hell did he get this letter," Tasmin said. "Now, we've got nothing."
"We've got a flashback." Allison nodded up at the Words. "Sue's getting married and Gibbs is so happy he's crying."
"Trust a Sue to make a grown man cry."
"She's doing it again now." Allison pointed at Gibbs, who was standing not too far away with heaving shoulders. He had an arm stretched out to seek support from a nearby tree.
"Oh, yuk." Tasmin curled up her upper lip. "That is not a pretty picture."
Kate came to tell him that Ducky and Palmer had arrived, and to apologise for what she had done earlier. Gibbs brushed past her, saying he didn't need her apology.
"Another rule: never say you're sorry."
"I'd like an apology, though," Allison said. "There are a few flashbacks to the Sue and Tony on an undercover mission before they were an item, and they are sugar sweet."
She had her headphones on and iPod in hand.
"They also use technology in an anachronistic setting."
"The iPod, you mean? When was that first introduced?"
"October 23, 2001," Tasmin replied. "She could be an early adapter, but that means that her and Tony's courtship and marriage lasted about six months, seen as she needs to get killed a little more than three years before Kate is killed."
"Could be an AU, in which Kate is not killed and this story is set at a later time."
"I doubt this Sue would miss out on the opportunity to have Kate killed off."
"If Kate is dead, who's she going to bash?"
Tasmin squinted an eye. "Anachronistic use of technology," she dictated.
While the PPC agents waited for Ducky and Palmer, they read the rest of the flashbacks. But what started out as a clichéd romance with an argument over who got the shower first, soon turned into a smooth, obstacleless romance, when Tony caught the Sue wearing one of his shirts and told her she looked good in it, rather than telling her to take it off.
"You know how you always look away when two people are making out in public, but try to get a better look when they are fighting in public?" Allison asked.
Tasmin nodded.
"It's the same with stories: readers want to see the conflict. Happy people are boring."
Palmer and Ducky put the gurney down next to the body. Kate told him about her case of foot-in-mouth disease of earlier that day, and Ducky realised what day it was, the anniversary of a terribly traumatic day for both Gibbs and Tony. He continued by telling Kate and Palmer all he knew about the Sue.
“As I recall she was quite a charismatic and ambitious young woman. If she wanted something she worked hard to achieve it. She was a fierce woman she took after Gibbs you know. She was like him, never afraid of a challenge. She was beautiful too breathtakingly so, she stole our Tony’s heart almost immediately but neither one of them knew it for awhile but soon enough they figured it out. She was exceptional in everything that she did. Absolutely everyone loved her and the way she looked after Gibbs you sometimes forgot which one was the child and which was the parent. She was also vastly intelligent. She graduated from MIT with top honor and was awarded the position of valedictorian. I believe she was best friends with Timothy they had classes together and shared an apartment for quite some time while they were attending school. Then when she came to work here she sat at the desk across from her father the same one Timothy occupies now. She was actually the reason he became a special agent. She was also tough in other ways than Gibbs but sometimes the same. She had a big heart as well. She was well beyond extraordinary.”
"I am not going to write all that down," Allison said.
"I think you have too. Ducky just summed up most of our charge sheet."
Kate asked him how she was killed, but Ducky didn't think it was his place to tell her that.
"We're not getting anything from here any more. Let's go see if Abby tells Gibbs off for not properly handling the evidence."
-oOo-
At the lab, it was Gibbs telling Abby off, about a female singer she was listening too.
“No Gibbs you agreed that I wouldn’t I never actually said anything.” Abby bit back and for now Gibbs let her.
"Five pounds says she was listening to the Sue," Allison said.
"Whatever she was listening to, I think it ate her punctuation."
Gibbs pulled the envelope, which he put in a plastic evidence back when no one was looking, from his pocket and gave it to Abby. She turned it in her hands and quickly spotted that it was addressed to Gibbs and that he had opened it. Gibbs shrugged it off and left.
"Is he always this impossible?" Allison asked. "He makes Stockwell look like a well-adjusted human being."
"He likes to have things done his way, but I think the author is embellishing here."
Abby waited until she heard the doors of the elevator close before she went to her other lab room. There she told someone they could come out of hiding.
The PPC agents looked cautiously around the door frame. Whoever was in the other room might not be canon.
“I don’t know that I can do this Abby.” She said quietly pacing around the lab.
"Punctuation, you mean?" Allison remarked. "Or correct grammar?"
"That must be the Sue," Tasmin said. "Through her Suefluence she's inflicting the same grammar on the other characters."
Abby assured her that she could, and that she had to, before 'they' found out on their own.
"Ooh, what could that be about?"
"I think our Sue has risen from the dead," Tasmin said. "And the fic has conveniently left out the part were Abby kicked her butt for breaking everybody's heart."
"It sounds more like Abby thinks no one is going to be that bothered about their heart break. Because they're all going to be too happy the Sue's back."
The Sue borrowed Abby's phone to make a phone call.
“That was Agent Fornell, in order for me to be completely and officially out of the program I have to identify the body in his presence.”
"She's in a witness protection program?" Allison looked at her partner for confirmation.
"Then what is she doing here? Protected witnesses are not supposed to come back to where they came from, it jeopardises their protection."
"It seems she was only protected from one person, and he's assumed dead now."
"That's two stupid assumptions. One, that he was indeed the only threat she needed to be protected from, and two, that she comes out of hiding before they are certain he is dead."
Allison made a note of it on the charge sheet.
"It's also a violation of rule number three: don't believe what you are told. Double check."
"Does this Fornell also live by Gibbs's rules?"
"No, but I would imagine the Sue does. She's his daughter, and takes after him."
The Sue then finally asked how everyone was and Abby told her what a hard time they all had, and still have coping with losing her.
It’s the same way he has always felt about Shannon and Kelly.
"This is interesting," Tasmin said. "Shannon was Gibbs's first wife, but apparently not the Sue's mom, or Abby would have said 'your mom and sister', and the Sue is older than Kelly would have been at this time. How do you think this adds up?"
"It doesn't add up."
Tasmin and Allison shared a meaningful look. Well, it was meaningful to Tasmin. It took Allison a little bit longer before the penny dropped.
"I guess it adds up to a charge." Allison made a note.
The PPC agents caught a glimpse of the two women hugging. Tasmin decided they had learned all they were going to learn, and suggested to move on.
-oOo-
"I've put us a little bit backwards in the fic," Tasmin said just after the portal closed behind them. "I think there's some charges for us to be found here." She pointed at the interrogation room through the two-way mirror. "That, for instance, is a violation of rule number one, never let suspects sit together."
McGee sighed softly while standing in the corner of the interrogation room, the woman who found the body sat at the table with her husband and father causing McGee to think about how Tony and Gibbs must feel when they see families like this, especially with the date being the reminder of the worst day of their lives and his.
"They're not suspects. That woman is a witness. We saw her at the crime scene."
"Why would he bring her in if he didn't think she was a suspect? Witnesses at the crime scene are questioned at the crime scene."
"What rule number is that?"
Tasmin shrugged. "Gibbs hasn't mentioned it yet, but I'm sure it's there."
Tony came into the interrogation room and told McGee the witness was free to go. The woman, who like the Sue was named Brooke -- which gave Tony quite a shock -- said she had something important to say and that they should call their boss.
A little while later Gibbs arrived, told Tony and McGee to go see Ducky about the autopsy, and the witness's father and husband to wait in the hall. Gibbs then had some chit-chat with the witness, to make her feel comfortable, before asking what she saw that morning.
"Wouldn't it make more sense for him to ask her why she wanted to see him?" Allison asked. "It makes sense it's about the body she found, but it's rather presumptuous of Gibbs to not check first if she could have anything else on her mind. Didn't he ever quote that as a rule?"
"Nope, but he likes to get to the point quickly, so if a witness asked for him specifically, he would like to know why."
The witness started to tell the story of that morning. She had been on one of her walks when she suddenly heard someone call out her name. She turned around to see that the person yelling had his back turned to her. She ducked behind some shrubs when she saw his rifle. Then the man suddenly collapsed. Shortly after, a woman that had been hiding on the other side of the clearing (the witness had spotted her) came into the open, felt the man's pulse, left something near the body and took the rifle. She hadn't seen the woman's face, but she could describe her clothing.
“Just a lot of long straight brown hair, a medium blue cable knit sweater over a white button down shirt, and a pair of designer jeans.”
"This woman must have extraordinary vision. Not only can see someone hiding when someone with a better vantage point can't, she also can see what people are wearing underneath their jumpers."
None of this information excited Gibbs into asking any more questions. He opened the door and told the witness she could go home.
"I can't help shake the notion that Gibbs actually knows what's going on," Allison said. "At least, he doesn't seem to make any effort to find out what is going on."
"Perhaps all was already explained to him in that note he found."
"Why would anyone carry around a block of Navy stationary on the off chance that they needed to write a note in the middle of the woods?"
Tasmin shrugged. "Perhaps the Sue had foresight and wrote the note earlier. Wouldn't put it past her with her being brilliant and all."
Allison rolled her eyes. "When you start making excuses for the story, things are going very wrong."
"I'm not making excuses. I try to find reasons that fit the story to explain why characters are seemingly behaving irrationally."
"Just open up a portal and let's go see if people are more rational somewhere else."
-oOo-
In the autopsy lab Ducky was trying to be rational as he explained his findings to Tony and McGee. The body lay, internal organs showing, on a slab with the three men surrounding it.
Tasmin joined the little group, but Allison decided she'd prefer to look anywhere else in the room.
Ducky said that the man had died of a heart attack and that he had gun powder residue of a rifle on his right hand. Tony said they hadn't found any rifle or bullets on the crime scene.
"Well, you haven't exactly been combing the crime scene for evidence, have you?" Allison said behind his back. "We were there longer than you."
Tasmin bent a little backwards so she could look behind Tony's back at her partner. "Obviously, charge."
"Obviously, written it down already." Allison showed the notepad.
Tony suggested the man had been hunting.
“That’s not likely Anthony, not in his uniform anyway, no I’d venture a guess that he was after someone.”
"Now, why would he not hunt fowl in his uniform, but would hunt a person in his uniform?" Allison asked.
Tasmin bent backwards again. "It's not permitted to hunt fowl with a rifle in either Virginia or Maryland. It's not permitted to hunt -- period -- in Rock Creek Park, where this body was found. I think Tony would have known that."
Allison thought about it for a moment. "That doesn't really answer my question why the dead guy would be wearing his uniform to go after someone. Navy personal are permitted to wear their own clothes when they take leisure, aren't they?"
"When on authorised leave or off-duty they can wear civilian clothes." Tasmin turned her head to the body. "The fact that he wasn't, either means he wasn't off-duty, or the Sue needed a plot device to get team Gibbs involved quickly."
"I'll make a note of it so we can ask her which it was."
Tony and McGee left to go and see what Abby had come up with studying the clothes of the corpse. The PPC agents decided to share a lift with them. The men talked about the difference between questioning and interrogating. When they arrived at Abby's lab Tony was quick to point out a woman in the lab that stood with her back towards them. Gibbs, who had taken the stairs, told them they knew the woman already, then hit both men in the back of the head for not recognising the Sue.
Tasmin quickly pulled her partner into a corner before the Sue would turn around and see them.
"That's a little unfair," Allison said. "His wife's been dead three years, he's entitled not to expect to see her in the flesh again. On the other hand, he's been thinking about her all day and how he still sees her everywhere. The least I would expect is that he would find the way she arched her shoulders familiar. Unless she has considerably, bulked up, or down."
The men continued to stare at the woman.
“She hasn’t changed at all.”
"Which makes it all the more unlikely that Tony did not recognise her."
McGee wanted to go in and talk to her, but Gibbs pulled him back and explained to him why he couldn't.
“Our victim lying on the slab in autopsy went after Brooke for witnessing a murder of his, something I’m sure you remember Tim, but she didn’t die. Brooke was placed into the witness protection program and until she identifies the body we can’t be in contact with her.”
"How can Gibbs now all this already?" Allison asked. "The Sue only just finished telling Abby. Did that note really explain all?"
Gibbs received a phone call from Kate telling him that Fornell requested his immediate attention. A lift was called and Gibbs and McGee stepped in when it arrived. Tony stayed behind -- the doors of the lift closed before Gibbs could pull him in.
"I wonder how that safety inspection went: button for making the lift get stuck between floors, check. Button to make doors open again when they close at inopportune time, uncheck, who needs those anyway?"
Tony mustered up his courage and entered the lab. Abby quickly made an excuse to be somewhere else -- despite having offered the Sue earlier to be there with her when she would tell the others that she was still alive.
The Sue said she was sorry she had put him through all this. Tony did not wonder how come she was still alive, but did ask why she was there.
“Witness protection, they wouldn’t even let me have a picture of you.” Her voice sounded far away as she buried her face in his shirt taking in his smell.
"Yes, because witness protection likes to break up families like that," Tasmin commented.
Suddenly, a toddler came running out of the ballistics lab and grabbed hold of the Sue's leg.
“Mommy, why are you crying?”
"That has to be the first flaw this Sue has shown," Allison said. "She's an irresponsible parent by leaving a toddler unattended, in a ballistics lab."
"Sounds more like she is throwing a toddler into a story as an afterthought or contrived plot device."
The Sue suggested to her daughter that she should go around the building to look for Abby. The daughter protested.
“But Mommy, Nanny Ziva said we shouldn’t wander around the building without her or Jenny.”
"What are the odds?" Tasmin said.
"For what?"
"That Ziva is in this story? She's canon, but she's not much of a nurse maid."
"I guess we're going to run into her sooner or later. She's part of the Sue's entourage."
The Sue's daughter -- or mini-Sue as Allison suggested she should be called -- skipped out of the lab. Tony suggested the Sue had found someone new rather quickly. The Sue replied he was the father.
"What did you say earlier about the witness protection program and breaking up families?" Allison asked.
"I'm just trying to figure out how old the kid is. I guess the Sue didn't even know herself she was pregnant before she was supposedly killed. That would make the kid 27 or 28 months old."
"Older if she was premature."
"Still, not old enough to make it likely for her to skip already. Or ask her mother moral questions for that matter." Tasmin followed mini-Sue with her eyes as she skipped past them. "I think we should follow her."
Mini-Sue pressed the lift call button, and when the lift arrived it revealed McGee sitting on the floor looking at a picture. He quickly put it away when the little girl addressed him.
“You’re Thom E. Gemcity!” She exclaimed with delight and her eyes lit up.
"This is not how a two-year-old behaves," Tasmin said. "They've stopped being totally self-absorbed, but I doubt they'd recognise strangers other than the people appearing on Sesame Street. They certainly do not recognise authors who write adult crime novels."
"McGee is her mommy's best friend. Perhaps she bought his book to show her daughter the photo on the back cover."
Tasmin pressed her lips together and hit her partner in the back of the head.
"Why do you always hit me?"
"Because you always make up stupid excuses for the characters."
"You do it too."
"When I do it, it doesn't give me a headache."
"No, it gives me a headache," Allison muttered under her breath.
McGee was also surprised a toddler would know him.
“Your picture is on the back of Deep Six, it’s my favorite book!”
Tasmin hit her partner in the back of the head again.
"I didn't even say anything."
"No, but you were gonna." Tasmin turned away from her.
Allison made a gesture she was going to attack her partner.
Despite the baby-fat in mini-Sue's face McGee recognised her looks. He asked her where her mother was. The girl told him her mother had sent her out to find Abby. McGee offered his help.
"I guess the two-year-old just made our hit list," Allison said.
Tasmin just nodded in reply. She pulled the remote activator from her bag. "Let's see if we can find Ziva in this building."
-oOo-
Tasmin's first attempt to find Ziva brought the PPC agents back to the autopsy room. Ziva wasn't there, but Palmer was and he was telling Ducky that he had met Abby's new assistant when he took the corpse's clothes there. A gorgeous woman that introduced herself as Ziva. Ducky was surprised to hear that Abby got a new assistant after what happened with the last one.
"What happened to the last one?"
"Nothing that's important in this story, other than that it places it firmly past the first half of season three, when Ziva should be working at NCIS, and Kate shouldn't."
Ducky and Palmer examined the intestines of the corpse from the woods.
Ducky ignored the last part of Palmer’s statement as he was consumed with his work. “Mr. Palmer, it appears as though our victim has suffered from a fatal heart attack.”
"You've already come to that conclusion before," Allison said. To her surprise, Palmer made a different assessment.
“If it wasn’t a heart attack then what was it Doctor?”
Ducky thought the man had been poisoned by arsenic.
Tasmin frowned. "I don't think acute arsenic poisoning looks like someone had a heart attack to the trained medical eye."
The scene turned to black for a moment, and when colour returned Palmer was sewing up the corpse. Kate walked in and asked if they had anything new. Ducky told her the dead man had been poisoned.
It appears to be arsenic, quite a complex chemical actually way back when it was used in food and or drink to kill an enemy almost instantaneously,
"No, it's not," Tasmin said. "Arsenic is an element. White arsenic trioxide is the formerly popular poison. That can take a rather complex chemical structure as a monoclinic polymer, but that's at temperatures well above room temperature."
Kate stopped Ducky from going off on a tangent about a stage play with the word arsenic in the title.
"And I think Ducky could have come up with a lot more interesting tangents about arsenic. For instance, that despite, or perhaps because of its well known toxicity it was used in medicine, and even in some forms to give candy a tasty colour. Or he could talk about the Marsh test, that can detect arsenic in the body, even at small quantities, and that this test was first used in a murder trial in 1840; the first time forensic toxicology gave evidence!"
"I have often wondered if you perhaps were a character that was rescued from a badfic, rather than someone that came from the real world. Now I know. You are the love child of Ducky and Gibbs."
Tasmin narrowed her eyes. "I am not an NCIS badfic character."
"Going off on tangents, slapping people in the back of the head? Typical behaviour for the child of canon characters."
Tasmin raised a finger, but couldn't think of a point to make. She glared some more at her partner. Then she decided to follow Kate when she left the autopsy lab.
"Where are you going?" When no reply came Allison followed her partner at a dumb run.
She just managed to jump into the lift before the doors closed. She caught Kate giving a longing glance to a picture on her mobile, but didn't manage to see the picture before Kate put the mobile away again. Tasmin looked less inclined to talk to her than usual, so she didn't bother making conversation. She decide to observe elevator etiquette, stepped to one side and stared into the distance. Which was where the Words were.
The Words said that Abby had found a substance on the letter Gibbs had given her, but that she hadn't been able to determine yet what it was.
“Did Brooke kill him?”
Abby replied that the witness could have been the killer. Gibbs ordered McGee to call her back in.
Allison puzzled for a moment how Abby knew the name of the witness. She thought it was unlikely Kate had told her the witness's name over the phone as Abby claimed had happened. But who else could have dropped the name? Had the Sue known about the witness in the park and that she said her name was Brooke?
The lift stopped. The opening doors revealed McGee. He told Kate to go to the interrogation room; the witness was back.
From the Words Allison gathered that the witness had managed to make it from her phone, through building security and up to McGee's desk -- unescorted -- in about five minutes.
"Not only does she have X-ray vision, she's superfast too. There's another one for our hit list."
Tasmin didn't reply.
Kate nodded quickly and left the elevator in pursuit of the observation room and to keep this bizarre behavior of McGee’s from continuing.
"His behaviour is bizarre? She's the one that's trying to catch up with a room." Allison said as she left the lift in pursuit of her partner who had gone after Kate.
The PPC agents joined Kate in the observation room, and only then did Gibbs decide it was time to talk to the witness. Gibbs told her he wanted her to tell him what she had really seen. The witness replied she had told him that.
I have evidence that tells me your story was not the truth. It would really help me out if you told me what happened.
The witness cracked and told him what had really happened.
"That was quick," Allison commented.
"No backbone," Tasmin added. "This witness, I mean. She doesn't even call his bluff on the evidence. Makes me think she has nothing to hide, and if she has nothing to hide, why would she have lied in the first place?"
Kate stepped out of the observation room. The fic had jumped ahead in time and now the Sue stood at the door of the interrogation room debating whether she should interrupt Gibbs. Kate told her he was busy and that she, as a visitor, should not be in this part of the building. The Sue gave her a challenging look. She showed Kate her old badge and introduced herself.
Gibbs stepped out of the interrogation room at that moment and father and daughter were reunited. Gibbs told Kate to escort the witness upstairs. When the witness came out of the interrogation room the Sue flung herself at the woman. The two engaged in a cat fight until the Sue got the upper hand and managed to pin the witness against a wall.
“This bitch tried to kill me.”
Gibbs pulled the Sue away from the witness and into a quiet corner; Kate grabbed hold of the witness just in case. Gibbs asked the Sue what happened. She tried to dodge the question, but Gibbs put a fatherly arm around her shoulder and suggested she'd start at the beginning.
The PPC agents cautiously followed them to the employee lounge, but did not enter it. Instead they hung out just outside the door.
Gibbs gave the Sue some coffee, and some water to wash the coffee down with. Then he pushed the letter Tony had found that morning across the table to her. She read it twice, like Gibbs had done that morning. Gibbs explained where they'd found the letter.
“I gave this to you after I graduated from High School I left it in the basement on your work bench the day I left for MIT.”
"The envelope was addressed to Special Agent Gibbs. Why would she address a letter to her own dad that way?" Tasmin said.
"Why would she claim that leaving a letter somewhere is the same as giving it to a person?" Allison asked.
Gibbs said he never found it on his workbench. The Sue then suggested it must have been stolen, by someone connected to the woman who had tried to kill her today.
"That was some ten years ago," Tasmin said. "Why would someone deliberately steal a note to Gibbs and then keep it for ten years? Did they forget they had it?"
it’s obvious that they both want me dead. She had to know that I wasn’t which means that I’ve been compromised.
"No, it is not obvious," Tasmin said. "That someone took your note ten years ago does not obviously mean they want you dead. Not then and not now. It may mean that someone wanted to play you a trick, but if they wanted you dead, they would have acted on that probably a lot sooner after going to MIT."
Gibbs asked her to tell him why she was here and why the witness had tried to kill her. The Sue first would like to have a question of her own answered. Instinctively, Gibbs knew what she wanted to know and told her that Tony hadn't so much as looked at another woman.
"Which is pretty much a contradiction of what Abby had told her earlier," Allison noted. "That Tony flirts with lots of women to ease the pain. Unless he can flirt without looking."
"I doubt he can. Gibbs could be lying to make his daughter feel better. It's acceptable dad behaviour."
Gibbs's phone rang. He ordered standard lockdown; no one to go in or out of the building. Apparently, the witness had managed to get the better of Kate and knocked her unconscious. Director Shepard came in and she and Gibbs started arguing. The lights went out and Fornell arrived to join in the argument. The Sue started to get uncomfortable: there were people arguing about her as if she wasn't in the room, the power was off and she wanted to get to her daughter.
Just then she heard mini-Sue's voice and she bolted out of the room.
"How can she see anything in the dark?" Allison asked as the Sue blew past them.
"Mom's can do extraordinary things when they think their kids are in danger."
Around the corner, in the squad room, she found Tony cradling mini-Sue.
“The blackout scared her,” He explained nervously as he handed his child off to his wife.
And thus Gibbs found out he was a grandfather. And realised that Director Shepard had known all along.
“How dare you.” He whispered loudly.
“Jethro, I’m sorry but witness protection law states”-
"There's no such thing as witness protection law," Tasmin said. "Witness protection is provided for under the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. Title V stipulates that the Attorney General is authorised to provide for the security of witnesses and their families if he thinks that giving testimony could place the witness's and or their family member's life in danger. It does not say that NCIS directors may not blab."
Gibbs hissed he did not give a damn about this -- non-existent -- law, and made his way to the stairs when Shepard wanted to protest and stepped on his heel.
"Making Gibbs hiss words that don't have an S-sound, and making Shepard turn on his heel."
"Can we go somewhere where there's a light? I can't write any charges down in the dark."
"Everyone else seems to be able to see just fine. I'm surprised they even noticed the power went off."
"I'll add that as another charge, when I get the chance." Allison didn't bother glaring at her partner; she wouldn't be able to see it.
Not much later power was restored. Allison started scribbling down saved up charges. Nothing was happening in the bull pen, so Tasmin decided to read the Words.
"They're going to organise a protective detail, which involves all of them going to Tony's house."
Allison looked up. "Is that wise? Or even effective?"
"Could be effective, if the members of Team Gibbs and the FBI agents all acted as a human shield for the Sue. Other than that, I have no idea what he is thinking."
"He's probably not thinking human shield either."
"Oh, look, there the Sue explains the reasoning to Tony." Tasmin pointed at the Words of a later scene. "He says his place is the first place anyone would look, and the Sue thinks it's the last."
“Think about it Tony, someone who is looking to kill is going to look in the last place they would think of as opposed to looking in the first place they should look which will end up being the last.”
"That makes no sense," Allison said. "If I wanted to kill a Sue, I would first look in the places I know she could be, being her flat, her husband's house, her place of work, her kid's day-care place. I'm not going to think of all kind of places she could think of that are better hiding places, such as an out of state hotel. How would I even be able to find such a hotel?"
"She's right about one thing, though."
"What's that?"
"Tony's place is the last place they will look for her, because if they find her there..." Tasmin pretended her hand was a gun and fired three shots.
Tony, however, thought it was a clever idea to assume that a killer would assume a person wouldn't be so stupid as to hide in their own house.
"I think that's a cue for bad things to happen at Tony's house."
Tasmin shrugged. "Let's go see how that protective detail works out."
-oOo-
End of Part one. To part two.