Chapter ten

When Gibbs entered Abby’s lab, Tony was suddenly in front of him, having faded out and in to stand just behind Abby. His hand ran down her arm, and she shivered visibly, smiling slightly but saying nothing, because Ziva was on the floor beneath a blanket, eyes open. The Mossad Officer still looked a bit pale.

As Gibbs strode in, Ziva scrambled to her feet.

“Easy,” Gibbs said, grabbing her arm as she stumbled, lightheadedness hitting her.

“Gibbs,” she said. “I did not mean to sleep so long.”

“It’s fine,” Gibbs said. “I told you to rest.”

Ziva nodded. “I am rested. I shall go up and see if McGee needs any help.”

Though not an apology out loud, it was still one, for the words spoken earlier about Tony. Gibbs doubted she’s say anything else; they all thought about it, they all knew the possibility, but none of them needed to hear it out loud.

She left, and Gibbs waited until he’d heard the elevator doors close behind her.

“What’ve you got?” he asked Abby.

“Nice to see you too,” Abby said. “You know, I can’t hear Tony, but even as a ghost, he’s still better at pleasantries than you.” Gibbs gave her a look, and she backtracked. “Not that you’re not nice. You are. You’re just not—you know, you don’t do the ‘hi, how are you?’ thing. You’re nice in other ways.”

“Abby—”

Her blabbering came to a halt and she took a breath. “I’ve done a little ghostly research.”

She didn’t continue, and Gibbs wondered why it was that she could never simply tell him. “I’m not going to do a drum roll.”

“You never do,” Abby said, a bit sadly. Then she continued, in work mode. “I started with Wikipedia, because it just rules.”

“Wikipedia?” Gibbs echoed.

“Oh, Gibbs,” Abby said. “There’s a whole cyber world of information out there, just waiting for you. Wikipedia is this online encyclopedia, where anyone can do articles on anything.”

“Then how do you know what’s correct?” Gibbs asked. “Never mind. What did you find?”

“Wikipedia says that ‘a ghost is the apparition of a deceased person, frequently similar in appearance to that person, and usually encountered in places he or she frequented, the place of his or her death, or in association with the person’s former belongings’,” Abby said, reading from her notes.

“So I’m dead?” Tony asked, and there was only a hint of a crack to his voice.

“He’s dead?” Gibbs asked.

“I wouldn’t draw that conclusion from information of Wikipedia,” Abby said. “We aren’t dealing with something similar in appearance to Tony – we’re dealing with Tony. Besides, like it said further down – it’s a vexing subject, and even those who do believe in ghosts have different theories about it.”

Gibbs sighed. “Did you find anything of use?”

“Not really,” Abby said. “There is this other site, Ghost Study, which says there are different kinds of ghosts – ectoplasms, vortex, shadow ghosts, apparitions. Really, apparitions are the ones that sound the most like Tony – ‘They show up in a transparent human form and wear the clothing of their period. They normally appear faint and disfigured as in being incomplete.’”

“Hey!” Tony said. “I’m not disfigured.”

Gibbs had to smile, very slightly, at Tony’s indignant protest. Abby caught it, and she frowned for a second before putting two and two together.

“He’s not disfigured, is he?”

“Nah,” said Gibbs. For a brief moment, he wondered how he would have reacted if Tony had been disfigured upon appearing before Gibbs the first time. He pushed it aside before the thought had time to fester.

“Good,” said Abby. “Sorry, Tony. I guess you’re not an apparition either.”

“He is slightly see-through,” Gibbs said.

“Oh,” Abby said. “Well, I think I’ll have to go to the Magic Box later on.”

“The Magic Box?” Gibbs echoed doubtfully, the same words leaving Tony’s lips.

“It’s a shop,” Abby said. “They sell all sorts of magic stuff – spell books, ingredients, orbs, herbs, statues of gods and goddesses. They helped me when I wanted to make the protection dolls. This old guy owns the shop, he’s great. He’s British, and he has these stories – you know, maybe I should introduce him to Ducky.”

Gibbs shook his head, tuning her out. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He had enough of a hard time believing in a ghost, singular, and he didn’t need to add other forms of magic to the mix. He just wanted to find out the rules that Tony adhered to – although most of all, he needed to find the real Tony, the one with the body, who could touch and interact with the world.

At least Abby seemed happier now that Tony was around to reassure her. Gibbs wasn’t sure why she was so reassured by a ghost, but he was glad she was. They all needed every bit of happiness that they could gather right now.

“You might want to tell Ziva,” Abby said, breaking into Gibbs’ thoughts. She was looking at him intently; he’d lost himself in his internal monologue for a while.

“Why?” Gibbs asked.

“Because she thinks she was crazy yesterday, seeing Tony,” Abby said.

Perhaps that was one more reason why she had said Tony might be dead. Seeing him when she was weak and concussed couldn’t have been easy.

Still, he settled on a, “We’ll see,” to Abby. Ziva was not as open-minded as Abby, and though Gibbs trusted Ziva with his life, there was still something that held him back. It was even more so with McGee – Gibbs trusted him implicitly, but of his team, McGee would certainly be the hardest to convince that ghosts existed. But then, Gibbs wasn’t planning on telling McGee, so that was a moot point anyway.

The phone rang at five fourteen the next morning, rousing Gibbs from an uneasy sleep. Normally, he rarely had nightmares, but at the moment they wouldn’t leave him alone; Tony’s face kept flashing by, mixing with the faces of Kate and Jenny, of Shannon and Kelly, of Marines dead in his arms and enemies dead at his hand. Waking was almost a relief, a short break in the long line of death he had experienced in life.

“Gibbs,” he muttered.

“A body,” Director Vance said. He too sounded a bit tired.

Gibbs’ breath hitched. “DiNozzo?”

“They didn’t say,” the Director said. “No ID yet.”

The Director gave him the address. It was the first body dumped on the other side of the Anacostia River, but if Gibbs’ estimates were right, it was still in line with the rest of the victims.

“I will inform McGee, David and Ducky,” Director Vance said.

Gibbs didn’t respond; he couldn’t find his voice. His heart pounded a mile a minute, the pressure rising inside until he felt like he was on fire. He wanted to scream, to shoot, wanted to know that it wasn’t Tony he was going to find upon getting to the crime scene.

Tony’s ghost was nowhere to be seen; he’d disappeared just after Gibbs had left Abby’s lab the afternoon before and hadn’t been back since.

Gibbs flew down the streets in his car, tires screeching as he cut corners and broke the speed limit. There was hardly any traffic out, the sun having barely risen above the treetops.

He knew he must look like hell, but he had never given much thought to his appearance and he wasn’t about to start now. He’d dressed quickly in whatever was at the top of the drawers.

“Gibbs, NCIS,” he said, identifying himself to the cop at the edge of the crime scene. There were two police cars.

The young woman nodded. “The victim is male, thirty to thirty-five, found naked a little over half an hour ago. We haven’t identified him as a Marine yet, but since he fits the profile of the serial killer on the news—”

Gibbs nodded briefly.

“But sir, I have to warn you – this body has been mutilated,” she said.

Gibbs didn’t stop to ask; he would find out soon enough. He pushed past the other two police officers – and then black dots started dancing across his vision as familiar hair became visible. He drew deep shuddering breaths, forcing himself to stay on his feet, even as agony washed over him in heavy waves.

It couldn’t be.

He took another step forward, to get a better look.

He fell to his knees as he realized that although the man in front of him had the same color hair as Tony, it wasn’t Tony. It was Petty Officer Gregory Williams; Gibbs recognized him from the photos they’d pulled.

“Damn it!” he screamed, slamming his fist into the pavement.

It wasn’t Tony, but they had still failed, again. He had still failed; a man was dead because Gibbs wasn’t good enough at his job. They hadn’t been fast enough and a sixth man had been forced to lay down his life for the madman.

Anger rolled off him in waves, and the police officers wisely stayed away.

Gibbs flipped open his phone and dialed speed dial number two.

“Not DiNozzo,” he told Ziva.

He didn’t wait for an answer and he didn’t call McGee. Ziva would call McGee; one phone call was enough for Gibbs.

The female police officer had been right, though – Williams’ body had been mutilated. It had been ripped in two; the upper part ended just below the ribcage. Both parts had been dumped together, laid out with only a few inches between them, making for a macabre picture.

His hand hurt from where he had smashed it into the ground, and he reveled in the feeling. It grounded him, made him feel like he was still part of the world, even when everything seemed to be falling apart at the seams.

“Oh, this is new,” said Ducky upon taking a look at the body. “Poor boy.”

Gibbs growled at him, just as he did at McGee, Ziva and Palmer once they’d all arrived at the scene. McGee and Palmer cowered, doing their jobs and stuttering more than usual. Ziva tried her best to appear calm and collected, but Ducky finally grabbed Gibbs and pulled him aside.

“Calm down, Jethro,” he said. “Nothing will be any better if you manage to alienate your team because you are worried.”

“They need to work harder,” Gibbs ground out.

Ducky gave him a stern glare. “They are working themselves into exhaustion as is. You know that as well as I do. They are just as worried about young Anthony as you are, as we all are.”

Gibbs didn’t know what to say. His thoughts and feelings were in turmoil, indecipherable and frustrating. He had been here before – after the call that had delivered the news of the deaths of his wife and daughter. He had been here with Kate, with Jenny—he had been in this state more times than he cared to count, although not all of them had been as bad.

This was bad.

He wanted to kill someone now.

“Jethro,” said Ducky, gentle voice taking him back to the present. “Let me look at your hand.”

“It’s fine,” Gibbs snapped.

“From the way you’re cradling it, it doesn’t look fine,” Ducky said. “You may have broken something. What did you do?”

“Ran it into the pavement,” Gibbs said. He didn’t think Ducky would appreciate dishonesty.

“Oh,” said Ducky. “Perhaps not your smartest move.”

He took Gibbs’ hand in his own, turning it over and prodding. It hurt, but Gibbs doubted anything was broken; he had had broken bones before, and knew what it felt like.

“It’s a bit swollen, but I don’t think you managed to break anything,” Ducky said, agreeing with Gibbs without knowing it. “Still, probably a good thing you did not pick your gun hand.”

Gibbs didn’t answer. He stared over Ducky’s head at McGee and Ziva taking pictures and measurements of the crime scene. Palmer was working on the body, preparing it for the move back to the morgue. They worked efficiently, even under the cloud of despair and fear.

“Don’t alienate them, Jethro,” Ducky said. “You need them, as they need you.”

Gibbs nodded. He would try, even when he couldn’t promise anything.

They walked together back to the crime scene. McGee flinched visibly when Gibbs opened his mouth to speak.

“TOD, Ducky?”

“A few days ago,” Ducky said. “Three, four perhaps. When did he go missing?”

“Five days ago,” said Gibbs.

“Then I’d venture he was murdered not long after that,” Ducky said. “The look of the separation of the upper and lower part suggests it was made post-mortem. No apparent cause of death, but if I may assume, I believe we will find he OD’d on a dose of Propofol, as the others. Of course, I will perform a careful autopsy to make certain the fact. I will also try my best to identify the method used to—separate him.”

Gibbs nodded. The mutilation of the body was new, but Gibbs had no doubt that they’d find that it had something to do with the painting. The killer’s MO hadn’t changed since the first victim showed up; there was no reason to assume that it would have changed for this young man. But Gibbs knew the danger in assuming, and he knew Ducky did too. They’d check and re-check, if for nothing else than the risk being rather high of a copycat killer imitating the murders based off what the media reported. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“McGee, report,” he said.

“I—uh, we’ve taken photos and measurements,” McGee said. “The security footage is being brought back to HQ as we speak. This exact part of the street wasn’t monitored, but the streets around here were, so hopefully we’ll see something.”

“Ziva?” Gibbs asked.

“I have spoken to the police,” she said, coming up to stand beside him, notepad in her hand. “They had little to tell me; they were alerted by a call that came in at four thirty-seven. The caller was a Miss Isabelle Drake; she was on her way to work. I spoke to her and she seemed upset, but hadn’t seen anything other than the body.”

Gibbs held back a sigh; the killer seemed as methodical and well-planned in how, when and where he dumped the bodies as in the kidnappings and murders.

“Another dead?”

Tony’s voice came from just beside him; Gibbs turned his head just slightly to see him fade into view. There was no need to give a verbal answer to Tony’s question – the body that Palmer was currently covering up was more than enough.

“Holy hell,” Tony said, horrified, upon seeing the body in pieces. “You okay?”

There was something funny about a ghost asking him that. There was also no way for Gibbs to answer him out here, not when the police was milling about, his team was a few feet away, annoying media people were filming and photographing every second of it, and bystanders were starting to crowd just outside the police tape. Then again, that might be just as well, because he had no idea what he was supposed to say. Okay? He hadn’t been okay since Tony disappeared. The dry feeling in his mouth had yet to go away and the panic from before, when he hadn’t known whether he would find Tony’s body or someone else’s, was still fresh in his mind.

Ducky and Palmer left the scene, the body loaded into the back of their van.

“Ziva, McGee, go talk to the wife,” Gibbs said roughly once they had finished up. “Meet you back at the office.”

They nodded mutely, both worn and weary, and left in Ziva’s car. Informing loved ones of deaths was always an ordeal; Gibbs had done it enough times – hell, he’d even been on the other side of it. There were never any words that were the right ones, no words that could ever bring back the deceased loved ones, no phrases that would bring any comfort.

“Boss?” said Tony, and Gibbs realized he’d been staring into nothingness for a few moments too long.

He headed to the car, knowing Tony would follow him.

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