Chapter three

“The latest victim is Lance Corporal Kyle Westin,” Ziva said as soon as Gibbs came into the bullpen. “Abby got a match from AFIS. He disappeared on his way to work nine days ago; the wife was the last one to see him.”

“Go talk to her,” Gibbs said. “Work?”

“Worked as a data network specialist,” Ziva said. “Lived in Kensington.”

“Would’ve passed Bethesda on his way to work,” Gibbs said. Since Tony had disappeared there, it was as good a place as any to check out. Then again, they had already checked, and found nothing.

Ziva nodded. “Abby also asked me to tell you that Dr. Mallard found a residue on the man’s face; she’s running it now.”

Gibbs gave a curt nod. “After you’ve talked to the wife, go over Westin’s medical records,” Gibbs said. “See if he’s ever been to Bethesda Hospital.”

There probably wouldn’t be any such lead. They had checked the other victims’ medical histories in search of a common denominator to do with the hospital after Tony disappeared, but as McGee had pointed out anyone could get into the hospital parking lot where Tony had been kidnapped.

Gibbs’ heart rushed at the thought of Tony, as he was unable to shake the sense that what he’d just interacted with had not been a hallucination after all.

He sat down, taking a steadying breath before he focused on the computer screen. Ziva was grabbing her stuff to leave to talk to Mrs. Westin, and he swallowed. He had no idea of how to ask what he was about to, so—

“Do you have a tattoo?”

Ziva stopped, frowning at him. “I do.”

“One only Tony’s seen?”

There was some color rising in her cheeks. “Yes. What—”

Gibbs didn’t hear her, if she said anything beyond that. He definitely hadn’t known about her tattoo; although it was probably teasing fodder between the two of them, it had never come up in conversation.

Damn.

He found Ziva staring at him. “Gibbs, are you all right?”

He managed to nod and wave her off, giving her no explanation to his probably very strange line of questioning. She glanced at him as she left, but made no move to ask anything else. When the elevator doors shut behind her, Gibbs let out a soft sigh.

Well, hell.

Tony was real. Tony the ghost was real.

And with that, another set of unpleasant realization came crashing down on him – if Tony’s ghost was haunting him, that should mean that Tony was—

The pencil he’d been holding in his hand broke suddenly.

Had Tony realized that he was dead? He’d asked about it. He’d said something was wrong – but the first time he’d—appeared he hadn’t even known he was incorporeal. It wasn’t until the second ‘visit’ in the bullpen that he’d realized as much.

And where was he now? Was he coming back? Or had Gibbs sent him away, banished him so that he wouldn’t return, by refusing to help?

His mind also ran through a couple of lines of, am I crazy? He was actually starting to believe in the idea that what he’d seen earlier was actually Tony – albeit not live, in the flesh.

He couldn’t work this way, he decided, and without further ado – because neither Ziva nor McGee was present – he stood and headed out. Coffee was a definite necessity right now.

Half an hour later, he had downed one cup of hot black liquid, and carried another back to headquarters. He pretended that he wasn’t looking around, trying to catch a glimpse of golden hair and a thousand watt smile.

Perhaps he had imagined the whole thing after all.

McGee had returned and was looking through surveillance footage of the street when Gibbs returned. They already knew the body had to have been dumped between four forty-five and five forty-five – those were the times when the guards had passed the location – but it was still an hour of footage from two different camera angles for McGee to go through. The footage wasn’t the best, as it wasn’t supposed to film the street, as much as it filmed the entrance of the business building.

McGee greeted him with a nod and a ‘boss’, and Gibbs gave what could only constitute as a grunt back. He was preoccupied; his mind was running wild, bouncing back and forth, from I’m crazy to it was really Tony, and a variety of in-betweens.

“McGee,” he snapped after half an hour of silence, unable to stand it any longer. He had to do something – talk, scream, whatever – lest he go mad.

McGee jumped. “Yes, boss?”

“Found anything?”

“Uh, I—um,” said McGee, in an reversion back to the old probie-stuttering of a few years ago. Perhaps worry and sleeplessness in combination with fear of Gibbs’ wrath did that, although Gibbs knew it wouldn’t have had any effect on Tony. Now that Tony wasn’t there, acting as a buffer between Gibbs and McGee, he really did need to be nicer.

He couldn’t bring himself to it.

“Spit it out.”

“Uh, well, I looked through the footage,” McGee said, the words spilling out on top of each other. “There’s one that stands out.”

“And?”

“It’s a white van with tinted windows,” McGee said. “Uh, no readable plates, and according to the database search I just did, there are about nine thousand vehicles that fit the description just in this county.”

“And the driver?”

“Invisible,” McGee said, and upon Gibbs’ look, he hastened to add, “Either he was lucky, or he knew where the cameras were and parked beyond them. There’s a shadow to indicate movement, but it’s dark and there isn’t much—”

“Send it to Abby,” Gibbs said.

“Yes, boss,” McGee said.

Ziva returned less than five minutes later.

“The wife is as clueless as the other wives,” she said, placing her bag on the floor and coming over to stand by Gibbs’ desk. “Distraught and of little help – and apparently pregnant with their first child.”

Gibbs darkened at the mention; yet another child who would have to grow up without knowing his or her father, all because some sick bastard was playing games.

“Lance Corporal Westin left their house at about seven a.m. last Wednesday, and she hasn’t seen or heard form him since,” Ziva said. “She reported him missing on Thursday.”

“Why are we only hearing about this now?” Gibbs asked. “From now on until we catch this bastard, I want to know every time someone misses so much as an hour of work, understood?”

Both Ziva and McGee mumbled, “Yes, boss.”

Gibbs looked at them, gaze traveling over their tired forms. Under his stare, they quickly returned to work, Ziva’s eyes flitting over the screen and McGee immersed in something, typing quickly. Gibbs couldn’t help but let his gaze wander to Tony’s desk; it still felt so wrong, so very, very wrong to not have Tony sitting there, cat-napping or working studiously on an angle neither of the other two agents had thought of, grinning and teasing them all the while.

He rubbed his temples and took a long swig of coffee, feeling the liquid run down his throat and warming him even though he felt cold to the bone.

“Boss—”

He looked up, finding Tony standing there, right in front of his desk.

Gibbs stopped himself from saying Tony’s name, but he did stand abruptly. It caused Ziva and McGee to look up, and if he’d needed any evidence that he was the only one who could see Tony, he got it now; they both looked in confusion at Gibbs, McGee’s gaze inches from going straight through Tony.

Gibbs headed out without a word.

He walked into the nearest empty conference room, and locked the room behind him. Glancing around, he made sure none of the recording equipment was turned on – then he turned to Tony.

“You’re real,” he said.

“Look who’s finally catching on,” Tony said. “Who said I couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks?”

“DiNozzo—”

“Boss, I’m just trying to lighten the mood,” Tony said, voice quieter. “I’m obviously a ghost. That means I must be dead, right?”

Gibbs inhaled sharply, even though he’d come to the same conclusion earlier. Tony looked down at his feet, which were clad in a pair of expensive-looking shoes, floating a few inches above the floor.

“Don’t assume things,” Gibbs said, getting his voice back.

Tony glanced at him, a smile that couldn’t be described as anything but sad on his lips. “Don’t hope for things that are unattainable.”

“That’s not one of mine,” Gibbs said.

“Might as well be,” Tony said.

It was true; Gibbs couldn’t argue with it. Hope had never been his strong suit, even less so after his wife and daughter had been murdered.

“There has to be a reason why you’re here,” Gibbs said.

A part of him still couldn’t believe he was having a conversation with a partly see-through version of his second in command, but that part had been squished down beneath gratefulness over actually speaking to Tony again, no matter how bittersweet it felt. He’d feared he never would get to talk to Tony again. He also decided that if this did, in the end, turn out to be his imagination playing tricks on him, then he was very nearly okay with it – anything to get to hear Tony’s voice again.

“Maybe I just have to haunt you in death like you haunted me in life,” Tony said.

“I never haunted you, DiNozzo,” Gibbs said.

“Call it what you will,” Tony shrugged. “Is ‘riding my ass’ better?”

“DiNozzo,” Gibbs growled.

“I know, boss,” Tony said, and reached up and head-slapped himself. “I’ll do it for you, since you can’t right now.”

Gibbs wished he could reach out and cuff Tony upside the head. Wishing wasn’t something he usually spent time doing, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted Tony to be real, solid, warm and there – not this only partly opaque version.

“What happened to me, boss?” Tony asked.

“You tell me,” Gibbs said. He motioned at Tony. He might as well test his Senior Agent’s memory while he had the chance.

Tony frowned. “There was the serial killer, right?”

Gibbs gazed at him, studying him. He realized that the first time Tony had appeared, he hadn’t realized he wasn’t really there. Tony must lack memory of some of the things that had happened lately. “How much do you remember?”

“I remember the killer,” Tony said. “The victims were clean, naked, and all males between twenty-four and forty-two. Four of them, right? Some kind of drug overdoses, few other marks.”

“Yeah,” Gibbs said. “What about the night you disappeared?”

Tony’s frown deepened. “I was—out walking. I was on the phone?” He looked at Gibbs for confirmation, but Gibbs schooled his expression to give nothing away; he wanted Tony to remember, not to piece things together from outside clues. “I think I was. But I don’t remember why I stopped talking or what happened next. It’s all—dark.”

“He grabbed you while you were on the phone with me,” Gibbs said. He could still remember his blood running cold at the sudden, mid-sentence silence. The sound of a body falling had come next, and the crack of the phone hitting the pavement. There had been no voices, other than Tony’s grunts of pain.

“Gibbs,” was the last breathed word Gibbs had heard, before the call had been ended. They had found the car and the phone in the Bethesda Naval Hospital parking lot, but it had led nowhere.

He flashed back a few years ago, when Tony was drugged and kidnapped. At least they’d found him, dirty and smelly but still alive, rather quickly that time.

Not so much now.

“I don’t remember what happened,” Tony said. “Why can’t I remember?”

“I don’t know,” Gibbs said, although his mind supplied him with the possibility that Tony couldn’t remember anything beyond that, because he’d died soon afterwards. He refused to say those words out loud.

“You and I—we were talking about the killer’s pattern, weren’t we?” Tony said, brow creasing. “Have there been more bodies?”

“One, today,” Gibbs said. “There’s been no time-pattern as far as when the bodies show up – anywhere from a few days to three weeks between each dumping. They’ve been missing for anywhere between four to eight days before their bodies appear, dead for most of that time. It’s been over two weeks since his last dump before the one today.”

“Maybe I disturbed him,” Tony said.

Gibbs nodded. “Possibly. You’re good at disturbing.”

“You know, that’s not a very nice thing to say to someone who might be dead,” Tony said, but he looked relieved at the comic relief.

“Second ‘b’ for bastard,” Gibbs said, shrugging. Still, Tony’s words made something Gibbs’ gut twist painfully.

“Yeah,” Tony said.

And then, just like that, Tony was gone, the image of him fading at the blink of an eye. Gibbs was left sitting in an empty conference room, staring at the wall behind the spot where Tony had just been standing.

He rubbed his eyes. Although Tony did seem very real indeed, it was still messing with his mind. Was Tony dead? Was he alive? Where did he go when he disappeared this way? Was he coming back, or was this it?

He would have to ask Tony next time, not simply be blinded by relief at seeing him again.

He exited the conference room, returning to the squad room, his head still feeling heavy.

“Boss,” McGee said, “There are three people that have missed work today.”

“And?”

“One of them fits right in with the other victims,” McGee said. He hit a few keys on his keyboard, and a service record and a picture of a sailor came up. “Petty Officer Gregory Williams. Thirty-one years old and, uh, attractive, I guess.”

“Definitely,” Ziva said, standing beside Gibbs and cocking her head to the side as she studied the picture on the screen. “Very.”

The man had striking blue eyes and blond hair cut short, Navy style.

“He hasn’t been reported as missing yet,” McGee said, “but he fits right in. I’ve tried his cell and work phones, got nothing. His wife answered at home, and she’s been unable to contact him since this morning too.”

“All right,” Gibbs said. “Let’s focus on Petty Officer Williams, then. Ziva, go check out the house, find out how he gets to work, and follow that trail. McGee, get me phone records and credit card statements, and once Ziva knows the route he takes to work, I want whatever video you can get of it.”

“Yes, boss.”

Gibbs felt someone watching him, and looked up to find Director Vance on the second floor. Without a word, he headed up.

“Director,” he said.

“Where are you at?” Vance asked.

“We just found a new suspected victim,” Gibbs said.

Vance frowned. “That would make six victims?”

“Seven,” Gibbs said. “But one of them hasn’t turned up dead yet.”

“Gibbs, I need this bastard caught,” Vance said. “Sec Nav’s breathing down my neck and the media is going crazy.”

“We’re working every angle we can, sir,” Gibbs said. He didn’t add that he had also been having conversations with the not-yet-turned-up-dead victim.

“Good,” Vance said. “Keep me posted.”

“Yes, sir.”

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