Work Text:
Disclaimer: NCIS belongs to CBS Broadcasting, Paramount Pictures, and Belisarius Productions. No copyright infringement is intended. This is just for fun, not for profit.
Acknowledgements: Thanks are very much owed to my friend C, who spent several years working crime scene investigation with a metropolitan CA county crime lab. This fic uses a few elements and anecdotes from some of the stories she's told me; any mistakes are entirely my own. Thanks, too, to Rebecca for the lightning fast beta.
Notes: Written for the LiveJournal NCIS_Flashfic "First" Challenge: A character study, focusing on McGee's first really difficult crime scene after joining the team.
This is NOT a pairing-oriented fic. It is mostly gennish, but there's a bit of Tim/Abby and a bit of Gibbs/Tony. The warning is for crime scene gore.
~ * ~
Eyes open or closed, it didn't matter; he could still see the bodies, two of them. No, two people. They were dead, but they were still people.
Naked, both of them, and bloody. The man's throat had been cut; the woman's torso was slashed wide open. Eviscerated. Tim had heard the word for years without ever thinking about its literal meaning. Now he'd seen it, smelled it – viscera, guts, spilling out and over the polished hardwood floor.
He crouched miserably on hands and knees on the patchy, muddy lawn and retched into the bushes. In between heaves, he had a moment to wonder if his pants were going to end up totally ruined, but he couldn't bring himself to care very much.
Disemboweled. Tim heaved again. The weapon that had opened the woman's belly had also sliced open her intestines. Shit, he'd learned, smelled just as bad while it was still in the colon. The stench was compounded by the smell of urine, fast ripening in the summer heat; both victims' bladders had relaxed after death. And over and through it all, there was the smell of spaghetti sauce simmering away in a big pot on the kitchen stove. The only saving grace was that the bodies had been discovered shortly after death, so the odors of decaying flesh had yet to join the olfactory overload.
He'd moved reflexively to turn off the stove when they'd first arrived at the scene, only to freeze at Gibbs' barked command.
"Leave it. Do not touch my crime scene. Nothing gets touched until the room's been photographed and searched. Nothing."
Tim had turned away, abashed. He'd known better.
He spat now, wishing he had some water to rinse the foul taste of vomit from his mouth.
He heard someone descending the back porch stairs, but didn't turn around to look. He was pretty sure he knew who it was.
"Still out here, Probie? I'm surprised you have anything left to lose."
Tony, here to make things go from bad to worse, just as he'd expected.
Tim cleared his throat, spat again, and passionately wished he carried a handkerchief so he could've wiped his mouth on something other than the back of his hand. "I'll be right there. Just give me a minute."
More footsteps on the stairs, slower and somehow heavier this time. "DiNozzo. Go help Ducky."
"You got it, Boss." Tim heard Tony bound up the stairs, but there was only one set of footsteps.
Great, just what Tim needed – Gibbs seeing him like this.
"You okay, McGee?"
He stood then, finally, brushing off his pant legs as he turned to face Gibbs. "Yes, sir. I'm fine."
Gibbs smile was wry and barely there, but it wasn't unkind. "Don't worry. Happens to a lot of good people. You should've seen DiNozzo at his first really bad one."
"Really? I thought he used to be a cop."
"Police work is different from criminalistics. Investigating a homicide isn't the same as working the crime scene. What we do is much harder, in some ways, sinks you right into the middle of it where you can't look away. You have to look long and hard right at the worst of it."
Tim swallowed the sourness in his throat, resisting the urge to turn away and spit again. "Still, it's hard to imagine you ever reacting like this, sir."
Gibbs was silent for a moment. "My first bad one wasn't a crime scene."
"Oh." Tim winced inwardly, wishing he could learn when to keep his mouth shut.
"I didn't come through it any better than you, though. That took time. You'll get there." He slapped Tim on the back. "You ready to get back inside?"
Tim took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes, sir."
"You don't have to call me sir, McGee."
"No, sir." Tim winced again. "I mean, okay, Boss."
Gibbs fished a set of keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Tim. "There's some bottled water in the van. Take a minute if you need to, then come on back in and we'll get to work."
Tim made it quick, settling for rinsing his mouth and spitting a few times and then downing half the bottle. Between vomiting and sweating in the heat, he didn't want to risk dehydration.
Snapping on fresh gloves, he headed back inside and met Ducky and Gerald coming out with the first of the two bodies. He held the front door open for them, then stepped inside. The stench assaulted him again. He clenched his jaw and fought off the resurgent wave of nausea.
Suck it up, he told himself. You've never failed at anything in your life and you're damned well not starting now.
"McGee," Gibbs called. "In here."
He found the team in the condo's spacious living room, clustered in the alcove furnished as a home office, keeping their distance from the remaining victim whose body still lay in a grotesque sprawl near the fireplace.
Gibbs frowned and dropped his cell phone in his pocket. "Bad news. All the other teams are still tied up and there are no criminalists free to work with us, so this one's all ours. I know you've all put in a sixteen-hour day already, but we've got to do it all, so it's going to be a long night. Odds are the killer cleaned up before leaving, so the bathrooms are first. I'll take the master bath and bedroom. Kate, you've got the other bathroom, the front hall, and then the kitchen."
Kate nodded, grabbed her kit, and headed for the powder room off the front hall.
"McGee, you take this office area, from here—" Gibbs pointed at the bookcase that served as demarcation between the office and the rest of the living room, "to here. Don't worry about pulling anything off the computer now; we'll take it back with us."
Gibbs broke off for a moment, watching as Ducky and Gerald returned for the second body. He turned to Tony. "DiNozzo, you get the prize."
"The living room. On it, Boss. It's as good as done."
"Just so it's done right. Whoever's done first can take the second bedroom." Gibbs turned to Tim. "Okay, walk me through it."
Tim took a deep breath, then regretted it when the stench threatened to choke him. He swallowed hard and forced himself to breathe normally. "Start here." He pointed at the wall to his left. "Work top to bottom, left to right. Photograph and sketch, search, bag and tag, fingerprint."
Gibbs nodded. "Get to work." He grabbed his kit and started down the hall, then stopped and turned. "You're still new at this. Ask questions if you need to. Don't screw up my crime scene because you're too dumb to ask."
"Yes, sir. Boss," he said to Gibbs' retreating back.
Tony let him have the camera first since Tim's assigned space was small, and then watched over his shoulder as he shot, making mocking remarks that managed to be helpful without seeming like it. Tim was too grateful to mind much, especially when Tony stayed to oversee his sketches.
He couldn't afford pride. Or mistakes.
And then Tony headed back to the living room, and Tim was on his own.
He'd never realized how much stuff was in an office, even a home office. The room had seemed small when he'd photographed it, but it was packed, crammed full of books and files and stacks of mail and several different kinds of computer media. And he had to look at every bit of it, open every file, flip through the pages of every single book.
Two hours had passed and his back was getting tired from all the bending and straightening when Kate came and tapped on his shoulder.
"Coffee run," she said. "Food, too, if I can find anything open at this hour. What do you want?"
He'd managed to distract himself from the smell of the place by concentrating on his work, but the mention of food brought his attention back to the sickening miasma of blood and offal and spaghetti sauce and threatened to turn his stomach again.
Kate apparently read his face. "You have to eat," she said, not unsympathetically. "I know you don't want to, but we've still got hours ahead of us and you need the fuel if you're going to keep up your energy and concentration."
Tim swallowed hard. "Okay," he said. "Coffee's good. Cream, no sugar. And you can bring me whatever you're bringing everyone else. I'll eat."
She nodded. "Good. You'll feel better if you do."
He reached for his wallet. "Need money?"
She shook her head. "Don't worry about it; I'll expense it later."
"McGee!" It was Gibbs, calling from the back of the condo.
"Yes, sir!" Tim started toward him, but Gibbs was already halfway down the hall.
"There's a safe under a false floor in the bedroom closet. Find me the combination. Chances are it'll be written down somewhere in the office."
Tim nodded, his stomach quivering from a sudden adrenaline rush. "Okay, Boss."
"What do you want in your coffee, Gibbs?"
Tim turned to see Kate standing hipshot, the fingers of her gloved hand resting delicately on the mouse pad next to the computer, one finger tapping lightly at its surface.
"What do I ever want?" Gibbs growled.
"Black it is," she said amiably, and winked at Tim as Gibbs turned on his heel and strode away.
"I want that combination, McGee," Gibbs called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the master bedroom.
"Thanks, Kate," Tim said quietly, and moved to join her at the desk.
"Under the mousepad," she said. "It's a classic. If it's not there, try under the keyboard or taped to the bottom of a desk drawer. I'll be back soon with coffee and food. Good luck," she said, and left.
The combination was in none of those locations, but Tim did find it (along with an e-mail password) on a Post-It stuck to the underside of one of the computer speakers, and Gibbs' quiet "Good job, McGee" when he delivered it was enough to drive Tim's lingering nausea almost entirely from his mind.
So was the sight of the Glock pistol and the plastic bag full of white powder – several ounces at least, it looked like – that Gibbs found in the safe. Tim made a mental note to look for paperwork on the weapon.
Kate brought back drive-through burgers as well as coffee, and when they retreated to the van to eat, Tim found to his surprise that he was ravenous. The night air was sultry, heavy with heat and humidity, but at least it didn't smell bad, and that was a blessed relief. He ate quickly and with good appetite while he listened to Kate and Tony banter listlessly, both too tired to skewer each other effectively.
The food and the coffee carried him through the next three hours of hunching over and searching through stacks of mail and file after file in the two tall cabinets that flanked the desk.
It was in "Medical Records (Lily)" that he found it. A fetal ultrasound dated sixteen days ago, stapled to three pages of insurance forms.
He stood there for a moment, immobile, staring at the image, then turned and walked out into the living room. "Tony."
From the dining area, Tony looked over his shoulder. "What?"
"She was pregnant."
Kate, fingerprinting in the front hall, stopped and looked at him.
"The woman," Tim said. "She was pregnant." He stared at the bloodstained floor where she'd lain, her belly split open wide and her organs spilling out. "About five months." His stomach churned, and he felt a cold sweat break out under his shirt.
"Do not throw up on my crime scene." The stern voice behind him was Gibbs, emerging from the master bedroom.
Tim swallowed hard and nodded, fighting for control.
"Breathe," Kate said. "Through your mouth. Slow, deep breaths."
It took a minute, but it worked, at least well enough. He cleared his throat. "I'm okay now."
"Whatcha got, McGee?" Gibbs asked.
Tim handed him the documents. "Fetal ultrasound. She was pregnant." He turned back to where the bodies had been. "She… I didn't see… there wasn't…"
"No," Tony said quietly. "There wasn't."
Kate shook her head. "How could anyone…?"
Gibbs didn't answer. He just handed the papers back to Tim and pulled out his cell phone. Tim could hear him briefing Ducky with the new information as he strode back down the hallway to the master suite.
Neither did Tony, who, in a surprising display of sympathy, patted Tim awkwardly on the shoulder before turning back to his work.
"Guess it's not the kind of question you can answer, is it?" Kate shrugged and headed back to the front hall. "Oh," she said, and turned around, gesturing toward the papers in Tim's hand. "Don't forget to get the stapler."
"The stapler?"
Kate nodded. "Every stapler has a signature, a unique stress pattern that it leaves in the staples when it bends the metal." With a final, small smile, she returned to the front hall and picked up her fingerprinting brush again.
Tim forced himself to turn away from the bloodstained floor and go back to the office. It took more willpower than he'd care to admit to make himself open the medical records file again.
It took him another two hours and change to finish searching the office and bagging and tagging evidence. He found a wedding picture, the couple barely more than kids, the young sailor spit-shined and polished in his dress uniform and his bride beaming. He found the mortgage and insurance documents for the condo, none of it in their victims' names; further digging determined that the owner was the female victim's stepfather.
He held it together pretty well as long as he was searching the room. It was only when he started on fingerprinting that the memory of the dead woman's body and the impressionistic image of the fetus that had curled within her rose up to haunt him. He thrust the pictures out of his mind as best he could, concentrating instead on the ache in his neck and his back and his shoulders, his muscles complaining steadily about the endless repetitive tedium of dusting and brushing and collecting the prints. But the images kept returning: the woman's bloody guts, the young couple's happy faces in their wedding photo, the baby that would never be born.
He silently thanked Kate, who apparently had made her way into the kitchen, because the spaghetti sauce was no longer simmering on the stove and the smell of it wasn't nearly as strong as it had been earlier, a small mercy that made a remarkably great difference. It seemed that he could tolerate the smells of blood and gore much more easily when they weren't combined with the aroma of food.
By the time he reached the end of his fingerprinting two hours later, he was flagging badly, exhaustion warring with the lingering horror. Crouched in the corner behind a big potted plant, lifting the last of the prints from the lowest drawer of one of the file cabinets, he was running on sheer willpower when Gibbs came out into the living room.
Tony, who'd been working ceaselessly ever since their arrival except for their brief food break, was fingerprinting the last few feet of wall in his assigned space, fatigue evident in his posture. Dust, brush, lift, over and over and over again; gray smudges on furniture and three long walls showed where he'd already been.
Tony reached up high on the wall beside the doorjamb, his neck craned at an awkward angle. Tim stretched his own neck to see through the foliage of the potted plant, and breathed a quiet "Uh-oh" when he saw that Tony had failed to lift several prints, and that Gibbs couldn't have missed seeing it.
Behind Tony, Gibbs raised his hand, and Tim felt a brief moment of petty pleasure at the thought of the head smack Tony was about to receive, doubtless to be followed by a typical shot of scathing Gibbs sarcasm.
But instead, Tim watched as Gibbs' hand came to rest on the back of Tony's neck.
Gibbs spoke softly, but Tim could still hear him. "Looks like you might've missed a print or two, Tony."
Tony dropped his arms to his sides; his head appeared to tip back slightly, into Gibbs' touch, as he looked up at the wall. "Oh, shit. I'm sorry, Gibbs. Dammit."
"Don't worry about it," Gibbs said. "No harm done."
Exhaustion and distress showed in every line of Tony's body. "I fucked up. Jesus. I'll get them."
"It's okay," Gibbs said quietly. His thumb rubbed slowly over Tony's neck. "You've done twice the work of anyone here tonight, and you've been at it almost twenty-four hours."
The slow rhythmic stroking of Gibbs thumb under Tony's ear was mesmerizing, and terribly intimate, and when Tony turned his head to look at Gibbs, the naked devotion on his drawn and tired face made an ache bloom in the center of Tim's chest. Suddenly he felt painfully alone.
Aware that he was intruding on a very private moment, Tim looked away and focused on lifting the last of the fingerprints on the file drawer in front of him. The job completed, he coughed and made a small show of clambering to his feet. The groan as he painfully straightened his aching back was real; he flushed self-consciously when Gibbs and Tony turned to look at him.
"All done, Boss," Tim said. "I think."
Tony cleared his throat. "I'll be done here in about ten minutes."
Gibbs clapped Tony on the shoulder and left him to finish his work. He joined Tim in the office alcove. "Do I need to check your work, McGee?"
Tim felt himself flush. "No, sir. Boss. I don't think I missed anything."
Gibbs nodded. "Good." And then he did it anyway, making Tim talk him through the procedures he'd followed and what he'd found. When he'd finished his recitation, Gibbs just nodded again and said, "Pack everything up and get the van loaded. When you're done, see if Kate could use a hand."
Tim counted that as praise, and even though his hands trembled slightly with fatigue as he packed his kit, he couldn't help smiling with satisfaction.
Half an hour later, the team gathered on the front lawn beside the van.
"Okay, people," Gibbs said, squinting at the pale morning sun inching skyward on the eastern horizon. "Do a final exterior check, and then we're out of here. I want everyone to go home and get two or three hours sleep; otherwise you'll be worthless and make stupid mistakes. I don't want any mistakes on this case. We're going to catch this son of a bitch. Kate," he pointed. "East side of the house. DiNozzo, west side. McGee, since you upchucked in the back yard, it's yours. I've got the front and the storm drains. Go."
The back yard was small and tidy, and Tim covered it quickly. He could still hear Kate and Tony in their respective side yards, so he leaned against the back fence and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, dialing from memory.
Abby picked up after two rings, sounding sleepy and unfocused. Tim's chest ached; he wished he could be there to see her, sleep-rumpled and warm and soft.
"Abby," he said, and that was all he could get out for a moment.
"Tim?" she said. "What's wrong?"
"I need to see you," he said. "Can I come over?"
~ fin ~