NCIS. Abby/Kate. 055. Spirit. *
Title: Feeding the Ducks
Fandom: NCIS
Characters: Abigail Sciuto, Caitlin Todd, Jethro Gibbs, Anthony DiNozzo, Timothy McGee, Ziva David, Donald "Ducky" Mallard
Prompt: 055 Spirit
Word Count: 4,734
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: My Other Left Foot, SWAK, Kill Ari, Honor Code, Frame-Up, Probie,
Summary: Gibbs sticks up for Abby when another lab casts doubt on her work... but Abby thinks someone else is to blame for the team's recent problems.
Author's Notes: The line Tony quotes at the end is from the John Wayne version of "The Alamo."
Little Damn Table
Abby blinked as she opened the door, certain she was still dreaming. Gibbs smiled and held out the tray and said, "Go on." She pulled her Kaf-Pow from the carrier and stepped aside, letting him into her apartment. She watched him for a moment, following him into the living room and waiting for him to explain why he was there. "Nice place," he said.
"Gibbs?" He turned to face her. "Did ya have a sudden hankering to see what my apartment looked like at five in the morning?"
He smiled and bowed his head and little, taking his own coffee from the carrier and putting it down on the table. "Abby... do you remember Petty Officer Albert Cohen?"
Abby pondered the name and paced towards the window. "Cohen... killed his wife?"
"Yeah," Gibbs said quietly.
"He's in jail. R-right...? I mean, he's not... escaped and coming after me, is he?"
Gibbs shook his head. "No, he's not escaped. He's filing an appeal."
"He'll lose," Abby scoffed.
"Abby, do you remember what evidence put him away?"
She rolled her eyes. "Geez, Gibbs, if I'd known you were going to give me a pop quiz..." She thought for a moment and then snapped her fingers. "The knife! It was covered with his wife's blood and wrapped in the shirt he'd worn to go hunting. I found his fingerprints on the handle."
Gibbs stepped closer to her, looking her in the eye. "I have to ask this, Abby. But how thorough were you?"
"Gibbs," she scoffed.
"Abby... humor me."
"I printed the whole darn thing. Cohen's prints were the only ones on the knife."
Gibbs shook his head slowly. "No, Abby. They're not."
Abby's eyes widened. "What?"
"For his appeal, Cohen hired an independent lab to re-examine the evidence in the case. One of their scientists discovered a second pair of prints on the handle of the knife. They do not match Petty Officer Cohen."
"No, Gibbs."
"One of the unknowns overlaps Cohen's print. He was not the last person to handle that knife, Abs."
---
Abby stormed into the lab, shucking her coat and tossing it at the wall. "Okay. This is what we're gonna do." The walrus-faced man standing at her lab table jumped, stepping away from her. "I'm going to get the evidence back from whatever idiot lab processed it." She picked up her lab coat and slipped it on. "I'm going to rerun every stinking test I can think of and I am going to discover how I missed a fingerprint." She turned and picked up her box of rubber gloves. "Because I am telling you... I did not miss a fingerprint, overlapping or no, but especially overlapping."
She pointed one finger at the walrus and said, "And if I keep talking, maybe you won't tell me who you are."
Gibbs hurried into the lab, sighing when he saw Abby pulling on her rubber gloves. "Abs, you cannot be here."
"I have to redeem myself, Gibbs."
"You can't," he said, putting his hand on top of hers and taking the gloves from her. "If the court decides you were in the wrong, it could put every single case you've worked on in jeopardy. Everyone who was put away on the strength of your tests, every warrant obtained by evidence you confirmed... all of it will be appealed." He motioned at the walrus. "This is Dr. Shineman."
"Shlienberg," the doctor corrected.
"He's from Norfolk. He's the best in the field. He'll figure out what happened with the knife."
"I can't just sit at home, Gibbs. They'll be tearing apart my work, I can't just..."
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. "Abby... trust. Go upstairs with Tony, Ziva and McGee. We will figure this out."
She looked away from his face and he hooked her chin, forcing her to look at his hands. He signed, "Trust me."
She whispered, "I do." She pulled off the gloves and dropped them on the table. Turning to the walrus, she said, "Make me proud, Schlienchen."
"Shlienberg."
---
Ziva leaned back in her chair, using the toe of her boot to swing herself back and forth. "So the man is in prison, put there by your... fine investigative skills... and he is allowed to simply... walk away now?"
"He had appeals," McGee said. "It's his right as an American to completely gum up the entire system."
"The man killed his wife. Abby proved it. The evidence pointed to him and no other. Had I been here, I would have simply..." She drew her thumb across her throat.
"Then you'd be the one filing appeals, Ms. David," Gibbs said, walking into the squad room.
Ziva straightened her chair and stood. "Gibbs. I was simply stating my... frustration with the American legal system."
"Uh-huh. DiNozzo, get the independent lab that did the test for Cohen's appeals. I want to know who found those fingerprints."
"Got it, boss."
He looked around. "Where's Abby?"
"Not here," McGee said.
"I told her to come up here to keep her mind off of things."
"Where would she have gone?" Tony asked.
Gibbs came back out from behind his desk and headed for the elevators. "You get on the lab, DiNozzo. I'll find Abby."
---
"I'm really, really sorry."
Abby crossed her feet under the bench, staring down at her hands. The ducks, just visible through the trees, spread out from their pond in search of kindly souls with pieces of stale bread. Abby had bought a Subway sandwich and dumped out the contents, tearing the bread into pieces for when they approached.
Directly behind the bench, the concrete walkway curved back into the trees. Skaters, bicyclists and joggers occasionally passed, but none of them paid any attention to her. A tree on the opposite side of the path stretched over it, forming a canopy that shaded the bench. When Gibbs sat, he brushed his thumb over the golden plaque fixed to the center of the seat.
"This bench dedicated to
Special Agent Caitlin Todd
Who Gave Her Life For Her Country
We Miss You,
LJG, AS, TD, TM, DM"
Abby didn't look up at him.
"You don't have to be sorry, Abs," he said. "If you made a mistake, which I do not believe for a second that you did, we'll get through it."
"Every case," Abby said, shaking her head. "Every conviction. They'll all have a chance to appeal. And you know, Gibbs, I... I'm not even sure I didn't make a mistake. I mean, it was... right around the time..."
"I know, Abby," Gibbs said softly.
She sniffled and said, "I wasn't thinking about cases and evidence. I was thinking about Kate."
"We all were. But that doesn't mean we did sub-par work. We'll get to the bottom of this."
She looked down at his coffee cup and realized he hadn't brought her anything. "No Kaf-Pow!?" she asked, then realized. "You didn't know I would be here."
Gibbs smiled. "Call it a lucky guess."
"You don't believe in luck."
"Luck is what happens when I don't know I'm following my gut."
Abby smirked. She tore off a piece of bread and held it out to him. "Wanna feed the ducks?"
"I'll feed a duck," Gibbs said, taking the bread from her. Together, they walked down the slope towards the pond.
"I wasn't apologizing to you."
"Oh?"
She bit her lip and said, "You're going to think it's stupid."
"Uh-oh."
"I was apologizing to Kate. I know she's still around, Gibbs, you can believe what you want. I feel her. Sometimes I can hear her talking to me. And I know you're probably rolling your eyes, but..."
"I saw her, too," Gibbs said.
Abby turned and stared at him. "What?"
"Right after. In the bullpen. She..." He shrugged. "Talked to me. And when Ari took Ducky. The last time was at her funeral."
"Oh," Abby said. "I keep seeing her. At home, on the bus, at the store..."
"Why were you apologizing?"
"Because she's doing this. She's angry at us. For letting her die."
Gibbs scoffed.
"I knew you'd say that," Abby said. "I just didn't know when."
"Well, come on, Abby..."
She held her hands out and said, "Look at what's happened since then. Paula Cassidy was kidnapped and tortured and ended up taking a leave of absence from NCIS instead of accepting Kate's position... poor Tony was almost put in prison for murder, McGee shot an undercover cop... You said it yourself! It's like someone broke a mirror. The whole team is getting seven years bad luck."
Gibbs tossed a piece of bread to a duck, who spread his wings and rushed over to claim it. "You really think Kate would do that?" he asked.
"I don't know," Abby said softly. "I used to think she was unbreakable. I don't know what to believe anymore." A duck wandered over to her and she tossed him a chunk of bread.
---
"Okay, Skeinman," Tony said.
"Shlienberg," the scientist sighed. "My name is Shlien... berg."
"I'm gonna call you Skeinman," Tony said. "No offense. I'm just not keen on learning new names. You know how it is." He pulled a stool over and said, "Okay. Wow me."
He looked at his print-out, looked at DiNozzo and said, "I'm not sure what you're expecting."
"You were going over Abby's tests. Well?"
"I reran the knife. The prints were there, as the independent lab revealed. I then ran the overlapping print through AFIS and I'm currently waiting for a--"
"Hold the phone, Schindler," Tony said. "You're really putting me to sleep over here." He stood and pulled the man's tie out of his vest. "I mean, come on. What's with the Mr. Rogers' get-up?"
"This is what I wear to work," the replacement huffed. He pulled his tie from Tony's hand and stuffed it back into his vest. "I've seen Ms. Sciuto's attire and, to be frank, it's atrocious." He headed to the desk and Tony followed him. "At Norfolk, we're required to present a certain amount of professionalism both on and off the job." He stopped at the table, glancing back to see Tony behind his desk. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
Schlienberg sighed and walked over. "And this is why your agency is under investigation. Inappropriate behavior in the lab. This is not a playground, Mr. DiNozzo. The facts we uncover here often mean the difference between life and death. So you'll excuse me if I am a little more stuffy than my predecessor."
"Stuffier," Tony said. "And don't call her your predecessor. 'Cause you'll be back at Norfolk before your seat in your little cubicle gets cold. I'd trust Abby to investigate my case. And, he-ey, you know what? She did. And despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she saw through the lies and..." He held his hands out. "Well, here I am."
Schlienberg said, "Riveting. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some work to be doing." He dropped into Abby's seat... and released a mighty and long-winded fart. He jumped up and pulled the purple toy from the seat where DiNozzo had placed it."
Tony laughed and said, "Oh, yeah, meet Bert. He's Abby's farting hippo. Catch you around, Shinglebeam."
Schlienberg looked at the toy and said, "I don't know who framed that man... but I am certainly beginning to understand why." He dropped Bert onto the desk and sat down again.
---
Tony stepped out of the elevator and met Ziva as she was about to enter. "Oh. I was coming to look for you. What did Schlienberg have to say?"
"Who?"
"Schlienberg. Abby's replacement."
"The name doesn't ring a bell. But the dullard temporarily filling in for Abby doesn't have squat."
She handed him a print-out. "I ran a check on Winston Laboratories, the independent lab that re-ran Abby's results."
"Oh?" Tony said, scanning the file.
"Over the past four years, they've had a ratio of seven acquittals to every upheld ruling."
Tony whistled. "That's a pretty steep ratio. It's like a ball team having... well, like a ball-team having a..." He tried to do the math in his head and eventually just said, "It'd be like a really great run for your team. Kind of hinky..."
"Hinky," Ziva said, rolling her eyes. "You know I looked hinky up in four American slang dictionaries."
"Yeah?" Tony said.
"It's not in a single one of them."
"You don't say." He picked up the car keys from her desk and said, "Grab your jacket. We're going to Winston."
---
Tony drove to Winston Laboratories. Ziva was staring out the window, stewing. "Question."
"Shoot," Tony said.
"Is everyone on this team obligated to be implicated in some crime or another?"
Tony laughed. "Sure seems like it lately."
"I like Abby as much as the next person... but we have to look at the possibility that she just... missed this. Is it not?"
Tony sighed. "We once found a seed in a man's boot."
"Oh, good, it's story time," Ziva muttered.
"Gibbs knew that comparing the seed to a tree, he could give motive to our suspect. Abby said she could match plant DNA, no problem, but Gibbs was skeptical. So, without her knowledge, he gave her a blind test. Told her both samples came from the same tree. She made a positive match on the right sample, but because Gibbs kept information from her--"
"He lied."
"--was creative with the truth... she thought she'd screwed up. She was a mess. She even hit Gibbs when he told her what he'd done."
Ziva's eyes widened. "She hit Gibbs?"
"So the urban legend goes."
"How is that possible," Ziva muttered. "Unless she originally had three hands? And he lopped off the extra as punishment?"
Tony smiled. "You haven't been around long enough, Ziva. Abby and Gibbs? Kind of give-and-take you and I could only dream of. So the idea of Abby making a mistake is the same as suggesting Gibbs might have made a mistake."
"He's not infallible, you know."
"No," Tony said. "But he's damn close."
They got out of the car and flashed their ID to the guard. He pointed them to the main entrance and they headed inside. The receptionist smiled as they approached. "Hello, and welcome to Winston Laboratories. How may I assist you today?"
Tony held his ID up again. "NCIS. We want to speak to the guy who did the test on Petty Officer Cohen's trial."
The smile vanished and she picked up a phone. "Just a moment, please."
---
The JAG prosecutor checked the file and said, "Ms. Sciuto. Thank you for coming down this morning."
"Like I had a choice," Abby muttered, adjusting her glasses. "Sorry."
"It's no problem," the lawyer smiled. He clasped his hands behind his back and stepped towards the witness box. "Ms. Sciuto, why don't you tell the jury what it is you do for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service?"
She cleared her throat. "I run the forensics and ballistics lab."
"What falls under your purview?"
"Blood, DNA, bullets... basically if you can check for it under a microscope, I investigate it." She smiled, glancing at the jury to see if the joke had landed well. The ones who were paying attention looked scared of her, so she looked away.
"Hm," the lawyer nodded. "So fingerprint matches, DNA comparisons, confirming that a suspect's gun was in fact used in a murder... that's a lot of pressure on your shoulders. Tell me, what do you do for fun? To relieve the pressure?"
Abby glanced nervously at the judge and said, "I, uh... party sometimes."
"Lot of booze at these parties?"
"I don't drink."
"That wasn't the question."
"Yes, there's alcohol, but..."
"And you listen to what some would qualify as..." He checked his notes, "'satanic, devilish music.' Is that correct?"
"Heavy metal is not..."
"Is that correct?"
"Some people call it that, sure, but..."
"Ms. Sciuto... according to Timothy McGee's sworn statement, you sleep in a coffin. Is that accurate?"
She looked at the gallery and saw McGee, looking guilty as hell in the front row. "Yes, it's accurate."
"Ms. Sciuto, are you a devil worshipper?"
"No!"
"Petty Officer Cohen was Jewish. Is that why you were so determined to blame him for this crime?"
"I'm not a devil worshipper! I'm Catholic! I--"
"You wear those clothes to your 'Catholic' church, Ms. Sciuto?"
She looked down, shocked to see she wasn't wearing her typical court monkey suit. Instead, she was wearing a plaid skirt and a black t-shirt that said BLACK SABBATH. "I... I-I wasn't..."
"Answer the question," the judge snapped.
Abby turned at the sound of the judge's voice, shocked to see Kate sitting behind the gavel with a white powdered wig on her head. Abby gawked a few more seconds and said, "I... didn't! The fingerprints weren't there!"
"Whose, Petty Officer Cohen's?" the lawyer asked. "Are you admitting to planting them?"
"No!"
"Guilty!" Kate said, slamming her gavel down. "Off with her head!"
The back doors of the courtroom flew open and a guillotine was rolled in. Abby screamed and tried to escape, grabbed from behind by Gibbs and Ducky. "Decapitation is actually quite a lovely way to go," Ducky said, straining to hold onto her. "You don't see the blade, which is usually kept so sharp as to be painless. Relatively speaking."
"But you still end up with your head in a basket," Gibbs added.
"A tisket, a tasket, Abby's head in a basket," Tony sang from the defense council's seat. "Sorry, Abby," he said as she passed. "I tried the best I could."
"ABBY!"
---
She jerked, looking around for the guillotine before realizing she was in Gibbs' car. "You okay?" he said. "You were about to kick a hole through the floorboard."
"I'm fine," she muttered, sitting up and rubbing her forehead. "Where are we?"
"Almost to your apartment."
She pushed herself up in the seat and looked over at him. "I really wish you'd let me help with the case."
"And you know why I can't let you."
She sighed and nodded. "Thanks for being there for me."
He smiled and reached over, squeezing her shoulder.
---
Dr. Louis Gabriel escorted Tony and Ziva to his office. "I really don't know what to tell you, Agent DiNozzo. The prints were there, plain as day. I don't see how your lab could have missed them, but..."
"Yeah, that's just it," Tony said. "I don't see our lab missing these prints."
Gabriel sighed and held up the report. "Well, see for yourself. I have the photographs taken from your own scientist. The fingerprints clearly overlap here."
Ziva took the photograph and examined it. "They do appear to overlap," she said quietly, handing the photos to Tony.
He looked at the knife and shook his head. "This is impossible. Abby would not have made this mistake."
Ziva said, "This was during the time immediately after Special Agent Todd..."
Tony shushed her and stepped forward. "Your lab does a lot of independent work, doesn't it?"
"Yes," Gabriel said. "And if you believe you're the first investigators to show up barking like a mad dog because we've proven that you screwed up..."
Tony threw the photos on the table. "Abby Sciuto did not screw up. You want to know how I know? Because Abby Sciuto found the evidence that put me in jail. That's right! I'm an ex-con." He stepped forward and Gabriel almost tripped over his chair. "So if she turned in evidence against me, her best, if slightly mentally disturbed, friend then she would never... ever... make a mistake with or otherwise alter any other evidence. Do you understand me?"
"Look... Special Agent DiNozzo..."
"How much do you get paid for each acquittal?"
"It doesn't work like that."
"Still. You get paid a certain amount for each case, whether it results in acquittal or not. Right?"
"Well, of course. It's how we--"
"So you get handed a case and a jury overturns the ruling... it's good advertising? If your acquittal ratio is higher. I mean, if none of your cases were overturned, who would use you in their appeals?"
Gabriel shook his head. "You're oversimplifying a very complex..."
"I don't think it's complex at all," Tony said. He leaned forward and said, "All right. All the cards on the table. I saw the knife after Abby printed it. The overlapping print was not there."
Gabriel hesitated and looked down at the photograph. "I..."
Tony shook his head and turned to face Ziva. "You get a knife. Add a fingerprint or two. Maybe you fudge with the chain of evidence. It's easy to do, really easy to do accidentally. So imagine how easy it would be to do it on purpose. I mean, even if you don't fully remove the blame from the suspect, you've managed to plant a little something called 'reasonable doubt' into the mind of Ma and Pa Kettle on the jury."
He turned and pointed at Gabriel. "You fiddle with evidence. You add something, or take it away and hope no one will notice. You get your acquittals and the new cases keep rolling in." Tony pulled his cuffs from the back of his belt and held them up. "Sorry to break it to you, Doc, but I think the well is about to run dry."
"Excellent work, Tony," Ziva said.
"Thank you, Ziva," Tony said, cuffing Gabriel's hands behind his back. "It'd be nicer if you didn't sound so surprised, but I'll take it."
She shrugged and said, "How could you possibly remember the placement of fingerprints on this knife?"
"Oh, that?" Tony said. He shrugged. "I never saw the knife after Abby fingerprinted it."
Ziva's eyes widened. "You bluffed?"
Tony laughed and said, "Oh, yeah. We do that sort of stuff all the time around here. Now," he said, slapping his hand down on Gabriel's shoulder. "Your rights. I'm going to pay really close attention. Cause I don't want to mess up with you. Now, let me know if I skip anything."
---
Tony walked into the squad room and slowed as he approached his desk. There was a huge box sitting on his blotter, a red bow perched on top. He looked around for the perpetrator, but there was no one in sight. He bent down, looking at the side of the box for any evidence it was leaking or smoking or ticking. After the plague-infected letter last year, he'd even been opening his credit card statements with salad tongs.
He put down his pack and was about to call Gibbs when he spotted a piece of paper taped to the edge. "It's safe. Open it! - A." He smiled, recognizing Abby's handwriting, and tore the tape off. He opened the package... and his eyes lit up.
The Indiana Jones Trilogy. The Star Wars Trilogy. The Matrix Trilogy.
Also what looked like every John Wayne movie ever made, including The Alamo. Tony dug through the bounty, pausing to ooh and ahh over various movies. When he got to the bottom, he found a card. He opened it and smiled when he read Abby's note: "Thank you for not giving up on me. Abby."
He picked a handful of movies out of the box and sat down, reading the back of each one. "Well, ma'am," he drawled in a bad approximation of John Wayne's drawl. "There's right and there's wrong. You gotta do one or the other. You do the one, and you're living. You do the other, and you may be walking around, but you're as dead as a beaver hat."
---
Abby was back on the bench under Kate's tree, watching the ducks wander back and forth across the clearing. "It's a good spot," Kate said, watching the ducks. "Close enough to see the ducks, but not so close that you have to chisel the bench clean every morning."
Abby smiled sadly and Kate nudged her. "Hey! Why the long face? Tony cleared you. Everything's going back to normal."
"You're still not here."
"Yeah," Kate said. "I wasn't here very long anyway."
"Long enough," Abby said. "Those two years? Kate, I..." She shook her head. "It was the best. And now... you're gone... and I can't figure out how I used to be. It's like I'm atrophied." She looked at Kate. "Not that I'm comparing knowing you to a crippling injury. But... okay, when you get laid up, you lose muscle ability and, when it's healed, you have to learn how to walk all over again. I mean... walking? How can you forget that?
"But that's what it's like with you gone. Like I spent a year floating and now... I have to learn how to walk again and talk again and breathe again. And I feel like crap most of the time because it hurts. And it's hard. And I don't want to do it. Because it would be so much easier to just sit back down in that wheelchair. But the chair is gone. You're gone. And I'm broken. And I just want to feel fixed again."
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, a tear rolling down her cheek.
Kate laughed and said, "You're not broken, Abby. You're the most together person I ever met. Because you don't wear suits. Because you wear a dog collar to the office. Because you do cartwheels in the lab and because you don't mind letting people hear you laugh or cry or do any of those little Abby things. I wish I had half your strength when I was alive."
Abby looked at her and said, "How long are you going to stay?"
"Until Gibbs gets here."
"Gibbs is..."
"He just parked."
Abby ran her fingers over the letters of Kate's name on the plaque, the only way she could really touch her. "I love you, Kate."
"I did too," Kate said. "You helped me realize who I was. Thank you for that, Abby."
"Abby?"
She looked over her shoulder and smiled as Gibbs approached. When he sat in the spot so recently vacated by Kate, she squinted at him. "How did you know to find me here the other day?"
"Played a hunch."
"You didn't bring me a Kaf-Pow."
He smirked and said, "Okay. I came here to clear my mind. Finding you was a..."
"You were about to say 'stroke of luck,' weren't you?"
"No," he chuckled.
Behind them, someone said, "Hey!" They turned and saw McGee coming off the path towards them. "What are you guys doing here?"
"What are you doing?" Abby asked.
McGee held up the paper sack. "I eat much lunch here. Whenever I can."
Abby scooted over, parting her legs around the plaque and letting McGee have her original seat. He sat down next to her and leaned forward. "Hi, boss."
"Tim."
Abby thought for a moment and said, "So. All of us come here to see Kate, huh?"
McGee smiled and looked down at his food. "You think she knows we come?"
"Oh, yeah," Gibbs said. "She knows."
Abby and McGee both looked at him and he chuckled. "Hey. More things in heaven and Earth, Abby. And besides. Not all of us are here. Tony is..."
They heard whistling coming from the trees and all three of them turned to watch the bend in the path. After a moment, a groundskeeper ambled into view. They chuckled at themselves and Abby said, "I guess it would be a little farfetched if it had been Tony."
"Tony?" the groundskeeper said. They all turned again. "The tall, Italian kid?"
"You know him?" Gibbs asked.
"Oh, sure, sure," the groundskeeper chuckled. "Here every morning, pretty much. Loves to talk about movies. Ah, the old movies, back before special effects ruin them. That Tony, he's a good egg. Something about that bench, though, makes him awful melancholy. Awful melancholy." He shook his head and ambled on.
Gibbs reached over and took McGee's roll. "Come on, Tim. Let's go feed the ducks."
Abby watched them walk down the hill and looked over her shoulder. Kate was watching them, too, tears in her eyes. She turned to Abby and mouthed, "I love you," before she faded.
Abby stood and ran to catch up with McGee and Gibbs.
Fandom: NCIS
Characters: Abigail Sciuto, Caitlin Todd, Jethro Gibbs, Anthony DiNozzo, Timothy McGee, Ziva David, Donald "Ducky" Mallard
Prompt: 055 Spirit
Word Count: 4,734
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: My Other Left Foot, SWAK, Kill Ari, Honor Code, Frame-Up, Probie,
Summary: Gibbs sticks up for Abby when another lab casts doubt on her work... but Abby thinks someone else is to blame for the team's recent problems.
Author's Notes: The line Tony quotes at the end is from the John Wayne version of "The Alamo."
Little Damn Table
Abby blinked as she opened the door, certain she was still dreaming. Gibbs smiled and held out the tray and said, "Go on." She pulled her Kaf-Pow from the carrier and stepped aside, letting him into her apartment. She watched him for a moment, following him into the living room and waiting for him to explain why he was there. "Nice place," he said.
"Gibbs?" He turned to face her. "Did ya have a sudden hankering to see what my apartment looked like at five in the morning?"
He smiled and bowed his head and little, taking his own coffee from the carrier and putting it down on the table. "Abby... do you remember Petty Officer Albert Cohen?"
Abby pondered the name and paced towards the window. "Cohen... killed his wife?"
"Yeah," Gibbs said quietly.
"He's in jail. R-right...? I mean, he's not... escaped and coming after me, is he?"
Gibbs shook his head. "No, he's not escaped. He's filing an appeal."
"He'll lose," Abby scoffed.
"Abby, do you remember what evidence put him away?"
She rolled her eyes. "Geez, Gibbs, if I'd known you were going to give me a pop quiz..." She thought for a moment and then snapped her fingers. "The knife! It was covered with his wife's blood and wrapped in the shirt he'd worn to go hunting. I found his fingerprints on the handle."
Gibbs stepped closer to her, looking her in the eye. "I have to ask this, Abby. But how thorough were you?"
"Gibbs," she scoffed.
"Abby... humor me."
"I printed the whole darn thing. Cohen's prints were the only ones on the knife."
Gibbs shook his head slowly. "No, Abby. They're not."
Abby's eyes widened. "What?"
"For his appeal, Cohen hired an independent lab to re-examine the evidence in the case. One of their scientists discovered a second pair of prints on the handle of the knife. They do not match Petty Officer Cohen."
"No, Gibbs."
"One of the unknowns overlaps Cohen's print. He was not the last person to handle that knife, Abs."
---
Abby stormed into the lab, shucking her coat and tossing it at the wall. "Okay. This is what we're gonna do." The walrus-faced man standing at her lab table jumped, stepping away from her. "I'm going to get the evidence back from whatever idiot lab processed it." She picked up her lab coat and slipped it on. "I'm going to rerun every stinking test I can think of and I am going to discover how I missed a fingerprint." She turned and picked up her box of rubber gloves. "Because I am telling you... I did not miss a fingerprint, overlapping or no, but especially overlapping."
She pointed one finger at the walrus and said, "And if I keep talking, maybe you won't tell me who you are."
Gibbs hurried into the lab, sighing when he saw Abby pulling on her rubber gloves. "Abs, you cannot be here."
"I have to redeem myself, Gibbs."
"You can't," he said, putting his hand on top of hers and taking the gloves from her. "If the court decides you were in the wrong, it could put every single case you've worked on in jeopardy. Everyone who was put away on the strength of your tests, every warrant obtained by evidence you confirmed... all of it will be appealed." He motioned at the walrus. "This is Dr. Shineman."
"Shlienberg," the doctor corrected.
"He's from Norfolk. He's the best in the field. He'll figure out what happened with the knife."
"I can't just sit at home, Gibbs. They'll be tearing apart my work, I can't just..."
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. "Abby... trust. Go upstairs with Tony, Ziva and McGee. We will figure this out."
She looked away from his face and he hooked her chin, forcing her to look at his hands. He signed, "Trust me."
She whispered, "I do." She pulled off the gloves and dropped them on the table. Turning to the walrus, she said, "Make me proud, Schlienchen."
"Shlienberg."
---
Ziva leaned back in her chair, using the toe of her boot to swing herself back and forth. "So the man is in prison, put there by your... fine investigative skills... and he is allowed to simply... walk away now?"
"He had appeals," McGee said. "It's his right as an American to completely gum up the entire system."
"The man killed his wife. Abby proved it. The evidence pointed to him and no other. Had I been here, I would have simply..." She drew her thumb across her throat.
"Then you'd be the one filing appeals, Ms. David," Gibbs said, walking into the squad room.
Ziva straightened her chair and stood. "Gibbs. I was simply stating my... frustration with the American legal system."
"Uh-huh. DiNozzo, get the independent lab that did the test for Cohen's appeals. I want to know who found those fingerprints."
"Got it, boss."
He looked around. "Where's Abby?"
"Not here," McGee said.
"I told her to come up here to keep her mind off of things."
"Where would she have gone?" Tony asked.
Gibbs came back out from behind his desk and headed for the elevators. "You get on the lab, DiNozzo. I'll find Abby."
---
"I'm really, really sorry."
Abby crossed her feet under the bench, staring down at her hands. The ducks, just visible through the trees, spread out from their pond in search of kindly souls with pieces of stale bread. Abby had bought a Subway sandwich and dumped out the contents, tearing the bread into pieces for when they approached.
Directly behind the bench, the concrete walkway curved back into the trees. Skaters, bicyclists and joggers occasionally passed, but none of them paid any attention to her. A tree on the opposite side of the path stretched over it, forming a canopy that shaded the bench. When Gibbs sat, he brushed his thumb over the golden plaque fixed to the center of the seat.
"This bench dedicated to
Special Agent Caitlin Todd
Who Gave Her Life For Her Country
We Miss You,
LJG, AS, TD, TM, DM"
Abby didn't look up at him.
"You don't have to be sorry, Abs," he said. "If you made a mistake, which I do not believe for a second that you did, we'll get through it."
"Every case," Abby said, shaking her head. "Every conviction. They'll all have a chance to appeal. And you know, Gibbs, I... I'm not even sure I didn't make a mistake. I mean, it was... right around the time..."
"I know, Abby," Gibbs said softly.
She sniffled and said, "I wasn't thinking about cases and evidence. I was thinking about Kate."
"We all were. But that doesn't mean we did sub-par work. We'll get to the bottom of this."
She looked down at his coffee cup and realized he hadn't brought her anything. "No Kaf-Pow!?" she asked, then realized. "You didn't know I would be here."
Gibbs smiled. "Call it a lucky guess."
"You don't believe in luck."
"Luck is what happens when I don't know I'm following my gut."
Abby smirked. She tore off a piece of bread and held it out to him. "Wanna feed the ducks?"
"I'll feed a duck," Gibbs said, taking the bread from her. Together, they walked down the slope towards the pond.
"I wasn't apologizing to you."
"Oh?"
She bit her lip and said, "You're going to think it's stupid."
"Uh-oh."
"I was apologizing to Kate. I know she's still around, Gibbs, you can believe what you want. I feel her. Sometimes I can hear her talking to me. And I know you're probably rolling your eyes, but..."
"I saw her, too," Gibbs said.
Abby turned and stared at him. "What?"
"Right after. In the bullpen. She..." He shrugged. "Talked to me. And when Ari took Ducky. The last time was at her funeral."
"Oh," Abby said. "I keep seeing her. At home, on the bus, at the store..."
"Why were you apologizing?"
"Because she's doing this. She's angry at us. For letting her die."
Gibbs scoffed.
"I knew you'd say that," Abby said. "I just didn't know when."
"Well, come on, Abby..."
She held her hands out and said, "Look at what's happened since then. Paula Cassidy was kidnapped and tortured and ended up taking a leave of absence from NCIS instead of accepting Kate's position... poor Tony was almost put in prison for murder, McGee shot an undercover cop... You said it yourself! It's like someone broke a mirror. The whole team is getting seven years bad luck."
Gibbs tossed a piece of bread to a duck, who spread his wings and rushed over to claim it. "You really think Kate would do that?" he asked.
"I don't know," Abby said softly. "I used to think she was unbreakable. I don't know what to believe anymore." A duck wandered over to her and she tossed him a chunk of bread.
---
"Okay, Skeinman," Tony said.
"Shlienberg," the scientist sighed. "My name is Shlien... berg."
"I'm gonna call you Skeinman," Tony said. "No offense. I'm just not keen on learning new names. You know how it is." He pulled a stool over and said, "Okay. Wow me."
He looked at his print-out, looked at DiNozzo and said, "I'm not sure what you're expecting."
"You were going over Abby's tests. Well?"
"I reran the knife. The prints were there, as the independent lab revealed. I then ran the overlapping print through AFIS and I'm currently waiting for a--"
"Hold the phone, Schindler," Tony said. "You're really putting me to sleep over here." He stood and pulled the man's tie out of his vest. "I mean, come on. What's with the Mr. Rogers' get-up?"
"This is what I wear to work," the replacement huffed. He pulled his tie from Tony's hand and stuffed it back into his vest. "I've seen Ms. Sciuto's attire and, to be frank, it's atrocious." He headed to the desk and Tony followed him. "At Norfolk, we're required to present a certain amount of professionalism both on and off the job." He stopped at the table, glancing back to see Tony behind his desk. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
Schlienberg sighed and walked over. "And this is why your agency is under investigation. Inappropriate behavior in the lab. This is not a playground, Mr. DiNozzo. The facts we uncover here often mean the difference between life and death. So you'll excuse me if I am a little more stuffy than my predecessor."
"Stuffier," Tony said. "And don't call her your predecessor. 'Cause you'll be back at Norfolk before your seat in your little cubicle gets cold. I'd trust Abby to investigate my case. And, he-ey, you know what? She did. And despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she saw through the lies and..." He held his hands out. "Well, here I am."
Schlienberg said, "Riveting. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some work to be doing." He dropped into Abby's seat... and released a mighty and long-winded fart. He jumped up and pulled the purple toy from the seat where DiNozzo had placed it."
Tony laughed and said, "Oh, yeah, meet Bert. He's Abby's farting hippo. Catch you around, Shinglebeam."
Schlienberg looked at the toy and said, "I don't know who framed that man... but I am certainly beginning to understand why." He dropped Bert onto the desk and sat down again.
---
Tony stepped out of the elevator and met Ziva as she was about to enter. "Oh. I was coming to look for you. What did Schlienberg have to say?"
"Who?"
"Schlienberg. Abby's replacement."
"The name doesn't ring a bell. But the dullard temporarily filling in for Abby doesn't have squat."
She handed him a print-out. "I ran a check on Winston Laboratories, the independent lab that re-ran Abby's results."
"Oh?" Tony said, scanning the file.
"Over the past four years, they've had a ratio of seven acquittals to every upheld ruling."
Tony whistled. "That's a pretty steep ratio. It's like a ball team having... well, like a ball-team having a..." He tried to do the math in his head and eventually just said, "It'd be like a really great run for your team. Kind of hinky..."
"Hinky," Ziva said, rolling her eyes. "You know I looked hinky up in four American slang dictionaries."
"Yeah?" Tony said.
"It's not in a single one of them."
"You don't say." He picked up the car keys from her desk and said, "Grab your jacket. We're going to Winston."
---
Tony drove to Winston Laboratories. Ziva was staring out the window, stewing. "Question."
"Shoot," Tony said.
"Is everyone on this team obligated to be implicated in some crime or another?"
Tony laughed. "Sure seems like it lately."
"I like Abby as much as the next person... but we have to look at the possibility that she just... missed this. Is it not?"
Tony sighed. "We once found a seed in a man's boot."
"Oh, good, it's story time," Ziva muttered.
"Gibbs knew that comparing the seed to a tree, he could give motive to our suspect. Abby said she could match plant DNA, no problem, but Gibbs was skeptical. So, without her knowledge, he gave her a blind test. Told her both samples came from the same tree. She made a positive match on the right sample, but because Gibbs kept information from her--"
"He lied."
"--was creative with the truth... she thought she'd screwed up. She was a mess. She even hit Gibbs when he told her what he'd done."
Ziva's eyes widened. "She hit Gibbs?"
"So the urban legend goes."
"How is that possible," Ziva muttered. "Unless she originally had three hands? And he lopped off the extra as punishment?"
Tony smiled. "You haven't been around long enough, Ziva. Abby and Gibbs? Kind of give-and-take you and I could only dream of. So the idea of Abby making a mistake is the same as suggesting Gibbs might have made a mistake."
"He's not infallible, you know."
"No," Tony said. "But he's damn close."
They got out of the car and flashed their ID to the guard. He pointed them to the main entrance and they headed inside. The receptionist smiled as they approached. "Hello, and welcome to Winston Laboratories. How may I assist you today?"
Tony held his ID up again. "NCIS. We want to speak to the guy who did the test on Petty Officer Cohen's trial."
The smile vanished and she picked up a phone. "Just a moment, please."
---
The JAG prosecutor checked the file and said, "Ms. Sciuto. Thank you for coming down this morning."
"Like I had a choice," Abby muttered, adjusting her glasses. "Sorry."
"It's no problem," the lawyer smiled. He clasped his hands behind his back and stepped towards the witness box. "Ms. Sciuto, why don't you tell the jury what it is you do for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service?"
She cleared her throat. "I run the forensics and ballistics lab."
"What falls under your purview?"
"Blood, DNA, bullets... basically if you can check for it under a microscope, I investigate it." She smiled, glancing at the jury to see if the joke had landed well. The ones who were paying attention looked scared of her, so she looked away.
"Hm," the lawyer nodded. "So fingerprint matches, DNA comparisons, confirming that a suspect's gun was in fact used in a murder... that's a lot of pressure on your shoulders. Tell me, what do you do for fun? To relieve the pressure?"
Abby glanced nervously at the judge and said, "I, uh... party sometimes."
"Lot of booze at these parties?"
"I don't drink."
"That wasn't the question."
"Yes, there's alcohol, but..."
"And you listen to what some would qualify as..." He checked his notes, "'satanic, devilish music.' Is that correct?"
"Heavy metal is not..."
"Is that correct?"
"Some people call it that, sure, but..."
"Ms. Sciuto... according to Timothy McGee's sworn statement, you sleep in a coffin. Is that accurate?"
She looked at the gallery and saw McGee, looking guilty as hell in the front row. "Yes, it's accurate."
"Ms. Sciuto, are you a devil worshipper?"
"No!"
"Petty Officer Cohen was Jewish. Is that why you were so determined to blame him for this crime?"
"I'm not a devil worshipper! I'm Catholic! I--"
"You wear those clothes to your 'Catholic' church, Ms. Sciuto?"
She looked down, shocked to see she wasn't wearing her typical court monkey suit. Instead, she was wearing a plaid skirt and a black t-shirt that said BLACK SABBATH. "I... I-I wasn't..."
"Answer the question," the judge snapped.
Abby turned at the sound of the judge's voice, shocked to see Kate sitting behind the gavel with a white powdered wig on her head. Abby gawked a few more seconds and said, "I... didn't! The fingerprints weren't there!"
"Whose, Petty Officer Cohen's?" the lawyer asked. "Are you admitting to planting them?"
"No!"
"Guilty!" Kate said, slamming her gavel down. "Off with her head!"
The back doors of the courtroom flew open and a guillotine was rolled in. Abby screamed and tried to escape, grabbed from behind by Gibbs and Ducky. "Decapitation is actually quite a lovely way to go," Ducky said, straining to hold onto her. "You don't see the blade, which is usually kept so sharp as to be painless. Relatively speaking."
"But you still end up with your head in a basket," Gibbs added.
"A tisket, a tasket, Abby's head in a basket," Tony sang from the defense council's seat. "Sorry, Abby," he said as she passed. "I tried the best I could."
"ABBY!"
---
She jerked, looking around for the guillotine before realizing she was in Gibbs' car. "You okay?" he said. "You were about to kick a hole through the floorboard."
"I'm fine," she muttered, sitting up and rubbing her forehead. "Where are we?"
"Almost to your apartment."
She pushed herself up in the seat and looked over at him. "I really wish you'd let me help with the case."
"And you know why I can't let you."
She sighed and nodded. "Thanks for being there for me."
He smiled and reached over, squeezing her shoulder.
---
Dr. Louis Gabriel escorted Tony and Ziva to his office. "I really don't know what to tell you, Agent DiNozzo. The prints were there, plain as day. I don't see how your lab could have missed them, but..."
"Yeah, that's just it," Tony said. "I don't see our lab missing these prints."
Gabriel sighed and held up the report. "Well, see for yourself. I have the photographs taken from your own scientist. The fingerprints clearly overlap here."
Ziva took the photograph and examined it. "They do appear to overlap," she said quietly, handing the photos to Tony.
He looked at the knife and shook his head. "This is impossible. Abby would not have made this mistake."
Ziva said, "This was during the time immediately after Special Agent Todd..."
Tony shushed her and stepped forward. "Your lab does a lot of independent work, doesn't it?"
"Yes," Gabriel said. "And if you believe you're the first investigators to show up barking like a mad dog because we've proven that you screwed up..."
Tony threw the photos on the table. "Abby Sciuto did not screw up. You want to know how I know? Because Abby Sciuto found the evidence that put me in jail. That's right! I'm an ex-con." He stepped forward and Gabriel almost tripped over his chair. "So if she turned in evidence against me, her best, if slightly mentally disturbed, friend then she would never... ever... make a mistake with or otherwise alter any other evidence. Do you understand me?"
"Look... Special Agent DiNozzo..."
"How much do you get paid for each acquittal?"
"It doesn't work like that."
"Still. You get paid a certain amount for each case, whether it results in acquittal or not. Right?"
"Well, of course. It's how we--"
"So you get handed a case and a jury overturns the ruling... it's good advertising? If your acquittal ratio is higher. I mean, if none of your cases were overturned, who would use you in their appeals?"
Gabriel shook his head. "You're oversimplifying a very complex..."
"I don't think it's complex at all," Tony said. He leaned forward and said, "All right. All the cards on the table. I saw the knife after Abby printed it. The overlapping print was not there."
Gabriel hesitated and looked down at the photograph. "I..."
Tony shook his head and turned to face Ziva. "You get a knife. Add a fingerprint or two. Maybe you fudge with the chain of evidence. It's easy to do, really easy to do accidentally. So imagine how easy it would be to do it on purpose. I mean, even if you don't fully remove the blame from the suspect, you've managed to plant a little something called 'reasonable doubt' into the mind of Ma and Pa Kettle on the jury."
He turned and pointed at Gabriel. "You fiddle with evidence. You add something, or take it away and hope no one will notice. You get your acquittals and the new cases keep rolling in." Tony pulled his cuffs from the back of his belt and held them up. "Sorry to break it to you, Doc, but I think the well is about to run dry."
"Excellent work, Tony," Ziva said.
"Thank you, Ziva," Tony said, cuffing Gabriel's hands behind his back. "It'd be nicer if you didn't sound so surprised, but I'll take it."
She shrugged and said, "How could you possibly remember the placement of fingerprints on this knife?"
"Oh, that?" Tony said. He shrugged. "I never saw the knife after Abby fingerprinted it."
Ziva's eyes widened. "You bluffed?"
Tony laughed and said, "Oh, yeah. We do that sort of stuff all the time around here. Now," he said, slapping his hand down on Gabriel's shoulder. "Your rights. I'm going to pay really close attention. Cause I don't want to mess up with you. Now, let me know if I skip anything."
---
Tony walked into the squad room and slowed as he approached his desk. There was a huge box sitting on his blotter, a red bow perched on top. He looked around for the perpetrator, but there was no one in sight. He bent down, looking at the side of the box for any evidence it was leaking or smoking or ticking. After the plague-infected letter last year, he'd even been opening his credit card statements with salad tongs.
He put down his pack and was about to call Gibbs when he spotted a piece of paper taped to the edge. "It's safe. Open it! - A." He smiled, recognizing Abby's handwriting, and tore the tape off. He opened the package... and his eyes lit up.
The Indiana Jones Trilogy. The Star Wars Trilogy. The Matrix Trilogy.
Also what looked like every John Wayne movie ever made, including The Alamo. Tony dug through the bounty, pausing to ooh and ahh over various movies. When he got to the bottom, he found a card. He opened it and smiled when he read Abby's note: "Thank you for not giving up on me. Abby."
He picked a handful of movies out of the box and sat down, reading the back of each one. "Well, ma'am," he drawled in a bad approximation of John Wayne's drawl. "There's right and there's wrong. You gotta do one or the other. You do the one, and you're living. You do the other, and you may be walking around, but you're as dead as a beaver hat."
---
Abby was back on the bench under Kate's tree, watching the ducks wander back and forth across the clearing. "It's a good spot," Kate said, watching the ducks. "Close enough to see the ducks, but not so close that you have to chisel the bench clean every morning."
Abby smiled sadly and Kate nudged her. "Hey! Why the long face? Tony cleared you. Everything's going back to normal."
"You're still not here."
"Yeah," Kate said. "I wasn't here very long anyway."
"Long enough," Abby said. "Those two years? Kate, I..." She shook her head. "It was the best. And now... you're gone... and I can't figure out how I used to be. It's like I'm atrophied." She looked at Kate. "Not that I'm comparing knowing you to a crippling injury. But... okay, when you get laid up, you lose muscle ability and, when it's healed, you have to learn how to walk all over again. I mean... walking? How can you forget that?
"But that's what it's like with you gone. Like I spent a year floating and now... I have to learn how to walk again and talk again and breathe again. And I feel like crap most of the time because it hurts. And it's hard. And I don't want to do it. Because it would be so much easier to just sit back down in that wheelchair. But the chair is gone. You're gone. And I'm broken. And I just want to feel fixed again."
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, a tear rolling down her cheek.
Kate laughed and said, "You're not broken, Abby. You're the most together person I ever met. Because you don't wear suits. Because you wear a dog collar to the office. Because you do cartwheels in the lab and because you don't mind letting people hear you laugh or cry or do any of those little Abby things. I wish I had half your strength when I was alive."
Abby looked at her and said, "How long are you going to stay?"
"Until Gibbs gets here."
"Gibbs is..."
"He just parked."
Abby ran her fingers over the letters of Kate's name on the plaque, the only way she could really touch her. "I love you, Kate."
"I did too," Kate said. "You helped me realize who I was. Thank you for that, Abby."
"Abby?"
She looked over her shoulder and smiled as Gibbs approached. When he sat in the spot so recently vacated by Kate, she squinted at him. "How did you know to find me here the other day?"
"Played a hunch."
"You didn't bring me a Kaf-Pow."
He smirked and said, "Okay. I came here to clear my mind. Finding you was a..."
"You were about to say 'stroke of luck,' weren't you?"
"No," he chuckled.
Behind them, someone said, "Hey!" They turned and saw McGee coming off the path towards them. "What are you guys doing here?"
"What are you doing?" Abby asked.
McGee held up the paper sack. "I eat much lunch here. Whenever I can."
Abby scooted over, parting her legs around the plaque and letting McGee have her original seat. He sat down next to her and leaned forward. "Hi, boss."
"Tim."
Abby thought for a moment and said, "So. All of us come here to see Kate, huh?"
McGee smiled and looked down at his food. "You think she knows we come?"
"Oh, yeah," Gibbs said. "She knows."
Abby and McGee both looked at him and he chuckled. "Hey. More things in heaven and Earth, Abby. And besides. Not all of us are here. Tony is..."
They heard whistling coming from the trees and all three of them turned to watch the bend in the path. After a moment, a groundskeeper ambled into view. They chuckled at themselves and Abby said, "I guess it would be a little farfetched if it had been Tony."
"Tony?" the groundskeeper said. They all turned again. "The tall, Italian kid?"
"You know him?" Gibbs asked.
"Oh, sure, sure," the groundskeeper chuckled. "Here every morning, pretty much. Loves to talk about movies. Ah, the old movies, back before special effects ruin them. That Tony, he's a good egg. Something about that bench, though, makes him awful melancholy. Awful melancholy." He shook his head and ambled on.
Gibbs reached over and took McGee's roll. "Come on, Tim. Let's go feed the ducks."
Abby watched them walk down the hill and looked over her shoulder. Kate was watching them, too, tears in her eyes. She turned to Abby and mouthed, "I love you," before she faded.
Abby stood and ran to catch up with McGee and Gibbs.