Discovery – Part Two by Ladyholder

Reading Time:
9 Minutes

Art by Polaris

Tony whistled as he walked into MCRT’s row and smiled as he saw that he was the first one in. Taking a Monday off wasn’t something that he did often, but the indulgence of an occasional 3-day weekend was too lovely to miss. And it had allowed him to get some errands done, so it had been a win/win all around.

His email was a fucked-up mess like normal, with people complaining about Gibbs, also like normal. The only good thing about it was that MCRT hadn’t caught a case, so he wasn’t starting the week behind.

Tony settled into to start reading everything so he could catch up and figure out what fires he could extinguish.

“Do you want me to get you some more coffee?” Gibbs asked as he settled behind his own desk.

“It does nothing for me,” Tony admitted. He glanced up at Gibbs and raised an eyebrow at him as he stared at him in horror. “I know. It’s a travesty that becoming a werewolf took away my caffeine reactivity. I miss the bump to waking up.”

“That’s horrible,” Gibbs said. He picked up his coffee cup and cradled it close. “Why do you drink it then?”

“Habit and I like the taste,” Tony admitted. He waved a hand at his water flask and smirked. “I’ve got flavored water in there that will keep me going.”

“I know that you said you were a super taster before you got bitten, so I’m sure you’re not using a commercial flavoring agent,” Gibbs observed. “The chemicals have to be horrible.”

“No to the commercial flavors. I use fruit juices for the most part, and some spices, depending on what I’m aiming for. I also drink a lot of iced tea,” Tony said cheerfully. “Plain water is gross, and I refuse to buy bottled water.”

“Coffee is the best,” Gibbs said smugly.

“Coffee tastes great, but I can’t drink it like you do. How you’re not 99% coffee bean, I don’t know,” Tony said with a laugh. “Should I ask Ducky to make sure that you’re not dehydrated?”

“Do not!” Gibbs said sharply. He pulled his coffee closer to him and curled one hand around it. “I’m hydrated enough.”

“Ha,” Tony said. He smirked at Gibbs before turning back to his email. “We’ve got a new email from JAG. It looks like we’ve got a trial date for Reginald Brown.”

“That’s good news,” Gibbs said with a sigh. He leaned back in his chair and tapped one finger against his desk. “Did they cc Vivian?”

“They did,” Tony said after checking the headers of the email. “Viv is still here in DC, and she should be available when the trial kicks off.”

“Sounds good. Email her to remind her that we’ve got the evidence files if she needs a refresher on what happened,” Gibbs directed. “And check w/ the JAG lawyer to see when they want to start prepping for the trial.”

“Got it,” Tony said. He popped the top off his water flask to take a sip before he started emailing everyone.

“Hey Ducky,” Tony called as he walked into Autopsy.

“Tony,” Ducky said. His voice was filled with a smile that wasn’t showing due to the mask covering the lower half of his face. “What can we do for you?”

Tony ignored the body of the table. He was doing his best to ignore the scents as well. He had no idea how Ducky dealt with death on a daily basis, but he respected that he did. “I don’t know if you’ve checked your email this morning, but we’ve got a trial date for Reginald Brown.”

“Goodness, it has been a while,” Ducky said. He stepped back from the autopsy table and turned to look at him. “Do we have a schedule for when they want to talk to us all?”

“They do,” Tony confirmed. He glanced at Gerald and nodded at him. “I’m not sure that you’re going to be called on, Gerald, but I wanted to make sure that you’re both aware so you can go over your notes and refresh yourselves on what happened with the case.”

“Thank you for the update. After this gentleman is taken care of, we’re free for the rest of the day, so we should be able to update ourselves,” Ducky said with a smile Tony saw more from how his eyes crinkled than from the shape of his mouth. “Now, I know you hate it in here when I’ve got a guest, so best be off to let Abby know as well. Also, please let her know we’ll be by with a full load of samples for her to work on in a bit.”

“Gotcha, Ducky. I’ll come down for tea soon,” Tony promised. He waved a hand at Gerald and headed out to visit Forensics.

One thing about being a werewolf that he wished he could control was how acute his senses were. Abby had a bad habit of playing her music at ear-bleeding levels, and it was bloody painful before she turned it all off. Scent was also wretched when he was around smelly scenes, so Autopsy was gross.

Being a LEO was just one gross thing after another, and putting bad guys behind bars barely made up for that.

Letting Abby know about the trial was an easy errand, and once he had that chore done, he needed to make sure that he and Gibbs had a chance to go over their notes on the file as well. He wanted to make 100% certain that Brown went to jail for the rest of his life.

“Why do we have all these boxes being delivered?” Kate asked.

Tony looked up to see one of the records techs pushing a cart out of the elevator. “Hey, Marcus! Is that ours?”

“Yup. All the boxes of stuff from the Littlefield case and her killer,” Marcus confirmed. “Where do you want me to put these?”

“You were a little faster than I expected, but how about the conference room?” Tony suggested, pointing at the room in question. When Marcus headed towards the room, Tony quickly got into the reservation system and checked it out for them for the next two days.

Once that was done, he made sure to email Gibbs and the Director so they could keep their team off the rotation to allow them time to review the case.

“Kate, you have a choice,” Tony said. He glanced up at Kate as she sat up behind her computer. “You can join Gibbs and me as we review the case Marcus just brought us, or you can review cold cases.”

“That’s the monster case that you busted a few months after I joined the team, right?” Kate asked. At his nod, she smiled. “I’d like to join you all.”

“Okay, then get yourself something to drink and a snack or two. We’re going to be a while,” Tony directed. He snagged his own flask and a pad to take notes before following Marcus.

The records clerk was already pulling boxes off his cart and lining them up on the table. “Call me when you’ve finished your review, and I’ll come back up to collect the boxes. Just don’t shift the contents around.”

“Will do,” Tony promised as Marcus pushed his cart out of the room. Tony dropped his stuff on his chair and started pulling the tops off each of the boxes. “I did not miss seeing this shit.”

“How bad is it?” Kate asked. She was standing across the table from him and was looking in one of the boxes.

“Start down on the other end, Kate,” Tony said, waiving at the correct box.

Kate walked down to the end of the table and looked in the box. “Do you want me to take everything out?”

“Yes. Make sure to pile it neatly and place the box under the table, under the pile. I want to try to be as organized as we can be,” Tony directed. He had the last box open and was pulling everything out of it.

It took them almost ten minutes to pull everything out and get it piled up on the table. The case had generated a lot of evidence, and they had been meticulous in how they’d kept their records to make sure that nothing was missed.

“Oh, my God,” Kate muttered as she read through the first file. “Is all of this real?”

“It is,” Tony said. He glanced at the file she was looking at and saw that she was reading Littlefield’s file. “Yeah, she was the first victim that we knew about. And it’s thanks to her that we were able to break the case.”

“Really?” Kate asked as her eyes flicked up to meet his before turning back to the file in her hand. “Okay then.”

“That box and the next one should have all of the files we assembled on the victims. Read over them if you want,” Tony said. He pulled the evidence summary out of the last box and settled down in his chair to start reading.

“He kept trophies?” Kate asked several hours later. She had made her way through all of the victim profiles and was reviewing the full report that Tony and Gibbs had generated, detailing everything that they had done and discovered in the course of the case.

Tony looked up and focused on his probie. “What?”

“He kept trophies?” Kate asked again.

“Yeah, he did. From all of his victims. We’ve got a lot of evidence that we collected, and found even more in his house,” Tony said. He pointed at the boxes in question and sighed as he considered what Brown had done. “We’ve got pictures and video of everything. The actual evidence is in a climate-controlled unit.”

“How long do we keep evidence?” Kate asked as she got up to investigate the boxes Tony had pointed to.

“NCIS keeps evidence indefinitely in permanent federal databases. Physical evidence is typically kept through the entire investigation and legal process, including all potential appeals,” Tony explained. “So, we can go back and pull evidence on files that are decades old if we need to.”

“Do we ever need to?”

“Sometimes,” Tony said with a shrug. “Occasionally, we have a new case pop up that ties into an older case. I don’t have any statistics on the numbers.”

“I’m going to guess that the long-term storage isn’t here in this building, right?” Kate asked.

Tony shrugged once before he waved a hand at the boxes in front of them. “We tend to store the cases that haven’t gone to trial yet because we need to keep accessing them and pulling them in and out of long-term storage is silly. Once we get a verdict on this case, all of the physical evidence, all of the reports, all of the videos, will get moved to into storage and only pulled out if Brown appeals his verdict.”

“You’re that certain he’ll be found guilty?” Kate asked. She was laying pictures out on her side of the table and peering at them before referring back to the report that she had been reading.

“Yes,” Tony said bluntly. “In those pictures, do you see the floor?”

“Yes? It looks glossy and frankly, easy to clean,” Kate said. She flipped through the pictures she was looking at and tapped the floor as it showed in each. “Why?”

“You’re right, it was very glossy. And it was very clean. At least in the middle. At the edges, where there were cracks and ripples, there was DNA evidence from his victims,” Tony said. He smiled grimly as he remembered that discovery. “We spent a lot of time going over that space with a fine-toothed comb, and there was more to find than we had expected.”

“Okay,” Kate said. She glanced at the pictures of the trophy basement and then back at the files detailing the lives of each of the victims. “So, they’re going to get justice.”

“That’s the plan.”