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With the new information about Fanny Pru and Harold Pride, Balboa pulled them in to interrogation. He hoped that he would be able to use the additional information to get a confession or at least something that would incriminate her further. He was just waiting for Ducky and Jimmy to figure out the bone mess before actually starting the interrogation.
Currently, she had a nice place in one of the NCIS holding cells and she’d stay there until Balboa was ready for her. McGee had done an awesome job trailing their financials and had definitely found some serious circumstantial evidence, but Balboa wasn’t satisfied with that. He wanted to take her down hard.
After all, these lawyers were targeting one of their own. That would never be ok, especially not someone like Tony who was always willing to pitch in when asked. If he didn’t know that it would piss Ducky off, he’d be hovering in autopsy’s doorway waiting for results.
He’d done that exactly once when he was a fresh NCIS agent and never again. Ducky could be scary when he wanted to be. Now, he waited until Ducky called.
He knew Gibbs got away with going down and checking periodically, but he also knew that Ducky took Gibbs’ head off for it too. Balboa was kind of jealous of the special relationship the MCRT had with Dr. Mallard, but at the same time he had zero desire to handle the MCRT cases on a regularly basis. Being backup pinch hitter was bad enough.
He actually wouldn’t put it past Gibbs, Bishop, and Tony to still be investigating this case despite having handed it over to his team. He didn’t care, so long as the evidence was properly admissible. He just wanted this case done with.
The rest of the team had been digging into alibi’s for the various heists that had resulted in money appearing in Harold’s and Fanny’s accounts. His SFA grabbed his attention and Balboa turned that way. He wondered what they’d found.
“Even if we can’t get them for the murders and attempting to frame DiNozzo, we can still get them for the heists. We have proof for here, here, and here.”
“Great. Make sure it’s all documented properly for court.”
His SFA nodded and the team returned to their work. Balboa normally didn’t mind the delay in solving cases. He was a pretty easy going man, but this one really had him on edge.
He wasn’t sure if it was the secret that Tony, Gibbs, and Bishop were keeping or if it was just that Tony was being framed again. It might just be that there was something about this case that sat bad in his gut. He didn’t know.
All he knew was he was really tempted to tap his foot impatiently which he never usually did. He was struggling to keep the impulse under control and breathed a sigh of relief when his phone finally rang. “Balboa.”
“I have something for you, if you’d come down,” Ducky quietly offered.
“Of course, Ducky.”
Balboa gestured for his SFA to follow him. Depending on what Dr. Mallard had found, Balboa may need his SFA to give the team orders while he did something else. He hoped that whatever Ducky had was enough to put this team of lawyers behind bars for good.
Together the two headed down to autopsy. Balboa would never say he was eager to find out how people died, but he was hopeful that this case was almost over. He didn’t know what secret the MCRT was keeping and he frankly didn’t want to know.
He was happy to go back to dealing with the nice idiotic drug dealers his team usually handled. Still, they’d have to see what Ducky had first. The vast array of bones on different autopsy tables didn’t exactly fill him with joy.
“Ah, Balboa. You’re here,” Ducky greeted.
Balboa nodded. “What have you found?”
Ducky walked over to the autopsy table closest to the doors Balboa and his SFA had entered through. ”This table is all animal bones. Not really much of a crime since they can all legally be hunted. We did send any samples we found to Abby just in case they proved useful.”
Balboa nodded as he and his SFA followed Ducky to the next table. “This table is interesting. It’s still animal bones, but these are ones that are protected species and against the law to be hunted. We didn’t find much trace evidence on these. Whoever did these killings was more careful, but we did find some. We also sent them to Abby.”
Balboa exchanged looks with his SFA. Protected species deaths, while not strictly NCIS jurisdiction, could be traced back and possibly lead to the breakthrough they needed. Still before doing anything more they needed to know what else Ducky had and then check in with Abby.
At the next table, Ducky paused, garnering the attention of both Balboa and his SFA. “This is the first human kill based on the decay of the bones. We don’t have all the pieces of this body, but the ones we do have show signs of significant rope burn.”
“What could cause that?”
Ducky frowned. “My best guess is that they specifically cut through the skin and muscles and then tied the ropes directly around bone to cause the most pain.”
Balboa and his SFA shared looks of consternation. Was there another person involved in this? They hadn’t seen evidence of either Fanny or Harold having the kind of killing intent needed to purposefully torture someone like this.
Ducky didn’t wait for them to reach their own conclusions, however. He just moved onto the next table. “This is at least 3 bodies, but we don’t have enough of any of them to even guess at cause of death.”
“Were they rope burned too?”
Ducky shook his head. “No, this seemed to be much more surgically cut like would happen during hospital amputations.”
Balboa wrinkled his forehead. This case was getting more and more perplexing. What was going on here?
They had one final table and Balboa slowly made his way to it, wondering what new horrors Ducky planned to unleash on them this time. Even his SFA was silent waiting for Ducky to speak.
“This is the most recent victim. We actually have the whole body of this victim despite it being cut up into pieces,” Ducky paused.
Balboa didn’t like the fact that Ducky was pausing. That couldn’t mean anything good. What the hell had happened to this person?
He gestured for Ducky to go on. He just wanted all the bad news out there. Then he and his SFA could go back discuss it with the rest of the team and figure out what it meant for them.
“The person who killed this one really liked their schadenfreude. There is more evidence of torture than I can even reasonably catalog in my autopsy report. Not just one or two instruments used, but at least 10.”
Balboa stared at the victim, “The victim must have been really strong to go through all that.”
Ducky shook his head. “I don’t think so. There is evidence that the victim slipped into unconsciousness before some of the methods were applied. I think the suspect used torture to wake the victim from unconsciousness as well.”
Balboa frowned heavily. What had they gotten dragged into? This couldn’t lead to anything good, especially as the killings no longer seemed to fit with Fanny Pru or Harold Pride’s background.
He exchanged looks with his SFA and they both headed back out of autopsy once it was clear that was all Ducky had for them. They’d stop by forensics on their way back to the bullpen and see what Abby had for them. Hopefully what Abby had found from the samples would be less disturbing than one Ducky had told them.