Tortuous

“I feel like we're playing a chess match where we can't see the opponent's pieces except briefly after they move.” Tony complained.

“So figure out how he’s picking his victims or his ending move.” Gibbs growled.

The first murder scene, a note has been tucked into the dead petty officers shirt that simply said the pawn. The second murder scene, there'd been a dead bird of the crow family next to the body. They hadn't thought anything of it until the next scene rolled around which was a double homicide involving a bishop and a petty officer.

At that point they reexamined all three scenes and realized that the tortuous thoughts of the serial killer led to each scene corresponding to a chess piece. That had only been reinforced with this latest scene which had been set up like a framed picture with the dead petty officer inside the frame dressed as a knight and with a caption underneath reading a knight at night and some nonsense about following the knight on the tortuous route.

Tony really hoped they caught this guy soon before he started an international incident by killing some visiting king and queen. It was bad enough that he’d killed a bishop. That was like declaring war on God. The killer should be making a mistake soon since they had already pissed off God. Tony couldn’t wait. He hoped it would happen before Gibbs shipped them all to Gitmo for not solving the murder.