Post by Karie on Sept 1, 2005 8:44:47 GMT -5
Act four:
After stopping by a sub shop and getting some sandwiches, Tony drove the car back to headquarters. It was silent the entire way. Tony was afraid to speak and Maggie didn’t look inclined to do so. When they arrived, Maggie took her bag and went inside. Tony followed her quickly, entering the elevator just before the doors started to close.
“Trying to get rid of me, Sauer?”
“If I were, I wouldn’t resort to beating you to the elevator.”
“Are you saying I’m slow?”
“Well now, do you feel slow?”
“Nope. In fact, I feel like I’m at the top of my game!” Tony grinned at her, baiting her.
“It’s always fun with you, Dinozzo. You couldn’t be serious if your life depended on it.”
Tony looked hurt for a moment, his mouth hanging open. “I can too, and you know it. I was always serious about my studies in College.”
“Yes, and then there was graduation…” she replied as the elevator stopped on floor below theirs. The doors opened and she began to step though them.
“Hey, this isn’t our floor. This is Abby’s.”
“I know. She and I are having lunch together.” Maggie continued towards the lab. Tony stuck his head out of the elevator.
“When did that happen?” He asked.
She turned back and signed to him with her free hand. He wasn’t sure what she said, but he got the gist of it never the less. She turned back around and kept walking as he pulled his head back into the elevator and let the doors close. When she reached the lab, she found Abby glaring at a computer, her music was up really loud and she was ignoring it all. Maggie reached over and turned down the music to a comfortable level for listening.
“At least you don’t turn it off like Gibbs and Tony do.” Abby chuckled.
“Well that wouldn’t be nice, now would it?” replied Maggie as she handed over one of the white bags she had been carrying. “Hope you don’t mind, you seem like a veggie wrap type of person.”
“Thanks. You’re right of course. What did you get” Abby reached out and took the bag, opened it and pulled out the wrap for inspection.
“Walnut and chicken garden salad.” Maggie sat on a stool and pulled out a fork to attach her salad.
“That looks good.”
“It tastes good too.” Maggie smiled. She liked this young woman a lot. She could easily talk to her, and this was unusual for her when it came to working in a team. Usually the team hated the thought of her coming in and disrupting things, but not Abby. She was very excepting of Maggie from the beginning.
“Ok, now tell me about Tony in College! Was he as pig-headed and skirt chasing then as he is now?”
Maggie put her take out container in the trash and smiled at Abby. It was gossip time. “Not really. Tony was such a nice guy in college. Do you know, he only had three girlfriends the first three years?”
“Really? Wow, I didn’t know that. What happened with them?”
“Well, the first was when he was a freshman, the second was his sophomore year and the third was his junior year. Each was a senior for that year, and they each broke up with him at graduation.”
“What about his senior year?”
“He didn’t want to do the same thing to another girl, so he swore off women that year.”
“Tony swore off women for an entire year?”
“Pretty much. Except for me, that is.”
“So how did you and Tony meet?”
“I was just transferred from NYCU. My father had retired as a Navy Admiral and my mother wasn’t doing anything, so they wanted to move away from New York. They chose Ohio, for whatever reason, and they asked me to switch over to Ohio State. I didn’t have a reason not to.”
“And that is where Tony was.”
“He was in campus security, and he took time out to show me around. He and I decided that hanging out together was a good idea for the year. So that’s what we did.”
“So it was a mutual protection thing. So that neither of you had to date that year.”
“Well, sort of like that, yeah. We spent time together, and when people invited one of us to a party, we naturally took the other as a pseudo date. That way we knew who we were going home with.”
“That is so sweet!” Abby finished her wrap and threw the trash away. “So, what happened?”
Maggie paused. It had been good to talk about the old days, but she didn’t feel like doing that anymore. “Nothing happened. Graduation came and we stopped talking to each other. We both went through the academy and we went to work in different parts of the states. That was it.”
Abby didn’t say anything. She knew that Maggie was hiding something, but she wasn’t going to pry. Gibbs had said she was fragile and that Abby was to try and find out why she had so many problems with her previous stations. He also said that this was for Tony’s sake, and Abby liked Tony a lot. But she had now hit the brick wall, and there was no sliding around it.
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Tony had continued on his way to the bullpen after Maggie had stepped off. His mind was reeling with the events of a few hours ago. The atmosphere of the room had been charged as Maggie had questioned Lisa Malcolm so completely about that night. He knew Maggie had come out of it shaking, because he was shaking as well. He shuddered again at the vivid recollection that Maggie had pulled out of the woman. Reaching his desk, he plopped his lunch down and walked over to Gibbs.
“We got a sketch for ya, Boss.” Tony tossed the pad down on Gibbs’ desk and turned back to his own to eat.
Gibbs picked up the pad and stared at it for a long time. “How did you get such a vivid sketch of the assailant?”
“Maggie is good at that.” Tony wouldn’t say anything else on the subject.
“I guess that is why she has been transferred 12 times in the last 9 years. The only reason she was transferred the 13th time was because I wanted her.” Gibbs glanced over at Tony, who was trying to eat his lunch. The other agent looked up at him for a moment, and then swallowed the bite in his mouth before speaking.
“She knows how to help rape victims. It’s something she practiced time and time again. I helped her in the academy.”
“According to her record, she has a very good success rate in these cases. Each one she has been on has resulted in finding the perpetrator within hours of getting a very vivid sketch. But each sketch artist that has worked with her has come away from the experience somewhat… shaken.”
Tony nodded silently. He knew about Maggie’s record. He had kept tabs on it since they split up after the academy. He knew that she searched for the rape cases, and that soon after she solved a rape case, the department would have her transferred somewhere far away. Then she would have to start all over again. It was a vicious cycle, she started out cold, she would do her work diligently, she would be placed on a rape case, she would solve it, and then she was transferred. Tony looked at Gibbs, expectantly.
“How was your experience with her today?” Gibbs wasn’t looking to get rid of Maggie, Tony knew that. “Are you ok with what happened?”
“She helps them, Gibbs. She has a way of making them relive what happened. She brings them back to that moment when they were attacked and makes them face it all over again. The sooner she can make it happen, the more vivid and clear the sketch can be. Each time she does this, the victim will completely recollect the scene, down to the most minor detail. After that, they can look at it from a different prospective, which makes them angry and stronger. They aren’t afraid anymore. She calls it taking back the power of their life. And she always insists that the victim take the chance of letting a male friend take care of them. This way they aren’t afraid of all men and can continue their life relatively the way they had before the attack.” Tony had been talking all this time with nearly no time paused to take a breath. When he was finished, Gibbs looked at him hard.
“And this is very unsettling for the sketch artist.”
“The description comes out in a rather explosive and angry tone of voice. The artist who is not ready for it will actually feel as if they are in the room with the attack going on. It’s unnerving at best.”
“You can understand though, and be prepared for it. Because you role played it with her to help her practice, right?”
“Yeah, although it’s still a little scary watching as it happens. I can take it though. I worry more about Maggie after the interview. She takes it all to heart, and that can be a dangerous thing. It seems as if she is trying to take on the pain herself, so that the victim doesn’t have to.”
“According to the records, after she finishes this, the victim is always able to live through it and they go back to their normal lives, fairly complete.”
“They are never complete, but the semblance is nearly perfect. They can live afterwards.”
Gibbs looked back at the sketches in his hands. He could tell that Tony was still shaking from the incident. “Do you want to take the rest of the day off? After this, we should be able to catch this guy pretty quickly, and there is really no reason for you to stick around here…”
Tony shook his head and walked back to his desk. “I have work to do, Boss. I’m ok, really.”
Gibbs didn’t say anything after that, but stood and walked towards Abby’s lab to give her the sketches. He was beginning to think that Maggie Sauer was a very different person than her record showed. According to her other superiors she was a rouge cop, she was dangerous and her interrogation methods were way beyond the book. This was why Gibbs liked her so much. But according to Tony, there was reason to concern themselves with Maggie’s state of mind. She was unstable in Gibbs’ eyes and he wasn’t sure if she could be contained. But he trusted Tony to watch her, and with Abby, Ducky and McGee helping, they could keep an eye on their newest agent. They might even be able to bring her back from whatever hell she fell into. And Gibbs felt that she was worth it all.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
When Gibbs walked into the lab, Maggie left, returning to her desk in the bullpen and pulling one of the files she wanted to fix in front of her. She still felt uncomfortable saying that this was her desk. After all, she was replacing a good agent and a bad agent all at the same time. The bad agent she cared nothing for, but the good agent...Agent Todd… that was the one that Tony, Tim and Gibbs cared about and she was trying to fill her shoes. It was a daunting task at best, but she was determined to make the best of it.
Tony looked up at her, trying to gage her emotions at this moment. But she was a closed subject. He turned back to his computer and started his next search.
Subject search: Margherita Sauer. Search parameters: rape, assault, police
He hit enter on his keyboard and went back to his paperwork. He didn’t want Maggie to know he was looking into her background so deeply. He may not even find anything, but he had to try. There was something about Maggie that had unsettled him for a long time. Gibbs’ questioning him about her interview procedures had reminded him about it. But he wouldn’t tell Maggie he was looking. She would hate him for it later, but for now, he had to know. He just didn’t know when or where, so the search was hard to work with. He would break it down later.
Down in the lab, Gibbs watched Abby do her magic. After a few minutes of scrutinizing the sketches, she scanned them into her computer and began her searches through AFIS to find a match. Meanwhile, she turned to Gibbs and talked to him about the samples she had studied.
“Well, the blood that Maggie and Tony found in the bathroom is a match for Lisa Malcolm’s.”
“That makes it consistent with her interview. She crawled into the bathroom after the attack, and that is where she was found.”
“There was semen on the bed sheets, which Maggie was able to collect. That doesn’t match Lisa’s fiancé. I am betting that once we get a hit off the system for the sketch, we can check the DNA in CODIS and we will have our suspect.”
“Good job, Abby. Now tell me about Maggie.”
The Goth sighed. She didn’t like spying for Gibbs, but something was defiantly up with this new Agent, and she wanted to help the team as much as she could.
“She’s a nice person, Gibbs. She and I talked about Tony and College. She said Tony was a really nice guy back then. I don’t know if I believe that, but… Something happened to her back then, Gibbs. I don’t know what it was, but it sends up red flags to my senses. She’s hiding something from everyone.”
Gibbs sat back on the stool and thought for a moment about what Abby had said. It simply confirmed his suspicions and made him want to find out more about this mysterious woman that was now a part of their team.
After stopping by a sub shop and getting some sandwiches, Tony drove the car back to headquarters. It was silent the entire way. Tony was afraid to speak and Maggie didn’t look inclined to do so. When they arrived, Maggie took her bag and went inside. Tony followed her quickly, entering the elevator just before the doors started to close.
“Trying to get rid of me, Sauer?”
“If I were, I wouldn’t resort to beating you to the elevator.”
“Are you saying I’m slow?”
“Well now, do you feel slow?”
“Nope. In fact, I feel like I’m at the top of my game!” Tony grinned at her, baiting her.
“It’s always fun with you, Dinozzo. You couldn’t be serious if your life depended on it.”
Tony looked hurt for a moment, his mouth hanging open. “I can too, and you know it. I was always serious about my studies in College.”
“Yes, and then there was graduation…” she replied as the elevator stopped on floor below theirs. The doors opened and she began to step though them.
“Hey, this isn’t our floor. This is Abby’s.”
“I know. She and I are having lunch together.” Maggie continued towards the lab. Tony stuck his head out of the elevator.
“When did that happen?” He asked.
She turned back and signed to him with her free hand. He wasn’t sure what she said, but he got the gist of it never the less. She turned back around and kept walking as he pulled his head back into the elevator and let the doors close. When she reached the lab, she found Abby glaring at a computer, her music was up really loud and she was ignoring it all. Maggie reached over and turned down the music to a comfortable level for listening.
“At least you don’t turn it off like Gibbs and Tony do.” Abby chuckled.
“Well that wouldn’t be nice, now would it?” replied Maggie as she handed over one of the white bags she had been carrying. “Hope you don’t mind, you seem like a veggie wrap type of person.”
“Thanks. You’re right of course. What did you get” Abby reached out and took the bag, opened it and pulled out the wrap for inspection.
“Walnut and chicken garden salad.” Maggie sat on a stool and pulled out a fork to attach her salad.
“That looks good.”
“It tastes good too.” Maggie smiled. She liked this young woman a lot. She could easily talk to her, and this was unusual for her when it came to working in a team. Usually the team hated the thought of her coming in and disrupting things, but not Abby. She was very excepting of Maggie from the beginning.
“Ok, now tell me about Tony in College! Was he as pig-headed and skirt chasing then as he is now?”
Maggie put her take out container in the trash and smiled at Abby. It was gossip time. “Not really. Tony was such a nice guy in college. Do you know, he only had three girlfriends the first three years?”
“Really? Wow, I didn’t know that. What happened with them?”
“Well, the first was when he was a freshman, the second was his sophomore year and the third was his junior year. Each was a senior for that year, and they each broke up with him at graduation.”
“What about his senior year?”
“He didn’t want to do the same thing to another girl, so he swore off women that year.”
“Tony swore off women for an entire year?”
“Pretty much. Except for me, that is.”
“So how did you and Tony meet?”
“I was just transferred from NYCU. My father had retired as a Navy Admiral and my mother wasn’t doing anything, so they wanted to move away from New York. They chose Ohio, for whatever reason, and they asked me to switch over to Ohio State. I didn’t have a reason not to.”
“And that is where Tony was.”
“He was in campus security, and he took time out to show me around. He and I decided that hanging out together was a good idea for the year. So that’s what we did.”
“So it was a mutual protection thing. So that neither of you had to date that year.”
“Well, sort of like that, yeah. We spent time together, and when people invited one of us to a party, we naturally took the other as a pseudo date. That way we knew who we were going home with.”
“That is so sweet!” Abby finished her wrap and threw the trash away. “So, what happened?”
Maggie paused. It had been good to talk about the old days, but she didn’t feel like doing that anymore. “Nothing happened. Graduation came and we stopped talking to each other. We both went through the academy and we went to work in different parts of the states. That was it.”
Abby didn’t say anything. She knew that Maggie was hiding something, but she wasn’t going to pry. Gibbs had said she was fragile and that Abby was to try and find out why she had so many problems with her previous stations. He also said that this was for Tony’s sake, and Abby liked Tony a lot. But she had now hit the brick wall, and there was no sliding around it.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Tony had continued on his way to the bullpen after Maggie had stepped off. His mind was reeling with the events of a few hours ago. The atmosphere of the room had been charged as Maggie had questioned Lisa Malcolm so completely about that night. He knew Maggie had come out of it shaking, because he was shaking as well. He shuddered again at the vivid recollection that Maggie had pulled out of the woman. Reaching his desk, he plopped his lunch down and walked over to Gibbs.
“We got a sketch for ya, Boss.” Tony tossed the pad down on Gibbs’ desk and turned back to his own to eat.
Gibbs picked up the pad and stared at it for a long time. “How did you get such a vivid sketch of the assailant?”
“Maggie is good at that.” Tony wouldn’t say anything else on the subject.
“I guess that is why she has been transferred 12 times in the last 9 years. The only reason she was transferred the 13th time was because I wanted her.” Gibbs glanced over at Tony, who was trying to eat his lunch. The other agent looked up at him for a moment, and then swallowed the bite in his mouth before speaking.
“She knows how to help rape victims. It’s something she practiced time and time again. I helped her in the academy.”
“According to her record, she has a very good success rate in these cases. Each one she has been on has resulted in finding the perpetrator within hours of getting a very vivid sketch. But each sketch artist that has worked with her has come away from the experience somewhat… shaken.”
Tony nodded silently. He knew about Maggie’s record. He had kept tabs on it since they split up after the academy. He knew that she searched for the rape cases, and that soon after she solved a rape case, the department would have her transferred somewhere far away. Then she would have to start all over again. It was a vicious cycle, she started out cold, she would do her work diligently, she would be placed on a rape case, she would solve it, and then she was transferred. Tony looked at Gibbs, expectantly.
“How was your experience with her today?” Gibbs wasn’t looking to get rid of Maggie, Tony knew that. “Are you ok with what happened?”
“She helps them, Gibbs. She has a way of making them relive what happened. She brings them back to that moment when they were attacked and makes them face it all over again. The sooner she can make it happen, the more vivid and clear the sketch can be. Each time she does this, the victim will completely recollect the scene, down to the most minor detail. After that, they can look at it from a different prospective, which makes them angry and stronger. They aren’t afraid anymore. She calls it taking back the power of their life. And she always insists that the victim take the chance of letting a male friend take care of them. This way they aren’t afraid of all men and can continue their life relatively the way they had before the attack.” Tony had been talking all this time with nearly no time paused to take a breath. When he was finished, Gibbs looked at him hard.
“And this is very unsettling for the sketch artist.”
“The description comes out in a rather explosive and angry tone of voice. The artist who is not ready for it will actually feel as if they are in the room with the attack going on. It’s unnerving at best.”
“You can understand though, and be prepared for it. Because you role played it with her to help her practice, right?”
“Yeah, although it’s still a little scary watching as it happens. I can take it though. I worry more about Maggie after the interview. She takes it all to heart, and that can be a dangerous thing. It seems as if she is trying to take on the pain herself, so that the victim doesn’t have to.”
“According to the records, after she finishes this, the victim is always able to live through it and they go back to their normal lives, fairly complete.”
“They are never complete, but the semblance is nearly perfect. They can live afterwards.”
Gibbs looked back at the sketches in his hands. He could tell that Tony was still shaking from the incident. “Do you want to take the rest of the day off? After this, we should be able to catch this guy pretty quickly, and there is really no reason for you to stick around here…”
Tony shook his head and walked back to his desk. “I have work to do, Boss. I’m ok, really.”
Gibbs didn’t say anything after that, but stood and walked towards Abby’s lab to give her the sketches. He was beginning to think that Maggie Sauer was a very different person than her record showed. According to her other superiors she was a rouge cop, she was dangerous and her interrogation methods were way beyond the book. This was why Gibbs liked her so much. But according to Tony, there was reason to concern themselves with Maggie’s state of mind. She was unstable in Gibbs’ eyes and he wasn’t sure if she could be contained. But he trusted Tony to watch her, and with Abby, Ducky and McGee helping, they could keep an eye on their newest agent. They might even be able to bring her back from whatever hell she fell into. And Gibbs felt that she was worth it all.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
When Gibbs walked into the lab, Maggie left, returning to her desk in the bullpen and pulling one of the files she wanted to fix in front of her. She still felt uncomfortable saying that this was her desk. After all, she was replacing a good agent and a bad agent all at the same time. The bad agent she cared nothing for, but the good agent...Agent Todd… that was the one that Tony, Tim and Gibbs cared about and she was trying to fill her shoes. It was a daunting task at best, but she was determined to make the best of it.
Tony looked up at her, trying to gage her emotions at this moment. But she was a closed subject. He turned back to his computer and started his next search.
Subject search: Margherita Sauer. Search parameters: rape, assault, police
He hit enter on his keyboard and went back to his paperwork. He didn’t want Maggie to know he was looking into her background so deeply. He may not even find anything, but he had to try. There was something about Maggie that had unsettled him for a long time. Gibbs’ questioning him about her interview procedures had reminded him about it. But he wouldn’t tell Maggie he was looking. She would hate him for it later, but for now, he had to know. He just didn’t know when or where, so the search was hard to work with. He would break it down later.
Down in the lab, Gibbs watched Abby do her magic. After a few minutes of scrutinizing the sketches, she scanned them into her computer and began her searches through AFIS to find a match. Meanwhile, she turned to Gibbs and talked to him about the samples she had studied.
“Well, the blood that Maggie and Tony found in the bathroom is a match for Lisa Malcolm’s.”
“That makes it consistent with her interview. She crawled into the bathroom after the attack, and that is where she was found.”
“There was semen on the bed sheets, which Maggie was able to collect. That doesn’t match Lisa’s fiancé. I am betting that once we get a hit off the system for the sketch, we can check the DNA in CODIS and we will have our suspect.”
“Good job, Abby. Now tell me about Maggie.”
The Goth sighed. She didn’t like spying for Gibbs, but something was defiantly up with this new Agent, and she wanted to help the team as much as she could.
“She’s a nice person, Gibbs. She and I talked about Tony and College. She said Tony was a really nice guy back then. I don’t know if I believe that, but… Something happened to her back then, Gibbs. I don’t know what it was, but it sends up red flags to my senses. She’s hiding something from everyone.”
Gibbs sat back on the stool and thought for a moment about what Abby had said. It simply confirmed his suspicions and made him want to find out more about this mysterious woman that was now a part of their team.
LOL! ;D
