Title: Day 1
Author: tarotgal
Fandom: NCIS
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Disclaimer: Not my characters. I wish they were mine. I definitely don’t get paid for this.
Summary: A Christmas-themed case comes up when Gibbs' team is short of members.
Notes: Written during my 12 Ficlets in 12 Days in 2015 project for Artistic

“I’d estimate the time of death between eleven o’clock at night and three in the morning. I might be able to narrow that down once I get him back to autopsy.” Ducky straightened up with a little groan of pain and a hand pressed to his lower back. “I’ll be happy when Mr. Palmer is back in town and on the job.”

Gibbs nodded in understanding. They wouldn’t even be out here if NCIS were fully staffed during the holiday season. And Ducky shouldn’t be out here at all. But when the body of a marine helping with the Toys for Tots program shows up dead on the side of the highway, there wasn’t anything they could do but investigate. And Gibbs wanted the best he could get. And that meant Ducky on the scene where the body was found and McGee down the road, interviewing the staff of the place the marine had been going: Christmas in Virginia.

The place was a Christmas-themed village in one of the richest parts of Northern Virginia, where the residents could easily afford extravagancies that cost a hundred dollars a head. It was a full village, complete with a workshop for elves where kids could make crafts, a café where you could buy winter-spiced coffee and peppermint scones, and a town hall where Santa Claus himself held court. There were more than a dozen buildings, and a lot of parks and sitting areas in-between. And considering it was supposed to close at nine every night, that meant an almost infinite amount of places where murder could be committed.

Hopefully, McGee would find something that would be useful. Gibbs didn’t have anything against Christmas, he merely had a different idea of what made for a good Christmas. His idea of Christmas was rising early and working on his boat. Theirs involved candy canes. A truckload of candy canes. Just driving past it made Gibbs shudder. If he’d still had a daughter, Gibbs probably still wouldn’t have considered going there.  And now he had to go there to investigate a murder.

*

It was strange to walk into the big, orange room and not have DiNozzo there making some joke about him. Gibbs hardly knew how to make an entrance without giving a slap to the back of his second in command’s head. “Got anything from the security cameras, McGee?”

Tim looked up, mildly startled. The man always put so much thought and energy into his work, tuning out everything around him. “Someone fried the hard drives at the Sweet Station.”

“The what?”

“It’s one of the buildings in the village. One half of it is a ticket booth for the train that circles the town.” A train? How many ways were there to kill a man in this place? “The other half is a security station for the whole village. Unfortunately, someone set fire to the computers recording every inch of the village last night. I haven’t been able to get anything off those hard drives yet.”

Naturally. Just once, he wanted a reliable witness who saw the whole thing or a security camera with a clear as crystal picture of a murderer’s face. Was that too much to ask for? It was nearly Christmas, after all. “Keep working on them.”

“Will do, Boss. But I haven’t told you the best part yet.”

“Are you planning to?” Gibbs cocked his head in a way that sent McGee slightly into a panic.

Hurriedly, the agent tapped away at his keyboard and brought up something that suspiciously looked like footage. “Whoever did it missed the security camera footage for the parking lot. Their network is all tapped out supplying Christmas carols inside the village, so the parking lot’s run on a separate system. The image is grayscale, but you can still make out a figure carrying something through the lot into one of the small Christmas carts the staff uses to get around the village. Watch.”

Gibbs watched. Closely. The figure was large, heavyset, and clearly carrying something that could have been a body slumped over one shoulder. Leaning closer to the monitor, Gibbs tried to make out any detail that might help. But when his nose touched the screen and Tim stifled a laugh, turning it into a nervous cough, Gibbs knew it was a futile attempt. “Is this cart of theirs still missing?”

“Cops found it a couple miles down the road from where the officer was found. It’s being brought to Abby for testing.”

Gibbs nodded and let Tim keep doing what he did best. If anyone could get something off those burned up computers from Christmasland, it was their Elf Lord.

*

Twas the night before Christmas
And all through NCIS
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even

Abby looked up from her keyboard, eyes unfocused as she was lost in thought but pointed in the direction of the mistletoe that hung over the doorway to her lab. “McGee, what rhymes with NCIS?”

Her question was followed by a cry of success from across the lab as Tim managed to finally wrench the burned computer drive from its casing. He wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “What?”

“I’m trying to write my own Christmas cards this year, but I’m not feeling inspired. I thought I’d try stealing from the best, but I’m already stuck trying to find a rhyme for NCIS. You’re a writer. Any thoughts?”

“Asbestos?”

She wrinkled her face.

“Then I’ve got nothing. And you shouldn’t be doing this anyway. You’re supposed to be figuring out those chemical samples from the crime scene.”

“Already done!” she replied happily.

“I like the sound of that.” Abby and McGee both turned to see Gibbs walking in. Their boss’s ability to show up exactly when Abby had results to share was not only uncanny, it was something akin to a miracle. And this was certainly the season for those. It was also the season for suicides, overdoses, and domestic abuse. NCIS had been flooded with cases this week, a particularly bad problem as Tony was out sick with the flu and Ziva was off visiting family in Israel for the holidays. A smaller team and more work did not result in a very merry Christmas season. “Hope you’ve got something good for me, Abbs.”

“A candy cane?”  She offered him a stocking that sat on her desk, filled to bursting with peppermint candy. Gibbs waved his hand at it dismissively. “How about a chemical analysis then?” She clicked her mouse, typed a couple keys, and up popped the results. “There were a whole lot of things found in that cart. Apparently they get hosed down every few days, so there’s a good chance that all of this is related to the case. The first thing I found traces of is a brand of lighter fluid found in pretty much every camping store across the country. No help there, especially as we already know the front of the officer’s body was burnt. The second is sawdust, and I bet you can guess what wood it’s made of.”

McGee answered immediately, “Pine?”

“Yep! Scotch Pine and Fraiser Fir, to be exact, two of the most popular types of Christmas trees. So it doesn’t exactly narrow anything down.” Gibbs did not look pleased, which wasn’t a typical look on his face when Abby gave her explanation. So she hurried along. “I also analyzed the knife found in the officer’s back. It’s not a whittling knife.” She clicked her mouse, tapped a few keys on the keyboard, and clicked the mouse again. “This is a recipe for my mother’s gingerbread cookies. It’s also a list of the exact ingredients that were found in traces on the knife. It’s a kitchen knife, Gibbs. And I know what you’re thinking: everyone bakes gingerbread cookies this time of year.”

Gibbs nodded.

“All these common things, when put together, point straight at one location at the Christmas village…” Another click of the mouse brought up the village map. “The kitchen.”

As though the lightbulb had just appeared above his head, McGee saw where she was going with this and jumped in. “And there are only three people with keys to that building, two of which were in Maine this weekend for their daughter’s wedding. So if it wasn’t the village owners, then it can only be—“

“That’s right,” Abby interrupted. “I’m sorry, Gibbs. You’re going to have to arrest Santa Claus.”   

With a single chuckle and shake of his head, Gibbs gave into the irony of taking Santa Claus into custody on Christmas Eve. “Good work, Abbs.” He went to kiss the top of her head, but the ridiculous elf hat covered most of her black hair. So, instead, he slid a candy cane out of her stocking and hung it on the bent end of the hat so that it caught on the jingle bell. Then he leaned close and whispered, “Ingenious.”

She beamed back at him, a smile spread across her face. “Aw, thanks, Gibbs!”

But he merely cocked his head toward the computer, looking thoughtful. When she didn’t get it immediately, he raised his eyebrows. “Kinda rhymes with NCIS, don’t you think?”

Her face lit with understanding. “Gibbs!” She wrapped arms around him and he kissed her cheek.

Then he pulled back. “Come on, McGee. Let’s go be grinches.”

*

“Look, I’m telling you I don’t know where Lincoln Barnes is. But if you find him, I hope he gets what’s coming to him for abandoning us the day before Christmas.” This was a very unlike thing for an elf to be saying. Her tone and her cotton candy pink and white striped outfit were violently at odds. She pulled a candy cane out of a pocket of her apron. Hooking two fingers around the curved portion, she gestured with it as she continued to speak. “Did you know we had a line of guests from one side of the parking lot to the other when we opened the gates this morning? And our head elf is sick with the flu, so we had to get Stu from janitorial to fill in. He’s not trained to deal with kids, but at least we had one guy who fits the Santa costume.”

“How fortunate,” said McGee, softly enough that Gibbs wasn’t sure if that was for him or for the elf they were speaking with.

“Except now we’re one man down for the clean-up crew. Kids make a mess, you know. And we can’t have Santa out there with a bucket and mop, cleaning up some kid’s—“

Gibbs interrupted her. “Does the janitorial staff have a key to the kitchen building?”

“They don’t need one,” the elf said, peeling off the wrapper and chomping the end of the candy cane off. “They’ve got master keys that work for all the buildings.”

*

They’d come for one Santa Clause and it looked, now, like they were going back to NCIS with another. The elf had been right; this one wasn’t very good at being Santa. And, apparently, he was also pretty bad at murder. So bad that after doing it once, he’d been seen trying to cover his tracks and had to do it again. And all for a seasonal job where toddlers sit on your lap and ramble greedily about presents… or cry… or worse.

He had sent a couple agents to Lincoln Barnes’ house. They’d found his car in the driveway and his body apparently in the living room in a pool of blood, a candy cane still in his mouth. After this case, Gibbs was pretty sure it would be a long time before he touched another candy cane.

“Looks like he’s going on his break early, Boss,” McGee said, glancing at his watch and then back at Stuart Glass. They hadn’t wanted to take Santa into custody in front of the children, which had given the NCIS agents and Abby time to process the other murder scene, which had been covered in Glass’s fingerprints. That was enough to bring him in on.

So McGee and Gibbs had been hanging out in the employee break room, glass-enclosed loft on the second floor of the town hall, affording an excellent view of the two-story tree in the lobby when the curtains weren’t drawn. And, apparently, Stu the Janitor-Santa-Murderer didn’t notice that today, they were drawn. He burst into the break room, whistling, and immediately found himself looking down the barrel of Gibb’s weapon.

“Stu Glass, you’re under arrest.”

McGee slapped cuffs on the stunned man before he had a chance to blink. “For what?”

“The murders of a marine officer last night and for the previous Santa, Lincoln Barnes.” The only thing worse than arresting Santa the day before Christmas was murdering Santa two days before. McGee read him his rights as he stood there, flabbergasted but twitching. In the corner of the break room, two elves were on their phones, trying to find an 11th hour replacement Santa; from the sound of it, prospects didn’t look good for Christmas village and the hundreds of kids lined up downstairs around the tree, waiting to see Santa.

“Just FYI,” McGee said as they marched Santa to the door. “There are better ways of moving up at work.

“You think I did this because of a job?” Santa laughed. He might not have a way with kids, but he had the rich, rumbly, bowl full of jelly laugh down. “Boy, you must have your B-team in for the holidays.” Gibbs was just about to ask him to explain, but then Gibbs noticed the look in the man’s eyes and realized the man was high as a kite. It usually didn’t pay to sample your own wares, but maybe he’d needed a hit to get him through dealing with the kids all day. Any real Santa would have considered this job a blessing, not a burden. “That stupid marine said he got stuck in traffic coming up from Tidewater and he got here just as I was moving the stash out of the kitchen. I knew there’d be cops all over this place when they found Barnes’ body. Hiding the drugs here was fantastic; easy to slip them to customers in all the Christmas chaos. But then Barnes had to go and ruin it all with his moral compass shit. He threatened to tell the bosses about the whole operation, and of course I couldn’t have that.”

What part of ‘right to remain silent’ did this guy not understand? Gibbs wished he’d had a tape recorder to capture all of this. Then he noticed McGee holding his phone, angled just so. Now that was ingenious.

“Agent Gibbs?” Gibbs turned to see the two elves now off their phones and looking worried. “The suit belongs to Christmas in Virginia,” the one with a name tag reading ‘Twinkles’ told him. “Not that it matters, because we’ve got no one to wear the suit now.” He almost sounded disappointed that a drug-running murderer wasn’t going to get more face-time with children here.

The other elf, who jingled as she moved because of a hundred bells attached to her costume, spoke up; she even jingled when she talked. “Unless… you’re the right height. What ‘s your pants size, Agent Gibbs?”

Oh no. No, no. At once, Gibbs saw where this was going and it was going nowhere good.

“You must have some free time now that the case is solved. Of course, you’ll need to eat this.” Twinkles pulled a candy cane out of her pocket like magic. “It’s a Christmas in Virginia trademark that Santa has peppermint breath.”

Of course it was. He could hear McGee coughing to cover up his laughter again.

Twas the night before Christmas
And teams at NCIS
Had solved cases that showed
Crime-solving ingenious

The agents were tucked
Up warm in their beds
Safe from slaps
To the backs of their heads.

Gibbs playing Santa
Was a sight to see.
As was the rare snowfall
On Washington, D.C.

So to my coworkers,
Friends, and family too,
Merry Christmas to all,
Especially to you.