Chapter 2: The Van Ride
@Crossover Premise @Teresa Lisbon @Case Opening @NCIS Team @Investigative Style @Lisbon’s Restricted File
The NCIS van hummed along the two-lane blacktop, cutting through the gray Virginia dawn. Inside, the air was warm with recycled breath and the sharp, burnt scent of coffee from a roadside stand.
Tony drove with a relaxed precision, one hand draped over the wheel. “Place is called Cobalt Creek,” he said, reading a rusted welcome sign as they blew past it. “Population forty-two hundred, and apparently, one dead naval officer.”
“Thirty-six hundred,” McGee corrected from the back seat, not looking up from his tablet. “Census data shows a three percent decline since 2020.”
“Even better. Tight-knit community.” Tony’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “Bet the local chief’s also the barber and the animal control officer. Probably used chicken feed to outline the body.”
In the passenger seat, Gibbs stared straight ahead at the unspooling road. He said nothing, his silence a vacuum that pulled all the sound in the vehicle toward him.
“Remember the case in Nebraska where the Sheriff used a plastic bag from his own utility belt to secure a murder weapon?” Ziva said, her voice flat. “He said it was ‘handy.’ His fingerprints were the only ones left on the knife.”
McGee shook his head, tapping his screen. “That’s amateur hour. In Idaho, the deputy mayor insisted on walking the scene with us. He was wearing the victim’s riding boots. Said they fit him better.”
“See? This is what we’re walking into.” Tony gestured broadly with his free hand. “A circus. ‘Step right up, see the strange federal agents! Don’t touch the evidence, Earl, it’s federal!’” He dropped the carnival barker voice. “Our first twelve hours will just be undoing their… enthusiastic assistance.”
Gibbs’ jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. His gaze remained fixed on the horizon where the sky was bleeding from black to bruised purple.
“It is not always so,” Ziva countered, though her tone lacked conviction. “Sometimes they are competent. They simply lack resources.”
“Competent, small-town, and cooperative?” Tony chuckled. “That’s a unicorn, Ziva. Usually, it’s a territorial thing. They see the suit and the badge and they get prickly. It’s all about their turf.”
The van slowed as the GPS chimed, instructing a turn onto a narrower road lined with skeletal pines. The docks came into view, a dark scar on the edge of the steel-colored water.
Gibbs finally moved, reaching for the door handle as Tony pulled the van to a stop behind a row of local cruisers. His blue eyes scanned the perimeter, the tape, the positions of the officers. He took in the lone figure in a uniform bomber jacket and navy ball cap standing apart from the others, her back to them, looking out at the water.
“Enough,” Gibbs said, his voice a low rasp that silenced the van. He pushed his door open, the cold air rushing in. “Let’s go meet the unicorn.”
Gibbs moved toward the dock with a purposeful, ground-eating stride that forced the others to fall in behind him. The mist clung to his jacket, and the worn planks absorbed the sound of their footsteps, making their approach feel unnaturally quiet. He focused on the woman in the uniform as she turned, her posture straightening but not stiffening, her eyes taking them in with one swift, assessing sweep.
“Chief Lisbon,” she said, her voice neutral, cordial but devoid of warmth. “Teresa Lisbon. You’re NCIS.”
“Gibbs,” he replied, offering a single, slight nod. He gestured with his chin. “Agent DiNozzo, Officer David, Special Agent McGee.” His team gave brief nods, their own professional masks in place, their eyes already straying past her to the tape line and the shadowed shape beyond.
“Your scene is secure,” she began, turning slightly to include them all in her gaze. “We widened the original perimeter after I confirmed the victim’s affiliation. The two dock workers present at discovery have been separated since my arrival.” She pulled a small notepad from her pocket, flipped it open. “Deputy Miller logged everyone who accessed the immediate area before my tape went up. That’s himself, Officer Peters, and the finder, Ernest Frye. I initiated photography before any close examination.”
She delivered it all in a clean, factual monotone, like a briefing officer reading a prepared statement. Tony’s eyebrows climbed a fraction; this wasn’t the flustered defense he’d anticipated.
“The body?” Tony asked, stepping forward, his curiosity piqued.
Teresa’s green eyes met his, cool and clear. “Adult male. Tied up with a plastic zip tie. Appears to have died from having his throat cut. His clothing is damp. My people haven’t moved him.”
She offered nothing else. No theory, no gut feeling, not even a sigh of professional frustration. She just waited.
Gibbs watched her for a two-count of silence, then turned his head. “McGee. Ziva.” That was all he needed to say. They moved past Teresa, gloved up and ducking under the tape, their focus narrowing to the form between the pilings.
Gibbs looked back at Lisbon. “Who found him?”
“Ernest Frye. Local lobsterman. He arrived at approximately 5:15 a.m. to check pots. He called 911 at 5:22 a.m. from the parking lot.” Her answers were immediate and precise, matching the details she’d logged alone in the fog.
“Marina hours?” Tony jumped in, pulling out his own notebook.
“Gates close at ten. There’s supposed to be an overnight security driver, but the service is inconsistent.” A flicker of something—annoyance?—passed through her eyes. “I’ve discussed improving it with the harbormaster multiple times. He hasn’t followed through.”
“Cameras?”
“A few. Mostly covering the road access and the main warehouse entrances.” She pointed toward a rusted bracket under the eaves of a distant shed. “None with a clear view this slip. It’s digital, stored on a drive in the admin office. I had my deputy secure the drive.”
Tony nodded, scribbling. “Dockworker routines? Private leases?”
“The day crew starts at seven. The two men already here were prepping a charter boat down at slip eighteen.” She inclined her head toward a low, white building at the landward end of the dock. “The harbormaster, Alan Scheiner, is in the administration office with Mr. Frye. The two workers are in separate storage rooms. A deputy is with them to ensure they don’t compare stories.”
“Go,” Gibbs said to Tony. “Statements. Start with the harbormaster.”
“On it, Boss.” Tony flashed a quick, sharp smile at Teresa that didn’t reach his eyes and headed off, his shoes tapping a rapid rhythm on the wood.
Gibbs turned his full attention back to Teresa Lisbon. She had provided every logistical answer requested, swiftly and without embellishment. Now, as the federal machinery clicked into gear around her, she did something he found far more interesting than any territorial bluster.
She stepped back.
She moved a clean three paces away from him, her hands loose at her sides, and simply observed. Her gaze tracked McGee and Ziva as they worked, noting their techniques, but her expression gave away nothing. She wasn’t vying for inclusion. She wasn’t hanging on his every word hoping for a scrap of case detail. She was a sentinel relinquishing her post, waiting, it seemed, for formal dismissal.
In Gibbs’s long experience, even the competent local cops always had questions. They asked about procedure, about Naval protocol, about what he thought. They tried to prove their worth, or mask their insecurity, with a barrage of inquiry.
Teresa Lisbon just watched the water and the fog, her silence as deep and impenetrable as the grey water beneath the dock.
Teresa Lisbon just watched the water and the fog, her silence as deep and impenetrable as the grey water beneath the dock. She could feel the weight of Gibbs’s attention still on her, a tactile pressure between her shoulder blades, but she refused to turn and meet it. Her performance was one of mundane competence, nothing more.
She’d slid her notebook, dense with her own sharp observations about the staged positioning and the foreign mud, back into her inner jacket pocket. It had felt too much like a manifesto. Let them see the cautious local chief, not the former agent who’d spent two hours alone with a body cataloguing a killer’s methodology.
A shiver ran through her, tightening the skin on her arms. The wind off the water had a bite now that the adrenaline of discovery had worn off. She wrapped her arms around herself, the coarse material of her jacket rough against her palms. The chill was in the air and in her bones, a deep, settling cold.
She looked down, focusing on the mundane to steady herself. Her uniform boots were smudged with dock grime and a sprinkle of fine, dark gravel kicked up from the parking lot. She nudged a small pile of it with her toe, watching the particles skitter and then fall through a crack between the planks into the unseen water below. It was a pointless, grounding action.
The rhythm of the federal investigation established itself around her. McGee was a flurry of precise movement, shooting new photos from different angles, his camera flash a stark, periodic blink against the gloom. Ziva moved with a silent, economical grace around the body, her eyes missing nothing.
“Gibbs,” Ziva called out, her voice clear. “The tie is industrial grade. He was alive when it was applied. The bruises underneath are pronounced.”
Gibbs didn’t reply, but watched as Teresa Lisbon continued to move the dock grime around with her foot before his gaze swept the pilings and the ropes of the nearby fishing boat.
The voice that cut through next was familiar and out of place. Deputy Miller, earnest and over-eager, had drifted from his perimeter post toward McGee. “Excuse me, Agent? For your chain of custody log, do you want the evidence bags numbered sequentially starting from one, or should we match our original numbering from the Chief’s initial walk?”
McGee paused, opening his mouth to answer.
Teresa’s voice sliced across the dock before he could speak. “Miller.”
The deputy flinched, turning.
“Back to your post at the tape line.” Her tone was flat, a command that brooked no discussion. “Procedural cross-reference can wait. You can look up the federal form number later. Your job right now is the perimeter. Nothing else.”
Miller’s ears reddened. “Yes, Chief. Sorry.” He retreated quickly, his boots thudding a hurried rhythm back to his assigned spot at the landward edge of the crime scene tape.
Teresa let her gaze follow him for a moment, ensuring he was in place, before turning her head back toward the water. The intervention was calculated. It reinforced a hierarchy they’d expect—a chief managing a slightly bumbling deputy. It also stopped Miller from inadvertently revealing how detailed her ‘initial walk’ had truly been.
She resumed her silent vigil, a statue in a navy ball cap. She watched Ziva carefully bag the victim’s hands. She listened to the distant murmur of Tony’s voice from the harbormaster’s office, bright and probing. She felt, more than saw, Gibbs approach her again. His footsteps were quiet, but the planks creaked in a specific sequence under his weight.
“You didn’t touch the body,” Gibbs stated. It wasn’t a question.
“No,” she said, still looking at the water. “I confirmed death from a distance. No pulse visible in the neck. No reason to contaminate the scene.”
“But you looked. Closely.”
This time she turned her head. His blue eyes were on her, sharp as chipped ice. He was testing the edges of her story. “It’s hard to miss a wound like that, Agent Gibbs. Even from a few feet away.”
“He wasn’t killed here.” Gibbs delivered the line softly, watching for her reaction.
Teresa allowed a slight, weary frown, the kind a tired cop might make when the case suddenly gets more complicated. “The lack of blood spatter suggested that. I figured your people would confirm it.” She gave a small shrug, a gesture of ceding authority. “You’ve confirmed it.”
A long moment passed, filled only by the cry of a gull and the lapping of water. He was waiting for her to ask how he knew, to engage, to prove her curiosity.
She didn’t.
Instead, she rubbed her arms against the chill and nodded toward the growing brightness in the east. “My officers will maintain the perimeter as long as you need. I was told you’d bring your own medical examiner. I’ll make sure they coordinate directly with you.” Her words were a polite handoff, a closing of a file.
She was shutting down, and Gibbs saw it. A local chief handing over a hot case to the feds should be full of relief, or frustration, or at least a lingering, morbid interest. Teresa Lisbon was a blank wall. It was the most interesting thing about her. This deliberate, practiced neutrality.
Gibbs took a single step forward, then another, closing the distance between them on the creaking dock until his worn suede jacket was almost brushing the sleeve of her uniform. He didn’t blink, his gaze drilling into the side of her face, testing the strength of her composure.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t step back into the space he’d ceded. Teresa simply turned her head and met his stare directly, her green eyes calm and utterly unimpressed. She held the look without challenge, a neutral acknowledgement of a maneuver she’d seen a hundred times before. Her posture remained compact, rooted, a subtle declaration that she understood the power play and found it tedious.
“The four deputies you see here are most of my town’s police force,” she said, her voice low and even. “I have one nearly-retired desk sergeant sitting at the station right now.” She glanced past his shoulder toward the main road, where the first faint signs of morning traffic were beginning to stir. “Most of the town is awake now. This quiet won’t last.”
Gibbs’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Your point, Chief?”
“My point is you could probably use the manpower my deputies provide,” she said, tilting her head toward where Miller stood stiffly at the tape line. “More than you need a police chief standing around with nothing to do. I’ve told them to follow your directions. They’re good at following directions.”
“Chief…” Gibbs began, a protest about jurisdiction and oversight forming, but she cut him off with a subtle shake of her head.
“I’ve learned that my presence at any investigation, from stolen barbecues to traffic accidents, invites questions,” she explained, her tone pragmatic. “People want to talk to the top. It slows things down. Here, it’s better if I’m back at the station, managing the rest of the town while you work.”
Gibbs studied her face, reading the neat, professional logic of it. It was sound. It was efficient. It also conveniently removed her from his immediate scrutiny. He gave a single, curt nod, unable to fault the reasoning even as his instincts hummed a low warning.
“Alright,” he said.
Without another word, Teresa gave a final, perfunctory nod and turned, walking with a measured, unhurried pace down the long dock toward the parking lot. Her boots made a soft, fading rhythm on the wet wood.
Gibbs watched her go, the mist beginning to swallow her form. Then he called out, his voice carrying clear in the damp air. “Be reachable, Chief.”
She stopped. She didn’t fully turn, just glanced back over her shoulder, her profile sharp against the grey water. “I will be,” she said.
Then she continued to her unmarked sedan, slid inside, and started the engine. The headlights cut twin cones through the lingering fog as she pulled away, leaving Gibbs and his team in possession of her dock, her body, and a lingering, unresolved question she wore like a coat.
Inside the car, the silence was a relief. Teresa gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white, and let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The bland mask she’d maintained for Gibbs felt brittle now, a ceramic shell over a live wire.
She drove past the sleepy clapboard houses of Cobalt Creek, their windows glowing with warm, yellow light. A man in a bathrobe collected a newspaper from his porch. It was a picture of mundane safety she was tasked with protecting, a picture now fractured by a pair of zip-tied wrists and a precise, brutal cut.
Her phone buzzed on the passenger seat. The screen lit up with the station’s number. Sergeant Mullins, the nearly-retired desk man, would be wanting guidance on what to tell the inevitable curious callers.
She answered, her voice steadying into its practiced, professional cadence. “Lisbon.”
“Chief,” Mullins’s gravelly voice came through. “Got a Mrs. Henderson on line two, says someone’s been tipping over her ceramic garden gnomes again. Wants you personally to come take a report.”
Teresa closed her eyes for a second, the absurd normalcy of it washing over her. A dead Navy officer on the docks, and the world still turned on gnomes.
“Tell her I’m tied up with a federal matter on the waterfront,” Teresa said, switching hands. “Have Deputy Collins swing by after his shift ends at the docks to take her statement.”
“Federal matter?” Mullins asked, his tone lifting with curiosity.
“NCIS,” Teresa confirmed, knowing the gossip would be all over town within the hour anyway. “A naval link. They’re running the scene now. We’re in a support role.”
She gave a few more terse instructions, then ended the call, tossing the phone back onto the seat. Support role. That’s all she could be. The alternative—letting Gibbs see even a flicker of the sharp, analytical hunger the scene had sparked in her—was untenable. That part of her was sealed, too, filed away in a vault marked Consequences.
Pulling into her designated spot behind the small, brick police station, she killed the engine but didn’t get out. She stared at the peeling paint on the back door. Eighteen months of peeling paint, of gnome complaints, of deliberately dulled edges.
And now a man with a military haircut and a slit throat had washed up on her shore, bringing with him a man who looked at silence not as absence, but as something to be broken. Gibbs’s probing stare felt like a thumb testing a healed fracture, searching for the weak point.
Her own observations from the dock—the industrial tie, the lack of spray, the foreign mud—churned in her mind, forming unwanted connections, suggesting professional patterns she recognized in her bones. She shoved them down. It wasn’t her case. It couldn’t be.
With a final, resolute sigh, she pushed the car door open. The chilly morning air hit her face. She had reports to fabricate, a town to placate, and a carefully constructed solitude to maintain. Every step toward the station door felt like walking into a cage she’d built herself, while back on the docks, the man with the sharp blue eyes began pulling on the one thread that could unravel it all.