Special Agent 2: The Dark Soldier

Chapter 5

"Bullet to the head," Bishop observed, snapping a picture of the dead captain lying before his car. "Not a fun way to go out."

"But a quick one," DiNozzo commented, crouching down and pulled a wallet out of the captain's pocket. "ID says he's Navy Captain Samuel Morris, Boss," he said, looking up at Gibbs.

"Witness said he found the captain lying here when he was driving through," Loki said, walking over from where he had been interviewing the middle-aged man watching nervously from the sidewalk. "He called 911, and they transferred the case to us on recognizing the uniform."

"Someone obviously wanted whatever was inside his car," McGee observed as he snapped a picture of the smashed window. The agent opened the door, frowning at the glass shards on the front seat. "But what?"

"We'll find out," Gibbs said from where he stood in front of the car, glancing down at the blood spatter on the hood. "It could be what they killed him for."

"Poor fellow," Ducky commented as he walked over, Jimmy Palmer pulled the gurney out of the NCIS van. The medical examiner knelt down beside the body, setting his black bag down beside him. "The cause of death, however, is quite obvious."

"Blew his brains out," Gibbs observed, looking at the stained hood. "With a powerful gun."

"I suppose you already have a guess as to what type of firearm the bullet belongs to," Ducky stated, removing a liver probe from his black bag and slipping it into the body. "Your gut tell you?"

"Seen this before," Gibbs said. "Marine sniper rifle."

"So, are we looking for a Marine?" Bishop asked, her eyebrows knitting together.

"Nope," Gibbs answered, turning and glancing around. Loki, carefully bagging the glass shards alongside McGee, looked up at the former Marine. "I don't think so."

"Who then?" Loki asked, furrowing his brow. He was starting to receive a bad feeling about this.

"We'll see," was all Gibbs said.

"Our Navy captain died yesterday afternoon," Ducky said, removing the liver probe.

"That's odd," DiNozzo stated. "Why wasn't he found earlier?"

Jimmy gave DiNozzo a puzzled look. "Didn't you recognize this place? It's Ghost Street."

DiNozzo just gave Jimmy a look. "Ghost Street? Care to elaborate, Palmer?"

Palmer glanced around him like a ghost would flit out of one of the nearby buildings, his eyes wide behind his glasses. "It's cursed," he said in a low voice. "Haven't you heard the stories about Ghost Street, the Cursed Street? Gravity stops working sometimes, people vanish off the face of the earth, and strange beings walk down the streets at night. And then...there's him." Jimmy shuddered. "The stories say the street is named after him, the veteran who wanders searching for everything he's lost. He's walked so long, he's been turned into a ghost, each step steering him further away from reality." Jimmy glanced around furtively. "The stories also say he never really died, just slowly became disengaged from reality and became a ghost."

DiNozzo and McGee exchanged a look, both looking uncharacteristically troubled. "But they're just stories," McGee said, his voice sounding like he was trying to convince himself.

Jimmy's face was serious. "That's what I thought, once."

DiNozzo managed a laugh. "Yeah, right. Ghosts aren't real, and all those things people think happened must be their imagination." He glanced around. "The people who tell those stories had too much to drink."