A/N: The next one in the series: what would it be like if Ellie told Jimmy? (This chapter is not related to the last one; just different takes on the same idea.)
Jimmy's humming softly as he glides through the Autopsy doors. He doesn't bother with the lights; he's just heading over to his desk for a moment and then he'll be on his way to the parking garage. It's been a pretty quiet day, and he's looking forward to getting home to Breena and Victoria. He's so focused on planning what he might cook for dinner that he fails, at first, to notice the unauthorized body on one of his furthest tables.
When the body moves, he pushes his glasses back on his face, grabs the nearest umbrella, and assumes a defensive stance. "I- uh, identify yourself!" he stammers into the shadows.
"Just me, Jimmy," the body says quietly, apparently either unaware of or unaffected by his little display with the umbrella. Palmer breathes a sigh of relief and tucks it back into its spot on the umbrella stand.
"Agent Bishop. What can I do for you? Is there a case?" He asks, outwardly as polite and professional as can be, even in spite of his inner lamentations - he was just about to go home! He flips on the lights and heads over towards where Bishop is still laying nearly flat on her back.
"Jimmy, do you know any dead people?" Ellie asks unceremoniously. Jimmy gets a feeling this might not be about a case at all, and pulls up his stool near the table.
"If you want to know about dead people, you've come to the right place!"
Bishop sighs almost dramatically. "Not dead people, per se," she whines. "More like the opposite of dead people."
Jimmy furrows his brow. "So, living people? I mean, it's not exactly my field of expertise, but I'll help if I can."
Bishop sits up abruptly, but still doesn't look over at Jimmy as she speaks; Palmer is quickly growing concerned about her emotional wellbeing but tries to brush it off. After all, Agent Gibbs wouldn't have her here at work if she wasn't okay.
"Have you ever known anybody after they died?" She asks.
"I mean, most of my customers," Jimmy jokes, "Though I don't always get to know them very well - it's not like I have a lot of regulars."
Bishop finally turns towards Jimmy, and from the look on her face he realizes that this might not be the best time for jokes.
"What I mean is," she begins, finally pushing off the autopsy table and beginning instead to pace around the room, "Have you ever known anyone who was supposed to be dead, but then turned out not to be dead at all?"
Palmer thinks hard. "Agent Gibbs had this friend a couple years ago. Showed up at Gibbs' place right after his own funeral. There was a guy back when Tony was here who was forced to fake his own death by a rogue CIA operative; he missed his own wedding and his own fiancee thought he was dead for like two weeks. Oh, and we had a body come in once that turned out not to be a body at all." He's been counting off not-dead people on his fingers, and looks up to see if that seems to answer Bishop's question. She still looks pretty agitated, so perhaps not.
"How 'bout anybody . . . dead for longer?" She asks darkly. Jimmy tilts his head sideways at her, standing to lean on the table.
"Okay, Bishop, what's going on here?" He decides it's best to just ask outright. "All these questions about dead people not really being dead. I mean, you've been acting kind of squirrely ever since -" Jimmy's eyes go wide behind his glasses with sudden realization. It can't be, it literally cannot be what he's thinking, and yet, doesn't it have to be?
"Oh my god," he mutters, moving abruptly towards the wall and turning on the biohazard warning that locks the doors and will keep away any possible interruptions. It's not exactly standard operating procedure, but he figures this conversation has gone far enough off-grid that such measures are warranted.
"Bishop," he hisses. "Are you telling me that Zi-" he cuts off, not quite able to bring himself to say her name, and lowers his voice even further as he says, "That she's alive?"
"I'm not supposed to tell anyone!" Ellie cries, and Jimmy feels his heart catch in his throat, not least because he may very well be among the worst secret-keepers he knows, second only to one Abby Sciuto.
Palmer's hands fly to his head and he takes a few steps back and forth as Bishop settles cross-legged back onto her autopsy table. "Okay," he begins after a moment, deciding it's best to gather as much information as possible before he even tries to think about what to do next. "Bishop, how do you kn- that is, um, why do you think-" he sighs, takes a deep breath, and tries again: "What makes you say that she's still out there?"
Having anticipated this question, Ellie is already pulling Ziva's note out of her soft brown wallet. "She left me this," she explains, smoothing out the page's wrinkles as best she can against her leg before passing it over to Dr. Palmer.
"The handwriting seems to match what was in her journals," Bishop continues, and Jimmy's nodding.
"Yeah, I recognize it," he says softly, then looks back up at Ellie. "This says not to tell anyone. Does anybody else know?"
"I haven't told anyone," Bishop says almost defensively, and Jimmy has to fight hard to keep from rolling his eyes, because while it's not technically wrong to say that she didn't tell him, it isn't exactly right, either.
"I'm pretty sure Gibbs knows, though," she continues. At Palmer's questioning look (although he really should just accept by now that Gibbs knows pretty much everything worth knowing), she explains about the letter that was torn out of Ziva's journal, and how she quickly realized that it was Gibbs who had the notebook when the page disappeared.
Jimmy is quiet for a long moment, just thinking. "I think we need some help," he finally says. He can't shake the feeling that he and Bishop are like a couple of high school kids who stumbled on something they shouldn't've seen and are now making the situation worse as efficiently as humanly possible by keeping it to themselves.
"I don't know, Jimmy," Ellie shakes her head. "I mean, she pretty clearly says not to get anyone else involved."
"She told you that," Jimmy defends, "And yet now I know anyway. And because I know, I can't just sit back and do nothing. We need more answers."
"Okay, I hear you, but Jimmy-"
"Hey! Bishop! Unless you're holding out on me, we know essentially nothing about what's happening here! We have a whole team of investigators and answer-finders upstairs. It would be silly not to use them."
Ellie looks almost panicked. "What if Ziva gets hurt?" She demands.
"What if she's already hurt?" Jimmy counters. Bishop's hands go still; the thought honestly hadn't even crossed her mind.
Palmer sighs. "Look, Ellie, for all we know, this note was written under duress," He points out. "I know she's trying to protect her family, but we are her family, and it seems to me that maybe we oughtta protect her this time."
He's been so caught up in his conversation with Bishop, thoroughly distracted by his attempts to convince her to get some help, that Jimmy has missed several phone calls. In fact, he doesn't even realize that the doors have opened his three bosses - well, his two bosses and Ducky, technically - are standing behind him in biohazard gear until the director clears his throat and says, "And just who are we protecting, Dr. Palmer?"
Uh-oh.