Timothy sat at his desk, his face only by the soft glow of his small desk lamp, looking both perturbed and completely absorbed in whatever he was studying. The building was almost empty, but Tim hadn't noticed that he was one of the last agents still there. Gibbs, he knew, had gone home already and both Ducky and Abby were on their way out. The entire team had been in a celebratory mood that night as one of their bigger cases had just been closed.
"McGee," Ziva admonished as she re-entered the squad room. "Are you still here?"
"Just checking some things," he told her without looking up.
"McGoogle, we caught the guy. You don't need to pour over those e-mails anymore," Tony said. "Two days ago you said you never wanted to see them again."
"It doesn't make sense, Tony."
"What does not make sense?" Ziva asked as she packed up her things and readied herself to go home.
"Ah, McGee's just embarrassed because he was out-geeked by some high school drop out," Tony whispered to her, though he was making sure he was loud enough to be heard by Tim.
Tim frowned, not because of Tony's teasing, but because the comment was somewhat true. Tim couldn't understand how a man who had dropped out of high school his junior year with a 1.8 GPA had managed to keep him and the rest of his team running about on a wild goose chase.
It had started five days earlier when NCIS had received an anonymous e-mail. It detailed the murder of a female petty officer by the name Rachel Owens, including where they could find the body. It ended by telling them there would be more to come and challenging them to find.
"McGee, I want you to track this guy down!" Director Vance had ordered when the e-mail had turned out to be on the level.
And so McGee had tracked the guy down. Well, he'd tracked down the WiFi coffee shop from where the e-mail had been sent. That had been the easy part; the hard part had been figuring out who, out of the twenty people who'd shown up on the security camera had sent the e-mail. Their troubles were only increased when they were told that the Wi-Fi extended to the outdoor tables and that the security cameras were only located inside the coffee shop.
"I'm sorry, boss," Tim had said, momentarily abandoning the "do not apologize" rule. "Abby's working on the footage, but our chances at this point are slim."
With each day came another e-mail and another body. No matter how quickly Tim worked to trace each e-mail, they always found themselves arriving a bit too late. The pulled security videos they were able to get – not all of the WiFi spots were even able to give them that much – were watched ad nauseum for the chance that even one face would pop up twice. There was no way NCIS could possibly set up surveillance in every area that offered WiFi service, so all they could do was try to anticipate. Tim had grown increasingly frustrated by his inability to catch this guy. With each new e-mail, he'd gotten the sinking feeling that the sender was taunting him specifically.
"McGee, Paulson is the guy," Tony insisted, pulling Tim's attention away from the e-mails. He'd printed them all out and had placed them out, side by side, on his desk. "He admitted that he'd accosted Rachel Owens," Tony reminded, referring to the first victim.
"Tony, the guy is unhinged, sure, but that doesn't make him guilty. I don't think he could facilitate this kind of elaborate scheme. He works at a gas station and, from what I've seen, can barely even work the register."
"Yes, McGee, and we found, based on the victims' credit card receipts, that all five of them had stopped by the gas station in the last week."
"So? It's the gas station closest to the base, so it's not so strange that all of the victims had stopped there at some point."
"McGee, we found his fingerprints in Ethan Smith's car," Ziva put in.
"He could have helped P.O. Smith put something in his car recently."
"The rope found in his shed matches the marks made from the rope used to strangle the victims."
"I'm sure that applies to hundreds of people."
"McGee, we know that the guy tried to pick up P.O. Owens and she rejected him. He's acting out his revenge."
"So why aren't all of the victims women? Why would he be sending us e-mails, letting us know about the murders?"
"He was playing with our minds, McGeek," Tony told him. "Lots of killers like to taunt the officials that are trying to catch them."
"It just doesn't make sense, Tony!"
"Not all murderers make sense." Tony grabbed his bag and threw it over his shoulder. "Look, Probie, if you want to stay in on the first night off we've had in a week, that's your business, but I hope you don't think less of me if I choose to spend my night a bit differently."
Tim didn't respond, instead giving Tony and Ziva a distracted wave, telling them he was fine and that they needn't feel any obligation to stay behind with him. They both bade him good night as they walked to the elevator and Tim robotically responded with his own good-bye. His mind, though, was on the e-mails in front of him. There was something there that he wasn't seeing and it was driving him nuts.