Chapter 38
Hours later, the whole team was tense, the minutes were passing, any minute now they would get a call, calling them to another crime scene.
Time seemed to stand still.
Then, the phone rang.
Gibbs listened then rang up.
" Grab your gear. "
Half an hour later, they all arrived at the crime scene. They were all so worried about what they might find that they didn't even found strange that Palmer didn't seem to get lost on the way there.
It was an old warehouse, in the middle of other warehouses. It looked abandoned.
There was a police car in the front, an officer standing in front of the door. He looked a little pale, and green.
" Are you Agent Gibbs? "
" Yes, what do you got? "
" A mess. I don't even know how many bodies. We just made a quick sweep of the building and waited outside. "
" Why were we called? "
" Found a Navy uniform. "
" Alright. " Gibbs turned from the officer to his team. " DiNozzo, bag and tag. David talk to who discovered the body. McGee photos. "
Ziva stayed outside talking to the officer while the others went inside.
The first thing they noticed was the man, hanging from the ceiling, a chain wrapped around his neck. And a sword cross his middle.
The next was the floor, it was a pool of blood, all around the hanging man. Beneath him, a pile of body parts, two heads carefully placed on the floor.
As soon as they entered the building Palmer moved to the front, next to Gibbs, wanting to take a look at everything before the agents moved forward.
' Why would she use the same place? I was already here. ' Palmer thought. Then it hit him. ' I was here, and I fought her here. There is bound to be something she left here. Something that is going to lead back to me. '
He was not allowed to work on the bodies so he just walked around, looking for something that was a sign.
He could feel the eyes of the others on him. And Gibbs following his every step.
He carefully looked at the blood at the floor, searching for some pattern from the edges of the pool, some flaw. Then the bodies. He assumed from the amount of pieces and, obviously, the number of heads on the top, there was two bodies on the pile. Both male, medium built at least. In shape, it was probable they actually were in the Navy. A navy uniform was placed on the side of the pile, on the other side from the front door. It was clean, no blood in it. And he noticed that the pile had no blood either, just on the floor. ' They were bleed out, before being cut. ' And, of course as he had seen before, Jack was hanging from the ceiling. He looked, but nothing was different about him. The cuts, the sword, it was all the same.
After analysing the bodies, he started looking around the floor. The same boxes, the same lamp next to the bodies. The walls were clean. No writing, no papers, no pictures.
But there was something. A smell, partly concealed by the smell of the bodies, but it was there. It smelled like...
" Flowers? " He muttered to himself, looking towards the stairs that led to the second floor.
The others stopped working and looked at him, following him with their eyes. Ziva had just entered the room, finished talking with the police officers. She was in shock for a moment, before following everybody's gaze and observing Palmer aswell.
Before stepping on the first floor, he saw a sensor, hidden, as soon as he climbed the first step it would be activated.
The others saw his hesitation. Gibbs was about to ask him what was wrong when he climbed the first step. And from somewhere on the warehouse a music began to play.