Chapter 43
Two hours after leaving Palmer in the conference room McGee went in to check on him.
The agent that was supposed to be on the hall wasn't there. He opened the door and saw that Palmer wasn't there. He entered the room, and behind the desk he found the agent that was on guard, unconscious. He drooped to his knees, checking the man's pulse. It was there. He phoned Ducky and asked for him to go up to the conference room.
He called Gibbs and told him what happened. The older agent asked Tony to look around and asked Tim to look through the surveillance videos.
Tim ran out of the room as soon as Ducky entered it. He got to his desk and started going through the videos. It didn't take him five minutes to find all that he needed.
They saw as Palmer attacked the agent and dragged him inside the conference room. Then calmly exited the building. They saw as he turned to look at the building for a moment before turning and walking away without a second glance.
" Find him! " Growled Gibbs.
Tony called the hotel, Jimmy's car was no longer there. He put a BOLO out for it.
Half an hour later the BOLO came back. Police had found the car torched in an abandoned lot. No one was inside it, fortunately, and it didn't seem to be any object inside it aswell.
The agents tried at Palmer's apartment and he wasn't there, and it didn't seem like he had been there. His cellphone was turned off. There was no use in his credit cards. But they did noticed that in the day after the first crime scene, he withdrew practically everything he had in the account.
Gibbs was pissed, beyond pissed. There was not a word for the level of anger the man was feeling.
Ducky was trying to mask how confused he was, and how hurt too. He kept remembering a phrase Palmer spoke to him, after their talk. ' Thank you Dr. I always enjoyed our conversations '. He had been right, it was a good-bye.
Abby's lab had no music coming from it, she was working in silence. ' How could Jimmy attack a NCIS agent? '.
After a while, Tim who had made no progress in finding Palmer, looked up from his desk to his colleagues. From their faces they were not doing any better.
' There's no way were going to find him. He left no possible way to be tracked. ' Tim thought. ' We should have known, he was just waiting for us to give him access to the crime scene. He probably figured out the second he saw it! But this woman is looking to kill him, would he go after her? ' His eyebrows were furrowed in deep thought, he was biting his lower lip. ' From the moment his whole thing started, he never went against her instructions. We found out that he has training, he could be thinking about showing up and meet her. '
He pulled up the photos from the crime scene. He carefully watched every single one. Trying to remember Palmer's reactions in the crime scene.
He stopped at the picture of the flowers. There was something about it, his mind kept telling him that there was something familiar about it. Something he recognized.
The others in the bullpen noticed Tim's expression, he was on to something. They didn't interrupt, just kept working on their assignments, praying to find something.
Tim researched the species of the flowers, he counted the flowers. He looked for places in DC that sold flowers. He read the note, muttering the words, jumping letters to see, if there was a code in it. But kept coming back to the pictures of the flowers. He had been looking at the photos for what it felt like hours.
He needed coffee.
Coming back from the break room he sat at his desk, took a big gulp from the coffee, placed the cup on the desk, then he looked at the screen.
Squares and colors.
" THAT'S IT! " He jumped, running out of the bullpen to Abby's lab, if someone could help to solve this faster, it was Abby.