In Case Of Emergency, Call Abby

Changing Lanes

"Okay, then observe." Abby moved her gloved hands in a flourish over the letter, which was written on simple, classic notebook paper. "First of all, Onyx was under duress when he wrote this; do you see how neat and tidy everything is?"

"Yes." Jenny and Gibbs told her in unison.   

"Well, I know Onyx, and even at the best of times, his handwriting is untidy and never stays on the line when he uses lined paper."

"It's practically perfect here." Jenny observed.

Gibbs nodded in agreement as he surveyed the letter. "Are you saying that the more stressed he gets, the neater his handwriting becomes?"

"Uh-huh. You should see what happens I—"

Sharply, and again in unison, Jenny and Gibbs gave a cry of, "Abby!"

The scientist laughed nervously. "Okay, okay! Follow me back to the monitor!"

Jenny and Gibbs did and watched Abby call up a digital copy of the letter.

"I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary about the paper itself when I examined it, but when I looked for fingerprints, it lit up."

Abby pressed a few buttons on her keyboard, inputting a command, and they watched as the computer scanned an image of the letter on to the screen. When it finished, they saw two sets of different-sized fingerprint fragments. One set was blue, and the other set was red.

"Which set belongs to who?" Jenny asked.

Abby isolated the blue set. "These belongs to Onyx. Not only is he in the Navy database, but he's in a few donor bases, too."

On Abby's other side,Gibbs asked, "If the blue set belongs to Clarkson, then who does the red set belong to?"

"I don't know yet." Abby confessed as she isolated them and blew them up so her friends could see. "They definitely don't belong to anyone in the Navy, or this government, because I've looked through all of the Navy and government-related databases I can think of. Right now, I'm running these prints through a few other databases."

"Do you know how long it's going to takedown get a hit?"

Abby shook her head. "No."

"The last time it took a long time for database results to come up, we identified Ari Haswari."

"I remember," Abby shivered. "And my fingers are crossed that it doesn't come to that. For good measure, though, I sent the searches up to yours, McGee's, Tony's, and Ziva's computers, too, so you guys can also keep track."

"That's good work, Abby. Is there anything else that the director and I should know about?"

Abby shook her head. "Nope—that's everything. Is it alright if RJ and I leave to go get lunch now? I'm sure the cafeteria has good food, but we'd have better luck at the Italian place downtown because RJ loves pasta."

Surprisingly, it was Jenny who gave the answer to this. "Yes, but take someone from the team with you—the last thing we need is anyone suspicious bothering you and Ruby."

The director spoke so authoritatively that Gibbs didn't try to to contest the order if one of his people being borrowed.

"Who do you pick, Abby?" asked Gibbs.