There was an old woman who lived in the motel and she told NCIS that she heard two men yelling the night before the death and saw someone drive off in some kind of red car after the argument. The red car belonged to Jed Hamilton who was also the mayor. Later when looking thru Jed Hamilton’s garage, they found packages of rats in his freezer and he was the one who put the dead rat into Jenna Flemming’s suv. During the investigation process of Sanders death, they spoke to Max’s girlfriend. She told NCIS that the congress women had max working on a “secret project” and they asked the congress woman about the secret project and she told them he was researching the closure of the Brighton Naval Base.
Later on, they found Jed Hamilton standing on the congress woman’s front porch drunk and yelling and he said he just wanted to apologize for the dead rat. He tells the NCIS crew that he did not kill Max Sanders. NCIS says that Jed “did put the rat in Flemming’s suv and is a drunk but he is not the killer” (“Pay to Play”). The congresswoman started to think that it was Laura Perkins which is Max’s girlfriend who killed him. In the end, they found out that it was actually her who killed him and the reason was because of him working with the congresswoman on closing the navy