Title: No Good Deed
Author: mswyrr
Rating: PG
Words: 1479
Spoilers: All nine aired episodes.
Summary: Sooner or later, somebody's going to get a look inside Jane's house.
Author's Notes: Much thanks to WritingGoddess for beta reading this for me. She really helped me make it a better fic than it would have been otherwise. And thanks to Blacksquirrel, for chatting about the show with me. Thou art a fount of good thoughts!
-
Teresa Lisbon prided herself on her team. They were good people. She took care of them, and felt she could rely on them to give her their best in return. She felt like their unprecedented close rate was strong evidence in favor of her management style, though she'd been criticized before for her approach.
That said, she really wasn't their mommy. When Jane called in sick, she didn't pay much attention. Everybody went about their jobs as usual, though there was a certain spark missing from the day. A few days later, when he was still out sick, Van Pelt cornered Teresa in her office and asked if maybe someone shouldn't check on him.
Teresa agreed to do it after work. It wasn't really beyond the call of duty. She figured she'd drop off some soup and crackers, make sure he was still alive, nothing to it.
-
Jane answered the door wearing a navy blue pajama set. He'd put a light blue robe on over it and had brown slippers on his feet. There was a crisp white handkerchief peeking out of his pocket.
She lifted her grocery bag. "I brought soup," she said as she took him in.
His hair was a little mussed, and his nose was red. Even with that, he still seemed too well put together. He looked more like a stage actor's facsimile of a sick man rather than actually ill.
He smiled, reaching for the bag.
She lowered it. "Wait a second. You don't look too bad--"
He quirked an eyebrow, humor dancing in his eyes.
"--why haven't you come into work?"
Jane licked his lips, and shrugged. He waggled his fingers: gimme.
She stared him down.
He sighed. 'Okay' he mouthed. "Lost my voice," he admitted in a hoarse, nasally whisper. He grimaced at how he sounded. "I can't," he lifted his hand and made a vaguely Occult motion with his hand, somehow conveying what he did for the CBI in one fluid move, "like this."
"Oh," she said, somewhat surprised. But she understood: he got a lot of mileage out of his soothing tenor in his work.
He had finished his gesture by neatly removing the crisp white handkerchief and having a coughing fit. It went on so long, she got a little worried. Afterward, he reached for the bag again with such a pathetic expression that she wondered if he wasn't playing it up a little.
She handed it over.
He pulled at the handles and peered down at the soup, then looked up and smiled again. 'Thank you' he mouthed. He looked closely at her, considering. Then, leaving the door wide open, he turned smoothly on his heel and strode back into the house. Half-way in, he turned back and gave her a questioning look, waving her in.
The breeze blew cool against her, and the door gaped open. The hall was dimly lit, with dark rooms leading off to the sides, and a bright kitchen up ahead. It made her curious. She stepped inside and felt relieved to close the door. As always with Jane, she felt vaguely manipulated too. She tried to brush off the feeling as she followed him back to the kitchen.
She found him rummaging in the cupboard. He took out two clear glass bowls and turned to her brightly. He held them out, one deftly held in each palm, and tilted his head to the side, posing a question.
"Oh, no. I really..."
His mouth formed an "ah." It wasn't anything obvious, but he seemed to droop a little in disappointment.
"...should get home," she finished lamely.
He gave her a quick, forced smile, and waved her goodbye. He turned his back to her and started to replace the second bowl. He opened the soup's container and poured it into the bowl, preparing to reheat it.
She ran it through her head. It wasn't inappropriate to share a meal now and then with a colleague. And he seemed to need the company. Why rush home to her empty apartment and choice of frozen dinners?
As she thought, she glanced around the kitchen. It was beautiful. The floor was dark wood, the counter tops were slate, and the lighting was so discreet that it didn't shine from any particular place so much as illuminate the room with a warm glow. It was like something out of Better Homes and Gardens.
She remembered that he had been a very successful charlatan once.
As she was about to give in and stay for soup, she noticed something strange.
The house's back door was just off the kitchen, and there was a pair of pink rollerblades next to it. The image of Disney's Cinderella smiled up at her from their sides, smudged with dirt.
She puzzled at them, then heard the microwave beep. She looked up to see Jane pull his bowl out of the microwave and turn to set it on the table. When he saw her there, he widened his eyes.
"Staying?" he got out weakly.
"Uh..." There was a forest green jacket on one of the chairs at the table. It looked like cashmere.
It looked like a woman's coat.
Did he have company? What was...
There was a picture of Jane on the stainless steel fridge. A little blonde girl was getting a piggy-back ride from him, all smiles. He was playing up his fatigue, hand raised to his brow melodramatically.
She glanced from that to the Cinderella rollerblades, and the coat. Felt a chill go through her, though it was warm inside. She met his eyes, and could see that he'd seen.
His mouth opened, as if to say something. But there wasn't really anything to say. He took a step toward her on that beautiful hardwood floor.
She imagined him picking it out with the woman who'd worn that green cashmere jacket.
"Yeah. Sorry. I, uh, have to go," she said quickly, backpedaling out of the kitchen. She turned and made for the front door.
She left him there in a house where it was always the same day, the same horrible night. She went home and her empty apartment didn't seem so sad anymore. When she laid down to sleep, her mind was still in that house. She imagined he had three toothbrushes in a holder on the sink, a child's in bright pink and two adult brushes, blue and green. There were toys on the floor of his daughter's room that had never been picked up, and his wife's earrings sat in a porcelain dish on a dresser somewhere in their room.
She kept seeing it, and she started to understand why he couldn't sleep.
-
The next day, she called him from the office.
He picked up, and she heard a whispery "Hello?"
"Listen," she said, tapping her pencil against her desk, "you're not just good for your svengali routine. If you want to come in, you could help out just observing suspects."
Silence.
"There's a lot of filing, too," she joked lamely. "And I think Van Pelt misses you, so..."
"Okay."
"Okay. See you soon."
Hanging up, she decided that, since she'd done everything she could be expected to do, she'd let herself forget everything she'd seen at his house.
It ought to have been easy. He made it so easy. He came in, dapper and happy go lucky as always. He got a lot of play out of pantomime, delighting everybody, and later spotted something in a suspect's body language under interrogation that took their investigation in the right direction. He almost made it too easy. The contrast was something horrible. She couldn't stop thinking that he must have known she would see what she saw if he invited her in. He must have wanted her to know, like he had told her about his plans for Red John.
She wondered if he did these things because he just needed someone to know, and still look him in the eye without flinching, or if he needed her to make him get help. She wasn't sure. If he just wanted acceptance, she couldn't take his work from him. At the same time, she had started to feel like she'd signed a mentally ill person out of the hospital to do tricks for her, help her close cases.
When she caught sight of him asleep on the couch, she felt such a sense of relief. She got some mother hen comments from Cho and Rigsby, she was so vigilant that nobody wake him. It probably wasn't necessary. He was exhausted from being sick, and he hadn't stirred by the time they shut down for the night. She didn't know what to do yet, but she got some peace from knowing he wouldn't be locking himself in that dead house tonight.
-end-
What we are given is taken away,
but we manage to keep it secretly.
We lose everything, but make harvest
of the consequence it was to us. Memory
builds this kingdom from the fragments
and approximation. We are gleaners who fill
the barn for the winter that comes on.
-Jack Gilbert, "Moreover"