A/N: Here I am again, having been struck by inspiration to write this new scenario. As with my other AU's, I try to keep these characters in character, despite their change in circumstances. Here you will find Jane, somewhere between his psychic days personality and his post-Red John attitude, though in this case he's never been married or lost anyone he loved to a grisly murder. Lisbon is just Lisbon in a skirt, and you will also find some old supporting characters turning up in new ways. Above all, this is a romance, with an M-rated scene or two along the way, which I promise to warn you about in advance. I hope you enjoy this. Thanks for taking a chance.
Judge and Jury
Chapter 1
Assistant District Attorney Teresa Lisbon stood in the empty courtroom, the morning light streaming in from the high windows, her eyes focused on the statue of Lady Justice behind the judge's bench. On those days when it seemed like nothing was fair, it always helped to remind herself that, despite its flaws, theirs was still the best legal system she knew. She felt some comfort too that if a jury in this life didn't give justice, God would surely mete out His own in the next. Such was unfortunately the risk in the trial that would begin today.
Lisbon touched the gold cross at her neck, took a deep, cleansing breath, and sat down at the prosecutor's table. She opened her briefcase and pulled out the file that she already knew by heart.
Sheriff Thomas McAllister.
In The State v. McAllister, the State of California would contend that McAllister had embezzled funds from the Napa County Sheriff's department, as well as taken bribes from a handful of some of the wealthiest arrestees in the county, keeping their offenses quiet and choosing to look the other way. They had caught McAllister red-handed with these reprehensible nonviolent crimes, but Lisbon knew in her heart, along with the head of the California Bureau of Investigation, that this man had done much worse than they could pin on him. But because McAllister was so well-known in Napa County, the media coverage there so biased, the courts had granted a change of venue to Sacramento County to ensure the fairest trial possible. The defense had no reason to fear ADA Teresa Lisbon. This, she hoped, would be their fatal error.
Lisbon's friend at the CBI, Agent Kimball Cho, believed Sheriff McAllister was likely the serial killer Red John, but he had nothing but a gut feeling and circumstantial evidence—not enough to bring charges against the man for murder. But Cho had plenty of evidence from his White Collar division to prosecute on the other charges, so when the venue had changed, he'd come to Lisbon, thinking that if McAllister were convicted, they could at least get the murderer off the streets for a while, saving lives and buying some time to find more evidence against him. After hearing Cho's thoughts and looking at the pictures of the Red John crime scenes, Lisbon was all in.
The soft click of the courtroom door made Lisbon turn in her seat to see who had joined her. Someone else had probably chosen to ignore the notification outside the door that jury selection had been postponed an hour, but, like her, had probably wanted a quiet place to get their bearings before the trial began. But instead of her boss, DA Oswaldo Ardilles, or someone she recognized from the defense team, the man who'd entered was a stranger to her. A very handsome stranger.
The first thing she noticed about him was an inherent grace, a stride reminiscent of Cary Grant in—well, pick any movie he'd been in. And though the stranger's footfalls echoed in the empty courtroom, his feet seemed light with confidence. He wore an expensive three-piece suit sans tie—another indication the man was not a lawyer—and his wavy blond hair was shiny, soft, and expertly coiffed. His high cheekbones and full, chiseled lips would be the envy of male models everywhere, but it was his eyes that made her heart pick up speed. Pale green with a hint of blue, they were alight with humor and mischief, and they had zeroed in on her as he made his way to the front of the room.
"Hello, there," he said, his tone hushed and intimate, and the smile that followed nearly did her in. He was literally breathtaking, and were Lisbon able to recall anything in that moment (let alone breathe), she would remember that no man had ever had such an immediate, visceral effect upon her senses. He took a seat on a padded bench, and, looking around the room, inhaled dramatically.
"Don't you just love the smell of justice in the morning?"
His light sarcasm snapped her out of her momentary daze, and she couldn't help but smile a little, though she forced her voice to sound official, she being an officer of the court and all.
"Did you notice the sign on the door? Jury selection has been pushed back an hour."
"Well that explains the absence of the judge and the dirth of sharks in suits," he said, nodding toward the empty defense table. "No offense."
Lisbon's smile widened in spite of herself. "That's the defense table, so I'll let that one pass."
He grinned back at her, appreciating her good humor, and for a moment, he seemed somehow familiar.
"So if you're not one of the sharks, what are you doing here so early? Reporter maybe?" Her eyes narrowed and she remembered herself. "If you're a witness for the defense, then we shouldn't be talking like-"
"No, none of the above. You might just call me a concerned citizen, here to observe the legal process." His eyes fairly twinkled at some private joke.
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Okay…"
It was probably best that she simply ignored his presence, maybe even left in order to protect herself from whatever role he was playing in this case. But how could one ignore the sensual awareness of such a man, any more than one could be in the same room with Michelangelo's Statue of David and disregard such a masterpiece? She shook her head at her uncharacteristic flight of fancy, and when she got out of her own head and focused on him again, she was mortified to see that he'd been watching her closely, likely seeing every thought and emotion playing across her face. To make matters worse, he grinned knowingly.
Feeling her cheeks grow warm, she cleared her throat to hide her sudden nervousness. "What do you hope to see today, Mr.-?"
"Jane," he supplied readily enough. "But you can call me Patrick." There was that devastating smile again.
Damn, but the man could flirt.
"I really have no expectations," he continued. "This justice stuff, it's all just a crap shoot, isn't it? It all comes down to who's on the jury, who's the slickest attorney with the best fairy tell to tell. Justice doesn't amount to a hill of beans anymore—if it ever did."
She shook her head, wondering how he could possibly know she'd just been thinking along similar lines.
"Wow. I'm glad I'm not as cynical as all that. I see your point, however; though I admit I still hold out hope that at least most of the bad guys on trial are rightly convicted. I don't know, Mr. Jane: can one be an optimist and a realist at the same time?"
He looked at her a moment, his eyes softening as they examined her from the top of her dark head to the toes of her sensible pumps. She almost felt like he was touching her physically, and her blood hummed with awareness. His eyes met hers again across the courtroom.
"If anyone could pull off such a contradiction, Miss Lisbon," he answered her at last, "I'm convinced that you could, with admirable grace and...passion."
She was momentarily captured by his gaze, and then it occurred to her that he'd spoken her name. She hadn't told him who she was. Not that it was a secret—she was a public servant. Still, it was just another thing about this man that put her on edge.
"How do you know my name?"
"I read the papers," he replied nonchalantly. "But I have to say, I envy your optimism, I truly do, and I would love to know your secret, after having prosecuted some of the worst characters in society."
How had she stumbled into such a deep conversation with a total stranger? She really should be going over her notes…
"It's not a secret," she said. "It's a choice, and in some cases, a method of survival. You look at studies of survivors of horrible situations, and they all tend to have gotten through by having hope that they would get out of it. People who give up, who believe their future is a negative forgone conclusion—they're the ones least likely to survive."
He grinned in sincere admiration. "You make a good case, Madame Prosecutor," he said. "You have the same optimism you'll win this trial?"
She nodded. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
"The defense had better up its game then, hadn't they. I can already tell it will be an absolute pleasure to watch you in action, Miss Lisbon." By the way he was looking at her, there was no mistaking he'd meant that literally.
Flushing bright pink, she abruptly stood up from her chair, moving jerkily to gather together her papers and files. Feeling herself revert to awkward teenager mode, naturally she dropped a few folders onto the floor. It was like she was in high school all over again, blushing because the quarterback had deigned to notice the band nerd.
"Shit," she muttered, then squatted as best she could in her pencil skirt to gather up her fallen belongings.
She didn't know how he made it to her side so quickly, but before she knew it, she was engulfed in the scent of a woodsy, expensive cologne, equally overpowered by the sensation of his nearness. He picked up a few of the scattered papers from beneath the table, while she hastily gathered the rest. She stood and shoved them into her briefcase. When she snuck a glance at her knight errant, he was still squatting on the floor, an open file in his hand. He was staring, enthralled, at crime scene photos of women eviscerated with a carpet knife.
The sight was enough to bring her back to the present, and she was once more the confident Assistant DA.
"Hey," she said sternly, "those are DA's office property." She reached a hand down to his level expectantly. He looked up at her then, his eyes grave, his face pale after observing the horrors depicted in the pictures.
"Who did this?" he asked softly.
She found she couldn't lie or brush off his question—not about something as serious as this. Her weighted tone matched his.
"Those are just a few of the women killed by the serial killer who calls himself Red John."
He glanced down again, shuddering slightly before almost reverently closing the file he held. He stared a moment at the label on the outside of the file, neatly written in her own hand: Thomas McAllister. He rose slowly to his feet, and when he handed the file back to her, he seemed shaken.
"You think McAllister is Red John?"
She took the file and put it with the others in her briefcase. "The sheriff is being charged with embezzlement and bribery," she hedged, though it was no secret within the law enforcement community that McAllister had also been investigated for the murders of twenty women. She was certain the sheriff knew the CBI was watching him.
"That isn't what I asked." He was standing again, unnervingly close to her, about a head taller than her. She imagined she could feel the heat emanating from his lithe body.
She forced herself to shrug, turning away from him to close her briefcase with a snap. "I can't comment on an ongoing investigation."
They were both quiet a moment, and Lisbon briefly closed her eyes, willing him to leave, though frozen herself to the spot.
"Hmm," he said thoughtfully, tapping his full bottom lip.
And then he was walking back the way he'd come, down the center aisle toward the door. "I'll be seeing you, Miss Lisbon," he called wryly. She turned in time to see the door close quietly behind him. She let out the breath she'd been holding, then sat heavily back in her chair.
It was then that she remembered where she'd seen him before.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Patrick Jane found himself outside the courthouse, sitting with his back to the decorative fountain in the tree-lined square, gazing sightlessly at the California State Capitol building in the distance. He allowed the cascading water to help him gather his thoughts. The photos of the bloodied, murdered women had been horrific enough to momentarily take his mind off the intriguing charms of the Assistant DA. He'd seen a similarly mangled body when helping the Malibu Police Department six months before.
It still frustrated him that he hadn't been able to solve the murder of the young woman, found dead in her own bed, a grotesque smiling face dripping blood on the wall above. His one failure had led him out of the world of murder and depravity to the slightly less disheartening arena of jury consulting. But he had never forgotten his failure; indeed, he was still haunted by it.
Could this man whose jury he was about to help pick, be responsible for the girl's death in Malibu? The lovely Teresa Lisbon seemed to think so. It had occurred to him as he walked out of the courtroom that she was trying to get McAllister on the only crimes she could successfully pin him on. But what if the jury decided he was not guilty of embezzlement or bribery? He would be free to go out and kill again. That is, if he was, in fact, Red John.
Jane closed his eyes and raised his face to the east, the late summer sun glowing orange beneath his eyelids. He had not seen any of the DA's evidence that linked McAllister to Red John. Obviously, if Miss Lisbon had had enough proof that McAllister was the serial killer, he'd be on trial for that. He'd have to have more information to make his own decision, and it would start with meeting the man face to face, which he had yet to do.
He glanced down at his Cartier watch, noting there was still about thirty minutes until court was in session. Time enough to make it to the holding area where McAllister waited with his lawyer. Slapping his knees in finality, he stood and trotted back up the steps and into the courthouse.
"Patrick Jane, with the defense team," he said, holding up his ID and visitor's pass for the uniformed guard to see. He was buzzed inside the holding area and led by another officer to a small room reserved for the defendant and his lawyers. At the officer's knock, the lead counsel for the defense, Ray Haffner, answered the door. His eyes widened in surprise.
"Mr. Jane? What can I do for you?"
Jane looked over the tall man's shoulders to see the other attorney on the case, Brett Partridge, who was standing in a corner drinking coffee, and another man Jane knew from newspaper and TV reports was the defendant, Sheriff Thomas McAllister.
"I was hoping to meet the sheriff before jury selection, get an idea of his personality to help me better gauge which jurors would respond the most positively to him." Jane had never needed to do this before, but it sounded like a logical enough excuse the moment the words fell from his mouth.
"Oh, uh, sure. Come in." The handsome attorney stepped aside and nodded toward McAllister. "Sheriff, this is Patrick Jane. He's that jury consultant I told you about."
McAllister rose, clad in an off-the-rack charcoal suit, smiling ironically at the handcuffs that made shaking hands awkward. Nevertheless, Jane clasped the older, balding man's right hand, staring deeply into startlingly blue eyes while surreptitiously feeling the steady pulse at his wrist. The man's hand was dry and warm, his face relaxed, his smile easy. Not at all the normal demeanor, in Jane's experience, of a man about to be go before a judge.
Jane took the chair opposite the sheriff without it being offered.
"So, I've heard you guarantee a favorable verdict," said McAllister.
Jane shrugged. "I've been right so far."
"What are you, psychic or something?"
McAllister's slow, country bumpkin drawl wasn't fooling Jane in the least. There was an undercurrent of danger beneath the guileless grin, an intelligence he was trying very hard to hide.
"Yes," replied Jane. "Something like that. This far north, you might not have seen my local show in LA, but I'm hoping to be syndicated soon."
"So what, you cherry pick juries in your free time?"
"Yes. When I'm not a consultant for the police."
"Huh," remarked McAllister. "Working both side of the fence. Interesting. Hey, Ray, you sure about this guy's loyalty?" He was talking to his attorney, but those disconcerting eyes stayed unwaveringly on Jane's.
"I don't care whether you're innocent or guilty," said Jane, "my job is to keep you out of jail."
"But what do you really think of me, Mr. Jane?" asked the sheriff curiously.
"Odds are, you're guilty. But as I said, I really don't give a damn."
McAllister's eyes fairly sparkled. "Hmph."
"He checks out," Haffner rushed to say, "and he's right about his success rate. He's consulted on about six trials in the last six months, and it's gone favorably for his clients every time. What's even more amazing, he doesn't have need for expensive mock trials or predictive computer programs to pick the winning jurors. He does it all off the top of his head. People are starting to call him the Jury Master."
Haffner's attitude toward his client was oddly deferential—usually it was the other way around because a defendant depended so much on his attorney, let him take the lead.
"Is that so?" said McAllister. "Well I hope his good run doesn't run out on me." There was an unmistakable warning there, and the humor had left the sheriff's eyes.
"You're not really psychic," scoffed Partridge, after taking a sip of his coffee. "You're just good at reading people, like an FBI profiler or something."
"A nonbeliever, eh?" said Jane gamely. "You need some proof?"
Partridge laughed without humor. "Sure. But you'd better make it quick. It's almost showtime."
Jane stood and walked to stand before the gangly, dark-haired man, immediately assessing him as being a whiny, cynical know-it-all. The exact opposite of the stunning Miss Lisbon, came the wayward thought.
"I know what you're thinking," Jane said, making his voice go low and mysterious, like he did on his show when he pretended to read the minds of his audience members.
"Oh, really?" Partridge said, in unison with Jane.
And then Jane proceeded to say the exact same words Partridge uttered at the exact same time he spoke them. At least ten sentences worth.
"Ok, stop, stop!" exclaimed Partridge (and Jane).
Jane stopped, putting the man out of his misery.
McAllister chuckled, as did Haffner, and Partridge went back to his corner to sulk in annoyance.
"Well, I'm convinced," said the sheriff.
"Just a cheap party trick," said Partridge (and Jane also, for good measure, and because it gave him pleasure to tweak the irksome twit a little more).
Haffner checked his watch just as the officer knocked on the holding room door.
"Did you get what you needed?" Haffner asked Jane.
Jane nodded, looking back at the sheriff. "More than enough."
"Time to go," said the officer through the door. Haffner opened it, and the officer came in to escort the defendant into the courtroom.
Jane took up the rear, his mind working furiously. Sheriff McAllister had all the characteristics of a psychopath, and it seemed to Jane that he was more than capable of committing murder. Even if he wasn't Red John, he had no doubt the man was guilty of the crimes he was accused of today.
As they entered the courtroom, and the defendant and his two attorneys were ensconced at the defense table, Jane caught Teresa Lisbon. Beside her was a lovely young redhead, another attorney for the prosecution. He caught Lisbon's eye and she frowned at him, and he realized she had figured out who he was. He gave her a wink for good measure, delighting at her immediate blush, and took his seat in the gallery directly behind the rest of his team.
Judge Louisa Marks came in and everyone rose, then sat again at the sound of her gavel. Then, one by one, the potential jurors were called in by name, taking their chairs in preparation for the attorneys' voir dire questions. Jane's eyes were drawn to the back of Teresa Lisbon's head, noting how her dark hair hung in soft waves to her shoulders. Then he recalled the dark, blood-matted hair of Lorelei Martins, Red John's victim in Malibu, and his heart clenched painfully.
As Teresa Lisbon stood at the podium to question the first juror, Patrick Jane suddenly knew what he had to do.
A/N: Thanks for reading this first chapter! I would love to hear your thoughts so far.