AN: Thanks so much for all of your support, everyone! Hopefully, I can still reply to everyone's reviews, but I'm insanely busy right now, what with the end of the school year starting to wrap up, and, you know, being in the middle of another story with Donna. I promise to try, though!
A big thank you and kudos to Charming for giving me a wonderful idea that I'm running with.
The Art of Sanctuary
Chapter Two
It was early in the work day when the call came in from the AG's office. The morning still had a sort of clear, pure feeling to it, complete with gorgeous sunshine and promising temperature. It was the sort of atmosphere that made one feel lighthearted and optimistic.
Of course, it wound up being total nonsense. Just another reason why she shouldn't trust anything.
Jane was already in her office when she arrived, the shadows under his eyes looking almost bruised. He had gone almost a full week without sleeping, finally giving in just a few days ago. It was obvious now that he still wasn't sleeping, though what he did with the dark hours of the night, she wasn't entirely sure.
He'd at least shaved, attempted to tame his hair. The gray pinstriped suit looked fresh, crisp, so she had a feeling he was at least going back to his hotel room for a few hours. The CBI didn't have the nicest locker room facilities in the world, and not even Patrick Jane could look totally put-together after using them.
There was a cup of gourmet coffee sitting on her desk, the paper wrapper telling her that he had gotten it from the cart on the rooftop.
"Morning, Lisbon," he said in his normal cheerful tone. "Lovely day, isn't it?"
"Hi," she replied, shrugging out of her blazer as a concession to the weather. She took an experimental sip of her coffee, though she knew there was no reason to be cautious. Jane sometimes seemed to know her tastes better than she did. "Thanks," she added, raising her cup towards him in salute.
"You're very welcome," he told her.
She sat at her desk, fired up her computer, and attempted to get a few housekeeping items taken care of. The past few days, she had been rather distracted, what with the implicit threat towards her life and the constant, burdening knowledge that it was only a matter of time before Red John took another victim.
It really was no wonder that she was a little behind on paperwork. At least their new press secretary wasn't as persistently annoying as Brenda had been. She let herself smile just a touch in remembrance. All of this was just proof that sometimes people got what they deserved. And when they did, you couldn't help but cheer for karma.
However, she was barely through her first set of duplicate forms when the phone rang. Calls to her desk usually meant new crimes, and she sighed, feeling her shoulders set in the way they always did before a new case.
The woman on the other end, Carla Somebody from the AG's office, told her without preemption that they had just gotten a call from Malibu PD, from a very green officer, who was quite convinced they had another Red John murder on their hands.
After she hung up, she allowed herself perhaps five seconds of sheer dread. Malibu. Of all of the places she didn't want to have a Red John murder, the small costal city was definitely near the top of the list. In fact, the only places above it were the apartments of her team members.
Red John was bad enough, but dragging Jane back to where his worst nightmares had happened was just icing on the proverbial cake of torture.
When she raised her eyes, he was looking at her, and she recognized the expression. "Is it him?" he asked, even though he already knew.
She nodded. "The Malibu police called."
His posture changed slightly, became sharper. "Malibu." For just a moment, she tried to figure out what he was thinking, but realized it was going to be an entirely futile effort on her behalf.
He stood, his half-empty teacup rattling in its saucer as he deposited it on the table beside her couch. "It's a long drive," he noted flatly. "We'd better get going."
A half hour later, the team was loaded up in their customary vehicles, ready to make the nearly eight hour trip. She had requested that everyone come this time, which had led to Grace carting several expensive-looking pieces of electronic equipment down to the parking lot.
For several various reasons, she had decided that she would much rather have her team together for this. Given the distance, it would probably be easier to investigate if they had all hands on deck.
And, she admitted to herself as they turned onto the street that ran parallel to the CBI, it made her feel better if they were all together. Strength in numbers wasn't just a saying, and given Red John's usual M.O. of attacking a victim when they were alone, it simply made sense.
Jane had been entirely silent since he walked out of her office, and even now, leaning slightly into the car door, his posture screamed to be left alone.
So she kept to herself. It wasn't like she didn't have enough to think about.
Sean Barlow had creepily and accurately announced her feelings towards Jane not a week ago, and she was still reeling from the possible implications. Yes, she was fairly certain that Jane knew anyway, but it was most definitely not how she imagined him hearing the words for the first time.
And, while she was thinking of words, it did disturb her a touch that Lorelei Martins had said nearly the same thing to Jane, all those months ago, as she covertly listened in to their interview.
You're a little bit in love with her.
A little in love with him, eh?
There was a very good chance that it was a simple coincidence - it wasn't an unusual phrase or combination of words, after all. It was just that, when they were dealing with Red John, there was very little that was ever coincidence.
However, she figured that was almost a silly thing to be worrying about. Almost. The point here was that Jane now officially knew how she felt. She hadn't bothered denying it, not wanting to draw any more attention to her feelings, hoping Barlow would just let it go. And then Jane had jumped in, trying to deflect the attention away from her.
Her knight in shining armor, and all of that.
God, could that have been any more awkward? She doubted it.
And then, to top the day off, she'd attempted to bring the topic up again, only to have Jane turn it into another direction.
He really, really didn't want to talk about their relationship. He'd made that beyond clear, both a few days ago and when she had summoned the courage to ask him about his words in Las Vegas, now almost a year ago.
There were a few reasons she could think of for that - one, maybe he knew that he felt different than she did and was trying to spare her the pain. Two, and this was what she was hoping for, he was simply afraid of what admitting feelings would mean, what unintended consequences it would have.
For there was no doubt that there would be consequences.
His comment that she was his happy memory had stuck with her, however, gone straight to her heart. She had never put it in those terms before, but she supposed the opposite was true as well. When she looked back at the past nine years of her life, it was the moments with Jane that stuck out. Nearly every wonderful or amazing thing that had happened either featured him or had him in the background.
She was forty now. Almost a quarter of her life had been devoted to Patrick Jane and his cause. It was a little bit of a strange thought.
They all stopped for lunch around the halfway point of their journey, mostly at Rigsby's insistence. Apparently, the poor man was dying of starvation. She mainly thought Grace and Cho had just gotten tired of listening to him complain or eat his way through all of their snacks.
Jane did speak a little during their meal, a few teasing comments directed at Grace, a mention that Rigsby had ordered enough side dishes to feed an entire family in Africa for week. He sat on her left side, next to the window, and though the chairs were wedged together closely, made no attempt to move them.
She didn't know if it was his way of apologizing for his silence or if he simply just wanted to be near her, and she really didn't care either way.
He offered to drive the rest of the way, and while that was normally something she wanted to avoid, eight hours really was a long time behind the wheel, and if driving made him feel better, so be it.
With something resembling his usual cheeky grin, he set the cruise about three miles an hour over what she would have done, just because he knew it would annoy her.
"I wonder if the timing of this murder will eliminate anyone from your suspect list," she mused once, staring out the window at the scenery.
"It's a possibility," he allowed, "though I think Red John probably picked a time when all seven suspects were still viable. He doesn't want to give it away that soon. I mean, I'll certainly check, but I wouldn't be surprised if this murder got us no closer to the truth."
She turned her eyes back to him, noting his grip on the wheel was rather tight.
"I'm trying to guess who it is," he told her eventually. "Who the victim is. Someone I know, obviously, someone connected to me." His expression was very thoughtful. "I don't have family in Malibu, and really, we didn't have a great deal of friends."
"No?" she asked. "Minor celebrity that you were, I figured people would be lining up to be your best friend."
He smiled, and there was an edge to it. "True enough, but the whole pretending to be a psychic thing didn't exactly lend itself to many deep friendships. It's hard to be close to someone you constantly have to lie to. My wife definitely had more real friends than I did, but I didn't really have much to do with them."
She chewed that information over for a while. He was right, obviously, and it made her even more sad to think of what he had lost. There wasn't anyone else for him - just his wife and daughter. They had quite literally been his whole world, taken away in one fell swoop.
The false friends he had mentioned had probably run as fast as they could in the other direction. Jane had been totally alone, at least until he walked into the CBI offices and walked out with what would become his surrogate family.
She took another moment to be grateful that she was the agent in charge of the Red John case. Jane had needed someone, and her compassionate nature made her take him on. Imagine if it had been Bosco, or one of the other countless people in the building.
No, Jane had needed her. She liked to think that sometimes he still did.
As they got closer to Malibu, their conversation faded out, the lines on Jane's face becoming a little more set. Although this place surely held a great deal of good memories for him, they were all overshadowed by the dark knowledge of what had happened here.
"What's the address?" he asked as they entered the city limits.
She checked her phone before rattling it off.
"I think I know where that is, at least generally." His eyes never left the road in front of him. "Not a bad neighborhood, by any means."
There was a tiny frown in between his brows, and she knew he was frantically trying to make the connection, to figure out who their victim was. Personally, she was almost terrified to know.
After a certain amount of wrong turns, they had the flashing lights of police vehicles to lead them to their destination.
Jane hadn't been mistaken - the neighborhood was nice. All newer houses, well maintained lawns up and down the quiet street. It was the sort of place that she could've seen herself living, kids running around in the backyard.
But, of course, that life path hadn't presented itself.
Jane was the first out of the vehicle, moving very deliberately. She kept one eye on him as she talked to the officers on scene.
"Do we have an ID?" she asked almost immediately.
"Mary Iverson," the detective read from his notes. "Early fifties, just retired. She was a kindergarten teacher at one of the local elementary schools in town for decades."
Lisbon got an eerie feeling.
Nodding her thanks, she ducked under the yellow crime tape and followed the trail of activity to the bedroom at the end of the hall.
A plastic sheet covered the body, the blood evident even from where she stood. On the wall behind the queen-sized bed, the expected smiling face leered at them.
Jane was standing slightly off to the side, hands shoved in his pockets.
When the room was empty, save the two of them, he turned to look at her fully.
"She was Charlotte's kindergarten teacher," he whispered, although she had already come to that unhappy conclusion.
"Any idea why Red John picked her?" she asked quietly.
Jane glanced over the room with unseeing eyes. "She was...one of the first people that really made me feel like I was doing a good job as a parent."
Lisbon furrowed her brow. "How's that?"
"When you have a child," he started, and she suddenly knew he was a decade away, "you really have no idea what you're doing. You try all of these different things, the best things you can think of, but you're still terrified that you've done everything wrong and you've wrecked your child's future." His lips quirked slightly.
"When we first met Mary, I think it was some back-to-school night. We introduced Charlotte to her, and Mary told us that it was very obvious she came from a loving home with caring parents." He paused. "She made it sound like it was the most important thing in the world, the best thing she could possibly wish for. Not that Charlotte knew the alphabet or could write her name, but just that she was loved unconditionally."
There was a moment where Lisbon would have considered reaching for his hand or even giving him a hug, but his posture changed again, and she stayed where she was.
"It's a gratifying thing, hearing from a total stranger that you're doing the best for you child, especially after the upbringing I had. We were about as far from the ideal as you could be, trust me, and I guess I was just always worried that I wasn't going to be capable of doing any better." His eyes were almost glossy, and she wasn't sure he even remembered that she was in the room. Her heart hurt.
The arrival of Cho and Rigsby snapped him out of his reverie, and he very simply told the other two men that this was definitely Red John. Clearly, he meant to keep his connection with the victim to himself.
Like every Red John crime scene, there wasn't much to see. There were no phone numbers written on the wall this time, nothing other than what they expected to find.
The Malibu PD had kindly set up a headquarters of a sort for them in their main station. Lisbon suspected the unusual amount of cooperation was because most of them still remembered the Jane murders, and they wanted nothing to do with the reemergence of the man who had done it.
There wasn't much daylight left by the time they had unloaded their gear, and with the long journey, she instructed the team to call it a night.
The hotel was about a carbon copy of most places they stayed in on the road. Small, reasonably clean, in need of updating. She perused the delivery menus on the nightstand, wondering if Jane could recommend anything to her.
And speaking of Jane...
From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blonde curls pass by the window. Her heart gave a funny beat before she realized he wasn't stopping at her door. A moment or two later, she heard the engine of the Chevy start. Peering through the streaked glass, she saw it head out of the parking lot and turn south.
Though it worried her, she decided to leave him on his own, even though her fingers were unconsciously bringing up his contact information on her phone already.
He would be fine, she reassured herself. It wasn't like he was in the middle of a strange city.
After ordering from some Italian place, which she was sure would have been delicious under normal circumstances, she took to pacing up and down the faded carpet, practically wringing her hands.
The truth was, she was very definitely worried about him. Red John was always bad, but being here was worse.
And then, like a bolt of lighting, she knew where he was.
The yellow pages gave her the name of a cab company. Fifteen minutes later, she was climbing in, wondering why she felt so compelled to go to Jane tonight.
The beach house was dark, but that was expected. The Chevy was parked in the driveway, and she breathed a sigh of relief for just a moment. She had no idea how he was going to react to her presence. The last time she had been here, it had been to pull him out of his fugue state. The place hadn't improved at all since then.
She climbed the steps silently, but the front door was locked. Frowning again, she started to make her way around the side of the house, following the wooden planks that wound down to the beach.
Just as she was going to attempt to slide the glass kitchen door open, she saw him.
He was lying on the beach, well-up from the water, head pillowed on his arms. In the moonlight, she could see his shoes and jacket tossed carelessly beside him.
Slowly, she picked a path to where he was, then carefully sat beside him, legs stretched out in front of her.
"Good evening, Lisbon," he said quietly. "I didn't think you'd come out here."
His tone was unreadable. "Do you want me to leave?" she asked softly.
He shook his head. "No. Stay."
She had no idea how long they were silent, just watching the waves crash ahead of them. "Is it awful, being back here?" she asked abruptly, but just above a whisper.
Unexpectedly, he shifted, resting his head on her thigh. Without thinking about it, she gently stroked his curls, the smoothness of the strands at odds with the coarse sand that clung to them.
"It's not so bad right now," he murmured. He curled closer, one arm going around her waist.
They were quiet again, words seemingly too much for now. She watched high tide come and go, still utterly unwilling to move. Once, she looked down and found that his eyes were closed.
It was an unexpected place to have such a moment, and yet, that was precisely what had happened.
Eventually, he stood, pulling her up along side him. He kept her hand as they walked back to the car, pausing to gather his discarded shoes and coat, then driving back to the city itself.
No one spoke until they had reached the door of her hotel room. "Sleep well," he murmured, offering her a warm smile, full of undertones and affection.
"You, too," she replied, fingers curling around the metal doorknob.
Like he had done a few days ago, he leaned in and softly kissed her cheek. He was closer to her lips this time, something she was quite sure was intentional, but still far enough away to be able to claim innocence.
And then he was gone, throwing her one last indecipherable look over his shoulder before he disappeared into his own room.
She showered, then lay on her lumpy mattress, feeling decidedly bereft. She missed the sand under her toes, and Jane's warmth draped across her.
Closing her eyes determinedly, she sought to remember exactly how that felt. Sighing, she rolled to her side and wrapped her arms around herself.
A poor substitute for what she really wanted if she'd ever known one, but some things couldn't be helped.
At least not yet.
