Tag to Red Hair and Silver Tape (S1E2), which is still my favourite episode to date. I love that The Mentalist subverts the usual 'Knight in Shining Armour saves Damsel in Distress' into 'Lady-Knight in Shining SUV saves Gentleman in Jeopardy'. This episode was the best example of this, which is probably one of the reasons I love it so much.
This gives Lisbon's POV during the critical stand-off scene near the end, since we mainly saw Jane's side of it and I've always wondered what it was like for Lisbon to be on the other end of that phone call. It starts from the point where she left the motel room.
To The Rescue
'Too much butter?!' Lisbon thought incredulously to herself as she strode to her car. 'That whole charade was based on a chef using too much butter! Now I'm the one who has to go and soothe the ruffled feathers of that incompetent sheriff! Why me? Really, what did I do to deserve this?' She wondered for the umpteenth time how cleaning up Jane's messes had become a principal part of her job description.
Just as she was about to climb into her car, Lisbon's phone, predictably, began to ring.
She answered it with a "Hey."
"Boss," Cho said.
"Yeah, I'll be right there."
She climbed into her car as she listened to Cho give a brief synopsis of what had just happened. She didn't bother to interrupt him to tell him that she'd already seen the whole debacle. Cho could always be relied upon to give the shortest version of any story, particularly when he was relaying bad news to his boss (something he'd had a fair bit of practise doing). When he started to give her directions, though, she interrupted with a terse, "Nah, I know where it is," and hung up.
She started her car and drove out of the motel parking lot and onto the main road. Now that she was alone, she was prepared to admit that what had happened was a tiny little bit funny. Rigsby to the rescue. Oh, dear. She allowed a little grin at the recollection. Granted the sheriff had just been trying to help, but he was one of those irritating characters that it's hard to really feel sorry for. The only thing Lisbon was actually sorry about was that she was going to have to be nice to the guy now. Schmoozing was her least favourite part of her job. She preferred to bark commands than to sweet-talk. Curbing her sarcastic tongue in the interests of political expediency was just plain hard work.
Her phone started to ring again. She glanced at it before answering. Jane. So much for her little peaceful interlude. He was probably wanting her to turn around and go back and fetch him. Well, too bad, he'd just have to wait. At least there was never any need to curb her tongue with him. She answered the phone, all ready to give him an unedited piece of her mind, when she heard him say, "Stop. Think. Do not move. Whatever you do, do not move." The phone was definitely on speaker-phone, as his voice had that slightly distant, disembodied quality about it. He wasn't talking to her.
Lisbon heart gave a strange little leap of fear, and she slammed her foot down on the brake pedal, thankful that the roads in this peaceful little backwater were so quiet and empty. In one smooth movement, she switched her phone onto speaker, dropped it onto the seat beside her, and spun her car in a U-turn back the way she had just come. The conversation in the motel drifted through to her.
"What?" A man's voice, but not loud enough for her to identify.
"Do not move." Jane was sounding a bit panicked. Lisbon pressed her foot flat on the gas.
"Hey, no! Stop! Put that down! Stop!" Lisbon knew that voice – the chef's wife. Dammit, Jane had been right after all – no doubt the wife's involvement was the theory he had been trying to tell her before she had cut him off. The woman sounded distinctly crazy. There were clunking noises which Lisbon couldn't quite identify, but it seemed that Jane was trying to get away.
Damn, damn, damn. How far away was she? She'd only been driving for about a minute before Jane called. He'd be all right for a minute, wouldn't he? He was Jane – he'd keep them talking till she got there. No need to lose her cool. She'd definitely be on time. Lisbon could feel her hands starting to shake slightly as she took a corner much too fast. Too much adrenaline.
She knew she should call Cho and request backup, but at the speed she was driving she dared not take her eyes off the road or her hands off the steering wheel. Besides, she didn't want to break contact with Jane. She needed to know he was okay; hear his voice. It suddenly felt as though it had been a lifetime since she'd seen him, rather than just a couple of minutes. Why had she left him alone? Her number one rule was to never leave Jane alone. Nothing good ever came of it.
"What are you doing here?" She recognised the chef's voice this time.
"Think. Think." 'Come on, Jane, stop saying that!' she thought, catching some of his panic, 'You're Patrick Jane: improvise, dammit!'
"What are you doing here?"
"Does it matter? I'm here. This place is surrounded by police and CBI agents." Yes, that was more like it! She wished it was true, but knew that even if she called for backup now, there was no way they could get there quickly enough to help her. The situation was too precarious; she was going to have to get in there as fast as possible and just do her best. Her stomach clenched slightly. If anything happened to Jane, she'd never forgive herself.
"Oh, no." The chef seemed to be the gullible type. Unfortunately, his wife was not. Lisbon was taking a rather violent dislike to her.
"He's lying. They would be up here arresting us by now if they were here." 'Yeah, lady,' she thought fiercely, 'give me about twenty seconds...'
"SWAT. They're waiting on SWAT. There's no way out of this." Thank heavens his brain seemed to have started working again. Though backing them into a corner wasn't necessarily the best policy.
"There's nobody. Let's just kill them and get out of here." 'No, no, no, no!' her thoughts were becoming almost incoherent with horror. 'Keep them talking, Jane! I'm nearly there.'
"Woah, listen to me. You can walk away from all of this. No disrespect, but you're both clinically insane. You're not going to go to prison; you'll go to a hospital for a couple of years and then you can walk away."
Lisbon pulled her car to an abrupt stop in front of the motel and didn't even bother to turn the engine off before she tumbled out the door, pulled out her gun and ran over to the motel room door. She could hear the yelling still going on inside. Without hesitating, she burst through the door, gun first.
Time slowed right down and everything suddenly seemed to be happening in slow motion, as though she was swimming underwater. She took in the scene, assessed the danger, focused on Malcolm bearing down on her with his knife poised to strike, took aim and shot twice, just as though she was at the shooting range. She didn't even notice Jane standing directly behind Malcolm or the way he ducked instinctively when she fired. He was not a threat so he didn't enter into her current calculations. Malcolm's wife, however, did. Lisbon's dance with death continued as she pivoted to deal with the next imminent threat to her life. One warning, one deadly shot, a second body on the floor, sudden silence.
It was as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. Jane and Lisbon stood, shocked and disoriented like the stunned survivors of some major disaster.
Ten seconds had passed. It felt like a lifetime.
Lisbon couldn't bring herself to do her standard check to make sure the suspects were dead and to secure their weapons. Instead she holstered her gun and focused on the woman who lay tied up on the floor. Here was a problem she could solve, so she crouched down beside her, murmuring comfortingly, and removed the duct tape from the woman's mouth and hands.
Only when she had done that, did she dare to look at Jane, her eyes still wide with shock. He was just as overwhelmed as she was, and dropped his gaze almost immediately, shaking his head.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Air and sound started to filter back into the world. Lisbon skirted Malcolm's body and went to fetch her phone so that she could start dealing with the aftermath. She found a certain comfort in her routines and procedures. They created distance between her and the death that she had created on the motel room floor. They were her justification.
Jane, with fewer resources to fall back on, escaped outside. He offered no comfort to either the kidnapped woman or Lisbon. His way of coping and creating space was to literally walk away. He didn't watch Lisbon as she competently took charge of the scene. He went and stood out of the way and looked up at the clouds scudding across the sky and wondered why he hadn't wanted to die. Why, in that moment when death had loomed, had he wanted to live with every fibre of his being? He couldn't make sense of it, but, despite everything, he was glad that he was still standing here, gazing at the sky, alive.
'I must thank Lisbon some day,' he thought vaguely.
0000
Later that day, as they were leaving Melanie's funeral, Jane finally recovered his equilibrium enough to notice that Lisbon was perhaps not coping quite as well as she appeared to be. In moments like these he realised with great clarity why Lisbon was so passionate about the rules that bound her profession. Her job handed her such frightening power over the lives of others that she was even expected to kill when the circumstances called for it. What a terrible burden. Lisbon coped by leaving the bulk of that burden on the people who created the rules in the first place – as long as she stayed within the boundaries they set, the responsibility for the terrible consequences was not truly hers. It was the only way she could do what she did and not break.
Jane knew that, rules or no rules, Lisbon was deeply upset by what she had had to do that day. He might not have the words yet to thank her, but he could end the shocked state of isolation into which they had both retreated. He reached out and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, reminding her that he was still alive because of her. Lisbon didn't acknowledge the gesture, but Jane saw a subtle change in her body language, as though she had been holding her breath all this time, and had finally released it.
He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and then let go. This time when Lisbon looked over at him, he didn't drop his gaze. Taking in his expression, she received the silent message he was trying to send her.
'You are not alone.'