Jane woke to the quiet tapping sounds of Lisbon working on her computer. Night had fallen outside and the soft glow of her desk lamp made the office seem smoky, ethereal. Or was it just his foggy brain, the slow crawl to consciousness from such a deep sleep? Up from the depths came a small sliver of hope that he'd been having an extended, nightmarish dream, but that couldn't be because he had fallen asleep in Lisbon's office. He hadn't slept on Lisbon's couch since before Kristina Frye. That reality quickly slapped him back to the real world.
He blinked his eyes awake. "What day is it?"
The typing stopped. "It's still Tuesday. Welcome back."
Jane shifted his legs off the couch and pushed himself up to sit. He tried straightening his crumpled suit jacket but soon gave up and scrubbed his hand through his hair and yawned.
Lisbon came around her desk and sat next to him.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"It's just after 5:00. You realize that you passed out."
Jane frowned. He didn't really remember that. "I remember you told me to sit down and shut up."
"And for once you actually listened."
"Did you call me Jesus?"
Lisbon smiled and shook her head.
Jane rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. "Any news?"
"Patricia gave up some DNA."
Jane turned to her, bringing her into focus. "Really?"
"Yes."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"And she's still here?"
"Yes. She's actually trying to make herself useful."
"How?" Jane asked with obvious suspicion.
"She's reading missing person reports."
"That's awful nice of her," he said.
"Look," Lisbon said, "You are going to have to trust me here. You are in no condition to… handle this."
Jane scowled. "I can handle this."
"You flipped out because she was sitting on your couch!" Lisbon said.
Jane exhaled heavily. Yeah. That wasn't handled well.
"So are you not taking sleeping pills anymore?" Lisbon asked.
Jane shifted, uncomfortable with where he knew she was going. "I am. They're not working. I'm fine, Lisbon. This was helpful." He waved a hand at the couch.
"So you got …three hours of sleep in how many days exactly?" she asked.
Impatient, Jane stood and walked over to the desk. "So how long until the lab results are back?"
This time Lisbon exhaled deeply. "Jane, Patricia has already told me twice she's not going away. You're going to have to deal with her. And, frankly, the whole team is already convinced she's your mother. Bertram is too."
"Bertram?"
"Yeah, he came to see why we weren't progressing on Bakersfield and he met her. He said Patricia was like a charming and beautiful version of you."
Jane scoffed. "Bertram's an idiot. He could be charmed by a snake. And even if she is my mother, I don't have to deal with her because I get to choose who is in my life."
He saw a flicker of sadness pass across her face and when she said, "And who exactly have you chosen to be in your life?" he knew why. He knew Lisbon worried about him, that she couldn't help her own mothering instincts, that deep down he reminded her of her father, a man who never recovered from his loss, a man who chose the course of slow self-destruction instead of finding happiness again. And he hated that he caused her pain of any sort, but it was easily mitigated by the fact that anyone who did get close to him suffered far worse pain than a passing sadness over his inability to heal and move on with his life. "I have everyone who needs to be there," he said. "I don't need to explain that to you."
"No, you don't," Lisbon said, standing up. "I do understand. I get it. The whole madman in the attic thing," she said waving her hand at the ceiling. "I get it. But I've been thinking this through, Jane, and I agree that we cannot trust Patricia's motives here just yet. The timing is incredibly suspicious. But at the same time, say it is all coincidental. Say she only found you because her first month back in the States after 20 odd years away she happened to see you on TV. Say she has the best intentions in trying to reach out to you, that it's all on the up and up. And then say Red John found out that your mother was back in your life. What do you think he would do?" she asked, not as a question but as a fact.
Jane stared at her unable to formulate an answer. His mind reeled at the implications of this woman's presence, that even her claim to be his mother could get her killed. But then he was yanked back by the opposing thought that if she wasn't killed by Red John, then at least they would know she must be working for him.
"It's impossible," Lisbon said. "I've gone round and round and the only thing I can figure out to do at this point is put her in protective custody."
"You've got to be kidding me," Jane started.
"I think she would do it willingly, considering what she has told me."
"If she's working for Red John, if she's as good as I think she is at manipulating people, she could cause havoc for the CBI," Jane sputtered. "She's already got Bertram wrapped around her finger!"
"Well, she's got Van Pelt and Cho too. But the fact is that in protective custody we'd have complete control over her. And we'd know if she's in communication with Red John, or someone else. Van Pelt says she's gotten daily calls from someone at a medical research facility in San Francisco. We're still working on figuring out who that is."
He saw the truth in what she said. "And you've already decided, haven't you?"
"Yes." She went to her desk and sat down. "I'm just figuring how to present it to her."
He shook his head. "I need a cup a tea." He turned for the door and when he grabbed the doorknob, he looked over his shoulder at her. "Cho?" he asked. "Really?"
"They read the same books," Lisbon said and shrugged, her hands already tapping on the keyboard.
"And not Rigsby?"
"Rigsby's been in Bakersfield all afternoon conducting interviews."
Jane stepped into the bullpen shaking his head. There were times, not often, when he longed for a far less gullible world. He cautiously looked over to the couch and saw it empty. Van Pelt and Cho were at their desks staring deeply into their computer screens. He scanned the room and did not see Patricia and then he noticed the victim boards were gone. He went over to Cho.
"Hey," Cho said, his eyes barely flickering off the screen.
"Cho," Jane said, scanning the room more closely. "Where are the victim boards?"
"Lisbon had everything taken to interrogation room #1 before she brought Patricia up here. We're running the investigation out of there and locking up our computers when we're not here."
A surge of pride for Lisbon washed over Jane. "Well, I'm glad at least one person on the team hasn't been charmed out their wits," he said.
"Anyone who knows and loves Tolstoy the way she does cannot be all bad," is all Cho gave up.
"Ah, Cho, I thought you were more a Jane Austen fan," Jane said. "Where is this literary effete anyway?" he asked.
"Dude," Cho said taking his eyes off his screen and staring directly at Jane, "you need to back off."
Jane raised his hands up in mock surrender. He turned and made his way to the kitchen for his tea. And that's where he found her, camped out at one of the tables with case files spread out before her. Her back was to him and he stopped in the doorway. He considered retreating. Going out for tea seemed far more pleasant than having another encounter where his systems could go ballistic with no notice whatsoever. Then she noticed him standing there and he was committed to following through with his original plan.
"Oh," she said, as he made a beeline for the stove and kettle. "Hi."
He simply raised his eyebrows without looking at her and turned to fill the kettle under the tap.
"I'm really sorry about the couch," she said to his back. "I didn't know."
He went to set the kettle on the stove and turn the burner on. Then he went to find his tea cup. It wasn't in the drain board where he had last left it, so he searched the cupboards but it was gone. He turned to scan the counters and tables and instantly saw his blue tea cup sitting right in front of her, a spent tea bag hanging out on the saucer below it.
He closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath in. He was not going to flip out. He let the breath release as slowly as he had taken it in. He was not going to flip out.
"Are you all right, Patrick?" she asked.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Don't call me that."
"What?" she asked.
"Don't call me that. Nobody calls me that here."
"Oh."
"That's my teacup. Nobody but me uses that teacup." His chest was tightening, his breath was getting shallow. He was not going to flip out.
Patricia looked down at the teacup and then back up at him. "Oh. I'm sorry…I."
"Yeah, you didn't know," Jane said and grabbed a coffee mug out of the cupboard. He squinted at the message: Only 4 days till Friday.
"No, I didn't," she said and he heard an edge in her voice that was not apologetic at all.
He found the teabags and began tearing one open.
"Patrick," she said, and he turned and frowned at her. "I'm sorry, I am not going to call you Jane. I just can't do that. I just… I just want to talk with you…I want…"
"I'm sorry," Patrick shot back, "but what you want doesn't matter to me in the least." His heart was thrumming now and he couldn't stop it. "You can't just show up here and insert yourself into my life and expect me to do whatever the hell you want me to. Even if you are my mother—and apparently everyone here and their boss thinks you are—I don't really care if you are or not." As he was talking, as he saw the effect his words were having on Patricia, Jane was aware that the force behind the words was coming from a place of origin he had no knowledge of. They spewed out with an anger he never knew he had. To his knowledge he had never felt anything but disdain for his mother.
Patricia opened her mouth to say something but stopped. She studied him instead. He knew she was reading him but he couldn't stop his systems from firing against his will. The kettle's shrill whistle broke the silence and he turned away to drag the kettle off the burner.
He heard her quietly say, "You really don't remember me, do you?" And she said it like Lisbon earlier, not as a question but as a fact. He put the teabag in the coffee mug and poured the hot water over it. His chest constricted and for just an instant he couldn't breathe. He swallowed and closed his eyes, focusing on loosening his chest, releasing the tension that held his body in its grip. He slowly filled his lungs with air and then released it quietly.
"You realize how odd that is," she said in the same quiet voice. "It is very disturbing to me that you can't remember, and not because of me. I expected your anger and bitterness. I deserve it. We had been very close, Patrick, and I know how I felt at the loss of you. I can only imagine how much worse it was for you, being so young and not having any understanding or comfort. I'm sure your father's anger at me kept him from comforting you.'
Jane squeezed his eyes tight. "I don't believe you. You're acting like I already believe you're my mother. I don't."
"It's disturbing to me," she continued, "because of what it says about you. It suggests that something … something happened to cause you to lose your memory. And it makes me very concerned for you."
"I don't want your concern," Jane said with a scorn that rose quickly up at her last statement. "I don't want you here," he said, turning and looking at her. "If you are my mother, if the lab comes back saying that, I still don't want you here. I never yearned for my mother or her concern, and I've got enough going on right now. I don't want or need this. So if you are truly concerned about me, if you want to prove that concern to me, you'll tell Lisbon that the best thing you could do right now is leave."
"Jane?" Lisbon walked briskly into the kitchen. Jane looked at her and quickly looked away as she assessed the situation. "Is everything okay here?" she asked.
Jane looked at Patricia who smiled at Lisbon and said, "Yes. Everything's okay."
Lisbon said, "Jane? I'm sorry to tell you this here," she said flicking her hand quickly, "but we don't have much time."
Jane heard the urgency in her voice. "What happened?"
"There's been another Red John murder."
"What? No. That's not…" he couldn't comprehend.
"In Santa Clarita. A woman and child. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to tell you like this, but you know how crazy this is."
"It's only Tuesday. That's insane," he said.
"Jane, it's different this time. It's not a mother and child."
"What do you mean?"
"I want you to sit down first," Lisbon said steadily.
Dread swept over him, dread wrapped around him like a black cloak that wanted to strangle him. Lisbon came over to him. "Just tell me," he said.
"They've IDed the body of the woman," Lisbon said. "It's Lorelei Martins. A county sheriff recognized her from the APB we had out on her."
Jane closed his eyes. God, no.
"Jane?" Lisbon said, taking his arm. He opened his eyes and looked at her. She guided him over to Patricia's table, directing him to sit. He saw the case files on the table. "Jane, Jane, look at me," Lisbon said, turning his face back to her. "You have to listen to me, Jane. You know how crazy this is, the escalation, the message. Jane!" Lisbon took his face and held it so he had to look at her. "Jane, you have to listen to me. You have to trust me. I'm putting both you and Patricia in protective custody."
