Jane shook Lisbon awake early the next morning. "Lisbon, I figured it out."

"Already?" she slurred sleepily.

"Yes."

"Great," she mumbled, closing her eyes and turning over. "Tell Cho to arrest him."

"Arrest who?"

"The killer," she said, her voice muffled by the pillow.

"No, I'm not talking about the killer," Jane said impatiently. "I'm talking about the missing money."

Lisbon grunted into her pillow.

"You were right—why would someone take only some of the money, instead of all of it? It doesn't make sense. So then I thought of it—the killer hit Waller with the horse, and then started to grab the money. But he heard Jerome Keller coming down the hall with his cleaning cart and got spooked, so he ran before he could grab all the money. Brilliant, right?"

He leaned over to peer at Lisbon's face. "Lisbon?" She turned her face deeper into the pillow and reached back blindly with one arm to push him away from her.

"I'll make coffee," he decided.

Xxx

Once Lisbon was properly caffeinated, she had to admit Jane's theory was a plausible one. Though she agreed contacting Keller again to see if he might have heard something just before he found the body was probably worthwhile, she reminded him that they still had no evidence that the killer knew of the safe's existence. Jane dismissed this, convinced he would ultimately find the evidence he needed to prove he was right.

When they got to the office, Lisbon sipped her second cup of coffee and addressed Rigsby. "Anything turn up with the security footage?"

Jane took her coffee away.

"Hey!" she protested, distracted from Rigsby's response. "I was drinking that."

"You just finished your last cup twenty minutes ago," Jane said, exasperated.

Lisbon scowled. "What's your point?"

"You shouldn't drink so much coffee. It's not good for you."

Lisbon glared at him. "Give me my coffee back."

"No."

She made a grab for it, but he evaded her. He took it over to the corner and dumped it in the potted plant. "From now on, I'm limiting you to one cup a day."

"You're limiting me?" Lisbon said dangerously.

Jane took note of the glint in her eye and decided discretion was the better part of valor. "Very well," he said hastily. "We'll start with one cup every four hours and work back from there."

"Uh," Rigsby said. "Do you still want to hear about the security footage?"

"Yes," Lisbon said, still glaring at Jane. "Go ahead, Rigs."

Rigsby cleared his throat. "Right. Bad news first—I haven't turned up anything in the security footage yet, and one of the cameras on the north side of the building has been broken for the last two weeks. The good news is that each floor of the building has restricted access, so aside from the security office and building maintenance, only employees of Trident Industries have access to the seventh floor."

"What's the mode of access?" Lisbon asked.

"ID badge with a chip embedded into it. You swipe the badge through a card reader to get access to the office suite."

"What happens if I try to get into the building without a badge?" Jane asked.

"You're supposed to check in with the security desk up front so they can call an escort for you."

"What if I sneak past the security desk and manage to get into the elevator without anyone seeing me?"

"Wouldn't do you any good. You could push all the elevator buttons you want, but if you don't swipe a badge first, the elevator wouldn't go anywhere. You'd be stuck at the lobby level."

"What if I ride up the elevator with someone else and follow the person into the office they were going into?" Jane persisted.

"I don't know about the other tenants of the building, but at Trident Industries, all guests are required to sign in at the front desk and have an escort. Like I said, only employees and people officially associated with the building can get into their office suite."

"Or people who are clever enough to realize that all they have to do to get past this foolproof security system is lift a badge off some unsuspecting sap who works on the floor they want to go to," Jane pointed out.

"I guess," Rigsby said, frowning a little.

"It's a good start," Lisbon said firmly. "Nice work, Rigsby."

"I'm just saying, it would be criminally easy to steal a badge off of one of these people if you wanted to," Jane said.

"We'll keep that in mind," Lisbon said dryly. "But for now, let's operate on the assumption that our killer is not a professional pickpocket, and focus on the employees of Trident Industries."

"I can compile a list of employees, pull some background information," Van Pelt volunteered.

"Great," Lisbon said. "Get started on that, and see what you can do about getting hold of Waller's financial information. Rigsby, you keep working the security footage."

"Sure thing, boss."

Lisbon turned to Cho. "Cho, can you follow up with the ex-wife? Find out where she was at the time of the murder. I want to know when she was last in contact with the victim and whether she knows anyone who had an axe to grind with him."

"You got it."

"Thanks. Jane and I are going to head back to Trident Industries and talk to Waller's partner. Grace, send me the list once you've pulled it together. We'll try to talk to some of the other people in the firm while we're there."

"Will do," Van Pelt said.

Lisbon looked at Jane. "Let's go."

Xxx

Tony Alvarez, Waller's partner, got up from his desk to greet them when Jane and Lisbon entered his office.

"Mr. Alvarez," Lisbon said briskly, shaking his hand. "Thank you for meeting us."

"Of course," he said. "Anything I can do to help." Introductions were made, and he gestured to the two guest chairs in front of the desk. "Please, sit down. Make yourselves comfortable."

Lisbon accepted the offer, and Alvarez sat down at his desk, opposite her, smoothing down a hideously bright orange lanyard with his security badge around his neck.

Jane did not sit down, but wandered around the office, picking up things from the shelves and inspecting them closely before placing them back on the shelves.

"Uh," Alvarez said, looking at him somewhat askance. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, just familiarizing myself with my surroundings," Jane answered. He gave Alvarez a cheeky grin. "You don't mind, do you?"

"I suppose not," Alvarez said, disconcerted.

Jane resumed his perusal of the shelves, and Alvarez visibly made an effort to ignore him. He directed his attention back to Lisbon. "What can I do for you, Agent Lisbon?"

"We're hoping you can give us a little bit of background on Mr. Waller," Lisbon said. "Help us identify some of his contacts, get a sense if there was anything unusual going on in his life prior to his death, that sort of thing."

"Sure," Alvarez said, scratching his neck. "I can help with that."

"How long did you and Mr. Waller know each other?" Lisbon asked.

"We met in college," Alvarez told her. "We were members of the same fraternity."

"So you'd known each other what, twenty years?" Jane asked. "Maybe a little more?"

"Sort of," Alvarez replied. "We were never all that close when we were in school, actually. We fell out of touch after college. I never even thought about him for years, but then we happened to run into each other at a party about five years ago. We got to talking and he told me about this idea he had for a new business. It was a great idea, but he needed startup capital. One thing led to another and we ended up going into business together. I provided the startup capital in exchange for an equal share in the company."

"I see," Jane said. He changed topics abruptly. "And where were you last night?"

Alvarez blinked, but answered readily enough. "I had dinner with some clients over at Kallah's. After that was over, I went over to the Fox and Goose to watch the game."

"I'll need the names and contact information of the clients you met with last night," Lisbon said.

Alvarez nodded. "Of course."

"Is it normal for you to have client meetings that late?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Wining and dining clients was more of Adam's thing. He's the closer, the one who could sweet talk investors. I'm more of the operations guy."

"So how did you end up being the one to take the meeting last night?" Jane inquired.

Alvarez looked over at him. "Adam called and asked me to take the meeting at the last minute."

"Did that strike you as odd?" Lisbon asked.

He shrugged. "Not really. He could be like that sometimes."

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know, just a bit inconsiderate. Forgetting something and then just expecting you to cover for him because he'd failed to plan appropriately."

"Hm," Jane said. "With him out of the picture, that makes you pretty much the head honcho, doesn't it? Maybe you liked the idea of not having to share the profits with anyone and decided to get him out of the way yourself."

"I'm afraid it doesn't work that way," Alvarez said. "I hate to sound callous, but I'm afraid Adam's death is going to be damn costly to me personally. Adam is the idea guy, the one who was clever with numbers and all that. I manage the operations, but Adam is the vision behind the company. His death is likely to result in reduced market confidence in the company, so it's probable I'm going to have to deal with falling stock prices in the midst of scrambling to cover a huge leadership gap."

"Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Mr. Waller?" Lisbon asked.

"Not really," Alvarez said with a frown.

"What about his ex-wife? Do you think she might have anything to do with this?"

"Cheryl?" he said blankly. "No. Cheryl couldn't have done this. I mean, they fought a lot, sure, but usually whenever things got heated between them, they just ended up in bed together."

"Even after they'd split up?" Lisbon asked.

"Especially after they'd split up."

"What about other people here at the company?" Jane asked. "Anyone he clashed with?"

Alvarez hesitated.

"Out with it," Jane said. "What was the name that just crossed your mind?"

"Mrs. Sweeney," Alvarez said reluctantly. "Gloria Sweeney. But she couldn't have done this, either. The woman's a grandmother, for God's sake."

"What's her relationship to Mr. Waller?" Lisbon asked.

"She's his personal assistant."

"They didn't get along?"

"It's kind of hard to explain their relationship." Waller scratched his neck and tugged absently at the lanyard again. "They couldn't stand each other, really, but they had a kind of weird mutual reliance on one another. Adam depended on her to keep his life organized and on track. He was a mess without her. Harder to say why she stuck with him as long as she did. She's gone through some health issues over the past couple years, though, so maybe she just didn't want to deal with getting a new job and changing her insurance and everything."

"Did Waller help her out with medical bills or a modified work schedule to accommodate her illness or anything like that? That could explain why she'd have a soft spot for him."

"God, no. Adam was too self-absorbed to think of something like that. He was just as demanding and needy as ever after she got sick." Alvarez shifted the lanyard again, apparently trying to tuck it under his shirt collar so it wouldn't rest against his skin. He wasn't successful—it kept sliding back into place.

"Is there anyone else you think we could benefit from talking to?" Lisbon asked. "Other people here at the company, friends, any other social contacts you can think of?"

"Sure. I can give you a list." Alvarez took the lanyard off and set it on the corner of the desk. "Damn thing," he muttered, casting the offending orange cord a dark look as he picked up a pen and slid a piece of note paper towards himself.

Jane picked up the lanyard and examined it. "Nice lanyard," he remarked.

"Thanks," Alvarez said sourly. "Not my idea. Adam got them for free from some marketing company doing a promotion. Gave them out to everybody in the office a few weeks ago, insisted everyone use them to hold their badges."

"Not a fan?"

"I know they have the company logo on them, but you have to admit that color is hideous," Alvarez said, his pen scratching on the paper.

"At least it's handy for keeping track of your gym card," Jane said, turning over the badge holder and inspecting the other side, displaying a gym membership badge for a local gym. "You work out?"

"Every morning at six," Alvarez confirmed, finishing his list. He handed it to Lisbon. "Here you go."

"Great, thank you," Lisbon said. "We appreciate your assistance in this matter."

"Not a problem," Alvarez said, waving off her thanks.

"One more thing," Jane said.

Alvarez looked at him. "What's that?"

"Were you aware that Mr. Waller had a safe behind a painting in his office?" Jane asked.

Alvarez blinked. "Yes," he said with a frown. "I had to sign off on having the damn thing installed."

"You don't sound like you were too happy about it," Lisbon remarked.

"Well, honestly. It was completely ridiculous and it cost a fortune. What did he need a safe in his office for?"

"To hold a fortune, apparently," Jane said.

Alvarez frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Did you know he had five million dollars in that safe?"

Alvarez stared. "Five million?"

Jane nodded. "Cash. Hell of a petty cash fund."

"What the hell?" Alvarez demanded. "Who the hell keeps five million dollars in cash? Hadn't he ever heard of a bank?"

"Probably would have been safer there," Jane agreed. "Someone took three hundred thousand and fifty thousand dollars from that safe."

Alvarez looked flabbergasted. "You think whoever took the money killed him?"

Jane nodded. "That's the theory."

"Jesus," Alvarez exhaled.

"Do you have any idea where he'd get that kind of money?" Lisbon asked.

Alvarez's mouth twisted. "We sure as hell weren't giving out that kind of cash as holiday bonuses, that's for sure."

"Did he have a history of gambling, anything like that?" Lisbon suggested.

Alvarez's eyes flicked to hers. "He did like to play cards now and then. But I've never seen him bring in anything close to that amount of money on skill alone."

"Everybody has a lucky night now and again," Jane said cheerfully. "Maybe Waller had his."

Both Alvarez and Lisbon looked at him, disbelieving.

"Obviously it wasn't last night," Jane clarified. "You know, since he was murdered."

Lisbon decided that it was time to end the interview.

xxx

They took their leave of Alvarez and headed out into the main offices of Trident Industries. Lisbon called Rigsby and tasked him with running down Alvarez's alibi while she and Jane checked out Waller's other colleagues. She and Jane spent the majority of the day interviewing Waller's co-workers, but no promising leads emerged. Jane asked everyone he came across about the safe, but after a whole day's worth of interviews, it seemed the existence of the safe wasn't widely known in the office. Only Alvarez and Waller's assistant had been aware of it, and neither of them appeared to have had any clue what was in it. All in all, it was not a fruitful afternoon.

"What did you think of Mrs. Sweeney?" Lisbon asked Jane as they drove back to the CBI together afterwards.

"I liked her," Jane answered from the passenger seat as he looked out the window.

"I meant, do you think she would be capable of murder?"

Jane turned his attention away from the window and looked at her. "Of course she's capable. Everyone is capable of murder, given the right circumstances."

"But you don't think she did it."

"No," he said, looking out the window again. "And neither do you."

"What makes you say that?"

"You liked her, too. You liked how tough and no nonsense she was."

"My feelings towards her are irrelevant. We're supposed to be unbiased."

"Of course your feelings are relevant, and why should we be unbiased? Your feelings are based on unconscious observations of a person's behavior and demeanor. That's valuable information, and we should absolutely allow it to bias us. If we truly remained unbiased, we'd never get anywhere. Why are you asking about her?"

"She didn't seem to think very highly of Waller, that's for sure."

"Neither do I, after everything we heard today," Jane said. "He was an ass."

"If he was as much of a bastard to her as everyone we talked to today indicated, she'd definitely have motive."

"She didn't do it," Jane said dismissively. "Alvarez was right. They had a co-dependent relationship. Waller needed her to keep his life on track and she needed him because he was the only person who didn't pity her after she got ill. Besides," he added, "if she was going to kill someone, she would have poisoned them. Much neater and more efficient than bludgeoning them to death."

"This is your reasoning?"

"What? She's an efficient woman. Much too smart to risk leaving blood evidence lying around where anyone could find it."

"Well, did anyone else stand out to you out of the people we talked to today?" Lisbon asked as she pulled into the CBI parking lot.

"Not really," Jane said with a frown as she parked. "It doesn't sound like Waller was close to many people. He was a wheeler dealer, used to smooth talking clients, but I didn't get the sense he had many close personal relationships. We talked to a lot of people today, and no one mentioned ever hearing him talk about any friends. Most of his social contacts appear to be through work, but I didn't get the impression he was particularly close to anyone at the office, either."

Lisbon sighed. "Maybe Cho found out something about the ex-wife."

They headed up to the office, Jane's hand at the small of her back as usual.

"Alvarez's alibi checked out," Rigsby informed them when they entered the bullpen. "Five of his clients and three members of the wait staff at Kallah's all confirm he had dinner there last night. After that, the bartender and a few regulars at the Fox and Goose say he was there watching the game until eleven."

"How about the ex-wife?" Lisbon asked Cho. "Alvarez didn't think she was capable of murder. What's your take on her?"

"Oh, she's definitely got the capacity," Cho said. "From what she told me, it's a miracle she and Waller never fileted each other across the dinner table with their steak knives. Thing is, sounds like whenever things escalated to that point, they just ended up having sex instead."

"That's consistent with what Alvarez told us," Lisbon said.

Cho shrugged. "There's always an exception. Could be this was the time he drove her so crazy that she decided to bash his brains in instead of banging his brains out."

"Does she have an alibi?"

"Says she was out of town on business and just got back last night. I'm working on running it down now."

"Sounds good." Lisbon addressed Rigsby. "Rigs, anything turn up in the security footage?"

He shook his head. "I've looked at everything in the half an hour before and after the murder and haven't turned up much. Only a couple of people going in and out of the building during that time, and I've matched them all up with the badge photo for people who work for other companies in the building. But like I said, there's a blind spot at the corner of the building, so if someone went in or out through that stairwell, they wouldn't show up in the security footage."

"All right, keep looking. Expand your window to an hour before the murder to start."

"What about after?"

She shook her head. "I can't see anyone holing up in the building and waiting it out once the police showed up. Focus on the time before the murder for now and if you don't find anything, we'll re-assess."

"Sure thing, boss."

"Van Pelt, how about you? Any updates?"

"I'm working on getting the security logs from building security and the financial records from Trident Industries," Van Pelt reported.

"They didn't send the security logs with the security footage?" Lisbon asked.

Van Pelt shook her head. "The surveillance system is managed by a different vendor than the one that manages the card readers. The data are stored in a different database, and it's taking them longer to extract the information. I did get Waller's personal bank records, though, so I've been looking through those."

"Good. Focus on that and the financials when they come in. I want to know where that five million came from."

"On it."

xxx

Lisbon worked late that night. For once, Jane didn't pester her about leaving on time. He sat on his couch, still brooding about the safe.

"The safe is the key to this case," he told her later that evening, when everyone else had gone and he'd relocated to the couch in her office. "I can feel it."

"There's still no evidence of that," Lisbon pointed out.

"This is a hunch, Lisbon. A real, feel-the-truth-of-it-in-your-gut hunch," Jane said, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. "I'm certain I'm right. But I'm missing a piece of the puzzle. There's something eluding me about this whole thing."

"Something will turn up," she said absently, turning a page in the file she was reading.

"You aren't worried about this?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"I have you to worry about it for me."

"I can't figure out the next step. The sequence of events that would trigger someone to reveal more information about it."

"You'll think of something."

He looked at her. "You seem awfully sure of that."

"I have faith in you."

"You do?"

"Of course." She met his gaze. "You've never let me down yet."

"I think we both know that's not true," he said, looking away. "But I have no intention of letting you down on this, at least."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to come up with a brilliant plan to catch the killer and solve the mystery of the safe."

The corners of her mouth turned upwards. "That's what I thought."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really? You just assumed I'd concoct a brilliant scheme to wrap this whole case up in a nice tidy bow, did you?"

She smirked at him. "Why do you think I keep you around?"

"My dashing good looks, of course."

"That's just a perk." She stood. He watched her put on her coat and gather her things. She went over to the couch and bent down and gave him a soft kiss. "Come on. It's late. Let's go home."

"If this is your idea of a new motivational technique," Jane said, allowing her to pull him to his feet, "…it's working."