Thanks everyone for all the reviews and follows and favorites. They really have helped me keep going on this. This isn't the final chapter, but a major resolution is realized and it's all clean up from here. Totally excited for the new season!
The team quickly returned to the store and each found a witness to question. It was Sunday morning, a typically slow time, and there was only a skeleton crew. Rigsby found the only employee in the back. He had seen a black SUV parked at the loading dock. Cho got a description of the "detective dude" from the kid in the bakery section, and Lisbon tried to calm a distraught Jason Gallatin and store manager. Jane roamed, a sour sickness turning his stomach.
According to the witness in the back, the SUV had parked at the loading dock and a tall, slim guy with gray hair and in a suit had gotten out of the passenger side and come into the store room. He identified himself as FBI and said he was there to question a woman about an ongoing case. He had gone to the bakery section and waited. The witness had not seen anyone leave as he had been in the cooler. According to the kid at the bakery, the "detective dude" was tall, slim and had gray hair and had identified himself as an LAPD detective who was waiting for an informant. When Myra and Sophia Gallatin arrived he approached them, showed his badge, called Myra by name and said he needed to talk to her out back. He led her and Sophia into the backroom. According to Jason Gallatin, the family stopped at the store every Sunday to get doughnuts to eat on the way to church.
Lisbon told the manager to call 911 and report the kidnapping. She explained that they were FBI agents and needed the store to alert local law enforcement. The team returned to their vehicles and pulled onto the PCH, driving back the way they come.
"Where we going, boss?" Rigsby asked, following behind Lisbon and Jane's sedan.
"I don't know," Lisbon said. "Shit!"
Two sheriff patrol cars raced towards them, sirens blaring, heading for the grocery store. Lisbon pulled over into the empty lot of a pilates studio and threw the car into park. She turned to look at Jane.
"Tell me where they're going," she said.
Jane's stomach turned at the suggestion.
"They're still alive," she said. "Right now, they're still alive."
She was right. If he opened the portal to just what Kirkland was doing right now—not to anything he'd already done…. or wanted to do—he'd be safe. And as he had that thought he realized he wasn't afraid anymore. He had a distance on his fear that brought a calm he hadn't experienced in, well, three weeks. The thought of seeing things from Bob Kirkland's point of view was not the terrifying prospect it had once been. Now when he thought of doing it, he only thought of how they were going to catch the sick son of a bitch once and for all and before he could kill again.
He opened his mind to Bob Mealy-mouthed Kirkland. Where are they?
"Jane?"
"Hold on," he said.
"There are two options," Lisbon said, more to the team than Jane. "He takes them somewhere until nightfall or he goes to Jane's now."
"Taking them to Jane's in broad daylight is way too risky. Too many prying eyes," Rigsby said.
"He just kidnapped them from a grocery store in broad daylight right under our noses," Cho said.
"Third option is he takes them somewhere and never goes to Jane's," Ballard said.
"He's going to my house," Jane said.
"Right now?" Lisbon asked with urgency.
"No, I mean, I know he will end up there. Just hold on. Let me think," he said, getting annoyed. He had a sensation, the psychic equivalent of having something just on the tip of your tongue. Where are they? What are they doing right now?
And right then he was behind the wheel of a government-issued SUV. Black hood, tinted windows. He saw a familiar door sliding up. How many times had he waited for his garage door to open to the clutter of their old lives? The Christmas and Halloween decorations, surf boards and bicycles, the garden tools and potting soil,the plastic play kitchen Charlotte had outgrown—all of it now wiped clean leaving only an empty shell of blank walls and concrete floor. He pulled the SUV inside with a satisfied smugness. He pressed an unfamiliar garage door opener and the door slid down behind him. He turned to look in the back seat and saw Ray Haffner sitting next to an unconscious Myra. She was propped against the door, her daughter, also unconscious, propped against her. Jane instantly knew that Haffner was there to help get the drugged bodies inside the house. His stomach lurched at the thought that someone, a former CBI agent no less, would help Kirkland do what he was planning to do.
"They just pulled into the garage at my house," Jane said. "Ray Haffner is with them."
"That's affirmative," Ballard said. "Garage door has been engaged."
There were so many "Shits!" said in unison, Jane's ear rang. "They're alive, but drugged," Jane said.
"Ballard, go upstairs now. They will end up in the master bedroom," Lisbon barked.
Lisbon threw the sedan into drive and sped out of the parking lot for Jane's house. "We're going in quiet," she commanded.
Lisbon and Jane got there first, parking five expansive houses down. Rigsby and Cho were right behind them, and when Minelli and Hightower arrived with the van, they all went to it to gear up with unmarked bulletproof vests and to check their weapons. Jane quickly showed the team the entrances to the house on a rudimentarily drawn map. Zablocki and Anderson soon arrived and stealthily made their way past the security of a neighboring house and onto the private beach. Minelli and Hightower followed them. The sliding glass doors on the deck and walk-out basement could not be breeched, but there was a side door into the laundry room they could get in by picking the lock. The stairs going up to the main part of the house would lead them into the kitchen. Other than that, the best entrance in the front was through the door to the side of the garage. The front door was too risky with all the windows surrounding it. Cho, Rigsby and Lisbon went there with Jane following.
"You're staying out here until it's all clear," Lisbon whispered to him as Rigsby peeked through the window at the top of the door.
"I know," Jane said. His heart was in his throat and his adrenaline was off the charts. That it was all happening at his house added a sickening sadness into the mix.
"Looks clear," Rigsby whispered. "No one behind the wheel."
"Haffner was in the back seat with the mother and daughter," Jane said.
"Voices in the house," Ballard said. "Two of them talking."
Lisbon nodded to Jane, who went to unlock the door and let the team in. Lisbon and Cho moved quietly and quickly to the door to the kitchen while Rigsby checked in the SUV.
"Mother and child are in the SUV. They're unconscious like Jane said," Rigsby whispered. He quickly joined Lisbon and Cho.
Jane hung back at the outer door.
"Where are they Ballard?" Lisbon asked.
"Front entryway."
"Minelli?"
"We're in, heading up." A moment later he said, "At the door to the kitchen now."
"Okay," Lisbon said. "We're going in.
Jane watched as Lisbon led Cho and Rigsby through the door with their guns drawn. When they were out of sight, Jane waited. He heard only the sound of adrenaline-spiked breathing and it wasn't enough. He went into the garage towards the open door to the kitchen. He was drawn by the sudden need to see Kirkland's face at the moment he realized he was caught. He passed the SUV, looking in and seeing Myra and Sophia, and that spurred him on. He stepped up the lone stair into the kitchen and quietly made his way towards the front entryway.
And then all hell broke loose. Jane heard Lisbon yell, "Put your hands up!" before everyone was yelling. When Jane made it to the scene, the whole team had circled the suspects, with Ballard on the stairs, and had their guns trained on Kirkland and Haffner. Both were completely surprised by the sudden appearance of so many. Then, as if in slow motion, the team watched as Kirkland grabbed Haffner, hooking his arm around his neck and pulling a curved knife out of his suit pocket and holding it at Haffner's throat.
All hell broke loose again, with everyone yelling, "Drop your weapon!" Kirkland tightened his grip on Haffner's throat and Haffner reached instinctively at Kirkland's arm as he struggled for breath. The look on Kirkland's face was now one of calm intention.
Jane walked around to face Kirkland and Kirkland stared blandly back at him.
"Well, it looks like you brought a knife to a gun fight, Bob," Jane said.
"It would appear so," Kirkland said as if bored.
"Drop the knife, Kirkland," Lisbon said.
"It's over," Jane said. "We win."
Kirkland smirked. "This isn't quite checkmate yet, Patrick. It's been fun playing though, hasn't it?"
Jane didn't answer. Instead he opened the portal to Kirkland's past, knowing it would be the ultimate final nail in his coffin.
"I am curious, though," Kirkland said, "how you found me."
Jane smiled. "Oh, that? That was easy. You see, it turns out that I'm psychic afterall."
Kirkland's smug boredom was replaced with confused interest.
"I see you," Jane said. "I see everything about you." The images were coming, playing out like some sick B-movie horror show. "I see what your mother did to you, how she made you dress up—"
"Shut up!" Kirkland yelled. He tightened his grip and pressed the knife onto Haffner's throat until blood appeared.
The team started yelling again and closing in. They had had enough.
"Drop the knife, Kirkland!" Lisbon said, "I mean it!"
Kirkland looked to her now. "Poor Teresa," he said. "All your loyalty will get you nowhere. You know that, don't you?"
"Well, you're the expert in that, aren't you?" Jane asked. "How long has poor Haffner there been your disciple?"
Haffner's face was frozen in fear and bright red from the tight grip Kirkland had on him.
Kirkland smirked.
"How do you see this playing out?" Jane asked. "You slit his throat and all these good people open fire on you? Is that how you want to end it?"
A change came over Kirkland and he relaxed his grip on Haffner. "You're right, Patrick. That's not how I want this scenario to end. My work will continue long after I'm gone, but I do have a choice in how this part of my story ends."
"Let him go, and drop the knife," Lisbon said carefully.
"Okay, okay," Kirkland said as if she were just some nagging school teacher. He unwrapped his arm from Haffner's neck and held his hands up, arms bent at the elbows. He still gripped the knife in his right hand. Haffner stumbled forward to his knees and gasped for breath.
"Drop the knife now!" Lisbon said.
Kirkland simply smiled, a wide smile of complete satisfaction. Then he quickly brought the knife to the left side of his neck and cleanly sliced his own throat. Blood from his jugular spurted out onto the floor and Haffner and Kirkland crumbled to the ground.
The shock of his action completely silenced the team. All Jane could hear was Haffner's breathing and Kirkland's throat gurgling. A flood of mixed emotions swept through him as he stepped forward to look down on the face of the man who had nearly ruined him. Kirkland's eyes were wide open as he struggled against the inevitable, a pool of blood growing beneath him. As Jane stared down he was struck at the cartoonish image he saw, the deep and bloody cut on Kirkland's throat was grotesquely similar to the bloody smile Kirkland had painted on so many walls.
A final bout of disgust overtook Jane. Red John was dead. Kirkland was a clown. Jane turned and left.
