A/N: Hope everyone is hanging in there during these strange times. Wishing all of you and your families peace and safety.
A/N2: Uh. This chapter is kinda evil. As are the next several chapters. If work isn't too crazy, I might try to post a little more frequently for the next few chapters. Both to keep you entertained during isolation and also not to leave you with angsty cliff-hangers too long. Though it is possible you won't thank me for the upcoming angst-fest and will instead just throw virtual tomatoes at my head for what I've done to our favorite couple. :)
xxx
"Meyers!" Givens barked across the bullpen two weeks later. He glared at Lisbon from his office doorway. "My office, now."
"Busted," Heather muttered to Lisbon under her breath.
"Hush," Lisbon said, and went into Givens' office.
Givens tossed a printout on his desk and scowled up at her from his office chair. "What the hell is this?"
Lisbon glanced at the printout, marked up with red ink. "My copy for tomorrow's edition."
"No, it isn't," he said, pointing a meaty finger at her. "Because there's no way I'm publishing this."
Lisbon raised an eyebrow. "Why not? Is anything in there untrue?"
"That's not the point," Givens grumbled. "You've spent the last two weeks harping on this Ramseth story. Running around town, asking questions that are making people nervous."
"Isn't asking questions kind of the name of the game around here?" Lisbon asked, crossing her arms over her chest. "I was under the impression that was what you paid me for."
Givens scowled. "You're pissing people off. Powerful people. The police commissioner was not happy about that article you wrote last week about 'a pattern of mishandled procedures.'"
"Well, I wasn't happy with the way his department handles evidence," Lisbon said. "After I started digging around on this, I found a dozen more examples where officers knowingly disregarded evidence in favor of closing a case quickly. People in this town deserve to know there is an institutional failure in their police department."
Givens glared at her. "I don't give a damn. This paper can't afford to piss off the entire police department. Not to mention the mayor's office and the D.A.'s office."
"The citizens of this town can't afford to remain ignorant of the fact that the city's leadership is comfortable letting criminals go free if it keeps their case closure rate high," Lisbon countered.
"Whatever," Givens said, disgusted. "I'm not publishing this. In fact, you're benched from this whole damn story."
"You can't do that," Lisbon said, outraged. "I'm finally making real progress on her case!"
"There is no case," Givens said, incredulous.
Lisbon lifted her chin. "The autopsy report confirmed she was murdered. Everyone I talked to said she was well loved in her personal life, so she had to have been killed because of something she was working on."
"You are not a cop!" Givens said. "Leave that to the professionals. Your job is to report what they tell you."
"You think an investigative journalist's job is to shut up and swallow the party line?" Lisbon said. "We're supposed to ask the questions that nobody else is asking! And on this case, there are an awful lot of them. It's our job to make sure the public gets answers."
"I'm not arguing about this with you. You're benched from this story. You're going to rip that up—" here, he pointed at the redlined printout on his desk—"and instead of making a nuisance of yourself all over town, you're going to take Barkley with you to City Hall for the Spring Gala tonight. She's going to take some pictures of rich women in fancy dresses, and then you're gonna write about those rich women in their fancy dresses."
"You're putting me on the society page?" Lisbon said, outraged. "That is such—"
"You're going to write about those fancy dresses," Givens overrode her. "And you're going to have that copy ready for me by the end of the day tomorrow. Is that clear?"
Lisbon glared. "Yes, sir." She snatched her copy off his desk and marched back out into the bullpen, seething.
"Whoa," Heather said, taking a look at her face when she got back to her desk. "What happened?"
"Sexist bastard just stuck us with the society page," Lisbon spat out. "Of all the—" she cast a venomous glance at Givens' office door and growled several invectives in its direction.
Heather rolled her desk chair a few inches away. "No offense, but has anybody ever told you you're kinda scary when you're mad?"
Lisbon scowled. "Yes."
"Well, they were right," Heather said affably. She gestured to the redlined printout still clutched in Lisbon's hand. "What's the deal with that? If it's safe to ask, that is."
"My copy for tomorrow's edition," Lisbon said, balling it up and tossing it in the recycling bin. She sat down in her desk chair, her shoulders slumped in defeat. "Givens is scrapping it. He benched me from the Ramseth story."
Heather stared at her. "Seriously? That's absurd! Our readership has been way up since you broke the story of her murder."
Lisbon shrugged. "I guess it hasn't gone up enough to make him want to risk making waves among city leadership."
"Ugh," Heather snorted in disgust. "I hate when political bullshit gets in the way of us doing our jobs."
"Tell me about it," Lisbon said darkly. "Believe me, I have been here before. It never gets easier to swallow, though."
Heather rolled her chair back over to Lisbon and nudged her shoulder. "So what's the new assignment?"
Lisbon made a face. "Covering the Spring Gala at City Hall."
"Ah. Well, at least there will be pretty dresses," Heather said cheerfully.
Lisbon shot her a withering glance. "If you try to make me have a good attitude about this, I will hurt you."
Heather put her hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I would never," she protested.
The corner of Lisbon's mouth twitched. "Good."
"So I guess we'd better sort out some logistics, huh? It's tonight, right?"
"Yeah," Lisbon said. She typed into the search function in her email client. "I think somebody sent around a copy of the guest list the other day."
She found the email and opened it. The message had a guest list attached, along with details about how to get into the event. Lisbon looked at the heading again. "City Hall," she said slowly.
"What about it?" Heather said absently, peering at the guest list over Lisbon's shoulder. "Hey, half of Utah Jazz is going to be there!" she said excitedly. "Maybe this won't be so bad after all."
"Dorothy Rameth's office was in City Hall," Lisbon said. She scrolled down the guest list. "James Durst is going to be at the event."
"Who the hell is James Durst?" Heather said blankly. "He's not a basketball player, is he?"
"He was Ramseth's boss," Lisbon told her. She pulled up a directory of the building. "His office is in City Hall, too."
"So what?" Heather said.
"So, you were right," Lisbon said. She sat back in her chair, the gears in her mind turning. "Maybe this won't be a waste of time after all."
xxx
Lisbon scanned the crowd and listened with half an ear as the vapid woman before her waxed eloquent on the design of her two thousand dollar dress. She half-heartedly jotted down the name of the designer while she cast her eyes around the room in search of James Durst.
"Hey," Heather hissed in her ear, clicking away with her camera at Lisbon's side. "The designer's name is Christian Lacroix. Not Christopher Lacrosse."
Lisbon looked at her blankly. "Huh?"
Heather rolled her eyes and nodded at Lisbon's notebook, where she had indeed written down the name 'Christopher Lacrosse.'
Lisbon frowned and dutifully corrected the note.
"What's with you?" Heather asked, still clicking away. "You don't mess up names. You're the most detail-oriented person I've ever met."
"It's nothing," Lisbon said absently, still scanning the crowd. Ah—there he was. She spotted James Durst speaking to an anxious looking man with dark hair and glasses in the far corner of the expansive space. "Listen, can you cover this for a while? I need to check something out."
Heather's eyes narrowed. "What are you planning?"
"I'll tell you later," Lisbon promised. "Please—can you hold down the fort for a while?"
Heather sighed. "You owe me."
"Thanks," Lisbon said gratefully. "I'll make it up to you, I promise."
"Yeah, yeah," Heather said, shooing her away. "Be gone with you."
Lisbon wove her way through the crowd and slipped behind a convenient column to conceal herself so she could eavesdrop without alerting the two men to her presence.
"—I just want to know if we're close or not," she heard an anxious voice say as she positioned herself carefully behind the column. She surreptitiously pulled out her phone and hit the record button so she could transcribe it into her notes later if she heard anything interesting.
"Would you relax?" said a second voice in a soothing tone. "You've got nothing to worry about."
"Easy for you to say," grumbled the first voice. "You're not the one losing money every day that contract isn't signed."
"I'm telling you, Thorpe, everything is all set," said the second voice. "I've got all the paperwork on my desk upstairs." That had to be Durst. "I just need to get the new contracts person to sign off on it, and you'll have the contract in your hands by the end of the day tomorrow."
"You really think you can get the new person to sign off on it?" Thorpe asked.
"Of course. I hired him myself. He won't give us any trouble. Not like the old lady."
"I don't know," Thorpe said, still anxious. "That article that said she was murdered—aren't you worried about someone poking their nose into her files and all of this blowing back on us?"
"That has nothing to do with us," Durst said. "An unlucky coincidence."
"All I'm saying is, if someone found that memo she wrote to you, it wouldn't look good for us-" Thorpe continued.
"Nobody is going to find it," Durst said. "Who would even think to look?" She heard him clap the other man on the shoulder. "Come on, let me buy you another drink to celebrate," he urged his companion, and the two of them drifted away.
Lisbon hit stop on the recorder on her phone and stayed behind the column, her mind racing. Could this mysterious contract have something to do with the reason Dorothy Ramseth had been killed? Durst had dismissed the notion, but could he be covering up for appearance's sake? He certainly didn't seem to have any compunctions about sweeping the less savory details of whatever shady deal he'd been discussing with Thorpe under the rug.
She thought back to her first phone conversation with Mrs. Ramseth. She'd mentioned her boss submitting some paperwork with numbers that didn't add up. It sounded like she'd written a memo on the subject, as well. One that Durst was determined never to let see the light of day.
She needed to get a look at that contract.
She slipped her phone back into her pocket and made her way over to the nearest fire exit. She'd made a note of Durst's office location before she'd left the office, so she knew where to go. She climbed the stairs and stole down the deserted hallway once she made it to the third floor, making as little noise as possible in the high heels she'd been forced to don for the occasion. When she reached Durst's office, though, the door was locked.
She cursed under her breath.
The devil on her shoulder piped up. The devil that had a voice that sounded suspiciously like Jane's. As a cop, she would have had to get a warrant to search Durst's office. But surely, the Jane on her shoulder reasoned, the rules of engagement were different for a member of the press? She had no power to get a warrant in her current role. After the experience of working with Salt Lake PD, she had zero hope that she'd be able to convince them to request a warrant based on her say so. She already knew they weren't exactly breaking a sweat over this case. If justice was to be served for Dorothy Ramseth, she, Lisbon, was undoubtedly the person best positioned to get it for her. Surely that meant the circumstances required a little…flexibility.
Muttering a quick prayer asking for forgiveness under her breath, she bent down to inspect the lock. It was a simple one. She didn't know how to use lock picks like Jane, but she could probably pop it open with a credit card like she'd done for her neighbors when they'd locked themselves out of their dorm room in college.
It took her longer than she would have liked, standing there exposed in the hallway when anyone could walk by—God, what if Durst decided to come back to his office for some reason?—but after struggling with the card for a few moments, she finally wiggled it in just the right way to get the door to pop open. Success! She breathed a sigh of relief and went into Durst's office, closing the door behind her.
She made a beeline for the desk and turned on the desk lamp. Lord, the man's desk was a mess. Stacks of papers everywhere. She rifled through them as quickly and methodically as possible.
Fortunately, she found a packet of contract materials with the name Thorpe on the signature line after only a few minutes of searching. Given the time constraints she was operating under, she didn't bother trying to read through it, but pulled out her phone and carefully snapped pictures of every page. It took a torturously long time.
By the time she was finished, she knew she ought to get back to the Gala. Heather would be missing her, and if she thought to ask the security team to help track Lisbon down, Lisbon would be at even greater risk of being caught than she was already. But she glanced at the door adjoining Durst's office and realized that Dorothy Ramseth's office was directly within reach. If she could find that memo, too…
She turned off the desk lamp and went over to the door and tried the knob. Unlocked. She breathed out a sigh of relief and went into the next room.
She could see signs of a new presence in the office once she'd switched on the light. A Utah Jazz pennant hung in a place that had clearly held a rectangular frame before. A diploma for Brigham Young hung in pride of place next to the desk. She looked around. The boxes on the shelf, though—she went over and inspected them. A photograph of Mrs. Ramseth with her family sat on top. Not all her stuff had been moved out yet, then.
Lisbon went through the boxes as quickly as possible, smiling sadly at some of the mementoes Mrs. Ramseth had stored from various children and grandchildren over the years. The boxes held only personal items, however—no damning evidence was to be found here.
Lisbon moved over to the filing cabinet. The top drawer appeared to have been emptied and begun to be repopulated by the office's new occupant – a single file folder hung in desolate isolation, labeled simply, 'Admin.'
The second two drawers, though, still contained Mrs. Ramseth's files. She had apparently kept paper copies of all her electronic files, each document meticulously indexed and placed precisely in its place. Lisbon pulled up the image of the cover page of the contract on her phone and found the contract name. Salt Lake City Public Works, awarded to Blackhawk, Inc. She checked Salt Lake City Public Works first, but only found the original request for proposal. She took pictures of that for good measure, keenly aware of every moment that was ticking by as she stood over this filing cabinet.
She found what she was looking for in a folder labeled 'Blackhawk, Inc.' This was the memo Durst had mentioned—it was addressed to him, and contained a detailed accounting of the discrepancies Mrs. Ramseth had noted in her review of the contract materials. It was dated the day she died.
Lisbon took photographs of this, too, her hand trembling. Then she carefully replaced the papers in their folder, shut the drawer, and switched off the light.
She breathed easier once she was back in the hallway. She took the same stairs she'd taken to get up here to make her way back to the first floor.
She nearly knocked over a couple of party-goers standing too close to the door when she opened the door to get back into the ballroom. "Sorry," she apologized, red-faced. "Looking for the ladies' room."
"It's that way, love," a kindly older man said, pointing the way.
"Thanks," Lisbon muttered, and blindly headed the way he'd indicated.
She'd almost reached the ladies' room and was about to turn right into the main part of the ballroom to look for Heather when a strong hand seized her by the wrist.
Lisbon reacted instinctively, yanking her hand away and preparing to stomp on the instep of whoever had accosted her, but the hand merely seized her wrist again, its grip intractable.
"Teresa," Agent Montrose hissed. "Where have you been? I've been looking all over for you."
Lisbon blinked. "I've been—never mind. It doesn't matter. What are you doing here?"
"You've been compromised," Montrose said. "I need to get you out of here."
"Compromised?" Lisbon echoed, her feet rooted to the spot. "You mean—?"
"I don't have a lot of detail," Montrose said. "I'll tell you what I can once we get out of here. For now, we need to get out of here as quickly and quietly as possible."
"Where's Jane?" Lisbon demanded. "Is he safe?"
"I don't know," Montrose said tightly. "Soren is tracking him down now. Come on, we need to get out of here."
Ignoring Montrose's attempts to shepherd her out of the ballroom, Lisbon pulled out her phone and hit number one on the speed dial. The phone went straight to voice mail. Lisbon's level of panic immediately increased tenfold.
"What happened? What have you done to find him so far?" she asked Montrose, aware that her tone was more suited to an interrogation room than their current setting.
"I promise, I'll explain as much as I can as soon as we get out of—"
"There you are, Teresa," Heather said, coming up behind them. She sounded mildly put out. "Where the hell did you disappear off to? When you asked me to cover for you, I didn't think you were going to bail on me for half the night." She stopped, glancing at Montrose. "Who's this?"
"This is my friend, Lauren," Lisbon said, Montrose's first name sitting strangely on her tongue. She twisted her hands together, desperate for more information about where Jane might have gone. If he was hurt—
Lisbon swallowed hard. "I'm really sorry, Heather, but I have to go. Something—something's happened with Patrick."
"Is everything okay?" Heather said, her eyes wide.
Lisbon shook her head. "I don't know. I'm sorry—I really have to go. I'll—I'll call you later, if I can."
"Yeah, of course," Heather said, looking worried. "I hope everything's okay."
Lisbon nodded tightly, unable to say more. What kind of trouble had Jane gotten himself into now? Had one of Scalzi's men tracked them to Salt Lake? Found their house? Lain in wait for Patrick to get home and—
Or was it Red John? Had he tired of Jane's refusal to play the game and come here to forcibly draw him back onto the board?
"Come on," Montrose said briskly, scanning the room for threats as she ushered Lisbon towards the nearest exit. Lisbon, her mind assaulted with images of Jane being hurt, tortured, all because of her, followed blindly.