Disclaimer: The Mentalist, its characters and universe belong to Bruno Heller and CBS. I'm only a fan, writing this for love of this TV show and personal pleasure.

A.N.: This is for 2x03 "Red Badge". How did Jane convince Lisbon to throw quite the spectacle in order to catch Dr. Carmen?

Loving Him was Red

Insight

Lisbon had just walked up to her front door after Jane went out, closing her eyes and feeling her tears fall down her face. Suddenly feeling exhausted, she pressed her forehead against the door and sighed heavily, wondering what in the world was going to happen to her now.

"Lisbon?" She suddenly jumped when she felt the light knock on the door and heard Jane's voice just outside. "Please let me back in? I just thought of something."

"Jane…" She sighed, and a protest was halfway through her lips when she swallowed her words. A part of her wanted to wallow in self-pity and just be alone and cry for a while, which was why she'd asked him to leave. But another part of her recognized that sitting in her house alone and crying would not get her out of this mess. If Jane knew something that could help her, she would take it. If anyone could help her now it was probably Patrick Jane.

She pulled the door open and ushered him in. She recognized a spark of excitement in his bluish green eyes, something that hadn't been there just a minute before when he'd left her. "What is it?"

"You were right, I am the best at this, right?" He spoke not in a boastful manner, as he was wont to do, but as someone merely stating a fact. "I thought maybe it was something I did wrong, maybe there was some sort of block keeping me from reaching your memories. You did say earlier that you didn't want me inside your head."

"Yeah, I know, but I changed my mind," she was quick to reassure him, as she subconsciously crossed her arms in a defensive posture. "I need your help and I trust you."

"No, I know that. It's not anything I did wrong─anything we did wrong," he said, the words coming out quickly as he grew excited as he explained his thoughts. "So if the memory wasn't there for you to see, there's only one logical explanation. There is no memory."

"Okay," she said slowly, frowning in confusion at him. "Why do you say that like it's a good thing? If I can't remember what I did, then I can't be sure of what I did or didn't do. We're back to square one."

"No, but think about it," Jane said, his eyes sparkling with excitement. "If there had been a memory there, I would've been able to help you retrieve it. You can't remember it because there is nothing to remember. And that is something that can only happen for one reason: You've been drugged."

"What?" She blinked up her eyes at him, her frown becoming even more pronounced. "What do you mean, drugged? How would someone even drug me without me realizing it?"

"I'm sure about this, Lisbon." He told her in that tone of utmost conviction that she knew so well. "After all, nothing else would account for sudden memory loss. You didn't suffer any recent blows to the head and there are no other symptoms that would indicate illnesses or other possible scenarios for this."

"Okay," she nodded slowly, thinking over his explanation and making sense of it. "But who would drug me? How? And why?"

"I expect the answers to these questions are all connected," he said, gesturing with his hands as he started thinking it out loud with her. "Now there are a few drugs capable of producing that effect, I'm sure you know all about them: GHB, rohypnol, hypnotics. I'm thinking it was probably some form of benzo, such as diazepam or lorazepam, which would cause anterograde amnesia."

"Benzos?" She frowned and made a gesture of bewilderment with her hands. "Why benzos?"

"Just a hunch," he said, tapping at his lips with an index finger as he started pacing the room. "As for how you would be drugged, probably a beverage. Who would have access to give you a laced beverage? Think about your day. Anything different you had to drink? Is there anything that strikes you as odd?" He turned and looked intently into her face.

"What? No." She frowned at him, feeling a little thrown with his line of thought and trying to keep up. "Okay, so I had several cups of coffee at work, as usual. I poured it myself, there's no way someone put drugs in it, unless everyone else in the department was drugged as well. Then a water bottle when I skipped lunch. And…"

"And?" He prompted, still watching her face carefully.

"There was also Dr. Carmen's crappy coffee in his office during my appointment." She added after a moment, her lips twisting in thought.

"Hmm." Jane murmured, his eyes narrowing momentarily.

"What? You know something." Lisbon said, as she saw that, her eyes widening a little as it dawned on her. "Dr. Carmen?"

"It fits," he said, biting his lower lip with a thoughtful look on his face. "He'd have access to the drugs. It would explain why he still hasn't signed you off for the counseling sessions. A couple of sessions, okay. But he's been holding you now for too long."

"But why would he do that? What's his motive?" She asked, feeling completely bewildered by this turn of events. Though honestly everything that had happened in the last couple of days seemed bewildering as it was, a part of her brain wondered why should this surprise her anymore.

"Well, obviously you're being framed," Jane said, nodding along at his words. "The killer did a pro job, perfect clean shots, shell casings gone and then we find the murder weapon conveniently close to the crime scene with your prints on it? If you had killed him, that gun would've been wiped clean and sitting at the bottom of the river, never to be found."

"So Roy Carmen is framing me," Lisbon said, testing the words out loud to see if it made more sense. As she thought it over, suddenly she narrowed her eyes and her whole expression darkened considerably. "I'm going to kill him." Jane raised his eyebrows at her declaration. "Seriously, I want to punch the lights out of that son of a bitch."

"Okay, hold on," Jane said quickly, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. "Far be it from me to stand in the way of your revenge, but in case you'd like to prosecute him to the full extent of the law, and I believe you do, we still need to catch him. This is all just conjecture and circumstantial at this point, we don't have anything on him."

"Oh we'll find it," she said forcefully. "I'll get the team working on it. There's always a trail. There's going to be something and we'll catch him and nail that bastard."

"That might be, but it will probably take a while," he conceded with a nod of the head, then lifted his eyebrows at her. "Wouldn't a confession be simpler and better?"

Lisbon tilted her head just slightly, narrowing her eyes at him. "What are you thinking?"

"I saw you did some undercover work back when you were with SFPD." He returned her one of his near patented Patrick Jane smiles. "How are your acting skills?"

After Lisbon had punched, cuffed and Miranda'ed Dr. Roy Carmen, she'd passed him over to Wayne Rigsby, who'd been standing outside by her front door, waiting in case any back-up was needed. Since technically she was still suspended, Lisbon wouldn't be able to officially take him in, process and interview him for the murder of William Mcteer, so she let Rigsby take care of all that.

"Hey," Lisbon said, as Rigsby marched Carmen out of her house, and found Jane still standing in her living room. "Are you going with Rigsby back to HQ?"

"Nah. He and the rest of the team can handle it. I thought I'd stay and help you clean this up," he said, gesturing with a hand at the considerable mess in her living room, with the bottles, pills and bullets spilled about.

"Don't worry about it," Lisbon said dismissively, walking over and retrieving the near empty bottle of whisky from the floor.

"Nice punch there," he commented, sitting down on the ottoman and starting to collect the spilled pills on the coffee table. "I'll bet it felt good to get those things off your chest as well."

"You know I just said all that to get him talking," she said, straightening up and putting the bottle on the coffee table, and she started gathering the stray bullets.

"Hum." He murmured, one of his eyebrows rising.

Lisbon stopped what she'd been doing, turned and narrowed her eyes at him. "What?"

"Oh you're good," Jane replied calmly, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he concentrated on collecting the pills. "Don't get me wrong, you were great there at the station, throwing that chair at the window and all of that. But here, when you were talking to Carmen about being angry and exploding, all the misery and pain?" He put the pills back in the bottle and looked up directly into her eyes. "You weren't acting, Lisbon."

She stared at him, feeling frozen under his piercing gaze. Working with Jane for so long now, she'd somehow thought she would already be used to his methods and being subjected to his cold readings, however that was not the case. Finally she blinked her eyes and opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out and she just started to feel like a fish out of water.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to…" Jane trailed off, whatever it was that he'd been saying getting lost in the air. He seemed somewhat surprised with himself and unsure of what he was doing for a moment, but then a quiet smile returned to his lips. "I just wanted you to know that I understand."

"Thanks," she said quietly, a small smile also forming on her lips.

They remained in silence for a few seconds as the moment stretched before them. Jane then cleared his throat and said, "If you'd like, I can take you to HQ. We could watch the interviews and see Carmen sweat it out. Also Minelli should be able to reinstate you now."

"Yeah, I'd like that," Lisbon said, smiling gratefully at him. "Let me just put on some decent clothes and we'll go."

She went up the staircase towards her bedroom to get a change of clothes while Jane waited for her downstairs, taking advantage of this opportunity to snoop through her possessions and delighting in what he could find.