"Jane," Lisbon said the next afternoon. "I think I should try taking a crack at Carter alone."
"Absolutely not," Jane said, as though she weren't the lead investigator on this case and it wasn't one hundred percent her call how to handle suspect interviews.
She'd known he was going to be like this. "Jane—"
"You're injured," he argued before she could lay out her case. "You wouldn't be able to defend yourself if he came at you with a knife or something."
"He's not going to come at me—"
"If anything, I should talk to him myself," Jane said. "He'll be happy to have rattled me yesterday. His guard will be lowered."
She put up a hand to forestall him. "Just—hear me out."
A muscle in his jaw ticked. "Fine."
"Yesterday, he talked like he knew me," Lisbon said. "He knew who I was when I came into the room. He commented on my work and the 'challenges' you've caused me."
"You already tried," Jane pointed out. "You said he wouldn't talk to you and Cho after I left. He only wants to talk to me."
"Yesterday I was with Cho. I think he'll feel differently today if I go in alone, now that he's had a chance to cool his heels a bit."
"I don't like it," Jane said, shaking his head.
"Come on. I need you to observe him," Lisbon said. "Cho will be right outside the door."
Jane argued the whole way to the FBI detention facility, but in the end, he reluctantly settled himself in the observation room while she went to the interrogation room next door.
Cho gave her a look she couldn't quite interpret when she passed him. She thought it could have been anything from 'Are you sure you know what you're doing?' to 'I can't be responsible if Jane flips his shit and does something even crazier than usual while you're in there' to 'I've got your back.' Possibly it was an amalgamation of all three.
Carter broke out into his dimpled smile when she came into the room. "Agent Lisbon, what a delightful surprise. I can't imagine Patrick was very happy about letting you walk alone into a room with the Big Bad Wolf."
"Not his call," Lisbon said, taking a seat opposite him. "Is that how you see yourself? As the Big Bad Wolf?"
"Oh, Teresa," Carter said, sounding disappointed. "Don't tell me you're going to try some psychobabble interrogation technique on me. We were off to such a promising start."
"That wasn't my intention," Lisbon said. "I'm just trying to keep the animal metaphors straight. First a tiger, now a wolf. Will you next be a lion that must be bearded in its den?"
Carter laughed. "I think for Patrick I've become more of a white whale. But come now, you didn't go to all this trouble to talk to me about metaphors. You want to ask about what I said to Patrick yesterday about his beloved wife and child."
"I do," Lisbon agreed. "If you want to point me to a pile of evidence that incriminates you in the murders of Angela and Charlotte Jane, or any of your other victims, please feel free. But to start, I'd like to hear more about your relationship with O'Laughlin."
He hadn't expected her to lead with this. "What about him?"
"You admit that you know him, that you have knowledge of his efforts to hunt down Madeleine Hightower. How do you know him?"
He smiled at her. "We have a mutual friend."
She looked at him levelly. "What friend would that be?"
He made a dismissive gesture. "Nobody you'd know."
"You can't give me a name? Must not be a very good friend."
"Oh, he's a good friend. But I see no need to drag him into these tedious police matters. He has more important things to do."
"Like what?"
"A little of this, a little of that."
"I see. He hasn't confided the details to you." Lisbon sat back. "Maybe he's not certain of you. Feels you still need to earn his trust."
His gaze sharpened at that. "He's certain of me. He knows he can rely on me."
"So why was your friend so interested in Hightower?" Lisbon asked.
"I never said my friend new anything about Madeleine Hightower," he corrected her. "Only that I met O'Laughlin through him."
"Very well," Lisbon said pleasantly. "What made you interested in Madeleine Hightower."
He smiled again. "Who said I was interested in Madeleine Hightower? That was all O'Laughlin."
"No," Lisbon said. "O'Laughlin was following orders. Either yours, or someone else's. Which is it?"
"Ah, Agent Lisbon, trying to draw me into giving you an answer to a question with an invalid premise," he said, waggling a finger at her. "You really should be taking lessons from Patrick on this sort of thing, you know. You're far more clumsy at it than he is."
"Which part of my question do you believe comes from an invalid premise?" Lisbon asked.
"You expect me to buy into your supposition that O'Laughlin was taking orders, which is pure speculation on your part."
"That isn't speculation," Lisbon said. "It's fact. His cell phone records indicate as much." The team was still working through the phone records, but they'd found enough to know O'Laughlin had been taking orders for months. Up to and including disturbingly specific advice on how to ingratiate himself into Van Pelt's good graces. Van Pelt had read each text exchange with a stony expression and then gone down to the gym and pummeled a punching bag for two hours straight. After, she returned to her desk with her jaw set but otherwise composed.
Lisbon looked at Carter. "So which is it? Was O'Laughlin taking orders from you, or someone else?"
Carter ignored the question. "I see now. You let Patrick play out his hunches, but you always complete your homework thoroughly, don't you? Were you a Girl Scout, Agent Lisbon? Always prepared."
Lisbon had never been a Girl Scout, but she took the opening. "You know a lot about me, Mr. Carter. How did you know who I was before I came to interview you yesterday?"
"I keep my ear to the ground."
Another non-answer. Slippery as an eel.
"You speak of Jane like you know him, too. With fondness."
"Very perceptive," Carter said. "Yes, I suppose I do feel a certain fondness for him."
"Why?" Lisbon said. "He's such a pain in the ass."
Carter laughed outright. "He interests me. There are so few interesting people in the world, wouldn't you agree?"
Lisbon wouldn't, but she had a feeling Jane could relate to the sentiment. "If you feel fondness for him, why bring up the night his wife and child died the way that you did? Why deliberately provoke him?"
Carter spread his hands. "To prove I am who I say I am, of course."
"But you haven't done that," Lisbon said. "You've offered no physical evidence that you are the killer known as Red John. Easy enough for him to feed you a few dramatic lines if you're working for him. Why shouldn't I believe you're just another disposable disciple?"
His expression closed down. She could see he hadn't expected his confession to be challenged. She'd boxed him in neatly. He only had two options: confess he was only a minion, or offer proof he was Red John. Either way, he lost.
She let the silence stretch out. When he still didn't answer, she pressed on. "Your wife said you were a powerful disciple. I'm betting that means you know a lot more than some low-level grunt like O'Laughlin. So what happens to you now? Will you be killed like Rebecca Anderson and Todd Johnson? Or are you going to stop jerking me around and tell me how to find Red John before he comes after you next?"
His jaw tightened, but he didn't respond. He looked, Lisbon reflected dispassionately, very much like he'd like to kill her.
She got to her feet. "I'll let you think about it."
She left the room.
xxx
"Wow, boss," Van Pelt said admiringly when Lisbon, Jane, and Cho got back to the CBI. "That was amazing."
Lisbon paused. "You already watched the interview footage?" She'd arranged for her team to have access to the FBI server as part of her deal with Darcy, but she hadn't been aware that their systems allowed for real-time observation of interrogations from the other side of the city.
"Are you kidding?" Rigsby said. "Me 'n Grace would have sold tickets and popcorn if it weren't for, you know—" he gestured vaguely.
"The strong likelihood that some of our colleagues work for Red John and would take half a chance to destroy the case we've been building for the better part of a decade?" Cho suggested.
Rigsby looked sheepish. "Yeah. That."
"Yes, Lisbon did well, considering," Jane said in his most condescending tone. "I still think I could have gotten more out of him, though."
Lisbon was annoyed, but reminded herself she should take this as a backhanded compliment. Jane always got testy when someone other than him did something particularly clever or effective.
"You can have another go at him tomorrow," she promised him. "I think we'll get more out of him if we tag team it."
Jane unruffled somewhat. "Very well."
"Well?" Lisbon prodded him. "Did you get anything useful from observing him?"
"I'm convinced he's not Red John," Jane said heavily.
The team, who hadn't been privy to the details of their park theorizing, burst out with a dozen exclamations and questions.
Jane explained the inconsistencies in the Debbie Lubin case with the Red John murders and relayed the details of what Debbie had overheard. "I think you have it right, Lisbon," he said, deep in thought. "I think Carter is a powerful disciple. One he didn't expect us to take alive. But he wants us to think Carter is Red John, when previously he's been quite upset about anyone taking credit for his work."
"He might have gotten over that if he thought you were going to stab him to death in a shopping mall," Rigsby pointed out.
Lisbon grimaced, but Jane only nodded. "Excellent point, Rigsby. Okay, so Carter is a bishop. An important piece he's willing to sacrifice to save his own skin. But he allowed Carter to confess to us. Carter must have received instructions from him. Through the FBI, possibly, or more likely, from someone at Sac PD."
On the other hand, suppose that's not true. Why not just kill him right away, like Rebecca Anderson and Todd Johnson?" Jane went on. "Neither of them made it to the 24 hour mark before he went after them."
"That was the whole point of putting the Carters in the FBI facility in the first place," Lisbon reminded him.
"Mm," Jane said. "I'm not convinced."
"Let's focus on the evidence." Lisbon turned to Van Pelt. "Anything new come up on the background check?"
"His business seems legit," Vann Pelt said with a frown. "But it's only five years old. And I can't identify the angel investor who gave him the start up capital.
"Have you found anything on his real identity yet?" Jane asked.
Van Pelt shook her head. "Nothing yet, but I'm still looking."
"What about the wife?" Lisbon asked.
"She grew up here in Sacramento," Van Pelt said. "Rigsby talked to her parents."
Rigsby nodded. "They said Sally met Carter at church and they married three months later. They're happy their daughter found a good Christian man to settle down with. Real fire and brimstone types. Big on women submitting to their husbands."
"Yikes," Lisbon said. "What about Carter's parents? They still alive?"
"No," Van Pelt said. "They both died about ten years ago, a couple years apart."
The team spent the rest of the day digging up everything they could find on Timothy Carter, but Van Pelt was right. The man was a damn ghost.
Lisbon got home late. It had been a long day and she was tired, but she tossed and turned in her bed restlessly, unable to settle. Her mind kept cycling through everything they'd learned about Carter in a loop, interrupted only by unhelpful worries about Jane and how he was doing. God. Coal tar soap and strawberries and cream. For the first time, she finally had a better understanding of Jane's desire for vengeance. She'd always understood it at an abstract level. But now, her memory of the crime scene photos and every scene she'd ever worked where a child had been hurt or afraid was overlaid with the phantom scent of strawberries and cream, and the thought was almost unbearable. And for Jane to have found his own child—
They were approaching the tenth anniversary of Angela and Charlotte's deaths. She knew that day would be hard for Jane. That in many ways, he'd never grieved properly. But she'd nonetheless hoped that despite everything, time had done its work and brought a measure of healing and relief to Jane's life. Only now, she felt instead of observing Jane healing from his grief, she'd been invited inside it with him properly for the first time, to experience it raw and fresh.
She finally fell into a troubled sleep around two in the morning, only to be woken by the sound of her phone ringing a little after four.
She fumbled for her phone on the nightstand, feeling as though she'd been drugged. "'Lo?" she mumbled into the phone.
A vaguely familiar female voice greeted her from the other end. "Agent Lisbon?"
"Speaking," Lisbon said without opening her eyes.
"This is Agent Darcy. I'm at the detention facility. Timothy Carter is missing."
Lisbon's eyes flew open. "I'll be right there."