Title: Red Window

Author: Shannon – shannyfish

Disclaimer: I do not own "The Mentalist" or its characters, Warner Brothers and Bruno Heller do. This is merely for entertainment purposes only.

Rating: R (to be safe)

Summary: Sequel to "Suffering is the Best Punishment". With Lisbon gone, Jane leaves CBI to set out to find her and to kill Red John. He won't let Red John kill his family again.

Warning: adult themes

Chapter 5 – "The Clues"

Author's Note: Trailer for "Suffering is the Best Punishment"…not sure how I'd make one for this one, but I shall think on it!

http: / www. mega video. com/ ?v = Q581AW2H

(take out the spaces for )

...

"They are like the clue in the labyrinth, or the compass in the night"- Joseph Joubert

CBI Headquarters

Postcards.

That's all he cared about at the moment. They were the only clues they had to find Lisbon. And that was all that mattered. He didn't care about the cases that Hightower was forcing him to consult on. He'd walk along and make a comment here and there and just pretend that he cared in order to appease her and to continue getting his postcards when they came. He was pretty sure that she was tampering with the mail or something that was a felony by holding them from him, but he was also pretty sure that she could somehow get a court to not see it that way. So, he tried to play along.

"Jane," Hightower said.

He was in his normal place. On his couch. Pretending to sleep. Obviously someone had no manners and was rudely attempting to wake his non-sleeping self. Jane tried to pretend that he didn't hear her. He thought that maybe she'd just walk off and forget about whatever she was going to complain about. That was why she was there.

"Jane, I know you're awake."

"Well, no one can sleep with you nagging them awake," he complained and pretended to wake up. He looked up at her. He didn't even think about moving into a sitting position. He was actually quite comfortable there.

"You're not following on your end of the deal."

"Excuse me?" he said.

"You used to close cases. There hasn't been a single case closed since you came back," Hightower told him.

"Come on, I'm just a consultant," he said. "You flatter me, but in all honesty it was Lisbon who solved the cases."

"Lisbon's reports—"

"She's too modest," Jane said quickly. "You can call up Minelli and ask him."

Hightower just stared at him before presenting a postcard in an evidence bag.

Jane sat up quickly and grabbed for it. The postcard was of the brightly lit town of Reno, which was in Nevada. His heart raced as he tried to conceive of what that meant as far as the CBI's involvement in finding Lisbon. They'd crossed state lines. He knew it was a possibility, but he'd wanted to believe that she was still somewhere close.

"You're not going to get a peek at this until the two cases that you're supposed to be working on are solved," Hightower told him.

"Lisbon's out there!" he shouted, getting to his feet. "She's giving us clues and you're playing games with me?"

"Don't think that I don't have agents working on this, Mr. Jane. I do. You're just not working on it or seeing what comes of it. Not yet."

And with that, Hightower left and took the postcard with her.

His mind raced and he raked his hands through his hair in frustration as he spun around and ended up facing a concerned bunch that consisted of Van Pelt, Rigsby, and Cho. So, maybe Cho looked more like his normal Cho face, but Jane liked to believe he was concerned as well. He needed to know what the postcard said. He needed to know what they'd learned from it. He just needed to hold it and see it and know that Lisbon was still alive.

Walking to where the team was sitting, he pulled out the most recent file. The case was of a man who was found drown in his own bathtub. Everyone had an alibi and there were no obvious suspects as far as the team was concerned. Jane knew better. "His wife killed him," Jane said. The only reason they had this case was because of the slight bruising that had appeared after he'd been removed from the bathtub.

"That's not possible," Van Pelt said. "She has an alibi."

"Mrs. Williams and her alibi…her friend…they were more than friends and he probably helped her do it," Jane filled them in. He'd been there and he'd seen all the clues, but he hadn't felt up to the task at the time in order to really run through things in his head. Now with the postcard on the line, he was working extra hard. "There has to be something… Unusual credit statement… They probably met up at a hotel somewhere since he lives with his mother…not exactly romantic."

"We haven't pulled her credit statements," Van Pelt admitted.

"Well, now I can't possibly do everything," Jane told her.

"Jane," Rigsby chastised.

"Do you know that Red John's taken Lisbon across state lines?" Jane asked. He was upset. He was emotional. He was angry. He was determined. He wasn't going to let this get to him to the point where he couldn't function. He was going to use the team to his advantage. They'd go to bat for Lisbon any day of the week. "Hightower has a postcard from Reno. She won't let me see it or know what the results are from whatever tests they're running until these two cases are solved."

"I'll get a warrant," Cho said quickly before moving towards his desk and his phone.

"The other case, though?" Rigsby said. "You mean the kidnapping? I don't know that that's solvable."

Rigsby was right. It had been weeks and they didn't know anything more. They'd just run into dead ends. And they really had tried. Jane had looked at that picture for so long and every time he wondered if she looked something like Lisbon had when she was a little girl. He knew that he was far too focused on Lisbon, he was seeing her everywhere, but he couldn't honestly stop from doing it.

Lisbon was the reason he was back at CBI.

Lisbon was the reason he just couldn't concentrate.

What could he do though? Hightower wasn't going to do anything if he didn't solve the other case as well. He was sure that she was feeling the heavy hand of the senator as well. Jane just…he'd looked at that case. He and Lisbon both had. It had been a priority before Lisbon had been taken. They'd spent hours and hours on it and nothing. It was like whoever took her was a ghost.

"Let's get the tapes for the gala from that night," Jane said. They had to have missed something. There was nothing else that they could go on. They pretty much only had the video tapes. No one had seen anything. That would be far too easy.

"We've looked them over a hundred times, Jane," Rigsby said.

"How many cameras did they have?"

"Ten, I think," Rigsby said.

"Think about it," Jane told them all. "It was an international event and at the capitol building… There were only ten cameras? Really? They probably have ten just covering the main entrance."

Kaydance Millary had not yet been found. Normally they strived to find a missing child within the first forty-eight hours. That didn't happen. She'd been missing for nearly a month now. There were no leads. He didn't suspect the parents. Well at least not of kidnapping her, he suspected them of being bad parents though. Actually, he was pretty damn sure that they were. But being bad parents meant that they just had to live with the fact that their daughter was taken and they were technically both responsible for it.

"I'll see if I can get any more footage," Van Pelt said as she moved towards her desk in order to make the calls.

"Wait," Jane said. "Cho should talk to Hightower and see if she can get them. We've already put in the request. Lisbon saw to it personally…perhaps Hightower has some more pull with those at the capitol building?"

"It's worth a try," Cho said.

…

It was late and everyone was getting ready to leave. Cho had insisted that they all walk out together, which Jane figured was Cho's way of making sure he didn't do anything stupid. Cho was a smart man. Jane had been pondering breaking into Hightower's office and commandeering his mail. He was still pretty sure that it was some kind of offense to mess with the mail.

So, he'd decided to make Cho's life easier…at least today…and comply. They were all waiting at the elevator when an unexpected voice told them to hold. He turned to see Hightower standing there with the plastic bagged postcard from Lisbon. His eyes didn't leave it.

"Mr. Jane, I know our deal was for you to close both cases, but since I've recently discovered that security at the capitol building didn't give us all the evidence I've decided to let you see it now," she said and held it out. "Don't think that this means that if another one comes in though that I'm just going to hand it over. If you continue to close cases then you'll get it right away… Do we have an understanding?"

"I understand," Jane said as he accepted the offering. He turned it over and read the back of it. It was addressed to him as before. The message was longer this time. 'I don't know where they're taking me. All I know is that they don't intend to hurt me. Three men are with me. This is only a stop, we're moving on in the morning'. This time she signed it 'Teresa' and that made Jane a little more concerned.

He was sure that she knew that this would be evidence, that all of CBI would see it and she never really went by her first name. It was always Lisbon. He figured that it was probably something that she'd learned that made it easier for her to be taken seriously; it made her more like the other guys in law enforcement. And he'd gone along with it, almost always. He'd called her Lisbon. Jane knew that maybe she was scared and this was her way of unconsciously passing it along. Whatever he meant, he knew that they needed to find her.

"The postcard has so many fingerprints on it that it took quite a bit of searching to get all the matches. They're Lisbon's and then several people who work at the gas station store that this was purchased at. We contacted them and they said that Lisbon hadn't been alone in the store; two men were with her at the time. We're waiting on the video now. She'd hidden it in the bathroom in the paper towel dispenser and had written on a paper towel that she needed help and that the postcard needed to be mailed. Apparently they almost threw it away," Hightower explained.

…

It seemed like time dragged on and Jane felt like this cruel punishment of time stretching was only making things harder. They still hadn't solved the Millary kidnapping, but the tapes had helped them. They'd found the face of the man who had managed to take the girl's hand and lead her quietly and unsuspectingly out of the gala's main room. They'd run it through every database but so far nothing had come back. It seemed like they were closer, but then at the same time Jane felt like they were far off.

There was something they were missing. That was all he could think. Though he didn't think that it was something that they could really help. It was something that hadn't presented itself yet.

"Jane," Hightower summoned.

He got up from his couch quickly; he was hoping that they'd found some results regarding the two men on the video. He'd watched it and the first video several times. In the second one, Lisbon had seemed exhausted and uncomfortable. In her postcard, she'd said there were three men, and they still didn't have his face.

"Did you find something?" he asked.

"There are no hits on either of those faces so far. We've tried to widen the search in hopes that something comes up," she informed him.

"Oh," he said disappointed and turned his gaze downward.

"It's been almost a week," Hightower said. "Maybe you should think about taking some time off…"

He knew that he'd been more so mopey lately but he couldn't help it. The fear of never solving the Millary case and then not finding Lisbon was starting to weigh on him. He'd tried to do his job as well as before, but somehow he didn't think that was possible without Lisbon. She added to his antics…or at least added to how he did things. Cho wasn't the same as Lisbon. He was good at keeping the team going and doing his job, but he wasn't Lisbon.

"Ma'am!" came an urgent voice.

Jane followed Hightower's turned head towards the mail boy. He was carrying a plastic evidence bag with a postcard. His eyes widened a bit. Was this a new postcard? Was this Lisbon?

"You said that if another postcard came for Mr. Jane to bag it and make sure that you received it right away," the young man said and held it out for her.

"Thank you," Hightower said and accepted the bag and then nodded to the young man.

Jane watched him leave and then looked to Hightower. He didn't care that tests weren't run on it yet. He just wanted to see it. To read the clue that could be contained on it. He could see the front picture side of it. It was a colorful one with the state name 'Idaho' illustrated on the front. His heart dropped a bit. They'd gone over another state line.

The postcard was offered to him without a word after a moment and Jane had to admit that he was a bit surprised. "Thank you," he choked out before flipping it. It was addressed to him as before. "The house with the red window," he read aloud. "She didn't sign it this time," he said with a bit of concern.

The house with the red window.

He pondered it for a moment and then handed it back to Hightower with a bit of hesitation. He'd been able to keep the other two since they'd been processed. He knew that this one needed to be processed as well in order to get more information. It had to be done. But these postcards, these clues, these lines of communication…they were the only connection he had to Lisbon at the moment. The other two postcards were safely locked away in his desk.

"Maybe it means that they've finally stopped," Hightower said as she read the message as well.

"The house with the red window," Jane repeated. "Maybe once the labs have done their thing it'll make more sense," he said. He shook his head. "Maybe the red window is distinctive. He could only hope. It was another glimmer of hope… He'd take it.

…

TBC…