A/N: Two chapters tonight. Enjoy!
xxxx
At Lisbon's insistence, the team reluctantly agreed to stop directing their primary focus on protecting her and returned to the tasks they had been working on prior to the delivery of Red John's lamb. Jane was the only one who was exempt – okay, he had just ignored her orders. Lisbon was dividing her time between continuing her research on what Jane had taken to calling the Iron Properties trifecta and trying to track down Orville Tanner's sister. The latter effort had her heading out of the office quite fairly often for interviews, which made Jane nervous. The fate of Clarissa Allen fresh in his mind, Jane decided to abandon all his earlier lines of inquiry in favor of accompanying Lisbon on all her interviews for the time being.
On the fifth day after receiving the lamb, however, he arrived at the office to find she'd already left. Van Pelt informed him that she'd gone to visit a cousin of Orville and Adelaide Tanner.
"By herself?" Jane said, horrified.
"I think she took Cho with her," Van Pelt offered.
Jane breathed deeply. "Okay."
He called Cho and confirmed Lisbon was safe and sound with the other agent. "I can't believe she left without me," Jane fumed, once he had been assured of her safety.
"I believe it," Cho said. "You're driving her crazy following her around all the time."
"I go on interviews with her all the time!" Jane protested. "Why should this be any different?"
"Because usually you're at least half paying attention to the interview and trying to come up with some scheme or another to catch the murderer. Lately you've just been staring at her like a hawk and assessing your surroundings for threats from Red John."
"I'm watching out for her."
"Lisbon isn't used to being the center of your attention," Cho told him. "It's unsettling for her."
This threw Jane off. "What?"
"You're an intense guy, Jane. Lisbon is used to being around you when that intensity is focused on Red John or another killer. The idea of being the primary object of your observation is a new concept for her. She's finding it a bit unnerving."
"But I…"
"… have been paying attention to her for years?" Cho finished for him. "I know. Thing is, Lisbon doesn't know that. You've done a pretty good job of hiding it from her."
"Is she there with you now?"
"She's inside, talking to the cousin."
"You left her alone in there?"
"I stepped out to take the call."
"You should go back in."
"I will, as soon as you stop freaking out about this."
"Look what happened with Irene Gregson," Jane said, undeterred. "What if the cousin is one of Red John's people? She could be planning to kidnap Lisbon the moment your back is turned."
"The cousin is over seventy years old. I think the boss can take her."
"You can never be too careful."
Cho hung up on him.
Xxx
Jane was waiting on the couch in Lisbon's office when she got back. "You ditched me," he said reproachfully when she came in.
She sighed. "I'm sorry, Jane. I just wasn't up to dealing with your manic obsession today."
"My manic obsession?"
She nodded, too tired to find words that might placate him. "I wanted to talk to the Tanners' cousin and your constant hovering is distracting."
"I'm sorry my efforts to protect your life are so distracting," he said peevishly.
She held up a hand to forestall him. "Please, Jane. Can we fight about this later? I have a bit of a headache and I'd really rather not go ten rounds with you at the moment."
Jane noted the tension in her neck and the way she winced away from the light. Only Lisbon would describe a near crippling migraine as 'a bit of a headache.' "I take it the interview didn't go well," he said abruptly, hoping she recognized his question as the peace offering that it was.
"Correct," Lisbon said, sitting down on the couch next to him and covering her eyes with her hand. "The cousin barely knew anything about Orville and Adelaide Tanner. She never met Orville or Adelaide herself. Their parents didn't get along and lived in different towns. Their parents died when they were young children and then it seems Adelaide died in some kind of mysterious accident when she was eighteen, so it looks like we're not going to be able to track her down and ask her more about how Orville might have met Red John."
Jane got up and went to the kitchen, coming back with a warm, damp towel. "Put this over your eyes," he instructed. "It'll help with the pain."
She accepted the hot compress wearily and did as he suggested. "Thanks."
"What kind of mysterious accident?" Jane asked after a few moments of sitting in silence with her.
"Hm?" she murmured, not lifting her head from where it rested against the back of the couch.
"What kind of mysterious accident did Adelaide Tanner die in?"
"I don't know Jane," she said tiredly, the compress still resting on her eyes. "That's why the accident is mysterious."
"Car accidents are the most common cause of death for young adults under twenty five years old, so it couldn't be that. What would be mysterious about that?" Jane mused.
"It could be mysterious if it was a hit and run and no one knew who was responsible," Lisbon suggested.
"Then why not just say it was a hit and run? The way you said it, and the way I presume the cousin said it to you, was that the nature of the death was mysterious in and of itself."
Lisbon removed the compress from her eyes and looked at him. "You think Adelaide Tanner might have been murdered?"
"It's possible. Maybe Red John did it. Or Orville himself. Or maybe someone else did, and her death caused Orville to turn to Red John for some reason."
"Or she might not have been murdered at all," Lisbon pointed out.
"Perhaps, but I'm betting there was some kind of foul play involved somewhere along the line, or people wouldn't be referring to her death as 'mysterious.'"
"Great," Lisbon muttered. "One more mystery to solve."
"That's the headache talking. You're intrigued, I know you are."
Lisbon considered his theory. "You think the parents might have been murdered, too? They would have been fairly young when they died. It would have been too early for Red John to have had anything to do with it, but if Orville Tanner lost most of his family to violence at a young age, that could explain why he might have been vulnerable to Red John's persuasions."
"Interesting notion," Jane said. "Definitely a possibility. Who took care of Orville and Adelaide after their parents were killed?"
"I don't know. I asked the cousin about that and she wasn't sure. She thought maybe some cousins on the other side of the family might have taken them in."
They were interrupted by a shout from the bullpen.
"What is it?" Lisbon said, craning her neck to see what had happened.
"Rigsby," Jane said. "Either he's just made a particularly good shot throwing wadded up paper into the waste basket, or he's found something."
Lisbon got up slowly, as though the movement pained her. She set down the compress and walked out to the bullpen somewhat stiffly.
Jane put his hand at the small of her back to support her as he followed her out of the office and she leaned into his touch.
"What's up?" Lisbon asked when they joined the rest of the team in the bullpen. Jane let his hand fall to his side but stayed close to her.
"I found her," Rigsby announced triumphantly. "It took forever, but I found her."
"Found who?" Lisbon asked.
"Rebecca Anderson," he said proudly. "I finally found out something about her that doesn't have anything to do with her unhealthy obsession with cats."
"What'd you find out?" Lisbon said.
"I took your advice, boss, and traced the numbers she listed as references."
"I thought they were all disconnected," Van Pelt said.
"Oh, they were," Rigsby said cheerfully. "Here's the thing, though. The first two numbers were for fake businesses. I couldn't turn up a thing on either of them. The third one, though, was listed as a government office."
"So you were able to get through to that one after all?" Lisbon said, confused.
"Nope. That one was out of service, too. But I thought it was weird she would have gone to the trouble of making up two businesses and use a real organization for the third, so I looked up the number for the government office she'd listed on her resume. I called them and it turned out she actually worked there."
Lisbon frowned. "If she actually worked there, why would she list a fake number?"
"Because she was fired," Rigsby said gleefully.
"What for?" Jane wanted to know.
"Stealing seals," Rigsby said.
"Seals?" Van Pelt repeated.
"Yup. She worked for the county records office. She worked there for over fifteen years, never had a single complaint filed against her, and then one day her supervisor caught her stealing seals—you know, those fancy stamps they use on official documents."
"The county records office," Lisbon repeated with a note of wonder. "Where they issue birth certificates."
Rigsby nodded. "Exactly."
"Ah, official birth certificates," Jane said. "The mother's milk of identity thieves."
"You think that's how Red John set up fake identities for his people?" Cho asked.
"Of course it is," Jane said. "She probably had a whole setup at home, hidden in a cupboard behind her porcelain frog collection. A fancy printer, the right kind of cardstock, she'd have been in business."
"So who did the CBI actually talk to when they called the number listed in her references?"
"I tracked down one of her former co-workers. She told me Rebecca gave her a burner phone and paid her a thousand dollars to pretend the phone belonged to the county records office and sing her praises if anyone called asking for a reference."
Van Pelt frowned. "That seems like a really important job."
Lisbon looked at her. "What, working in the county records office?"
Van Pelt shook her head. "No, I mean for Red John. Having someone like that on the inside to supply fake identities to his other disciples would have been invaluable."
"But she wasn't on the inside anymore," Cho pointed out. "She got fired, remember?"
"Yeah, but why not set her up in another records office? Obviously having someone on the inside of an office like that was useful."
"Because he needed someone he could trust to get themselves hired by the CBI and assigned to Bosco's team so he could monitor their investigation," Jane said. "He must have known her for a long time, if he trusted her enough for these critical tasks."
"But he clearly didn't trust her that much, or he wouldn't have killed her just because she'd been caught," Van Pelt said.
"I still have no idea how she connected up with him in the first place," Rigsby said. "I told you she worked at the county records office for twenty years, but there's no sign of her before that—nothing."
"So Rebecca Anderson is probably not her real name," Lisbon concluded. "She must have had a few identity theft tricks up her sleeve before she faked her way into that position."
"Maybe she met him while she worked there," Van Pelt suggested. "He could have met her and found out she worked there. He might have seen it as an opportunity."
"Maybe," Lisbon said doubtfully. "The lack of a paper trail before that is suspicious, though."
"I agree," Jane said. "It's possible you're right, Van Pelt, but it seems more likely that he knew her first and placed her there on purpose."
"Why do you think he killed her, then, if he'd known her so long and trusted her so much?" Cho asked. "She was definitely loyal to him. She didn't seem like she was ever going to give him up, based on that interview you had with her."
"Not on purpose, no," Jane said. "But people can give away information without realizing they are doing it. If I'd had her longer, I might have been able to trick her into revealing something she didn't intend to share."
"Too bad he got to her before you could," Cho commented.
Lisbon shook her head. "I still can't believe how easy it is for him to just cut down one of his own people like that."
"I don't think it is easy for him," Jane said slowly. "I think Rebecca Anderson being captured represented the loss of a great asset to him. To Red John, once a person is no longer useful to him, they become a liability. Rebecca was definitely going down for the murders of Bosco and his team—to him, there was no advantage to keeping her any longer, and a very definite risk in allowing her to live. Still, I think killing her cost him deeply."
"What do you mean?" Cho asked.
"He'd like us to believe he has a limitless supply of followers and the loss of one doesn't mean anything to him, but I don't think that's true. I'm not saying there aren't other followers out there that we don't know about, but it's not true that it doesn't impact him when we take one out of commission. He's not infallible. He makes mistakes. He knows relying on these people makes him vulnerable. We struck a blow to him when we caught Rebecca. And Irene Gregson. And all the rest."
Jane looked around at the rest of the team.
"Slowly but surely, we're weakening him."
