Chapter 6 - Manipulations
She tiptoed quietly from her room as the sun rose high in the hills behind them. She looked over at the couch and saw that Jane was sprawled out on the couch, the photograph of his late wife on the table next to his empty flute, which was beside the emptied bottle of wine. She breathed inwardly and crept up behind the tan couch, reaching for the cream-colored blanket that was draped over the back.
Lisbon looked down at him and felt immense guilt for what she manipulated him into telling her. Though she had been truthful in everything she told him, her manipulation came from drawing on Jane's emotional state; reaping the benefits of the impact his wife's death and the mental representation of it had on his hard, iron-clad, cop persona. It didn't feel good to manipulate him into sharing how Red John was the connection between them. But, if she was being honest, she didn't regret it. The connection she suspected was confirmed. He wanted proof and evidence? He got it.
She picked up the blanket and walked around the couch to face him, leaning over to drape it over Jane. She gave out a yelp, however, when he suddenly reached up and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her down on top of him. The shock registered on her face as she looked up at him and saw that one of his eyes were open, a ghost of a smile turning the corners of his mouth.
"You shouldn't sneak up on a man with a gun," he told her softly. "It's dangerous. I could have mistaken you for an intruder."
She scrambled back off him and stood, throwing the blanket at him, hitting him in the face with it. He laughed as he sat up and uncovered his face, throwing the blanket to the cushions beside him. She noticed that he put a hand to his head and rubbed his temples with his hands. She bit her half-healed lip and sighed, finally heading into the kitchen. She dug around the cabinets, finally locating the headache medicine. She grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with tap water.
"Here," she told him, handing over the aspirin. "For your headache."
"Is this because you feel guilty about last night? Resurrecting memories I wanted to keep buried?" He clearly wasn't over last night.
"It's the only way to get you to listen to me," she told him, sitting on the chair next to the couch. "I didn't want to do it."
"Sure," he laughed, popping the aspirin into his mouth and taking them dry without the water. "But we can't touch your tragedy, huh? Off limits?" He shook his head in amusement. "We are doing it your way."
"Getting buzzed on wine when you are protecting someone from a serial killer isn't exactly standard practice," she told him, changing the subject. "I am sorry about last night."
He waved a dismissive hand toward her. "Nothing about this whole thing is standard practice, sweetheart." He sat back and undid the buttons of his vest. He could see her watching him closely as his fingers wrapped around each one, flinging the button through the loop. He smiled discreetly at that. He looked up at her and watched her cheeks grow crimson, her eyes falling back to his.
"What do we do next?" she asked. "I mean since we know Red John's connection between your wife and me."
"Nothing," he told her. "Minelli told us to come back up here and stay low. That's just what we are going to do."
"So now you want to follow the rules?" she asked him, crossing her arms. "You know he's not finished, Jane. We need to get out of here. You said I would be a sitting duck at my house. Imagine me here. He will find out where I am and come looking to finish me."
"Of course not," he told her, trying to knead his neck muscles with his hand. "Serial killers don't take vacations, Teresa." He dropped his hand and shrugged one broad shoulder. "But we are up here, and he is way down there for the time being. If anything happens, someone will come."
"Why send us to a place that has no phone access? What sense does that make? How would you call for help?" she asked, her mind racing now. "Doesn't that seem a little counter-productive?"
"Nice to know Sac PD gives a shit, huh?" He laughed darkly. "They don't give a damn, Teresa. But I will always save you. I will. No matter how much you get on my nerves with your psychic crap and digging up things about my past, I will always put you first. Take solace in that." His face was serious. "If you have to choose only that to trust me on, it would be a safe bet."
"I have no choice," said Lisbon. "You're the only one here with a gun."
"There. See? Who said trust is dead between us?" He smiled a dazzling, innocent smile. "Progress."
"Meh," she replied with a slight smile of her own. She was silent for a moment. "Why do you hate Sac PD so much? You never answered that."
He looked at her and leaned forward. "When you tell me something about your past, I will tell you more about mine. That's my deal. Until then, case closed. Conversation over. 10-4, over and out!" He lifted himself from the couch. "Want eggs? I'm still a little woozy from last night, so you might get a shell or two..."
"My husband," she said, causing him to spin around and stop his advancements. "His name was Max. My son's name was Ethan," she told him, touching the ring with her fingers unconsciously. "They were murdered almost eight years ago." She shook her head and closed her eyes, unwilling to allow the exhumation of memories to overwhelm her. "My...my son...he..." She reopened her eyes and found Jane standing directly in front of her, his eyes soft with knowing. He knew what she was feeling. She had made him feel that last night.
"Shh," he told her, holding out his hand and stroking her knuckles with his fingers. "It's okay. Take your time."
"My reading of people has a negative impact," said Lisbon. "I don't think you've read my whole file, have you?"
He dropped his hand and shook his head. "I didn't get a chance to get through it all," he admitted. "Why?"
"The whole thing is in there," she told him. "How my husband begged me to stop pretending I could read minds and cold-reading people and collecting the money. How he had told him that things like this could get me in trouble. He wasn't wrong. He was never wrong." She cleared her throat. "So, you need some help with those eggs?" she asked, moving around him to the kitchen.
"I don't want to hear about it from your file," he told her. "Which I gave back to Minelli, anyway. I want to hear it from you, not pieces of paper." He walked past her and reached for a frying pan. "But since you told me something, I guess I can tell you the story of why I hate the Sac PD. Those lazy, no good bastards and their half-assed police work." He sat the pan on the stove and turned on the burner. "Hand me two eggs."
When Grace Van Pelt walked into the CB, she knew something wasn't right. It was strange to see Minelli's door closed this late into the morning. As she walked closer to the door, she noticed the light was still on. The uneasiness crept on her as she knocked on the window. When she didn't get an answer, she stepped on her tiptoes and looked through the clear top of his office walls, over the black partition on the bottom.
Inside, Virgil Minelli's office was wrecked. There were cabinets all thrown from the walls they stood against, papers and folders and files spread all over the floors and his desk. Grace's breath caught in her throat. She opened the door carefully and entered. She stepped inside and looked around at the mess.
"What the...?" she asked the empty room.
It was when she took two more steps inside that she saw a pair of legs stretched out behind Minelli's desk. Grace gasped and ran over, dropping to her knees and shaking the body of Virgil Minelli.
"Sir? Sir?" she called, shaking him violently in an attempt to wake him. "Virgil!"
She turned herself and grabbed the telephone off his desk and dialed down to security. Once she explained the situation and was assured they were on their way with help, Grace tried once again to rouse her boss. Finally, she felt him stir beneath his fingers. He groaned as she helped him sit up, propping him up against the back of his desk.
"Boss? You okay?" Grace asked. "I called for help. What happened?"
"I'm fine," he said though his voice betrayed him. "I don't know what happened, Van Pelt. One shock to the back and I was out. They take anything?" he asked, his breathing speeding up.
Grace looked around, her eyes scanning everything. It was hard to tell because the files had all been torn from their places and strewn all about the room. She shook her head and looked back down at her boss, who wasn't looking too well.
"I can't tell," she told him truthfully. "You didn't have anybody's files in here did you?" she asked.
"I had some files transferred here a couple days ago," he told her. "Is there anything in the bin on my desk?"
Grace could hear security coming, the elevator dinging and their heavy boots heading in their direction. Grace propped herself up and looked at the disheveled desk. There was nothing in the bin except a folder.
"A folder," she told him. "It's kind of flat, though. Looks empty."
"Shit," he whispered, watching as Grace got to her feet to meet the security guards. Medical help for Minelli was still coming. "Van pelt!"
"Yes, boss?" she asked, leaning back down close to him.
"I need you to do me a favor. It's important."
"But..."
"Grace, trust me."
"Okay, boss. What is it?"
"Go warn Jane that someone stole Teresa Lisbon's file."
"We were doing a night sting," he started, pushing her plate toward her and sitting down with his own. "It was my squad searching out a neighborhood we thought might have some illegal activity. You know? Drugs, gangs? We thought they'd use it as a dump site. Throw illegal weapons, drugs there. That sort of thing."
Lisbon listened intently, watching as he scooped eggs into his mouth. "What happened?"
He looked up at her and chewed his eggs thoughtfully. "Well, after sitting there for about three hours, I see this small movement coming from the back of a house about four rows down. In the shadows."
"What did you do?" She was fully engrossed in his story of why he hates Sac PD.
She couldn't blame him. She hated Sac PD, too, but because they had shuffled her around from person to person when she approached them for information. If her surviving Red John had taught her anything, it was the fact that the CBI gave way more cares than the Sac PD did. And, in particular, Patrick Jane.
He would never admit it, but she saw it in his face. He cared about her. Caring and trusting were two very different things. You can care about someone so deeply you feel it in your heart, but not trust them. And this was the case with Jane. He didn't treat her like a victim. That lent itself to the fact that he, too, is a victim. He treated her with apprehension, sure, but he also treated her better than just pushing her aside and telling her to suck it up.
"I was the investigating officer. I investigated," he told her, shoving a forkful of egg into his mouth. "Rigsby and Cho were in a car two lengths behind me. I called back on my radio and told them I saw a subject in motion." He lifted his eyes to hers and shrugged. "Cho and Rigsby stayed in the front of the place while I went to the back. The kitchen door was open, so I walked in." He smiled at her. "I was sure I would be catching a crook that night!" His smile disappeared. "I walked in, and I hear a noise from upstairs. I head to the front with my weapon out. I didn't call out because I didn't want them to run."
He finished his eggs and stood to put his dish in the sink, turning around and leaning on the counter. His expression changed a little. It became hard and defunct of any emotion. He looked like he was thinking back on it. She cleared her throat softly and stood, taking her own plate over to the sink and leaning herself on the counter next to him. She looked over at him and smiled a little.
"Sounds like the night you saved my life," she said. "Minus the not calling out part. I never properly thank you. Thank you for coming to get me, Patrick."
He gazed at her unwaveringly. This was the first time she told him he had saved her life. She didn't back down from his gaze, either. She had wanted to tell him that he saved her life when she had shown up on his doorstep, but she didn't get the chance to do it. Or, rather, her trust wasn't in its first stages to do so.
He cleared his throat and finally looked away from her. "Right. Well, I go upstairs, and I turn to wordlessly tell Cho and Rigsby to hold their positions. You know? Wave to them and tell them to stay put. Like dogs!" He laughed and then sighed. "Anyway, I see something go behind me from the corner of my eye. I turn and follow the stairs and I see a door slightly open at the end of the hall. I go down there slowly, gun drawn. I open the door further, and nobody is there. As I turn around, I see him! He is taking off down the stairs."
"Wouldn't Rigsby or Cho catch him?" she asked.
"Ah, and there is the shtick. When he bounds down the stairs, Rigsby and Cho are gone. I chase the guy out the kitchen door, but he was gone in a flash. It was two in the morning, and there was no light out the back of the property. Kind of like your place," he told her, eyeing her sideways. "I see one last thing before I lose him, though."
"What?"
"Coming back to that. So, I run out and around the building, and I see Sac PD pushing Cho and Rigsby along the sidewalk. I run up to them and ask them what the hell their problem is. They tell me that this is their jurisdiction and that we didn't get the proper approval to do our sting. Bullshit!" He placed a hand through his hair. "It was all set up."
Lisbon looked at him in confusion after a moment. "You hate Sac PD for that? I know you said not to read you, but I sense more to this story, Jane." She turned to him, leaning her hip against the sink.
"Oh, there is," he confirmed, nodding his head. "But you need to tell me more about your past before you get any more of mine." He smiled mischievously at her.
She smiled back. She couldn't help it. He was playing a cat and mouse game with her. Something she was too good at for him to win. But she'd let him think he had the upper hand. She reached out quickly and straightened his vest, doing up his buttons again and running her hands along the silky material.
"You'll be waiting a long time, Patrick," she told him quietly, looking up at him. She felt his hands cup her elbows.
"I'll wait," he assured her. "We've got nothing but time, Teresa."
She saw his head tilt toward her infinitesimally, so she pushed her arms down and stepped away from him. She walked past him, leaving a sizable gap before turning back to him as he called out to her. He was going to kiss her! For the second time since they'd held up here, he was leaning in to kiss her. She had to get out of that situation. Though she felt a pull toward this cop with an attitude issue and mood swings, something was holding her back.
"You're welcome, Teresa."
"For what?" she asked.
"Thanking me for saving your life," he told her. "I told you I would save you, Lisbon. That's one." He held up his finger and smiled.
She smiled back, turned around and headed for her room. Once she got behind the closed door, she sighed and looked down at her hand. Opening her palm, the front door key that Jane used to lock the front door was sitting in her hand. Her manipulation to get him to be distracted enough to not notice her hand slipping in his vest pocket as she done up his buttons worked. The wanting to know about Sac PD? A successful bait and deflection to get him to trust her enough. She thought about going out the windows, but she noticed that every window she looked at, including the back patio door, had alarms on them that went off whenever they were opened. While she was pretty sound minded, she had no familiarity with technology and would never be able to cut off the alarms. Damn those drug lords and their over-the-top precautions!
Then there was the story she had told him to get him talking. The story of her family was almost true. She changed the names and number of years ago they were murdered, taking a shot in the dark that he didn't know the truth. She still didn't trust him and him telling her he never bothered to read all of her file fell in her favor. His trust for her was starting to come around. She felt guilty about that. Everything else was honest. The thank you for saving her life, even the temptation in her eyes for him. The attraction he felt certainly wasn't one-sided, but she couldn't focus on that. It was a diversion and a dangerous thing to be involved with. She told him the truth. She wasn't looking for romance. It didn't mean it wouldn't still come.
She'd go while he was busy in his own room or something. Be gone before he noticed the key missing. She couldn't stay around here and hope to god he could protect her. They were doing no good here. Red John would be here. She had no doubt. Even he had no doubt, but he was doing nothing about it. She knew a lot about Red John. She should. Her son and husband were murdered by him. Just another cog in the connections. Red John was playing a dangerous game. Where would she go? What would she do when she finally left? Go back home? She was a sitting duck in both places. She'd have to figure that out when the time came for her to take off. Her only regret was leaving Jane behind. But he was a cop. He had a gun. He could protect himself ... right? She took the key and placed it in her jeans pocket. She'd figure everything out later. Right now, she needed a bath and clean clothes and time to think.