Chapter 41 – Cognition

Lisbon's hands gripped the steering wheel as she watched him through the rear view mirror. She turned her cadence soft and non-threatening as she read his face and turned her mind away from the Glock pressed into the back of her head. Still her voice was a little shaky as she spoke.

"Jeff, put the gun down first. If I drive with that pressed into my skull a speed bump could set it off. She paused then told him softly, "You don't want that."

She read his reaction, saw him swallow accordingly allowing her to take a breath. He didn't want to kill her, of that she was certain. Though he was unshaven and sleep deprived by the heavy stubble and the dilation of his eyes. And he was definitely scared. Even if he didn't want to harm her, all that only added up to making his actions unpredictable.

"If I didn't have this gun to your head you'd arrest me and I..." he licked his lips as he took a gulp of air while his eyes shot up to the CBI building in front of them, "and I can't have that," he said with determination. "Now drive us out of here, Agent Lisbon. And not a word to the Security Guard on your way out."

"Okay," she said before taking another breath and starting the engine.

She'd done exactly as she was told and a few minutes later she was clear of Headquarters and driving east from it. Forster sat in the backseat, his gun pressed into her side as she drove. "So, where are we going?" she said in as conversational a tone as she could muster. "There's a turnoff up ahead. Stay in this lane or take it?"

The sound of her cell phone made him press the gun deeper into her waist. "Don't answer that," he told her.

"It's probably my partner," she said. "If I don't take it he'll be suspicious. Believe me you don't want that."

Ignoring her he answered instead, "Turn off at next exit, we need to find somewhere to talk. And lose the security detail you have following you first."

"She's not answering," Jane said, furrowing his brow.

"Probably driving," Cho replied at his side. "Just eat what she brings you, don't be so fussy."

"Hmm, probably." A sense of unease washed over him. Telling himself he was being paranoid he added in a more jovial tone, "You're one to talk, having a conniption every time there's pineapple on a pizza."

Cho's lips upturned slightly. "Fruit on a pizza is wrong. Plain and simple."

Jane smiled faintly then sighed, his finger hovering over her name again while he bit his lip.

"She's fine," Cho said.

Following Forster's orders Lisbon parked up at a fast food parking lot. "Why here?" she asked him.

"Because I'm confident you won't shoot me here," he replied, nodding to the young families walking to and from their vehicles all around them. "Too much chance of someone innocent getting hurt."

"Who says I want to shoot you at all?" she said evenly. "You're the one with the gun, Jeff. You're in charge of what happens next, not me."

"You blame me for what happened to your Agent."

Lisbon breathed out, removed the hostility she felt for him from her voice, "Red John attacked my Agent, not you, Jeff. Her name is Grace, you must know her if you were at Wayne's bachelor party. She's a beautiful girl, inside and out."

"Stop it," he said through a ragged breath. "I'm a trained Agent, Lisbon. I know all about the psychological mumbo jumbo. If I let go of this gun then you'll either kill me or arrest me."

Her patience exhausted she snapped. "You were the one who sought me out, Jeff. Now either tell me what you want or let me go. What is it, a message from Red John? You here to tell me how clever he was?!"

He blinked quickly. "What? No! Of course not!"

She turned in her seat suddenly to face him, surprising him and making him press his weapon into her stomach. Openly hostile she shot him a withering look. "You were right earlier. I do want to kill you. I want to rip your head off for what happened to Grace. What you allowed to happen. So what the hell do you want with me? There's only one way to make up for some of that and that's for you to tell me who Red John is."

He stared into her eyes and shook his head. "I...I didn't know that was going to happen to her...honestly I didn't."

"Even if that were true, and I don't know if it is, you knew something terrible was going to happen as a result of that text, don't take me for a fool and tell me you didn't."

As tears pricked at his eyes she took the opportunity while he was emotionally distracted to draw her weapon on him that she'd surreptitiously unholstered as she'd driven. "Tears won't help you, Jeff. But the name might or so help me god I'll end you right now."

He stared at the weapon as it faced his heart before looking her in her eye and saw her determination. After a moment he slowly put his gun down on the seat beside him and shook his head as a few more tears escaped, his shoulders slumped like the defeated man he was. Quietly, "Then you better pull the trigger, Agent Lisbon. Because I don't know his name."

Alicia Van Pelt had the same striking red hair and statuesque figure as her daughter, although her tresses had darkened to mahogany as the years had passed. Currently they were tied up in a loose chignon as she stood at the coffee machine in the hospital. Her husband Amos stood a couple of inches taller and wider than Rigsby with short salt and pepper hair and was pacing back and forth up and down the corridor beside her as he talked on his cell phone.

With a weary expression Alicia fed dollars into the machine until three insipid beverages were dispensed. As Amos came off the phone he took one off her as she balanced the other two in her hands.

He smiled softly at his wife and nodded, "That's the last of it. Everything's been cancelled for Saturday. Wedding is officially off."

"Thanks, sweetheart," she sighed. "You okay?"

He nodded furiously. "Of course."

He stole a glance at Rigsby in the waiting room as they walked back towards him who was sitting on a chair there, his legs shaking as he rocked manically on his toes, the frustration of waiting for news almost severing his last nerve.

"Hey, you don't have to act all strong for me," she admonished him gently. "I'm not one of the football players you coached, Amos."

He shrugged as a small smile crept up on his lips as his wife called him out as she usually did. He sighed, "What am I supposed to say, honey? Our daughter..." He looked away as he took a deep breath, never wanting to appear weak in front of her. "We already lost one of our girls...what if we lose the other one too?"

Tears pricked at her eyes and she took a breath of her own. "I don't know," she admitted. "But I'm not willing to go there yet."

She nodded to Rigsby, "I also know one person right now who could use one of your half time speeches so get to it, Coach."

Her bossy tone made him smile. "So now I've taken care of the wedding arrangements you've found another way of keeping me busy, huh?"

"If it helps keep those negative thoughts away then yes."

"Can you track her phone?" Jane asked Cho as a second call to Lisbon went unanswered.

"Not from here," Cho supplied as he kept his eyes trained on the playground entrance.

"Something's wrong."

Cho turned his head towards him and said nothing for a second. The worry in Jane's expression then made him say, "Let me call her security detail."

A brief call to them later Jane spoke before Cho had to. "She lost them." He tapped his hand on his thigh. "Damn it, why would she do that? Some security detail if they're that easy to lose." A call to his phone made him stop his tirade. He rolled his eyes with a sigh as he answered it. "Lisbon, thank god, where the hell-"

He stopped talking and listened as she interrupted him. Finally he said, "And where are you now? Okay, Cho and I will be right there. Don't let him out of your sight."

"I'm sorry," Rigsby said to Alicia and Amos Van Pelt as she handed him a coffee. "This is all my fault," he added as he hung his head.

"Talking like that isn't helping her, Wayne," Amos said as he sat down beside him. "Right now do I wish she'd chosen a different profession? You bet ya. But you know Grace, stubborn and pigheaded as a mule. She wouldn't be swayed from being a cop no matter how much I tried to get her to choose something safer."

Rigsby smiled faintly and a laugh escaped him. "Her stubbornness is one of the things I love most about her."

"Just as well," the other man said, "because you'll have years more of that ahead of you."

"God, I hope so," Rigsby said through a ragged breath.

"And that same stubbornness is going to get her through this," her mother said with conviction. "You think she's going to let this setback stop her from achieving everything she wants in life? And you're a lucky man that she wants that future with you."

Rigsby smiled up at the woman who would be his mother in law one day, the strength in her expression reminding him of her daughter's. He got up from the seat and took a breath as he hugged her. "Thank you Alicia, you're right. No more pity parties, I promise."

Amos Van Pelt got to his feet and tapped Rigsby on the shoulder as he saw a specialist approach them.

Jane and Cho arrived at a No tell Motel on the outskirts of Sacramento where Lisbon and Forster were holed up. A curtain twitched inside and they approached the chipped painted blue door. Lisbon opened the door and Jane threw her a relieved glance as he and Cho were ushered inside.

Forster sat on the bed, handcuffed to the slated wooden headboard while Lisbon tucked her Glock back into the back of her jeans. Jane said nothing as he regarded the man while he threw his jacket onto the back of a chair and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Forster shot furtive glances to Lisbon and Cho who were both looking at him like he was a cockroach.

Jane stared at him for a long moment and Forster opened his mouth to talk. "No," Jane commanded him. "We'll tell you when we're ready to listen to what you have to say."

He turned his back to him and took a breath as he looked at Lisbon and Cho with his hands on his hips. "So, what's his story?" he asked her.

"Like I said on the phone, says he didn't know it was Red John when he sent that text. Told me he was in debt and some loansharks were after him. He was told his debts would be clear if he just sent that text."

"Hmm. You believe him?"

She rolled her eyes. "I don't know what the hell to believe anymore. That's why you're here."

He nodded. "Right. How'd he find you?"

"What?" she frowned. "I don't know. He was at the CBI, guess he was waiting for me to show up."

"How'd he even know we were looking for him?"

Her frown grew before she nodded in acknowledgement. "Haffner told him obviously."

"Good old Ray," Jane said with an eye roll of his own.

"He did us a favour, Jane."

"Having a man holding you at gunpoint is not exactly a favour in my book, Lisbon," Jane bit back.

Before she could respond Jane swung round to face Forster. "Why didn't you just show up at the playground? Why go to the CBI instead?"

Forster stuttered, "Because...because I didn't know who was going to be there at the park. Who you were bringing with you there. So...so I wanted to talk to Agent Lisbon on my own terms. Let her hear me out before I had a bullet in me. I had no idea-"

"You know who I am?" Jane asked, interrupting him, taking a step closer.

"Of course, you're Patrick Jane...the whole CBI knows about you."

Jane studied the other man, his gaze penetrating as he said the next words slowly and menacingly. "Good. Then you know there's no point in lying to me, Jeff."

"Okay," Forster said, clearing his throat as Jane's blue green eyes pierced his brown ones.

"You say you didn't know who it was who told you to tell them when Rigsby left that party. Why would you do that for some stranger? Even if they told you your debts would be clear, why would you believe that to be true?"

"I-"

"Not one lie or I'll allow my two friends here to go to town on you. Cho here looks like he wouldn't need much of an excuse. Lisbon is only just holding back herself. Even I'm finding it difficult not to wrap my hands around your throat right now for what happened to our friend."

"Okay," Forster admitted with a nod. "It...It wasn't entirely a stranger who asked. But I still don't know who it was."

Cho came up beside Jane. "Stop talking in riddles and tell us the truth."

Forster looked from one man to the other and took a deep breath. "Promise you'll keep me safe if I tell you everything."

"No," Cho said. "But you might live if you do. Best you're going to get."

"Tell us," Lisbon said as she stood beside her two colleagues. "Or I'll perp walk you into the CBI right now and hand you over to Bertram myself. They need a lead, why not let it be you?"

"And you might have resisted arrest before then," Cho said with a straight face.

"Happens," Lisbon nodded with a smirk at the implied threat of bodily harm.

"All right," Forster nodded. "All right." He took a deep breath and began talking. "There's a secret organisation of cops and other law enforcement individuals called The Blake Association. I don't know how far its reach is..."

"Doctor Jenner," Amos Van Pelt said to the man around his age who had approached them. Rigsby swallowed, unable to talk, his heart lodged in his throat.

The doctor gestured for the three of them to take their seats around a coffee table and took one opposite. "Okay, we've checked the swelling on Grace's brain and I'm pleased to say that it has decreased."

"Oh, thank god!" Alicia exclaimed, grasping her husband's hand.

"Wait," the doctor said. "While that is very good news your daughter still has a way to go, Mrs Van Pelt."

"What do you mean?" Rigsby asked him.

"Well we're going to bring her out of the coma gradually over the next few hours and then we'll assess her again."

"But the swelling was what you were worried about, if that's gone down then-"

"She had a severe blow to the head, Agent Rigsby. We haven't been able to assess her cognitive brain function yet. When she's conscious we'll be able to do that and assess any damage that blow may have caused her."

"Like what?" Van Pelt's father asked.

"Any number of issues. Speech, memory loss, perception, ability to concentrate, motor skills and so on." As he saw three worried faces looking at him he softened his clinical tone. "Look, this is good news. But she's not out of the woods yet is all I'm saying. Might be an uphill battle and some...well some issues, depending on what they are, may be permanent. We'll know more in a few hours." His pager went off and he quickly got off the seat. "Sorry, have to take this. Any questions?"

"Can we see her?" her mother asked.

He nodded curtly. "Of course."

"What do you think?" Lisbon said as she, Jane and Cho regrouped outside the motel room door after listening to Forster's confession on the corruption that had infiltrated California Law Enforcement.

"Tyger, Tyger," Cho said with a shake of his head. "That's their greeting?"

"And their warning," Lisbon said as she puffed out a breath. She ran a hand down her face. "Jesus, we knew we weren't sure who to trust already and now we find out..." She shook her head.

"Three dot tattoo, should be easy to track them down with that at least," Cho said.

Lisbon glanced at Jane who was standing against the wall beside the door with his hands in his pockets and staring ahead. He had said nothing while Forster had opened up and still hadn't uttered a word.

"Jane, thoughts?" she pressed.

He shrugged without looking at her. Despondently, "Knowing about this doesn't help us catch Red John. We just know he must be part of it. We don't know what role he plays in it. If anything it makes it harder to find him with that kind of power around him."

"So what do we do with Forster?" Cho asked.

Jane shrugged again, "Whatever the hell you like as far as I'm concerned. Beat him up, turn him in, whatever. He's no use to us. He's just a cog in the wheel."

Lisbon sighed before she shook her head. Then she smiled thinly at them both. "Hang on. There's still a way we can use him. It might not get us to Red John but it'll get us closer."

"Oh?" Jane said as he looked at her, furrowing his brow.

"You have a plan to get Stiles talking yet?" she asked him.

"No, not yet."

Her smile grew into something altogether more self satisfied. "Well I do."

His face suddenly lit up with admiration for the woman opposite him. "Then don't keep us waiting in suspense. Do tell, Agent Lisbon," he grinned.