The entire team sat around a sturdy wooden table in a rustic restaurant, all of them wearing diamonds to play poker and eat cheeseburgers. It wasn't the over-the-top reserved dinner that Patrick had had in mind, but he seemed pleased enough to be with all of them. Additionally, the fact that the atmosphere allowed for Rigsby to give occasional shouts of victory or defeat without anyone giving him the stink eye definitely made for a better evening than forcing the poor jock-boy to sit for two hours without touching his tie.
"So you really won all of this by memorizing cards? You didn't have cards up your sleeves or something?" Van Pelt demanded, wide-eyed and wondering.
The rest of the table stifled sighs of irritation at the invitation for the smug consultant to bestow upon the world some more brilliance.
That consultant was either oblivious or wisely choosing to ignore his disgruntled teammates. "No, that would be cheating." He said with a smile. "Just memory." His blue eyes flicked briefly around the table, touching on each face for only a second before focusing back on Grace Van Pelt.
Still in disbelief, Van Pelt pushed on. "How? That's impossible."
Sometimes Ronnie wondered if Van Pelt showed so much doe-eyed interest in the mysteries of Patrick Jane's convoluted mind because she hoped in some strange way that it might make Rigsby jealous. The blonde shot a look to the man, eyebrows quirking slightly as he watched the redheaded women through a hooded gaze.
Ronnie's self-confidence shot upwards fractionally. She wasn't much of a detective, but every once in a while she could land a hit right on the money.
The closet millionaire (or whatever his mysterious net worth may be) was only thrilled to explain his methods of genius to an eager, curious, child-like audience. Jane spent the rest of the poker game telling the young red-head how to utilize memorization to keep control of the game, which resulted in Cho's prophesied victory and everybody else's miserable defeat.
Ronnie lost on purpose. They were playing for pork rinds and those abhorrent things made her sick.
While Cho attempted to get the others to play again, happy about his victory, everybody else pulled away from the center of the table as quickly as possible. Nobody wanted to play with a card shark and Rigsby wasn't thrilled about losing to Cho so quickly in the evening.
Lisbon got up and took off her gleaming red necklace, dropping it and her earrings on the tabletop. "Alright, guys. It's been fun playing dress-up, but playtime's over."
Cho looked up, still laughing over his win. "Sorry, boss, what do you mean?"
"This," She gestured to the jewelry. "It's kind of a waste, don't you think?"
Jane looked almost hurt. "Well, I would have bought world peace if I could. They didn't have it at the casino gift store. Very limited range of items for sale."
Lisbon sent him a chastening look. "You know what I mean."
Ronnie knew what she meant.
Jane had switched to staring adoringly at Lisbon. "I know those emeralds look lovely with your eyes."
Lisbon hid another blush behind a scolding glare. "Thank you. It's beautiful, but I can't keep it."
Maturely, Jane nodded quietly. "I understand."
Cho and Ronnie shared a look, the former still unbelieving that there was anything going on there, and the latter further convinced that there was something going on between the boss and the consultant. Cho rolled his eyes at her silent earnest.
Quickly following Lisbon's directive, Van Pelt took off her rubies. "Yeah, you're right. Goodnight." She got up and went after Lisbon. As they headed out of the restaurant to their hotel rooms.
Lane, Rigsby, and Cho all looked to Ronnie, who was still sitting in her chair, cradling a diet coke in her hands, decked out in a sapphires galore. She slurped once more from her straw and shrugged. "I swear I'll be all noble and give mine back too, but I really don't think they should be lying around unsupervised."
Jane smirked. "That's very responsible of you, I appreciate that."
"I'm not giving mine back." Cho stated definitively, a decision which was heartily echoed by Rigsby.
"That's my boys!" Jane cheered. "Live it up!"
THE MENTALIST
Jane didn't let Ronnie relinquish the diamonds. With approximately three thousand dollars to her name, he implored her to sell them and put the hefty check in her savings. Cho and Rigsby also encouraged her to keep and hock them, so she accepted his generous gift and let the matter go.
Cho drove her back to the hotel, agreeing to hold onto her expensive gifts to ensure that whoever saw her wearing them in town wouldn't find them in her belongings.
She paused outside her door, glancing over at her partner who was unlocking his own door down the hall. "Cho?"
His eyes found hers, eyebrows high with concern. "What's up?"
She smirked. "You looked really pretty today."
"Shut up, Masters."
THE MENTALIST
Waking up with the scent of strange pillows and sheets all around her no longer felt unusual. Back when Ronnie started working at the CBI officially, after the academy, the constant excursions out of town and overnight trips for cases had left her with weeks of restless, uncomfortable sleeplessness.
Since then, Ronnie had stopped associating feelings of relaxation and comfort with home. It had been hard at first, never quite managing to let go of the familiarity of her apartment. Carla Masters invading said apartment with photographs cured Ronnie of that in a snap.
She rolled over, pressing her face into the pillow. It smelled of generic detergent. It actually seemed familiar—she had a flash back of a motel she and her mother had stayed in one night.
Disgusted, Ronnie sat upright. The slightest memory of her past turned her stomach. With the arrival of the reminiscent sensation, the comfort of the bed was ruined for her. She got up, pulling the covers neatly over the pillows, and went to draw back the curtains.
Ronnie's morning routine never changed, no matter where she woke up. Routine kept her stable; starting each day the same way made everything else seem normal and according to plan, regardless of unfamiliar places and unsettling cases. She stretched, she did her pushups and situps and squats, and used her desk to do dips and pullups.
If she had to thank her mother for one thing, it would be her dedication to fitness.
Body warm and muscles pumped, Ronnie started a pot of coffee and popped open her laptop, sitting at the desk by the window. The motel room filled with the smell of cheap, bitter coffee.
Ronnie's watch read four-thirty.
For twenty minutes—the exact duration that she started and finished her coffee, Ronnie browsed the news, read some articles from a fitness blog, and checked the day's weather.
By the time she took a shower and got dressed, it was half-past five, and Cho would most assuredly be awake, so she shuffled out into the hallway and knocked on his door.
After one knock, Cho opened the door and let her in, moving away to pour his own coffee. He was already showered and dressed, his bed made neatly. "Coffee?" He offered, sitting down at his own desk.
Ronnie shook her head, perching on the arm of the chair by the bed. "No thanks. I already had some." They had time to lounge around comfortably. Jane and Lisbon would be fronting most of the legwork, so until one of them called, Ronnie and Cho were in the clear.
And while they could sit around and watch TV all day, Ronnie had another idea about how she wanted to spend their extra time. She got off the chair and joined Cho at the desk, smiling to herself as she saw he was perusing the same news articles that she had been browsing earlier.
He barely looked up as she sat down next to him. "Gas prices are going back up." He muttered grumpily.
Ronnie nodded once, tapping her fingers on the tabletop. "Yeah, one more dollar and I'm buying a horse."
"I fully support that decision." Cho slurped from his coffee, expression never changing.
Ronnie watched his brow sink lower and lower the further he read into the depravity of current events, and eventually she pushed his computer closed. He glanced up when he found himself looking t her hand instead of a blurb about city property taxes.
She raised one eyebrow. "I want to find Carla."
Cho stared at her, waiting for her to fill the empty silence with an explanation of her statement.
"She's taunting me with fear, and I know Minelli's on it, but I want to be the one to bring her down. Will you help me? I want to find her." She slid her hand off his laptop cover, never breaking eye contact. Her heart raced with the thrilling idea that she might be able to close the door on her past by personally bringing down the operation that turned her into a criminal. "Help me, Cho."
Cho leaned back in his chair, like he always did when Rigsby suggested doing something he wasn't too happy about. "You want to hunt down the woman who probably watches every moment of your life like a lifetime movie?"
Mildly insulted, Ronnie crossed her arms. "At the very least, my life would be aired on CBS."
A few long seconds went by, as though Cho was waiting for her to change her mind. His dark eyes searched her face, scanning every feature for signs of sincerity or desperation or anger. "I won't help you get revenge."
Ronnie lifted one shoulder carelessly. "I don't want revenge. I want to know she'll never touch me or own me again." She still had dreams of that baseball bat. The bone-shattering pain of it striking her ribs over and over again was the only thing that ever woke her up in the night. Not the bodies she'd seen, not the children she'd tricked, not the men she'd stabbed.
Those things haunted her when she forced herself to remember what she'd done, but they never filled her sleep. She often wondered if she didn't fee enough soul-eating remorse to be a good person, but the facts never changed. Her bones breaking under her mother's baseball bat haunted her at night.
Cho leaned forward, palms down flat on the table between them, the way he always did when an idea had been suggested that he felt he could act upon. "And what are you planning on doing once you catch her?"
"You'll make the arrest." Ronnie said definitively.
The decision surprised him.
"I'll file the reports, I'll testify in court. She'll go to prison and I'll never see her again." Ronnie meant it all without a breath of falsehood. She didn't want to arrest her mother. She didn't want to be close enough to touch her or hear her voice. No part of her wanted to be in the same room as Carla Masters ever again, not even to bring her pain.
"I'll email Minelli and get whatever they've got on the notes and the photographs you received. After he sends them, we'll go from there." Cho promised, deep furrows in his brow as he looked up at her. "We'll get her."
THE MENTALIST
"When Carla uses a courier outside of her usual circle, like whoever she used to deliver the two notes to the CBI, she checks in on them regularly for two months after she's done with them to make sure they don't rat. They have no idea they're being watched but she's nothing if not controlling." Ronnie brought her own laptop to the desk beside Cho's, where they were watching a clip of security footage that Minelli had already isolated, showing an older man delivering the note to Ronnie's desk.
He had other envelopes in his hands, delivering them to other agents in the office.
"Minelli already got ID on this guy. He started working for the building two weeks before you received the note. If Carla's got her eye on him, it's going to be hard to ask him where he got it." Cho scrolled through the man's profile, pausing on a blown-up scan of his driver's license. "His name is Aaron Lane."
Ronnie racked her brain for her mother's methods. "She's already run a copy of his phone and computer—someone on her payroll is fielding his calls, texts, and emails. We have two options: we can bring him in, question him, and convince him to agree to being held under protective custody."
Cho checked Lane's records, shaking his head. "He doesn't have a rap sheet, but he's worked a dozen jobs in the past three months. For some reason, he can't hold down a position. I'm guessing substance abuse of some variety; shows up intoxicated, loses his job, spent all his money on drugs or booze, he's out of money, he's in trouble financially. I'll bet that's how your mom got to him. He probably won't agree to protective custody. What's option number two?"
Ronnie admired his deductive reasoning. She knew she'd been right to ask him to help—her brain never worked that quickly. "Snail mail."
Cho, the bust-down-the-door-guns-blazing field agent blinked in surprise. Never in his experience as a CBI detective had he ever conducted an interview via snail mail. "You want to...send him a letter?"
Ronnie nodded. "Carla's never looked through their mail if she doesn't expect something. He can read his mail, send out his bills, go back to whatever he was doing without ever tripping her alarms."
Admitting it was a good idea, Cho ran his mind through the possibilities, testing simulations. "Best case scenario, he's ambivalent enough to answer and be done with the situation. Most likely he'll toss the letter, either not caring or unwilling to be cooperative. We'll have to incentivize him to answer."
Ronnie was already drafting a letter. The official one would be printed on CBI stationery, but for the moment her paper napkin would do. "How about a bag of coke?"
Cho was not amused.
If Cho or Ronnie went to talk to Aaron Lane, or even if they personally delivered the letter, Carla would know and she'd have Lane killed in hours. If there was an option that included being able to sneak around under Carla Masters' nose, Ronnie would take it.
"The second note, handed to the security guard downstairs is pretty much a dead end. He was seen in the CBI wearing full-body motorcycle leathers and a helmet. Traffic cameras followed the bike to a parking garage two blocks away. Minelli got footage from inside the building, but it shows the courier entering a restroom. Minutes later, five men left the bathroom together. The leathers and helmets were found in the restroom. He's gone." Cho clicked through a series of videos, shaking his head. "We're not gonna get anywhere with him."
Ronnie checked her phone. Still nothing from Lisbon. "Let's focus on contacting Aaron Lane. We'll see what we can work with after that."
THE MENTALIST
It was evening before Lisbon called them back to the office. She and Jane had gone first to the Meier's home to be witness to Mrs. Meier admitting to her family that she'd been having an affair with the casino's head of security, Matt Etienne, which led Jane and Lisbon to investigate him further. Evidently, they'd gone to speak with him at his home, and had found Meier's body in the freezer in his garage. Lisbon called Cho in to conduct the interview of Matt Etienne.
Ronnie went into the room with him, adopting her usual spot against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. Lisbon choose to stay in the room as well, posted against the wall across the room from Ronnie, standing in the shadows.
Cho sat before Etienne, bracing his forearms on the table. His line of questioning began with the man's account of what happened the night that Meiers went missing. His expression never wavered, intense and pressing.
The casino's head of security, looking distressed and struggling to maintain control of himself, began his explanation. He was meant to meet and hook up with Ann that night, since it appeared that Jim Meiers would be staying the night at the casino. There were ninety minutes of unaccounted time between Etienne leaving work and his rendezvous with Anne, during which he claimed he had gone home and cleaned up.
Despite Cho and Lisbon's joined efforts, accusing him of killing Meiers for his career and his wife, Matt Etienne repeatedly and insistently denied the claim. He grew increasingly frustrated and indignant, apparently believing that he was a better man to Ann than Jim was, but he never wavered in his defense.
Upon the conclusion of the interview, Lisbon had Van Pelt go to the motel where Matt Etienne and Ann Meiers were to meet and check his story, and she sent Rigsby to Meiers' office to go through the tapes of the casino high-rollers.
When the two youngest agents were gone, Cho approached Lisbon quietly, Ronnie hovering behind him. She heard him explaining quietly the work that he and she had done concerning the pursuit of Carla Masters. Lisbon listened silently, occasionally glancing back at Ronnie. It seemed like it took hours before Lisbon nodded, spoke softly for a few seconds, and then nodded towards Ronnie and moved back to their work station.
Cho turned on his heel, hands falling from his hips, and strode toward his partner. "We're going with Rigsby." He said as he passed her.
Ronnie jogged to keep up glancing back at Lisbon before following Cho out the door. "What did she say? Is she okay with our side quest?"
"The team is priority number one. Other than that, we're free to operate our own assignment."
THE MENTALIST
Jim Meiers' son-in-law confessed to killing him that night—or, technically, early the next morning—after Jane absolutely creamed him in a poker game. Too caught up in his own pride to remember that Patrick Jane worked for the FBI, Daniel revealed Meiers' hundred-thousand dollar poker chip, acting in its own right as good as an admission of guilt. Daniel had lost a game of poker to one of the high rollers, and had offered his wife as payment in the form of sexual intercourse.
The night that he died, Jim Meiers had found the surveillance footage of his daughter showing up at the hotel room door to complete the transaction. Daniel killed him for his silence, his power, and his money.
[end of episode six]