"Snail mail isn't dead, Cho." Ronnie gloated, marching into the CBI bullpen, manilla folder in hand. "Our messenger has answered." She'd received the envelope in her own mailbox and had promptly stuffed it into the folds of a newspaper, ducking into her car where she'd sneakily dropped it into an old report file that she was taking back to the office.
Carla Masters' spies didn't need to know why she was keeping a prepaid return envelope.
Cho sat up in his desk chair, eyes following her as she triumphantly sat herself down at her desk and opened the folder. "What does he have to say?"
The man who had delivered the first note to Ronnie's desk had written back almost immediately. According to California law, law enforcement are prohibited from bribing suspects or witnesses for answers, so they couldn't offer the man money for his cooperation. Instead, they'd sent their request in an envelope resembling one from the area's power company, and had included the prepaid return envelope, addressed to Ronnie's apartment. The enclosed letter had been printed on CBI stationary, endorsed by the Mayor of Sacramento's signature, and included ample warning of the danger this man had put himself in.
He had been all too happy to comply.
"He says that the guy who restocked the vending machine in his apartment handed him three thousand dollars to deliver the note to my desk. The guy was armed so he just did what he told him to. Hasn't seen him since." Ronnie tossed the letter like a frisbee to Cho.
Eyebrows low in thought, Cho opened up the folded sheet of paper. "Vending machine?" He paused, realization lighting up in his eyes. "Didn't your mom operate a Coke truck?"
Ronnie nodded wryly, a pinched expression on her face. "That she did."
Carla Masters' primary transportation vehicle for the kids that she grabbed was an eighteen-wheeler. She had an expert forger—a regular contact of hers—paint the truck and trailer in the perfect likeness of a Coca-Cola semi-truck. It was so camouflaged it was practically invisible. That truck could go anywhere there was a vending machine—cities, country, open highway; apartments, schools, courthouses, restaurants—anywhere.
Nobody batted an eyelash at that truck until Ronnie stood up in court and confessed every dirty secret she could think of.
The hundreds of children they'd trafficked became known as the Coca-Cola Kids.
"I assumed she'd change her MO after I ratted her out, but apparently the truck's still in the rotation." Ronnie mused. She was already typing up a request to get access to the apartment security footage in the hopes of identifying the vending machine guy.
"She's got no reason to decommission it." Cho said, putting the letter in a new folder to be filed. "There are thousands of those trucks. Even public awareness can't get every single one of them under suspicion." He got up and moved to perch himself on the edge of her desk, watching her write the email. "We'll track down whoever gave him the money and hope you know him. We'll have to go get their records, see who's on their list for merchandise restocking. Either we're looking at their usual guy or someone under his pretense. In the meantime I want to send the notes over to somebody who can analyze the handwriting."
Ronnie sent off the email and rested her elbow annoyingly on his knee, plopping her chin down on her palm. "Sounds good."
Cho ignored her invasion of his personal space. He grabbed a pen and a pad of sticky notes. A second later, he showed her what he'd written: "We need to put cameras in your apartment."
Uneasy, Ronnie met his eyes. He stared back, sure, unwavering.
He'd written because he was worried they were bugged. He worried there was no limit to Carla's reach of awareness.
But he wanted cameras in her home. Where she showered and dressed and slept. Boundaries were gone, privacy violations were the necessary sacrifice, and home was a trap. She felt like she was right back under her mother's thumb.
Slowly, Ronnie nodded.
They'd do what they had to do, and then it would be over. Ronnie would move, get a new place, and disconnect her WiFi forever. Peace seemed like a fairytale.
Cho got up, placing his warm hand on her shoulder and squeezing reassuringly. Before he went back to his own desk, he patted her once on the back. "I'll send off the notes."
THE MENTALIST
The twenty-year-old Ronnie Masters lay perfectly still in the hospital bed, staring at the wall across from her. She could remember the only other time she'd woken up in a hospital—eight years old, still blinded by the childish loyalty to her mother, the girl had been on assignment, laying around in an alleyway like she'd been abandoned, waiting for someone to pity her.
Carla had sent her to lure people in, to trick them into giving her access to their homes. Ronnie had passed out from genuine malnourishment and someone had taken her to a hospital. At eight years old, Ronnie couldn't read faces, she didn't know who to trust; she felt captured.
At twenty years old, Ronnie studied everyone who entered the room, reading faces like road maps. She let the doctors poke and prod without lifting a finger against them. She'd changed drastically from the wild little girl who'd attempted to shove a fork between the ribs of the nurse who came in to replace her IV.
When Agent Cho showed up to check on her, he couldn't help but think that she wasn't lying, in shock; she was lying in wait.
Her eyes tracked him as he crossed the room to stand beside her bed. "How are you feeling?" He asked, examining the treated wounds and the bare bruises showing around the cloth of her hospital gown.
Ronnie said nothing, only watched him.
Agent Cho had been the one she surrendered to. He was the one who conducted her interview. And then, a day later, he was the one who visited her in the hospital.
Her experience told her that he was trying to make her trust him. Her gut told her not to. Those were the instincts which fought against her desire for sanctuary. She'd turned herself in; it wasn't a game, it wasn't a trap—the people who came into her life from that point on were supposed to be the trustworthy ones.
"We still haven't found your mother, Ronnie." Agent Cho said softly.
You won't, Ronnie wanted to tell him.
"It's only a matter of time, but it would help us out if you could tell us anything you know—"
"Anything." Her voice cracked—she hadn't spoken since their interview. She tried again. "I'll give up everything. In an official capacity, if it would help." It would mean her death, without question, but after twenty years with a terrible claw of fear in her chest, she'd give up everything.
Even herself.
"It'd help a lot, actually." Agent Cho responded, voice lifting with relief and surprise. "We can protect you if you testify."
Ronnie smiled for the first time in his presence—wry, shaky. "You can't, but thanks."
THE MENTALIST
The team got called out to a crime scene after dark, after a driver plowed into and killed a Rosemary Tennant in the street. Lisbon spoke to the first responders while Cho and Ronnie glanced over the body. She found out that witnesses claimed that Rosemary had been deliberately run over. They also learned that the victim's son had been reported missing days ago.
While they were talking, hammering out the details, a woman with wildly curly auburn hair approached, arms crossed and shoulders turned inward meekly.
She looked to Ronnie like Ms. Frizzle from the old Magic School Bus books.
"She was with me." The woman said, sounding distressed and pitying. She identified herself as Kristina Frye, the victim's spiritual advisor.
Just like that, Jane's interest was piqued.
Ronnie watched his attention pull away from the crime scene and zero in on Kristina Frye, instantly seeking to peel away every layer of the mystery that she was shrouded in.
According to her own claim, Kristina had been with the victim that evening, conducting a session to contact her late husband. Evidently the dead husband had known something of the coming doom and had alluded to the danger.
Ronnie mentally called utter bull.
"Okay, got it," Jane gave a short laugh, glancing around at the people near him. "Uh, by her own admission, she's either a channel for the energy of departed souls or she's involved in this murder. So you got a choice: you can call ghostbusters or we can take this lady downtown."
Ronnie was on board with that plan.
Lisbon, more reserved and professional in her judgements, sighed with an annoyance at the consultant. She turned to Kristina. "Miss Frye, would you mind coming into our office in the morning and answering a few more questions in detail?"
Completely ignoring the suspicion she'd put herself under, Kristina nodded earnestly. "If I could be of any help, I'd be glad to. Please call me Kristina."
Jane snorted, meeting Ronnie's eyes derisively.
Kristina turned on him, beholding him sagely. "Where is all this anger I feel coming from?"
Jane took on an air of innocence. "Not from me; maybe you're projecting."
In the interview the next morning at the CBI, they learned that Kristina had been working with Rosemary for three years, charging her five hundred dollars an hour, for five or six hours a week, as the victim was allegedly deeply troubled.
Ronnie couldn't imagine having that much money to spend. One glance at Cho's carefully schooled face told her he couldn't, either.
Kristina believed that the passing of Rosemary's husband had put her in the position of being taken advantage of and losing favor in the eyes of her children. Beyond that, the spiritual advisor refused to give information without Rosemary's permission.
With the team looking on in amusement, Jane sparked an argument with Kristina, challenging her unwavering position that the dead, while not omniscient, had information to give when they were ready. She believed in her trade, never giving any indication of falsehood. If she was performing an act, she played it winningly.
"You're good," Jane admitted, and Ronnie was loathe to agree.
"I like to think so." Kristina returned smugly.
Jane agreed with her.
"I think it's important to love one's self. How do you feel about yourself?" Kristina shot back.
He went off all over again.
THE MENTALIST
The hospital released her to a state-owned one-room apartment, where she remained under guard for the entire duration of the court proceedings, and until Carla Masters' case went from Active to Cold. She lived in isolation—excluding the ever present public servants—for six weeks.
Ronnie never resisted.
Up until the sixth week in protective residence, her only interaction with the CBI agents who brought her in—Lead Agent Minelli and Agents Lisbon and Cho—was in the court rooms: hearings and paperwork; hearings and paperwork.
In the sixth week, when it was decided to send the Carla Masters/Coca-Cola Kids case to a smaller department which had time to root through cold leads, Agent Kimball Cho knocked on her door. She hadn't spoken to him directly since that day in the hospital, but he'd gone to every court session. He'd plead her case and defended her in front of God and the judge, he'd met her eyes reassuringly when the lawyers and prosecutors used bully tactics to try to break her.
She didn't need the strength he offered, but she appreciated it.
So when she answered the door in shorts and a tank top, a pillowcase dangling from her clenched fist, she wasn't surprised to find the young Korean-American man standing before her with an unreadable expression.
He never had that wide-eyed, fake-smile, you-can-trust-me look on his face.
She liked that.
Agent Cho glanced at the pillowcase. "What were you gonna do, strangle me with that?"
Ronnie moved away from the door, allowing him entrance. "Yeah."
Agent Cho walked in after her, closing the door behind him. In her scant clothing, he could see most of the scars that were just labels on a diagram to him before. Her skin was mottled and mangled in ways that he'd never seen before on someone so young, someone who'd never been in military combat. "That's a good way to get that deal you want." He uttered sarcastically, tone light.
Ronnie circled the island, putting the pillowcase down and starting a pot of coffee. "I'm not innocent." Her voice was small, wavering, and only as forceful as she could manage. "I'm not harmless. I'm cooperating, hoping to cut a deal, and swearing to never kill, torture, or abduct anyone ever again." She met his eyes briefly. "The lawyer you gave me puts me in cardigans and long skirts when I'm on the stand like I'm a sweet little nanny, but that doesn't make me not a killer, Agent Cho."
The man stood across from her, watching her movements. "Talking like that won't do you any favors."
She shrugged. "It makes them stop staring at me with all that pity. Coffee?"
"Please." Cho helped himself to a chair at her island.
Ronnie poured two mugs, grabbed the cream and sugar, and stood before him. "Why are you here, Agent Cho? Your guards are here, I've spoken to your therapist—many times—and the lawyers won't stop telling me what I'm supposed to do next. So why are you here?"
"I brought you in," He fixed his coffee until it was the color of peanut butter. "I'm obligated to—"
"You're not." Her voice was stronger.
"You've got nobody in the world anymore. It's natural to feel that the person who helped you abandoned you when—"
"You didn't."
Agent Cho's eyes fixed on hers, trying to figure her out. His face was solemn and still, but the silence between them indicated his confusion.
"You brought me in because it was your job. You helped me because you feel my humanity has been abused and my innocence violated. You feel I was helpless to fight the life you pulled me out of and that I can be decent if only given the choice." She knew these things. She'd exploited her own appearance of innocence. Taking advantage of her own image had been a part of what made her so useful to her mother.
Agent Cho began to size her up like he suspected he'd been played until she went on.
"You're right. Given the chance, I'd be the perfect citizen. You gave me the choice. You have to go back to work, to other cases. You haven't abandoned me. You don't have to be here." Her eyes were piercing and steady, despite the hesitation she felt at never seeing the kind, quiet officer again. She didn't need him, certainly. She liked what he did for her, just as certainly.
Agent Cho took a long drink of his coffee. "I want to be here, then."
She was starting to trust him until he said that.