Chapter 5: catching my death

"It's okay, Teresa," he spoke softly as he crouched by her. "I've got you, it's okay."

She had fallen away again, she realized as she was woken up by the voice speaking to her. She blinked a few times to focus her sights, but he was very blurry before her. She wanted to speak, but her mouth was full of cotton balls and she couldn't get any words out. Help me, please.

"You're going to be all right, sweetheart," he promised. She felt something warm on her cheek - his touch, softly caressing her.

She felt the tears fall as he continued to whisper to her. She wanted to ask him how he had gotten here, ask him to help her up - she couldn't seem to get her arms or legs to move at all.

"I love you," he said, and then she blinked again and he was nowhere to be seen.

She screamed.

"There you are," he said as he pinched her arm this time. "You were gone on me for a while, Teresa, don't do that."

She was still with him. He towered above her. She was still bound to the chair. She shivered, cold, only clad in her nightgown. Her eyes darted from left to right, looking for him, the only sliver of hope dissipating as she came to understand he was not really here. It was the drugs probably, playing tricks on her. Focus, Teresa. She needed to find a way to stop him from giving her drugs; she needed her clarity if she was ever going to be able to attempt to flee.

"Sorry to disappoint," she said, hopefully coyly to hide the terror she really felt. "Maybe stop dosing me."

"You're not a disappointment, Teresa. I just want to have a good conversation with you."

He came to stand behind her, hands on her shoulders, whispering in her ear.

"It's interesting how clear issues become once you're stripped off your remaining shreds of dignity - how primal people become when their essence is exposed," he began.

"You should know that - you did that to me."

He didn't let her respond, and went on. "But you gave me a gift, too. I had all this time to study ways to humiliate and destroy you the way you have destroyed me. You want to know what I found?" His lips brushed her ear now.

She closed her eyes, remained still, waiting for his monologue to be over. God, what was it with egotistical man and loving hearing themselves speak?

"You're a tough woman. And you're one hell of an agent, I'll have to give you that." His voice was soft now, almost reverent. "Your one flaw is your inability to act upon your deepest desires. You're held back by this enormous shame of your femininity, to be vulnerable. It's such a shame, really."

He couldn't be more wrong about her, and it pleased her to know he did not know her at all. She wasn't ashamed of her femininity, she was just reserved with whom she'd shared it with. She considered it a sacred thing to share her innermost self, not speaking of the physical act of sex, but her deepest self. She definitely didn't believe femininity should be equated with vulnerability. In the end, he was just a simple man like most others, it seemed.

"You're so beautiful," he said as his hand moved over her throat. "I was glad to see that behind that tough exterior there's a very sensual woman." He moved his hand over her sternum before settling on her throat again.

"But you don't let just anybody see that side of you, do you? God, you're so closed off, Teresa, it's unhealthy," he chuckled, then squeezed his hand to close off her trachea.

She opened her eyes, tried to breathe, but he pressed too hard. Shit. The metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth. She began trashing involuntarily, fighting to get a breath in, and then he let go.

"Good, there you are," he snarled.

xxx

There was nothing he could do but sit on his couch as Californian State Agents were locating Haibach in the Redwood forest - it was too far of a journey for them to make, it didn't make sense. But what if she was there?

He stood up, walked to the kitchenette, made some tea and sat down again. A few minutes later, he sat up again, rose the stairs to the roof they'd stood on only yesterday, and looked out over the city.

He was antsy, had difficulty sitting down and waiting. She had been gone for eight hours now. There was something they were missing here, he was sure of it. Six hundred dollars and a trip to Northern California? Did he hire people to stalk her, take her, wait for her all the way in California? It was so well thought out, and he had a hard time believing Haibach was capable of that. Stalking, taking photos, yes. Abduction by way of paying off policemen? You needed serious money for that, and borrowing six hundred dollars was not serious money.

He needed to make a new list of suspects. Ones who had money, the intellect and motive to hurt Teresa. His mind wandered to the image of her, again, her slumped form, pushed into the vehicle. He imagined her tied up then, similar to how they'd both been tied up to that pole years ago by Rachel Bowman. They had worked together to escape, successful in their effort. They'd joked about it after, and he made sure to bring her an apple at least once a week after that. She was alone now, but she was a fighter, so he had to keep hope she would stay alive long enough for him to find her. During the Bowman case, she'd visited Linus Wagner in prison - he was definitely psychopathic enough to be on his list. Had he already been released? Did he have the money?

Another possibility was former ADA Marc Odenthal who had paid a hitman to kill Kelly Fowler. He was power hungry, greedy, had killed Kelly just to rise in the ranks of government. He was knowledgeable on guns and would know his way around dirty government officials. She'd been suspended during the case, he remembered, and in his misguided attempt to make up for it (because of course he had been the reason for her suspension) they'd ended up in a shipping container. He'd promised her then that he would always save her. He couldn't break that promise to her now. You already have broken that promise, but he shook his head as if to shake the thought away. He couldn't go down that hole just yet - he needed his wits about him to continue the search for her.

Newly invigorated, he made his way back into the bullpen and asked Wylie to help him locate all of his suspects.

One other option was Walter Mashburn. He definitely had psychopathic tendencies, he was definitely rich enough, was one of his few suspects who was not incarcerated as far as he knew, but was he bitter enough because of Teresa's dismissal to do this? He knew they'd had a one night stand - she'd probably hidden in the bathroom when he visited Mashburn last. He'd also known Mashburn was probably interested in pursuing some kind of relationship, albeit casual. She, on the other hand, didn't do casual relationships.

She did casual hookups, but wouldn't give that much of her time, her self, to someone she didn't respect and admired. He hadn't called her out on it, knew she was so private in her sexual exploits, and he couldn't blame her. Though, he realized, the person who did this had to know this about her - that the breach of privacy by sending the photos and video to the office would hurt her more than a physical beating.

Someone else with similar psychopathic tendencies and who had proven himself to be capable of acting upon them was Tommy Volker. He had gotten under her skin and he definitely wouldn't have taken it well to be taken down by a small woman like her. It was Teresa's first guess, as well, but she'd confirmed he was still incarcerated.

Reede Smith was his last option. He had violent tendencies, had been connected to the largest network of dirty government officials in California and possibly still had some of those connections - they hadn't weeded out all of the names on the list left by Bertram, after all. He never really showed any personal hatred against him or Teresa, joining the Blake Association only because of the accidental murder of a sixteen-year-old girl. Then again, Teresa would've confessed to the crime if she had been the one to (accidentally) kill an innocent person - Cho, van Pelt and even Rigsby would've done so, too. He didn't know about Fisher just yet, and he himself wasn't sure how he would've handled the situation, either. The truth remained that Reede Smith had it in his conscience not to confess to this murder, but to become part of a large criminal organization responsible for many more deaths than any of them were probably aware of.

"So, I looked into this Povo woman's financials again, and the only withdrawals she made with this account were at a cash withdrawal station here in Austin. I was waiting for the court order to check the security tapes of the ATM, and it's her." Wylie said as he pointed toward the image on his computer screen, the woman looking similar to the one on the security tapes from the motel.

"This image was taken only a day ago - she's here," he said.

Abbott and him stood beside Wylie, looking at the face of a blond-haired woman, probably in her early twenties. Cho and Fisher joined them.

"What's more, I saw that she once transferred money from this account to a personal account to a woman named Sarah Jacobs," he continued, "And Sarah Jacobs happens to have a Facebook account, and look at this."

The profile picture of the woman named Sarah Jacobs showed a young person, probably late teens or early twenties, with blonde hair.

"So, Sarah Jacobs and Tamsin Povo are related?" Abbott asked.

"I'm not sure, but they definitely know one another," Wylie remarked.

"Get me Jacobs' address. You, continue digging into Sarah Jacobs' life," Abbott instructed Wylie.

"Jane and Cho, go to her place of residence. Fisher, double check whether all the people on Jane's list are still in prison, or, in Mashburn's case, figure out where he is."

xxx

They didn't get an answer as Cho rung the bell and barked, "Sarah Jacobs, FBI, open up."

He kept his ear toward the door, listening for signs she was making a run for it - they had an agent stationed at the fire escape - but there was no sound coming from the apartment.

"Do you hear that?" Cho said. "Somebody's asking for help."

He busted down the door, gun drawn and checked the apartment for any signs of life.

"Jane, in here!" he shouted from the bedroom.

Jane stepped into the apartment, noticing all the walls had been painted in a soft pink hue. Colorful cushions adorned the washed-out green couch. There was a Pikachu figurine on the windowsill. As he approached the bedroom, the first thing he saw was Cho hunched over a pair of legs.

There she was, Sarah Jacobs, shot three times in the chest, and dead, obviously. The bedroom was painted in a mustard yellow color and she had flower-patterned sheets.

Everything pointed to Sarah being a very young woman, probably easily impressionable. What self-respecting adult still had flower sheets? Sarah Jacobs had been a girl, still, he concluded.

While Cho called forensics, he snooped in her closet. On first glance, the jeans and casual t-shirts pointed to the same conclusion as the rest of the apartment; clothes for an adolescent woman. But there, in the back, hung a different type of garment. It was a mesh fabric bodysuit, some type of lingerie. In her underwear drawer, he found Pikachu-themed cotton panties, but in the back he found the black lace. A lover, then?

He perused the bathroom for any sights of a male presence. Of course it was entirely possible Sarah Jacobs was gay, but he had a distinct feeling Sarah Jacobs dressed for an older adult man in her life. He didn't find anything, though, there was only one toothbrush in the cupholder and there were no shampoo or soap bottles marketed for men to be found. Was it a one-sided affliction?

Her desk had a laptop on it with a camera, but what he was interested in was the paper in the desk drawer - it was letter sheets and envelopes, the type of stationary used to send letters. The letter sheets were stuck to each other with an adhesive strip at the top. He could see that they were used often, half of them missing. He brushed a pencil over the paper to make the indents on the top paper visible - he had the distinct impression this Sarah wrote letters to her lover, and that this lover might have caused her death.

He could make out the salutation dearest lover in the indentations, but he had to wait for Wylie to do some magic to read it in full.
Wylie called then, and almost stumbled over his words so fast he was speaking, "They're the same person. Sarah Jacobs is Tamsin Povo. Forensics overlaid their photos to compare their bone structure - it's the same. They're one person."

Finally, a solid lead. Apart, obviously, from the fact that she was dead.

xxx

"Have you considered the idea that Sarah Jacobs has a twin?" Cho asked Jane on their way to Miss Jacobs' mother.

"No, why?"

"Just the alias she chose, the name Tamsin means twin originally," Cho remarked.

"It's worth asking," Jane responded. He didn't think she had a twin though, she had a lover - and he was convinced this lover had something to do with Teresa's disappearance, and with her fake name.

"I'll have Wylie check it, too," he said.

Sarah's mother broke down after hearing her daughter had died. She sat curled up on the couch, wiping her tears with a tissue Cho had gracefully provided her. She had no idea Sarah was seeing anyone, nor had she any idea of her daughter's whereabouts in the past few weeks.

"We haven't been really close, my Sarah and I," Ellen Jacobs confessed. "She was mad at me for leaving her father - he wasn't a good guy to me."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Jacobs," Cho said apologetically.

"Did she come to that opinion right away?" Jane asked, suspecting her lover might have had an influence on her. Her decor screamed impressionable young woman, so it was obvious she could've very easily been influenced by someone.

"She did, actually. When we first left him, she was mostly sad. It wasn't until recently that she'd shame me for the decision," she said, casting her eyes downward.

"Does the name Tamsin Povo mean anything to you?" Cho asked.

"No," she said after a moment of thought, "I don't think it does, I'm sorry."

xxx

They were getting somewhere, he was feeling it. Just as he was pondering over the alias of Tamsin Povo - twin - of what? - Abbott told them the search for Haibach had resulted in his capture. He had been working as a counsellor at a campsite for troubled teens situated in the Redwood forest. They'd been able to bring him in on suspicion of stalking, possible abduction. But, as Jane had already expected; he was not the guy they were looking for. He had some difficulty feeling grateful that he was at least now unable to hurt any girl at that camp, because it had brought them no closer to finding his Lisbon.

Off all Jane's suspects on the list, only Walter Mashburn was not incarcerated right now, they'd found out. They'd left his secretary a message, but hadn't the faintest clue where he was at this moment.

Sarah Jacobs' call records had produced little interesting information at first glance. If she'd had a lover, she definitely hadn't called him from her subscription phone. A burner maybe, but they hadn't found it in the sweep of her apartment.

She was now gone for fourteen hours, the working day officially over. He'd been awake for more than 30 hours and he suspected Cho and Fisher had been, too. While they'd all continue to work until they had found her, Abbott had sent Wylie, Cho and Fisher home for a few hours. They'd do better work while rested, he argued. Cho had simply refused but did leave to take a shower and a change of clothes in the FBI gym. Fisher had conceded she needed a few hours. She hadn't looked him in the eye when she confessed that, but he couldn't blame her.

He took a shower in the airstream and the memory of her presence lingered everywhere. He found the bra she was wearing hanging on the hook of the bathroom, one of his spare tootbrushes she'd used on the shelf above the bathroom sink. As the warm spray hit him, he was unable to stop his tears from falling.

He pictured her flushed face as she'd come to him after her workout, the way her wet curls clung to her back. She had been so beautiful then, without artifice, and he'd been so hopeful that they'd be able to mend their relationship and find something more in the cracks that had been left by his leaving. Her shy grin turned to a grimace suddenly, her face covered in blood like it had been when she'd been taken by Red John. He had been in time then, but he wasn't sure of himself enough this time that they'd make it.

Oh, god, what if they didn't get to her in time? He was unable to stop the images of her lifeless body flooding his thoughts. He placed his hands flat on the walls, needing the support to stay upright, and he slammed his flat hand to the wall, welcoming the tingling sting it left.

As he dried off and put on a clean suit, he sat down in the booth where he'd first kissed her, where she'd sat on his lap to convince him back to bed, and where he'd gone wrong in guiding the investigation to Richard Haibach. He had to set right that wrong now, before he'd be too late.

There wasn't any logical anagrams to be made with the name Tamsin Povo. He googled the name "povo", finding no people with the last name in the first three pages of the search results. It did come up as a Portugese word for "people". And then, it all clicked. The absence of Sarah Jacobs' boyfriend, yet the signs toward a lover. The letters she had written. The type of stalking he had put Lisbon through. The amount of money and power such an operation would have entailed. The way he'd involved Jane as an amused spectator - the lack of communication after she'd been taken proving his focus was not on torturing him. Once he'd had her, he didn't need Jane anymore. And the name Tamsin did not only mean twin; it was the female version of the name Thomas, too.

It couldn't be, but it had to be.

xxx

He'd done it a few more times, choked her until she was on the precipice of unconsciousness, then let her take in some breaths. Some part of her wished she'd just faint again so that she wouldn't have to consciously endure his torture anymore. Maybe she'd even see him again.

Her muscles kept spasming in intervals, probably due to the combination of drugs and lack of oxygen. She was lightheaded, too, and found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his voice. But she wouldn't give in, wouldn't show him any signs of emotional distress. She was sure that once she broke, he'd kill her. He had told her after all he wanted her vulnerable.

At some point he had received a phone call and promptly left the room. She couldn't see where he disappeared to, but he had seemed agitated in his conversation - she had to hold on to the hope that it was a good sign. Something had gone wrong in his plan. They were going to find her.

She thought she had been taken somewhere not too far away, but it wasn't based on more than idle hope. She'd woken up in the patrol car, was able to take off her earring for them to hopefully find it. They'd dragged her to another car and she'd almost managed to escape. They'd drugged her then and she woke up here. It could've been hours away, really.

The room smelled of mold and she heard water dripping onto the concrete floor from somewhere to her right. She couldn't see a door, a way out, but the smell combined with the lack of light told her she was probably in a basement of some sort. Both her legs were strapped down to the legs of the chair and her hands were still tied at her back. She thought she felt blood coming from her wrists as she moved them - she'd trashed too much. It hurt like hell, but it would possibly give her the lubrication needed to break free of the tie-wrap cuffs.

When he came back, she was less hopeful about the flaws in his plan. Looking at his expression, he was enraged. It could very well mean he was going to kill her sooner than later.

"Never trust a woman - a hard but important lesson to learn for a man," he pointed out as he approached.

"Now, where were we," he murmured.

"I think you were telling me something about your fragile masculinity," she spit.

His face changed from amused to indignant and he grabbed her thigh then, squeezing it painfully, moving it upwards to her inner thigh, then putting his fingers in the waistband of her panties and twisting the material painfully. She gasped.

"Oh, Teresa," he said victoriously. "Haven't you learned? You're mine now."

xxx

"It's Tommy Volker," Jane breathed into the phone to Abbott.

"He's in federal prison, Jane," Abbott said. "Did he pay people to take her?"

"Yes, and no. He must have escaped. I'm sure he's there with her himself. He has to be."

"OK, let's find him and bring Agent Lisbon home."

xxx