Aingavite Baa is the eighteenth episode of season two of The Mentalist.
Recap[]
It's late at night and everyone's drinking coffee and tea. Hightower says that Narcotics needs help and sends Cho and Van Pelt (specifically naming the two of them when Rigsby starts to get up) to a rural location to collect trash bags of evidence. Cho and Van Pelt go there, complete their task, and are just about to leave when they see a woman with blood streaming from her head, who can't remember anything. They call back to the office for help, and Jane comes and talks to the injured woman. She remembers that before she was hit in the head, she was lying in the dirt in a place that smelled like horses. The agents search the area, find the shoe she lost, and then see a barn. Inside the barn, they find three bloody corpses. The woman is taken to the hospital and Jane talks with her some more. He doesn't get any further information from her, but he is able to confirm that her amnesia is genuine rather than faked.
Back at CBI, Hightower calls Rigsby, Van Pelt, and Lisbon into her office and lays down the law: Rigsby and Van Pelt have to either end their relationship or one of them will have to transfer out of the CBI's Sacremento office, and they have to decide by the next day. Hightower then dismisses the two of them, has Lisbon stay behind, chews her out for not doing anything about the problem, issues her a reprimand, and finally lets her leave. Lisbon acts cool about the outcome of the meeting, but as Jane easily notices, she's getting pissed off at Hightower.
Of the three corpses from the barn, two are identified by their IDs, which were on them, and determined to be hikers who were in the area earlier that day. The third is identified via fingerprints as Leonard Railton, a Native American who lived on the nearby Shoshone reservation. Railton was a recent parolee, having a criminal history of minor offenses. Jane and Lisbon meet with Dolores Brinton, who is Railton's parole officer, sole emergency contact, and also a Shoshone member. Then they decide to look for leads on the reservation, and Brinton says that if they go alone they won't get any information from anyone, so Brinton accompanies them as a sort of liaison between the CBI team and the tribe.
Cho and Rigsby meet Ranger Tisdale, whose territory encompasses the trail taken by the two dead hikers. The ranger tells them the trail isn't too popular, and gives them directions on following it. Cho and Rigsby invariably get lost and manage to stumble upon a pot farm. They notice that the plants are not doing well. Then someone with a machine gun opens fire and they take cover. Cho and Rigsby then try to call for backup, but there's no cell reception in the area. They figure that there's only one shooter, so they return fire and try to outflank him. However, the shooter escapes, leaving his weapon (a submachine gun) behind.
Rigsby and Cho return to base, and Hightower orders them to talk to Leonard Railton's girlfriend and to the owner of the souvenir shop where Railton was working. The girlfriend, Derrien Hopwood, says that her baby was getting sick, and Leonard told her to stop using powdered formula -- he even gave her a large supply of regular formula. The souvenir shop owner, Markham Willis, isn't able to add any information about what happened to Railton, but the agents are able to determine that Railton must have had an additional source of income.
Jane buys some postcards (with photos of the area) and a flute at the shop. At CBI, he asks Van Pelt to bring the amnesiac Jane Doe in, takes her to the interrogation room, and shows her the postcards. She thinks she should know the locations, but can't remember anything else. Jane relates that he believes her to be a local, and ruminates on how wonderful it'd be if she could find herself at that tranquil place when he'd only say the word. Meanwhile, Rigsby and Van Pelt go into a side room to have a talk. After a brief make-out session, Rigsby says he's come to a decision: He's learned that there's an opening at the San Francisco office (only an hour and a half away) and he loves Grace more than anything else, so he intends to take the transfer.
Cho and Lisbon go back to the reservation and confront Ranger Tisdale, who says he didn't know anything about the pot farm. Cho then says that Railton's banker told them he was depositing $2000 a month over his salary, and raises the possibility that the money was going to the ranger in exchange for his not noticing the pot farm. Tisdale attempts to run away. Lisbon takes off after him and stops him with a flying tackle (which impresses Cho), then forcefully cuffs him, obviously venting some pent-up frustration.
Lisbon and Cho interrogate the ranger, who says he was getting paid to keep people off the trail and away from the pot farm, and to give the farm's owners a heads-up if anyone was snooping around. But he refuses to give the owners' names, saying that if he does, they'll kill him. He also says they the drug dealers are probably short on cash, as they've had irrigation trouble for the last six months. Jane briefly interrupts the interview, but Hightower quickly asks to see him. She lectures Jane in her office, but in return he gives her a thorough emotional undressing (deducing, among other things, that she's separated from her husband), and says that he's dissatisfied with the way she's handling the Rigsby-Van Pelt issue. He also says that when Lisbon's unhappy, he's "less happy." At that, Hightower lets Jane leave.
Jane takes the Jane Doe woman to the reservation to Leonard's memorial. After Jane makes a scene by interrupting the memorial and asking embarrassing questions of the remembrance leader and the audience, some of her memory returns.
She says that she remembers the lake, and that something was missing there. But that's all she remembers. Van Pelt takes the woman back to the hospital, and Lisbon wants to return to HQ, but Jane reveals his plan. The woman didn't remember anything. Jane just hypnotically planted a suggestion that she was there while she was looking at a postcard, and told her to say so when he gave her a cue. He figured that the killer would probably be listening, and hearing the girl say that something was left there would prompt him to go back to the lake to check whether anything was missing. Meanwhile, Jane had told Cho to go to that specific lake and watch for people, and sure enough, a concerned Markham Willis, Railton's boss from the souvenir shop, shows up. The team apprehends him and discovers a rifle shell casing that he had picked up. Earlier, when Jane was talking to Leonard's girlfriend, she had said that Leonard told her to stop using powdered baby formula, and the local ranger said that the pot crops were dying for the last six months, which Jane inferred meant that there was something wrong with the water that came from that lake. Willis refuses to drink water from the lake, and starts telling the truth.
A few months ago, he was contacted by someone offering large amounts of money to dump waste on the reservation. The man had asked Leonard to help, promising him money, which kept him silent until his girlfriend's baby got sick, after which he wanted to blow the whistle on the operation. So, he contacted a journalist and took her out to see the lake, but the man used a high-powered rifle to shoot Leonard and the journalist. Then two hikers happened on the scene when he was removing the identification from the two bodies, and he shot them both at close range. Still, he says that afterward, he felt sorry about everything, for what it's worth.
With the man in custody, he reveals what he did with the IDs, and they're able to get the Jane Doe's driver's license. She used to be a social worker and worked with Leonard years ago, but more recently was an Internet journalist -- specifically, the journalist who was with Leonard the day he was shot at the lake. So, she actually was there and her remembering the lake wasn't entirely Jane's suggestion. Her mother is contacted to take her home.
Back at the office, despite Rigsby's promise that he'll leave for the San Francisco office, Van Pelt finds herself overcome with guilt. She talks to Rigsby, and says that he'll get angry at her eventually because he had to give up his job and go somewhere new for her, while she got to stay with her job. She also fears the other people on the team will be angry at her for causing Rigsby to leave. She tells him that they have to stop seeing each other. She takes the elevator, crying. Lisbon too takes the elevator, but in seeing Van Pelt's tears, Jane decides to take the stairs.
Trivia[]
- "Aingavite Baa" means "Red Water" in the Native American language spoken by the Shoshone tribe.
- The episode was originally titled "Aignavite".
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Simon Baker as Patrick Jane
- Robin Tunney as Teresa Lisbon
- Tim Kang as Kimball Cho
- Owain Yeoman as Wayne Rigsby
- Amanda Righetti as Grace Van Pelt
Recurring Cast[]
Guest Cast[]
- Rosa Arrendondo as Dolores Brinton
- Gil Birmingham as Markham Willis
- Sean Bridgers as Ranger Tisdale
- Tracy Middendorf as Jane Doe / Camille Dillon
- Wes Studi as Joseph Silverwing
- Gemma Massot as Derrien Hopwood
- Dorian Kingi as Leonard Railton
- K. T. Thangavelu as Doctor
- Taylor Gray as Shorter Kid
- Loki Pacheco-Taylor as Wiry Kid
- Mylo Ironbear as Tribal Elder
Season 2 Episodes |
Redemption · The Scarlet Letter · Red Badge · Red Menace · Red Scare · Black Gold and Red Blood · Red Bulls · His Red Right Hand · A Price Above Rubies · Throwing Fire · Rose-Colored Glasses · Bleeding Heart · Redline · Blood In, Blood Out · Red Herring · Code Red · The Red Box · Aingavite Baa · Blood Money · Red All Over · 18-5-4 · Red Letter · Red Sky in the Morning |