Redline is the thirteenth episode of season two of The Mentalist.
Recap[]
At a posh car dealership, salesmen show their clients their new cars. However, one opens up the trunk of a car to show his client, and finds a dead woman stuffed in.
The team arrives, and finds that the woman, Liselle, has died from blunt force trauma, and that the building's alarm wasn't set so no one could get in to dump the body.
Jane goes to a group of a half dozen salesmen. The lead man says they're like a family; Jane corrects him that the work is more like a shark-pit of competition, and proves his point by saying that Liselle's client list is upstairs (it's actually in Cho's pocket) and all but one of them trip over each other to go get it.
The next day Cho and Jane talk to the owner, Oliver Westhoff, who acknowledges he likes his salesmen to compete. Every six months they have a sales competition. The winner gets a Rolex, the loser gets a new job. Liselle was supposed to be hosting the cocktail hour, but Kinsey, the guy who found her, stepped in. They meet James Kinsey, the competition leader.
Jane rifles through the fridge, which prompts Kinsey to snap at him to unhand his lunch. Jane accuses Kinsey of resenting her, even though she was in the middle of the pack. He says with a bag on her head, she couldn't sell squat. He admits he asked her out and she said no. She has a boyfriend named Jeff, a musician.
Back at the office, Lisbon sees Rigsby and Van Pelt in her office, and tells them that at the end of the current case, she'll report them to Human Resources, and likely one of them will be transferred.
As Lisbon and Jane go to talk to Jeff Sparhawk, Liselle's boyfriend, Jane has easily picked up that Lisbon is torn about her decision to report Van Pelt and Rigsby, and feels guilty for having to report them, and a little jealous for their love. At Jeff’s apartment, they find an expensive painting given to her by Walter Mashburn.
They meet with Mashburn, and he's a rich man with a hot girlfriend, a fast boat, and a castle in Scotland. He says that he wouldn't kill and stuff someone in the back of a car. If he ever wanted someone dead, he'd just make them disappear, like smoke.
They talk to another guy, and he said that he had a car with drugs in them, and he hired Jeff Sparhawk to get the dope out of the car. Sparhawk crashes his car near the dealership, and runs in to the dealership with a sword in his hands. Police surround him, guns drawn, as Lisbon approaches him to try to convince him to drop the sword. Sparhawk, shouting that he killed her, finally calms down enough to drop the sword. They take him in, but he talks nonsense, saying that he killed her metaphorically.
Meanwhile, Jane goes fishing on a dock, where Mashburn docks his boat. He then takes a long walk down the beach with him, gets him to mentally tell him where he hid his ring (a woman's bra), and successfully drives blindfolded in a parking lot by feeling Mashburn’s reactions. However, as he gets out of the car, he forgets to engage the parking break, and the car slowly rolls down the parking lot, off a cliff, and crashes into the water. But Jane consoles Mashburn that the color is off, no one got hurt, and that he'll buy him a new one.
Jane goes back to the dealership with Mashburn to get a new car, and have Brad Elias show them around. But, like Mashburn's rings, Elias mentally shows Jane which car he used to kill Liselle. Elias runs, but Cho takes a short cut, jumps off a car and tackles him, and brings him in.
It turns out that Elias, being the second highest salesman, resented James Kinsey, the highest ranked salesman. So, he poisoned his beef barley soup, but Liselle caught him doing it, and told Elias to confess to it. Elias feared losing his job, or worse, going to jail for making Kinsey sick, so he took a car and hit Liselle with it in the parking garage. Security came faster than he expected, so he stuffed her in a trunk and acted like nothing happened.
The case over, Lisbon talks to Rigsby and Van Pelt, and decides to hide the relationship and deny that she knew anything about it. She tells them both that they shouldn't stare at each other, hold hands, or kiss on the job. Surprising to her, the two take it surprisingly well, and accept the restrictions without complaint. Unknown to Lisbon, this trial has stretched their relationship thin, and Rigsby and Van Pelt are at risk of breaking up.
Lisbon gets a call from Jane, and goes back to the dealership. Jane shows up in an expensive gray car that Mashburn loaned him, and he speeds off to a restaurant to take Lisbon to dinner.
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
Guest Cast[]
- Currie Graham as Walter Mashburn
- Kevin Rahm as Brad Elias
- Peter Onorati as Oliver Westhoff
- Richard Kahan as Jeff Sparhawk
- Mark Deklin as James Kinsey
- Paul Ben-Victor as Noah Landau
- Laura Jean Salerno as Liselle Douglas
- Scott Burn as Brian King
- Seth Caskey as Maitre D'
- Eric Naroyan as Luxury Car Salesman
- Barbara Beneville as Resort Woman
- Reggie De Morton as Salesman