The Mentalist 2X21: 18-5-4

Okay, so I've decided to Wikipedia some stuff today. This was a rough week, but I made it. I deserve a treat. (I honestly have no idea how I got all this done this week). But, I want to say a couple of things.

I really enjoyed the playfulness between Jane and the guy that ran the game store. It's so much fun to watch him interact with someone who is on the same level as him.

Also, I 100% had no idea who the killer was. None of the suspects seems good to me. I'm so glad that at the end, Lisbon was like, how did you know? And Patrick was all, 'it wasn't easy.' Makes me feel better about myself. 🤣

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Jane and the CBI team investigate the death of Noah Valicat, murdered by a gun-wielding clown who cuts off the victim's right index finger.

The CBI has to process scores of clowns, there for a movie audition.

Lisbon and Jane interview the victim's brother Rafe and his widow Daphne. Noah was a mathematical genius, but a poor one, who had recently started using his skills to work as a day trader. He always hoped that one of his home-inventions would prove successful; meanwhile they barely survived on Daphne's waitress salary.

Jane sees an unfinished chess game in progress - Noah was playing with chess with Tolman Bunting who runs a store selling puzzles. Jane and Bunting begin a verbal chess game with no board or pieces.

Van Pelt finds that Noah's day-trader job was fictitious, instead finding files of seemingly random numbers and letters routinely e-mailed to "BeastSlayer".

Lisbon is phoned by a panicked Daphne saying someone is in her house. The CBI team arrives. No one is inside but the house has been ransacked and the carpet in the bedroom has been ripped back to reveal a high-tech floor safe, which Daphne says she did not know about. Lisbon finds the safe's key under the bed: Noah's missing finger. Looking through the safe's contents, Jane finds a locker key marked 42. Jane makes himself tea in the neatly organized kitchen.

"BeastSlayer" is Alec Mosca who says Noah offered to give analysis on his bets for a 10 percent cut which proved profitable for them both, but that lately his analyses were all wrong, angering Mosca who is now seriously in debt.

Lisbon and Jane discover that Bunting is secretly employing computer geeks in a computer security business. Bunting says Noah was working on a "universal hack", a priceless device capable of decoding any encryption. He offered three people $2 million for whoever could do it first. Three weeks ago Noah called and said he'd done it but worried about it falling into the wrong hands. Bunting did not believe him. Jane tells him about the locker key.

One of the other people building a device is in Amsterdam, the other is Oliver McDaniel who is a patient in a secure mental hospital. As Lisbon and Jane interview him, McDaniel eats spaghetti and meatballs from a tin can, and seems uninterested in the universal hack device and the locker key that Jane shows him. Jane learns that McDaniel's music player plays soothing ocean sounds.

As soon as Lisbon and Jane leave, Noah escapes using a duplicate pass-key made long before which he has been using to come and go as he pleases.

Jane spots McDaniel's escape to Brazil as a ruse and instead goes to a seaside resort - McDaniel's choice of "music" inferred it and he ordered tins of spaghetti and meatballs.

As the CBI team follows McDaniel a hooded man knocks him out. The team chases him into (and out of) a locker room, McDaniel's destination. They arrest the hooded man - Bunting. Jane recovers the universal hack device from the locker that is 4 rows across and 2 down.

McDaniel says that during Noah's murder he was at a strip club's buffet.

Bunting uses his contacts and the Attorney General orders Lisbon to drop the charges.

Jane meets Daphne, Rafe and Bunting at the Valicat house with the universal hack machine - Bunting wants it but Jane says Daphne, as the widow, is the owner. The machine does not work until Daphne flicks a switch. Text appears on the screen, scrolling: "My wife killed me." Daphne admits murdering Noah because her life was lonely and a drudge. She wanted the wealth the universal hack would provide but Noah hid it. She knew about the safe and how to open it (Noah's finger) but the device was not in there.

Jane tells Lisbon he figured out it was her as the kitchen was unsearched during the (fake) break-in because it was her domain - she knew it was not in the kitchen.

At CBI headquarters Bunting takes possession of the device. Jane apologizes that he had "a little fiddle with it" - now it is nothing more than a collection of useless loose parts. Threatening legal action Bunting is about to stalk out when Jane finishes their chess game, by winning.