Ball of Fire - Recap

Jane was at a roadside stand not far from Sacramento buying fresh fruit when he made a call to Agent Lisbon at CIB headquarters. He told her he just wanted her to be aware of where he was at the moment, and Lisbon, being in a saucy mood, ordered him to buy her some apples, which he agreed that he would do for her. Suddenly, a tall young man in a hooded sweatshirt, otherwise known as a hoodie, stepped from a car and aimed a nine milimeter pistol at Jane's head, pulling the trigger, firing several times. His accomplice, a shorter, sligthly older man also fired his gun and was killed by the fruit stand owner, Norberto Rivera, who himself was killed in the backfire. The first man ran closer to Jane and abducted him, pulling him into a late model sedan and driving off in a cloud of dust. Someone at the fruit stand called the local police and the FBI and the CBI were involved in the case.

As the agents swarmed the abduction and fruit stand area, Lisbon despaired of Jane's life. She and Rigsby assessed the area and went back to CBI headquarters where Lisbon told Van Pelt and other fellow agents to look into Jane's past cases and see if there was anyone he had put away who might want to abduct or even kill him. Lisbon discovered that there was a doctor who had been put into prison for torturing and murdering two innocent people who wanted to talk to her about Jane. He claimed to have published some personal thoughts about Jane on the internet some time in the recent past, capturing the attention of a young woman named Rachel. Rachel had written to this doctor, Linus Wagner, about her fascination with Jane and wanted his insight about what made Jane tick, how he seemed to solve his cases with so little effort, etc. The two had exchanged letters and she had told Wagner that she intended to do something about Jane soon, but what it was she would not share with the doctor. Being in prison as he was, there was nothing he could do but call Lisbon and tell her. He only divulged this information after Lisbon reluctantly agreed to testify on his behalf to improve his prison life. Wagner told Lisbon that he knew she detested him, but he felt some camaraderie with Jane and wanted to help him.

Meanwhile, Rachel and her male companion managed to take Jane to a mountain hunting cabin that belonged to the young man's father. Pulling Jane down into the basement, the man handcuffed Jane to a large pipe emerging from the wall. He yelled up to Rachel who came down the stairs and shot the man in the back twice, killing him instantly, leaving his corpse close to Jane's struggling form. Rachel told Jane how much she hated him, and how much she wanted to cause him pain, that he had no idea what she had in store for him. Rachel pulled a large cattle prod from a shelf and turning it on, aimed it directly at Jane's chest. She shoved it into his chest and the strong shock sent him reeling, but not far, because the handcuffs held firm. He moaned and groaned as she repeatedly jammed the weapon into his flailing body until she tired. Breathing heavily, he begged her to remove the beginning to smell corpse, which only made her smile wickedly and yank the corpse closer to Jane, leaving a trail of black blood. She screamed at him, then turned on her heel, climbing the stairs to carry out the next part of her diabolical plan.

A call had been made to CBI headquarters, reporting a burnt out car south of the area where Jane's abductor's car had been seen traveling. CLoser inspection revealed a restaurant menu carrying a fingerprint of the abductor which proved to be the young male who had kidnapped Jane, the young man who now lay dead in the hunting cabin's basement. That was a dead end, but knowing to whom the fingerprint belonged led them to Rachel, who had wrought some changes in her physical appearance, but not enough to put the local gendarmes off the trail. Interestingly enough, Rachel's father was a man who had been put away for murder and insurance fraud in the past, who had died of a simple infection in prison. That was the reason Rachel had had Jane kidnapped and was now holding him hostage in that basement.

Rachel told Jane those facts as she stood before him in the basement of that cabin, brandishing the cattle prod, but did not immediately use it. She had, as a primary residence, a house in the valley below that she had hard wired with remote alarms she could hear at the cabin. Those alarms went off when the CIB and FBI agents broke into that house, but found only dust covering everything, proving that she had not been there for weeks, so obviously she would have to be living somehere close by. If the police could find that abode, they would find Rachel and Jane, but it would have to be very soon.

Agent Lisbon was driving up the valley when she received a call on her cell phone from Rachel who directed her to an abandoned gas station. She told Lisbon she would have to follow her directions if she hoped to see Jane alive again. Lisbon obeyed, parking her vehicle at the gas station, leaving her gun on its' seat and walking a bit farther toward Rachel, getting into her car. Rachel drove the two of them to the hunting cabin where she handcuffed Lisbon next to Jane, telling them they would die a very painful death. What did she have in mind, Jane wanted to know? Lisbon announced that she smelled gasoline. Was Rachel planning to burn down the cabin and them along with it? Yes, Rachel said, that was the plan and she ran up stairs. She splashed gas everywhere inside and all over the deck outside. Unbeknownst to Rachel, Jane had taken something sharp from the nearby corpse's pants pocket and used it to pick himself free of the handcuffs. Jane attacked Rachel when she came down stairs to toss gas all over himself and Lisbon, and he overpowered her.

By that time, the other agents had located the hunting cabin and secured the scene, taking the now crazed Rachel into custody and releasing Lisbon. Jane and Lisbon had escaped by the skin of their teeth and were shaken by their close call. Death by burning was a most unpleasant way to go and they had come close to joining the corpse on the floor. Jane told Rachel that torturing and burning to death two agents was not the way to avenge the prison death of her murderer father and that she would have a lot of time to contemplate both that and the crime she had almost carried out.



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