Blood Money

Season Episode
2 19
First aired April 22,2010
Written by Jordan Harper & Ashley Gable
Directed by Adam Kane
Guest-starring John Kelly, Rachel Montez Collins, William Lucking, Mia Riverton, K Callan, John Kapelos, Dwayne Barnes, John Ales, Stephen Spinella
Previous episode Next episode
Aingavite Baa Red All Over
Blood Money is the nineteenth episode of season two of The Mentalist.


Patrick's reckless behavior catches up with him when his actions get a case against a hitman thrown out of court and Lisbon on suspension. But when the hitman is shot and killed himself, he has a shot at redemption.


Van Pelt walks down a dark alleyway, and a hooded man follows her. She turns around, and finds it's someone she's expecting. After a moment's hesitation, she asks the man to kill Wayne Rigsby.

Thirty six hours earlier, Rigsby, Jane, and Lisbon go to a house to find that Kelly Flower, a DA, is dead, shot at point blank. While walking around, Jane notices that the house is in the process of being remodeled. Her husband comes in to find her body, and falls to pieces.

At the HQ, Hightower introduces Cho and Rigsby to ADA Marc Odenthal, who gives them Kelly's cases she was working on before dying. Her most recent case is Hank Draber, a man wanted for smuggling, so Cho and Van Pelt go out to talk to Hank. He says he didn't want to get his hands dirty by killing a DA, and that he already has enough problems as it is. With him, along with fellow smugglers, is his aging mother, dolled up and pretty, feverishly scratching lottery tickets, hoping to strike it big. She speaks now and then, but her speech is random, and never stays on the same topic. Hank says that she's senile.

Lisbon and Jane interrogate Jayden Flower, Kelly's husband. While they talk, Cale Sylvan, one of the remodeling men, enters and stands directly on Kelly's bloodstain. When Patick Jane mentions it, rather than be alarmed, Cale simply moves his feet a bit. Jane asks the man some remodeling questions and gets his card, then returns to HQ. There, they look at Sylvan's file, and find that he's changed his name many times, and had an awful lot of unfortunate accidents happen near him - people dying while he's around, but nothing proven in a court of law. So, there's not even enough evidence for a search warrant. Lisbon sends Cho and Jane outside Sylvan's apartment to stake it out. Jane gets out to go for a walk, disappears, then re-appears at HQ, being vague about where he's been.

Lisbon sets up a sting, with Van Pelt as the bait, coming full circle from the beginning. In the dark alleyway, Sylvan says he says he charges $50,000. When Van Pelt asks for proof that he's for real, he first holds a knife to her throat to show how willing he is to kill. She asks for more, and he shows her a video on his phone of him killing Kelly. The rest of the team bursts from hiding and take him in.

In court, they show the video, with Kelly on the floor, pleading, before someone shoots her. Sylvan's lawyer brings up a cup which was found in Sylvan's sink, which was dusted for prints and found to have Jane's fingerprints on it. They pause the session, and Odenthal and Lisbon question Jane.

He reveals that during his walk, he picked the lock to Sylvan's apartment, went in, searched around, and checked his computer, where he had uploaded the video, the result of Sylvan's narcissistic glee at having proof of his own deed. Because of that, he knew that a sting could bear unmistakable evidence, leading him to suggest the sting with Van Pelt as the bait. But, the court doesn't have any other evidence on him, so Judge Hildred calls a the case to be thrown out under the Fruit of a poisonous tree exclusion rule.

Back at the office, Hightower sends Agent Lisbon five days suspension, because as leader of the team, she's responsible for the conduct of her team members. She leaves Cho in charge while she's gone.

Jane takes Cho out for coffee, and Cho guesses Jane has an ulterior motive for it. He says that while he was searching Sylvan's apartment, he found that Sylvan's not much of a tea drinker, but has the best, finest grinds of coffee, and since they're in the best coffee place in the city, there's a small chance he'll come there. And sure enough, he did. Jane bumps into him in line, and gives a half-hearted try at hypnosis, which obviously goes nowhere, but was a misdirection so he could search Sylvan's hoodie's pockets. Cho is unimpressed, as all Jane found was a button, lint, and some sand.

Back at the HQ, they discover that Sylvan withdraws $2000 a month from his bank account, but his apartment rent is only $900, must he likely has another place where he lives (or buys lots of expensive things every month, but it's too regular for that). On the other video on his phone (besides the murder), they find that he has a bag with a gym tag on it, and think to canvas the gyms in the city to see if anyone knows his other address there, a near impossible task with so many gyms. But, since Jane found sand in Sylvan's pocket, Cho infers that they should try a gym by the river. He says he grew up in Sacramento by the river, and knows river sand from ocean sand. A quick search narrows it down to one gym where they know Sylvan's other address.

Cut to Sylvan's house, where he's watching a black and white Gang movie, while in the back, a man is tied up with duck tape. A smoke grenade breaks through the window, and police stream in the house, handcuff him, and take him outside. But, while standing by a car, Rigsby notices a red visible laser dot on Cho's chest (why the shooter didn't use an infrared laser sight is anyone's guess), and tells Cho to duck. The dot moves to Sylvan, and he's shot once through the chest, and dies.

Cut to the next morning, where in the house's yard, graves are being dug up and skeletons exhumed. So far, they've found eight graves, and those are just the ones Sylvan's clients didn't want to be found.

Jane calls up Lisbon, who's on suspension but is still carrying three guns in her car, and has her meet him by the docks. There, they meet up with Hank and his senile mother, which Cho and Van Pelt already talked to. But while talking Jane easily picks up that Hank keeps looking over at his mother, and Jane figures out it's all a ruse in record time (though he wishes he'd checked her shoes for scuff marks, something he learned to do the last time a wheelchair-bound person was a suspect), and calls her out on it. She gets up, and yells at Hank, who's her fall guy, and she obviously runs the show. But while this time it at first appeared that Jane and Lisbon could talk to both of them alone, in reality, their fellow smugglers were just hiding, and they come out with guns, outnumbering and outgunning Lisbon's one gun. They surrender, and are lead into a shipping crate, which they load up and take out to the country. Jane and Lisbon are left alone to wait, and Lisbon says that she knows having Jane on her team will get her fired one day, and that she's prepared for that.

While they're talking, they hear a goat outside, and call out for someone to open their shipping container. There, they're greeted by a goat, and a Mexican kid that looks like a miniature Waldo. They walk to town, where they get transportation into the city, and Jane interrupts Marc Odenthal as he's pleading someone's case. Lisbon comes with him, but just sits in the gallery peacefully while he does his thing. As he's talking, Jane gets a phone call, and despite urgings from the Judge, he refuses to close it or take it outside until he's done. Marc comes over to him, and Patrick tweaks his nose, which he calls assault. The bailiff takes Jane out of court, and Lisbon follows.

Jane studies up on his law, and goes back to represent himself as lawyer in the case of tweaking Marc's nose. But, while talking, he keeps going on tangents, talking about movies, and inferring that Judge Hildred enjoys killing helpless animals, which although irrelevant, is true, and he shot a few ducks with a 10-gauge shotgun last time he went hunting. Jane repeats theatrically, saying a 10-gauge shotgun shoots three inch shells of death and destruction, which Marc absentmindedly corrects him as 3.5 (in reality, 3.6). Taking that as his queue, Jane reveals his suspicions.

Marc Odenthal's correction of the diameter of a 10-gauge shell, and his earlier absentminded but professional handling of an evidence pistol while yelling at Jane for losing his case reveals that he's very good with guns. Also, the cup found at Sylvan's residence likely wasn't just luck (after all, it's one thing to wonder why there's a cup in your sink that you don't remember using, but it's another thing to have said cup dusted for prints) and shows that someone went out of their way to find evidence of misconduct in Sylvan's investigation, and that someone had a real interest in seeing to it that Sylvan's case is thrown out. Therefore, Jane infers, Sylvan's shooter wasn't necessarily a second hitman hired to cover the original client's tracks, but it was perhaps the client himself, and that client was likely one of the two lawyers involved in his case, either his defending lawyer, or Kelly Flower's defending lawyer. But, not only had Marc shown that he's good with guns before Jane asked the Judge about hunting, Marc also likely had an interest in Kelly's death. He was just an Assistant District Attorney, but Kelly's Hank Draber case could have easily made him a full District Attorney, and indeed still likely would have if something were to happen to Kelly Flower. So, he hired a hitman to kill her, promising him that as the ADA, he'd do everything in his power that even if he were caught (since a lot more people would be snooping around for the killer of a DA than the regular person on the street), he'd do everything in his power to get him set free. So, when Sylvan was caught, Marc, knowing how Jane operated, likely had Sylvan carefully search his apartment for any sign of entry, and when he found Jane's mug, it was jackpot.

Still, at this point it's still all speculation, but Jane suggests that Marc Odenthal submit to a search of his house for weapons. He refuses, but the Judge sees the logic in Jane's argument, and issues a house search warrant for Odenthal.

Sure enough, in his garage, they find a sniper rifle and scope, and while questioning him, under threat that if he doesn't talk and is convicted anyway, that he could face the death penalty, he talks, taking that option off the table, and confirms Jane's suspicions. Marc Odenthal is taken away for jail.

In Hightower's office, she talks to Lisbon and Jane. She lays it down how many procedural codes they've broken (many, many ones for Jane, and just a handful for Lisbon), but then also lays down the results, in particular the rooting out of corruption among the California legal system. So, she says she'll talk to the DA about canceling Lisbon's suspension early, but still, Judge Hildred called earlier, and said that Jane has $16,000 in Court fines to pay.

Jane invites Lisbon to go to the shooting range with him, and after a moment’s pause, she says she will, but only if she can drive.


Main CastEdit

Recurring CastEdit

Guest CastEdit

Season 2 Episodes