Red John.
Red John.
Red John.
Always Red John.
It was always the Red John case that ate away at him.
Not the child molesting cases.
Not the sadistic torture cases.
Not her undying love for him.
Red John.
Always Red John.
Always Angela.
Always Charlotte.
Always Red John.
XXX
They sat in silence. They drove in silence. They walked in silence. No words were needed. No words were said. Red John. He had struck again.
He always struck again.
And again.
And again.
Like the debt you can never pay, like the child you can never love, like the marriage that fell apart, like the religion that didn't hold up. Red John.
Red John.
Red John.
So there they sat; there they sat in pure and utter silence. Driving. Not speaking. Just driving. Driving halve the way across the USA, from one end to another.
See this Red John case, it was different.
It was so different.
And yet it was the same.
The face on the wall; the stab wounds; the art.
The art of Red John.
It was perfect.
It was Red John.
The same Red John that had claimed the life of Angela Ruskin- Jane. The same Red John that had claimed the life of Charlotte Anne Jane. The same Red John that had taken the life of Lorelei Martins. The same Red John who had a price over Teresa Lisbon's head.
It was defiantly Red John.
So that led them to where we are now.
Driving.
Driving.
Driving in silence.
All 5 members of the team, driving.
All 5 members of the team, driving in silence.
All 5 members of the team, driving in silence towards DC.
DC.
Washington, DC.
Washington, DC, to go and play "Can we catch Red John" with a team of people who call themselves the smartest.
Who call themselves the best.
Who call themselves the Jeffersonion Institute.
A Forensic Anthropologist with degrees and Phds all over the place.
A Forensic Pathologist who was.. Well… a Forensic Pathologist.
A Forensic Botanist- yeah. You heard me.
A Artist. What the hell is an artist doing with a team like that?
And an FBI agent.
God this is gunna be awful. Jane thought, as he scoffed. On the rare occasions that he dealt with the FBI had ended beyond badly- and they usually included a law suit or two against him.
"Jane?" Lisbon asked him, as the rest of the team exited the van to go get the details of the case. HE had been in another world for hours.
"Mh?" He said wearily, still staring into space. Lisbon chuckled inwardly.
"We're here.." She said cautiously, as she watched the color drain from his face. "Jane?"
And that was it.
The mask was back up.
The most practised poker face in the world took its unwelcome place on his face.
Again.
"Yeeessss, Lisbon?" He smiled at the concern in her eyes, as she tilted her head, pursing her lips.
"Never mind, Jane. Lets get this over with." She puffed as she too exited the van to join her team, Jane closely at her tail.
As she entered the babble and the noise that DC brought, she saw her team conversing with two women. They were both beautiful, one with a darker complexion than the other. Even from this distance she could tell that the two women had seen so much worse than this. Another man knelt in a jumpsuit identical to the ones the other two women were wearing near a body. A fresh body of a little blonde girl with curly hair that fell just above her shoulders.
She could have been Charlotte's twin.
Jane froze, as she turned.
He had seen her.
He had seen the little girl.
He had seen the little dead girl.
"Jane ar-"
"Doctor Saroyon, why am I here?" A loud voice interrupted as a small brunette strode past in a similar jumpsuit, with such confidence you could have mistaken her for the president. Her pony tail bounced from side to side as she walked towards the older woman. The man on the floor sent a smile her way, which she graciously returned. The Asian chick that wasn't really Asian grinned pull time at the confident figure, before looking down at the body, her smile wiped from her face.
"Brennan, nice to see you here. We have another victim" She gestured towards the body "We need you to identify th-"
"Cam, that body has flesh on it. I believe that is more your area of expertise." She raised her eyebrows as the team from California surrounded them. "Hello, my name is Temprance Brennan, I'm a Forensic Anthropologist and this isn't my job-" she looked at the flesh covered body. "There is no point in telling me your names, I will not remember them. You see, I am important, there is only one of me. You… your not so important. There are many of you- so I will not learn your names unless I feel absolutely necessary." She smiled before turning back to her boss. "If that's all, Doctor Saroyan?"
"No, Doctor Brennan, it's not." She started to walk towards the barn behind them.
"Wayne!" A large man shouted from Brennan's car, as he ran towards the agents.
"Seely!" He pulled the man into a bear hug as the laughed, totally ignoring the body that lay next to them.
"Don't call me Seely.."
"Don't call me Wayne…"
They laughed as they turned to the three confounded agents, the scientist, the artist and the consultant.
"Guy's, this is my little cousin." Booth said to the scientist and artist, as Rigsby did the same for his team.
"Waiiitttt…" The artist spoke. "So theres Studly, there's Brother Studly, there's Baby Studly, there's Grandpa Studly, and now there's Cousin Studly too! " She laughed at the joke that the large agent and she obviously shared.
"Booth- this is Lisbon, Van Pelt, Cho… and… Jane."
"Hey- nice to meet you. Look- Bones- she doesn't mean it.. She doesn't do well with.. Well.. People.." He laughed as Jane stepped forwards.
"You're obviously ex-military, you have a very keep eye, so I presume it was a sniper? You have one child… Two children, and one of them is with Doctor Brennan?"
"Dude, that's creepy." Booth replied as they begun making there way towards the farmhouse. Jane shrugged, as he heard the voice of the socially- naiive Doctor Brennan.
"Booth!"
"Oh no…" Jane heard, as the huge agent jogged towards his partner.
"Look Jane, she cant talk to anyone without a big agent with his big badge out behind her… The two of you should get along!" Cho said as he too entered the barn. Lisbon smiled into herself.
Doctor Brennan was standing in the middle of the outbuilding, as everybody else stood stock-still. In the corner of the room, there was a pile of bones, brown and bloody, with insects crawling all over. Her head snapped up as the team walked into the building.
"Stop!" She practically screamed. "Stop…" She took a seep breath and spun around again, carefully making her way across towards the face on the wall. "Stop… Booth, I need you to very carefully walk towards me, and don't you dare stand on that line of foot prints.." She pointed towards a faded set of footprints in the hay of the barn.
Jane looked around the dark barn- clearly it hadn't been used in quite some time. There was a small window at the center of the left roof panel, sending bright rays of sunlight into the room that reflected of the mirror and lit up the remains like they would have been in a horror house. He looked towards some of the techs, where he saw the smiley face painted on the first panel of wood you saw after coming through the main- entrance. It was faded, but it was there. Like always.
Three fingers.
Right hand.
Clockwise.
Gloves.
Blood.
Red John.
Red John.
Red John.
"What am I doing Bones" Booth called out as he slowly made his way towards the anthropologist.
"Who has been in this room? More importantly.. If you are a size 10 male, please raise your hand?" She called out, completely ignoring her partners queries. About halve a dozen men raised there hands. "Okay, who has treds on the bottom of their shoes that form 10 zigzags?" All of the men lowered their hands. "Good. Booth, I need you to stand just to the left of this footprint here. You.. Err.. What's your name? I don't care.. Come and stand on Booth's right." Rigsby did as was asked of him. Once the two large men stepped away from the footprints they had just made, there was a clear trend emerging.
"Jane, is it? You're supposed to be a mentalist, so why don't you get over here, without treading on the footprints, and tell me what you observe from this." Jane strode over, faking his confidence.
"Um.. I.. I usualy work with victims who have a bit more.. Well a bit more.. Flesh…" He said, covering his mouth. Brennan chuckled.
"Anthropologically speaking, I can understand why you analyse everything. After your wife and daughters deaths, it is a kind of paranoia. A coping mechanism. Before then, it was a way to assert your alpha-male primitive genes. You had everyone hanging off of you're every word. Many tribes in Eastern Asia would have a person who could control the tribe through his or her- but usually his due to sexism- mental abilities and keen eye for observation." Even Jane was chuckling now, despite the mention of his dead wife and daughter. Brennan turned around and began assessing the body.
"Okay, so our victim is female, late teens, early twenties, she was an asthmatic and Caucasian. She had light blue eyes and brown hair with blonde highlights. She has been dead for approximately three weeks, but excessive sunlight and insect activity have degraded her remains. She was about 5 foot 8" and she weighed around 120 pounds. Now, I want these three sets foot prints sent back to the Jeffersonion, after Ange has photographed them. The remains too, should be sent back to the Jeffersonion immediately. Hodgens, take samples from the face on the wall and see if you can find out what kind of glove was used. Then do your buggy thing. As for what to do with the body covered in flesh, throw it away for all I care. Go to Cam for your instructions on that one. And if any of this" she gestured around her "is in any less than perfect condition when I get it back, I will find out who did it, and I will kill them. This is a serial killer, and we all know how they need to be handled. If we learnt anything from the Grave-Digger, from Howard Ebbs, from Pelant, its that every little detail matters. Don't disappoint me." She concluded and flew out of the room. Booth nodded and followed her. As she slid into the car, he doubled back, ignoring the bewildered look on her face.
"Jane?" He asked, pulling him and Lisbon aside as her team moved towards the car.
"Your colleague is.. Interesting.." Lisbon said, barely able to hold a chuckle.
"Yeah… She.. Well she's Bones." He shrugged. "Jane, I need you to give the squints complete access to the Red John records and case files. No limits. You have to tell them everything. And I mean everything."
"I will."
"You're lying, Hey, it's your choice. They will find everything out anyway, but if you want to catch Rend John sooner rather than later, then you're going to have to tell them everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. You get me?" Booth turned and walked towards the car before Jane could reply. He nodded at Agent Lisbon as he sat next to Brennan in the car.
"Jane.." She turned towards him.
"He's right. I need to tell them everything. They will catch him, wont they."
"Yes. They will find the evidence that the CBI techs never did. These people all have higher IQ's than Einstein. If anyone can catch him and send him to jail, it's them. I read a few case files.. Even the interns are good on the-"
"He won't make it to the courts Lisbon. I thought you understood that." Jane said, looking towards the ground. "It's me or it's him. There's no other way around it." Hurt flashed in her eyes at the prospect of loosing Jane for more than six months. Those six months had killed her. Each second without Jane at her side ate away at her. But he would never know. He would never care. Because of Red John.
God, if he doesn't kill Red John, I will. She caught herself thinking. No. No you are not in love with him, Reece. You.. Your NOT! You.. I.. I cant be..
A/N- I love reveiws, even if I cant always reply to them. So i will make this a mutichapter if I get five reveiws? I posted this as a Mentalist story becasue although the Jeffesonion and its team play an imortant role in this now, they will die away eventualy. This is a Mentalist fic eventualy! Pure Mentalsit fluff- just give it some time. The rating is for future chapters (that is, if you reveiw!)... Da Da Dahhhh.. Thanksx xx