A Red Recording
Description: Jane was sure that he would never know exactly what happened on the night of his family's death. He didn't count on Red John's camera skills...
As the working day began to wind down the bullpen was filled with the sound of quiet bustling as people prepared to go home. Lisbon was in her office making no move to go anywhere as she worked her way through the mountain of paperwork that regularly occupied her desk. Cho had already left for the night, eager to escape after Rigsby had broken out a fresh set of photos of his little son, Ben, talking a mile a minute about the amazing new things his young child could do ("He's already rolling over! Apparently that's really advanced for his age…"). Van Pelt had looked on, smiling as she felt her usual bittersweet emotions over Wayne's joy in fatherhood.
Rigsby had put away the photos now and was packing up his briefcase so that he too could leave for the day. Van Pelt had gone back to idly clicking around her computer screen, every few minutes refreshing the page of the criminal database she monitored to see if any of her searches on the CBI's most wanted had come up with fresh leads.
"Well, I'm heading out. Night, Grace." Van Pelt looked up from the screen to see Rigsby in his overcoat, his briefcase in one hand as he began to make his way out of the bullpen. She gave a wave and said "See you tomorrow, Wayne." He turned around in acknowledgement of her words and gave a goofy little salute as he kept walking. As he did this a beeping sound drew Van Pelt's attention back to her computer screen and she froze as she saw what had appeared on the screen.
"Wayne!" Van Pelt yelled without realizing what she was doing. Rigsby, who had only gotten down the hall by this time, came running back into the bullpen, looking around wildly to see what was wrong.
"What is it, what's going on?" Van Pelt pointed silently at her computer screen and waited for Rigsby to process the information as she had just done. Finally he gave a heaving sigh and said "You gotta show this to Lisbon." Grace nodded in agreement and, unhooking her laptop from its power source, and carried the computer into her boss's office behind the glass doors.
Lisbon looked up wearily. "What you got? New leads?" Lisbon was a dedicated cop and never questioned the thought of starting a new project late in the day.
Van Pelt was visibly nervous, her hands shaking slightly as she clung to the laptop in her arms. "Boss, I was running all the regular searches and something new came up in the Red John case… a video."
Lisbon's reaction was muted from exhaustion, but she looked quite startled and concerned all the same; CBI cases beginning with videos sent to the criminal database had never really had happy endings. Lisbon said nothing as she watched the video that Van Pelt and Rigsby had already seen, turning pale as it progressed and finally having to wipe her suddenly tear-filled eyes with her long sleeved shirt as it came to an end. Despite trying to keep her voice calm and even, she found herself almost yelling when she said "Where's Jane? Get Jane down here right now!"
Van Pelt and Rigsby looked at one another, obviously confused. Rigsby cleared his throat and said "Boss, I know this is his case, but are you sure you want to get him in on this right now? I mean, we could at least wait until the crime scene is found instead of letting him run around on a wild goose chase to figure out who these new victims are-"
"These aren't new victims," Lisbon interrupted, "This video is from ten years ago. These people are Angela and Charlotte Jane. It's his wife and daughter."