Red-Colored Night Skies
This story is my entry for this month's Paint it Red contest. The challenge's prompt was: Time was never on my side.
Story: How a simple airplane flight can end up in everyone's worst nightmare. An explosion, a dead pilot and two CBI-agents are stuck in the middle of the desert with one very badly injured consultant. Lisbon and Cho are the only ones who can keep Jane alive while a rescue party heads out to find them, running a race against time.
All chapters will be posted before the end of the month :-)
Type: This story is blatant Jane-Whumping and I do mean Whumping!, with loads and loads of hurt/comfort and angst as sugar coating. Add to that some wild animals, some very bad men and there you have it.
My inspiration for this story came from a very old episode of an Australian '80's series called 'The Flying Doctors'. In that episode, a doctor, a mechanic and a pilot got stuck in the desert as the pilot was badly hurt. It got me thinking: What would happen if I were to place my three favorite characters into the same basic position (without the pilot of course)? This story is the result of that thought.
Jane/Lisbon/Cho Friendship (in my universe Jane and Lisbon are not a couple nor will they ever be, but they are the best of friends with of course the necessary comforting in place.
I've taken a bit of liberty with the area they are in, even though most of it is based on real locations and towns. Please forgive me for any medical errors I might have made. And yes, if you find spelling or grammatical errors, that's because I'm not native English.
I do not own The Mentalist characters but I sure love to toy with them.
Feedback is very much appreciated and welcomed! I try to reply to every comment personally.
Red-Colored Night Skies
Chapter One
Teresa Lisbon watched her consultant grip his chair tightly and smiled. Patrick Jane hated flying. He always had. Even for very short distances, as they were used to in the California area, he grumbled and nagged about missing his trusted car. He would prefer to drive eight hours straight instead of hopping on a plane and spending barely 50 minutes on it.
This flight was probably one of his worst nightmares as they were not on a commuter flight but in a two-engine airplane flown by the owner of one of the most magnificent vineyards of California. He was the pilot, flying his three passengers (Jane, Cho and Lisbon) over the vineyard and then over a large patch of the Great Basin Black Rock Desert. He had insisted on bringing them after they solved his son-in-law's murder. After all, it was only a forty-minute flight to the city where Rigsby and Van Pelt would be waiting for them.
It was a mere coincidence that the team had been called in for the murder. They were in Palm Springs and had just resolved another case when Bertram called them and told them about the murder on Richfield's real estate. After debriefing and a lot of pressuring from Bertram, they had decided to split up in two teams with Rigsby and Van Pelt volunteering to stay in Palm Springs and tie loose ends up there and the rest of the group heading out to the estate by rental car.
The real estate itself was the size of a small country. It took almost 2,5 hours to drive from north to south, with a beautiful ranch right in the center of it. The ranch was self-sufficient, working with solar energy, its own water supply coming from deep below the surface and generators as backup. Thirty people worked on the estate. It took the team exactly two days to find the killer and close the case.
Even though staying at the estate had almost felt like a holiday, the three of them were eager to return to Palm Springs and had been packing when Mr. Richfield told them he would bring them back and take care of their rental car. He didn't take no for answer.
Mr. Richfield was not a man who took no for an answer. He was short of stature but compensated that with a very firm demeanor, making sure that everyone who worked for him knew who was boss. Lisbon liked him and had politely taken up on the offer, calling Van Pelt and Rigsby at the Palm Springs Police Office where they had been working to let them know they were on their way by plane and would arrive before dark.
Richfield loved to brag about his wealth and had flown very low over his vineyard, miles and miles of it. He was obviously a very good pilot and adored his little plane. The fact that Jane saw green every time he took a dive towards this property to show them yet another beautiful piece of land didn't matter to him.
Finally they were passed the man's borders and over the desert, with nothing but miles and miles of sandy hills. The heat was touchable even inside the plane.
"The Great Basin is a very particular area of California," Richfield had said, his voice droning on and on about this and that. "It's split up in a lot of very different regions. The area we are flying over right now is called Black Rock Desert. You have to be careful not to get lost here. Sometimes the desert animals don't see a human being for days. During the day it's extremely hot but at night it can cool off quite a bit, especially during this part of the year. And then there are the wild animals of course. If you get lost here, you won't last very long. Quite an interesting place in nature, this is."
Jane let his voice fade out as he leaned back, praying the nightmare would be over soon.
"Help yourselves to some soda," Richfield waved with one hand as the other held onto the wheel. "I've got some nuts in the back as well. My wife's work. She takes care of things, you know? I just use them." He roared with laughter at his own joke, finally shutting up for a few moments.
"Like hell I'm going to eat something now," Jane muttered, his hands still holding firmly tight on his chair.
"Lighten up, Jane," Lisbon smiled. "We'll be there in twenty minutes. It's not that bad."
Cho, who had been looking outside to admire the scenery turned his head. "Bet you ten bucks he's going to throw up before we get there."
Jane painfully grinned, realizing Cho was probably right.
"It's a deal," Lisbon laughed, shaking hands with Cho. "I'll bet he'll hold on until we land. And then he'll throw up."
"Yeah yeah, make fun of my misery," Jane grunted, now clutching his painful stomach. "Why do you think I prefer driving myself? I'm car sick."
"And airplane sick," Lisbon added. "Relax, Jane. It's no use taking Dramamine now, we're almost there."
"If you call another twenty minutes almost…" Jane croaked. "Can someone open a window?"
"This is not a train, Jane. You can't open a window on a plane."
"Then hand me a bucket please."
"Hey guys, I see something odd," Mr. Richfield spoke from the front of the plane. "Look to your right."
The three of them leaned towards the right windows and saw smoke coming from the middle of the desert. It was black smoke, whirling towards the sun.
"That's odd," Lisbon said. "There shouldn't be anything around these parts, right? Didn't you just say this was deserted area? What do you think it is?"
"I don't know," Richmond said, "could be a house or a shack on fire or a car or truck involved in an accident. There is one road that goes through these parts but it's hardly ever used. There is a long stretch of road where I can land. I'm going down."
Jane groaned even louder. "Are you serious? Can't you just call it in and let someone else come take a look?"
"Well, that's a slight problem there," Richfield confessed. "My meters are off. I should have them checked; my wife's been nagging me about it for ages. So calling in would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. We'll just go and see ourselves and make sure that everything's okay. It won't take a minute."
"Okay," Lisbon said approvingly. "You are right, we should probably check it out. But I'd like to be in Palm Springs by evening. Our colleagues are waiting for us."
"It won't take long," Richmond replied.
"This is no-man's-land," Jane muttered, "the only thing burning here is a burning bush." But he knew he was outnumbered as his three companions were very determined to find out where the smoke was coming from. He leaned back, closed his eyes and tried hard not to spill his bile all over the plane as Richfield brought it down efficiently and landed perfectly on the road.
The heat was imminent. Jane had already taken off his jacket but now considered just stripping altogether and leave the plane naked. If there was one thing he hated about California desert, it was the fact that it was too hot. At least the ocean side was a lot more bearable with a daily, gentle breeze. Even a storm sounded nice right now.
Richfield had already left the plane alongside Cho, making haste with their quest. Lisbon turned as she took the small steps downwards. "Aren't you coming, Jane?"
"Yeah, yeah." Jane took deep breaths and inhaled air before the heat made him groan once more. Almost immediately the nausea vanished, allowing him at least to recover from the plane sickness.
The smoke came from behind a small hill, hiding whatever it was from their view. They walked to the top of the sandy hill and spotted a burning car standing in a small valley, a long way from the main road. From the tracks it was clear the car had been driven here only to come to a stop in the middle of the valley.
"Listen," Jane said, closing his eyes as they stood on the hill. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Cho reacted. "It's deadly quiet here."
"Exactly. Isn't it great?" Jane exhaled, opening his eyes again. "Fantastic."
"Not if you get lost around here," Richfield commented dryly. "Perhaps that's what happened to this car and its driver."
"It's odd though," Lisbon said, "why would there be a vehicle burning in the middle of nowhere?"
"Do you think there's someone inside?" Cho asked, holding his hand above his eyes.
"I don't know. I can't tell." Lisbon was the first one to go down the hill, towards the vehicle. Richfield followed immediately after. Cho was the third one to go.
"Alright, just leave me here," Jane muttered, sliding down the hill as the last one. "Stupid kids playing with an old car, setting it on fire, I'll bet you ten bucks on that."
As they approached the vehicle, Cho was the first one to see two bodies sitting in the front seats of the car, both burned to a crisp as the flames licked through the vehicle, leaving a trail of smoke and burn marks. It was obvious the car had been burning up for some time, now shedding smoke and small flames from its engine.
"Okay," Jane said out loud. "Guess I lost that bet."
"A homicide?" Cho asked Lisbon. "Car set on fire in the middle of the desert with two bodies in them. Could be a mob hit, someone trying to get rid of evidence and hoping no one would ever find them."
"Or a suicide pact?" Richfield asked curiously.
"Strange suicide, setting yourself on fire," Jane commented, moving slowly towards the car to take a closer look at the bodies. "Mr. Richfield, do you have a fire extinguisher on the plane?"
"Yeah, I do."
Jane turned towards him, "you'd better go get them then before all evidence has gone up in flames. We might at least save some of it."
"I'll go," Cho said, turning around and hurrying back up the hill.
Richfield walked towards him, "Evidence? What do you think this is?"
"Murder. They didn't stand a chance. Their hands are tied together to prevent them from escaping the vehicle. From the looks of it, they were burned alive."
"How can you tell?"
"Look at the way their bodies are lying in the car. They died in agony, mouths open and bodies withering against the fire. It was painful. And if you look closely, you can see that the car doors were jammed as well. Even if they had been able to free themselves, they would never have gotten out."
Jane looked around. "Look, there are more traces there. There were two cars here and the second one left in a hurry by the looks of it."
Lisbon took out her phone to make pictures of the traces and the burning car, knowing that the desert was merciless and would get rid of the traces soon. The tire tracks were deep, as if from a heavy Jeep or a van.
Richfield felt goose bumps crawl up on his skin. "That's terrible. Disgusting, really."
"Yes it is," Jane said slowly. "People can be very cruel, Mr. Richfield."
Lisbon frowned as she looked at the car. "We have to call it in." She grabbed her cell phone. "I can't get a connection. Mr. Richfield, we'll have to coordinate this and get the troops in. We'd better go back to the plane and use your radio. Night will fall soon and if we don't hurry nobody might make it here until morning."
"Darkness will fall in about two hours," Jane said. "You won't get anyone here before that time. So we might as well head back and hope that Mr. Richfield here remembers where he landed."
Richfield nodded, clearly nauseated by the sight of the two burned corpses. He shuddered. "Who would do such a vicious thing?"
"That's for us to find out now," Lisbon said. "Jane is right, Mr. Richfield. The best thing for us to do now is to head further to Palm Springs and return in the morning. There's nothing anyone can do now for these two people."
Lisbon took steps backwards as she made more photos of the crime scene. They literally were in no-man's-land. Cho came back down the hill, carrying two fire extinguishers to make sure the fire was finally out and the car wouldn't explode in the middle of the night. Jane circled around the car, avoiding the heat and smoke, trying to take a better look inside at the corpses. Richfield was right next to him, following him around as he asked questions.
"Jane, don't come too close," Lisbon warned him.
Jane turned halfway towards her, his eyes glued on the vehicle. "Don't worry, Lisbon, we're fine."
The next thing they knew, just as Cho was approaching with the fire extinguishers, the car blew up on them, throwing all four of them to the ground in a loud blast.