Of Bullseyes and Bloody Betrayals
The two men turned to look at each other, then at the man standing in the docket.
"Um, Mr. Jane," said one of them, "We need to break for about 20 minutes or so…"
"Oh yes?"
"Yeah."
"How did I do?"
"Um, we need to check…"
"Yeah, verify the results…"
"That's right, verify the results."
"Yeah, if you can just give us 20 minutes…"
Patrick Jane glanced from man to man, perplexed. "Certainly." He removed the headphones, placed them on the narrow shelf in front of him. He turned to leave the small room, but paused, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
"Was that a cafeteria I saw coming in? And if so, does it serve tea?"
The men looked at each other yet again. "Tea?"
"Yes, black tea. Orange pekoe. English breakfast, anything similar. Not that herbal poison that's all the fashion now…" He smiled at them earnestly. "And the water, it needs to be almost boiling. That is a problem with most places as well. Lukewarm water doesn't release the tannins properly. Dishwater would be better."
"Um…"
Patrick Jane shrugged. "Not to worry. I'll figure it out. Back in 20?"
"Yeah. 20."
And with a little wave, Patrick Jane left the long dark narrow room, the two men watching him go.
They turned around and looked at the wall behind them.
"Did he just…?"
"That's impossible. No one can do that."
"I've never seen anything like that..."
"Let's get to work…"
__________________________________
It was a dismal excuse for a cafeteria, but then again, it was a dismal excuse for a building. The walls were unpainted concrete, the floor likewise. It had low ceilings and precious few windows anywhere. In fact, the lighting was fluorescent tubing, casting cold blue shadows around every corner, across every face and under every table. It reminded Jane of a bunker, although truth be told, he had never been in a bunker in his life. It reminded him of what he imagined a bunker to be like, and he left it at that.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. It had taken him 35 seconds to walk here from the long dark narrow room. That left 19 minutes 25 seconds. He set the clock inside his head and scanned the room for a cup of tea.
It was obviously classified as a cafeteria, that much was true, with a long stainless steel counter, a roller shelf for brown plastic trays and a glassed-in cabinet containing saran-covered sandwiches, apples and very old pies. Vending machines were everywhere. In one corner, he spied a lone coffee pot smoking on a hot plate. None of it seemed very appetizing.
19 minutes, 10 seconds.
He had killed a man this week.
Hands in pockets, he ambled over, realizing his prospects were getting slimmer by the step. There were white mugs, brown plastic stir sticks, a basket of non-dairy creamers and sugar packets, but no hot water or tea bags to be seen. Disappointing but not entirely surprising, given the setting. The few patrons were sitting holding their mugs, and chatting to each other, but no one seemed to be drinking. Jane realized that they were not here for the coffee.
And certainly not the atmosphere. It was most unpleasant, and the lone attendant busied herself wiping counters with a sour, crumb-laden blue rag. Jane made a face, made a decision, and walked out of the cafeteria, down the long bunker-like hallway and out of the building into the night.
The coolness of the air hit him and he closed his eyes, releasing a long deep breath. He much preferred the night sky to the ugly falseness of fluorescence, and he leaned against the institutional grey stucco of the outside wall to wait, trusting his internal clock to tell him when his 20 minutes had passed. Sacramento was visible in the distance, lights sparkling and dancing under the darkness and it was quiet this far out in the hills and fields that surrounded the city. There were a few cars in the parking lot, his own Citroen being one of them, but it was 3:30 in the morning, a time when most good people were in bed, asleep.
That had been his problem. Too much time, not enough sleep.
He had killed a man this week.
He kept his hands firmly in his pockets, afraid of what he might see if he pulled them out. It was usually the sight, the memory, of hands covered in blood, tissue, organ, torn fabric. He frequently saw that when he looked at his hands. A trick of the light, a skip in his memory, like déjà vu. His pockets were a good place to keep them so he just wouldn't see. But now, a new sight, a new memory, hands snatching a rifle off the ground, feeling its weight, its coolness and metallic sharpness, the burn of the recoil against his skin as he pulled the trigger, taking a life with a single minute action. His hands had betrayed him, saving Lisbon, yes, and Maya Plaskett, but losing the one man who could lead them to Red John in the process. He had actually, finally, killed a man, and with a gun no less, and for some reason, it was plaguing him to no end. He couldn't find a harbour in it anywhere.
Sixteen minutes.
Lisbon had tried to help, really she had. He couldn't blame her for not understanding. She had killed men before, and he had always assumed she was okay with it, but again, truth be told, he had never stopped to ask. He was entirely too self-absorbed. There had to have been a first time for her as well. But likely it hadn't come with such a price. Maybe he was wrong. He didn't know her as well as he thought. He had trusted her and she had betrayed that trust, promising to wait for Red John, but allowing her fear to get in the way. She had upset his plan, thereby upsetting him. And she wondered why he didn't trust people.
"You'd choose life," she had said and he had denied it. But she was right, he had chosen life, her life. It had almost been instinct, not really a choice after all, a knee-jerk reaction to protect a woman he cared for, and it had betrayed everything he thought he valued, everything he thought he had so carefully constructed for himself, by himself. Yes, he thought, that was perhaps the heart of the matter. By saving Lisbon, he had betrayed himself. What kind of man could be shipwrecked so easily?
He had killed a man.
Hardy had laughed and sshhed as he died, and Jane had wanted to grab him, save him, eviscerate him. His hands had betrayed him yet again, feeling the irrational urge to put his hands in the blood. Pull his intestines out in vengeful glee, then stuff them back in panic and desperation. Stop the heart from beating, stop the heart from stopping. Get bloody, stay clean. Blood the lover and the enemy in one. He had curled them into fists that night, not knowing what to do with his bloody betraying hands.
Sheriff Hardy was DuMont Tanner and he had died because of those hands. A victim of Red John almost as much as he himself, both tools in the game they were playing and he realized with horror that no matter what Hardy had done, he had not betrayed Red John. Orville Tanner's son, once a kid, losing his father in a murderer's stead, had remained faithful to the end and he wondered how his daughter would have faired, had she lived and he had died. He stopped that train of thought quickly. His chest would surely burst if he went there.
12 minutes, 56 seconds.
He took another long deep breath. This is why people smoked, he realized. You could stand around, outside a building, thinking and puffing, swallowing fire and flicking ash, and it seemed natural, therapeutic. His blue eyes scanned the dark ground – butts everywhere. Yes, even here. Perhaps mostly here.
He gazed up, wishing the cafeteria had had tea after all. The constellations were bright this night, and he began to count them, name them, shape them, connecting very different dots and was surprised at how many of them could form smiley faces if you really tried. At least they weren't red.
He had killed a man. With a gun.
He hated guns. They were pathetic and small and for the weak of will or constitution. When he had imagined himself killing Red John, it had always been organic, a knife most likely, or his own hands. But he had killed a man with a gun, a rifle, something big and cold and impersonal, and that also was a betrayal. He could understand Red John's attraction to knives. It was viscerally satisfying, hands-on, cathartic, like gardening or painting. Just bloodier. He had used a gun. What did that say about his will? About his constitution? He had betrayed his own principles. Did that make Lisbon right – was he being selfish and childish? Should he really have let her die?
10 minutes, 6 seconds
She wanted to fix him, and for some odd reason, that wasn't a betrayal. She wanted what she wanted, all hearts did after all, and hers was no different. She wanted some illusion of him, whole and happy and productive, and railed against what she saw as his refusal to "get better". He understood, couldn't hate her for it. In fact, it warmed him more than a cup of tea to know how much she had invested. But even after all these years, she still didn't realize how badly he was broken and that ultimately, he had no desire to be fixed.
"There are people who care about you, who need you," she had said. He knew she meant it, knew she meant well, knew she cared. Hated himself for letting her. She could have been killed, by Hardy, by Red John. Now, she was now as much a target as he, more so if Red John stayed true to type. He couldn't allow her to care, couldn't allow her to need him. Had to keep her at arm's length. To allow her in would be devastating for both of them.
Eight minutes, 29 seconds.
A Scotch would be good right now, he thought to himself. A man could get lost inside his own head very easily. Sleeping pills or Scotch tended to bypass that cycle, and he had none at the moment. He would have to go home for that. Home. Home had cabinets filled with that kind of help. Home was the perfect place to find the balance he needed. One look at the wall, and he was home. Red John had become his home. Red John and his red smiley face. It was only when he had killed the man, could he move out.
He had already killed a man this week. Would do it again in a heartbeat.
And then, there was that. Part of him had felt good, very good, when he had pulled the trigger and sent the sheriff flying. The part of him that cried for justice, for revenge, for the spilling of blood as payment for the spilling of blood, and realized that it was almost a biblical thing, an eye for an eye, a life for a life, and it was a curious and dangerous path, as it hadn't seemed to satisfy that yearning in the least.
He realized with dread that very likely, he needed more blood, and wondered now if there would ever be enough.
And that thought left him very quiet for a very long time.
Something clicked inside, and he knew that he had just effectively thought through 19 minutes of time, and he needed to go back inside. He knew they couldn't believe what he had done, and more than likely, they would ask him to repeat it. He would, of course. It was easier than he had thought, mind over matter, and his mind always won out over any matter. It had always been this way, even as a child. Anything he tried, he aced. This would be no different.
With one final, long deep breath, he left the coolness of the night air and went inside the building, down the long dark low-ceilinged hallway and into the room with the small partitioned cubicles, or dockets, taking up the space he had occupied just 20 minutes earlier. The men swung around as he entered, walked around to meet him there.
"So? How did I do?"
"Um, how 'bout trying that one more time, Mr. Jane?"
"Yeah," said the other. "Just for verification."
"Fair enough," he said, reaching for the head phones and pulling them on over his ears. He picked up the Glock 9mm he had been using earlier, let his hands wrap around it, feeling its weight, its shape, its hard smooth texture. The physics of it, the mechanics, its design both inside and out, all spoke to him, giving him vital information about how it would fire, and he used that, calculating and projecting the bullet's path in his mind long before it left the muzzle. A new target had been set up and with one graceful arc, he swung his arms up, locked and fired the entire round without flinching. 6 shots in perfectly timed succession. Bam bam bam bam bam bam. Like clockwork. Like a heartbeat. Like breathing.
He lowered the weapon, placed it on the small shelf, and removed the head gear. The men trotted round to check.
They shook their heads yet again.
Just like the last time, it looked like only one bullet had been fired, the first passing through dead center of the target, and the following five passing through the exact same hole, impacting on the far wall like vertebrae. Perfect score. Impossible aim. Bullseyes every time.
"Is it good?" Jane asked.
"Um, yeah," said the first. "Really good, actually."
"I thought you said you'd never done this before," said the other, incredulous.
"Oh, I haven't. So, it's good, then?"
The men shuffled their feet. One of them cleared his throat.
"Have you ever considered sniper detail? You're accuracy is pretty dead on…"
Jane smiled. "I hate guns. I just wanted to know, that's all. Thank you gentlemen. Good night."
And he turned and left the room, walked down the long bunker like hallway of the joint CBI/Sacramento PD Firing Range, and stepped out into the night.
The end