Who the hell are you?
You know. You all know exactly who I am. Say my name.
Do what? I don't—I don't have a damn clue who the hell you are.
Yeah, you do. I'm the writer. I'm the one who figured Red John is McAllister.
Bullshit. Nobody got McAllister.
You sure?
s/9497919/1/Red-John-Revealed
That's right. Now. Say my name.
You're Forseti Purge.
You're goddamn right.
OZYMANDIAS
It shouldn't be long now. He made noises without words, the stuff of nightmare, like a fish hooked out of water. Then his eyes clouded over and nothing more escaped his mouth. Patrick Jane released his hand from his neck.
It's over.
He was dead.
For a moment, Jane just sat still staring into his dead eyes, locking the sight into his impregnable memory fortress, knowing that it was burned forever in his head even if he could no longer distinguish left from right, up from down.
He won.
He wanted to scream, to laugh crazily, to clinch the corpse like a hated doll. He'd only be drawing people's attentions. Perhaps he should have finished this in the church. That way, he needn't have bothered with all this running, as exhausting as they come. He must have known there would be another backup.
Whatever. The word once writ couldn't be undone, et cetera. Dead was dead.
And he was alive.
He looked at his gun. Past by his head flashed a moment's fantasy where he shot himself to join his wife and his daughter. If he were not still trembling, he would have laughed. What a joke. His ghost daughter, or more correctly his subconscious, said it best: they were dead. They didn't care. Besides, even if such things existed—and they didn't, anyway—he could imagine the conversation that would ensue.
Hello, my name is Patrick Jane. I'm your father. I just shot your murderer. Then I shot myself, too, so I can see you all.
Not going to happen.
Jane planted the pistol on his hand for all the good it would do. An hour in the forensic lab would reveal his fingerprints, too. Then the next day, no, likely the next hour, his name and face would appear in all TVs and internet and newspapers from Vancouver to Veracruz. This is a civilized society, they'd say. There are laws. Even serial killers deserve their day in court. We can't possibly condone vigilante execution...
And so on, and so forth, he thought. They wouldn't get it. He stood, dusted his jacket a little. His concern should be his pants though, now stained with blood.
Below him lay Red John, killer of killers, who not ten minutes ago boasted his empire of thousand members and indiscretions.
There was nothing to him anymore. Whatever he'd had in life, he was now a corpse in a public park, mute, inert, having spent his last moments alone and begging and calling the cops, useless as yesterday's news.
Jane took his phone. He needed to share this with somebody. He needed to say—what? Apology? Gloat? Farewell?
None of those things tasted right. He wasn't and would never be sorry for killing Red John. He'd strangle him a thousand times if he could. At the same time, it wasn't something he felt the need to gloat for. He'd done it because it had to be done. As to farewell...
No. All these lies had to stop. They'd worn him thin, anyway. He didn't want to say farewell to someone he would very much love to see again.
The truth would be it, then. Just the truth. What really happened.
He called Lisbon.
To his infinite displeasure, she didn't pick up. Perhaps her phone had been confiscated by those feebs. What a shame. What a crime. He wanted—he needed to hear her words. Meh. You couldn't have everything. Voice mail would have to do.
"It's over. It's done. I'm okay. I'm gonna miss you."
That's it. The truth. It couldn't go truer than that.
There was nothing more left for him here, so he threw away the phone and strolled away from the scene, the sun high up in the sky, Angela and Charlotte eternal in his memory.
He ran.