A Mentalist fic that's been bouncing around my laptop for a while, because I really need to take a break from everything else.
My first multichapter Mentalist, woo!
Disclaimer: I do not own.
And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. –Revelations 19:17
Red Tiger Hymn
The only light in the room comes from a guttering candle.
When the man wakes up, it's to a room full of shadow and one lonely flickering light, and he can't help but be afraid. He doesn't remember much, only fragments, flashes of an alley, car headlights, and sharp, stinging pain in his neck. He doesn't know where he is, only that it's dark and smells like dust and fire.
He can't move. From the neck down he's numb, unable to even twitch away from the soft, dry laugh that comes from the other side of the candle.
"Comfy?"
The man blinks—a flinch—and there's another dry laugh. Someone stirs in the shadows and lifts the candle, and the tiny light flickers.
"I'm glad you're awake. I was starting to think I'd been a little too forceful."
The man in the chair flinches again as the candle comes closer, a bright, hot little spark. He can't see the holder, but the holder can see him, and pats his shoulder comfortingly.
The man can't feel it.
"You're my first," the man in the shadows explains. "Alone, anyway. I haven't quite gotten the hang of the whole bag and tag part yet. It's a process."
Fear starts to swim in the man's gut, and he wants to talk but finds that he can't.
"Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you. You won't be able to speak."
The shadow-man keeps walking, and the little prick of light wavers.
The man in the chair can't breathe.
"Do you know why you're here?"
He doesn't.
The shadowy man sighs and sets the candle down. The little fire flickers. Shadows dance, and the man thinks he sees knives.
"No? Ah, well."
He can't breathe.
"You are here to help me," the other man says. The fire burns orange off a gleaming knife. "Now relax. This will all be over soon."
A knife shines silver, and the candle snuffs out.
"Jane," Lisbon says, kicking the couch.
Jane starts awake, blinking rapidly. "Hi."
Her face softens. "Were you actually asleep?"
"Oh, no, I'm fine," he says, flapping a hand. "It was time for me to get up anyway. We have a case, yeah?"
"Yeah. You sure you don't want to go back to sleep? I can pass this one off to Serial, they're itching for some new cases."
"I'm fine," Jane says again, stretching. "I can sleep in the car. So, new case?"
"Yes." Lisbon starts walking briskly, aiming for the elevator. "You might want to pack an overnight bag for this one."
"Out of town case?"
"Not really. It's over in Rio Linda, so it's not far, but they're telling me it's going to be a long one."
"Oh?"
Lisbon shrugs. "The local PD was sketchy on the details. They've found something nasty, that's for sure, but they're out of their league."
"A challenge, then."
"Could you maybe not sound so excited about someone's death?"
Jane spreads his hands. "I'm not excited about someone's death per say, but c'mon, you've been bored too, admit it. It's been a slow summer."
Lisbon rolls her eyes, punching the down button. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
Jane grins.
"Insufferable bastard. Go home, pack a bag. Meet me in the parking lot in an hour?"
"Will do."
"Good," she says, and gives him a Look. "Promise me you'll behave?"
Jane grins, and goddamnit, she hates it when he smiles like that. "Promise," he says, and she makes a mental note to buy a few dozen bottles of aspirin.
It takes nearly an hour to get to Rio Linda because of the traffic. Lisbon hates traffic. She's really tempted to turn on her siren and plow through the stalled cars, but that's technically against regulations, and Jane's all for it, and what Jane's all for, she probably should be against.
It's still tempting, though.
Jane, for his part, actually dozes, for a little bit anyway.
"You feeling okay?" Lisbon shoots him a worried glance, and Jane smiles back blearily.
"Fine," he says. His hair's sticking up from where it was pressed against the glass, and it kind of ruins the put-together air he's trying to pull.
Lisbon raises an eyebrow.
"Really," Jane says. "Just fine."
"You sleeping okay?"
"Meh." He shrugs. "No less than I usually sleep."
She eyes him but lets it slide. He isn't cracking up yet, so she doesn't need to start dosing his tea again.
It might be a good idea to buy some sleeping pills later though, when he's not looking. Just to be prepared.
In the back seat, Rigsby jerks awake, gasping and kicking Cho in the stomach. Cho grunts and glares, and Van Pelt stifles a giggle.
"Wusgoinon?"
"Nice of you to join us," Jane says cheerfully, like he hadn't been napping five minutes ago.
Rigsby groans. "My head is killing me," he mutters. Wordlessly, Lisbon hands him a bottle of aspirin.
"We should be there soon," she says. "Why don't we go over what we know, while we wait for these idiots to remember how to drive?"
"Patience with the masses, Lisbon," Jane says sagely.
"Oh, shut up."
"Hey, if you'd let me drive, we would have been there half an hour ago."
"In pieces, yeah. Now hush. Cho, read the file?"
"Single body found in a Rio Linda warehouse at eight fifteen this morning," Cho reads. "Body found by the owner of the warehouse, a local chicken farmer."
"Is that it?"
Cho nods. "Just about, yeah. They haven't released many details."
"Damn," Lisbon says. "We're really going in blind this time."
"We've had worse," Jane points out.
"True."
"We'll get there soon."
"I know."
"You're tense."
"I'm not tense."
"Yes you are, I can see it in your shoulders."
"I'm fine, Jane."
"I'm not saying you're not fine, I'm saying you're tense."
Wordlessly, Lisbon reaches behind her, and Rigsby gives the aspirin back.
When they get to the warehouse, it's nearly two in the afternoon and she doesn't have to be a detective to see that the local cops are bored, pissy, and freaked out.
"That bad, huh?" she mutters under her breath, and pops another aspirin. She gets the feeling that it's going to be a very long case.
Jane steps out of the car, stretching and smiling widely.
Oh yeah. A long, long case.
"You Agent Lisbon?"
One of the LEOs, a big, burly guy, stomps over to Jane and looks him up and down.
"Oh no," Jane says. "She's Agent Lisbon. I'm just the consultant."
The cop gives her a look, and she resists the urge to roll her eyes. So a sexist cop, then. Wonderful.
"I'm Senior Agent Theresa Lisbon," she says instead, offering her hand. "CBI."
The cop takes her hand slowly, looking her up and down. "Detective Rowcliff," he says. "Rio PD. Took you guys long enough to get here. The coroner's been bitching about heat and decomp for the last two hours."
Lisbon smiles, and Jane gets that gleam in his eye that means he's planning something nasty. She tries her best to give him a look that says no, bad Jane, down.
"Traffic," she says. "You know how it is. Fourth of July's coming up, everyone's going to barbeques and fireworks."
"Right."
"This is my team, Agents Cho, Rigsby, and Van Pelt, and Mr. Jane, our consultant."
Rowcliff tips his hat and leads them under the tape. "I gotta tell you," he says. "I didn't wanna bring you guys in. I think it's time our department got took on some real crimes, but my superiors insisted. They say this is a little out of our league."
"What exactly is this? Your office was sketchy on the details."
Rowcliff snorts. "Local poultry farmer came into his warehouse this morning and found a dead guy in it."
"We know that much," Lisbon says patiently.
Jane mutters something (probably insulting) to Rigsby, and he chokes back a laugh. Lisbon glares.
"If it was just a dead guy, we wouldn'tve called you. We get our share of dead guys, you know."
"Right."
"Anyway, this guy's been cut up pretty bad. Coroner says probably just one attacker, but the vic had to've been tied down or something because he died in the chair. No defensive wounds, no sign of him fighting back, just blood, and a whole lot of it."
"Okay," Lisbon says, nodding. "We can handle that."
"That's not the weird part. We've seen worse here. Not by much, but we've seen it. What's weird is the writing on the wall."
Lisbon's eyebrows rise and she feels Jane go stiff and alert behind her. Oh shit. "Writing?"
Rowcliff nods, scratching his chin. "Some weird Biblical mumbo jumbo. You'll have to see for yourself."
Oh, fantastic.
"Peters," the LEO barks, and a short, balding man looks up and comes over. "This here is Sam Peters," Rowcliff says. "He's the coroner and the head of our forensics team. He'll take you through."
The coroner nods to them and leads the Serious Crimes Unit through the warehouse doors. Inside, the whole place smells faintly of fire and dust and Van Pelt sneezes, wincing at the stale air. The first half of the warehouse is mostly farm tools; rows and rows of chickenwire, pliers, tractor parts, and gasoline. The second half is empty except for a chair in the middle, and in the chair is one of the most mutilated bodies Lisbon has ever seen.
Gaping wounds, ranging from short, quick stabs to long, shallow slices decorate what once was an athletic man. Blood soaks his clothes and the floor around him, and splatters arc off in all directions.
"Oh, God," she mutters.
Jane brushes against her arm. "Look," he says, and nods.
Directly past the body, painted in terribly familiar letters on the wall, are a few sentences, clearly written in blood.
The letters are clumsy, childlike, like the killer wasn't sure of how to make them, yet, and Lisbon feels her blood run cold.
The first sentence reads Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men.
The second reads tyger, tyger, and Jane's face goes very still.
"Jane," Lisbon says. "Jane, look at me."
He does, and she can't read the expression in his eyes but it's not a good one.
"Jane, this probably has nothing to do with Red John. It's okay. It's just a coincidence, that's all."
"You don't really believe that," he says, and she doesn't. "There are no coincidences with him, Lisbon, I've told you that before. It's one of his."
One of his, Lisbon thinks, her heart sinking. One of Red John's. A network. There's an entire network of people like Red John, bad, awful, horrible people, and they all, it seems, know about and like taunting Jane.
When they find Red John, Lisbon's going to shoot him before she arrests him. Not anywhere vital, of course, but somewhere painful. Somewhere very, very painful.
"Cho," she says, half-turning. "Get the boss on the phone. Tell him we have a possible Red John connection—"
"There's no possible about it," Jane says loudly.
"—and that we're going to need our own forensics team on this."
"My team is more than capable—" the coroner begins, apparently affronted. Lisbon stops him with a hand.
"This is now the CBI's," she says. "You and your people are done here. We'll take the body and any evidence you have."
"Hey," Rowcliff says angrily.
Lisbon glares. "No arguments on this." The LEO and the coroner glare, but don't argue.
"Lison," Jane says. A manic edge creeps into his voice and he stares at the dead, bloody man, fingers curling and uncurling.
"Do you know what the first sentence means?"
He looks up quickly. "Looks Biblical," he says. "Book of Revelations, I think." He looks down again, staring hard at the victim. "Lison, look at his face. Does he look familiar to you?"
She frowns and leans in, careful not to get any of the blood on her. "Now that you mention it…" The shape of the man's nose is familiar, and so is the set of his mouth. She can't be sure because there's a particularly vicious gash cleaving open his cheek, but he does look familiar. If his eyes were open, she thinks they'd be dark brown. "Yeah, he does look kind of familiar."
Jane leans even closer and he's in danger of falling into the pool of blood now. His lips are pressed together so tightly they're white, and she can see his fingers shaking.
"Lisbon," Jane says slowly, unsteadily. "Lisbon, I know him."