Spoilers: Small spoilers for The Crimson Hat & The Red Barn.
Disclaimer: No matter who I kill I'll never be the owner of The Mentalist.
He had disappeared without a trace. It had been almost a week. His motel room had been cleaned for the few personal belongings he owned, his hideout at the CBI loft looked as it had before he had inhabited it, and his house was as empty as always. They all feared the worst.
xXx
Two weeks after Jane's disappearance, almost to the dot of when she'd last spoken to him, Lisbon's phone rang. They'd put out a bolo on both him and his car, hoping for something, anything really that would pop, 'cause they didn't have much of anything else to go on. And when Lisbon had finished her phone call she was able to inform the team that it had been fruitful.
The state police had stopped a man driving Jane's car. He had no explanation as to how he had come into possession of said vehicle, so obviously he had to have stolen it. Mystery solved, at least regarding the car, Jane was still missing. Now the kicker was that when the police had come across the suspicious looking man, who had turned out to be a thief, they'd arrested him and when they searched the car they'd found a badly beaten and bloody body of a man in the trunk. Lisbon's hands had been shaking when she hung up the phone. They'd told her that they hadn't been able to identify the body yet. In reality, it could have been anybody, but it was of course most likely the owner of the car, which would explain the no contact as of late. Before she hung up she told the chief they'd be right there. Then she went into the bullpen and informed the team of the new development.
They knew when she entered something was awry, and her worried look - the one she'd worn for the last two weeks - was more prominent than ever. She gave them the details and they were out of there and on their way before she could say: 'Jane is very likely dead'.
xXx
The car had been absolutely silent as Lisbon drove them to the scene. She herself had been clenching the steering wheel so hard her knuckles had turned white. Thirty minutes later they arrived at a little side road to Interstate 5 where the man driving Jane's car had been arrested. The police had long since taken him away, but the chief and an officer was waiting for them at the familiar sky blue Citroën.
It was with their hearts in their throats that they looked at the body in the trunk. The police chief hadn't been lying when he'd said it was going to be hard to make a positive ID. It basically wasn't much more than a mess of skin, bones, and the occasional lock of hair all smeared with the crimson color of blood. Keeping it together after seeing all this stuffed into the trunk of Jane's car was hard for the whole team. It was all they could do to not throw up their lunches. Still they couldn't with any certainty say that this was in fact the remains of Jane. Some DNA testing was definitely required.
xXx
Lisbon fingered her cross unnoticed by anyone not looking. Jane had once called her out on that particular habit. And at this very moment she wished for him to be standing right there beside her, giving her one of his snarky remarks about something they were missing, something his laser sharp eyes had long since focused in on. So what was it? What was she missing?
xXx
Jane wouldn't leave his car, ever. For God's sake he'd even taken the hideous thing with him to Vegas when he had been gone for six months. If he was out there somewhere he would have reported it stolen the minute it had gone missing. And he wouldn't have lent it to someone, especially not someone like the common thief they had locked up. Besides the man claimed he'd just found it at the side of a road, abandoned, there'd been no one in sight, the keys were in the ignition and the tank was full, just ready to go, to take him wherever he wanted to go, and so he done just that. The police told Lisbon and her team how he'd reacted when they had found the body, total shock and surprise. So the man was very likely not the killer. He didn't look the type anyway, all thin and lanky, his clothes hanging on him like a teenager that had had a growth spurt overnight and could no longer fit in any of his clothes. He wasn't much older either, no more than 20, and he probably had a mild addiction to some kind of drug or another, given his body language and his overall behavior. Questioning him did no one any good. But one thing was for sure, he'd probably been cured of stealing any more cars for a while, or at least he'd have in mind to check the trunk before stealing a car and being busted for a crime he didn't commit. After all he couldn't be sure that someone would believe him the next time something like this happened.
xXx
It took forever for the tests to come back. The office had been buzzing with a nervous kind of giddiness, and not the good kind. The results however lifted their spirits, but it also gave them pause. If this wasn't Jane, who was it? And where was Jane? There had been no matches in the databases for the DNA. There had been no fingerprints to test, they'd all been burned off. In fact what the coroner found was quite disturbing. It was murder no doubt about that. Besides the obvious state of the body, it seemed that the unidentified man had been tortured a good long time before he'd actually died. There were different seized burn marks throughout his body, caused by everything from stun guns, lighters and matches to cow prods and flamethrowers. A few bullets were recovered. There was water found in his lungs, which suggested attempted drowning. But what had ultimate killed him, was all the long and methodically slashes he'd sustained. He'd slowly bled out, died in agony no doubt, from all the blood loss.
When Lisbon read that in the coroner's report, something hit her, and it hit her hard. Without knowing the man's identity - which they probably never would - she knew who it was. John Doe number 3121433999 who was currently lying on ice in the city morgue, until it's faith was decided, was no other than Red John. She was certain of it. More certain than anything she'd ever been certain of in her life. And as soon as that puzzle piece fell into place the rest followed. That's why Jane had disappeared. He hadn't been kidnapped, and he wasn't lying dead in some ditch somewhere. No, he had run away. He'd done what he'd always said he would do. He'd killed Red John, watched him bleed out slowly, seen the light fade from his eyes. The thought made her shudder. And then he'd run, just like that. He'd run away from his responsibility, from justice, from the team and from her. Coward!
Lisbon didn't share her suspicions with anyone. Not even her team. But she suspected they already had had similar thoughts, they weren't stupid after all. The case remained open and Jane remained gone. But life continued on.