Lisbon was in the bullpen. The rest of the team paid her no mind as they worked quietly at their desks. Well, except for Jane, of course, who was in his usual spot on the couch, and was more interested in watching Lisbon than doing any actual work of his own. She'd taken to coming out of her office to stare at her bulletin board whenever she felt like she'd hit a dead end with her research. Looking at the map and all the notes tacked to the board helped her take a step back and get some perspective on the whole thing, keep the big picture in mind. That day, as her gaze roamed the board looking for a new angle from which to consider the bits and pieces they'd managed to collect, her eyes landed on the familiar image of the smiley face.
From the couch, Jane watched the gears turning in her mind. He liked watching Lisbon think. "What are you thinking about?" he asked.
"I was just thinking about the smiley face," Lisbon told him.
He frowned. "What about it?"
"It's kind of a weird choice for a signature, don't you think?"
Jane shrugged. "Would you rather he'd chosen a symbol from some kind of Satanic ritual or something?"
"Of course not. It just seems odd. Red John likes tea, and Bach, and William Blake poetry. The bloody smiley face just seems kind of… unsophisticated, in comparison."
Jane frowned, and sat up. "I never thought of it like that."
"How do you suppose he ended up picking that particular image as his signature?"
"I'm not sure. Somehow it seems unlikely that he picked it up from one of those cheesy buttons in one of those souvenir shops that specializes in seventies kitsch." Jane looked over at Cho. "What do you think, Cho?"
Cho shrugged. "Maybe he's a Bergman fan."
Lisbon blinked. "Ingrid Bergman? The movie star from the forties? What does she have to do with anything?"
"Nothing. I was talking about Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish film director."
"What's his connection to the smiley face image?" Jane asked curiously.
"The first record of the smiley face image was in one of his early movies."
"Which movie?"
"'Port of Call.'"
"What's it about?"
"It's about a girl who tries to kill herself and then falls in love with a sailor."
"Does the sailor fall in love with her, too?" Jane asked.
"Yeah. But he's conflicted about it because it turns out she's slept with other guys before."
"Ah, so she would have been considered a fallen woman, in that day and age," Jane said sagely.
Lisbon ignored him. "Where does the smiley face come in?"
Cho shrugged. "At one point in the movie, the girl draws a smiley face on the mirror with her lipstick. Only it's frowning instead of smiling."
Lisbon frowned, thinking of the smiley face in Rosalind Harker's bedroom which the lab had confirmed had been drawn in scarlet lipstick. Before she could voice her thoughts, however, she was interrupted by an unfamiliar voice.
A delivery man had entered the bullpen and was looking around. "Hello," he said cheerfully. "Delivery for Patrick Jane?"
Jane raised a finger. "That's me."
The man crossed to Jane and handed him a clipboard. "Sign here, please."
Jane signed, and the delivery man handed him a cardboard box slightly larger than a shoebox. "Here you go. Have a nice day."
"What's that?" Lisbon asked Jane as the delivery man collected his clipboard and left.
"I have no idea," Jane said. "I don't usually receive mail here. I take it this isn't an extremely early birthday gift?"
"It's not from me." She looked at the other members of her team.
"Don't look at us," Cho said.
"Jane's too hard to shop for," Van Pelt agreed.
"Open it," Lisbon urged Jane.
Jane obliged her. He ripped the paper off the package and tore the tape fastening together the flaps of the cardboard box. He reached into the box, looking bemused, and pulled out… a stuffed animal. He turned it over in his hands, looking perplexed. It was a small, plush white lamb with mint green button eyes, the kind of stuffed animal that looked so soft you just wanted to rub your cheek against it to feel the texture of it against your skin. A look Lisbon couldn't quite read flashed across Jane's face; she thought it might have been shock. When he handed her the plush toy, however, the mask was firmly back in place—he looked as composed as ever. She accepted the lamb warily, turning it over in her hands. Then she saw it—the thing that had made Jane react. A small round disk hanging from a red collar around the lamb's neck, bearing the emblem they'd been discussing not five minutes before—the macabre smiley face in miniature, fixed to the collar like a dog's license indicating its ownership.
"It's from Red John," she stated, her voice calm.
"So it would appear," Jane agreed.
"Why the hell would he send you a stuffed animal?" she asked, handing it back to him.
Jane shrugged. "It's obviously a message of some kind."
Lisbon frowned. "What kind of message?"
"I don't know."
"It's got to be a symbol, right?" Rigsby said. "But what does it represent?"
Jane looked at him. "Excellent question, Rigsby. What do lambs usually represent?"
"Innocence," Lisbon offered.
"Purity," said Cho.
"A sacrifice," Van Pelt said quietly.
There was an unpleasant pause.
"I'm afraid we're going to have to assume Grace is correct," Jane said slowly. "He's telling me he's planning to kill again."
"Maybe not," Lisbon said. "Maybe it's just a message about Clarissa Allen's death. Something along the lines of 'see what happens when you get too close?'"
"Stop investigating or else? I don't think so. Clarissa Allen's death was a message unto itself, although one I think he would have preferred not to have sent at all. This is something different—it's a message of intent. Gregson's hasty actions exposed more about him than he's ever allowed us to see before, and he knows it happened because of our investigation. He's unhappy with me, and he's going to take an innocent life to express that unhappiness."
"Why send a message at all?" Rigsby wondered. "Why not just let us just find out for ourselves when it happens like he usually does?"
"He wants me to know it's my fault," Jane said. "That whoever he chooses, their death will be laid at my feet. He wants to savor my guilt."
"How could it be your fault?" Lisbon said angrily. "This whole thing was my idea. If he's going to blame anyone, why not blame me?"
"He doesn't know that," Jane realized with something like relief. That was good. He didn't want Red John's attention drawn to Lisbon any more than it already must be. "He assumes that any idea that brings us closer to him must have come from me."
Cho shook his head. "He thinks you're the only person smart enough to catch him? His ego must be even bigger than yours."
"Hopefully we can use that to our advantage," Jane said. "Arrogance is the intelligent man's downfall. Nobody knows that better than me."
Lisbon frowned at him, clearly displeased by the comparison and about to argue the point, but before she could speak, Cho said, "So how are we supposed to figure out who he's planning to kill?"
"Good question," Jane said. "We need to consider the message carefully."
"The lamb," Rigsby said dubiously.
"Yes. An innocent sacrifice."
"Do you—do you think it means he's going to kill a child?" Van Pelt said tentatively.
Jane grimaced at the thought. "That's entirely possible."
"Well, he's not going to manage it if I have anything to say about it," Lisbon said firmly. "We have to figure out who his intended target is."
"Do you think this has anything to do with the poem?" Cho asked Jane.
"What poem?" Van Pelt asked curiously.
Lisbon had a wild moment of fear that he was going to mention 'The Jade Raven.' Any talk of poetry these days made her mind stray to the handwritten words in Jane's notebook.
Cho, however, had another poet in mind. "Remember how Red John quoted that poem 'The Tyger' to Jane that time?" he said to Van Pelt. "It was written by William Blake."
"What makes you think that the stuffed animal has anything to do with that?" Rigsby said, confused.
"Blake wrote another poem called 'The Lamb,'" Cho informed him.
"What's it about?" Rigsby asked.
"It's a companion piece to 'The Tyger,'" Cho explained. "In 'The Tyger,' the author is speculating about who could have created the something so beautiful and destructive at the same time. In 'The Lamb,' a child is telling a lamb God is the one who created him. Blake references the lamb in 'The Tyger,' too, asking 'Did he who made the Lamb make thee?'"
Van Pelt pulled up the second poem on her computer screen and read a few lines aloud. "'Little Lamb who made thee… He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb.'"
"It's kind of a riddle," Jane said. "The child answers his own question with a pun."
Cho nodded. "There's dual symbolism there. The Lamb as God and as the innocent child."
Rigsby was reading 'The Tyger' on his own screen. "But in 'The Tyger,' the writer doesn't know the answer to his own question. 'What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?' That's the question he poses at the beginning of the poem, but he never comes up with an answer, even at the end."
"Poetry readings are all well and good," Lisbon said impatiently. "But how is that going to help us find a specific child who may be in danger?"
The team speculated on this point for over an hour, but the only conclusion they reached was that Red John was likely to target a child with a specific connection to the case. Jane believed the symbolism would be more meaningful if he chose someone already connected to the case. In the end, Lisbon ended up ordering the team to look into the families of all of Red John's victims, not being able to come up with a better idea than that he was planning to take one of the victims' children.
The whole team devoted the day to the task, desperately trying to narrow down the list of potential victims to an extent that they could have a reasonable chance of providing protection to the most likely targets. When it became clear that they weren't going to be able to narrow down the list without at least a little more to go on, Lisbon sent them all home, advising them to get some rest so they could start fresh in the morning.
Jane stayed. He lay on the leather couch, staring at the Elvis spot on the ceiling and turning the little lamb over and over in his hands. He was certain they were missing something about Red John's message, something that would tell him who the intended victim was.
He inspected the tag hanging from the lamb's neck, but it yielded no further clues than it had upon first examination. The collar, too, did not seem to be anything more than what it appeared to be—a plain red collar. He poked and prodded the body of the little lamb to see if it might contain some clue hidden in its stuffing, but no luck. It was as soft and malleable as it was designed to be.
He returned his mind to the symbolism that had led Red John to choose the lamb in the first place.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The tiger, sleek and terrifying, prowling through the night.
Little Lamb who made thee …
Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb
The lamb, simple and innocent, representing joy and light.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright… What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
That central question, never answered: who could create something capable of so much destruction?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright… Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Was it possible for the tiger and the lamb to share the same Creator? That key question is simply phrased and easily answered in 'The Lamb,' but in 'The Tyger,' even the question itself is more complex. A 'why' is embedded implicitly in the question of 'who.' Who could create such a cruel creature; why was evil permitted to exist?
There was a symmetry between the two poems, in the structure and in the choice of subjects. There would be symmetry, too, in Red John's choice of symbols.
Red John was the tiger. He thought of himself as something fierce and beautiful, a powerful creature to be respected and awed. That much was obvious.
But the lamb… who was the lamb?
Little Lamb who made thee... he calls himself a Lamb.
Jane ran through the list of children the team had compiled that day, every child they could think of with the remotest connection to one of Red John's victims, but none of them stood out. Were they on the wrong track? Maybe Red John was planning to target a new victim through the foster care system, one he had found through Irene Gregson that the team didn't know about yet. But no, Red John would want Jane to guess. He loved this kind of game, dangling the promise of an answer in front of Jane, knowing that as soon as Jane got close, he could snatch it away again just as easily. He wouldn't have made it impossible for Jane to guess, though; he would have arranged the game to give Jane a sporting chance, so his victory would be that much sweeter when he triumphed over him in the end.
Thy fearful symmetry…
The tiger and the lamb…
The lamb and the child…
I a child and thou a lamb, we are called by his name.
The lamb… and the Lamb.
Jane sat up slowly. The Lamb as God. The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The innocent child and the savior, called by the same name. They'd been looking for the lamb, but perhaps they ought to have been searching for the Lamb. He stood and walked into Lisbon's office. She had a pocket Bible in her desk; he liberated it from the confines of the drawer it normally lived in and went back to his couch. He opened it and flipped to Revelations.
In Revelations, the conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah and the slain Lamb are one and the same. Both creatures represent different facets of Christ. The one who is worthy to face the righteous judgment of God.
The Lion is the Lamb. Lions and tigers. Symmetry.
The Lamb as God. As Jesus. As the savior of mankind.
Red John, as the tiger, represented the evil of man. The lamb represented the good. The good of man…
Jane stared at the lamb in his hands. The one with the green button eyes. Dear God.
This was a message to him. And that changed everything. Because in his world, there were two main figures in his life; representing a great divide. Red John was the evil in his life… and Lisbon was the good. She was the Lion, and the Lamb. His hope, and his only possible savior.
Lisbon was the intended sacrifice.