Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 54)

Rating: M for graphic violence and language

Fandom: The Mentalist

Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim… if not his sanity, itself.

Author's Note: We're getting down to the final couple of chapters now. Thank you for reading this far. I hope you have enjoyed the journey! -Lex

"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool."

-Stephen King (The Stand)

"The world, although well-lighted with fluorescents and incandescent bulbs and neon, is still full of odd dark corners and unsettling nooks and crannies."
Stephen King (Firestarter)

"There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it."
Joyce Carol Oates (A Widow's Story)


Wednesday, June 18th, 2014 4:16 P.M. PST

Her father drove her to a little walk-in clinic a 20 mile drive from their apartment and sat with her in the waiting room after filling out the perfunctory paperwork. She was silent, drowsy, holding the chemical ice pack to her head dutifully, eyes unfocused and more than a little glassy. Once or twice she started to drift off and Patrick would rouse her gently, squeezing her hand, as if afraid to shake her.

Her head pounded something fierce and she felt nauseated. After 15 minutes of waiting she stood on unsteady feet and told her father she thought she might be sick and he nodded concernedly, held one of her arms and took her to the woman's room, not giving a damn about who might have a problem with him in there. She made it to one of the toilets, almost fell down and puked up what felt like everything she'd eaten in the last week. The process of vomiting drove a fresh stake between her eyes and into her frontal lobe and she cried out in pain. Patrick knelt beside her, making gentle circular motions on her back as her body did its thing and wave after wave of vomit came.

It seemed to go on forever.

Charlotte had had a fear of vomiting for quite a while. It was scary, to her, that her body would do something as intimate and extreme as regurgitate her stomach contents without her consent. The smell of the vomit, the flood of acid in her noses, her father's touch on her back, all contributed to the growing sensation of shame, and brokenness, and of being too crazy and traumatized to save or help. Tears leaked out of her eyes, tears of grief, ran down her face, dropped into the toilet with the vomit and the shame.

Finally there was nothing left in her stomach and mouth but bile and acid. She spit a few times, near actual sobbing tears and not consciously sure why, why the flood of such strong grief... She hated losing control and she hated being seen as weak. Maybe that was why. Maybe that was all.

But probably not.

"Everything is going to be all right, Charlie," Patrick said, still rubbing her back, like she was much younger than she was, like maybe she was a toddler. She let him, because damn it, the sensation was soothing and she felt adrift in a sea of her own madness and pain. She didn't want to ask him to stop, to be the strong, sullen teenager. But she didn't want to acknowledge that she needed his comfort, either. So she remained silent, and let him do his concerned Dad thing. She took a wad of toilet paper from him the fifth time she had spat in the toilet (Patrick had flushed the toilet multiple times during her performance, to spare her having to hunch over the sight and smell of her own sick-up) and blew her nose, but it still burned, and she could taste vomit strongly.

The entire bathroom reeked of the stuff, and with that thought she felt her cheeks heat up, felt them go red. Patrick was looking at her and she avoided his eyes, embarrassed and humiliated and in pain and exhausted. Knew he had seen the reddening cheeks, knew he wouldn't comment on them.

"It's not going to be okay. You don't believe me." The words came out of her without conscious control.

"First we'll get you checked out, and then we'll talk. And I promise you, I am going to listen and take what you have to say seriously." Patrick's words, so confident and self-assured. There was comfort in his voice, but she also felt annoyed. He had no right to be so confident and self-assured.

She started to nod and another bolt of cerebral agony hit, so she winced and tried to force a smile, but it was hard to manufacture. Jane tugged her to her feet, not letting go as she swayed, and helped her over to the sinks. She washed her hands and face with the pink liquid soap such walk and clinics always seemed to provide and probably bought in bulk, hissing as her hands clumsily made contact with her bruised, broken head. It didn't need stitches, was barely more than an open graze, but the bruise was magnificent, blossoming from the temple to behind her ear and starting to discolor a bit of her forehead on the right side and the socket of her right eye. With the pallor of her face, she almost looked dead, a domestic violence murder victim, a zombie back from the dead...

She stuck her tongue out and there, plainly visible, was a deep laceration where her teeth had really decided to dig in, and Jane winced in sympathy, eyes flickering away as his own squeamishness hit.

Maybe that had been why her vomit was that horrible red-orange colour.

"You didn't tell me about your tongue," he said gently. He squeezed her hand, and ushered her out of the washroom and back to the waiting room. Then he walked over to a water cooler, pulled one of the little wax paper cups out of the dispenser bolted to the wall, filled the paper cup with water and brought it back over to her. It was one of the ridiculous wax paper cones, the type you couldn't put down. Stupid design.

"Here, kiddo. Drink this."

Charlotte took the wax paper cup and sipped on the water, swished it around her mouth. The acid burned and she wondered how much enamel was peeled off a person's teeth each time they puked, and what was going on in her mouth right now, at a cellular level.

Then her name was called.

She got unsteadily to her feet and Jane tugged her gently along, passed the swinging door which separated the back examination rooms from the plastic bucket seats out front. She sat on one of the two plastic bucket chairs in the room the receptionist ushered them into, and Jane sat down next to her.

"My head is killing me," she moaned, and then wondered why she had said it. She felt stunned, and a little drunk, a little drowsy, and like her words might just tumble out of her brain and past the rampart of her lips like political refugees seeking asylum from a dictator.

The thought made her laugh, just a little, and with the laughter came more pain. Jane watched her warily, not smiling, one hand gently tapping her thigh in what was supposed to be a comforting gesture. As a general rule, she didn't complain about physical pain. Red John didn't care for the most part, and when he had seemed to care, there had been a devilish sort of facination and pleasure glowing deep in the recesses of his soul, shining through his too-black pupils. She had learned to shut down complaints. And yet... she was complaining now. Comfort-seeking behavior?

She considered. It made sense. Seeking comfort was what normal, healthy humans did when they were hurting and trusted the human they were with. But... it still felt dangerous. Taboo and shameful. In response to her comment Patrick had only nodded seriously, eyes wise and sad and fully of empathy.

The door opened and a man that looked much the way an old fashioned St. Nicholas version of Santa Claus might look walked in… if Santa wore coke bottle glasses, shaved and wore scrubs with spongebob squarepants on them under a glaringly white lab coat. The traditional stethoscope hung around his neck and Charlotte was reminded for some reason of old ladies who sported dead minks around their necks like that was somehow fashion, and tittered a little.

"Charlotte Jane?" He said brightly, moving into the room, pulling a little stool out from where it was sitting by the wall, scooting over to her on what had to be 200-year-old feet decked out in snazzy neon Nikes. Charlotte stared at him, bewildered, as if a unicorn had just pranced into the room. Finally, when it became obvious that his kid was too preoccupied with analyzing the doctor and wasn't going to respond to his voice, Jane nodded.

"That's us," Jane said brightly. Charlotte giggled at that.

"Says here you hit your head running into a tree at school?" St. Nick said, raising his bushy eyebrows.

"She had a panic attack," Jane clarified simply. The doctor nodded knowingly.

"Is this the first time you've had a panic attack?" He asked her, pulling a penlight out of his lab coat's front pocket and shining it into her eyes. Charlotte hissed out a swear and recoiled as if the light was liquid acid he was spraying into her eyes.

"Just a second sweetie, and I'm done," he said stolidly, flashing the light from one eye to the other quickly, comparing pupil sizes and all that good stuff. Charlie had the absurd notion that maybe, just maybe, he could see her thoughts and memories with that penlight.

Ridiculous. Had to be ridiculous.

Finally he put the penlight away and asked her to follow one of his ancient fingers back and forth. She did that to the best of her ability, but the urge to sleep was growing.

"The file says you lost consciousness at school, they found you knocked out?"

"Uh huh," Charlotte offered dazedly. If they knew all this already, why were they bothering asking her?

"That's not good. Do you have any nausea? Any trouble walking or speaking?"

"She threw up in the bathroom here about ten minutes ago," Jane said before Charlotte could deny anything and the doctor's eyebrows bunched together.

"Head injuries can do that. Good news is your pupils are reacting normally to light and when I looked in your eyes, I didn't see anything in them that caused me concern. But that's quite a bump you have there." St. Nick made a face. "Has to hurt a lot…"

The doctor got up, went to a cabinet running along one wall and pulled a pair of blue latex gloves out of a box. He came back and gently palpated her head, nodding.

"That old tree wasn't playing fair, huh?"

"No," Charlotte said, utterly serious. Jane felt a familiar and uneasy feeling being to unravel in his guts.

The old doctor just laughed.

"Being drowsy after a mild concussion is quite common. Do you know the date, honey?"

Charlotte thought about it for a second. "June 18th."

"What year is it?"

"2014," Charlotte said slowly, as if in a dream.

"Can you tell me the day of the week?"

"Wednesday… Wednesday?"

"Yup, that's 3 for 3," the old doctor said happily.

He then asked her her name, her address (and nodded when Jane confirmed it), who the president was and how far from the earth, in miles, the sun was, winking at Jane as the last question was asked.

"On average, 93 million miles," Charlotte said tiredly. The doctor's eyebrows shot up.

"Wow, I didn't expect you to get that right, but very good," he said, more than a little surprised. He then turned his attention to Jane.

"Dad, good news is that she's firing on all cylinders. I could send you to the ER and get an MRI done, but unless her symptoms get worse, the drowsiness gets progressively worse or she begins to forget important bits of information or shows other signs of amnesia, or you have trouble waking her up… unless those things happen, it's probably not necessary."

"Okay, we can go," Charlotte said, looking over at Jane, clearly itching to get the hell out of dodge.

"My advice, unless things get worse today or over the next few days or she develops new cognitive symptoms or vision symptoms, is to go home and rest. Tylenol for the headaches. With the vomiting, something light and bland, easy to digest… pudding or broth."

The doctor was getting up now, snapping off his gloves.

"She also bit her tongue, and it looks pretty deep to me," Jane added.

The doctor nodded, came back and hunched over.

"Can I see your tongue?"

Charlotte stuck it out tiredly. The doctor winced.

"Welll… it doesn't look like it needs stitches, but yeah, that's a nasty cut. You've really been in the wars today, haven't you, honey?"

"The wars?" Charlotte echoed, uncertain.

"Just an old saying people used to use back in my day. Means you had a rough day."

"Yes," Charlotte acknowledged and shut her eyes against the glaring fluorescent light of the examination room. The Wars. Yes. That expressions fit well.

The doc began to write rapid notes in her file. "Regarding the panic attacks… if they repeat, or become a problem, I'd advise speaking to a child psychologist. Medication is sometimes helpful and the earlier these types of problems are resolved, the better. If not dealt with early, phobias and even agoraphobia can develop."

Jane nodded woodenly.

"Okay, then?" Santa asked, standing up, offering his hand to Jane. Jane shook it. Charlotte still had her eyes closed. The room felt like it was spinning, like she had just gotten off the world's most painful tilt-a-whirl.

"Keep a close eye on her and if she gets worse, the emergency room. But I don't think it will be necessary. Tonight, wake her up at least every hour. Lots of rest, and if she still feels sick, liquid foods like soup or ginger ale to drink, nothing heavy."

"How about Dairy Queen soft-serve?" Charlotte said solemnly from her chair, eyes still closed.

"I suppose that would be okay. Seems like you deserve Dairy Queen after the day you've had."

"Thanks," Jane said, nodding. He wanted to tell the doctor about Charlotte's hallucination… or dream?… or whatever it was about seeing Red John out in the woods, but opening that can of worms seemed unlikely to yield any important medical data and the day had been stressful enough as it was.

"If you have any questions, don't hesitate to phone. Do you know the toll free nurses line number?"

Jane shook his head, and the doc gave him the number. Jane wrote it down on a scrap piece of paper, folded it carefully and stuffed it into his front pocket.

And then they were alone. The doctor had gone to attend to other patients, leaving them alone to collect themselves.

"Dairy Queen now, Patrick?" Charlotte said groggily, head leaning against Jane's torso. He smiled.

"Are you up for Dairy Queen, or do you want to go home and sleep?"

"Dairy Queen," Charlotte murmured, millimeters from sleep. Jane nodded, not surprised, helped his daughter to her feet and walked her back to the car.

They went through the Dairy Queen's drive-thru and Charlotte didn't protest. She got a large, Royal Ultimate Choco-Brownie blizzard and Jane got a strawberry sundae. He pulled the car into the parking lot and killed the engine.

Charlotte started to wake up a little bit, eating her blizzard, pupils dilated and eyes unnaturally glassy.

"My head is killing me," she murmured again, in between bites of Blizzard. Jane nodded sadly. He took a bite of vanilla soft serve in strawberry sauce and regarded his daughter. Maybe the concussion would help her open up.

He hoped so.

"You want to tell me about what happened at school today?"

Charlotte sighed. She didn't "want" to, but she had to, and they both knew it. If she didn't, Jane would only bring it up when she was feeling better, and the idea of his questions and prodding in the future was annoying. Better to get it over with now.

"I was in class and I got scared," she said flatly, and took another bite of ice cream. And another.

"Why were you scared?" Jane promted.

"I don't know. I suddenly felt… just really, really scared. Like the walls were closing in on me," she said slowly, in between bites of soft serve and brownie chunks. Jane nodded.

"So you got out of your desk?"

"We don't have desks, Patrick. We have tables. Nutcases can't tolerate desks, don't you know? I got up from my table and went to the window and looked outside and felt even more scared. I felt like I had to get out of the room just then, that I was having a heart attack or was going crazy." She was silent, not ruminating but exhausted and drowsy. Jane nodded, even though she wasn't looking at him.

"Those are pretty typical, normal panic attack symptoms. What then?"

"My teacher came over to me and grabbed my wrist and asked if I was okay. The usual adult stuff. Blah, blah, blah. You know."

Jane nodded and waited.

"Then I felt even more scared and I ran out of the classroom. And as I ran, I got more and more and more scared. The sensation of fear seemed to double every few seconds, if you can imagine that. I ran outside. I ran onto the field. I ran to the fence. The big chain-link fence and I climbed over it and jumped down and ran into the woods. I kept running and running. Then I tripped over a log or something."

Her words were coming out faster and faster, adrenaline-speedy.

"What then?" Jane nudged softly, sotto voce. He had a pretty good idea. It was another reason he hadn't brought up the Red John vision in the doctor's office.

"Got the wind knocked out of me. I was lying on the ground looking up at the sky and a shadow came…" Charlotte trailed off, eyes closed, and put another spoonful of ice cream in her mouth as reward for all this talking and opening up.

Jane waited patiently.

"What caused the shadow, Charlotte?" He said, eyes bright, determined. A dog with a bone.

"It was… the Thing in the Black trench-coat. Same one I saw in the park."

"Wait… you saw this… you saw him in the park?"

Charlotte nodded gently, and moaned, and scrunched her face up in pain.

"My head hurts, Patrick. Each word feels like a ghost is reaching in between my eyes and squeezing my brain, and that ghost has very long and sharp fingernails…"

"I know, honey. Just stay with me here, and then we'll go home and get you some tylenol. You saw this… this Thing in the Black trench coat in the park?"

"I wasn't sure at first it was Red John. He was standing too far away, wearing sunglasses and a black hat, too. Then I saw him again. And again. One time across the street from the 7-11. Another time in the same park, where I take Dixon to run around… near the dog park. But not in the dog park, in the people part of the park, where some of the homeless sleep..."

Jane nodded and Charlotte took two greedy bites of ice cream and sighed loudly, stressed and tired and pained.

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" Jane said, a little more sharply than he intended to. Instantly he regretted his tone, there was far too much accusatory demand in that tone. Luckily, Charlotte wasn't with it enough to take offense at his tone of voice.

"Wasn't sure if it was really him the first few times. Thought so, but wasn't sure. California is full of weirdos. And then… I thought maybe I was going crazy…"

"You still could have told me," Jane insisted, pained.

Charlotte scooped another spoonful of soft serve into her mouth in response to that, eyes still closed. The right eye was mostly purple-black now and the left eye had a touch of purple growing around the tear duct, a faint shadow of a bruise on the lower lid. Fuck. She'd really whacked the shit out of her head.

Her right eye was badly swollen and would probably be swollen shut in a few more hours, if that.

"Do I have to go to school tomorrow, Patrick? I don't feel very good."

"No," Jane said solemnly. He didn't feel like adding that she couldn't go back to school until she spoke to a psychiatrist at least once. He didn't feel like telling her that the school was already pushing for anti-anxiety medication at the very least. She was already upset, and Jane could see now, a faint tremor in her hands as she ate her blizzard. Stress? Adrenaline? Or something more serious, some dark snafu in her brain showing up early? He wasn't sure. He had sudden, vivid mental images of blood clots forming in the brain, of tumors and swollen brain arteries. Of bruised brains and seizures. Brain injuries were unpredictable.

He reached out and stroked Charlotte's "free" hand, the one holding the Blizzard cup, the one that couldn't pull away easily. Reached forward and kissed her cheek.

"You can always tell me if you see something that scares you, Charlie. I'm your Dad. I love you."

"You'd think I was crazy," she said slowly. Another spoonful of ice cream down the hatch. A small dribble of brown-tinted soft serve was running from the corner of her face, down her her cheek, her chin, onto the fabric of her hoodie and the collar of the black AC/DC t-shirt she had worn under it to school today. The front zipper was halfway down her chest. There was dried blood on the t-shirt, small smears of it visible of the dark gray hoodie.

"I don't think you're crazy, and I am not going to start now," Jane said resolutely. "Traumatized? Yes. Anybody would be traumatized after surviving what you lived through. But not crazy. I don't think that. Red John is crazy, okay? Not you."

Charlotte was silent, except for noisy smacking noises as she ate the ice cream and considered his words. She didn't have confidence in his words. He couldn't be that objective when it came to her, and Red John, and his long-dead wife. Those subjects were his Kryptonite.

"Tomato, Toe-mah-toe," she finally said dully, scratching her right cheek with her right hand, red dairy queen spoon leaving traces of brown ice cream on her cheek to match the splotches of dried-brown-blood. Oh well.

"When you saw him… when you were lying on your back. What happened then?" Jane said, taking a deep, silent breath.

"He… I… can't really remember. Sort of fuzzy," she said around a mouthful of ice cream. Drool and ice cream and blood-tinged spit drained out the side of her mouth and slopped down her cheek. She was oblivious to it. She seemed regressed, and he wondered how much of it was concussion, how much of it was trauma.

"Just tell me what you can remember."

"He stood over me… he smiled. He said… some things. He said… you didn't understand reality or something like that. That you saw what you wanted to see. Something like that. He called me a broken toy. I think. I said he wasn't real. I said you killed him… I think I said that. He pulled off one of his gloves. Black leather glove, very tight glove. You know the type? I think they're called patent leather."

Charlotte slit her eyes open and Jane nodded dutifully. He knew the type.

"Yeah. He pulled it off. Left hand, I think. And he had a knife. He cut his hand open and it bled… bled all over the place. To show me… show me he was real. So I would believe. Really believe. Apparently, daydreams and hallucinations don't bleed all over the place."

Another slurp of ice cream. Such a strange, surreal soundtrack to this horrific little tale. Slurp, slurp, gulp.

"I love Dairy Queen. Thank you, Dad," she said softly, groggily. That blizzard was lasting forever. He smiled, a sad smile, and nodded. Such little things made her happy.

God damn it. He felt suddenly near to tears.

He processed what she had said. Did he think Red John was still alive?

No. He'd seen Red John die. He was sure of it… and yet, doubts lingered. Red John was Red John. Master of manipulation. But no… that was getting crazy. If he didn't keep both feet on the ground, how could he expect his kid to? He had to be strong. He had to show her what was real.

More troubling than the panic attack and the concussion was her seeing this figure in the park and at the 7-11 on different days. Red John didn't stalk his prey… except for him. But as a general rule, he saw what he wanted, he calculated where that prey would be, and he attacked. That was his signature, that and the damned smiley face drawn in blood. That's what his signature had always been.

Strike silently and don't give the victim a head's up, a chance to plan an escape or notify anyone or write in a diary. His modus operandi had evolved and become more sophisticated over the years, but the signatures of serial killers didn't change. It was their raison d'etre, their purpose for being and breathing and doing what they did. There was no logical reason- even using Red John's twisted logic- to think that he'd just show up in parks and watch his kid for weeks from a safe, identity-obscuring distance. From a distance. When Red John made an appearance, he always took something. A life, or a childhood. Something.

Jane considered his daughter, her fractured sleep and her nightmares. Her unwillingness unless forced to leave the apartment. Maybe she had truly seen a weirdo in the park. That was entirely plausible. Maybe someone who had read about Red John online and read about Patrick Jane and followed the case, gotten a little stalkerish and somehow tracked down his child. That was also possible. Maybe one of Red John's so-called "eyes"? Also, disturbing as Hell, but entirely possible.

"The man standing over you today, when you looked up… what did his face look like?" Jane asked gently, putting the pieces together.

"Like Red John's face. Like your face. With sunglasses on," Charlotte drawled out.

Jane felt a twisting, gnawing sensation in his guts. Being compared to the man who had raped and tortured his only child was an agony he didn't think he would ever get over. He kept his face as neutral and soft as possible. Sighed. He was so fucking tired.

She had hit her head, hard. Hell, maybe she had hit her head the first time she had fallen. Dreamed the entire event, some sort of post-concussion waking nightmare or something?

"His face looked like a grinning skull," Charlotte said sloppily, almost asleep, left hand griping the Dairy Queen blizzard cup tightly like it might ward off evil spirits. She still had half the ice cream left, but it was already starting to melt and pool in the cup, more of a dairy soup now than actual ice cream.

"A grinning skull?" Jane repeated slowly, tasting the words.

"Yes," Charlotte said, and nodded, and winced, and scrunched up her face as the pain blossomed again.

"Okay," Jane said calmly, much more calmly than he felt. He knew that traumatic events could trigger psychosis, latent but undeveloped mental illnesses. His paternal grandfather, if he remembered his father's drunken ravings correctly, was undoubtedly a paranoid schizophrenic. Didn't they say that mental illnesses like schizophrenia often jumped a generation?

He wasn't sure, but he felt very, very cold inside at the thought.

Charlotte had not only been traumatized far beyond any human ability to withstand such torture, she'd also been given, if her reports were to be believed (and Jane had no reason to doubt them) psychedelic substances to induce compliance. Psychoactive drugs could trigger psychosis in individuals who were genetically predisposed to such conditions.

Even if she wasn't schizophrenic (and his mind wanted to run from that thought in the other direction as fast as was humanly possible), she could have suffered a drug flashback. It was more plausible than Red John's burnt corpse returning from the grave to haunt them all.

And she hadn't been sleeping well. He knew that. It was obvious. Sleep deprivation, stress, a head injury… all of it muddied the waters.

"You think I'm crazy, obviously," Charlotte said softly. Dixon, resting in the back seat of the Citroën stirred slightly, half asleep, and made a whimpering puppy sound as if reacting to Charlotte's words in his sleep. Jane took another bite of his strawberry sundae. It was beginning to melt, too, the white ice cream mixing with the red, translucent strawberry sauce. He spooned some into his mouth. Considered his words carefully.

"I think you're traumatized," he said finally. It was the best he could come up with without getting into territory Charlotte would argue against.

"You don't believe me that Red John is back," Charlotte broke out, and her eyes opened groggily so she could see her father's reaction.

Jane shook his head.

"I don't believe Red John is back, no. But there are other explanations for what you experienced today, other than you being crazy."

Charlotte let out another long, exhausted sigh.

"I don't want to go to school tomorrow, Daddy. It's not safe there."

Daddy? She hadn't called him that in ages. Post-concussion slip or deliberate manipulation? It didn't matter.

"You're not going to school tomorrow. They already know. We'll get your work sent home for a while."

"But you think I am crazy. Even at the crazy school, they think I am crazy. At the crazy school, for the crazy school…"

"Shhh, Charlie. It's not a crazy school," Jane murmured, hoping something in his words would reach her, knowing it was unlikely.

"Is too," she said back, and ended her conversation with another, now melted spoonful of choco-brownie blizzard.

"We're going to go home now," Jane said. "Do you want me to throw your blizzard out for you? Are you done?"

Charlotte frowned and pulled the cup closer to her like it was a puppy and he had just asked if she was okay with him throwing the puppy in the trash.

"I'm taking it home. Put in the freezer. For later."

"Okay," Jane allowed. He didn't want to leave her, but the nearest trash can was only a few feet from the car. He opened the door, walked the few feet to the trash can and dumped his sundae in. He wasn't hungry anymore, if he'd ever been to start with. He wasn't even sure anymore, when he thought about it, if he even liked the taste of strawberries anymore.

"I really love Dairy Queen, Daddy," Charlotte said sleepily when he came back and got back into his seat, and Jane knew now it was the concussion and his kid being on the verge of sleep that had her using the atavistic "Daddy", but he still smiled.

"I know, Charlie. Okay, make sure you don't drop it, now," he said, like she was much younger. Which, in a way, she currently was, emotionally, if nothing else. He started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, back into the street, into the flow of traffic, back to their home.


She put the melted blizzard in the freezer next to some microwave meals and a bag of frozen peas and went to her room to rest. Jane phoned Lisbon, recapped the days events, made tea (his standard go-to in times of stress) and worked a Sudoku puzzle from the paper. He couldn't go to sleep yet. Had to be awake to wake Charlie up.

After and hour of sleep, he went into her room and shook her gently. Her eyes slit open and she winced and made an annoyed sleep. He smiled, pulled her blanket up over body, turned the lights off, turned her nightlight on (a present from Lisbon, a cool nightlight with a Walking Dead theme which didn't make Charlie feel like she was being babied) and went back to the kitchen to brood.

Around 10:30 he opened up the freezer, feeling peckish, and pulled out Charlotte's blizzard. The ice cream had melted and refrozen and was rock hard, the red Dairy Queen spoon frozen in the muck like an ancient Mammoth that had gotten stuck in a sudden flash freeze and died before it could register what was happening. He thought of his child, and her problems, and her fears and her cradling the Dairy Queen Blizzard to her chest like a shield, the rows and rows of small rubber and plastic figurines she had purchased and had lined up on the shelves in her room (the latest collection were called Littlest Pet Shop) as if she could retroactively recapture the lost innocence and sense of wonder of her stolen childhood, and suddenly the tears were guttering out of his eyes and down his cheeks and he couldn't stop crying.

There was a building pressure behind his eyes and in his throat, an urge or need to scream, to keen, to moan, to sob. He went into the bathroom and stripped down, locked the door, turned the shower on and got in. The sobbing was beginning to get worse. It was painful to hear and he was distantly aware of how loud he was, how he might wake up Charlie. His eyes scanned the interior of the shower, made contact with the small waterproof AM/FM shower radio Charlie had purchased (evidently showering gave her too much free time to think and she needed the music to distract and soothe her) and turned it on. A local rock station was playing, sounded like the Ramones, and he turned it up and sobbed into the spray of water.

He thought of his daughter claiming Red John's reincarnated face looked just like his face, and he thought of Red John's betrayal of his daughter, little more than a baby. He thought of the monster that was his own brother pressing his baby into the blankets and violating her, her cries and moans of fear. Had she vomited then? He sobbed harder.

He thought of his wife, and how much he loved her, and the bloody smiley face and her dead body set up like a scene in a twisted diorama, just a toy to play with. He thought of standing above her coffin as it was lowered into the ground with the flowers he had selected as a going-away gift thrown on top and the mud coming down. He thought of the small coffin that had housed the corpse of what he had to believe was his own child, and that going underground, too, and he sobbed harder, moaned. Opened and closed his mouth and gulped in hot water, swished it, spat it out, sobbed until his entire body shook and he was on the bottom of the shower stall in a little ball, sobbing and cold even as the hot water steamed and pelted his tanned body.

His daughter in Red John's clutches, and all that abuse, and horror, and terror, and loss on innocence. Most of the time he mentally and emotionally pushed the deeper pain in those thoughts away. Usually he could push it away, push it away, keep busy and just push it all away. But that damned Dairy Queen cup, the frozen ice cream that couldn't really be re-eaten, like a childhood that could never be gotten back, could never be erased and fixed, just sitting in there among the peas and frozen Swanson dinners… the pain just kept swelling up in him, like his consciousness was a surfer in an ocean where the swells just kept coming and he just had to stay afloat and try to ride it out…

He sobbed until his throat and eyes throbbed and ached, until his lungs felt raspy and his head throbbed with pain. He lathered shampoo into his hair and scrubbed his face until it felt raw, until the genetic dirt he felt in every cell was semi-boiled by the water's eat. He saw, in his mind's eye, Lisbon's floating, concerned face and her probing eyes and he wished to get out and phone her, invite her over, hug her, just sit with her and curl up and put his head on her lap like a beaten dog and just let her tend him, but he couldn't do that. Lisbon was already stressed and tired and his daughter was already destroyed, and looking so hard for guidance and security.

He couldn't break down.

He thought of Red John's body before him on the ground, dead as any body he had ever seen, the machines he had hooked up flat-lining their electronic scream, the taste of the Mexican heat and dust in his nostrils and hair, fear-sweat curdled on his arms and making him cold even under the fabric of his vest and suit shirt.

He thought of Red John as a toddler, crying as his beloved Patrick was taken out of his life, nose and eyes red and running, mouth open like a character from Edvard Munch's "The Scream".

Red John had to be dead… didn't he? Charlotte was convinced he wasn't. But Charlotte was half-mad with fear and pain and trauma. He was amazed she could talk and attend school and get out of bed some days. In her position, he didn't think he would have been able to function as well as she did.

Jane stayed in the shower till his skin wrinkled and pruned and his body was too exhausted to sob and his back and arms and legs were shaking and the water ran cold. Then, slowly, he picked himself up off the tiled floor and stood up, got out of the shower, toweled off and changed into his pajamas.

He had to be strong or what chance did Charlie had to heal? He owed her that much.

He went back into her room when he was certain all traces of snot and tears had been dried away by the towel and gently shook her again to make sure she could still wake up. She did, again, swearing under her breath and he laughed a hoarse laugh, kissed her sweaty forehead and went back to his thoughts and his tea and his own pain.