Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 18)
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: Thanks guys for the reviews. They really make my day, much more than you'd think! Also, important, my sister made me a Charlotte's Web music video when I first started writing this and I feel you guys would get a kick out of it. I prefer to listen to it paired with Santana's Put Your Lights On. I think she did an exceptional job putting clips together and I think it really fits with this fic. If you like this fic, check out the music video (and you can listen to the original version or pair it with Santana, like I do). Go here: www dot youtube dot com/watch?v=PGJ6S95IzIE Also, guys, my RJ is not the same RJ as the show. I hope you will still enjoy this story. I don't really watch the show, but I saw the big reveal episode and felt disappointed for the fans.
"The star maker says, "It ain't so bad"
The dream maker's gonna make you mad
The spaceman says, "Everybody look down"
It's all in your mind" - The Killers - Spaceman Lyrics
"Lie awake in bed at night
And think about your life
Do you want to be different?
Try to let go of the truth
The battles of your youth
'Cause this is just a game "- 30 Seconds To Mars - A Beautiful Lie Lyrics
After Charlotte's admission to Patrick, she seemed drained. He held her until she seemed unable to be held, rigid, like wood. She pulled back and sought out his eyes.
"You look like him," she said softly, and her words were haunted.
"Like Red John?" Jane confirmed and Charlotte nodded.
"Yeah."
"What about me looks like him?" Jane clarified. Charlotte shrugged.
"Your eyes. Your smile. Your face, in a lot of ways." She blinked hard and shook her head. "But you're not him."
"No," Jane said solidly. "I'm not him."
"But you could be him, if your life had been a little different. You have the same skills. Similar way of looking at people and similar makeup..." Charlotte spoke slowly, and tapped her head with her right pointer finger on the word "makeup", eyes scanning her father's face for awareness. Jane smiled at her gently. He didn't know how to respond to what she was saying, so he just smiled and tried to be calm.
"You hate him," Charlotte confirmed. Jane nodded.
"Yes, I do."
"Will you kill him?"
Jane nodded. "Yes. I am going to kill him."
"Because you hate him?" Charlotte's voice was listless. Jane thought about this. Shook his head no.
"No. Because he is dangerous. Because he is dangerous to you. Because he is evil."
"Because he hurt me?" Charlotte questioned. She took a breath and blew it out and it sounded raspy.
"That is part of it. What he did to you... the horrible things he did to you, Charlotte, that is because he is evil. He is bad. You know that, right?"
"Red John once told me that the only time people really appreciate life is when they are fully panicking. That the rest of the time, they are worrying about meaningless shit or living in the past or the future, and not appreciating the fact that they are alive, that billions of years of evolution miraculously came together to make them self aware and here. So if you can make them not only suffer- but panic- you are doing them a favour, because they are forced to really live. He said that he was an angel of darkness, that light can't exist without darkness, but darkness gets the bad wrap. Is the fall guy. And that makes what he does holy. He is really doing the kind thing and the moral thing, precisely because he will never be thanked for his troubles. Only beings of light get the credit. It's unfair, he says. Beings of light are hypocrites. Darkness is the real light, he says."
"He is evil and he is insane," Jane clarified. "It's possible to be both."
"Do you feel sorry for him?"
"Sorry for Red John?" Jane queried carefully. Charlotte nodded immediately.
"No."
"I feel... maybe... far and deep inside of me but maybe just a bit... I feel sorry for him. Does that make me evil?"
"No. That makes you very, very good. That makes you compassionate. More compassionate than anybody else I have ever known."
Charlotte thought about her father's response. Smiled a little. Jane smiled back at her.
"Red John thinks he is better than mostly everyone," Charlotte informed her father. Jane nodded tiredly.
"I know he does."
"Do you think you are better than most other people?" Charlotte asked her father shyly, looking at him from under her long eyelashes.
"No," Jane said, maybe a bit too fast.
"You don't think you're smarter than most people?" Charlotte amended.
"I think," Jane said carefully, sighing out as he thought of how to phrase his words, "that I have put a lot of time and effort into thinking. I have devoted more time into thinking about thinking and how to do that effectively than most people ever do or ever need to do. And as a result, I may be functionally more intelligent than a lot of people." Jane looked at Charlotte for confirmation, that she understood the subtleties of what he was saying. He wasn't better than others, no, just smarter, and only smarter because he'd worked at it.
"What about genetics influencing intelligence?" Charlotte continued. Jane was nodding. It would make sense she'd go here.
"I think genetics may play into intelligence, yes, but that hasn't been confirmed. It hasn't been proven. And even if it was, it wouldn't make me better than other people..."
"It would make you genetically better," Charlotte argued. "By definition."
"Genetically smarter, maybe," Jane said. "Not better."
"What's better then?" His kid volleyed this back immediately. Jane knew she and Red John had almost certainly had similar talks.
"I think life is inherently valuable. I think all people have worth," Jane said. A philosophical discussion could last for hours, Jane was sure, and he wanted to know more about the crazy chicken man and where to find him.
"Some lives are more valuable, though?" Charlotte persisted; a dog with a bone.
"No..."
"You eat meat," Charlotte said slowly. "You don't have to, to physically survive or even to be healthy. But you do. You wouldn't do that if you didn't think you were worth more than the animal you were eating, if your enjoyment of a meal wasn't more important than that animal's very life..."
Jane nodded slowly. He knew this was looping back around to something. He didn't want to argue.
"Some lives are worth more. 42 million human abortions are performed globally every year. So clearly most people feel that certain lives- even certain types of human lives- are less valuable than others. We objectify what is inconvenient and canonize that which suits us. But at the end of the day, it's all so much arbitrary bullshit. We treat some lives like they are less important." Charlotte looked at Jane for his return comment.
"That doesn't mean they are objectively less important, just because we treat them as such," Jane said, seeing an opening. "Just that sometimes... we get things wrong."
Charlotte wasn't stunned, she didn't even slow down.
"Objectivity? Who is objective? Objectivity implies there is a universal truth as a benchmark. You already told me you don't believe in God, Patrick, so without an omnipotent, omniscient God in the picture, how can you even begin to believe in objectivity? Everything in your world must be subjective, because there is no infallible authority." Charlotte smiled up at him, secure in the knowledge that her logic was sound. Jane stared, slightly intimidated. He'd been a bright kid himself, but not this bright.
"So..." Charlotte continued, when her father failed to speak, "if all is subjective, then who is to say what is wrong or what is right? Maybe Red John is right, and you just don't agree with him, but you're wrong. Who is to say?"
"Do you think he is right?" Jane asked softly, holding his daughter's gaze. Charlotte's gaze skittered away. She shrugged.
"What is right? I don't even know if I believe in right. I believe in is. Things happen. Who is to say if they are right or wrong?" She sounded deflated, though.
"Does that make you happy?" Jane asked softly, and Charlotte's eyes lit up.
"A-ha! Right there!" She sounded excited.
"What?" Jane said, eyebrows furrowing.
"What does it matter if my beliefs make me happy or not? Happiness shouldn't come into it, not if they are good, solid, righteous beliefs." She sounded pleased with herself.
"I think happiness is important..." Jane said simply. He trailed. He was tired and exhausted and brain-fogged and not in a position to defend his life philosophies and ontological "truths". He sighed.
"So does Red John," Charlotte said, when Jane was silent a moment too long. "Red John also thinks happiness is important."
"Red John kills people to feel important," Jane said, tired. So tired. "It's not the same thing."
Charlotte scratched at her cheek. Sighed tiredly. "Why not?"
"It's just not," Jane said stubbornly. But it was the best he had. At a certain point, the reasons for things couldn't be broken down any further. Call it philosophical string theory, call it whatever you liked, but sometimes things really were just self-evident.
Not to everyone though. And that was the source of a lot of problems, Jane knew.
"Is there a chance he is right about anything he says? At all?" Charlotte asked then, tone a little more tender. Her father looked tired, drained. It wasn't good form to beat your debate partner with the leg of the dead horse.
"No," Jane said curtly. "He is crazy and he is evil and every word out of his mouth is a lie."
"Red John said things in reality aren't black and white. Nothing is truly bad or truly good," Charlotte said. She said this so plainly and calmly, that Jane felt like screaming. As if he were being a child, a black-and-white thinker and was being gently corrected. It was crazy, the entire conversation.
"That might be true," Jane said hotly. He got up and went into the kitchen and pulled the kettle off the stove. He filled it with water from the tank. He was getting a headache and they still had so much to do today. When he had filled the kettle he brought it back to the gas range, turned the gas on, lit the pilot light with a wooden match and turned the flame up to boil the water. The flame hissed indigo blue like magic. Ta da.
"Nothing is truly 100% good or bad. I agree with that. But Red John is so incredibly bad that basically everything out of his mouth, in functional terms, is a lie. He might have some tiny sliver of goodness to him, but more than likely it's the nitrogen in his body which will fertilize weeds when he dies." Jane stopped talking, voice bitter and hard. Charlotte was watching him carefully. No doubt Red John spoke with similar vehemence. He had to be careful with Charlotte. He had to be what Red John was most definitely not: compassionate. Loving. Fair. Merciful. Pick one.
"Am I always going to be crazy?" Charlotte blinked at her father with world-weary eyes. Jane blinked himself. He hadn't been expecting such a sharp change of subject. He looked at his child and felt profound compassion for her. Oh, Charlotte. This life is so much harder for you than it fairly should be. She was expecting the truth. She needed it.
"I think you're going to have problems for a long time. But a lot of people have problems. They're nothing you can't live with. You have already done so well surviving, and that was on your own. If I was to say I am proud of you, that would sound patronizing, because frankly... I would be patronizing you. I am so much more than simply proud of you, and I hope some day you'll understand just how highly I think of you. You'll have problems, but you'll get so much better. You won't always feel like you do now."
"Do you know what Red John's name basically means? Bloody man. That is what I think."
"Oh?" Jane asked. Charlotte nodded.
"He doesn't really ever explain why he has that sobriquet, right? But I think John is just John, as in John Doe. As in an unknown man. And red just symbolizes blood. Blood is red. Therefore, bloody man. That is what I think of his name."
"That makes sense," Jane said, nodding.
"Are you mad at me?" Charlotte asked, looking at her father carefully.
"No. Why would I be angry at you?"
"For drinking and for scaring Lisbon and for upsetting you? For suggesting that nobody can be objective and that morality is stochastic?"
"I'm not angry at you at all," Jane assured her. He wanted to reach forward again and hug her but Charlotte was on edge again. She was no longer teary, and he couldn't get away with physical touch right now. Jane still could taste the bile in his throat that he had felt at the sight of her cut-and-burn scars. He would get plastic surgery for her, he had already decided. He'd find someone who could do a skin graft, and do it well. She wouldn't live the rest of her life with Red John's handiwork carved into her chest and abdomen as a constant reminder of the horror that was the better part of her childhood. Fuck that.
"I am scared of dying, Patrick. I never want to die." Her words were so plaintive, she sounded suddenly more like 6. Tired and weary. Younger than she was.
Jane nodded carefully at this. The idea of dying scared a lot of people. It made sense it would horrify Charlotte.
"Are you afraid of dying?" Charlotte asked her father.
"I'm... I try not to think about it, honestly. I can't change it. So I try not to think about it."
"The fact that it is for sure going to happen, though, scares me so badly, Patrick. It's like a horrible nightmare. It's like... it is so scary. I don't want to die. I don't want to end. I don't want to rot."
"You believe in an afterlife, though?" Jane said softly. Charlotte nodded. Then shrugged.
"Yes. But maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is just nothing. And I will never see Mom again. Hard for me to believe in anything, really..."
Jane nodded stiffly. Where had that come from?
"Dying is scary. How you rot. Red John showed me what happened. When I was little."
"He did?" Jane probed cautiously. The kettle began to scream on the element, the water was boiling and ready to become tea. He got up and went to it, turned the element off, poured boiling water into two cups, added a teabag into each cup. Orange Pekoe tea. Nothing special, but it did the job. He brought the cups of tea back to the little dining table and put the cups down and looked over at Charlotte. She got up off her so-called bed, stretched, and wandered over to the table. She sat down and Jane sat across from her.
"You're not going to die for a long time?" Charlotte asked her father worriedly.
"I don't think so," Jane said, smiling widely.
"I don't want you to ever die," Charlotte said softly, and stared at the darkening tea. Jane nodded solemnly.
"I will do my best not to die for a very, very long time." And he meant it. Until the last few days, part of him hadn't really cared. As much as he loved Lisbon, his grief and despair over his wife and child had made the idea of living seem more like a burden than a blessing. But Charlie was still alive. She needed him. She was relying on him. Her existence was a blessing.
"You're healthy?" Charlotte questioned. She reached a finger out and touched the steaming surface of the tea. Pulled it back immediately and sucked the hot water off the tip. Too hot, apparently.
"I am healthy, as far as I know," Jane said kindly. "Are you?"
Charlotte glanced over at him.
"What?"
"You healthy, Charlie?" Jane said casually. He thought of her coughing up blood. Of the raspy wheeze. The pallor of her skin. She shrugged.
"I don't like doctors," she said by means of an answer and Jane nodded. Considering the type of "doctors" she'd been "treated" by, her reaction made perfect sense.
"Have you had trouble with ulcers before? Asthma?"
Charlotte shrugged at her father's inquiry. "I feel sick a lot."
That made perfect sense too. Chronic stress and trouble sleeping combined with Charlotte's obviously miserable diet would make anyone sick.
"You don't think I am dying, do you?" Charlotte asked then, and her eyes seemed to bulge with fear at the thought of it. Jane very slowly took a deep breath, so she wouldn't notice. He kept the calm, calming smile on his face.
"No, I don't think you're dying. I think you're okay." Said in his best, most-soothing mentalist voice. "In fact, I am sure you're okay. You feel okay, don't you?" The voice he used to put people in a trance. Charlotte's eyelids drooped.
"Okay, I guess," she said slowly. Then sucked in a shaky, deep breath. Another one. Her brain seemed to remember something and her eyes flashed with fear again.
"What is it?" Jane said calmly, voice still soothing. Watching her closely.
"I know what happens when a person dies. Red John showed me..."
"What did he show you?" Jane said calmly, carefully. He wanted to know. But he also wanted his daughter to be calm.
"He killed someone in front of me and then he left me in a room with the body for three days and three nights. For 72 hours. And I had to watch what happened to the body. How it changed. Everything."
Jane nodded.
"I had to keep notes of how it changed, hour by hour. The eyes, the skin tone, the lips, the fingernails, any bruising or blood that was settling in the arms, the cheeks, the eyelids, whatever. Hour by hour, and I had a watch and a light to shine on it, but there was no other light in the room. And if I didn't do it, I would have had to do it again."
"That must have been very scary for you," he said this slowly. He would not get upset. Charlie needed to rest. He needed to rest. They'd be there in a few short hours.
"Red John says death is the great alchemist, something dies and it immediately begins to change. He says it is magic."
"Red John is insane," Jane confirmed again.
"With the lady he killed so I could watch her change, I said sorry. I thought her soul was still around, so I sang to her and told her to go to the light. I told her I was sorry she had been killed, sorry because it was partially my fault."
"How was it your fault?" Jane asked quickly, eyes sharp.
"She wouldn't have been killed if Red John hadn't wanted to teach me about what happened to corpses, if I hadn't been his protégée. She died as a lesson for me."
"But you didn't cause her death. Red John killed her, because Red John is insane."
"And also, because I liked her," Charlotte added.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, she was handing out informational pamphlets to try and get people to sponsor children overseas. Plan, or something like that. And I took one, because I was thinking I'd spend my money that Red John gave me as an allowance to sponsor a child, so I could do something kind instead of cruel. And so, we started talking. She bent over and I remember she was smiling at me. She told me she was from Boston and her name was Lisa. I remember, I asked her if she had a little boy I could sponsor named Patrick and she asked me why I wanted a Patrick and then Red John cut in and said we had to go."
"How old were you?" Jane queried.
"Um... 8? About 8. Back when Red John gave me an allowance to learn how to budget money. After I was about 9, I had to do things for the money, but before-"
"What kind of things?" Jane broke in. A bit too eager, he told himself silently. Calm down. Charlotte sighed.
"Nothing bad. Reports. Write reports. Like book reports? And essays."
"On books?"
"On some books, and also on topics in general. Who were the Sibyls? Who owns the federal reserve? What is the historical lie we are told for why the US got involved in Vietnam? Or write book reports. Crime and Punishment. The Trial, by Kafka. Sometimes I even got to pick the book, as long as it met certain requirements. I chose 'A Clockwork Orange' one time. But Red John also let me write a book report on The Little Prince, and that is a kids' book. I'd get a dollar a page. He also gave me money for learning words. I had vocabulary lists he wanted me to master. Words are the building blocks of understanding, he said. So I would learn words, word lists: obsequious, saturnine, hortatory, philippic. Like that. I'd get a dollar a word, too. One week, I earned 100 dollars for my reports and for my words. Mostly for learning words. I learned 88 words that week."
Jane nodded at this. It fit with his profile of Red John. It also fit with what he knew of his daughter.
"When the lady died, I sang to her. I did my tasks, too, wrote things down, but I sang to her for the whole three days." Charlotte blinked wearily. "Just in case her soul was still around. So she wouldn't be scared." Charlotte folded her arms across the table. Blinked hard, as if trying to blink away tears, but her eyes were dry.
"That was very kind of you," Jane said with eerie calmness. "I am sure that helped her."
"I don't want to be buried when I die. I don't want maggots to eat my face out and I don't want to turn all green like that woman from Boston. Lisa. I want to be cremated."
"Charlie? Why don't we think of something else right now? Okay?" Calm, soothing voice. She was staring at the top of the table, seemed lost in the past.
"Did you know the word pale in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, was actually, in the original Greek, chloros? Meaning green? Describing that whitish cast corpses get, white but with a greenish cast? Pale horse, actually meaning... pale as in green, as in dead-green. As in the green tone of death. We lose so much in translation. Chloros... same root as in the word chlorine and also chlorophyll." Charlie was still staring at the table surface.
"We can talk about all this later if you want. There will be time later. We will work it out. You're not dying anytime soon." A hypnotist's voice. Soothing, soothed. Her eyelids lowered another fraction of a millimeter. He couldn't be upset anymore, because he had to be calm. Because Charlotte had to calm down. She was far too stressed, far too chronically terrified. She was almost jerking with anxiety. Her hands were shaking slightly, and she didn't even seem to notice. Her body was still trembling. But she was slowly calming with his help.
"I don't want to die and I don't want to rot," Charlie persisted, eyes flashing again, fighting against the calm he was trying to give her. Was calming down frightening for her? Did she view it as losing the safety net that was hair-trigger hypervigilance?
"You're not going to die for a long, long time. You are going to be okay." His words were warm and smooth as honey. "Come on, Charlie. Let's calm down. You and me."
Charlotte rocked slightly on her seat. She stuck another finger in her cooling tea and began to drop water droplets on the table. Jane watched her carefully. She began to draw smiley faces with the water droplets. Then, angrily, blurred them.
"Hey? Charlie? Hey? It's okay. Come on," Jane soothed. "I am going to have a sip of my tea now, I bet it tastes really soothing. Warm."
He picked up his cup slowly, calmly, and took a sip, eyes on the teen. Charlotte watched him like a wary cat. Finally picked up her own cup and took a sip.
"I know what you're doing, Patrick. You're trying to make me relax. Because you think being so scared is bad for me."
"Isn't that good?" Jane pressed, ignoring her comment, eyes glittering. He smiled at her tenderly. Charlotte nodded tiredly. Took another sip. Jane took another sip. So did Charlotte.
By the end of the cup, her eyelids were even heavier. The trembling in her hands had stopped. She had stopped taking sudden, heavy inhalations of breath. Her skin tone was a little less washed out.
"Want another cup?" Jane asked kindly. He reached for her cup to carry it to the kettle.
"Okay," Charlie said tiredly, and rubbed a hand over her face, smoothing out her wayward strands of sweat-soaked hair. "Yeah, okay."
Saturday, November 3, 2013 3:25 pm PST
Lisbon felt nauseated. The stress from the last few days was hitting. Her head ached. She opened the glove compartment as she drove, dug her hand around, looking for painkillers. None, of course. All back in the airstream. The light was bright and hot. Dust rose up on the road, everything had a gray-brown quality. She had passed through honest-to-God tumbleweeds. They looked gray as they blew across the highway's darker gray asphalt. There was orange, iron-rich soil in the distance. The sky was bright blue, punctuated by bright white clouds. She'd never been in Mexico before, but it looked like how she'd always imagined: beautiful but wild, hot, desolate, simple in its elegance. A scene a small child could paint with tempera paints on terracotta or canvas and peddle for a few bucks to tourists. Hot, dusty, dry. Cacti in the distance. Lisbon felt hot, dusty and dry, too, except for the thin skin of sweat on her brow. She'd been okay in the airstream but now felt extremely thirsty.
There was a 6 pack of water (each half a liter) in the passenger seat and Lisbon tore through the plastic with her free hand, grabbed a bottle, and chewed the top off with her teeth. Her dentist would be peeved if he saw, but so what. The water was warm and sweet-tasting, a bit flat. There were some Catholic rosary beads hanging from the rear view mirror in the truck. Red glass beads, squinting the light around the truck cab like a prism. Attached to the beads was a white rabbit's foot, dangling listlessly. Lisbon had wondered about them since she'd started driving. Jane didn't believe in God. Were they Charlotte's? Charlotte believed in God. Or did Jane believe in God when things got really tense, when things got right down to the wire? She'd ask about them later. No doubt they belonged to the shady friend of Jane's who had procured the truck and airstream for them at the last minute. That was just another shady aspect of Jane's life that painted the picture of a nomadic, socially rebellious renaissance man. Jane knew people all over. Good for him.
She thought of Charlotte, of Charlotte's admissions of what she had endured under Red John's... tutelage? Horrific. Horrendous. Just thinking about Charlotte's young, pale face almost brought her to tears. Jane was holding up well. Charlotte was a firecracker, bright and smart and lively with a huge grin and tiny little teeth that seemed more like baby teeth than adult teeth. A somewhat goofy grin, as huge as her father's but slightly more manic.
Lisbon thought of Van Pelt and Cho and Rigsby. Obviously they'd know she and Jane were with Charlotte. Hopefully they wouldn't worry too much. Rigsby would be worrying, Van Pelt would be calm but helpful and trying to track them down, Cho would be calm and cool as always, maybe a little short with the FBI.
Lisbon thought of her brothers. Her familial relationships had always been strained. Did they even know she was missing yet? Would they even really care? They'd care, but not to such an extent that they'd be losing sleep. They'd care enough to maybe tune in to any news programs on the trio (the thought hit Lisbon oddly and made her laugh, the idea of her and Jane's smiling faces plastered on Nancy Grace with an old surveillance photo or police sketch of Charlotte looking innocent and goofy and alien in her over-sized, baggy clothes, all grungy pig-pen Victorian era street urchin).
Lisbon turned the radio on, but the CD player started instead. It was the CD Jane had found in the plush orangutan toy, of Charlotte speaking, being recorded. He'd been analyzing the CD as he drove. Lisbon shuddered and fumbled with the radio, found the button which switched the CD player function to radio and spun through the frequencies. She found what sounded like an oldies station in Spanish, then a station coming from LA, hard rock. Guns n' Roses was playing. You Could Be Mine. Lisbon felt a chill hearing it. Charlotte had been talking about the movie Terminator 2 at lunch and this song was featured prominently in that movie. Now, here it was, playing. Synchronicity. That's what Jane would have said it was, but she wasn't so sure. Felt like an omen to her, a bad omen.
But she believed in God, and bad omens, and ghosts. Jane didn't, or at least pretended he didn't. Charlotte believed in God, and Lisbon was sure that if pressed, she'd admit to belief in many other supernatural realities; ghosts, aliens, werewolves. All of them seemed real in Charlotte's eyes, the reflection of things usually gone unseen were no doubt welcome in her electric green. Lisbon thought again of what Charlotte had said, her pain at being forgotten by her father, her easy startling and traumatized gaze. Lisbon felt hot tears behind her eyes, drained the last of the water and felt the tears on her cheeks. Fucking Red John. She threw the empty bottle back toward the passenger seat. There was an ache in her throat, the ache that came when a person wanted to cry, and forced the tears back. Lisbon has never been an easy crier. Even alone, she felt inherently uneasy crying, as if the tears were admissions of weakness. She knew that was silly, but the sense was old, and strong.
Charlie was a cutie. Traumatized, damaged, scared, hurting... but also cute. Bright, silly, and strangely innocent. She was scared, Lisbon knew. Wary. Yet she wanted to reach out. She had handed Lisbon that poptart, features indifferent and guarded, but under the mask was tender ministration. Lisbon knew Jane wanted to stay back with her because she was hurting, decompressing, and because they were getting close to their location. The crazy chicken man was the only real lead they had to go on, but Jane would no doubt want to pick Charlie's brains. Also, of course, calm her down.
Lisbon was glad to drive. Glad to have this simple, straight-forward task to do, a task which didn't involve navigating the emotional waters of a batshit crazy, traumatized 16 year old girl with nightmares of sadistic murder. The rosary beads picked out light and scattered it, swaying in the early afternoon light. Hot light. Dusty, late light. The rabbit's foot made a soft, airy clink against the beads, almost noiseless, just loud enough to hear over the engine and her breathing and the sound of the dust. Almost- but not quite- a clink.
Saturday, November 3, 2013 3:45 pm PST
They chatted about meaningless, every day shit. Jane learning about his daughter. His daughter drowsy and adrenaline-fatigued, eyes heavy, skin pale under the red flush of her cheeks. She never really slept deeply, system was always going. Always on red alert, until she wasn't, until she dropped. An exhausting way to live.
She liked Pee Wee. She liked all the old movies she'd watched with her father as a little girl. Jane had never gone for the saccharine little kid bullshit, but the movies of his adolescence, exposing Charlie to Beetlejuice and Pee Wee and old 80s kid programs. Angela had raised some eyebrows at his choices but hadn't objected too much. She and her husband, both, had been raised on the carnie circuit, had seen freaks and masochists and sexual deviants before they both could read. Pee Wee and Beetlejuice were tame fare by comparison.
Charlie still remembered, and she still loved the oldies. Jane smiled tenderly as she spoke. She liked poptarts. Again, they went back to her childhood with him. Memories preserved and fed over the years, like precious plants. Flowers nurtured in a desert. Watered with tears.
"And your favourite colour is green?" Jane quizzed. He knew it was. Charlotte nodded.
"Like trees."
Trees. Life. Leaves. Grass. Jane smiled.
"If you were a colour and an animal, what would you be?" Jane asked. It was an old mental exercise. He'd used it on cases. It revealed how a person saw themselves in relation to the rest of the world.
"Some neon colour. Neon orange? And um... maybe... um... a monkey?"
Jane grinned. A monkey. Playful. Slightly deviant. Intelligent, curious, capable of higher bonding. Dextrous fingers for picking locks. Monkeys, Jane knew from his childhood, were consummate escape artists.
"What would you be?" Charlotte asked her father. She had her head resting on her arms, which were folded on the table. She looked tired. Wilted. But she was calm, and she seemed content to chit chat with her Dad. And that was good.
"Hmmm. Blue, I guess. I see myself as blue. Robin's egg blue, maybe?"
"Blue is calming, it is peaceful. Like the sky. No limits," Charlotte informed her father. He nodded, smiled. She was a perceptive kid, alright.
"Yes."
"What sort of animal?" Charlotte pressed. "I answered you."
"Maybe a fox?" Jane said. He'd thought about this before. Something friendly, but wild. Corporeal, but fast and fleeting. There, but not there. Foxes had always struck him as magical. They seemed to grin, and their eyes seemed to know the stories of dreamers. They were real animals, but also mystical, in a way, striking Jane as being the cousins of unicorns and gryphons. Intermediaries between the world of reality and the dream world, and their smiles told their stories. Their smiles told the hunter- you can kill me, but you'll never quite kill me.
"What would Red John be?" Charlotte asked her father, head still on her arms. Jane shrugged.
"Why don't you tell me. You've spent more time with him than I have."
"I want to know what you think. Without me telling you first. I want to know how you view him," Charlotte pressed.
"Why?" Jane asked calmly. He was on his third cup of tea.
"I want to know how someone intuitive and perceptive who hasn't spent time near Red John views him, as opposed to someone who has spent a lot of time around him..."
"Fair enough," Jane allowed. "For colour... Red John strikes me as something dark. Maybe the colour of red wine, dark red. Like blood that hasn't been oxygenated for a while. Maroon. Burgandy. One of those."
Charlotte shivered. Nodded. "Yeah. I think so too." Jane smiled at her.
"As for an animal... something predatory. A vulture, maybe."
Charlotte shivered and nodded again. "Yeah. Like how a whole group of vultures will stand around something that is almost dead, and all together, as if they are all thinking it at the same time, they will all begin to feast. Some times the thing isn't even dead yet. Reminds me of vampires."
Jane nodded.
"Red John is a vampire, in a way," Charlotte added. "He feeds off of fear and panic. And he paints with blood."
"Yes," Jane allowed.
"He killed me. The person I was. He killed me. My chest and abdomen... he knew you'd see. He must have known, so long ago, that I would show you. He carved the smiley face in me, so you would see. You'd see the smiley face, and you'd know..."
Jane kept himself very still. "Know what?"
"That I am dead," Charlotte finished simply. "Only appear to be alive."
Jane was quiet. "You're not dead. You didn't die. He wanted you to think that. But you're not."
"How do you know?" Charlie asked immediately, with so much yearning in her voice that Jane smiled despite himself.
"That hope in your voice? That desire to not be dead? Someone emotionally or spiritually dead wouldn't have that hope in their voice. They'd be flat." It was true, and Jane knew it was true. Charlotte thought about his words.
"I am different than how I would have been if you had raised me, though." Understatement of the century.
"Yes," Jane allowed. "But everyone changes. That doesn't mean you are dead. You're not dead. And Red John couldn't control you. He couldn't dominate you. That's pretty amazing."
"In some ways he could," Charlotte said. "In some ways, he could scare me."
"That's just being human," Jane said softly. He took another sip of his tea. "You wouldn't be human if he didn't scare you."
This got a tiny sliver of a grin out of Charlotte. "Yeah. But I still defied him, sometimes. When I could get away with it." She grinned at her father, lopsided, tragic, brave. Never-say-die Charlie. Charlie, who, at the age of 3, had written the alphabet and all the numbers she knew, in order, on her bedroom wall in green crayon. He grinned back.
"That's good. Good for you."
"I like how when I was little, if I was scared, you'd hug me. I always remembered. If I was scared, I remembered you hugging me."
Jane nodded at this. Didn't say anything. What was there to say to that?
"Can we talk about the crazy chicken man for a bit?" Jane said carefully. They would have to track this guy down soon. Jane didn't want to stress out his kid, but time was of the essence.
"Okay," Charlotte allowed. "When we are finished will all this, can we go on a vacation? You, me and Lisbon?"
"For sure we will," Jane said. Nodded. "Of course."
"Legoland in San Diego?"
"Okay," Jane said again, and thought of the many leisurely evenings he'd spent with Charlie when she was tiny, sticking Lego blocks together in front of the television- even though the box said she wasn't old enough yet to be trusted with the toy. When her mother asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she first said "a grown-up", and then, when pressed for a career choice, changed her answer to "engineer", a word neither Jane nor Angela could remember teaching her. "Not a ballerina?" Her mother had asked with faux disappointment, and Charlie had shaken her head with exasperation. "No!" No had been one of her favourite words. "Why do you want to be an engineer?" Jane had asked her, grinning prematurely at the response. Her reply had included a convoluted description of the red planet, Mars, and Martians and machines like tanks that would help the martians get from school to work and to the 'diamond mines'. Neither Angela or Jane had any idea where she had gotten such ideas, but Jane was pleased as punch with her answers. Charlie had drawn a picture of the martians, driving around in her invention (a silver VW bug type thing with tentacles) on a field of red ochre. She'd even seen fit to include a martian "dog", also green, with a trio of slit eyes and a long, froggy tongue. Engineer, indeed.
Jane asked her then, about the crazy chicken man. She went over what she had previously told him. Seeing God in the desert. How he was a crazy shaman and they would more or less just have to run into him. How he (the chicken man) seemed to like her, how he had kissed her head as a little girl (Jane felt a swell of gratitude for this strange, ranting Mexican who had done business with the devil that was Red John). Red John apparently had threatened the crazy chicken man with something. Death to his son, or something. Charlotte wasn't sure, just that the crazy chicken man was scared of Red John, but had once spit in his direction, in the dust. Red John had laughed and said something in fast Spanish that Charlie hadn't been fluent enough to decode. The crazy chicken man had gone red under the Latino tan of his skin, angry and wild.
Jane pressed for more. The crazy chicken man was kind. The whites of his eyes had a yellowish cast to them (jaundice, Jane knew... an indication of some liver problem?). He had bad teeth and many missing teeth. He smelled of spices, of Spanish food, and an undercurrent of blood. He smelled of dust, of brush fires and smoke, and also of honey. He went barefoot most of the time, but when he wasn't, he wore straw sandals. He ate wild locusts and honey, like John the Baptist. He cared for children who were orphaned or diseased, children others might fear. Charlotte could remember one bug-eyed boy with an enlarged head (hydrocephalus?) and yellow skin in the crazy chicken man's hut, eating dulce de leche (milk candy), a spill of red blood on the front of his stained, white shirt. Little pop-eye had apparently either lost a baby tooth or bitten his tongue, and had been crying, so the crazy chicken man had calmed him down and fed him milk sweets to dull his crying. The crazy chicken man had taken under his wing a set of malnourished twin girls no older than six, who had been beaten black and blue... until the angry father had cornered him, drunk, and made him return the children.
The crazy chicken man was followed by animals, sometimes. Wild dogs, but also squirrels and tlacuache (opossums). He ate odd foods and was seen in odd places, sometimes caught in the beam of headlights in the desert, eyes glowing like a cat's. Many people thought he wasn't really a man, at all, but a spirit of the desert who helped the simple folk, who could shape-shift. He had a rough, rowdy laugh and his eyes split into winks when he laughed. He spit saliva when he laughed. His hands were rough, calloused, and he wore red rosary beads around his neck. He had a lucky rabbit's foot, which sometimes he claimed had come from a rabbit that could speak Spanish, and other times claimed came from a shape-shifting spirit of the desert. He believed in Mary, Joseph and Jesus, but also the old native spirits of the desert, and his belief systems overlapped with some native American beliefs (particularly the Apache and the Navajo). He believed in a creature much like the Wendigo of the Algonquins of Northeastern US and Canada, a vampire creature of the desert created when humans engaged in cannibalism; a creature which could suck a person dry and make them run until they disappeared into a cloud of fire. He believed in ghosts, in reanimated corpses, in blood that could tell the secrets of fate and prophecy.
Charlotte had watched him break the necks of squawking chickens and cut their heads off, had watched him collect their black, steaming blood in terracotta bowls in a hut that smelled of smoke and mystery. He'd shaken the blood, looked at it, thrown gray ash and some of his own blood in the cup, and dusted the air with the smoke of buffalo sage. Small animal bones hung from fishing line and dangled in the doorway, with glass beads and...
"I thought he didn't have a home?" Jane pressed. Charlotte shrugged. Her eyes squinted as she went back in time in her memories and tried to remember more.
"I remember he was in a hut, but that was a long time ago. Maybe he does have a home..."
"Do you remember where it was?" Jane asked. Charlotte shrugged. She hadn't been to that hut in a long, long time. She didn't even know if it was his, or it belonged to someone else and he had simply been using it.
What she did remember was that it was on the outskirts of Hermosillo and she had been brought there once by Red John when she was sick. She'd been throwing up, high fever, and seeing things. The Crazy Chicken Man had spoken fast, felt her pulse, and taken all her clothes off except for her underwear. He had wrapped her in pieces of cloth soaked in what smelled like vinegar and fed her a very bitter tea to drink. She had gotten it down, then thrown up and had seen what looked like black snakes slithering around in the vomit and the Crazy Chicken Man had yelled: Bien, bien, ellos están fuera. Good, good, they are out. Charlotte believed she had been cursed by either Red John or one of Red John's victims. Jane was certain that her fever had been so high that this part of the story was marked by fever dreams and hallucinations.
She didn't remember anything else, but Jane had a lot more, now, to go on. The Crazy Chicken Man served the poor, the freaks, the dejected. In theory, anyone deformed or socially on the edge might know where he was, and might be willing to tell them for a few American greenbacks and a calm, safe smile. Jane had some small bottles of Corona in the back of the truck, hidden away from Charlotte and her nervous, alcoholic fingers. Coronas were good for bartering.
They'd find him. Jane only hoped they found him before Red John...