Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 28)
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: Hope you guys enjoy this chapter. It's an RJ chapter, so if my version of RJ gives you the heebie jeebies you might want to keep that in mind and not read in the dark or without your blanket or whatever. ;) Reviews are always appreciated.
"You take the individual we are talking about and then you subject him to stress. Stress happens to come randomly, but its effect on the personality is not random; it's specific. That results in a certain amount of chaos, confusion, and frustration. That person begins to seek out a target for his frustrations. The continued nature of this stress this person was under - the nature of the flaw or weakness in his personality, together with other elements in the environment that offer him a logical target for his frustrations or escapes from reality - yields the situation we're discussing. There is no trigger, it is truly more sophisticated than that." ― Ted Bundy
"God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again."― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
"Try to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. It's not real. It's just a dream." - Ted Bundy
Saturday, November 4, 2013 11:26 am PST
The man known in the United States of America (and particularly the state of California) as Red John and in South America (and particularly in Mexico and even more particularly in the relatively small Mexican city of Hermosillo) as Juan de Rojo or, less commonly, as el Lobo Rojo (the Red Wolf) was upset.
His protégée of the last decade had left him 5 days ago, nearing 6 days., now Right before Halloween, also known as Samhain, also known as All Hallow's Eve. The little bitch had flown the coop! He had taken her when she was young, had put so much energy and faith and love into her., and this is how she had repaid him? Fucking bitch. Red John considered his own parents- that slack-jawed carnie father who'd never done anything more than bamboozle stupid people out of money and his incompetent whore of a mother.
That maternal whore had taken Red John away from Patrick when he was just little, taken him like he was a piece of property, an end table baby, a jointed doll that miraculously cried real salt tears. She'd left Patrick, who was younger and smaller and less verbal, with their father. That whore. She hadn't been able to stand the carnival life, but had no real skills so she'd traveled around. They'd lived in motel rooms, sometimes with two beds, usually with just one, and she'd taken up the oldest profession on the planet and started whoring herself.
When the man named Red John had been too small to be sent outside, he'd been shut in the closet, where he'd had the early educational experience of listening to puta of a mother in the other room buck and moan for money and scream the names of random men. Henry. Chuck. Scott. Paulie. Al.
So many fucking names.
When little Red John got older, she'd sent him outside to wander around aimlessly. Sometimes she sent him off with a few bucks and he'd go to diners and drink coffee and and eat cereal and dump everything free on the table into his corn flakes for added calories. Little packets of peanut butter and strawberry jam and honey and maple syrup in the bottle, all in the corn flakes. He'd asked her repeatedly if he could go back to their father, since she was constantly complaining about him, her fucking no-good son, anyway. No, she said. She wasn't going to let that bastard Alexander win. He was her son, her's.
Alexander had Patrick and she had him, and that was only fair, wasn't it?
He got one and she got one, and that was fair.
They'd split everything 50/50.
Like he was a fucking toy.
That bitch...
As he got older, men in truck stops took an interest in him, in his playful, wide-set eyes and golden curls. He was so cute, they said. He almost looked like a little girl, skin so soft and smooth, eyes so bright... He couldn't really remember the first time he performed fellatio for money, but he couldn't have been older than 7. His mother knew, of course. Didn't care. Why should she care when she was selling herself anyway? No. Not one ounce of caring, not ever, not for Red John.
Instead she checked his pockets for money when he came home at night (so he developed the good sense to buy candy and treats with the money, and if she bitched he'd lie and say the men had given him comics or army men or baseball cards or whatever in lieu of cash and what the fuck was she going to do about that? When she knew damn well that such men often did fork over goods instead of money, anyway? If he held out on her, though, and tried to keep money, she'd go into a rage and beat him around the head.
Dirty little bastard, she'd call him. Little fucker. And all those years Patrick, living the good life in the carnival with their dubiously talented father, with his own bedroom and his relatively care-free childhood.
And Patrick had had the fucking nerve after all that undeserved goodness to go on TV and talk about shit he didn't understand and could never understand and call the killer named Red John all sorts of brutal names. Like he was somehow better. Like his life was anything more than pure luck?
It had hurt.
It had really fucking hurt.
He'd daydreamed about cornering Patrick, after that interview, cutting his unseeing eyes right out of his mocking, stupid, arrogant head. Cutting out his tongue and shoving it down his twin brother's throat. Let Patty-boy choke on his forked tongue.
Patrick Jane, the all-seeing psychic who couldn't even see what was right in front of him...
Angela, his pride and joy, who couldn't even tell her husband and her husband's twin apart. The dumb cunt.
Patrick Jane, in his early days, traveling around, living it up and it had been so fucking easy for Peter to blend in to the scenery. Angela at home, drinking red wine all alone and he just slipped in the front door one night with his heart beating staccato in his throat and she didn't even notice he wasn't Patrick, not with half a bottle of California vino in her.
And Charlotte... he'd come back for her, hadn't he? Like a good father should? Because he and Patrick were identical twins, which meant that they had identical fucking DNA, which meant that there was no real way to ever tell if Charlotte was his or was Patrick's.
And Patrick... had he figured it out yet? She could have been his, she might very well be his and have been created from the seed of the Red Wolf, of the Red John, of the grown boy who had simply been called Red... but a DNA test would never be able to show with any certainty if little disturbed Charlie who'd been raised by the mean, old Red Wolf was from Patrick or was from the sadist brother... and that was delicious, wasn't it, the uncertainty there?
It was funny, really. Sometimes when he thought about it, he laughed so hard his chest hurt.
Patrick, for all his intelligence, had such obvious fucking blind spots. He'd gone back though, gotten rid of Angela (who was essentially a lying whore anyway and not worthy of Patrick, there was no way she didn't on some level know he wasn't Patrick, nobody could be that stupid), scooped her up-scooped up Charlotte- and he'd taken her away. His little love child. His little project, a soul in a meat suit for him to raise and fine tune.
If Patrick was going to put his child (his maybe-child, no way to tell, ha ha!) in jeopardy, then he didn't deserve her, now, did he? He didn't deserve the life he had, either... he didn't deserve a damned thing.
Spoiled little sod of a man.
So Red John had done what any responsible adult would do, and he'd taken Charlotte. She was maybe-his, anyway, so he was only just a father reclaiming his maybe-kid. But fuck, fuck, right from the beginning she'd be a sniveling, whining pain in the ass... So maybe she really was Patrick's, after all. Something beyond genetics, but epigenetics. Patrick's epigenetics. Maybe. That might explain why she'd been so disappointing a project.
All that little whining shit had ever done was cry for her "Daddy", her "real Daddy" and never once- not once- did she think about the great pains he had gone to to take her and make her his own and train her so she'd grow up to be self-possessed and powerful. Spoiled, she was, spoiled rotten.
Charlotte had never given a damn about him, really. She'd been self-absorbed and spoiled right from the beginning, whiny and immature, Charlotte had been. He'd given her the world, and what had the little bitch done?
She'd shat all over his precious gifts like the dog she was.
Red John knew about gifts. He knew about how to show proper appreciation to one's mentor.
Red John himself, he'd been instructed by a man who in the 1970s, in a small Texas town, had been locally called "The Smiley-Face Killer", a name given to him by the media and much despised by the FBI and the killer himself. The Smiley-Face killer had come over from England.
He'd marked Red John as his own in much the same way he'd marked all his victims after they began to cool, except that he'd let Red John live and "remain in the pink and not the drink or the stink". Carved a smiley face into his heaving, prepubescent chest and abdomen while the boy bucked and screamed and bit into an oily rag. At the time, Red John hadn't understood. Hadn't gotten it.
Only later did he begin to understand the profound honor of having been chosen by such a distinguished man.
The Smiley-Face Killer had been the great grandson of the man who had inspired serial killers all over the world.
The Smiley-Face Killer even changed his last name, at the age of 18, to "Whitechapel" as an homage to his famous great grand-daddy, but people were too fucking stupid to ever put the pieces together. Great grandpappy had lived in London until his death in 1934. He'd been trained as a physician, and then recruited by the "higher ups" to deal with the prostitute "problem", the human garbage clogging up and polluting the glory of London, of the glorious city of God and King... He'd had a son in 1891 and that son had had a son in 1926 and that son had impregnated a woman who had given birth to Mr. Smiley-Face Killer in the year 1956 after the death of our Lord.
Mr. Smiley Face had been relatively young himself when he first took the young Peter Jane under his wing in early May 1976, when little Petey was nearing birthday number 8 and Mr. Smiley-Face Killer, only 19 but soon to be 20.
19 but with 4 brutal kills to his name already, and more than a dozen rapes.
"You know who my great grandfather was, lad?" Mr. Smiley-Face asked Peter Jane as he led him to a bathroom at the back of the Texaco station a block from his mother's motel and the shitty little trucker's diner where he bought his meals. Peter waited for the young man to unzip himself, but he never did.
"Who?"
"Why don't you try guessing? He's famous. Killed a whole bunch of women, and never got caught. Way back in merry old England."
Peter stared at the young man. By the age of almost-8 he'd already developed the hobby of finding stray animals and cutting their throats open with his trusty pocket knife. He'd lit a kitten on fire, an emaciated, mange-inflicted little thing with wet, weeping eyes and a crooked tail that looked almost broken, a gray kitten with fur the colour of ash, he'd lit it on fire and it had screamed like something almost human as the flames caught and spread and the smell of fur and meat and death and torment filled the air, and then little Petey stomped it out, pounding his army boots onto the dying animal, bones splintering, until it was gone, gone, gone... and he kicked it into a water run-off grate where it hung against the grate like so much gray tissue paper, eyes burned out and full of red jelly, mouth open in an eternal scream, teeth exposed now that the face was gone...
Every time he did this, he imagined he was cutting his bitch whore mother's throat, lighting her on fire. He didn't particularly dislike the animals.
They were simply convenient.
Now, this young man had him in his glittering, silver stare, and the child who would one day grow into Red John was interested, his curiosity was piqued.
"I don't know anything about killers," little Petey told the young man innocently, and the young man laughed at the absurdity of that statement.
"Sure you do. I see it in your eyes. You're not like other people. You have a darkness inside of you, don't you, lad?"
"You don't know anything about me," Peter Jane said with narrowed eyes. His mother had put the fear of God into him once. Somehow the dumb bitch had put two and two together, or suspected, and told him if he was ever caught they'd lock him up in a mental hospital and give him electroshock treatments until he could do nothing but drool and shit his pants like the dumb fuck he was.
Only psychos killed little animals, didn't he know that?! Was he a fucking psycho? Answer me...
"I know more than you think, mate. Take a guess who my great grandfather was, and I'll give you ten bucks. Ten American greenbacks if you get it right. All yours, and no risk of any nasty STDs, little man."
"And what if I get it wrong?" Peter asked. His heart had been beating so damned hard. He was excited, intrigued, and his blood felt hot and cold at once. More than anything he wanted to get it right. But he didn't know the names of any killers.
Not really.
Not that he could think of. But maybe... maybe he did.
He racked his brain. Mr. Smiley-Face grinned at him, eyes fever bright, pupils pinpoints of dark brutality, little pinprick black holes.
Peter wanted Mr. Smiley-Face to call him "mate" again, to call him "lad" again, or "little man", to smile at him...
"If you get it wrong, you come with me for a bit. We go on a trip, yeah?"
"Go with you?" The idea was appealing, the idea was Christmas and Halloween and an unlimited candy binge and Patrick back in his life and his bitch mother strung up and gutted like a deer, all at once. His mother wouldn't even care, would she?
He'd run away before.
She'd probably be happy, the dirty, useless whore... One less mouth to feed...
"Yeah, that's right. We go on a little trip, yeah, mate?"
"If I go with you, will you hurt me?" Peter asked. He didn't really care, of course. He didn't care and Mr. Smiley-Face knew he didn't care. Little Petey was flirting with this young man, though, a sort of flirtation that was profound, that went to the core of both of their souls.
He already knew he would go.
He'd go willingly.
Even if this smiling, dark-eyed man ended up killing him, he'd go, and he'd die happily,, at that. He'd go and he'd smile, no matter what happened.
He felt suddenly like a child possessed, excited, almost drunk. Giddy with some dark, sanguine desire that was stronger than anything sexual he would ever later experience. A mental and spiritual orgasm was building behind his eyes, something full of screams and gasps and bucking madness and the taste of fresh blood, of innocence bound and gagged. It was exquisite. He wanted this young man to look at him, smile at him. Take an active interest in him and his own latent, neophyte darkness, his own embryonic depravity.
He wanted Mr. Smiley-Face to put his hand on his shoulder, squeeze it, squeeze it until it left deep, black bruises, until the bones splintered, maybe. Splintered and broke through the tanned, muscular curve of his shoulder, with the blood so hot and vital staining the teenager's hands and... he licked his lips, excited.
"Do you care if I hurt you?" Mr. Smiley-Face said then, with a wide shark grin, like a carnival mind-reader. He had a gold tooth in the front and it flashed at little Petey, a wink of gold light (hello, that wink of gold said, like a spirit), and Peter Jane knew then, suddenly, with absolute clarity, that this man was his real father; the father he should have always had, the father he'd always wanted and needed but been deprived for so long...
His teenage "father" was wearing a smiley face t-shirt, but in the middle of the smiley-face's "forehead" was a bullet wound.
How perfectly unique!
Under the smiley-face, in bloody red puffy letters, were the words: have a nice fucking day, asshole.
"No," Peter said after a moment, grinning with delight at the atrocious t-shirt. "Not really. I don't care if you hurt me."
"Then why'd you ask?" This said with an amiable, hungry grin. Like they were talking baseball or something. Just boys being boys.
"I wanted to see what you said," little Petey said honestly.
"So what do you think of my answer?" Mr. Smiley-Face said back, sharp as a knife edge.
Mr. John Whitechapel said, because that was his real name, his legal name, until his tragic and premature stroke death in 2003. All grins and tanned skin and smelling of Old Spice and something musky like an animal den, then, though, in 1976, in the heat of early summer, the promise of early summer.
A boy on the tail end of a sad, broken childhood, really, edging into premature puberty at almost-8 and a young man entering baby adulthood in the dark shadow of evil.
Two killers fresh for the kill, like moths out of their chrysalides. Two young, happy, grinning killers sizing each other up in a bathroom stall behind a Texaco in South Texas.
"I like your answer. If I go with you... will you kill me?"
"I could kill you right now, if I wanted to, mate," Mr. Smiley-Face said and he reached a tanned hand forward. Slipped it around Peter Jane's almost-8-year-old neck.
Gave it a brief, playful squeeze just hard enough to show he was serious and capable of much darker things.
Peter grinned at him, kept his eyes open. Would that bruise later? He really, really hoped so. He wanted to be marked by this man, he wanted the savagery of his touch etched into his flesh in dark, pungent bruising like an inky brand, he wanted the outline of his fingertips on his flesh, wanted the veins to burst and bleed scarlet and...
"But, no. No. I don't think so. Too much potential in you, yeah? I'm not going to kill ya, mate. You're a gem, aren't ya?" Almost mocking tone, there, but not really. Sardonic. Eyes watching the boy as the boy fell into the pain of that sharp, cruel squeeze.
"Okay," Peter breathed. He felt dizzy. The air in the bathroom was hot and heavy. It smelled of urinal cakes and stale piss and pine sol with an undercurrent of cum. There was graffiti on the walls, names and fears and drunken dreams scrawled where nobody wanted to read them.
"So you wanna guess? You wanna guess my great granddaddy?"
"I'm going to get it wrong. I don't know any killers."
"Sure you do, mate. You're an American boy, and you have an intelligence in your eyes that tells me you know more than most lads your age. So. Name them."
"Name who?" Peter asked, staring up at Mr. Smiley-Face, at Johnny boy. Dragging out the foreplay of dark souls thrusting against one another in dreams of blood.
"Killers," and this with a pleased smile. "Go ahead."
"I really don't know any..." His heart had been going so hard then, so fast, and he felt dizzy with what had to be an almost romantic love.
"How about Bonnie and Clyde? You've heard of them?" Mr. Smiley-Face urged, grinning his gold-toothed smile. He pulled a cigarette from a pack in his jean shorts and offered one to Peter. Peter took one. His first cigarette, and Mr. Smiley-Face didn't laugh at him when he coughed.
"Well, yeah, I've heard of Bonnie and Clyde. Sure."
"Well, they killed people, didn't they?"
"Well, sure. I guess."
"No guessing involved, laddie," Mr. Smiley-Face purred at Peter. "It's a known fact, now, isn't it?"
"Okay."
"So, go. Name all the killers you can."
"And if I name your granddaddy in them, I get ten bucks?"
"No. You have to actually say which one is him."
"That's too hard!"
"Is it, really?" Mr. Smiley-Face said with a knowing smile. "Either way, you win, yeah? Get it right, and you get ten dollars. Get it wrong and you come on a trip with me that blows your mind?"
"Okay," Peter said, grinning. Mr. Smiley-Face was right, of course. He couldn't really lose here. Even if he lost... he'd win. Maybe, even... if he lost he'd really win. It was a win-win sort of situation, wasn't it? Oh, Happy Day.
"Okay, well, like you said, uh... Bonnie and Clyde?" His young voice was adrenaline shaky. He'd never played a game like this before.
"Go on," the young man nudged. "Who else, lad?"
"Um... Billy the kid? Um... Hitler. Stalin. Mengele? Vlad the Impaler? That is the guy who Dracula is based on. Um, also... Ed Gein?"
"Old Eddie, how'd you hear about him?" Mr. Smiley-Face said, and clapped the boy on the back to show his appreciation.
"Um... somebody told me that Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre is based on somebody named Ed Gein," Petey said with a wide grin. "I always remembered that, I guess."
"Ah. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Great film. You're into horror films, mate?"
"Yes, I love them," Petey said, grinning proudly.
"No nightmares?"
"Hell no!" The very idea was a little offensive, really. Mr. Smiley-Face held up his hands in a "don't shoot" gesture. Laughed.
"Okay. No need to get steamed, mate. Just asking. Your mummy, she have no problems with you watching those sorts of things?" The young man's eyes were glittering, were knowing. He already knew, but he was going to give Peter a chance to speak his piece, anyway.
"My mother is a stupid whore," Petey said with a scowl. "She doesn't care what I do."
"Ah. Okay. Thought so, but it's nice to get a little feedback once in a while, ain't it, mate?" Mr. Smiley-Face breathed tobacco air like a dragon. Peter Jane nodded vehemently, sucked on his cigarette, eyes scanning the young man's face, trying to memorize every millimeter, commit this all to memory. It sure was nice to get feedback!
"So, you can't think of anybody else, then? Any other killers?"
Peter ran names through his head. But they didn't fit. From England? Who did he know from England who'd killed people? He couldn't think of anybody.
"You give up?" Mr. Smiley-Face crooned. Peter nodded, excitedly. He was excited, because he'd lost. He'd lost the ten bucks. But he'd gained the trip. He'd gained the world...
"You ever hear of an old-timer named Jack the Ripper?"
Jack the Ripper! Of course! How could he have missed that?
"Yeah! He's your great granddaddy?" Peter Jane breathed. His eyes bulged. He barely dared to believe it, and yet, he did believe it. You bet your ass, he did.
"Maybe he is. What if he was?"
"That's so cool!"
Mr. Smiley-Face just grinned. "That's how I knew about you. Let's just say, it's in the blood, yeah? I look at one of us, and I can just... just tell, mate. Call it a psychic gift, yeah?"
"You mean... I'm like... like him?" It couldn't be true. Jack the Ripper was a legend. Surely this guy was pulling his leg.
"But you lost, so we're gonna take a little trip, right?"
"Right," Peter Jane said. Mr. Smiley-Face opened the bathroom door and they stepped out into the light of the waning day.
"Your face is all red, mate. I'm gonna call you that, okay? I'm gonna call you Red. You okay with that?"
"Red? Yeah. I like it," Peter said. He did like it, too. It was a great name. Simple and profound, and matching the colour of the pulsing behind his eyes.
"Good. Yeah. That's good. Come on, Red, we're gonna go on a little trip, now, yeah?"
And they walked towards the beat up old station wagon, a black 4-door 1965 Chevrolet Biscayne with fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror.
Looking back on this years later, Peter Jane would think of that day- May 12th, 1976- as his real birthday. It was the day he stopped being Peter Andrew Jane, unwanted and troublesome son to a whore mother and a no-good carnie father and became Red John. It was the day the fucking great grandson of Jack-the-fucking-Ripper became his real father, and everything began to make sense and his destiny became clear.
Red John had decided shortly after taking Charlotte to set up base in Hermosillo. It would be his South American base. Charlotte, even at five, had tried running once, when he'd taken her out, sprinted away from him like a startled squirrel, racing in no particular direction. He'd caught her easily, picked her up as she bucked and clawed and screamed, but they had been too far away from other souls for anyone to hear.
The idea of her getting lost in a place like Mexico city, and going to the authorities was terrifying. He could very well lose her in a big city if she decided to bolt and Charlotte was a bolter, she was a runner, and she was hard to get a grasp on- physically and mentally.
Hermosillo, on the other hand, was small enough that he could have "eyes" all over the place. His eyes were local people he had threatened or bribed or hypnotized or all three, and he had them all over the little city, lest Charlotte ever try to fly the coop. Every major gas station, convenience store... even the local hospital and police department had "eyes". As Charlotte got older she referred to them as "the hills have eyes", a reference to some stupid horror movie the kid liked to watch. She watched so much crap.
She had absolutely no class, no taste. Such a disappointing child, she'd turned out to be...
When Charlotte had left him, He'd known she would go to Patrick and that they'd go to the Chicken Man. So he'd paid the Chicken Man a visit, informed the old man of the situation, given the old man the low down and gotten his attention right quick.
The Chicken Man was to produce Charlotte to him for a quick disposal (she'd go into the ground like the failure she was, and if Patrick sought his brother out at long last and killed Lisbon to prove his acceptance of the situation and his hard-won loyalty, maybe Red John'd dig the little shit back up for Patty boy as a token prize, but otherwise she'd be sealed up tight and could die screaming in the dark with her fingernails clawed off to bloody stumps for all he cared).
If the Chicken Man did not drug them and produce Charlotte to him for her punishment, Red John would come back and kill all the Chicken Man's "babies", the worthless street children and genetic rejects the old shaman collected like an assortment of broken dolls. So bizarre, that Chicken Man. So bizarre. Who hoarded the unfortunate failures of God?
The Chicken Man had cried and blubbered and begged no, no, no. He had known that Red John was capable, perfectly capable, of killing his babies. He'd even beaten that little fucker Elian (old Charlie's best buddy among the Chicken Man's human defections; she had even referred to Elian as Oliver Twist and herself as the Artful Dodger one time, to Red John's blunted amusement and rising exasperation), he'd beaten that little fuck up in the church as the boy wriggled and begged him to stop, seizing the boy around the neck where the kid often did simple chores for peanuts, scrubbing the floors on his bruised hands and knees, smelling of dirt and early adolescence, the musky smell that older children developed as they shed the skins of childhood.
But... the Chicken Man (real name, Eduardo Hernandez of a long line of Mayan shamanic weirdos) had been on board with the plan. Red John had been pretty certain about that. He'd seen the hopelessness of the situation. Charlotte's life, or the life of a dozen other, equally innocent children. It was simple mathematics, was it not?
Charlotte Anne Ruskin-Jane- his most poignant and depressing of failures- would go into her custom made green coffin (her favourite colour was green, how thoughtful was the man named Red John, really?) and she would scream in the dark and think about what she'd done to him. And if Patrick really came around, maybe she'd be dug back up. Maybe.
The Chicken Man was to drug them all and present them to Red John. That had been the plan. He'd been on board. But the Chicken Man was also... something in his eyes had been unsettling, and if he offed himself, the plan would go south. The man thought he could shape-shift into animals, for crying out loud, so a ritualistic suicide to prevent his "first baby's" death was not out of the realm of possibility.
So Red John had alerted his "eyes" at the local hospital and the local police department to call him on his cell immediately if he- or his twin- came in with the old man for any sort of medical treatment and to immediately go into the parking lot and look for a vehicle with a California license plate (no doubt whatever vehicle Tricky boy would be driving would be from Cali) and to come back with the location of his twin, and the description and location of the vehicle.
Also, they'd all been given the directive to keep Patrick at the hospital or police station, to be distracted, and to find out where Charlotte and Lisbon were. Without setting off any red flags.
Now, nearly 6 days after Charlotte had betrayed him so brutally, his cell phone buzzed Dies Irae, "Day of Wrath". So. The hospital, then.
The old fucker had tried to end himself, and Patrick had hauled his insane ass to the hospital.
If he survived, Red John would catch him and cut out his lying, duplicitous tongue, cut it into little pieces and force feed the bastard his own tongue. Then he'd make him watch as he killed, slowly, each one of his defective "babies". And then he'd kill every single one of the chicken man's chickens and that fucking goat Charlotte had been so fond of (what had she called that goat again? Grumpy Gus?).
He'd barbecue that goat and have it with mint sauce. Roasted chicken too, on the side. Delicious, and more delicious because it would be the flesh of creatures that had been loved and known freedom until recently...
What he couldn't eat, he'd leave in the desert for the Gods and the vultures, and if they didn't bite? The maggots and the sand and the dust...
Red John answered the phone.
"Yes?" His voice was almost sultry, pleasant. Calm in a sinister way.
The man on the opposite end told him Patrick was there at the hospital with the old fucker, the Chicken Man. Chicken Man had overdosed on some hallucinogenic drug he called "bloodleaf" and was having his stomach pumped as they spoke. Someone had gone out into the parking lot and had a description of the vehicle all ready, the location, all of it. Red John wrote the details down lazily, smiling to himself, nodding, already tasting the tang of fear in the air that would be Charlotte's terrified sweat as he shut her up in her little box.
Patrick had claimed the old man had ODed at "home" and there was no woman with him, no young girl. So almost certainly Lisbon and Charlotte were back at the Chicken Man's place, hiding. Scared little rabbits.
It was too simple, really.
Fucking idiots.
And now the game would really begin...