Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 29)
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 again for the great reviews, guys. Enjoy this chapter, things are really heating up, now. Have fun with this! ;)
"The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. ("The Medusa")"― Thomas Ligotti
"We think there are limits to the dimensions of fear. Until we encounter the unknown. Then we can all feel boundless amounts of terror." ― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow
Saturday, November 4, 2013 12:15 pm PST
They'd been playing cards for maybe 40 minutes- Charlotte, Lisbon and Elian and Charlotte couldn't stand it. She felt hot tears behind her eyes. The Chicken Man could die. For the past decade he had been like a father to her, and now he could die! He was a little scatter-brained, but not an idiot, and the idea that he had overdosed on his tea was unsettling. It wasn't like him. What if he had been put in an impossible position by Red John and had attempted suicide to prevent doing something he considered to be worse... like kill her, or kill Patrick or Lisbon?
"Lisbon, can you stay here with Elian? I want to go in the house..."
They were playing war, slapping down cards. Lisbon looked at the girl. She was drawn up in herself, a tough kid trying not to cry. But Jane had said to keep an eye on her...
"I bet his house is a mess. I want to clean it up for him," Charlotte tried again.
"Maybe I should come in with you?" Lisbon started, glancing over at the young boy who had warmed considerably to her in the past half hour or so. "Maybe we could help you clean up?"
"Not sure Grumpy Gus would like that," Charlotte mumbled. She wasn't even looking at Lisbon now, but at her feet. "Okay? I won't be long. Will just go tidy up the kitchen, use the bathroom, and I'll come back. Okay?" She wanted to be alone because she was going to cry. And she didn't want to cry in front of Elian or Lisbon or anyone else. She was holding herself in tight control. Lisbon knew the type, understood the desire not to appear "weak" in front of others. She had been the same way as a teen. Hell, she still was the same way.
"Okay. I'm here if you need me," Lisbon said softly. Charlotte nodded, grabbed her backpack, and left the shed, pulling the steel door closed behind her.
Red John watched the shed from down the road, looking for signs of life. He wanted to get Charlotte alone. If Lisbon got involved, she might draw her gun or do something stupid, and then he might be forced to kill her, and Red John didn't want her dead. Not yet, anyway.
Charlotte had exited the shed and entered the little shack the Chicken Man called a home. Red John put the binoculars down on the passenger seat, ran a hand through his still-drying hair (he'd dyed it brown, quickly, after being told Patrick's hair was brown- he wasn't sure of the exact shade, but this would have to do, and from a distance, Charlotte would buy it) and crept the truck forward, little by little.
Lisbon was probably with the kids in the shed. It made the most sense, especially if Charlotte had just come out of the shed. Charlotte's body language as she ran had looked mournful. She had no doubt gone into the shack to either use the crapper or to cry. Both possibilities meant that she would come back out relatively quickly. Probably within 15 minutes. Lisbon, Red John knew, was a fiery, stubborn and strong woman. Similar traits in Charlotte would be met with mutual respect and consideration.
If Charlotte had fled the shed because she was on the verge of tears, Lisbon would respect that, and stay put until the kid was done with her crying, so as not to embarrass her.
It was too easy to manipulate people sometimes. It was almost sad...
The truck inched closer, little by little, like a living animal that had got the scent of blood. He wanted it on the edge of the property. When Charlotte came back out of the shed, he'd put his face in his hands, like he was grieving. Charlotte's neurotic, anxiety-driven brain would spark Catharine wheels of terror, and she'd run to the truck to find out about the dotty old shaman. She wouldn't realize that he wasn't Patrick until it was too late.
Charlotte stomped into the living room. Her body wanted to cry, but she knew she couldn't cry. In her mind, crying equated to being weak and in her life, the weak were killed. Certain emotions and physical states could almost be written out as algebraic functions.
Weak would be W and physical death would be D. T would be time.
W x T = D Weakness multiplied by time equaled physical death.
Crying was C. C= W.
And time was a function of simply being alive. So... mathematically? C=D.
Tears equaled death.
It was a mathematical imperative not to cry.
The girl put her left hand into her mouth and bit the flesh on her hand until red pain shot through the nerves. Tears welled in her eyes, but they were a function of pain, and not emotional sensitivity, and that was okay. They leaked out of her eyes and she wiped them away. A shudder ran through her body, an urge to sob, and she forced it down into her stomach. Sometimes she got bad stomach aches. But at least she didn't cry. At least she kept a lid on it.
She'd been keeping a lid on her tears- on her sobbing, really- for one long, nightmarish decade.
She went to the back of the shed, to the tiny bathroom the Chicken Man used for washing up. There was a mirror on the wall with a crack down the middle. A large bucket of water in the corner with a hand pump. A large basin that connected to some very basic plumbing set up (the pipes ran out the back of the shed for about 100 feet and then simply spilled the "sink" water into the desert's dust. An old claw footed tub also connected to pipes (one had to carry water over to it, heated on the stove, because it wasn't connected to a hot water tank, of course). And a bucket with a hole in the top that served as a makeshift toilet/chamber pot.
The idea with the chamber pot was that you only used it to urinate in, and the pee was removed and carried a good 100 feet (100 feet seemed to be the rule) from the shack and the shed and poured on the ground once a day. If you had to go number two, you went out with a hand shovel and a roll of toilet paper, dug a little hole, squatted, did your business, covered your business up. It sure made Charlotte grateful for having access to flushing toilets and electricity most of the time.
She walked over to the bucket, pulled down her pants, urinated. wiped with a small amount of toilet paper, put the toilet paper in her pants pocket (toilet paper was only for number two, but Charlotte didn't want pee staining her underwear). She pumped some water into a small bucket, washed her hands, washed her face with the cold water, poured it down the little sink.
On a shelf on the wall was hand soap, rinse-free hand sanitizer, shampoo, shaving cream, a box of band aids, a dusty container of hydrogen peroxide for wound cleaning. Charlotte pumped one squirt of hand sanitizer into her hands, rubbed them, looked at herself in the cracked mirror.
She thought then of the Chicken Man, and his kindness toward her. Him covering her fevered body in strips of cloth drenched in vinegar to bring down her fever, patting her head, hugging her, trying to make her smile when she was scared, his odd, funny nature and that damned goat. What would happen to Grumpy Gus if the Chicken Man died?
Charlotte had a sudden mental image of that goat being sold to a local butcher, of being slaughtered and cleaned and cut into salable portions, of his obstinate goat legs hanging on hooks in the butcher's front window, his head and his lifeless eyes on a blood stained table in the back of some slaughterhouse. That mental image started the tears.
She sat on the edge of the claw-foot tub and cried pitifully into her hands, angry with herself as her eyes leaked tears and her voice got hard and ragged and broke, but unable to stop now. Eventually her body decided it had released enough stress. She wiped the tears away. Looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was blotchy, eyes swollen.
Lisbon would not be fooled. Charlotte let out a ragged, controlled breath.
"You're getting weak, kid. This is no good."
Charlotte sighed. She'd go and tidy the Chicken Man's kitchen, maybe see if he had any Jarritos sodas (he sometimes had some hanging around for special occasions, room temperature but still tasty). She'd tidy up. Feed the chickens their feed. Charlotte got up off the edge of the tub, exited the bathroom, went back into the living room. Grumpy Gus was sitting on the Chicken Man's chair. He gave her his pissy fuck-you goat look.
"Out, Grumpy Gus," Charlotte muttered hoarsely. Grumpy Gus simply stared back. Finally he raised his head and made a pathetic goat noise.
"Get off his chair. You know better. Come on. Are you hungry?" Charlotte opened her backpack, found one last pop tart left and pulled it out. She pulled the foil off and held it out for the goat to see. "Come on, Grumpy Gus. Want this pop tart? You have to get off the chair. Come on."
The goat finally got off the chair and trotted towards her. Charlotte smiled at the animal. "That's right. Come on, dude. Come and eat." She walked backwards towards the front of the shack, opened the little screen door. The goat approached, eyeing her, well aware of what she was up to, but still interested in the pastry.
Outside the screen door, a clear bag of water hung from the door, reflecting sunlight. The Chicken Man had explained the function once to her. The bag of water apparently scared insects away, and kept them from entering the various finger-sized holes in the screen. Charlotte wasn't sure if it worked or not, but the Chicken Man swore by it.
It didn't keep goats out of the shack, though.
"You want some of this? Then you have to go outside for a bit, okay, Grumpy Gus? That's the deal." Charlotte broke the pastry in half, tossed half of it out into the dusty November day. The goat looked at her again with his inscrutable eyes, looked at the food, finally decided, fuck it, he wanted the pastry, and trotted outside for his reward. Charlotte grinned at his tiny, wagging tail, so much like a little dog's.
Then she caught sight of Patrick's truck.
Parked a good 200 feet or more away, Patrick with his head in his hands, like he was exhausted or upset or...? Fear and grief and panic swelled in Charlotte's chest. She hitched her backpack up on her thin frame, pulled the door closed so that it latched and took off at a sprint towards the truck and Patrick and whatever bleak truth awaited her...
Red John saw the girl on the porch of the shack, waving something. He adjusted the binoculars. A piece of bread, or pastry... yes, that was it, a bit of that god-awful pop tart she always ate. She tossed it into the sandy terrain and the Chicken Man's goat limped out into the noonday heat to collect his reward.
Red John put the binoculars away, put his face in his hands, angled so he could still see Charlotte through his fingers. She was a wary creature. If not by nature, then by upbringing, and she would automatically scan the horizon, he knew.
When she did, she would see the truck, see him, and assume he was Patrick.
She'd see his dejected, forlorn body language and assume that fucking, idiotic shaman had bitten the dust and come running (why run if she thought he was dead? It's not like running would bring him back. Sometimes so-called "normal" people- those with a sense of guilt or remorse, that was- could be so damned illogical).
She wouldn't realize she was in a trap until it was too late.
Charlotte approached the truck. Patrick's face was still in his hands. Was he crying? His shoulders were moving up and down, just a little, like someone crying... or... or laughing? Was he laughing?
Something in her mind sent up a warning then, but she pushed it away. It was Patrick. Same dyed brown hair, same navy hoodie he'd left with. It was the same hoodie, wasn't it? Sometimes Charlotte wished she paid more attention to the external world, and not just her own thoughts and daydreams. Red John and Patrick, both, were extroverts. They noticed things in the external world. She was an introvert, and try as she might, learning to pay attention to other people's clothes and haircuts and sunglasses wasn't her forte.
"Patrick?! You okay?!" She called. Patrick's head came up. He was wearing sunglasses. He hadn't been wearing sunglasses when he left, she knew. The warning bell rose, rose loud enough to be a conscious fear now, and not just something flying under the radar subconsciously.
She stared for a moment too long, as the driver's door to the truck swung open and the man who was not Patrick stepped out. In her mind, a calm voice told her that what she was experiencing was exactly what deer experienced when they froze in headlights, those few precious seconds before racing metal vehicles slammed into them.
She blinked and had an image of Red John's leering face over top of her shortly after her abduction, of the flickering firelight that had existed inside her bleeding chest and abdomen for a handful of terrifying seconds as Red John lit his handiwork on fire (the pain had been manageable and over the years Charlotte decided she must have been given some sort of local anesthetic to be able to watch her own chest and abdomen burn like that without screaming).
That memory loosened her legs, like a spring toy wound too tight. Then she turned and began to ran back towards the shack and towards Lisbon, and Lisbon's gun and Lisbon's safety, mouth opening to scream but nothing more than a dry, rusty creak of terror tumbling out...
Red John caught her quickly. She was wiry and she was quick, but she was also short and malnourished from a decade of eating mostly crap, and over-tired and exhausted and probably anemic. She bucked as he carried her towards the truck. She managed to scream Lisbon's name but his hand went around her throat almost immediately and choked the sound out of her.
"Shut up. She gets involved, and she's dead. Do you want that?" Red John's voice was a deep, almost melodic, purr.
Charlotte wasn't listening. The idea of being this man's property again, being trapped with him again, was a blinding red rage of panic that short-circuited her self control.
Red John surveilled the landscape. They were a good distance away, but surely Lisbon had heard something?. The man named Red John tightened his hold around the girl's neck, a standard choke hold, and she was out for the count within five seconds. Fucking little idiot.
Her stupidity made what he was about to do to her all the more palatable. Someone this bloody stupid didn't really deserve to live, not with all she had been taught. She'd had a first class education, and she had just run right into his trap.
Idiot.
He stared at her throat, at the way it seemed to almost be puffing up. He'd maybe been a little too forceful with her. Already, yes... his finger marks were starting to bloom on her long, pale neck. He thought for a moment that maybe he'd killed her, choked her to death. He'd pull off the road and check in a few minutes.
Little bitch.
Charlotte slumped against him, out for the count (or, possibly dead... that hadn't been his intention, but damn it all, had squeezing her neck felt good). He opened the passenger seat and lifted her into the passenger seat with no more consideration than if she were a sack of potatoes or a bag of laundry. He was buckling her in when he saw the steel door of the shed open, saw Lisbon's dark head come out into the daylight to inspect the area.
So the CBI agent had heard something, after all... or she'd heard enough to pique her alarm. A name screamed on the wind...
Red John made sure Charlotte was buckled into her seat, all nice and snug as a bug in a rug, and shut the passenger door. Lisbon was walking towards the truck. Red John raised a hand in a vicious wave and even without the binoculars, the killer could imagine the slightly confused look on the young CBI agent's face as she tried to process what she was seeing. He grinned at her, mumbled "Oh Lisbon, it must be tough to be so stupid, huh?" and got back into the driver's side.
Lisbon knew something was up now, she was running towards the truck at full speed, her firearm out. Red John slammed the driver's side door and started the truck's ignition, whistling some old school television intro under his breath (it took him a minute to place it, and when he did, he laughed into the dry November air and grinned at himself in the rear view mirror, back molars flashing winks of silver from his fillings- MacGyver!).
Lisbon was sprinting now, but she was too far away to get to them in time. A shot meant for him left a little hole just to the left of his temple (his left, Lisbon's right) and sent spider-web cracks across the windshield.
And then she was lost as a silhouette back there in the dust, mouth open, yelling something that simply did not matter in the whole scheme of things, something that would never, ever matter.
Lisbon hadn't known what was going on. She'd heard what almost sounded like her name, but couldn't be sure she'd heard anything, not with the deformed kid's television going full blast and the sound of Elian's raucous laughter as he slapped down cards and made goo-goo eyes at her (she was increasingly certain the kid had a little boy crush on her). But she was a trained CBI agent and she was responsible for Jane's child, so she'd gone to look, just in case, and she'd seen Jane loading his daughter (who looked unconscious) into the passenger seat of the truck. Then he waved at her, a strange, almost mocking wave, and she knew that the man that looked so much like Patrick Jane out there in the dust, wearing those sunglases and grinning from ear to ear wasn't Jane at all, but Red John.
She began to run, terrified of the implications (how had Red John gotten their truck? His hair was dyed brown, so someone had seen Jane and told Red John what he looked like... or... was Jane dead? No... Jane wouldn't be dead, that would make no sense, everything Red John did was about engaging Jane so Jane wouldn't be dead, but what did Red John want with Charlotte? Was she dead? She had looked unconscious for the few, confused seconds Lisbon had watched Red John secure her in the passenger seat...)
She took a shot at the window, certain it was Red John, certain Charlotte was being abducted, but still, on some level, not 100% certain she wasn't shooting at Jane, because Jane had played all kinds of games and tricks on her and others over the years, and that hesitation cost her a few more precious seconds. She shot close to her mark, but she didn't get her mark, and now the truck was gone in a cloud of red dust. Lisbon stared at it with shaking hands.
The Chicken Man didn't have a phone, of course. And she and Jane didn't have cell phones, not even burner phones, because Jane had been paranoid of Red John picking up the signals somehow and zeroing in on their location.
Lisbon wasn't aware she was crying until Elian was standing next to her. His eyes were narrowed into slits.
"The wolf got her. Got Charlotte..." His voice sounded almost cold. She turned to him, and wiped her cheeks.
"What?"
"That was Juan de Rojo, yes?"
"Yes," Lisbon confirmed with a nod of her head. Everything felt surreal, dreamlike. The colours were too bright. Everything seemed to pulse brighter behind Lisbon's eyes every time her heart beat. The boy by her side seemed so far away, and Charlotte was gone.
She had let Red John get Charlotte.
This would crush Jane, this would end him... Lisbon put her firearm back in its holster with hands that shook with adrenaline. The boy was looking at her with dark, gleaming, knowing eyes.
"Yes," Elian said again with another nod.
"Elian, I need to get into town. Do you know anyone nearby, with a van or a truck, anything like that?" She was amazed at how little her voice shook, at how calm she sounded. How was it possible that she could say these words and sound so calm? It was bizarre.
The boy was shaking his head sadly. "No. But I have a bike..."
A bicycle? That wasn't practical. The boy guessed her thoughts, shook his head.
"Takes gasoline, yes? My bike?"
"A motorbike?" Lisbon clarified.
"Yes, yes," Elian said and began to run back towards the little shack, beckoning for Lisbon to follow him. She did. He took her back behind the shack, and pulled a blue tarp off a motorbike. It was a little 4 stroke engine dirt bike, gasoline powered, red. Looked like 125 cc. Her youngest brother had had one very similar to it as a boy. Elian grinned up at Lisbon.
"You know how to drive it?"
"I can figure it out," Lisbon said, nodding. Her heart was still racing, everything appeared like she was looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Dissociation. Stress. Sleep deprivation and adrenaline and fear.
"No helmet, okay? You good with that?"
"That's fine," Lisbon said. The boy nodded.
"No keys, right? Just... those two wires?" He made a gesture that Lisbon rightly interpreted as "twist". She twisted the two exposed wires together and the little dirt bike hummed to life. Lisbon nodded, slid onto the seat.
"Thank you, Elian."
"Be careful with the wolf," the boy said sternly, and Lisbon nodded and peeled out from behind the shack, gunning it. The bike's top speed was 60 mph, give or take 5 miles per hour, but without it she would have been stuck walking... when this was all over and done with, she was going to buy the kid a Harley.
Jane had been waiting 50 minutes without an update. Several times he had made a move to leave the room and had been beckoned back immediately. Would he stay, please? The doctor would want to talk to him. Could he fill out some papers? Describe the plant again? 50 minutes after the Chicken Man had been whisked away down the hall, Jane decided to go and find a washroom. His bladder was about to burst. He'd only gone ten feet down the hall when a short, balding latino man came rushing over to him in a hurry.
"Senor? You need to stay in waiting room, yes? That will be best for all." The man's expression was uptight and nervous, almost panic-stricken. Something in Jane's brain began to click, ratchets tightening up.
"Just using the washroom," Jane said, smiling despite his fatigue and stress. The little man was watching him worriedly, trying to look calm but failing. Jane felt a rush of unease come over him, a pall of nausea. This wasn't right...
"Bathroom? Yes. Yes. Okay. I show you where is bathroom? I come with you?"
"I know where it is," Jane said, smile faltering a little. He nodded in the direction of a large blue sign in the hallway, showing the universal man/woman symbol that, more often than not, denoted bathroom facilities. The little man nodded again, too twitchy. Jane suddenly had a flash of insight. This little man had been instructed to keep him distracted...
Jane felt a cold shudder run through him. He'd never really thought the expression "his blood turned to ice" was anything more than hyperbole, but now he knew just how cold one's blood could get.
"You know what? I think I left something in the truck. Tell the doctor I'll be right back?" Jane turned and began to run back the way he had come, towards the large, front glass doors of Hermosillo's only clinic/hospital.
"Senor, but no? We should stay and wait for the doctor?" The little man was saying in the background, hurrying after him.
Jane ignored him and burst out into the afternoon sunlight, wincing at the sudden brightness of the light after almost an hour in the artificially dimmed clinic waiting room. He scanned the parking lot, looking for the truck. Not seeing it. Icy terror swarmed through him, panic choking out his breath. There was only one real reason that truck would be missing from this parking lot, and it involved Red John and Charlotte and... Jane fought back a rising wave of terror.
A panicked moan was building in his throat. It came out of him in a wheeze, like something a corpse might make in a morgue, gasses escaping.
He bent forward, filled with the sudden urge to vomit. He would not get Charlotte back this time, he knew. Not this time. He had been blessed once. This time...
Charlotte had defied Red John, and he would do away with her almost certainly, and possibly Lisbon too.
The little man was standing near Jane, apparently uncertain what to do. Jane found himself moving quickly then. He grabbed the little man by the shoulders, harder than he would have thought possible. He shook him and the man shook like a rag doll, mouth a perfect little "o" of fear.
"Do you work for Red John?!" Jane demanded.
"No, no..." the man was saying. His eyes were bright with terror.
"You better tell me!"
"Please, Senor, if you tell me the problem-"
"My truck is gone!" Jane spat out. "No glass.. you see? No glass. It was taken professionally, and I think you know who took it!"
"We go inside?" The little man tried again. His eyes were still terrified. Jane shook him harder. Of course this guy was terrified, he was looking into the enraged face of Juan de Rojo's twin brother.
"If my daughter or my partner are harmed, I will find you and I will kill you. Do you understand me?!" His voice was lethal, pure power and anger distilled down into barely controlled emotion. The man under his fingers seemed to wilt. He was shaking his head and saying no, yelping. Jane forced himself to calm down. Forced himself, but it was so hard, and he was so scared...
"Do you have a car? I need a car!"
"Please, if you leave now, he will kill me, mi familia y-"
"If you don't get me a car, I will kill you. Do you understand me?"
The man was blubbering now, pathetic crying. Jane blinked woodenly, tried to force himself to be calm again.
All he could see in his mind's eye was Charlotte's death-pale corpse laid out on a steel autopsy table, the "y" incision already sewn up with black thread, eyes forever closed (they glued them closed, Jane knew, when they embalmed), and Lisbon beside him (in his mind Lisbon was still alive for some reason), touching his arm as he tried not to freak out. The future that might very well already be set in stone. Bile choked up the back of his throat in hot, sour waves.
"You have keys on you? Give them to me. You can tell him I grabbed you, stole your keys. Stole your car. Now give them to me," Jane said darkly. The man nodded, fumbled in his pockets. Handed Jane the keys.
"Which one?" Jane demanded, eyes on the older man. The little man (what was he anyway? An orderly? A nurse? Certainly not a doctor, but he was dressed in scrubs) pointed out a beaten up yellow car. Honda? Something like that. It had seen better days.
"It has gas?"
"Yes, yes-" the little man said, bobbing his head extravagantly. "Yes. Has gas."
"Good. If a young woman comes looking for me, you tell her I have gone back to the Chicken Man's, do you hear?"
The man was silent a moment too long, eyes wild and confused, trying to process rapid fire English. "Do you understand?!" Jane demanded again, voice harder this second time. The scared little orderly nodded again.
"Young lady, yes, you went back to Chicken Man's."
"Right," Jane said, and he let the little man go. "And if Red John calls you, you tell him I am still there, don't you? You don't tell him I have left."
"No, no, I say to him, you are still here. I say-"
"Good," Jane said, cutting him off, and turned his back on the stuttering, crying little orderly of a man with the brightly terrified eyes. He stalked over to the beat up little tin can of a car, opened the driver's side door and was off.
He saw Lisbon on the road about ten miles from the hospital, racing on the dirt roads on a tiny little motor bike. Jane leaned down on the horn and turned the car around. He saw the bike slow as Lisbon turned to look. The bike stopped and Jane pulled the car up to Lisbon.
"He got Charlotte! Red John has Charlotte!" Lisbon said all at once, almost a scream. Jane nodded tightly. Lisbon looked like she was going to faint. Jane hit the lever for the trunk and got out of the car, came around and helped stow the bike away in the back. He had no idea what to do now.
"Tell me everything as you remember it. How long ago was this? Was he driving our truck?" He was listening to himself from a distance, amazed at how together he was, how controlled and calm he sounded when almost every impulse in him wanted to scream. What was happening to Charlotte right now? Was she even still alive?
"Our truck. I just saw him for a second, but his hair was dyed brown, like yours. So someone at the hospital must have told Red John what you were wearing, and that your hair had been dyed. And Jane... Charlotte didn't look conscious. I...Charlotte looked like she was going to cry, she wanted to be alone, you know? She went into the Chicken Man's shack just to use the bathroom, Jane, I swear. She was gone not even five minutes, and then I heard her yell. Jane, I'm so sorry, I don't know how this happened-"
"This is not your fault," Jane forced out wildly. He could hear a scream building in his words, could never before remember feeling as out of control, but at least he got that out to Lisbon, that small, terrified absolution. He had the car back on the road and was gunning it towards the hospital now.
If Red John got word that they were on to him, the Chicken Man's very life was at stake. The protocol would be to snuff the old shaman out, of that Jane was almost certain.
"Where are we going?" Lisbon forced out. Her whole body was shivering with adrenaline. She was staring out the dust smeared windshield with traumatized, shell-shocked eyes.
"Back to the hospital. They will have pumped his stomach by now, and I don't trust them not to kill him, not now..."
Lisbon nodded tightly, jaw flexing as she ground her back teeth together. Grind, grind, grind...
"Do you know where he is?"
"I'll find him. Look. I will get us in there, and I'll need you to cause a commotion. Can you do that? Start screaming and yelling, yelling about Red John. Throw things. Go nuts. Can you do that? Not so nuts they have grounds to sedate you or anything, but displeased-scared-nuts. Can you do that? You have your gun just in case?"
Of course Jane's plan would include an all-out freak out. Of course.
"I can do that."
"It's a small enough place, so it will free up any and all security guards. And I look like Red John in the flesh, so even if someone sees me, they might let me through. Chances are he's not in a room, yet, so... I'll grab him, get him out to the car. Give me 10 minutes, then get away. Pull your gun on anybody trying to detain you, and get out to the parking lot. I'll pick you up."
"If I can't get away?"
"Lisbon, you'll be able to get away. If we lose contact for any reason, you know where we parked the airstream? Can you find your way back there?"
Lisbon nodded. "I think so."
"Okay, we get separated and you get on the kid's dirt bike and head back there. There is some money in an envelope behind the microwave. Use that and get on the phone, phone the CBI or the FBI, anybody who will listen. Okay?"
"I can do that," Lisbon said again.
"Good. Good. I don't think Red John will have planned for this turn of events, so there probably isn't a plan for this scenario, but treat everyone in that hospital as a potential Red John agent. No chances. Actually... you know what, if you aren't in the parking lot after I get him out of there, I'll come back in to find you, I can't leave you there-" Jane's mind was whirling. He could barely think. Days of fractured sleep and sudden terror were making it hard to know if this plan was even workable or not. Lisbon was watching him with huge eyes, looking to him for answers.
"I'll cause a distraction and then I'll get out of there. You'll only need ten minutes?"
"If he's not in the emergency area, he's probably dead. Ten minutes is all we can spare, any more than that, somebody calls Red John or the cops get involved, the hospital is sealed off and..."
"And if you don't find him, find the Chicken Man, what then?"
"Then we go back to the Chicken Man's place and wait for Red John to show up," Jane said after a moment. He blinked, wearily. He hated to say that, it felt so helpless, but Red John clearly had the advantage here.
"And he'll know we'll go back there? How?"
"He'll know we'll go back there, because where else would we go?" Jane said. He pulled the car into the parking lot of the hospital now, jammed the breaks on. He and Lisbon got out at the same time.
"I'm going in the side entrance. You go on in, yell about the truck missing. I'll give you a minute," Jane said, making eye contact with Lisbon. She nodded and turned towards the front emergency doors.
"Oh, and Lisbon? Good luck," Jane said, smiling what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Lisbon smiled back at him, a shaky, disturbed, exhausted and relentlessly hopeful smile and then she turned away from him and began to run towards the clinic. Jane walked briskly to the side doors he'd spied earlier, meant for ambulance personnel, waited until he heard Lisbon's indignant yelling, and slipped inside.