Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 30)
Rating: M for graphic violence and language
Fandom: The Mentalist
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim... if not his sanity, itself.
Author's note: We head towards the RJ/Jane showdown full speed now. Enjoy! Sorry guys for the relatovely long delay in the updates. Life has been very busy and I probably shouldn't even be writing this right now. Reviews are much appreciated! :)
"Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves." - Elias Canetti
"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." -Alfred Hitchcock
Saturday, November 4th, 2013 12:42 pm PST
She was drifting somewhere between unconsciousness, dreams and full awareness of what was going on.
Red John had caught her. Red John always caught her. She had tried so many times (granted, most of those times were in her head) to get away from him. He always caught her.
She had been so, so close to escape this time. But she had been foolish, though. Nervous. The Chicken Man? Was he alive? Dead? Was she dreaming? Yes. That was right. Dreaming.
She hadn't been caught by Red John, she was simply having a strange sort of nightmare. She floated in a haze of gray, and in her dream something must have hurt her throat or her neck, because it pulsed with pain. It felt sort of hard to breathe. She coughed in her sleep, heard a croaking wheeze. Could hear the purr of tires. She was dreaming of being in a car or a truck or something.
Images from her childhood drifted through her awareness like shifting beams of sunlight filtering through the leafy expanse of a dark and formidable forest.
She could see herself at 8, standing over a dead body, while Red John painted his signature smiley face on the wall. The room smelled like hot, scared blood. The sound of screams clanged in her mind like cymbals.
Red John was talking to her, his voice so self-satisfied and indulgent, his voice was hot and thick, like blood. Blood in the air. Blood in the words.
Red John had a smile on his face, a Cheshire cat smile. The cat that ate the canary smile. The dead man in the room, splayed with his arms and legs all askew, was the canary. White eyes gaped open, pupils dilated, mouth frozen open in an almost perfect "o". Red John had the blood on his fingers.
He always painted with his fingers. He'd more or less gutted the man, and he'd pressed his fingers into the still-hot bowels to coat them in blood.
Had the man been conscious then, still? He'd been so still and motionless. But had any part of his dying brain registered what was going on?
Charlotte, eight, stood still and looked at him. She was long past crying. But she could never smile like Red John, even if she could no longer cry. She always stared with glazed, unblinking doll eyes when this happened.
And then she was ten. She and Red John were in New York city for a "job". He'd been holding her hand near the big park in the middle of the city. Central park? Yes. That was it.
He had bought her a hotdog, even though she didn't eat meat and he knew that. She nibbled at it, disgusted. Ate half the bun and ripped at the meat part, tossing it to a crow who seemed to be following her.
The crow scoped her out with its' intelligent, inscrutable crow-eyes. It swallowed the hot dog meat (covered in ketchup and mustard) in one gulp, throwing its' shiny black head back to get the meat down. The crow hop-walked along and she kept tossing it hot dog as it did so.
It lifted its' head finally and cawed, four caws. Calling its' brethren perhaps? Modern day dinosaurs. Birds had evolved from the dinosaurs. What sort of dinosaur had the crows evolved from? They were small but intelligent. Scavengers. Excellent facial recognition. Little Charlie knew (Red John had told her) that crows remembered faces forever. If you were kind to them, they left you alone. If you hurt them, they could cluster together and dive bomb you. Maybe even peck your eyes out.
(eyescutoutandstaringblackholeseyeslikegapingblackmouths)
Charlotte was always nice to them. She would have been nice to them even without Red John's little story, but the story sealed the deal.
"You have a friend," Red John had said, watching the hop-walking crow stalking them through central park.
"Hmmm," Charlie had said, noncommittally. "I guess."
"Not hungry?" Red John said then, tilting his head, sort of like a crow himself.
"Look at that one," Charlotte said, pointing to a second crow that had appeared in the trees. "Called by his friend."
"They do that," Red John said, nodding, appreciative. "They help each other out. Like we help each other out. Yes?"
"Can I get a pretzel?"
"I bought you a hotdog."
"I want a pretzel. I have my own money," Charlotte informed her captor, and pointed to a little cart. A man selling pretzels. The big, hot, doughy ones. The cart was within visual range, but a good distance away.
"I suppose," Red John said mildly. "But try anything stupid, Charlotte, and I just might have to cut your tongue out." From a distance he looked like a smiling, blond, attractive father talking to his pale, moody preteen daughter. Charlotte nodded soberly. She already had an idea what she was going to do. She would get away. She would.
It was impulsive, but any escape would have to be impulsive. New York city was big, and she had heard about street children who lived together, below the city, below the subways, in the dark like rats. That life called to her like a siren's song. She'd rather spend the rest of her life underground in filth, only popping her head above the cement burrows of the subway tunnels occasionally (like a startled little meerkat) than continue to live with Red John. He'd let her go then. Over 8 million people in downtown Manhattan. He'd never find her.
It was now or never. She sauntered over to the man with the pretzel card. Eyes bulging. Mouth already forming the silent plea.
She approached the pretzel man and nodded. Handed him a dollar.
"That man over there, he stole me," she told him softly. "He stole me. I am going to run. I have to get away..."
The man handed her the pretzel.
"You say something, kid?" The pretzel man said to her as they made their transaction. Apparently she had spoken too softly.
"You see the man over there, with the blond hair?" She made herself talk a bit louder. He seemed to hear her then. Narrowed his eyes and scanned the horizon. "With the suit?" She added.
"I see a blond guy, yeah. What about him?"
"He stole me from my Daddy. He killed my Mommy."
The look on the man's face changed instantly.
"Is this some kind of joke, kid?"
"I am going to run. Please stop him. I am going to run, now-"
"Kid, listen, if what you're saying is true-"
"Please don't let him get me. I am going to run," Charlotte ground out.
"Listen, I don't like this, you can stay with me and we'll get the police-" the man was talking too loudly for her comfort. Red John had ears that were almost supernatural. He knew things. And she was taking too long.
She picked up the mustard bottle slowly, squirted some on her pretzel. She could feel Red John's eyes burning into the back of her head, but didn't dare turn around.
"Charlotte, you about done?" It was Red John. He was close. Charlotte's eyes sought out the pretzel man, begged him to help her. Somehow... somehow help. It was impossible. But he had to help.
"Listen, buddy, you this little girl's father?" Pretzel man asked gruffly, clearing his throat. Charlotte felt the blood drain from her face. She did not dare turn around.
"I am. What's the little rascal been saying now?" Red John's voice was acid behind her, taunting and mocking. Too loud and too bright, even though it was a noise, and technically noises could not ever be "bright". She could hear the smile in his voice, the playful challenge: You wanna play, Charlotte? Okay. Let's play. Your move.
"She seems a little out of sorts," the pretzel man said, then. He seemed to be stalling. "Kind of freaked out."
"She gets like that sometimes," Red John cooed. Charlotte felt cold all over, deep into her bones, in her blood, even her brain felt frozen. She felt like puking, too. The day was too bright, too white. Light was stabbing her brain, and it hurt. Muscles in her abdomen and throat were undulating tensely, on the verge of upchucking her stomach contents. Everything was so damned bright. The pretzel man looked a far way away. Maybe she was going to faint? Yes. She might faint. If she didn't run, she might faint. Probably would.
Her ears were ringing, a high pitched tuning fork.
"I ain't never seen a little girl look so damned... Hell, kid, you okay?" Pretzel man said, turning his attention back to her. She reached out a shaking hand for his cart. Things moved very quickly then. Red John moved in quickly.
The pretzel man went to grab him. Red John had something in his hand.
It made a strange sucking noise. Too fast. Pretzel man made a low moan of surprise and tumbled over. Charlotte could see a little splurt of dark almost-black come out of his stomach. It splurted again. Fast. Rushing into the groan.
Pretzel man stared down at the almost-black with uncomprehending, shock-filled eyes. He reminded Charlotte almost of a cartoon, his eyes were that big and round and bulging.
Her brain stopped working then and autopilot took over. It wasn't intentional. She opened her mouth and began to scream scarlet words. She was screaming HELP! HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME! At the very same time, she was running. She was running fast, and zigzagging. She had never run so fast.
People were turning to see.
A jogging man was running towards her.
She darted deeper into central park.
She ran on rubber adrenaline-shaking legs, screaming, screaming, screaming.
She would never stop screaming.
She ran and ran.
She ran and ran some more.
Into the trees. Through the trees.
Branches whipped at her face.
She ran faster.
Her ears were ringing. She had stopped screaming. She could taste blood in her mouth. Had she bitten her tongue?
She felt a pain in her leg, stumbled, righted herself and kept running without bothering to even glance down. Kept running.
When she finally managed to look around, look behind her (how frightened she was that Red John would be right behind her like a shadow, grinning and leering at her with his cruel grin and watchful eyes) Red John wasn't behind her.
She had done it! She had gotten away from Red John! She kept running anyway.
Far away her ankle screamed up at her. Her face stung. It had been whipped red by tree branches, it felt hot and swollen. A few of the whip-marks were stung raw, prickled with blood. Her eyes felt dry and boiling hot, like eggs cooking in her skull. She ran and ran and ran until her lungs screamed with pain and the muscles in her legs spasmed and threatened to drop her onto the pavement (sometime in that long run- had it been ten minutes? An hour? Five hours? Sometime in that eternal run she'd left the underbrush and the trees of central park and ended up on pavement).
Her face burned, it felt hot and dry. She worked at her throat and spit saliva on the ground, thick and dehydrated and stringy.
She ran through the concrete jungle of New York city.
She was free. She was free! She had done it!
She ran and ran and ran until finally, somewhere deep in New York, in a back alley, near a bum who was lying on cardboard and smelled like shit, she leaned over, hands on her thighs, and puked the hotdog bun up into the alley.
She could feel 8 million eyes on her, 8 million spies for Red John, all watching her, all watching with shining eyes, all ready to turn her in.
The vomit burned in her nose and throat and sinuses. The sky was overcast, dark and threatening, gray and somber. It had been sunny and bright, blue with clouds, when she had approached the pretzel cart and now it was gray and overcast and ready to spit rain. Angry. Red John was angry.
Was he controlling the weather? Maybe. She didn't know anymore. Maybe he could do that. Maybe he really, really could control it.
She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her hoodie (she had purchased it 6 months ago with her own money, money made by writing up little reports for Red John on a variety of subjects). It was a Blue Oyster Cult hoodie. Patrick, so long ago, had been into classic rock from the 60s and the 70s.
She had listened to the radio, alone in the room Red John had designated for her, and had heard the song. Don't Fear the Reaper. When she was 7. Eventually she heard it again. Looked it up on the internet, and found out the band name. And she bought their hoodie.
She bought a CD of theirs, too. Listened to it alone in her room. Alone in the dark, and the pain of terror, it eased a bit.
All our times have come
Here, but now they're gone
Seasons don't fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
(We can be like they are)
The song had helped. It eased the almost infuriating, sanity-destroying terror of constant anxiety, of thanatophobia, of fearing her own murder. It helped. She could be like the weather, the seasons, changing into another season. When her time came. When her season changed...
She was wearing her Blue Oyster Cult hoodie that day, and jean cut offs. Black converse allstar high top sneakers. No backpack. No personal belongings.
Maybe that was why Red John had let her approach the pretzel cart alone. He hadn't expected her to try and run away without her precious backpack, without the photograph of Patrick that Red John knew she had printed off the colour printer back at "home". He hadn't expected her to run, because she had taken nothing with her, except for the clothes she was wearing and ten lousy dollars in ones in her pocket.
She had a pocket knife in the other pocket that Red John didn't know about (pretty sure he didn't know about it), but more than that, she had a gold Rolex around her left arm, up on the tiny bicep to pawn for cash. She'd stolen it off the body of the last person Red John had killed. He probably wasn't expecting that.
She wiped her mouth with her sleeve again and stared with fear-dilated eyes around the gray alley that reeked of shit and piss. The bum slit his eyes open and stared at her blearily, almost like a cat lazing in a pool of sunlight. She said nothing to him, but began to walk again, hood up, face wan and pale, eyes darting everywhere at once, but seeing nothing.
Red John glanced over at Charlotte as she lay broken and unconscious against the window of the truck. Her face was pale, and he could see the dark trails of his fingers' imprints blossoming already on her slender neck, dark purple with areas of red where the blood was closer to the skin. Her eyes were moving back and forth under the purple lids, like someone in the grips of REM sleep.
Her breathing was labored, punctuated by the odd whistling choke that denoted various injuries. He wasn't sure, of course, but there was a good chance he'd fractured her larynx. Maybe her windpipe. Not that it really mattered anymore. Charlotte was a thing of the past.
He'd given her a good decade of his life and she'd defied him at every turn.
She'd run back to Patrick and then allowed herself to be caught like the stupid animal she was. He couldn't believe he'd spent so much time and care on her. It was disappointing.
So damned disappointing.
If she wasn't awake by the time he got to the grave site, he was going to put her in the ground as she was. If she woke up at all, it would be to the pressing blackness, the terrifying and dizzying darkness of premature burial. Charlotte hated the ground. She hated small spaces.
Years ago, he had taught her the importance of staying alive at any cost. He'd administered a paralytic agent to her through a vein while she slept. Succinylcholine had been the drug of choice. He'd bent her head back and intubated her, bagged her tenderly, pushing air into her lungs with rhythmic squeezes of the bag.
He'd brushed her cheek with his hand and forcibly pried open her eyelids. He could tell she was conscious. He had seen the fear in her eyes, the way her pupils had dilated even though he shone a light into them. Not understanding. Unable to move. The foreign snake down her throat. Air pulsing into her against her will, rhythmic pulsing of oxygen, as if her very lungs were being raped.
He'd put her in the ground. Bagged her the whole while. She had never been in any real danger of suffocating. But she'd thought she was being buried. He had done everything he could to teach Charlotte the value of life and of staying alive. And she'd routinely disobeyed him, despite his warnings.
It was like she wanted to die.
She'd walked around New York for about an hour, keeping to mostly back alleys. A few homeless people called out to her from their filth. They reeked of booze and shit. Bleary, tired, yellowed human eyes staring at her from their rags like jungle animals sussing out fresh meat.
She kept walking.
Walking right out on the streets (as opposed to the back alleys) seemed dangerous. True, New York was huge and Red John wasn't psychic (was he? She was never really sure) but it just seemed too dangerous. But the idea of Red John waiting for her in a back alley, maybe hiding in the rags of a wino or in a dumpster, waiting to lunge out at her and get her... that was also nightmarish. Her skin was crawling just thinking about it.
As far as Charlotte knew, every police officer in the city was under Red John's control. Realistically she knew that wasn't true, but the "higher ups" certainly were under his control, of that Charlotte was certain, and she was small. It would be so easy to hand her over to an enemy. She wouldn't be able to fight anybody off. Even kids her age were usually significantly larger and stronger, and better rested to boot.
She thought for a moment or two about finding a pawn store and pawning the gold Rolex for cash, but what if the pawn store owner assumed she'd stolen the watch (technically she had stolen it, and she was pretty sure the victim's name was engraved on the back- Red John had killed the man and she had robbed his cooling corpse) and turned her over to the police? That was too great a risk to bear.
Anxiety clawed at the back of her brain, back behind her eyes. She was damp all over from the rain, blonde hair plastered to her forehead, shivering. Black hoodie hood wet and cold. With her luck she'd get sick and she'd get pneumonia and she'd catch her death.
But maybe if she could sell the watch to someone on the street for a good price, she could get train fare and get out of the city, get out of the state, maybe get to the middle of nowhere and find some kindly farmer who would be willing to let her pick apples for a living (or something) and then maybe one day she could sneak into his farmhouse and dial the operator and ask for Patrick Jane in California and the operator would connect her and Patrick would help and the nightmare would be over.
Maybe that could happen. Maybe that would happen!
Red John would be on the hunt and he would be looking for her. He knew what she was wearing.
Thank God she was "missing" in New York city, though, where people were typically unconcerned about other people and street children were generally seen but not-seen. What would Patrick tell her to do, if she could have asked him? She'd been taken when she was so young, so little, and sometimes she thought she was forgetting what he looked like (even though Red John looked like Patrick there was still a subjective and very important vital difference between Patrick and Red John, and that difference made Patrick as different from Red John as a fox from a python).
Sometimes Patrick was just like a faint dream in her mind. She knew he was real, because she had looked him up on the internet, but if he was real and good, how come he didn't know she was still alive? How come he hadn't come for her, hadn't saved her from this nightmare?
She ran Red John's claims through her young mind, over and over, obsessively. Patrick had given her to Red John. He didn't want her. He wanted to be free of her.
Charlotte wasn't sure what to believe most of the time. Red John lied all the time. She knew he lied, and yet, at the same time, it was hard to think past his lies. Some part of her wanted to make Red John happy. Wanted him to like her. Emotions warred. Fears and doubts did near-constant battle. She felt crazy most of the time, other times she wondered if Red John was right and she was simply weak, other times she wondered if she was cracking up and was utterly insane, sometime she even wondered if she was dead and was in Hell, like in a horror movie she had seen called "Jacob's Ladder" about a Vietnam war veteran who is stalked by demonic creatures through New York city, except by the end of the movie you realize Jacob has been dying the entire movie and was fighting the dying process and in his dying-brain was assigning demonic roles to the angels who had come to escort his soul back home to Heaven...
In the end she decided to get out of the alley and find a Salvation Army thrift store. Scope it out, go in, maybe find a change of she had a plan, she'd keep moving, and if she kept moving, she might actually win (not likely, but much more likely than if she just froze or started crying or something silly like that).
The little girl made herself step out from the alley and into the rush and noise of New York circa June 2007. It was about three p.m. and she was terrified.
Every passerby on the street was a prospective "eye" of Red John, and she had no way to know the "blind" eyes from the "watchful" eyes.
Red John classified all human beings as eyes; all humans were either "blind eyes" and had no idea who he was or what he could do (blind eyes often ended up dead, but every so often a watchful eye "turned" or became "problematic" and would end up dead, too, usually after undergoing a much more painful death), or they worked for him and were his "watchful eyes". There was no in-between, no gray, no watchful eyes that weren't on Red John's team, and no God.
No God, no angels, no hope.
But watchful eyes still had to sleep. Sometimes they slept. And that gave Charlotte Anne Ruskin-Jane hope sometimes. Without that hope she would have long ago given up...
And besides, in the back of her mind, and in her soul, deep deep down, she also knew there was a God. Even if Red John said there wasn't.
Because Red John was a liar and she was alive and things didn't always line up like Red John said.
Because there had to be a God.
There had to be...
Charlotte still wasn't conscious by the time Red John pulled the truck to a stop in the desert. He knew this place and it was fitting.
Years ago Charlotte had brought him here after a fever dream and a rather ill-planned "escape" attempt and had shown him a tree that had been struck by lightning (apparently) and burned to the ground. Apparently she had been standing not ten feet away and the lightning had been God talking to her, when she had begged her old testament "God" for confirmation of said God's existence. According to prepubescent Charlotte, the tree had burned to a black cinder in a matter minutes, had cast no smoke and no shadow and the sound of the flames had sounded like an eerie and powerful and omnipotent voice.
There had been a voice in the flames, talking to her, telling her its ("His", of course) plans for her. Telling her there was a God, and that she was not alone, and that she was special and must endure and must survive... Red John had considered killing her then.
He'd honest to God considered snapping her lying little neck, or opening up her throat with his camping knife, one quick, clean movement and she'd bleed out like a ig in the Mexican dust.
Because she was damaged.
She was obviously damaged goods, suffering some sort of psychotic break, her mind and sense of reality were warped beyond his ability to straighten out.
But he hadn't killed Charlotte. Not then and not after she took off in New York and made him chase her all over the place like a lunatic rat in a maze, not either of those times.
He hadn't even hurt her, hadn't even raised his voice.
But she wasn't loyal and she wasn't his and he knew it, now, knew there was no hope for the girl. Knew he had been deluding himself into thinking there might be hope for her. She'd never been his.
She'd never even wanted to be his.
God wasn't real and Red John would never admit there was any chance He or It or She or whatever could be real. So the only alternative here was psychotic break. He knew Charlotte well enough to know she wasn't lying. She was psychotic, weak and disloyal and he was sick of it. What's more, she had ruined his ten-year anniversary present to Patrick.
He reached over and gently shook her by the shoulder. She was still out for the count. Shame, really. He would have preferred to see her reaction.
In the desert, two of his men were waiting. The coffin had been laid out by the grave site. The ground was rocky and red, full of iron, the blackened tree looking over the gaping hole in the earth.
The screaming mouth of a hole waiting to be fed.
"Charlotte? Wakey wakey, Charlotte. It's time to wake up now. The early bird gets the worm. Rise and shine, lazy bones. And all that jazz." He shook her again. No sign of coming to.
When she breathed out, her breath made a whistling noise which indicated relatively severe trachebronchial injuries. Red John was silent a moment, ear bent towards her chest, listening. Awwwhhh. There it was. A sound like rice krispies, small cracking puffs of sound.
A delicious crunching noise.
It was called Hamman's sign and was caused by the heart beating against air-filled tissues.
The air-filled tissues were a primary indicator of mediastinal emphysema, a condition where air was present in the mediastinum, which was an undelineated group of structures in the thorax surrounded by loose connective tissue.
The mediastinum included the heart, the the esophagus, the trachea, the phrenic nerve, the cardiac nerve, the thoracic duct, the thymus and the lymph nodes. In short? He had crushed her throat with his hands and air was leaking from her trachea into the surrounding tissues, causing the stridor (the whistling noise in her breathing) and the rice-krispy-esque crackling.
The rice-krisp[y style crackling was caused when her heart beat up against tissue that was slowly filling with air from her trachea, her windpipe.
Red John had always been fond of anatomy and medicine. Real life offered him plenty of situations to name various anatomical structures and identify various injuries, but Charlotte had never been interested in learning about anatomy, either.
"Wake up," he told the unconscious girl, a little more forcefully. "You miserable little bitch, open your eyes and wake. the. fuck. up."
She didn't move, of course.
Her breathing was still fast and shallow and whistling, her heart still made crackling noises when it beat against air-filled pockets. The area around her eyes looked bruised a dark purple. This was caused when small capillaries around the eye burst during choking.
Red John pried one of her eyelids open and stared at the eye. Smiled. The sclera was red and bloodshot, capillaries burst from internal pressure.
"Have it your way," he told the teenager and got out from behind the wheel. He came around to the passenger side, opened Charlotte's door and hauled her out onto the dusty, red landscape. The iron in the rock dust at their feet was identical to the iron in Charlotte's blood, and pretty soon that iron would join the rest of the dust.
Red John kicked at the dust and smiled cruelly.
"By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return," Red John intoned blandly, head cocked to the side, analyzing the teenager that had grown out of that scared little child he'd seen so much potential in, just ten short years ago.
"I tried colloquial proverbs and I tried Genesis. Nothing," Red John told the two Mexican workers standing near the coffin. They eyed him warily, didn't smile.
Red John stared at them a moment.
"Ah. Right. Maybe I needed to try Old Testament Proverbs? You think? Yes, maybe that is where I went wrong," Red John told the silent men, and looked back down at Charlotte, lying unconscious in the dust.
"Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck. My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them. If they say, "Come along with us; let's lie in wait for someone's blood, let's waylay some harmless soul; let's swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit; we will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder; throw in your lot with us, and we will share a common purse"- my son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths..."
The whistle in the girl's breathing seemed to get higher pitched. Somehow it seemed to be begging him, her very damaged throat was begging him not to do this...
Red John picked Charlotte up under the armpits and hoisted her over his back like a sack of potatoes. God, was the little bitch ever light.
"You guys can put it in the ground now. I was planning for it to be theatrical when we pulled up in the truck, but the little sleepy head doesn't seem to want to wake the fuck up and see her surprise, so, you know..." Red John told his diggers, twirling his right hand around in circles, a universal gesture for "the same old thing".
Without another word, the diggers set to picking up the coffin, grunting and groaning. They half-slid, half-dropped it into the hole they had dug by the burnt tree. One jumped in and opened the casket's lid, staring with a pale face up at Juan de Rojo and his poor victim.
Red John lowered Charlotte's motionless body down to the man who had opened the coffin's lid. The digger took the teenager gently and arranged her inside the little box. She was breathing strangely. In his mind, the grave digger hoped the young girl would never wake up, that God would hear his silent prayer and take her home before she ever had a chance to wake to the red wolf's cruel nightmare.
"Her backpack?" The other grave digger pointed out to Red John. "Should we take it off her?"
"You might as well leave it on her," Red John said, grinning. "She took that backpack everywhere. Even slept with it on, sometimes. I'm sure she'd want it this way."
The man who had spoken nodded silently. His partner said nothing. He was praying ceaselessly for God to intervene, for God to strike down the Red Wolf.
The coffin was sealed shut and the digger who had laid Charlotte to rest in her casket crawled up out of the hole. Red John stared down at the coffin for a long while.
"That's a beautiful coffin, isn't it? Cypress or thuja, maybe cedar, I forget now what Hiroshi said. It's decay-resistant and they even scented it with sandlewood incense, isn't that a nice touch? Hunter green, stained. Polished to a fine luster. They made it for me in Japan and shipped it over here a few years ago." Red John breathed out slowly, eyes scanning over the sealed lid, pupils dilating at the exquisite beauty of the coffin. It was gorgeous, strikingly gorgeous.
"You see that mother-of-pearl sun and moon set in the lid? Tell me that isn't cpnsummate craftsmanship? And her name, there, between the sun and the moon? The name plate was crafted in ivory. And those dragons, coming off on the sides of the casket? We're talking hundreds of hours of work, just for those dragons. Japanese good luck dragons, I think they are. That phoenix, on the lid, with the red eyes? Actual rubies, and the teeth and details are gold plated. The flames on the wings are accented with real diamonds and sapphires. Over a hundred thousand dollars and hundreds of hours of work and the little cunt couldn't even be bothered to wake up."
Neither one of the diggers Red John had managed to recruit for his macabre task said anything. Neither one of them had been told the corpse going in the coffin wasn't actually dead.
"A coffin like that is a work of art. Too bad we have to cover it with dirt, huh?" Red John looked over at the men one last time. Sighed. Like Charlotte, neither of these beaners appreciated the finer things in life. So fucking depressing.
"You can fill the hole up whenever you're taken by the spirit," Red John said then, condescendingly, mockingly. He looked back down at the name plate with Charlotte's name and date of birth carefully, expertly, chiseled into the ivory. No date of death, because he hadn't been certain he was really going to use the coffin when he'd had it made. Under the the name and date of birth was the latin motto: timidi pater non flet. "A coward's father does not weep."
He'd become Charlotte's father and she had failed him every single time it had mattered and turned her back on him, time and time again. He would not weep.
He would not weep.
Slowly the diggers began to fill the hole in the with red earth. He waited until the last mound of earth was put in place and padded down with the shovel.
No screams. No nothing. Just like his hopes and dreams for Charlotte. So much effort, but in the end, absolutely fucking nothing but that damned, haunting nothingness.
(not even screams, she can't even be bothered to wake up and scream-)
What a fucking disappointment.
She was just gone, just gone and swallowed by the ground, and he would not weep for her...
"For their feet rush into sin, they are swift to shed blood. How useless to spread a net in full view of all the birds! These men lie in wait for their own blood; they waylay only themselves! Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the lives of those who get it," Red John said by means of a eulogy, then turned on his heel and went back to the truck he'd stolen from Patrick. Now to find his son-of-a-bitch brother and end this charade.