Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 33)
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 so much for the reviews, 're heading into climax now.
The bit in this chapter Red John quotes from "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars" is an actual, real US government document that was disclosed by the late (Milton) William Cooper in the 1991 book entitled "Behold a Pale Horse".
Cooper was in a position to see a lot of classified material during his military career and went to enormous lengths to try and warn the public. He accurately predicted 9-11 and the fact that Bin Laden would be used as a fall guy. He died in a manner that many in the conspiracy "theory" community believe indicates he was killed by the US government to shut him up (in his book "Behold a Pale Horse" he spoke of being intentionally driven off the road and threatened by the military).
If you're interested at all, I suggest grabbing a copy from your local lending library. Whether you believe what he has to say or not is up to you, but the book is worth reading no matter what you chose to believe, just for the sheer number of events he accurately predicted and continues to (posthumously) predict.
Reviews, as always, are greatly appreciated!
"Because they knew each other's thoughts, they even quarreled without speaking." - Bruce Chatwin, On The Black Hill
"Genius and insanity are fraternal twins."― Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
"Mum used to say we were the same soul split in two and walking around on four legs. It seems unnatural being born together and then dying apart."― Melodie Ramone, After Forever Ends
"It takes many sheep to satisfy one wolf."― Nenia Campbell, Horrorscape
Saturday, November 4th, 2013 2:08 pm PST
The darkness in the shed was had never cared for the dark. Ever since he'd been a small child, darkness had weighed down on his chest like a lead vest, making it hard to breathe.
"Door closed?" Red John taunted from behind his curtain. Amazingly, incredibly, sickeningly... Jane found himself thinking of the Wizard of Oz. Red John behind the curtain. His daughter stolen and tortured but still, somehow, playing the role of Dorothy, and various obsessions and traumas taking on anthropocentric roles as the other characters. Jane had a sense of some bad things he hadn't dared to let himself ponder at any length, and what was out in the open was horrific enough. His wife killed. Lisbon... who was she? Toto?
The metaphor was falling apart...
Jane blinked his eyes quickly. Everything was so surreal, the darkness was pressing. He felt dizzy. The terror of the last few days was surging through his veins in the form of adrenaline and various stress hormones. As a boy he'd once overdosed on over-the-counter caffeine pills.
He'd been having nightmares, hadn't wanted to sleep, and had popped far too many Wake Ups. His heart had gone over 160 beats a minute for over an hour. He'd almost had a full-fledged panic attack, thinking about the possibility of cardiac arrest.
That was how he felt right now. Almost ready to panic. Dizzy, over-extended and shaking with fear. He fought for control.
"Door closed?" Red John asked again- curiously impassive- when Jane failed to respond.
"Yes," Jane said gruffly. It was more or less closed. Good enough.
"Close it the entire way," Red John ordered, voice edging into annoyance. "You left a crack open. Close the box up tight. Be a good boy, now, Tricky. Close the doorrrrr." He was so damned bizarre. So damned creepy. His words and tone spoke to sexual immorality and goosebump-inducing perversion.
There was something lascivious in Red John's sultry purr of a command. Jane ground his teeth at that voice, anger battling through the rising panic.
"For fuck's sake," Jane snapped, feeling suddenly like a young child again, when his father used to scream at him to close the screen door of their shitty little circus trailer. ("Close it, don't slam it, Paddy! How many fuckin' times I gotta tell you?!")
A young, creeped out little boy... Daddy in the living room, sucking back his beer, with his greasy face and manic, predatory eyes. Every person reduced to a pocket, a pocket to be picked clean...
Jane edged the door closed. He felt a click as the door connected with something and locked. What sounded like a slight electrical beep pierced the air and Jane jerked slightly, body hyper-vigilant and tense, body startled and ready to fight or fly.
The sound was subdued, and yet it made Jane feel instantly uneasy. What sort of steel shed had a door that beeped when it was slid closed? That wasn't normal.
"You can now enter the den of the Red Wolf," Red John said theatrically, and he ended his command with a childish giggle. He honest to God giggled. In the dark Jane moved forward slowly, blind eyes magnifying swirling shapes and colours, the colours of the dark and of the unseeing eye, the colours, he imagined, of the blind.
The shed smelled musty, like dust, like a root cellar, like childhood monsters waiting to grab you by the ankle when you were forced down into the basement to do chores, or as punishment, the smell of dusty death.
Jane felt himself drift under the velvet curtain (was it velvet? Felt like velvet-) and into the main part of the shed. It was a good sized steel contraption, at least thirty feet long, maybe fifteen feet wide... if he had to guess. Nice of those American tourists to buy the Chicken Man such a shed to house his social-outcast "babies".
"Have you entered?" Red John cooed from the blackness. If Jane was seconds from panic, Red John seemed oblivious to that fact.
"Will you just cut the crap?" Jane hissed back in response. Talking helped the anxiety somewhat. There was another click and then lights came on. Spotlights.
Attached to poles in the corners of the shed, the light facing Lisbon. Lisbon made a low moaning noise of distress from where she half-sat, half-slumped on the lawn chair, bound by rope. Her eyes were bloodshot, pupils dilated, bloodied head left unattended. Jane scanned her face and body language, the slump of her shoulders, and decided she was concussed.
The lawn chair Lisbon was tied to was itself tied to concrete blocks that had been positioned on the ground, looped with chains. It brought images to Jane's mind of Harry Houdini and his death-defying tricks, Harry Houdini with his possessing, mesmerizing, hypnotic eyes...
Lisbon's eyes were open, and terrified.
Jane scanned the scene again, a matter of reflex more than will, trying to take in as much information- visually- as he could. One, Lisbon had a bloody wound on her head.
Two, it was almost certainly not life threatening, but she probably had one hell of a headache, quite possibly a concussion.
Three, yes she had a headache. Her grimace was fear, but also pain.
Four, she was awake and fully cognizant of what was going on, which was both good and bad, for different reasons.
Five, her shirt had been removed, but her bra had been left on...
Jane felt his breath grow short, felt his throat constrict to a pinhole.
Six, there were EKG pads attached to Lisbon's chest, like someone might have put on in a hospital if they were complaining of severe chest pain.
Seven, electrodes were attached to the pads...
Jane sucked in another breath. The vision of his beloved Lisbon tied down, with EKG pads attached to her shaking chest was somehow more revolting a scene that it should have been. It made Jane feel cold all over, dirty and exposed in an existential way.
His beloved Lisbon had been reduced to a beating heart and... (stay focused right now, Patrick, focus on details... get upset later, when you save Lisbon and Charlotte-)
Eight, Lisbon had electrodes attached to areas around her head. A small grouping of wires ran down from her forehead and over to a machine on a cart... Jane glanced over at Red John with horrified, dilated eyes.
Red John had reduced the sum total of Lisbon's existence to a beating heart and a brain sending electrical signals. He had stripped the individuality out of her and whitewashed it with terror and disgust. Lisbon was reacting- to Red John's way of thinking- much like almost every other human he probably encountered. She was therefore less valuable. One of many. Expendable, really. A beating heart and a firing brain.
Reduced to that. Reduced to computer read-outs. Valleys and peaks on a computer screen and on graph paper. (Stay focused, damn it!)
Nine, Red John was wearing a magician's suit; shiny, black shoes, dress pants, a cape... but no shirt. Ten, EKG pads were also attached to his chest. Eleven, The electrode wires from his chest and from Lisbon both ran to two small electrocardiograph machines.
Twelve, Red John had wires attached to his own head, too. Thirteen, all the wires... everything... went back to a portable medical cart. Fourteen, there were electrocardiographs on the cart, and some device that analyzed brain waves. A large computer screen.
Jane felt momentarily faint, light-headed and swoon-y. He forced himself to take a deep, slow breath. It didn't help much, but his vision cleared.
Fifteen, set up on a card table near the medical cart was a laptop which showed close circuit footage of Charlotte, panicking, in her coffin. Her eyes were wild and eerie, no longer human. Panic had forced her into some other realm of existence. Physically she was human, but everything that had made her human seemed to be gone. She wasn't even "just" traumatized, she was gone.
Her eyes... Jane approached the laptop and felt his intestines try to strangle their neighbour organs. His testes were shrunken, his stomach hurt.
His little baby girl's fucking eyes were insane...
Charlotte had a little flashlight on, and was screaming and clawing at the top of the coffin for her Daddy to help her. She was regressed. Her voice was different, too, younger, splintered. Jane winced involuntarily, felt bile and something salty in his mouth, and when he raised a hand to his lip he saw blood on his fingers and realized, dully, that he had bitten his tongue. The pain felt distant and surreal and utterly unsubstantial.
He gazed around the rest of the shed, looking for existential answers, trying to ground himself and remain objective, but his objectivity was crumbling.
He knew he was dissociating. It happened to all humans under enough stress. He. Was. Distancing... himself.
From this.
His own sanity seemed poised to flap down to the ground like a house of cards. (Get it together, Patrick, stay present. Remember what is at stake here!)
Jane continued his silent, numerical categorization of "facts".
Sixteen, there were beds and dressers and maksehift little bookcases for the chicken man's "babies". Sleeping bags, a cooler. This was his makeshift orphanage. Seventeen... No bodies. No corpses. Not inside the shed.
Eighteen, the other children were missing in action. Except for the monstrously tumor-ridden child who was now dead and cooling off by the side of the road. Poor kid...
(FOCUS!)
"The kids all scattered, I'm afraid," Red John said pleasantly, preternaturally, as Jane glanced around. "I did manage to convince that little scamp, Elian, to be the gate-keeper. He's a little scruffy looking, isn't he? Underfed and over-cocky. Not quite the effect I wanted, truth be told. But who else was I going to put in his place? Our dear Charlotte is... indisposed... and that kid with the head like a bag of lumpy potatoes? He is not fit to act as a door stop. I did him a favour, I believe."
"You killed him," Jane said inside him felt cold. His vision, his voice, his intestines, his blood. He felt like he was dreaming, and he knew if he was to touch his skin, it would feel numb. Even so. He felt crisper, now. Less on the edge of passing out. More analytical. Red John grinned, delighted.
"Just fixing one of God's numerous little mistakes," Red John said with a sweeping gesture, indifferent to his younger brother's shock and dismay.
"What sort of life do you think he had ahead of him? Really, Patrick. The politically correct version of morality is a bit arbitrary and out-dated, don't you think? Niceness for niceness's sake? Massive facial deformities, living in poverty in a highly superstitious part of the world and drinking water which is probably loaded with giardia and other little nasties? Sounds like a real Sunday picnic, to me, baby brother. And by that, I mean... it sounds horrid."
"You are not the judge of who or what deserves to live," Jane groused. There was a chair in front of the card table on which the laptop was positioned, the medical cart with the graph machines. Red John waved to the chair, as if he was inviting Jane to sit and have tea and crumpets.
"Come. Have a seat. You're looking a little peaked, baby brother."
"Not until you explain these electrodes to me," Jane said, darting his gaze to Lisbon, hoping she might find some comfort in that gaze. Probably not, not with his face so similar in appearance to that of the beast, but maybe... Her eyes were full of terror and confusion. So much for comfort. There was something else in her gaze, a distinct pleading...
"Oh? When you closed the front door? This whole place is one giant bomb, now, primed to explode. We better hope that little scamp outside doesn't try to come in here, or we all go boom. I don't think he'll come in here, though, so try not to worry excessively, baby brother. I don't think our little gate-keeper likes me very much. For all we know, he's flown the coop and taken off."
"What?" Jane said, not fully comprehending. Too many words. Too much stress. Too little sleep. And far too much on the line.
"I admit, the whole location, everything, is a bit slipshod. I had less time to work with than usual-"
"What the Hell are you talking about?!"
Red John frowned at his brother. "Sit down, Patrick, and then I will explain."
Jane nodded, sat in the empty lawn chair. He was pretty sure this was the same lawn chair he'd sat in as a child. Not one "like it", but the exact same one. Nothing happened as he sat down, shifted, tried to get grounded, tried to focus.
He'd half expected to be shot or get an electric shock or witness a hydrogen bomb explosion.
But there was nothing.
"See? Nothing bad happened," Red John cooed eerily. Jane could see why most humans might assume Red John to be psychic. He seemed psychic, dear God did he ever seem psychic.
"How decent of you," Jane said sarcastically. Even dazed and confused, he could still ground himself with that sarcasm. Red John ignored the tone of voice with a bored eye-roll.
"Now, Tricky Boy, I will explain how this little game works, yeah? Lisbon and I are both hooked up to separate-yet-connected EEG and EKG machines, as you have no doubt already ascertained. These are remotely connected to that laptop, there, on that card table. Go ahead. Click off that dramatic footage of little Charlotte freaking the fuck out, and you'll see what I mean. Go ahead, Tricky."
Jane leaned forward and closed the window of his daughter screaming and thrashing in her personal, subjectively-eternal Hell... Mercifully, the sound had been turned down. He was presented with two small tabs. One were a set of heart tracings.
TERESA LISBON, one of the heart tracings was called.
The other was labeled PETER JANE.
The other tab contained two real time graphs of brain wave activity. Lisbon's brain waves were mostly in beta territory, spiking repeatedly. She was terrified, and rightfully, sanely, so. Red John's brainwaves, on the other hand, were mostly in the theta range and rolled peacefully like a gentle car ride over grassy hills. Jane hadn't studied EEG readouts much, but he was fairly sure that Red John's brainwave activity was more often connected to dreaming than full wakefulness. Odd.
"Check out the heart activity, now," Red John said in a drowsy voice.
Jane nodded. Pulled up those tabs.
Lisbon's heart was racing at over 130 beats per minute, which corresponded with her terrified brainwave activity. Red John's heart was beating regularly, and slowly, at just 58 beats per minute.
"Interesting, yes?" Red John taunted.
"Okay. And the point of this is?" Jane ground out.
"I'll tell you, but first.. first take a little peak at your daughter. Little Charlie. She never has liked small spaces, has she, baby brother? A bit of a claustrophobe, that one."
"Taphephobe," Jane corrected dully. He blinked woodenly. His daughter was in Hell and he was bantering with his sadistic twin brother.
"Pardon?"
"Taphephobe. The fear of being buried alive. I am pretty sure Charlotte is not a run-of-the-mill claustrophobe. She handles small spaces which don't happen to be coffins-buried-under-a-couple-hundred-pounds-of-earth about as well as you'd expect of most folks."
"Ha," Red John said, delighted by the playful banter. "Yes. Well. Go ahead. Take a look at her, Tricky. You burn that image of her right into your mind's eye, okay? Sear it onto your compassionate little soul."
Jane dutifully clicked the tab with the CCTV footage of Charlotte back open. He turned the sound up, to bear witness to her torment. It felt more compassionate than ignoring her pleas for intervention. Charlotte's beloved God- as Jane knew was always the case- was missing in action.
Charlotte was screaming for help. She was repeating her plea for DADDY PLEASE HELP ME over and over, terrified. She had a little flashlight turned on, and Jane could see that her face was flushed and dehydrated, eyes wild beyond the boundaries of her ordinary wildness, eyes now broken and insane with terror.
She was on the verge of slipping into some psychedelic, existential terror beyond simple, human panic. She had been panicking from the moment she had woken up. She was in Hell.
She was in Hell.
"The flashlight... I really should have checked her backpack, but I didn't think she'd compulsively carry a flashlight around with her, for Pete's sake. Then again, I was a bit off-script today. The effect would have been much more poignant if you were looking at her with the night vision effect right now. I find that night vision makes people look a bit possessed, a bit overcome with... shall we say... darker, ethereal elements. Their eyes always glow green, don't they? And the irises always look so goddamned weird? Like something from a low budget ghost hunting cable TV show? Or maybe a grade B-"
"Can I talk to her?" Jane said then, pain evident in his voice. He couldn't hold it back.
"To who? Charlotte?"
"Yes."
"I can talk to her," Red John said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little wand. He spoke into the end of it after pressing a button on the side with his thumb.
"Charlotte? It's Uncle Red. Can you hear me, my little disappointment?" His voice was pleasant and calm, as if he was communicating with a very small child over a long distance radio. Charlotte kept thrashing and screaming, panic obscuring-it would seem- her very ability to hear.
Red John repeated his comment, slowly, tone one of bored contempt. Finally, Charlotte stilled a bit. By the light from her little pen flashlight, Jane could see that her fingers were broken, the nails torn out right to the quick. There was blood smeared up past the middle knuckle joints on most fingers. She'd broken most if not all of her fingers and torn out the nails in her terror.
Dear God.
"Hello?!" Her face was pinched, her throat badly bruised in a vile hand print.
Jane wanted to cry when he heard her voice, still so plaintive and insanely young.
Jane winced as she turned in such a way that the camera caught more of the bruising.
She sounded out of breath. Gaspy. Her voice though... so hopeful. Even after everything, so innocent and strangely unmarked. Just happy to be hearing a voice coming into the box...
"Is she responding, Patrick? I can't see the screen from this angle," Red John said, raising his eyebrows expectantly.
"She can hear you," Jane said coldly, looking at the small, young, terrified face on the laptop screen. His little daughter. His little, baby daughter. The child he had cradled as an infant and promised to defend and protect from everything bad and scary in the world. Oh, how badly he had failed her!
(Charlotte I will make it up to you, please hold on-)
Red John clicked a button on the wand and slid it back into his pants pocket.
"Can I talk to her?" Jane repeated. His eyes were burning. His throat was burning. He felt alternately hot and cold. He felt like he might sob.
"To Charlotte? Right now? I think that would ruin the game," Red John said earnestly. If Peter Jane knew his brother was a hair's breadth from tears, his voice bore no indication.
"Can I talk to Lisbon, then," Jane said, eyes tracking over to his partner. There was so much emotion in her eyes, so much fear and pain, but also love and compassion... for who?
With a shock, Jane realized Lisbon felt compassion for him. For his impossible, guilt-ridden, tortured position.
Her eyes were glazed with unshed tears. Jane felt his love for Lisbon roar up inside of him, a hot wave of renewed commitment.
He would outsmart fucking Red John. He would! He had to. He couldn't lose either Charlotte or Lisbon, not either of them.
"They are both alive, Patrick. I didn't kill either of them. And yet... no thanks. No gratitude. Nada. Sometimes I wonder why I try so hard with you."
"Thank you for not killing Charlotte or Lisbon," Jane said immediately, tone dutiful. The relief was evident in his voice. He meant every word, every syllable. As bad as this situation was, things could have been made much, much worse...
"You're welcome," Red John said, grinning wildly. "What are brothers for, am I right?"
"I don't know, Peter. You killed my wife. You stole my child, let me think she was dead for the last decade. Is that what brothers do?"
"Angela wasn't good enough for you, Patrick. Believe me. She wasn't," Red John said, schooling his face into something approximating displeasure. He shook his head to reinforce his position on the matter.
"That wasn't your call to make. That was mine," Jane said, eyes flickering over to Lisbon, then back to Charlotte freaking out on the CCTV footage, then past the rows of eerie camp cots piled with sleeping bags and pillows and donated, thrift store blankets.
For some reason Jane was reminded of the holocaust, of empty barracks and unguarded piles of suitcases... whatever evil was in this room now had been in the camps, then... Jane was suddenly certain of it.
"A wife who cheats on her husband? Especially one as devoted and caring as you were, isn't worth the time it takes to bury," Red John said, casting a glance over at Lisbon. "Don't you agree, Teresa?"
If "Teresa" agreed, her expression bore no trace of that fact. Her eyes were locked on Jane. Every flinch. Every haunted blink of the eyes. Every miniscule tightening of every facial muscle. She was watching him be traumatized all over again, deeply, and was unable to do a damn thing about it.
And machines were recording her horror and her pain for all eternity... unless, of course, someone broke the rules of the game. In which case, everything for a few hundred feet, in every direction, would be incinerated.
"What the Hell are you talking about? Angela never cheated on me," Jane said simply. This was a fact. A fact like: the earth revolves around the sun. Like: the moon is not made of cheese. A common-sense fact. There would not be and could not be any deviation from this fact.
"Ahh-ahhh-ahhhh. She was a cheater. Maybe not consciously, but she had a cheater's heart."
"Because my child is panicking and my partner is terrified, I will play along with this perverse little game of yours. Explain what you mean," Jane said, spitting the words out.
"I was fucking her, Tricky boy, if you really have to know. And she never once realized I wasn't you? Bullshit. She knew I wasn't you. She just didn't care when she had her little wine-drinking-binges on the long weekends you were gone securing television deals and shmoozing producers. When she was lonely, it didn't matter. All she wanted was to be fucked by someone who looked like you."
Jane blinked, hard. He let the words enter his awareness. The emotional meaning didn't connect. Then, it did.
"No."
"Yes," Red John cooed, clearly delighted with his disclosure. "When you were out on the business trips? On television shows? On fucking Oprah? Your wife was riding me like I was Seabiscuit, for Christ's sake. A bit inebriated most of the time, I'll give her that. But still, she was screwing me, and I was screwing her, and we're not so identical- Patrick- that a loving wife would have been fooled. No. She was fooled because she wanted to be fooled. She was fooled because she was damaged goods, and because she didn't love you the way you always assumed she had loved you. I did you a favour when I snuffed out her lights."
"Stop talking," Jane said numbly. He shut his eyes. He knew Red John wasn't lying. He knew it, and he hated that he knew it. And he hated that, on some minor level, it made the guilt and shame and pain he had always felt about her murder just-that-little-bit better.
"You know what else that means? Little Charlie? Darling Charlotte? Whose to say she's even yours, Tricky? We're monozygotic twins, Tricky boy. All a paternity test will show is that her father has our shared DNA. But you'll never know if she came from you.. or from me. What epigenetic horrors might I have passed on to her? But maybe you always knew... and maybe that is why you didn't look too closely at the body that was put in your daughter's coffin all those years ago, huh?"
"No," Jane said, shaking his head firmly. This he knew was bullshit. Something was clawing back behind his eyes. Tears. Maybe more. Maybe his own monster trying to rake its way out through Patrick Jane's windows-of-the-soul so it could battle the demon in Red John.
"Oh? Then why not look in the coffin?"
"She was my baby- or so I thought- and you had pulled her lungs out of her fucking back!"
"She was never your baby," Red John taunted, clearly pleased with Jane's torment and his role in causing it. "She was always just some terminally ill kid I spared a few more months of misery."
"You killed that child, then?" Jane said dully. Red John nodded.
"Does that surprise you? Shock you? Really, Patrick... it's like you think humans are going to live forever. They are brainless and stupid and act like sheep. Why cry when they go to slaughter?"
Jane sucked in air through gritted teeth. His eyes sought out Lisbon again. Her eyes were locked on him. He tried to smile at her, knew it probably looked insane.
"They aren't sheep," Jane said, turning back to Red John.
"Not physically. Of course not physically. Which is why I don't make a habit of eating them."
"How decent of you," Jane groused, despite himself. Red John ignored the sarcasm.
"They have the ability to be much more than sheep, they have the inherent potential, but most of them are too lazy and ambition-less to try. So they go through their entire miserable lives behaving as if they were born without any inherent intelligence. I read a US military top secret document, once, Patrick entitled 'Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars'. The entire document was extremely entertaining, but one bit always stuck out in my mind: Those who will not use their brains are no better off than those who have no brains, and so this mindless school of jelly-fish, father, mother, son and daughter, become useful beasts of burden or trainers of the same."
"Even better? If the people really cared about their fellow man, they would control their appetites (greed, procreation, etc.) so that they would not have to operate on a credit or welfare social system which steals from the worker to satisfy the bum. Since most of the general public will not exercise restraint, there are only two alternatives to reduce the economic inductance of the system (1) Let the populace bludgeon each other to death in war, which will only result in a total destruction of the living earth. (2) Take control of the world by the use of economic "silent weapons" in a form of "quiet warfare" and reduce the economic induction of the world to a safe level by a process of benevolent slavery and latter option has been taken as the obviously better option. At this point it should be crystal clear to the reader why absolute secrecy about the silent weapons is necessary. The general public refuses to improve its own mentality and its faith in its fellow man. It has become a herd of proliferating barbarians, and, so to speak, a blight upon the face of the earth."
"I'm just doing what the government that makes the laws that you more-or-less follow, Patrick, does all the time and in much greater numbers. I just have a little fun while doing it. Where's the harm in that?"
Jane blinked. "You're out of your fucking mind," he snapped.
"Maybe," Red John said, inclining in his head in such a way that Jane was immediately reminded of the common crow, "but that doesn't mean that what I am saying is incorrect."
"What do you want?" Jane said, looking back at Lisbon. Every second he was here, listening to Red John pontificate was another second Charlotte was terrified and panicking.
"I want you to understand," Red John said, glancing over at Lisbon, now, too.
"Understand what?" Jane snapped back.
"That I only ever did what I did because you're my brother, and because I care about you. Because I wanted what was best for you... and for Charlotte."
"You have Charlotte locked up in an airless coffin! How is that for her benefit?!"
"Better to die young than to be a miserable failure her entire life. It's not like I didn't give her plenty of chances to shape up and fly right."
Jane exhaled slowly. Red John could babble for hours and Charlotte would suffocate.
Jane tried to remember... but didn't Charlotte carry around a pellet gun? They weren't usually lethal weapons, but a well-placed pellet to the temple could spell permanent lights out.
"This is what I want. I want Charlotte out of that coffin. I want Lisbon out of here. I want both Charlotte and Lisbon out, alive. You can live if you want, but I want Charlotte. And I want Lisbon. How do I do that?"
Red John appeared to think. Creases formed on his brow as he mock-pondered Jane's declaration.
"And I want you. You join me, and I'll let Lisbon live. But Charlotte? She's not going anywhere. Like I said, Patrick, she's a loser. Better she just... end. It's better that way."
"If you wanted her dead, why not just kill her?"
"I want you to be the one who decides her fate. That way, you know, there is less tension between us later..."
"Later?" Jane demanded, hardly believing what he was hearing.
"You're going to join me."
"Like Hell I am," Jane snapped back before Red John was even finished.
"You're going to help me or Lisbon here, dies. Take a look at her, Patrick. What did she ever do but love you?"
Jane tried to ignore the blatant attempt at manipulation. His mind was buzzing.
"Explain the heart monitors."
"Simple. If one of us dies... and the EKG and EEG both flat-line for a full minute or longer, the doors will unlock and the bomb will be defused. Behind the laptop on the table, Tricky, is Lisbon's service piece. Go ahead. Take a look."
Jane moved forward, looked behind the laptop. Sure enough, there was Lisbon's gun. Jane picked up the weapon carefully (he had never felt right holding a firearm).
"Look inside," Red John taunted. "Fully loaded."
"Then why don't I just kill you, now?" Jane asked, raising the gun.
Red John made a displeased tsk-tsk noise.
"Kill me now and you'll never find Charlotte and she will die the worst possible sort of death, choking to death in an airless coffin, terrified, with her broken little fingers. Your little baby, freaking out and dying and never having her Daddy save her. Could you live with that?"
Jane felt stunned, half-drunk. Something obvious was staring him right in the face and he still wasn't seeing it.
"I thought you wanted Charlotte dead?" Jane snapped. He was itching to shoot Red John right between the eyes.
"Oh I do. But I also know how sentimental you are. So... if you kill Lisbon and agree to join me, I'll show you where Charlotte is. A little consolation prize for baby brother finally joining the winning team."
"Kill Lisbon?" Jane said numbly.
"Kill Lisbon and you get Charlotte."
"And if I don't kill Lisbon and kill you?"
"Then you and Lisbon are free to go, but Charlotte will suffocate to death in her little coffin... not sure you could stand the guilty of that, Tricky. Lisbon wouldn't be able to stomach looking at you after that, not with you wearing my face, and your little daughter? God, what a letdown for her, am I right?"
"And if I don't kill either of you and just walk out the door?"
"Then this place explodes. That is against the rules of the game. You do that, mind you, and Charlotte and Lisbon both die, too, of course, and any DNA evidence proving my existence is incinerated. After your death, an anonymous source will come forward linking you to all my murders and your DNA will be posthumously collected... say, a hair from a hairbrush at home, something like that. And you'll be known forever as Red John. A little prize for you. Because if you walk out that door I have obviously overestimated your mental stability and for that, I think... I owe you a little slice of immortality."
"You're fucking insane," Jane said again. He forced down a wad of bile.
"Takes one to know one," Red John taunted childishly.
"So you think... what? I am going to kill Lisbon?"
"Whatever. Look at Lisbon. All but pleading with you to kill her to save your damaged little girl. Fucking pathetic, you normal humans with consciences."
Jane glanced over at Lisbon and he could see that Red John's assessment was true. Lisbon nodded at Jane. She was willing to die if it meant he'd get back his daughter. Jane shook his head to clear it.
"And you gagged her... why?"
"I didn't want her to influence your decision, any. You normal people can get so damned sentimental in trying situations and I wanted to mitigate that influence. See, Tricky boy, I am what the headshrinkers call a sociopath. A sadistic sociopath, mind you, but still a sociopath. I am lacking a conscience, is what they like to say. The truth of the matter is that I had a conscience, but I intentionally got rid of it, piece by piece, over a number of years. I started early, mind you, but I still shed that particular human trap. I freed myself from an aspect of humanity that kept me a prisoner and became all the better for it."
"Shed," Jane repeated, nodding. "Shed."
"Pardon?"
"Like a snake shedding its skin," Jane said to no one in particular, apparently ignoring Red John.
"Patrick?" Red John prompted.
"Charlotte... you know what she said not long ago? The young girl you think is such an existential mistake?"
"I don't realllllly care," Red John said callously, sighing for effect. "But I have a feeling you're going to tell me anyway, aren't you, Patrick?"
"She didn't want me to kill you. Oh no! She actually cried about it. She worried that maybe you- my twin brother- were possessed by a demon, that you had allowed it to enter you and it had taken over and possessed you. That all you needed was an exorcism and that the soul of my brother was inside your meat suit, desperate to be freed from whatever supernatural force held it under wraps."
"And what did you tell her? Did you tell her she was crazy? That God and the Devil are bullshit?" Red John was delighted with Jane's admission. His silver eyes glinted, mercurial and deadly calm, like the eyes of Houdini. Houdini... whom Jane had obsessively read about as a boy.
Houdini, whom Jane had read about from the point of view of an author who believed that his "tricks" were not tricks at all, but demonic manifestations.
Houdini, who claimed five people he knew had personally been driven insane after playing with the Ouija board...
Jane looked at his supposed twin brother and saw Houdini's silver, hypnotic eyes staring back at him.
Those eyes were not human. They hadn't been human for as long as Jane could remember.
"You did, didn't you, Tricky? You told her God was bullshit, didn't you? Didn't you?!" Such gleeful words, perversely so.
"I told her that you were evil, and that no exorcism would ever save you. And that I would kill you," Jane said, and he heard Lisbon make a low noooo sound before Red John realized what he had done. The bang was deafening and then Red John had crashed to the floor. He was genuinely surprised. He was still alive, but Jane had shot him in the heart.
Jane approached his brother. Red John gazed up at him, no fear in his features. There was blood on the inside of his lips.
"Good for you, Tricky boy. Your little bitch is going to choke in her coffin... and God will never save her."
"You weren't going to let her live no matter what I did, were you?" Jane said calmly. He put his hand into Red John's pocket and pulled out his magic "wand", the keys to Lisbon's chains.
"No," Red John puffed out. "I wasn't going to lead you to Charlotte."
"Then at least I killed Charlotte's murderer," Jane said stonily, glancing over at Lisbon. The unshed tears that had been glazing Lisbon's eyes mere seconds ago were now running down her cheeks.
"Aren't you scared?" Jane asked, looking down at the human known as Red John who wore his face. "Aren't you?"
"Of what?" Red John rasped, and a small amount of the blood on his lips speckled Jane's cheek.
"Of dying," Jane said patiently. Sometimes, dying people went into shock rapidly and could become confused. Sometimes... but he knew on a deeper level that Red John was not confused. Red John was not in shock.
"Why should I be scared?" Red John said in his sultry, hypnotic voice. "You can't kill me."
"You're dying, Peter. I shot you in the heart."
"Peter Jane is dying," Red John rasped out, but already his eyes were beginning to look a little lost, a little unfocused. "But I am not... him."
"That's right. You're Red John, aren't you?"
"That's right," Red John rasped and coughed and a bit of blood bubbled up in his mouth.
Jane nodded. Jane glanced over at the laptop. Suddenly the air was filled with a high pitched whining noise. Red John's heart had stopped and was in asystole.
Jane looked back at Red John. He was completely still, eyes open and unseeing. Jane felt a chill. He turned back to the computer screen.
Jane clicked some tabs on the laptop and looked at the image of the flat-line EKG on the computer read out. He looked at the graph for the EEG. There was still brainwave activity, but less... and now... now none.
Jane went over to Lisbon and unlocked her from her chains, unlocked her from her shackles. Lisbon stood up unsteadily, obviously weak and dazed. Jane helped her out of the shed came back for the laptop.
He picked it up and was helping Lisbon towards his "borrowed" car when the shed exploded into a blazing inferno, a massive fireball of heat and flames.
Dark black smoke was already licking the blue Mexican sky.
Patrick Jane stared, dazed, not quite believing what he was seeing.
Lisbon was staring, mouth open. Neither of them spoke.
Time seemed to stop.
Only the fire licking out of the burning shed, only the fire and the smoke and the heat was real now.
Lisbon was the first to speak.
"Charlotte," Lisbon said unsteadily. "We still have to find Charlotte."
Jane nodded and turned back to her. He opened the passenger side door. Felix was still sitting in the passenger seat, like a robot that had been taken off line. If Lisbon was surprised to see the young man again, she said nothing.
"Felix," Jane said softly, more out of shock than out of concern for the kid. "Get in the back."
Felix got out and Lisbon took his seat in the passenger seat. Jane got into the driver's seat and started the car. He handed the laptop to Lisbon, clicked a button on the wand, clicked the tabs on the laptop so that the image of Charlotte in her personal Hell was once again front and center.
"Charlotte," Jane said in his most soothing, mentalist voice. Charlotte was clawing again at the top of the coffin, voice slurred and somehow, impossibly, drunk? Jane nodded to himself.
The idea that Charlotte might have pilfered a few mini bottles from the hotel earlier in the week really wasn't that far-fetched. She was screaming for Daddy, voice hoarse and damaged.
"Charlotte, it's Daddy," Jane said into the wand, waiting for her to hear him, eyes focused on her panicked, wild face. It took a second, but then she seemed to hear him. Jane didn't realize the flashlight was no longer on until he realized he was looking at her in shades of green. The batteries must have worn out.
She was panicking alone, buried alive in the dark. Just the idea made Jane feel a little short of breath.
"Daddy?" Charlotte rasped, drunkenly. "You there?"
"I'm here," Jane said, hoping to calm her, if nothing else. "I'm here."
"Lisbon?" Charlotte said, and it took Jane a startled moment to realize that Charlotte was checking on Lisbon's safety. Half-insane and drunk, she was still asking about Lisbon.
"Lisbon is here, too," Jane assured her, holding the wand out to Lisbon and nodding his head to indicate Lisbon should speak.
"I'm here, Charlotte," Lisbon said, and her voice was so tightly controlled that it almost made Jane want to sob again.
"Rehh Jawnn?" Charlotte slurred.
"Dead," Patrick said immediately, trying to assuage her fears.
"You coming to get me now?" Charlotte begged, eyes scanning the "ceiling" of the coffin. "Huh?"
Jane smiled, despite himself. Despite everything. Despite the fact that Red John's remains were burned away and that his own DNA might have been left at various crime scenes and the fact that Lisbon was concussed and traumatized and shaking and that some kid with some severe form of PTSD was in the back of his stolen car shivering and looking shock-y.
Jane smiled, and then he laughed.
It was the plaintive, almost annoyed "huh?" that made him laugh, so much like Charlotte as a little girl. Jane grinned over at Lisbon, who was laughing, now too.
"Yes, Charlotte, I am going to get you now," Jane said, recklessly promising her something he wasn't sure he could deliver. "I'm coming to get you, Charlie."
"Hurry up, Daddy. It's dark in here and I'm scared. My fingers hurt," Charlotte groused, staring ahead into the endless black of her coffin.
Jane nodded, and the smile on his face dried up.
"I know, Charlie. I am coming."
"Hurry up," Charlie repeated petulantly, eyes wide and eerie on the laptop's screen. "Is hot in here. Hurry, okay?"
"Okay."