Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 41)
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 for the reviews. Sorry for the lag in updating. I will try to get the next few chapters out in a timely manner.
Monday, November 13th, 2013 2:05 PM PST
Jane sat at the dining room table watching Charlotte spoon spaghetti-ohs into her mouth. The week had gone by almost in a blink...
He'd wanted to get up to Sacramento on Sunday but Charlotte had resisted the idea. Suddenly, the plane was no good, the idea of flying on a plane triggered a bug-eyed panicky look and Jane decided not to push it. Charlie relaxed when she was told it was fine, they'd stay at home. Sunday night had been spent watching Pee Wee's Big Adventure on Netflix (Charlotte had wanted to watch the 1978 horror movie "Halloween" but Jane had skillfully managed to avoid the classic horror flick and Jane was quickly developing an understanding for just how much comfort his child derived from repetition). Charlotte dragged her bean bag chair downstairs (with Jane's help) and propped it up in front of the TV, squinting. Jane wasn't sure, but thought she might need glasses.
Red John probably hadn't bothered getting her eyes tested and she was squinting an awful lot. Jane sat on a cushion beside his daughter, sharing a huge bowl of microwave popcorn and making the occasional comment about what Pee Wee was up to, trying to ground Charlie in the here and now. For her part, she was more or less silent and much farther away than physics dictated she should have been.
They'd gone to sleep around 10 pm, Jane tucking Charlie in like a much younger child. When he'd gone to plant a kiss on her forehead she hadn't pulled away and Jane had felt a glimmer of hope, or something like hope.
But then, in the night, he'd been startled awake by loud, frenzied shouts.
He'd been up and out of bed within a heartbeat, and had run to Charlotte's room and opened the door. The teen's eyes were open but she was screaming at something in the past that no longer existed except in the very worst nightmares, pupils dilated to eclipse all the green. A night terror, that's what this was. Jane had used all his mentalism skills to calm her down and she had finally drifted back to sleep, broken fingers holding the material of his pajama shirt.
Jane rested in her bean bag chair in the almost-dark, watching her sleep, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, her splinted fingers (the purple had faded to a green-brown now), eyes drifting over the blond wood shelves and scanning over the grinning trolls, the little dinosaurs, the lava lamp and other small toys pulled down from the attic and arranged ever-so-carefully. Trinkets from a past life, arranged carefully on the shelves by Jane's hands to Charlie's exact specifications (she would rearrange them herself, he had no doubt, when her fingers healed and the splints came off).
They'd gotten up late on Monday morning.
Lisbon had been disappointed by Jane's inability to fly out.
She'd understood, of course, but in practical terms she needed him out there. At 11 am, when Charlotte was awkwardly eating golden grahams and watching cartoons on the flatscreen in the living room, Lisbon had phoned to tell Jane that Elian had begun to scream hysterically the night before and nobody had been able to get him to stop. He'd eventually been sedated.
He'd been screaming about demons and Hell, about serial killers and about children rising from their graves... the circus didn't end when it came to Red John and his carnival of bullshit, Jane mused silently.
The screaming seemed to coincide with Charlotte's night terror and Jane felt an increasingly familiar stirring in his bowels, a sense of unease relating to the supernatural, to the idea that Red John maybe really was a spirit and that the shit related to him maybe did have a non-corporeal basis.
It wasn't a feeling Jane felt emotionally ready to process. The idea scared the living daylights out of him, if he was honest with himself. He knew it. He consciously knew he was scared with this paradigm shift and resistant to tread into these dark waters. He consciously knew he wanted to push any such connection to the supernatural out of the way, and yet... his own brain turned on him, nagged at him, pestered him with soft, insistant "what if's?".
He'd always been one of those kids unable to stop picking at scabs...
Elian screaming at the same time could have been a conditioned response, something planted in both Charlotte and Elian's subconscious minds to go off at a set time. But... as desperately as Jane wanted to believe that Red John might have scrambled both kids' minds just to send a message to his surviving twin brother, just to fuck with Jane, a final display of dominance... Jane found it hard to believe. The coincidences seemed to be gaining strength, hinting at realms Jane had previously believed with all his heart did not exist and could not exist.
To think that they might exist was a veritiginous feeling. Existentially dizzying.
"What is it?" Lisbon asked when Jane fell silent after she had told him about Elian's late-night freak out, and stayed silent. "Jane? What's wrong?"
"What time did he start screaming?" Jane asked.
"I don't know," Lisbon said. "Why?"
"They'd probably have written it down in his medical file, though, right? The approximate time? They write stuff like that down..."
"Jane?" Lisbon prompted, tenacious as a terrier.
"Charlotte woke me up screaming bloody murder around three thirty in the morning, last night. Her speech- if you want to call it that- made reference to many of the same themes you just told me our friend Elian was going on about. Weird, right?"
"Jane, Red John had extensive access to both kids," Lisbon said in a sigh, trying to reassure him of something she herself couldn't quite grasp. "He planted the same crap in both their heads."
"Maybe," Jane allowed with his usual tolerance. "Or maybe there is a supernatural realm that I have been too short-sighted and arrogant to contemplate, and Red John really was- is- an evil spirit."
"Jane?" Lisbon prodded again, but this time her voice held a tinge of concern. "You don't believe in spirits. You have enough on your plate without going down this path."
"I don't know what I believe in anymore," Jane said tiredly, and rubbed at his eyes with his free hand. "The world isn't what I thought it once was, Lisbon. I have made mistakes. I have been caught off guard. What do I really know about anything, at the end of the day? Not much."
"Red John messed with both of them and used themes of Hell and demons to do that. The same way fundamentalist Christians scare the shit out of little kids with stories about Hell. It's the same thing, Jane. And he's messing with you, now, too."
"Maybe," Jane said again, clearly not convinced. "Lisbon, could you phone... wherever it is our friend Elian is staying, and find out if someone wrote down the time when he started pitching that fit?"
"Yeah..." Lisbon said, trailing off, not certain she wanted to add more fuel to the fire, all too aware that Jane would eventually get his way, anyway. He always got his way. That was part of what made Jane, Jane.
"How is Charlotte today?" Lisbon asked a moment later, and despite the stress and concern in her voice, Jane also caught genuine affection in there, too, and he loved her for that.
"Okay. Eating breakfast and watching cartoons on Netflix."
"She-ra?" Lisbon guessed. Jane smiled into the phone.
"Nope. Try again."
"Beetlejuice?"
"That's the one," Jane said, grinning. "You're developing into quite the little psychic, Lisbon."
Lisbon laughed at him over the miles. "Charlotte strikes me as the obsessive type," the CBI agent said gently. "Sort of like her Dad."
Jane's grin grew wider. He felt the urge to hug Lisbon, strongly.
"Are you going to try again with Charlotte today?" Lisbon asked then.
"Try again?" Jane asked. He knew what she meant, but liked fishing for her answers, liked to hear her voice, the playful back and forth thing they had. It made him feel warm and comfy and drew out their interactions like a piece of taffy. He guessed Lisbon liked it, too.
"To convince her to get back on the plane and come to Sacramento? The locals are screwing up the case. Red John might be dead but there is still a lot we need to know. And Elian... if anyone can get to him, that would be you."
"I'll try again, but these things can't be rushed."
"Of course not," Lisbon allowed. There was a beat of silence. So many unspoken words between them. So much they had shared, but their personalities and histories dictated that neither one of them felt comfortable plumbing the depths of their feelings for each other over the phone.
"Charlotte's a tough nut to crack," Jane said, smiling into the phone, not yet ready to hang up. "She's resistant to my charms and skillful psychological prodding."
Lisbon laughed over the line. "You're her father so she has a natural immunity to you," Lisbon smirked. Jane nodded, eyes scanning the kitchen. He walked over to the stove, grabbed the kettle, and filled it with filtered water.
"I better go," Lisbon said then, and dimly Cho's voice could be heard in the backward, relaying some sort of information about some sort of case that wasn't Red John related. Jane nodded again.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll see you, Lisbon. Thanks."
He disconnected the phone, put the kettle on to boil (Patrick Jane, like the whole of the UK, drank tea when he was stressed and did so almost without thinking about the process) and walked into the living room to speak to his daughter.
Monday, November 13th, 2013 2:15 PM PST
Charlotte sat on her beanbag chair, staring at the flat screen television, spaghetti-ohs mostly eaten, a smudge of orange-red tomato sauce on her cheek. Jane entered the living room not for the first time since he'd gotten off the phone to Lisbon, took a seat on the couch, eyed his child and smiled at her. For her part, she ignored him, intent on her cartoon and dedicated to her stubbornness. They'd talked at what was more or less breakfast, and now the meal was... spaghetti-ohs, microwaved. Whatever meal that was. Jane didn't have the heart to call spaghetti-oh's out of a can "lunch".
"Why can't we go to Sacramento?" Jane tried again, sounding like a whiny child himself and not really caring.
Honesty would be the best policy with Charlotte. She was expecting manipulation and was resistant to it. She'd been resistant to manipulation and his winning smiles when she'd been four years old, for crying out loud.
"Wanna stay here," Charlotte murmured to the television. They'd had this talk shortly after Lisbon had phoned earlier in the day. "But you can always go to Sacramento. You're not handcuffed to me, Patrick."
"Elian's not doing well," Jane said bluntly, waiting for that to sink in. He'd left Elian out of it earlier. Charlotte ignored him. Jane turned his eyes to the screen. Earlier it had been Beetlejuice. Now it looked like some cartoon he dimly remembered from his late teen years- teenage mutant ninja turtles. Charlotte sat glued to the screen, reminding him of a much younger child. The bright colours of the cartoon flickered in her glassy eyes. She was still on painkillers and they were evidently getting her a little stoned.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"You can go to Sacramento, and I can stay here," Charlotte said, face screwing up in annoyance. "I'm not a child." This said in the whiniest tone of voice by a kid who was glued to a television show where the teenage mutant ninja turtles were attacking a brain riding around in a robot and calling each other "dude".
"That's not quite what I said," Jane murmured, eyes tracking her face. She sighed. Rolled her eyes.
His kid was traumatized and regressed, but she had fought tooth and nail to survive and in her mind, if Jane seemed too protective of her she would be insulted. He knew that, and it made sense.
But he also knew that the effects of trauma could be unpredictable and there was no way in Hell he was leaving her alone after all the crazy shit she had been through. That wasn't going to happen.
"I am afraid of going to Sacramento by myself," Jane said carefully, watching her face and her body language like a hawk. She stared at the television, sighed, finally turned to him. She paused the show and turned to him.
"No, you're not. You're afraid of leaving me alone because you think I'm a psycho whack job that might go off the rails." Like father, like daughter. Charlotte didn't beat around the bush. It was refreshing and Jane admired her directness, but his mentalism skills were fine-tuned for regular people, people who weren't quite so forthcoming.
"I don't think you're a psycho whack job," Jane insisted doggedly, smiling just a little bit as those words left his mouth.
"You think I might go off the rails," Charlotte pushed back with equal tenacity.
"Yes. But I think anybody would be at risk of that after..." Jane spread his hands in an open-ended gesture. "Anybody would. So why not you?"
"If I was going to go crazy, I would have gone crazy after I killed that guy," Charlotte muttered, and Jane forced down the rising emotion in his throat, winced against the sudden squirt of adrenaline into his blood stream.
It was an almost fluidic squirt of anxiety, electrical and raw, a jolt to the nerves and veins. He eased his mouth into a sardonic grin and pressed on. He'd heard so much crazy in his own life, but coming out of Charlie's mouth, it was somehow more awful. The idea of his baby in the role of a killer was something that his body physically reacted to, and not in a nice way.
"It's comments like that one that make me a little uncomfortable leaving you here alone." That wasn't entirely true. Comments like that were just icing on the cake. Charlotte turned her laser eyes on her father, tracking, tracing, analyzing him down to the micron.
"You think the mailman is going to go missing without a trace if you leave me home alone, or something?"
"Yeah. Not really funny, that one." Not funny at all, actually, but getting flustered was what his kid wanted.
"Have you ever killed anyone, Patrick?"
"Not in cold blood," Jane said immediately. He wanted off this subject. This subject could mutate quickly, and it was full of land mines... not only that, Jane wanted to make it clear that he was NOT Red John and NOT like Red John, and that meant leaving murder and death and corpses and all other yucky talk mostly unprocessed. He was just Patrick Jane. Mentalist. CBI consultant... and protective father.
"What about in hot blood?"
"Hot blood?" Jane repeated.
"Hot blooded.. check it and see... I got a fever of a hundred and three..." Charlotte sing-songed, eyes flickering from her father back to the television. "You know what it means."
"I don't think I do, Charlotte," Jane persisted.
"You're sure Red John is dead," Charlotte stated, not answering his question but switching gears. It was said as a statement, but Jane knew it was really a question. An obsessive question.
She had asked it numerous times over the last week. And like all obsessions, his reassurances didn't placate the nagging anxiety in her head for very long. The obsession would loop. And they were back at the beginning again. But he still had to respond to her obsession.
"Yes. I am sure he is dead." This back and forth was becoming a verbal dance.
"You saw the life drain out of his eyes?"
"Yes," Jane repeated solemnly.
"You saw his eyes dilate? The pupils?"
"Charlotte..." Jane sighed.
"He is a master manipulator. He could have faked it. It's not hard to look dead, you know. Even to make your pupils dilate on command. People can train themselves to do all sorts of shit-"
"I checked him. There was no pulse," Jane said softly. He'd repeated this for her at least a dozen times. He'd tell her ten thousand times, if that was what she needed.
"He didn't go into rigor," Charlotte persisted dully.
"No," Jane said."But only because the bomb he set incinerated his corpse and everything in the immediate vicinity..."
"There are people who can train themselves to stop their hearts. Same types of people who have trained themselves to chew and swallow glass without it cutting their mouths and there are people who can rub lit joss sticks on their forearms and not leave a mark. Most of them are demon possessed."
"Most of that is sleight of hand and mental manipulation," Jane batted back.
He saw Charlotte's jaw grind, her molars press hard together, the protrustion of bone at her temple flex. She was annoyed and frustrated. He didn't want to frustrate her, but he wasn't about to admit to realities he hadn't seen for himself and didn't believe- not really- could physically exist. One of them had to stay grounded in the real world.
"Maybe, but not all. Spirits are real and some people can manipulate the physical world." This said by a baby-faced sixteen year old with spaghetti-oh stains around her mouth who smelled of grape soda pop, snuggle fabric softener and hubba bubba bubblegum. Jane remained silent. Thirty seconds passed and Charlotte looked back at Jane skeptically.
"You don't believe me?"
"I believe you believe it."
"That's so much condescending crap, right there, Patrick, and you know it..." Charlotte muttered and slit her eyes just a bit to show her displeasure. "Don't condescend to me. I have seen things you couldn't even dream about."
"I am quite certain that's true," Jane allowed softly, and the pain leaked into his words at that admission. Charlotte caught the mood shift, pushed up against it with annoyance.
"You don't have to feel sorry for me. I survived. I saw some stuff, sure, but I am still here. And I know what reality is."
"You do?" Jane queried.
"Sure. At least more than you do." She was annoyed, and Jane didn't know what to do about that. Spirits? Demons? How could he accept those things?
This was going nowhere. Charlotte was defensive, felt unheard and patronized. She'd lost her perceived freedom and emancipation. The period of her life where she'd been on her own and manipulated by a serial killer was over, and quite suddenly over at that. What was going through her mind? What sort of mental shifts were taking place?
Jane knew the other shoe had to drop. Nobody just walked away from a "childhood" (childhood was the wrong word, of course, but really- what other word could possibly be used?) like that, nobody sailed off into the sunset without a hitch after that sort of horror show. Trauma and its effects on the human mind didn't work like that. There would be a crisis when the realizations of what she'd endured hit, and Jane wasn't going anywhere until that crisis had passed. That could take a few months, a year... or longer. The more traumatic the experiences, the more defense mechanisms came into play and the more layered and complicated the emotional responses became. And the more unpredictable the results...
"You think I'm crazy," Charlotte said after another few minutes of inane cartoon babble. On the screen the turtles were now battling Shredder and Bebop, Rocksteady... There were kicks and punches, ninja stars and the stamping feet of Shredder's foot soldiers. Jane shook his head at her comment.
"No, and you know I don't think you're crazy."
"Then why not go to Sacramento and leave me here alone?" Charlotte murmured, pretending to pay more attention to the tv than her father. Jane knew it was an act. She was watching him in the television's reflection again.
"Because maybe I'm the psycho whack job," Jane said finally, testing the waters. He kept his expression more or less neutral. Charlotte turned to him. Scrutinized him.
"What?"
"I'm scared to leave you alone, you're right," Jane said with a sigh, nodding. "But not because I think you're a psycho whack job."
"Why then?"
"Because... you're traumatized. That sort of trauma can have unpredictable effects on a person. I don't think you should be alone. But I am also traumatized. I lost you once already."
"I'm emancipated," Charlotte argued stubbornly, chin jutting out just a little. "Legally, I'm an adult." If Jane's admission hit her, she wasn't mentioning it. She was smoothing over her father's sadness, unable to deal with it. Was anybody naturally skilled at dealing grief and sadness? Jane didn't think so.
"You were emancipated under false pretenses during a time in your life when you were living with a serial killer," Jane said slowly, hating that he had to spell this out for Charlotte, hating how his voice sounded a little too sardonic... knowing there was no way around it. They'd argue about this. Jane knew that.
"I'm pretty sure that's not a legally binding emancipation, Charlie."
"You can't tell me what to do, Patrick," Charlotte murmured softly. "I'm the boss of me."
"That's right, you are," Jane said calmly. "That's why I'll stay here with you if you don't want to come to Sacramento with me. You're calling the shots, here, not me."
Charlotte nodded, stared at the screen. They watched television for almost a minute.
Her features tightened and she scowled at the image of Shredder, obviously displeased with her father's words. Jane knew she was irritated, annoyed and wanted to argue. Knew she felt her honour was being questioned, her competence. He hated bugging her, but he was not leaving her alone.
"You have to go back to Sacramento, Patrick. You need to deal with Elian, figure him out."
"I can't do that and leave you here alone," Jane said.
"Yes, you can."
"I could, but I won't. So in practical terms? I can't. Because, I won't."
Charlotte turned to look at her father. "If you didn't think I was a whack job, you'd leave me alone." Still irritated, afraid of what it meant that she had suddenly lost her "freedom", afraid of being seen as weak, as girly, as crazy... Charlie was afraid of all of these.
"I don't think you're a whack job. I'm still not leaving you alone."
"Then you think I'm stupid," Charlotte tried. Jane had to give her points for sheer tenacity. This "conversation" was stretching past the 15 minute mark now.
"You know that I don't think you're stupid. Besides, you don't want me to leave you alone, anyway," Jane said. Charlotte stiffened, looked back at the television.
"I'm an adult," she said lamely.
"You've lived through Hell, but you're not an adult," Jane said, still sitting on the couch.
"Am so an adult."
"Are not," Jane shot back playfully. Charlotte shot him a look.
"Am so," Charlotte muttered at the television. She leaned forward, punched the volume up button on the television with one of her "good" fingers. The sounds from the TV rose accordingly. Cartoon fighting and shouts.
"So we're staying in Malibu, then," Jane clarified. If she hasn't been through so much shit, he would have manipulated her to get what he wanted and played her like a fiddle, but the idea of trying and getting caught was too off-putting. She already had trust issues, and more than that, she already knew a lot of manipulation tactics.
"Fine. Let Elian die then," Charlotte said to the too-loud TV. Jane didn't respond. Finally he got up, crossed over to the television, and turned it off.
"Hey!" Charlotte's voice was offended, annoyed.
"Charlotte. I love you. But I am not leaving you alone. I am not going anywhere. You can scowl at me, glare at me and be a general pain in the ass all you want, but you're not getting rid of me. Do you understand?"
Charlotte stared at him, annoyed look growing more profound by the second.
"Now," Jane continued in the same confident tone, going back over to his couch, sitting down with exaggerated calm. "Why do you think Elian is going to die?"
"Because... because look what happened to Felix!"
"Elian is not Felix," Jane pointed out. Charlotte's brow remained furrowed. She was silent, obviously upset.
Jane watched her and she watched him. He knew she was battling with all sorts of shit and knew better than to show her excessive affection. She'd view such emotions as cloying- stifling- and almost certainly as disingenuous. The girl had grown up in a loveless environment, fighting for survival and to be tender with her would be seen as patronizing.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Charlotte sat up, pushed the power button back on the TV and resumed watching her cartoons.
"You're going to get bored watching cartoons," Jane told her patiently from his position on the couch. "You know that already. And we'll end up going to Sacramento anyway."
She ignored her father, arms wrapped around slender legs, head resting on thin knees. Finally she spoke.
"No, I won't."
"Yes, you will," Jane batted back, grinning at her when she turned to look at him.
"No, I won't."
"We'll see," Jane murmured and settled back into the couch to watch the show.
Monday, November 13th, 2013 6:38 PM PST
Charlotte had retired to her bedroom some hours before, apparently bored with the cartoons or irritated with Jane, he wasn't sure. Jane sat in front of the laptop in the living room, researching post traumatic stress disorder and the long term effects of torture on children. What he was reading was no good. He knew it wouldn't be pleasant, but to read the effects in black and white made it all the more real. Lisbon had phoned once to update them on the case.
Elian was no longer restrained but heavily sedated. The police in Hermosillo were still looking for Crazy Chicken Man but so far, no luck. He was presumed dead. The FBI was having trouble with the locals in Hermosillo, getting them to open up. Nobody seemed to really believe that Red John was actually dead. The locals attributed supernatural powers to Red John. Even if he really was dead? He wasn't dead. His memory hang over the entire city, a pall of death and fear.
Jane nodded at Lisbon's words, expression unusually morose.
"Your car? They delivered it back to me. So it's parked outside my place, now," Lisbon told Jane, trying to lighten the mood.
"The airstream?" Jane questioned.
"Yeah, they brought that back, too," Lisbon said. "Someone boxed up a lot of the old stuff found at Charlotte's old apartment and brought it by here, too. There are about five cardboard boxes of stuff, mostly books and clothes, some DVDs and stuff. I assume that's everything of value that was found."
"Cool. I'll tell her," Jane said into the phone. He wanted to go through Charlotte's stuff with a fine tooth comb. Maybe there was a diary in there, something he could use to gain entrance into her world, help her... "Just don't tell Charlotte about the stuff before I do, okay?"
"Done," Lisbon agreed.
There was a pregnant pause. Jane waited. Lisbon seemed unwilling to speak.
"Lisbon?"
"Jane, we ran Charlotte's image through updated facial recognition software and she comes up a few times, a few years back. Five years ago or so and about seven years ago... on security cameras. In cases associated with missing children..." Lisbon trailed, clearly uncomfortable.
"Missing children?"
"She appeared to be leading them away and... they were never found." Lisbon's words hung in the air.
"Oh," Jane said tiredly. "Red John..." Jane started, but lacked the energy to continue. Lisbon already knew.
"Yes, of course. Some of the FBI guys still want to talk to her. They think she was used as bait, but she is the only link to those cold cases. If you guys don't come back to Sac, I'm betting they'll send someone down to you to interview you and talk to Charlotte. Just thought you should know up front..."
"Yes," Jane said softly, nodding. "Yes, of course. Thanks."
"That... youth center Charlotte spoke of? Did you guys do any digging into that place?" Jane said, mind running its programs, crossing out its "to do's".
"Rigsby phoned and spoke to some director. Of course no history of Charlotte. If she was there at all, we're going to have a Hell of a time proving it."
"Yeah," Jane murmured. "And Elian? You get a time on that freak out?"
"Um... they weren't real specific, but they think maybe about half past three in the morning. That's the approximate time I was given."
"Interesting," Jane murmured. There was a beat. Lisbon waited for him to say something more.
"You guys are doing a great job. Keep it up, Lisbon." Overly bright, cheerful words.
"Jane?"
"I am going to try and get Charlotte on the plane. No guarantees, though." Still with the artificial cheer. "She's a stubborn little thing."
"Of course," Lisbon said, and Jane could almost see her nodding. She knew something was up, but knew better than to push him.
"And the boxes of her stuff? Can you put them in your office?"
"Yeah..."
"Thank you," Jane allowed. "And there was no diary, right?"
"Nothing like that," Lisbon told him. "But I didn't really go through her stuff too much. I figured I'd leave that to you."
"Did they check in the box spring before they junked it? If they junked it?"
"They're the FBI, Jane. I imagine they'd know how to search an apartment."
"You'd be amazed at what some people miss," Jane teased. "Her apartment... it's still... what happened to it?"
"After Charlotte disappeared and the police processed it, the landlord decided he wanted the stuff cleared out so he could rent the suite. The smaller things were put downstairs in storage, I think. No word on the furniture."
"But it might be in storage?"
"Jane, I don't know. Her apartment is only an hour or so drive from Sacramento. We could conceivably make a trip out there and dig around."
"Yeah. That's really interesting, Lisbon. Look, I am going to let you go now, okay?"
"Yeah..." Lisbon trailed and Jane smiled, disconnected. Walked to the stairs and mounted them. Walked up the stairs, walked to his daughter's closed bedroom door and knocked lightly.
"Charlotte?" Jane called. There was no response. He tried the door. It was locked.
"You, um.. .changing or something?"
"Just a second, Patrick," came Charlotte's reedy voice. Jane waited. The lock clicked off and the door creaked open. The teen was dressed in pajama lounge pants and a hooded AC/DC sweater. Her face was pale and drawn, hair unbrushed, face pale from lack of sunlight and low iron.
If Jane had to guess she'd been napping. His brain ran through the possibilities. He didn't think Charlotte was depressed, but it was a possibility he'd be looking out for.
"Whatcha doing?" He asked. The teen yawned at him in response, blinked sleep-swollen eyes at him.
"Nothing much."
"That was Lisbon. We should go to Sacramento right away. The FBI is screwing up the case."
"They always do," Charlotte groused. She wandered back to her mussed up bed, lay down on the comforter (a print of stars and planets, some of which glowed in the dark) and closed her eyes.
"You tired?" Jane prodded. The kid on the bed shrugged, noncommittal.
"I'm a teenager on prescription pain pills recovering from internal injuries and surgery... that takes a lot of energy."
"Yes, it does," Jane allowed, voice pleasant. "So... about the FBI?"
"I don't like planes," Charlotte said from her bed, eyes still shut.
"You were okay on them last time we flew..."
"Not really. I just didn't have much of a choice."
"The FBI wants to talk to you," Jane said, walking over to Charlie's bed, sitting on it. The mattress dipped under his weight. The teenager slit her eyes open.
"Why?"
"You were recorded on CCTV a few years back," Jane started, testing his words. "Seen with some kids who went missing." Jane let his words hang in the air. If Charlotte was upset, she didn't respond outwardly.
"Oh. Them."
"Yes. Them," Jane said carefully, eyes scanning his daughter's face. Her eyes were closed, lids dark from fatigue. The bruises on her face were lifting and fading a little more with each passing day. How many other bruises had been on her narrow frame and faded into memory? Jane kept watching her, the rise and fall of her chest. Waiting for more.
"They're almost certainly dead," Charlotte said, eyes still shut, tone more blase than Jane felt comfortable with.
"Why do you say that?"
"Why do you think?" Charlotte said solemnly, opening her eyes. "They're dead or they'll wish they were. The FBI will never find them."
"They're still going to want to talk to you, though," Jane added. The girl nodded.
"I don't remember much about them," she murmured and stared at her father with her ancient, tired eyes. Scanned her room lazily. Jane wondered what she was thinking about, what she was seeing in her mind's eye.
"There are techniques we could use to help you uncover some of those memories," Jane said slowly. Charlotte shook her head.
"No hypnotic anything. No way. I told you that before, already."
"Okay. Maybe we'll talk about it later."
"No," Charlotte said again, voice stern. "I'm not going back in time and nobody is hypnotizing me. I don't care what it's for."
"I'm good at what I do," Jane said softly. "You wouldn't feel any anxiety." Charlotte stared at him darkly, not impressed. Jane raised his hands in a "don't shoot" gesture.
"We go to Sacramento and we can help Elian. Talk to the FBI. Clear up some loose ends. We stay here? And they'll just come pester us at home," Jane tried. He waited for his words to really sink in. Charlie sighed.
"Elian still out of his head?"
"I think so," Jane said. "He's suffering, I know that." Jane wasn't sure, but he thought he saw a shadow of a wince fall over Charlotte's pretty features.
"Could you hypnotize Elian?" Charlotte said tiredly. "Maybe help him?"
Jane nodded. He didn't know if he could help Elian, he didn't even know what was wrong with the boy, but Charlotte seemed to need to think he could, and he wanted to get her to Sacramento. It was worth a shot.
"Fine. I will come with you."
Jane smiled at his child, delighted. Charlotte didn't smile back. She was too weary for smiles.
Tuesday, November 14th, 2013 11:06 AM PST
Charlotte walked through the airport, Jane watching her carefully. The night before had been uneventful, no problems. The teen had been sleepy, exhausted, had passed out before nine and slept the whole night. No screams, no dreams, no nothing. She locked her door before drifting off and Jane went into this bedroom, pulled apart a wire coat hanger and jimmied the simple push-knob door lock. Charlotte felt safe with the door locked, and he got that, but he needed to see her sometimes, to know she was alive and breathing and physically safe. That she hadn't disappeared out the window, maybe, or been abducted...
He watched her, comforter half kicked off onto the floor, laptop sitting on the little coffee table he'd got her. Firefox was open, youtube. There were videos of Red John cases in the news. Charlie had been studying...
She was exhausted. Since she'd come back, everything had been a constant adrenaline surge. She was falling into fatigue now, healing and rebuilding her life. But Jane suspected depression was creeping in, too. In the movies, in the TV shows, when people got closure, they got closure. Then they hugged, had a beer or three and lived happily ever after.
In real life, after a significant trauma, things rarely went that smoothly. When the drama died down, people began to analyze their lives and came to terms with what they'd lost. If they'd lost a lot, depression often followed.
Charlotte had lost her childhood, her mother, her sense of safety, even her status as a child who had never played a part in another child's abduction or murder. Jane knew she'd been sexually abused- he pushed the knowledge from his conscious mind (there was, after all, plenty of time to deal with the fall out of that particular can of worms)- but she'd also been tortured. Lied to. Manipulated. The last decade had been a stream of traumas, each one powerful enough to trigger Post Traumatic Stress Disorder all on its own. Charlotte's traumas were stacked up in her history like bricks forming a wall, bricks in a pyramid, with his unfortunate daughter at the top, disconnected from the world, unable to get back down, floating, trapped behind a brick wall of very bad things...
Jane blinked and smacked his lips. He'd fallen asleep in Charlie's bean bag chair and lapsed into a pre-dream state, a hypnogogic state. He looked over at her (still sleeping), got up, went to the bathroom and urinated, showered, shaved, brushed his teeth in the shower, rubbed soap over his body and spat hot water down the drain.
The water hit him on the face and neck and chest, almost painful because of the high water pressure. Jane scrubbed at his flesh, tried to wash away the sense of despair he felt nipping at him. He could see the latent depression and grief in Charlotte's eyes. She was going to crash. He knew it.
But he felt something else, something in his own mind, battling to get through- an uneasy despair which reminded him of his days at the beginning of this nightmare, when he'd had his breakdown and ended up on a locked ward. The feeling of uneasiness was back, of sadness that was turning into anhedonia and a sense of despair. A short-of-breath feeling that was existential but not physical, an itchy feeling in the blood that was becoming maddening.
Jane cut the shower off, got out and towel-dried. Changed into boxer shorts and a t-shirt and went to his newly-painted room to sleep.
And then he was awake, hitting the button on the alarm clock, changing, packing a bag, stuffing his wallet and ID and keys into the front pocket of his carry-on, packing away his toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant and a second suit, pajamas and socks.
Charlotte was up early and showered while he made scrambled eggs and bacon and waffles. His kid came downstairs wearing the same AC/DC hoodie she'd been wearing the day before, wearing cargo shorts and striped socks, black converse all star sneakers with the laces undone. She was frowning, gesturing with her splinted fingers.
"I can't shampoo my hair properly with these," She said, and Jane nodded.
"How'd you manage it?" He asked, and put a plate of eggs and waffles in front of her. He added a cup of herbal tea. Charlotte mouthed the word "coffee" and Jane shook his head with a smile.
"I managed to squirt some shampoo on my head and rubbed it around with my right thumb and pointer finger," the teenager said sulkily.
"Let's see the fingers," Jane said with more cheer than he felt. Charlotte extended her fingers. The severe bruising was down, each finger was far less swollen. Some of the bandages on the tips of the fingers had come off in the shower and looked dreadfully raw. Jane winced in sympathy.
"They're looking better. Probably a few more weeks and you can get those off," he said, digging into a mouthful of scrambled eggs. Charlotte nodded and scowled at her waffles.
"I thought you liked waffles?" Jane said, and took another bite of egg. The kid nodded.
"Thank you," she said tiredly, and awkwardly cut out a piece of the syrup-drenched waffle with her fork.
"You're welcome," Jane said brightly.
That had been breakfast. They'd taken a taxi to the airport. Walked around and waited for their flight, Charlie looking like a una-bomber wannabe with her hood pulled up over her head and her eyes shrouded in shades. They passed through security without incident. Sat in chairs lost in thought until the call to board came over the loudspeaker, and then they boarded.
They handed their tickets to a flight attendant on their way through, Charlie carrying her backpack in her splinted hands, body language dejected. She sat next to the window, pulled the shade, fumbled awkwardly in her bag for her headphones and DVD player. Jane watched her silently. Knew she didn't want to go to Sacramento, deal with the FBI, think about the past, think about the future... She was exhausted and scared, weary. He understood that. It made complete sense. Truth be told, so was he, and he hadn't had nearly as much to deal with.
But as a father it was hard to watch, especially when his default inclination was to fix unhappy moods and turn them into grins.
Sometimes the unhappy moods were the only appropriate moods, though. He let Charlotte have her's.
And then they were in the air, high above the city, cars reduced to matchbox toys, buildings scaled down to plastic models. Clouds drifted. They saw none of that because the window blind was drawn and Charlotte was focused on the movie (Gremlins? Jane thought it might be Gremlins and made a mental note to pay slightly more attention to pop culture) on her DVD player.
Lisbon was waiting for them at the airport. She smiled at Jane when she saw him, grinned and waved at Charlotte with slightly more enthusiasm.
Charlotte nodded back, walked alongside her father, looking for all the world like a regular, put-out teenage girl being dragged somewhere she didn't want to be. Jane let her be and fell into step alongside Lisbon. They kept the conversation light, relatively harmless: the bungling FBI and their inability to process evidence in a timely manner, an altercation Rigsby had had on the weekend with a skunk (he'd had to soak in tomato juice in his bathtub for hours, much to Jane's delight and he no longer smelled... but Cho was still ragging him about it), the new security guard at the CBI who barely spoke any English, a few new cases that were being handled by another team for the meanwhile...
The harder stuff was coming later.
Jane sat shotgun and Charlotte got in the back of the car. Lisbon was over-bright and unusually enthusiastic (Jane knew it was for Charlotte's benefit) as she drove. She'd brought her own car, and a small air freshener shaped like a strawberry ice cream cone dangled from the rear view mirror. Jane chatted about nothing in particular and the miles passed and faded away and then they were at the CBI, parking, getting out, walking into the building.
The trio entered into the bullpen and Jane shot a grin to Van Pelt, who sat behind her computer, scowling at the screen. She turned and grinned at him, rising immediately to welcome him. Cho and Rigbsy had been waiting for them, and Rigsby seemed oddly nervous. He rose and held out his hand to Charlotte and Charlotte took it and gave it an awkward shake. Rigsby launched into a monologue about the games on his computer- he had Donkey Kong, he had Space Invaders, all the retro games and did she like those? Charlotte sought out her father visually, already overstimulated.
"Where are you going?" She asked him, looking over to Lisbon. Jane had told her at breakfast she'd be staying with Rigsby and Cho and Van Pelt, but the kid had been drifting, not listening, and he wasn't sure how much of that had really sunk in.
"Lisbon and I have to go talk to some spooks and then go see Elian," Jane said calmly. If he stayed calm, she probably would, too. Probably...
"Spooks," Rigsby repeated, shaking his head and laughing. "Man, that sounds like something out of Dick Tracy or a 1940s crime radio show or something, doesn't it?... Spooks?"
Charlotte eyed Cho and then Rigsby. She looked uncertain. She turned back to her father, and Jane gave her a 100 watt smile.
"They're good people, Charlie. I trust them with my life," Jane said, still happy as a clam. Rigsby smiled at the girl, obviously delighted by Jane's comment.
Charlotte nodded, eyed Rigsby again.
"So you guys are good to hang out here for a few hours?" Lisbon asked her team, before looking back at Jane. Time to get this show on the road...
"I am totally good. I get paid to play video games and eat pizza?" Rigsby said, grinning, nervous but trying his best to make a good impression. "That's totally cool. Why wouldn't I be good with that, Boss?"
"Pizza?" Lisbon questioned, but Jane was already pulling her towards her office.
"I thought we'd get pizza," Rigsby spluttered. "Cause kids like pizza, right?"
"We'll be back... later today. Sometime. We'll phone," Lisbon said, and then disappeared into the hallway.
"Think she's okay?" Lisbon asked Jane. He sighed, finally nodded.
"I think so. Her stuff... these boxes over here are her's?" Jane questioned, pushing past Lisbon as she unlocked the door, hauling out the cardboard boxes.
He riffled through them. Underwear, socks, a hairbrush, ceramic knick knacks, some plastic juice tumblers and ceramic plates, a few old journals (Jane grabbed these and paged through them- there were doodles of bloodshed and murder, but nothing definitive. Words repeated over and over and "HELP ME" inked in red marker repeatedly, written prayers to a silent God-), hair ties and an unopened box of Cap'n crunch.
Jane sifted through the rest of the stuff- more of the same. A rubik's cube and small little girly toys, rubber horses and a plastic trapper keeper with brightly coloured unicorns on the front. Cherry chapstick, highlighter markers, a pocket knife, a slingshot, pepper spray, a few stuffed animals, a collection of mutilated barbie dolls, baby dolls with razors heated up and pressed into the plastic, red enamel paint dripping from the cuts. Jane stared at the mutilated toys with haunted eyes. Shook his head in dismay, momentarily lost for words.
"I... I didn't go through it," Lisbon said, sounding almost guilty. Jane nodded.
"A troubled mind finds some way to vent," Jane said solemnly, rotating one of the mangled dolls in his hands. "This is a pretty sane response to torture and murder."
"Yes," Lisbon said, nodding. "It is."
"You think she saw someone murdered like this?" Jane pressed, flipping the baby doll upside down, smelling it, scratching the plastic body with a fingernail. Lisbon shook her head and sighed.
"I don't know. It's possible."
"Or it could just be... a cry for help. Even if nobody was ever meant to see them."
"Right," Lisbon agreed. Jane placed the mutilated dolls on Lisbon's desk. Sifted through the last box. There were colour print-out photos of Jane. A book full of Red John's crimes as highlighted in various California newspapers, each story carefully cut out and glued on card stock paper, then placed inside plastic sleeves. There was also a small powder blue jewelry box with a tiny little ballerina in it that spun around to music (what was that song? Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah?) when Jane popped the lid.
Jane pulled the drawers out. Nothing. He turned the jewelry box upside down on Lisbon's desk, smacked the side of it hard with his hand. Nothing.
"Jane?" Lisbon questioned. Jane stared at the ballerina, then twisted her between his fingers. She moved like a screw. He unscrewed her and the top of the box came apart, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside was a clipping of hair. Light blond- almost white- and held together by a pale pink string.
Jane placed the lock of hair on Lisbon's desk and stared at her with heavy eyes.
"Charlotte was never that blonde," Jane said, eyes locking on Lisbon's. Lisbon nodded. "And that hair is poker straight. Charlie has natural curls."
"One of the kids in the CCTV footage- a little girl- was a towhead..." Lisbon started. Jane nodded sadly.
"That's her hair, then," Jane said, even though it wasn't necessary. Lisbon pulled open a desk drawer and grabbed a small envelope. She lifted the lock of hair into it, sealed it, and put it back in her desk.
"I'll find someone to process it," Lisbon said, eyes on the envelope, then rising to meet Jane's stare. He nodded, morose. "But I am going to have to tell them where it came from. You know that."
"Eventually, yes. But for now? Can you gloss over that part? Just submit it for DNA analysis?"
"Yeah, I guess."
Silence hung in the air. Jane chewed on his lip. He rarely seemed so pensive to Lisbon. She didn't like what that expression on his face hinted at.
"That's not... it's not a trophy, Lisbon," Jane murmured, eyes still locked on Lisbon's desk drawer, on the lock of hair in the envelop now inside it.
"I didn't think it was," Lisbon answered softly. "And even if it was... Charlotte was a child..."
Jane waved his hand, as if he could wave aside his concerns and fears so easily.
"Children are capable of murder. Especially when they are coached."
"Jane... Charlotte isn't..." Lisbon trailed uneasily. She wanted to comfort him. But they both knew that Charlotte was unhinged. Was it possible she had killed a child or two?
"I don't think it's a trophy, but... but, she shouldn't have kept it," Jane mused, obviously troubled.
"Maybe she wanted to prove to herself... it... it even happened?" Lisbon tried. Jane nodded, but didn't seem convinced.
"Maybe. Let's run it first," Jane said.
"Yeah."
Jane nodded towards the small cairn of mutilated dolls.
"You never saw these, Lisbon," He said as he unzipped his carry-on and began to stuff the dolls under his suit and pajamas.
He zipped the bag up, straightened, ran a hand through his hair.
"So... Elian? Yeah. Let's deal with that." Jane's voice was calm and upbeat, alert. The timbre was reasonably subdued, expression more relaxed than Lisbon thought was fair for the circumstances. Jane zipped his bag closed and walked through the door of Lisbon's office. Lisbon followed, locking her office door behind her, rushing to catch up.
She let Jane drive. He scanned traffic, sucked on the inside of his cheek, clearly lost in thoughts. Lisbon let him think and mull over what he knew. She didn't know what to say to him. What could she possibly say to make any of this better? She'd never been particularly good at giving people bad news or at dealing with the emotional fall out of the crimes they investigated and when it had to do with Charlotte, she was even less adept.
"I'm not getting serial killer vibes from her, Lisbon," Jane said in a distracted voice at a red light half way to the hospital Elian was locked up in. "I just... I'm not seeing it."
"Jane, she isn't a serial killer," Lisbon said plaintively. Jane nodded, but it was an "I hear you" nod, not an "I agree with you" nod.
"Dissociation? Sure. Charlie's got some definite dissociative processes going on. But who wouldn't, given what she has been through? That's the purpose of dissociation," Jane said, waiting for the light to turn green, then pulling through the intersection. "That's what dissociation does. That's its purpose. It shields the minds from unbearable truths. But killing?"
"She was probably used as bait."
"Why keep a lock of hair, though?" Jane said, screwing up his face in thought. "Why do that?"
"As proof? If she was used to being disbelieved, then having proof to some past crime might establish credibility."
Jane sighed. "Proof could have been details about the crime, stuff nobody could know. How'd she get the hair? Why'd she take it?"
"Maybe for the Chicken Man, then?" Lisbon suggested, thoughts running back into the past. "Didn't he burn hair? For his spells?"
"Hmmm. Interesting. Maybe a protection spell or something. Yeah," Jane nodded his head. "Maybe. But then why does she still have the hair?"
"Maybe she never got the opportunity to give him the hair or the kid was killed before she could give it to him or... Jane, you know that its not a trophy."
Cars rushed by them on both sides. Up ahead, there was a crash and a police officer with a SLOW sign was waving people through another intersection. Jane winced at the sight of the wreckage, pulled through and glanced over at Lisbon, then turned his attention forward again.
"She was being trained by Red John to replace him, right? Be his protégée? And what is Red John known for around the world, what is he infamous for doing?"
"Charlotte is disturbed. She is not a killer."
"She has been involved with murder, though. Under Red John's direction. I already know that."
"So this... you're thinking she killed a child on her own?" Lisbon said. Jane scowled at the thought said aloud. Sighed.
"That doesn't fit with the idea I have of her. But... what if I am too close to see clearly? Even I have my blind spots, Lisbon."
Lisbon nodded at that.
"What would it take for you have to killed another person as a kid?" Jane said, pulling onto another street, eyes scanning the roads, the sidewalks, flickering back to Lisbon. She stared at him. Shook her head.
"I don't know..."
"Sure you do. We've all thought about killing. Most of us think we're not supposed to admit it, so we don't, but everybody has entertained the notion. If somebody tells you they haven't, they're lying to you."
"Or maybe they haven't spent any time thinking about killing," Lisbon mumbled.
"Nah, we all have," Jane said lightly. "The difference between a psycho and someone fairly normal is how sadistic the daydream is, how realistic, whether they begin to make plans, begin to research... but we're basically hairless chimpanzees, Lisbon. We all think about those naughty topics we're not supposed to admit to thinking about. Then we lie about what we're thinking about. The lying isn't exactly antisocial in this context. Because everybody thinks about murder, and then lies about it afterwards..."
Lisbon rolled her eyes. Thought of making a sarcastic reply, and bit her tongue.
"Okay, if you were a kid... under what circumstances would you consider killing someone to be justified?"
Lisbon was quiet, thinking. "In self defense?"
Jane was nodding. "Yeah, sure. So if someone came at you or your brothers with a baseball bat or a gun or a knife... you might kill them in the heat of the moment, right?"
"Yes. But I am not sure I'd classify that as murder."
"Right," Jane said, turning left. "Yeah, yeah, it would be self defense. But what if there was no obvious physical threat but you'd been psychologically messed with? Could you kill then? If they were a really bad person? Maybe deserved to die?"
"Jane..." Lisbon sighed, shaking her head. "I don't know."
"I think you could," Jane said obdurately, nodding his head. "I think I could, too."
"Jane, you found a lock of hair that may be linked to one missing child. Murder is a pretty far stretch."
Jane pulled the car into the parking lot, shut off the engine, looked over at Lisbon. "We'll see. Let's see what our friend Elian has to say first, okay?"
He was out of the car before Lisbon could respond, loping towards the entrance doors, charged, on fire, activated. Lisbon followed after him, pushed the doors of the hospital open, let her eyes adjust to the inside lighting and followed after Jane to the elevators.