Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 49)
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, guys.
Wednesday, November 15th, 2013 6:30 pm
It took several hours after Charlotte decided to bite the bullet and talk to the feds, before they were actually there, checked in and awaiting the process Jane mentally referred to as "the interrogation". Charlotte had first eaten two bowls of froot loops, compulsively dividing the cereal up into smaller portions based on the respective color of each loop. Then, each color was eaten all at once, the other loops kept in their individual camps on Lisbon's kitchen table so they didn't get soggy, until all of red was eaten, all of orange, all of yellow, all of green, then blue, then purple…
Jane realized she was going through the colors in the same order as they appeared in the visible light spectrum (of course, Froot Loops' version of purple would have to cover both indigo and violet) and wondered about the importance of this ritual. He wanted to ask her questions, but decided to keep his mouth shut as his daughter ate, eyes distant, mind ruminating over dark and emotionally powerful issues.
Who could blame her for not being a Chatty Cathy right now?
She was so much more and less than a child. A stunted child, but something also, new. Borne of darkness. but not dark herself, not really. Jane watched her from the corner of his eye, studying her, trying not to be obvious about it. Of course, she probably knew he was doing it. She knew a lot more than she let on. He knew that.
If she needed to be a little weirder than normal for a half hour, so be it. Weird, he could handle. Weird was almost fun. Hell, he'd been called weird himself, a time or two...
She chewed, eyes glancing around the kitchen. The kid caught Lisbon's eyes, and every time, Lisbon smiled, the over-bright smile she usually reserved for Jane himself when he had gotten himself messed up and carted to the hospital.
Chew, chew, chew. God, she was a loud chewer. Jane took another sip of tea, scanned her face for the umpteenth time.
Chew, chew, chew... a dribble of milk down the sullen curve of her chin. Wiped away hastily with the mangled hand. Messy, unbrushed, golden curls. Thick lashes, like a doll's. A face much younger than her date of birth dictacted, but eyes so, so much older...
No doubt she was terrified. How could she not be? He was.
He'd woken that morning with a tightness in his chest and a dull ache in his guts, a feeling of pressure in his head, of breathlessness. A thought had come into his mind like a phantom, something about him as a kid, doubled over, hands on his knees, gasping and puffing on an asthma inhaler while the smell of peanuts and churros and hot cigarette smoke curled around his crumped form, but as far as he could consciously remember, he'd never had asthma.
The memory... if that is what it was... lodged in his mind like a bad after-taste, and there was nowhere in the puzzle of his mind to connect it to any other piece. But the antsy feeling continued, the gaspiness, the feeling of losing air.
Oh yeah, he was terrified. Not the physical terror of a panic attack... this was more existential, more thought-based, aside from the asthma symptoms.
Emotions shut down after a certain point. But the fear remained over him, distant and cold, like a pall. Hard to describe, and disconcerting.
(Get it together, Tricky boy...)
He didn't like to admit that to himself. That he couldn't shake this premonition away. It bobbed and came up for air, over and over, weak but determined, this premonition of dread, of his life about-to-be-shattered-into-little-pieces.
The acid in his mouth was lemony.
Jane watched as Charlotte dumped another batch of froot loops into her bowl (green). A quick bite with the spoon, the glint of light on Lisbon's cuttlery, a flash of light of tooth enamel, another slurp and dribble of white milk (God, she ate like a tiny child), chew, chew, crunch...
He was scared of what this interview could do to Charlotte. Terrified of what might be revealed pertaining to his daughter's horrific "upbringing", terrified of what other horrors she might have been forced to participate in. Terrified of what she might have done on her own, and what such admissions to an alphabet soup agency might mean for Charlotte in the future.
Her legal freedom. Her mental freedom… spiritual freedom, even, if they were going the hippy dippy route. They were in a constant mine field.
But what else? What else was mixed up in here, causing all this angst?
Jane didn't know.
So he did what he usually did when deeply distressed, and made himself (another) cup of tea, and sat and bobbed the tea bag while Charlie compulsively finished up her genetically modified garbage and hummed, off key, to herself. Some made-up song, Jane was certain, an auditory stim meant to pacify and soothe, distract her from all that hellish internal noise, the tinnitus that wasn't tinnitus.
As Charlotte was eating, Lisbon showered and dressed, did her make-up, threw some laundry in the washing machine (some jeans and a sweater for Charlotte), dried the clothes with lavender scent beads or something. Jane assumed she was trying to do whatever she could to comfort Charlie, even if she wasn't consciously aware of this fact. Lavender was well known to be a comforting smell, inducing sleep and calm in hyperactive babies.
Too bad Charlie wasn't a baby with a fussy stomach.
Too bad Red John wasn't croup, or colic... or...
And then, suddenly, things sped up, the way they tend to when the inevitable draws closer. Charlotte showered, dried her hair, changed into her clothes, mumbled words to Lisbon in the hall, all in what felt like ten minutes time. She moved fast, almost too fast, nearly hypomanic. No doubt her adrenal glands were pumping out the good stuff now, revving her up for fight or flight.
Lisbon was reading a battered Stephen King while she waited and before Jane knew what was up, Charlie was forcing her feet into her converse sneakers and trying to lace them up with her injured fingers, hissing at herself and her fingers and the laces that wouldn't loosen fast enough.
"Can I help?" Jane said, kneeling down by his daughter, loosening the laces so she could jam her feet in her shoes, then pulling them tight and tying them in little-kid-bows while she watched with her odd, alien eyes. She let him do it, eyes clouded, anxious.
"It's going to be okay, you know. It's going to be alright," Jane said in what he hoped was a comforting fashion. His girl gave him an exhausted nod, but she wasn't confident enough to smile back. Her face was wan, pale. Deeply pensive.
"It will be," Jane pressed, hoping to get that thought through to her. Maybe hoping to convince himself in the process.
Because, some deep part of him doubted it would really be all right.
It had to be all right, though. Had to be. Only outcome he would accept, or could accept.
But how, HOW, could it be all right? How? After everything that had happened, everything that might still happen, or be revealed (the airless feeling, back, a gasp)?
"Do you think if I make it... sort of... a demand of my talking to them, we could get Elian transferred to a nicer facility? Some place that maybe has a chance of really helping him?"
"I don't think it could hurt to ask," Jane said, trying to keep his tone upbeat, like his kid was asking about requesting a movie at Blockbuster back in the day. Keeping calm was important, here. If he let any cracks show, he was pretty sure Charlotte would panic, and if she panicked… who knew what would happen? It wouldn't be pretty.
Jane could imagine a full-scale emotional melt down.
He could imagine a blind panic, running through crowded streets with eyes full of panic, legs moving like pistons like something out of The Terminator or another of her favourite dystopian sci-fi flicks, the only goal being blind, unthinking escape. Who knew what all else?
Maybe a psych committal care of the FBI to a place like Elian was currently holed up in? The FBI had the tendency to think of every problem as a nail. They were the hammers.
Not a nice thought.
Everybody had to stay calm.
Nice and calm, Tricky boy, his mind told him slyly. You just keep the car on the road, for now. If you can, that is...
And then, just like that, they were leaving Lisbon's apartment, and she was locking the deadbolt behind them, seemingly upbeat for real, good old Lisbon, ever the port in the storm...
They marched down the stairs and across the parking lot to the car.
Lisbon unlocked the car's doors with the remote and Jane opened the back door for Charlotte, waited while she scooted inside, then walked slowly to the passenger side and got in, keeping his focus on Charlotte, and her door, her entire general side of the car. Expression deceivingly bland and care-free.
His legs were ready to move into a run if need be.
He half expected the back door to burst open, to have to chase his traumatized kid down the road, maybe wrestle her away from oncoming traffic, something fun like that.
It didn't happen.
Thank God for small wonders.
She sat in the back, carefully buckled herself in as Lisbon started the car.
Jane looked back at her and her pale, sad, stubborn face; smiled what he hoped was a comforting smile at her. She reminded him of a kicked dog in a cage, eyes wary and clouded, but still strangely hopeful.
"Everything is going to be okay. Lisbon and I will be there, unless you ask us to leave. And if we do, we will never be physically that far from you. If you need to stop the interview, just ask whoever is interviewing you to stop, and they will. Okay?" He was babbling. God.
"Yeah," Charlie muttered. Her features didn't relax any.
"You want to listen to the radio?" Jane asked brightly, nodding in the direction of the car's radio and CD player.
"I don't know," Charlie whispered, and shrugged. "If you do, okay."
Jane turned the radio on, scanned until he found some upbeat sounding pop station and turned the volume up just enough that the sound would create a pleasant background soundtrack.
"Is Elian still alive?" Charlotte asked softly from the back. Lisbon started the car.
It took Jane a moment to respond.
"Elian? Yes. Of course. Why did you ask that?" Lisbon shot him a warning look.
"If he died, you would tell me?" Lisbon pulled out of the parking lot...
"Yes. Yes, Charlotte. Of course I would."
"You promise?" Charlotte asked, squinting her eyes at her father.
"I promise. Elian is not dead. He is troubled and he is confused and really scared, I think, but he is very much physically alive." Jane kept his tone light. He was good at keep his tone light, but his pulse beat hard in the side of his head.
The car was moving now.
They would be at the FBI office Jane had been directed to in maybe twenty minutes, and Charlotte was delving into hypothetical scenarios involving the deaths of loved ones. Great. Good start.
And then, before he could change the course of the conversation, she was silent, lost in whatever thoughts were being bandied about in her brain and memories. Jane let her be.
Let himself be.
Let Lisbon drive, and as she did, he studied the road, and the landmarks, just in case he had to double back later, or go tracking his kid, or whatever...
The FBI "office" was located in a generic, squat concrete "professional" building in the middle of downtown Sacramento, a building with lots of windows and outlined with shrubbery, the generic kind of small leafy bush that seemed to blend in with everything and was ubiquitous in central California.
Jane thought the shrubs here were probably Japanese Boxwood or Texas Privet, but he didn't really care and supposed most people coming here probably didn't, either.
Bland, green bushes to even out the gray of the sidewalk and the brick buildings, add a bit of color. They were perfunctory, almost, like red apples drawn in a 6-year-old's drawing of a "tree", something that was there because it was expected.
The expected was blessedly soothing, when you'd lived a life of unpredictability, and he smiled at the bushes, gratefully. Lisbon caught his eyes, gave him a "what's up" sort of look and he shook his head fast, dismissing her unspoken question. Yes, Lisbon. I'm fine. No biggie.
Charlotte moved fast, almost like she meant to burst into a run, as soon as the car stopped and she could get free from it and the oppressive seat belt.
Jane gently reached out, tugged at her, at the back of her shirt (she was wearing a clean long-sleeved purple sweater and black tights without holes or rips, the most "professional" attire she owned, care of Lisbon's expert ad hoc mothering), and she startled, jumped a little, but stopped.
Looked at her father with a spooked look on her face, a deer in the headlights look.
"Slow down. Okay? Let's just slow down. No need for us to run." Jane used his most soothing voice, but the effect was lost on Charlotte, except for an air of irritation, a shake of the frazzled head.
Dad was clearly being obtuse.
"I'm not running."
"Practically," Jane pressed, meeting her eyes.
"Let your adrenal glands relax a bit, if that is possible. Okay? Walk slowly. Talk slowly. And breathe. Look at the shrubs. Do you know any shrub names?"
"I know how to breathe, Patrick," Charlotte muttered as they mounted the front steps and entered the building's lobby, a prosaic seating area with beige stuffed chairs and a low coffee table that looked like something stolen from a pottery barn catalogue, large fish tank along one wall with a huge- was that a goddamn catfish?- stationed at one end of the tank, watching comers and goers, movers and shakers.
Jane eyed the fish as they passed, and it stared right back at him with its dispassionately lidless eyes, a sort of grouchy, curmudgeony but strangely wise look on its cold-blooded face, as if it were ancient beyond human ability to comprehend, and had great wisdom to impart to him. The human.
Don't let the spooks and the g-men upstairs totally destroy your daughter's sanity, eh? You only have one daughter, Patrick. Daughters are precious pearls from heaven, so easily lost, and destroyed, and hurt…. You keep her safe, you hear me? Keep her safe Keep her saaaaaafffeeee-
"Thanks, Meister Eckhart," Jane murmured at the fish, and Lisbon shot him a look, somewhere between concern and amusement.
"What was that?"
"Yeah, nothing. Just making friends with the catfish."
"Right. Of course. The catfish."
They neared a bank of elevators along one wall, a faux-wood panel beside the elevators indicating who and what resided on which floors, behind which doors, in this particular professional building of secrets and murder and foot diseases.
Charlotte scanned the list of names and numbers.
An Acupuncturist, a Psychiatrist, a Podiatrist, on floor three there was an "FBI violent crime field office".
Charlotte nodded her head toward the entry.
"This one?"
Jane nodded back.
Charlotte hit the "up" triangle, stood back and waited. There was the classic "ding" and the doors of an elevator several over from them opened. Elevator whack-a-mole. They walked to it, stepped in, and Jane hit the button for the third floor.
The doors slid shut, smooth as silk.
Jane had already explained to Charlotte that she could ask for the interview to be stopped, if she was getting upset. Or for a break.
And there would be short breaks of several minutes duration every quarter hour. He and Lisbon, both, could be in the interview room with her, or only one of them, and if she needed it, she could ask either or both of them to leave.
Jane had asked Charlotte to promise that, no matter what, no matter what came up or how upset she got, no matter what was revealed during the interview, that she would tell the truth and, as a secondary request, not run from the building or ditch them physically or otherwise "disappear".
Running off was a big no-no.
No matter what.
He didn't want a repeat of her AWOL stunt at the CBI, especially if she was highly upset and not thinking clearly.
He didn't want her decompensating after going through any questioning that would be essentially re-traumatizing, and being alone in that state. Moreover, He didn't want her getting hit by a car or a bike… or worse.
Red John was dead, but Red John- as they all knew too well- had followers. He had people who had been brainwashed to do his bidding, and his bidding could very well continue to be enacted after his physical death. In that sense, he very much lived on through his minions.
The idea that his bidding might consist of someone abducting a panicked and distraught Charlotte fleeing the FBI field office wasn't outside the realm of possibility. It would be easy enough to foresee that Charlie might bolt from this interview. That sort of prediction didn't need a Sherlock Holmes to figure out, or a Patrick Jane.
She had developed quite the avoidant personality during her formative years with Red John, and she had definite emotional trigger buttons.
Pretty basic assumption, there.
You didn't need to be a mentalist to figure out which buttons were triggered by various situations.
So, no running away.
She'd be a target today, of all days.
Jane had made the adolescent promise several times.
He'd gone over his wishes (demands, really, but softened with his best Jane smiles) until she almost seemed her age and rolled her eyes at him in irritation, which earned her a toothy grin from her father.
Why? She had asked him the first time he made her promise not to run off, and he had stared at her with a concerned, paternal gaze until she looked at her shoes guiltily, as if she just uttered words indicative of a psychotic break or admitted to shoplifting...
Why?!
Then his mind had become really obsessive, inflamed by her apparent lack of self-protective fear. How vulnerable she was. So fucking vulnerable!
She didn't see her own vulnerability, or couldn't. End result was the same.
Now, in the elevator, he reiterated his conditions.
"Remember… no running off. Remember why, Kiddo. This is important. You can get upset without running away. Because, if you do, you could be putting yourself in danger. It might not feel like it at the time, but you could be in danger if you take off today, so remember what we talked about, right? Charlie?"
Take it down a notch...
She nodded her head solemnly.
He knew she meant to comply.
Still, he didn't fully trust that she wouldn't be overtaken by extreme emotions. He'd have to speak to the FBI guys about locking the interview room. Just in case. At least the front door.
And then, diiiing, they were there and a disembodied, mechanical and vaguely female voice told them they were on the "third floor". They stepped out of the elevator, saw a sign on the wall proclaiming "FBI violent crime offices" and a large arrow indicating the general direction of said offices, in case reading numbers on doors was beyond one's abilities.
"I thought these guys had their own building, and didn't have to share with other people," Charlotte whispered to her father.
"They have headquarters, which are entirely their own, and field offices all over, and then offices in various buildings," Jane said, turning left. Charlotte walked after him, and Lisbon behind her, in case the kid still decided to bolt, hemming her in, a mentalist in front and a CBI agent bringing up the rear with their precious, stroppy, petulant cargo bobbing along between them…
They found the right office, marked by a smaller sign, and entered.
A small waiting room and a desk closed off, a woman behind the desk in front of a lap top. Bland sort of place, nothing fancy, nothing prestigious and polished like Hollywood liked to present as the ef-bee-eye special. Even the carpets looked a bit worn.
Damn funding cuts.
There was a smell of something like carpet cleaner in the air, something musty under that. A faint whiff of cigarette smoke, from someone who didn't pay close attention to posted "no smoking" signs and still thought it was the 80's.
The receptionist at the computer looked over at them, smiled in that bland, bored way professional people have when they don't really want to be polite but are paid to be just that, that mechanical smile that comes from smiling as a matter of routine.
"Mister Jane?" She asked Jane with caffeinated indifference. He nodded.
"I'll just tell them you're here," she continued, picking up a phone. Charlotte gave her father a nervous look, like… maybe the phone wasn't really a phone.
Maybe it was a bomb.
Maybe…
Different possible scenarios- all bad and violently horrific-swamped her conscious mind. Jane saw it happen, saw the microfacial expressions that indicated stress, saw her pupils bloom in the halogen office light in instant response to a new flood of stress hormones.
Trauma was so much fun, wasn't it?
Jane sought out her eyes, found them with his own. Held her electric green gaze, now more electric, more charged, than he had ever seen it. He could practically see little sparks shooting out of those eyes.
Calm down, he mouthed to her.
Even Angela hadn't had eyes so brightly green; so much like a cat's shining in the night. Maybe she had some sort of mutated gene when it came to eye colour.
"It'll be okay, remember?" His words felt cheap and too easy, even to himself. He half-hated himself for saying them, for how easy and bland they sounded, how predictable. Something from a sitcom airing a special episode about some petty drama of the week. Christ.
She shrugged, but the shrug was perfunctory and more than he deserved.
"Won't it be all right, Lisbon?" Jane said brightly, darting a friendly smile over Lisbon's way, including her in the family fun.
Lisbon nodded immediately, smiled at Jane, smiled even more widely at Charlotte. What she hoped was a friendly, comforting smile. Not desperate. Not hiding fear.
Not a grimace.
Lisbon deeply hoped Charlotte couldn't see her own anxiety and fear hiding in that smile. That smile that felt much too large for her face.
She had used it on Jane a few times, when she thought he was a hair's breadth from going off the deep end.
Frazzled Lisbon smile, on too little caffeine, was Jane's unspoken name for that look.
"Of course. Everything is going to be fine. We're here, and we're not going anywhere. Nothing we can't handle."
"Yeah," Charlotte murmured. Not convinced.
"They already know a lot, you know. You just need to fill in the blanks," Jane continued, pulling the conversation back from Lisbon, before realizing how stupid his remark was. The blanks could be almost anything. A lot of badness could live in those blanks, a lot of nightmares, of tears and pain.
Blanks made up horror novels. They made up true crime books. Autopsy reports.
But what could one say to a kid in this situation, that was honest, and reassuring, when there was so much darkness and evil involved? Silence felt even worse.
Silence felt like neglect.
Jane considered his options. At one time, if he had been asked, he would have said he was charming, and reassuring, and able to put even the most psychologically messed-up individual into a calm head space. Comfort a distraught teenage girl? That would have been child's play in his pre-returned-Charlotte days. No problemo. Teenage girls were predictable and easy to toy with.
Teenage girls were a cinch to mentalize. They had minds more predictable than silicone valley traders, and that was saying a lot.
But that was before Charlotte had returned...
These days, he felt like he was losing his psychological Midas touch. He was too emotionally close to Charlotte to be useful, and he physically resembled her tormentor too much to be confident using hypnosis and manipulation tactics on her. Charlie herself knew a lot of those same psychological tricks -maybe even some new ones he had never 'learned'- and knew how to avoid being pulled along into peace and calm.
Even when it was in her own best self-interest.
And she was damned near impossible to comfort.
And she acted dumb, quite often, lulling Jane into a comforting amnesia of her true capabilities. Dumb was her shield. "Vacant" was her body armor.
He'd gone through the options over and over in his head.
His kid was immune to most forms of comfort. She knew explicitly how much lying was involved in comforting distraught people, and she knew that being comfortable could make you weak, and being weak could very quickly make you dead.
Her modus operandi since she'd been taken seemed to be staying alive at all costs. Which Daddy Jane was head over heels thankful for. But it meant his usual way of doing things was off the table.
It meant she was always playing mental chess with her emotions and her comments.
It meant in the most basic ways, she was unpredictable. And that made her hard to analyze, and manipulate.
Still... Jane felt more and more like he was losing his abilities.
More and more, the comments out of his mouth tasted like warmed-over shit, sounded like shit, hung in the air like shit.
Like that last one: just fill in the blanks.
Shit. Total dog shit.
"Yeah," Charlotte muttered, quieter than before, and Jane regretted opening his mouth.
Then, suddenly, there was a presence, and a woman in her late thirties was standing near the closed gate that divided the waiting room from the rest of the offices. Coming up to join her from down the hall was a younger agent, a man.
"Patrick Jane? Charlotte?" The female agent had a deep, intelligent voice, was tall, thin. Not model thin or actress thin, but runner thin, the type of thin that told Jane immediately that she controlled her body and her diet and did crunches before eating breakfast, but was physically strong and toned. Brunette.
Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail and she was wearing a dark gray pantsuit, white dress shirt under it. Feminine without being girly.
Possibly she had ulcers. If she was anything like Lisbon (and superficially, at least physically, she seemed to be) she'd suffer stress-related migraines. Probably had a bout of anorexia as an adolescent... she had the posture and body language of a professional woman, fighting in a good old boy's game and getting by, but not without taking some hits...
Superficially, she reminded Jane of Lisbon, and Jane postulated she had been chosen to interview Charlotte for precisely this reason. The FBI would know his kid had been around Lisbon for weeks, and they would not be out of line to think that Lisbon might have earned a little of Charlotte's trust.
Smart move on their part, and one Jane was immensely thankful for, even if it was manipulative. And if it was that blatantly obvious to him, Charlie would see it for what it was immediately.
Standing next to the Lisbon doppelgänger was another fed, younger by about five years, dressed in dress pants, a white rumpled dress shirt.
His jacket was missing, and his face was prematurely lined. He had kind, sad eyes. Puppyish eyes. Hair was dark blond, but prematurely graying at the temples, like someone who had seen a particularly brutal shock and whose hair had changed overnight in protest.
Jane was reminded of a character from Twin Peaks, a man whose hair went shock-white in a single episode. This guy had that shocked-as-shit vibe, too. It was the sort of personality quirk most people warmed to.
The younger agent, despite the fine lines and the gray hair, had a decidedly baby face, chubby cheeks. Jane knew instantly that when this guy was stressed, he binged on chocolate bars from the candy machine in the downstairs lobby. Jane pegged him as a Snickers guy, maybe a Mars guy… something with some chew to it, something to sink his teeth into when his nervous system told him he should run or fight and there were no monsters locked up to play punching bag with.
Guy had too much cortisol in his system, was on his way, no doubt, to developing type 2 diabetes.
Maybe already had a glucometer and was supposed to test after meals.
All of these observations Jane made in a matter of seconds. Charlotte blinked at them both, and Jane knew in that moment, she was done analyzing them, too.
Jane nodded immediately at the sound of his name. Stood up and walked over to the field agents, extended his hand for a shake.
"I'm agent Bennett and this is agent Michaels," the woman said, shaking Jane's proffered hand. Jane noticed the shake. Not too strong or weak a grasp, not sweaty but no indication of talc, no tremors. All good signs.
They needed someone outwardly soft and inwardly strong, here.
The man offered Jane his hand, then, and shook. Slightly weaker grip, a hint of a tremor in it. Oh yeah, this guy took his work home. Probably had stomach issues. Probably invested quite a bit in Pepto Bismal and antacids. He gave a shit about his job, maybe too much, and it was affecting his nervous system, but he wasn't a danger or a liability, not that Jane could see.
Jane was pretty sure he wouldn't be in the interview room; he wasn't confident enough.
But he wasn't a psychopath. Maybe he had been picked precisely because he exuded anxious strain.
Psychopaths were glib and charming and didn't get stress-ulcers or relive gory crime scene photos at 2 am in the shower, bent over and sobbing with their suits still on. They didn't throw up their lunches in corn fields when taking samples from child corpses. Their hair didn't go prematurely gray from stress, because they didn't feel stress the same way as non-psychopaths.
They were narcissists, and only gave a shit about themselves.
This guy was obviously no psychopath. Good call.
Another smart move on the part of the FBI. They were moving in for the win, playing the board well.
Jane continued to analyze the agents as Lisbon got up from her chair to shake hands and exchange pleasantries and do the Lisbon social thing.
Last came Charlotte, dragging her feet against the low-pile worn-out carpet of the waiting room floor like a much younger child. She stuck a small, caffeinated hand out and shook hands like the adults, mumbled an indistinct, perfunctory "Charlotte" and stared at the floor.
"So, are you guys going to come back with us, or," Bennett started, looking at Jane and Lisbon, but before she could say anymore, Charlotte spoke up.
"Yes. They come." That was an order. Jane grinned. Shot a grin to Lisbon.
"You want them in the interview room, Charlotte?" Bennett said, looking at the girl, trying to meet the girl's eyes. Which was impossible, because Charlotte was staring at the floor.
She nodded, though.
"At least until I can see it properly." Said as an afterthought. An admission of her lack of trust.
"Okay, that's probably the best idea. Then we can discuss what the interview will be like, and go over any questions you might have before we start, with your Dad and Lisbon there. Does that sound good?"
Jane couldn't make out his kid's response. It sounded like "hummo", but couldn't have been. I don't know? I dunno? Something like that.
Nice work, Charlie. You keep them guessing. Great enunciating, kiddo...
"You look an awful lot like Teresa Lisbon, my father's partner at the CBI," Charlotte said then, words clear. Said for all to hear. Jane bit his cheek to keep the bark of laughter in.
"I do? Oh, thank you. Lisbon is very pretty," Bennett said, throwing a smile to both Lisbon and Jane as she opened the dividing door and ushered them into the office area. Jane smiled back at the fed, delighted in the exchange. Charlotte followed behind Bennett and Michaels, and Lisbon and Jane brought up the rear, just in case, even now, Charlie decided to run for it.
They passed a few closed office doors.
"I think maybe you were chosen to interview me because you are female and look so much like Lisbon," Charlotte continued on as they marched down to the interview room.
Subtle, Charlie.
Jane grinned back at Lisbon, who looked to be biting the inside of her cheek.
"You do? That's an interesting theory," Bennett replied.
"I think that is probably the reason why. In addition to you being a skilled interviewer and no doubt highly manipulative."
Michaels, walking beside the older agent, let out a short bark of laughter and threw a look back at Jane and Lisbon. Jane nodded at him.
They turned a corner and Bennett motioned them towards a room with the door already open. Jane could see two couches inside, two stuffed chairs and a low coffee table in the middle.
There was a box of kleenex tissues on the coffee table. Too presumptuous, and it would irk his kid. There was a large tropical plant with dust on its leaves in the corner, and a large stuffed teddy bear sitting on one of the couches with a somewhat stupid expression on its face.
Dropped-on-its-head-at-birth-Teddy. Fetal-alcohol-syndrome-Teddy. Trisomy-21-teddy.
On one wall was a one-way mirror, and there was a small, black camera blinking its silent red light up in the corner of the room, which meant, Jane thought, that they were already recording. No doubt there was a larger video camera set up behind the one-way mirror, ready to record everything Charlotte might say, every precious word.
She was a forensic gold mine and the FBI had gold rush fever.
Jane could see scuff marks on the linoleum flooring where furniture had recently been moved and the walls were gray painted cinder block, which meant, to Jane, that the place was usually more interrogatory and had been given a face-lift for the adolescent's benefit. Not much of a face lift, but in a world of serial killers and genocide, you took what you could get.
"Here we are," Bennett said, ushering them inside. The federal agent motioned with her head at the couches, the chairs.
"You guys can sit wherever you want."
Jane moved over to one of the couches, was pleased when Lisbon sat beside him. Charlotte considered her options. Finally picked the couch with the brain damaged teddy bear.
Bennett sat in the stuffed chair facing Charlotte.
Michaels remained in the doorway.
"Michaels is going to be manning the video camera in the back room," Bennett said, looking first at Charlotte, then at Lisbon, then Jane.
Charlotte pointed at the one-way mirror. Bennett nodded.
And with that, Michaels gently closed the door. Jane had an instant memory of watching a mummy movie as a child, and the sound of a lid being put on a sarcophagus. The air conditioning was suddenly much too cold, the air suddenly felt sour.
Wednesday, November 15th, 2013 7:24 pm
Charlotte was fidgeting. They had just sat down, really, and already she was picking at an errant shoelace, pulling the plastic end off, the aglet, ripping that apart, flicking the remaining plastic onto the floor...
They started with small talk.
How was the drive?
Did they have trouble finding the place?
Jane answered, then Lisbon, keeping the mood as bright and non-threatening as possible.
But Charlie wasn't fooled. She stared at her shoe and pick, pick, picked the aglet to smithereens before moving on to its twin.
"Okay, usually when we talk to kids, we ask if they want anything like a water or a juice or anything. Would you like a drink?" That was Bennett. Michaels was long gone, to man the video camera.
The kid shrugged.
"I'll have a tea," Jane said brightly. "Whatever you have. But herbal, please."
"I'll have a coffee," Lisbon said. There was silence.
"I'm going to have a Pepsi, myself," Bennett said cheerfully, trying to engage the kid.
Charlotte muttered something.
"Sorry, I didn't hear you," Bennett said.
"I said they use aborted fetal tissue in labs to come up with flavor enhancers for Pepsi products," Charlotte disclosed, craning her head up, meeting the agent's eyes. Bennett wasn't fazed. She'd expected something like this.
Lisbon smiled a little too wide at that, remembering back to her first few days with Charlotte. Jane nodded thoughtfully, as if that was a perfectly normal comment in response to a drink inquiry. Why not?
"So not a Pepsi, then? What do you want, Charlotte?" Jane prompted after the pause became far too pregnant.
"Grape soda," Charlie said, playing along. Bennett nodded, and got up. Left the room. Jane sought out his kid's eyes.
He wanted to say so much to her, but what could he say that wouldn't sound lame? Lisbon saved him.
"She seems pretty nice," Lisbon said, and Charlotte nodded at that, a dainty sort of nod. Nice, sure. Nice.
And then Bennett was back, propping the door open. Another agent was there, and she brought the drinks inside, put them on the little table, closed the door, sat back down.
Like they were going to play a game of Uno, or something. Everybody ready to start the game?
Jane picked up his teacup, and Lisbon took her coffee. The little rituals that keep us sane.
If we can hold onto your sanity, that is.
If you're too far gone, the rituals tend to spin out the other end of the black hole, and make you even crazier.
What else was OCD? Charlie considered her thoughts, considered just telling all of them she didn't want to talk about Red John and that was that, and what could they do about it? She wasn't a criminal. Was she? So why was she forced to sit here and answer questions, like some convict? Some murdering scumbag?
Because, she was a murdering scumbag.
Sure, they were all being nice to her, now. But how quickly would that change, if she told them everything she had done, everything Red John had made her participate in, what he'd done to her, how damaged she was... Jane knew a lot of it. More than half.
But she'd sort of stretched the truth with Jane, too. Red John's hand hadn't been on the knife when she'd killed Beatrice. She made herself believe it, but deeper, she knew it wasn't true.
She'd killed that living doll on her own.
She'd killed Beatrice all on her own, because the kid was crying and yelling and carrying on and Red John was getting pissed, and who knew what he would do to her if that sort of idiotic crying continued? She wasn't even tied up, the Bumblebee, but still she sat in a chair, just cowering and crying, pathetic, not even daring to run. Whining like a kicked dog. And Red John was getting that hungry look in his eyes, that look like a cat getting ready to play with a mouse.
Red John had disturbing appetites. Much more than torture and murder. The unspeakable things worse than pain and death.
Her head had been thudding. The floor sped away from her, miles away. Micropsia, it was called.
And Charlotte had stood up, flustered, irritated, heart thudding hard, and gone to Red John's desk where his knife was, and grabbed it before either of them knew what was up.
She'd grabbed his knife, and gone over to the kidnapped girl, and meant to threaten her into silence... but the knife had... slipped. Slipped? Surely it had been just a slip, an accident. An accident. Right into the little girl's belly.
BOOM.
Surely an accident. Right?!
It had felt like stabbing a rubber doll filled with jello...with only half the recommended water. Too-thick jello. A bit of resistance and then so much give.
But it had slipped... or had it?
No, not really.
It hadn't really slipped.
Had it?
Charlie had stabbed the kid, head throbbing, mind screaming swears and demands to SHUT UP. Because... she didn't know why.
The screaming and tears.
So much like she had been, once upon a time.
Screams and tears and that pathetic-mewling-kicked-baby-animal noise, the whining that was worst of all and
so damned weak, and if not, if she hadn't,
then Red John would
do it.
Or something
much
worse.
There were worse things than dying.
She hadn't meant to stab the kid.
No, she had meant to.
On some level.
But she didn't want to do it...
Except,
maybe
she had... because the girl was so damned innocent,
and innocence was always destroyed.
And once she started, worst of all, she lost control.
The knife had come out, covered in red paint (except it wasn't red paint, oh no, it definitely wasn't red pain) like in an old horror movie, and she'd been unable to stop.
The knife had gone back in, and then she'd been in a frenzy, stabbing over and over and over and over and over and over and laughing and crying all the while.
Until Red John came behind her, and closed his arms around her belly and finally got control of the knife and pulled her away.
She'd had fine blood spray on her face then, a snotty, streaming face. And Red John had his hands on the knife, then. She was laughing. He was humming to her like she was a nutcase, saying "shhh", shushing her, in a strange sort of psychiatrist mode, therapist mode.
Acting like SHE was the nutcase.
Which she was.
Then.
Only after the girl's guts were hanging out all over the damned place. Then his hand was on the knife, to pull it away, and clean up the terrible, terrible mess she had made.
How could she tell them that in the moment, when the blood and adrenaline was pumping, when she'd been laughing and crying and stabbing in a frenzy, part of her had felt a sweet release, like steam being let out of a pressure cooker?
And how could she tell them that some time along the way, she'd stopped being so disgusted by the idea of killing, that it had even begun to seem interesting, exciting? That by the time she was ten and looked a mere seven, if she saw someone on the street who she thought was a pervert or a kiddie fiddler, she had dreams and fantasies of following him home (it was almost always a 'him', the people who looked like the fiddlers), tying him up, torturing him... no, she couldn't say that.
She couldn't say that she began to fall asleep to torture fantasies.
Thoughts of peeling the skin off fiddler's faces while they were still alive, leaving their pervert eyes gawking in the eye holes like cheap extras from a B horror movie? Ping pong ball eyes and Karo blood?
That these fantasies were not just for catharsis, but that some part of her was beginning to see Red John's way of thinking, to not only empathize with him but identify with him, too?
Maybe he really was her father, her real father.
Red John had planted a seed in her, and watered it, and some time or other, she realized she did want to kill.
Maybe.
How could she tell them that? Law-abiding Lisbon and her poor, sweet, strangely naive father (for all his manipulative skills) who was scared of guns, the FBI who thought they were alphabet soup super heroes saving the day from degenerates?
They'd lock her up and throw away the key.
How could she tell them that a part of her loved Red John, as sick as he was, as perverted and depraved as he was? Part of her loved his power, his voice, his cologne, the glint of intensity and intelligence he got in his eyes, especially when he was planning something.
Or the equally bright glint of interest in his eyes when she said or did something that caught his attention. How, after a while, she'd stopped struggling with the philosophical quandary of whether killing in all its forms was moral or just and had, instead, lapsed into a strange sort of dream-state, a desire to just kill already? That the horror wasn't there, by that point, but what was there, now, was a strange sort of insistent hunger?
All the damned time, a gnawing need in her soul?
She could imagine, then, they would no longer view her as a victim, or a survivor, or anything with any ounce of goodness in it.
She would quickly stop being poor little Charlie and become seen as damaged beyond repair, at best.
She'd killed a little girl. Snapped.
But still. She'd done it.
Jane was going to be disgusted, that much she knew. Maybe better to get it out with.
The Christians said, confession was good for the soul...
Charlotte picked up her can of grape crush, popped the tab, took a loud slurp and held it in her lap. Her head was spinning. She felt dizzy and weak in the knees. In her mind, and her memories, she could hear Red John telling her that that dizzy, weak feeling was the birth of need.
It felt uncomfortable, just like hunger pangs did, until it was acknowledged. Those who called it panic, or dread, or fear, had simply never followed the emotion through to the other side of the dream. They weren't brave enough to follow dark thoughts through to completion.
"Okay, so I thought we would start at the beginning," Bennett said, taking a little too-deep of an inhalation, snapping Charlie out of her thoughts.
"What do you remember about the night... Red John... do you prefer I call him Red John?"
Jane winced, despite himself. Charlotte nodded.
"You can call him whatever you want, as long as you don't call him my Dad," Charlotte said dully. Another slurp of grape soda.
Jane felt himself cringe this time, and felt Lisbon beside him, could feel her compassion for him. He caught her eyes and found strength in them. A port in the storm.
"Why would I call him your dad?" Bennett asked, tone neutral.
"Because sometimes he said he was. He said he and... my real dad, Patrick... were twins and identical, so there is no way to tell by a DNA test who is really my father. And that he had relations with my mother. And that I was really his." Charlotte was peering into the hole in her soda can.
"He said my mother knew, on some level, that he wasn't Patrick. When he was with her, you know, having...relations. But he said that she was stupid and a drunk, so maybe she didn't know." Charlotte's words were uniformly bland.
She was discussing peanut butter brands. What to watch on Netflix. Such indifference to pain.
"Do you think... Red John was your father?" Bennett asked, voice professional. They were falling into a rhythm, a back and forth. Charlotte was good at giving and speaking, at least on the surface.
Jane was still, watching, as was Lisbon. Finally Charlotte shrugged. Was unable to look up.
"I dunno."
"What would you like?" Bennett asked, and the adolescent stared at the agent in confusion, furrowed her brow.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, did some part of you wish Red John was your father? Is that why you never tried to contact Patrick?"
Charlotte stared at Bennett, looked over at Jane, back to the woman agent. Jane felt a burst of anger in his chest, a desire to interrupt the interview. But if he did that, things might escalate in a not-nice way. Better to get this little formality over and done with.
He kept silent. Waited. He could always jump in if he had to.
"I don't know," Charlotte said eventually, sounding defeated. She couldn't meet any of their eyes.
"That must be very confusing for you," Bennett said, soothingly, more therapist than agent of the bureau, now. Charlotte nodded quickly. Still refused to make eye contact.
The compassion would be ending soon enough.
Soon enough, they wouldn't be able to lock her up quickly enough. It wouldn't be like Elian in his sweet little loony bin where he still got to watch cartoons in the common room with his drugged-out fellow inmates and drink that pink strawberry milk shit.
No. They'd send her someplace much worse, something underground that reeked of piss, with no natural sunlight, and... she chewed on her lip and imagined scenes from the all the worst horror movies.
Maybe fry her in the electric chair, or whatever they did to kids in California.
Jane took a sip of his tea, and sat, waiting, body language conveying someone alert, and calm, and engaged. Charlotte's words were bland, but her eyes were far away, lost in some inner dialogue and she was looking at her shoes.
"Patrick, have you heard any of this before?" Bennett said, eyeing Jane carefully now, before looking over to Lisbon. Jane nodded sadly. So much pain in them. Bennett probably only saw the surface pain. She couldn't see much more than that, not without his sort of early training.
"Okay, so... at the beginning, right from the beginning, Red John told you he was your father?"
"Sometimes he did, and sometimes he said I was his student and that Patrick had given me to him because he no longer wanted me. It wasn't consistent. But Red John in general wasn't consistent, at least not obviously."
"Can you tell me what that means?" Bennett prodded. Charlotte sucked in a breath and seemed to count to five. Gathered strength, or stalled. Who could tell?
"If you were to print out everything he said, verbally, and you went through it all with a fine-toothed comb, a lot of it contradicted other things he said. He verbally contradicted himself all the time, at least, on the surface."
"Verbally but not... in other ways?"
"If you study body language long enough, you begin to notice certain trends with certain people," Charlotte said said softly, still staring at her shoes. "For instance, when I am uncomfortable, I tend to look down and away. Like now. I tend not to make the best eye contact at the best of times, but that eye contact drops to about zero percent when I am uncomfortable."
"And you are uncomfortable right now?" Bennett said, glancing over at Jane, at Lisbon. Charlotte nodded. Head still down.
"Of course I am."
"Why?"
It was a stupid question to ask. Charlotte smiled to herself, a sullen, bitter sort of smile.
"Because I know what sorts of questions are coming."
Jane watched his kid. Wished she would look up and catch his eyes, take some strength from them, but she was walling herself off.
"He called you his student?" Bennett tried, analyzing the teen's words. Charlotte nodded.
"Did he say what that meant? You being his student?"
"He wanted to teach me the tricks of the trade."
"What trade is that, Charlotte?"
Charlotte made a circular movement with her hand. "Family business, he said. You know. Blood and offal."
"Awful?"
"O-F-F-A-L. Offal. The killing business."
Bennett stopped, looked over at Jane. His face was a neutral mask. Years of practice. Lisbon nodded in sympathy.
"You were supposed to learn how to kill people?" The FBI agent's tone was carefully light.
Charlotte slurped from her soda can again, leaned over and put the can down on the little table. Jane could see her throat bob as she swallowed.
"Learn how to, and learn how to be good at it."
"Okay. How old were you when he told you this?"
"Right after... after he killed my mother. And brought the... doll... whatever it was... up. The fake me."
"The doll?"
"The dead girl," Charlotte corrected, peering into her lap. "It wasn't a doll. I just pretended it was a doll. I'd rather it was a doll. I call them dolls."
"Them?" Bennett pressed.
"Dead kids. You know... dead children."
"Do you remember how old you were then?"
"''Bout six, almost. Right after I was taken... you know. Kidnapped."
"Did you see what happened to your mother?" Bennett asked, wasting no time.
"That... I think I told you guys about that," Jane interjected. "And I thought we weren't going over those specific details?"
"I'd still like Charlotte to answer, if she can," Bennett said, not unkindly, eyes holding Jane's while he tried to process what to say. Jane nodded stiffly.
He felt Lisbon squeeze his hand, a small reminder of comfort in the cold room with the recycled air and fluorescent track lights.
"Sort of. But... sort of... it's blurry in parts. I already told Patrick before, like he said."
"That's okay. Can you tell me what you do remember?"
Charlotte was now tracing little lines on the top of the soda can with her finger, shoulders hunched.
"I came into my parents room. Red John was there. It was late at night. My mother was upset. Red John wanted her to drink some milk he had. Said it would be easier."
" At one point she told me to run, I think. Then Red John... either broke her neck or strangled her. His hands went around her neck. There was a cracking, popping, splitting sort of noise which seemed very loud to me at the time, but I didn't stay around to watch what happened after that, and I am not sure if anybody else was there, if they would have thought it sounded as loud as I did."
Charlotte sucked in a breath, continued with her monologue.
"I ran. I hid under my bed. I think I prayed, but if I did it was an automatic sort of prayer, in my mind and done in a hurry, out of panic. I heard footsteps. Red John came into my room. He looked under my bed. He said hello to me, and he was smiling at me when he said it, and I remember thinking he looked like a wild animal of some sort, like a lion or something, a hungry wolf from an old Germanic fairy tale where bad things can actually happen to little kids... Disney sugarcoats fairy tales, but the original ones were often gory and horrible and scary. Did you know that?" Charlotte stopped, looked at Bennett.
Bennett nodded in agreement. Those Germans certainly knew how to scare kids, all right.
"Then he pulled me out, grabbing me under my armpits, here, and brought me into my mother's room, and showed me her... I guess by then she was technically a corpse, a thing, and no longer my mother by that point. And he asked me to touch her. He wanted me to understand that she was dead, that she was just rotting meat now. To understand the permanence of death, you know?"
Charlotte took a deep breath. She was on autopilot, just the facts, ma'am. She'd disconnected herself, emotionally, from all this.
It was a valuable survival skill when plodding through Hell, to disconnect.
"Can you tell me what you remember then?" Bennett prompted. Charlotte nodded and dove inward.
"Everything seemed black and white to some degree, like an old TV transmission, or if there was color, it was diluted and the saturation was turned down... except for the smiley face on the wall. That looked very, very red; redder than it should have looked. The lamp light was angled on it, but that still doesn't account for how red it appeared."
Jane shifted in his chair, thought back to that crushing night, and seeing the mocking smile himself, and the red of that evil face. Lisbon rubbed his hand in understanding.
"Some time around then Red John cut into her back and he pulled her lungs out and asked me if I thought they looked like wings. I remember thinking at that point that I was losing my mind, or had lost it, or maybe had died myself, and this was Hell, and I had gone to Hell for past sins or something, although those thoughts seemed to come in a hurried jumble, as opposed to clean, independent thoughts. They might not have even been actual thoughts, you know, so much as impressions in a dark mind. Do you understand what I mean?"
Bennett nodded. Charlotte turned to her father. Jane nodded, stiffly. Blinked. Charlotte continued.
"The lungs... then...after the cutting... he tied them up, so they seemed to hang in the air like real wings. At that point they really did look something like wings, actual wings, if wings are pink with a yellow fatty sheen around them and glazed with blood."
Jane felt the room tilt a little, felt his stomach go hard and tighten. A pang of adrenaline in the blood. His mouth was dry and his hands felt cold and wet.
"Then... I think around then I might have peed myself. Maybe earlier. I can't remember clearly. I know around then, I puked. I think I puked anyway. That seems to be in my memory banks. And then Red John had me drink the milk he'd brought for my mother, at that point, and said something about me contaminating the fucking crime scene. Maybe I drank it before he cut her lungs out. I can't remember, exactly. Like I said."
Charlotte picked up the soda, took another sip, but it down on the table carefully.
"After that he brought the doll in. The... you know. The dead doll. You guys know what I mean. To play my part. And he arranged them. And he painted their faces red, with blood he had with him, in a little glass jar. Then he said we were going, and I got scared, even though I felt very fuzzy and warm by then... and for some reason I ran, even though a part of me no longer cared to get away, because it didn't matter anymore, or seem to matter anymore. I didn't really think about it. My body just did it on its own. And I fell down the stairs, and I broke my arm, and the bone came through the skin... and I sort of blacked out around then."
The room was silent. Charlotte, except for being, perhaps, a slighter shade of her previous pale, seemed unaffected by her own testimony.
"Are you feeling okay right now? Would you like to stop?" That was Bennett, concerned about the vacant look in the kid's eyes, and the white blanching of her skin. The lack of blinking.
"There is no need to stop," Charlotte said dully. She leaned over, picked up the can of grape soda once more, took another sip, put it back down. Mechanical.
"That is a lot to process, Charlotte. We can continue if you want, but let me know if you need a break," Bennett said, looking over at Jane and Lisbon for information, then back to the young girl she was interviewing. "Okay?"
"I never need anything like that."
"Like what?"
"Non-essentials. I need oxygen and water and a certain temperature and some basic minerals and vitamins and about 1200 calories a day. And some sleep. Not much else."
"Okay, well if you want to stop, let me know?"
"I want to get this over and done with, if it's all the same to you."
Bennett sighed.
Nobody besides Jane and Lisbon had spoken to Red John's "kid" since her return, and profiles and theories were no match for the reality. The girl was tough, and disconnected, and on autopilot. All of that made sense, given her "upbringing", if one could even call it an upbringing.
Bennett had interviewed crime victims before, but usually they were people who had lived through traumas of a relatively short duration. One time she had spoken to some kids locked up in a makeshift dungeon by a serial killer, and they had been wild-eyed and a bit spacey and speedy, but not completely shut down.
Of course, they'd only been locked up in the dungeon for a week.
Charlotte had been in Red John's clutches for a decade.
Well, shit.
Although... if one knew how to look, even Charlotte wasn't completely shut down.
Her skin was pale from lack of sunlight, and now, probably, an automatic fear response. The skin around her eyelids looked bruised, as if she didn't sleep well. Despite the pale skin, her cheeks looked flushed, as if she was mildly feverish. And she was chewing on her bottom lip and staring at her shoes, arms folded over her belly, one hand picking at the other arm's sleeve. Pick, pick, pick.
Only narcissists and psychopaths could talk about atrocities glibly, without any body language indicative of stress or anxiety. Charlotte sounded bland, but her body language screamed stress.
Bennett glanced down at her watch. They'd been speaking 17 minutes. And barely scratched the surface.
Charlotte answered Bennett's questions. She was almost robotic about it.
She answered questions pertaining to her early life with Red John.
What she could remember of the primary (that was the word she used, "primary") house she lived in.
No, she did not know the address.
No, she did not know the state.
Questions about Red John's "friends". In particular, one freaky man who sounded like he would make an excellent stand-in for Mengele in a world war 2 biopic.
His lessons and schooling of her, not just in exposing her to crimes and violent acts, but personally tutoring her in math, science, history (not the sort of history most children were acquainted with in elementary school, not by a long shot), a special sort of class which was basically a mixture of history and abnormal psychology, which dealt with learning about infamous and lesser-known psychopaths and their "lasting contributions to society".
So-called "ethical" discussions, lectures on philosophy (the usual stuff with regards to Socrates and Plato, Kant and Wittgenstein, interspersed between less-usual excursions into the personal beliefs of such child-friendly Übermenschen as Albert Fish, Caligula and Alleister Crowley).
Anatomy classes.
"Geography" classes, which usually involved lengthy "road-trips" to various parts of the country, culminating, almost always, in the execution of at least one capital felony.
Vocabulary improvement classes.
Piano classes.
Penmanship classes.
The usual elementary schooling, in other words. Haha! Charlotte smiled at herself as she said this.
The usual elementary schooling.
She lifted her eyes enough to see Bennett staring at her, not unkindly, face a mask of clinical detachment, and under that, the emotions that adults try to repress in public, but which come out at night, in the form of nightmares.
From the corner of her eye, in her peripheral vision, she could just make out Lisbon and Jane, ramrod straight, taking everything in, filing the information away (not that much of it was new), in their memories for later consideration.
She forced herself to sit up.
Darted a look over to Jane. His expression was serious, pinched a little, something a little misty about his eyes. Tears? Maybe.
He was sitting there with his suit jacket on his lap, his vest buttoned up, the sleeves of his white dress shirt with the pale gray pinstripes rolled up to the elbows, looking so much like his vile brother that Charlotte had the sudden urge to start screaming and not ever shut up.
She bit the inside of her cheek. Looked at him a little better.
Forced her eyes to focus.
His eyes had a softness and a kindness in them, something Red John's eyes never had.
It was something that words failed to capture, and it was a quality of being that couldn't be faked. Red John had tried, and had never been able to capture that glint of humanity.
No matter how hard he tried, there were some states of being that even master manipulators couldn't fake convincingly. The compassion and grief in Jane's eyes right now were two examples.
"Are you okay, Patrick?" Charlotte asked then.
Jane jerked a little, just a tiny bit. Smiled at her, a somewhat hesitant smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"I'm okay. How are you, Kiddo?"
"I want to get this over with. Please forgive the detachment. I'm sorry if it causes you additional pain. My sense is, it must be painful to hear your kid talking about evil acts in such a detached manner. But it's the only way I can talk about them. It's not even a conscious decision on my part, you understand, but automatic."
"I understand," Jane said. He nodded, as if to convince himself. "Of course I understand." His voice was smooth as silk, his practiced shrink voice. No grit in that voice, no snags. Just one, endless, understanding plane running off into the distance of eternity. Of course he understood. He'd always understand.
Charlotte shut her eyes for a moment. Hearing his voice was like running one's hand over a piece of freshly sanded wood. Warm, smooth, soothing. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-
She could feel her heart beat in her chest. Low, hard. The-THUD. And the thought, came... perhaps she was lapsing into a form of auto-hypnosis.
Wasn't it possible?
The-THUD.
"What if I say something that upsets you?" Her own voice seemed strangely distant. The voice of a character from a TV show with the volume turned down. With her eyes closed, there was red-black, soft, to fall into, to escape into. Dancing phosphenes on the undersides of her eyelids, points of light blooming into existence and dissolving into hazy neon blurs in the red-black, to make friends with.
The lulling, soothing image of a world through closed lids.
"I'll be okay," Jane said immediately. He willed his daughter to open her eyes, so he could get another read on her, but she kept them shut. Maybe it was too hard to maintain emotional distance if she was overstimulated visually...
"Charlotte... do you want to stop for a bit?" Jane asked, carefully neutral. Either Charlotte had hypnotized herself for emotional safety reasons, or was falling asleep.
Given how much sleep she had slept in recent days, and the content of the interview, Jane was betting on the former scenario.
"Let's just get it over with, Patrick..."
Jane glanced over at Bennett, sent her a warning look. He would stop it if his kid got upset. Bennett saw it instantly, in the set of his jaw, the flash of something like anger under all the paternal concern.
"Okay, we'll get it over with, then."