Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 52)
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: Okay, guys, I can tell some of you are disappointed in the recent turn of events, but please stick with the story and don't give up just yet. The sense of disorientation you feel now helps you further identify with the Charlotte character, the sense of never being safe, and my RJ is a narcissistic sadist, not someone who would go down without a fight, but someone who likes to play with his "food", so to speak. As humans, most of us want to believe what we need to believe to function and move on. We naturally swing that way. But I am not a sadist, and I haven't planned an ending that I think is going to leave any of you depressed, so stick with it.
I am going camping for a bit very soon (starting Tuesday morning, on September 5th) so I hope to have this chapter up before I leave.
I created an account at FictionPress dot com. My account name is "HorrorLex". I only have on story up there (short) but if you want to read original fiction by me in the next little while, go there and look for my stuff.
Thanks again, guys.
6 months later...
Thursday, June 12th, 2014 2:13 pm Pacific Standard Time
In the 6 months since Christmas, life had settled down into something of a predictable pattern, and Jane and Lisbon, and even Charlotte (though she whined and complained something fierce half the time, stubbornly and with an indulgent freedom and emotionalism Jane suspected she'd had to repress for the lion's share of her childhood) and they had all begun the hard but necessary process of rebuilding their lives into something they'd want to live in again.
Jane kept his Citroën but added a 2014 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon X to his growing collection of automobiles (he'd tracked the airstream down, too, and it was back in his legal possession).
The Jeep Wrangler was a belated present for Charlie's 16th birthday and even though he'd guessed she'd prefer black, he wanted to steer her away from seeing the world as too dark and scary and had chosen a Wrangler with a nice glossy grey-blue colour that the dealer called "Anvil Clearcoat". The interior he'd gotten in something called "Dark Saddle", which was a dark grey colour with just a hint of red in it. It was a very pretty vehicle and also looked "badass", at least according to Charlotte, and the colour scheme very nicely paired with her rescue dog, Dixon, a small detail that hadn't been lost on Jane during the purchase. He'd heard rumours that such Jeeps could be custom-built with fibreglass bodies, but hadn't managed to track one down, and instead had opted for an additional Kevlar coating option, guaranteed to slow down the wrath of the elements and prevent rusting.
Patrick Jane had only ever liked cars for their aesthetic appeal and his sense of the aesthetically pleasing tended to run towards Edwardian-era European finery or clean, smooth Scandinavian-inspired lines, but the Jeep was a present for Charlie, after all, even if it was registered, for now, in his name, so he'd loaded the gas guzzling monster with all the fancy extras he could think of, and that the car dealer could think up while he grinned his manic, sharky grin and daydreamed about all those extra dollars.
Jane'd dispatched with the original puny 3.8 L V6 engine and had gotten a late model hemi V8 put in as a "heart transplant", so he knew beyond all doubt that the vehicle was now, indisputably, a "gas-guzzling monster", a fact that was oddly appealing to his way of thinking at this point in his shattered life. He loved his little girl so much that he was going to get her a bad-ass off-road vehicle that cost more to fill than many people in the Middle East lived on in a month, and damn the Eco-Warrior foundation and the EPA! His little girl needed a gas-guzzling monster, and by God, she would have one!
He'd tricked the Jeep out with molded splash guard mud flaps for the front and rear wheels, chrome billet tail light guards, a front grille guard, cree LED fog lights (in addition to the regular headlights and turn signals, for off-road driving), an LED light bar installed over the front windshield, a 4" stabilizer lift, new coils and mono tube shocks, a steering stabilizer and leveling suspension bushings, black front and rear bumpers and of course the necessary, protective Kevlar coating over the "Anvil clearcoat" to protect it from Armageddon-level "natural elements" that might pose a threat to the paint job here in sunny California. Charlie could drive her 2014 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon X through pelting acid rain coming down in some place like Chernobyl and the finish would last for a good long while.
It had cost Jane almost 72 K after he haggled for a bit, which to his way of thinking was only 7,200 dollars "reward" for every year Charlie had stayed alive with Red John, or a puny 600 bucks a month, or to really make the point, a mere almost-20 bucks a day. Put that way, the Jeep was little more than a stocking stuffer.
This is what he'd said to Lisbon when she asked if maybe, just maybe, he was going overboard with the customized Jeep for a kid with the emotional maturity level of the average 11 year old, and a young 11 at that... Then he'd felt badly he was reducing his kid's torture to something as insipid and easy to come by (at least, for him, money seemed to be very easy to come by) and he'd added seat warmers, the portable DVD unit for the back, a hammock sling for the back seats for Dixon to ride on in comfort and a custom Walking Dead steering wheel cover and floor mats he found in a high end Bevery Hills store that specialized in such luxury items.
He couldn't give Charlie back her peace of mind, or her innocence, or her childhood, but he could buy her stuff that might bring a smile to her face, and that would have to do for now.
"It's not a hummer, but it has a lot of room for camping gear, me, Lisbon, the dog and Elian," Jane had said, grinning, when he showed Charlotte the jeep, and she made a sound that was something like an amped-up squeal and jumped up and down and ran her small hands gently over the Jeep's body like she was petting a famous thoroughbred racehorse, maybe a long lost relation of Seabiscuit.
Sitting sort of pathetically on top of the matte black roof rack was an oversized pink ribbon. He'd thought about wrapping it up in miles of Walking Dead wrapping paper and decided, nah, his kid didn't have the attention span to peel all that shit off...
Charlie had smiled again, eyes wandering over the jeep, more than a little overloaded and shocked, he could see that in her clearly, and hugged her father, unsure of what to say in a situation such as this.
Jane had started to teach Charlotte to drive a few days after getting her the Jeep and by mid-March of '14 she'd had her learner's license. He'd checked with the local schools, who had no records of Charlie attending any school at all, of course, so he'd worked with the school people to get her tested, to sort out what grade she'd have to enroll in when she inevitably decided to rejoin the land of the average citizen. Her emancipation had been a farce and illegal, which only made sense considering her life with Red John had been, at best, completely illegal and at worst, a horrific druggie nightmare, without (most of the time) the drugs.
On IQ tests she'd scored in the low 150s but there were huge discrepancies between her native intelligence and what she should have been taught. Apparently Red John's academic home-schooling program hadn't been geared to meet the standards of the California public school system's graduation requirements. Being able to list the names of hundreds of serial killers and their dates of birth and death didn't show up on any of the tests that Jane took his daughter to take, but knowing basic history about her country, the presidents, and algebra were considered important, and they were all areas in which Charlotte was lagging big time.
He'd discussed the pros and cons of homeschooling the teen, but she was becoming apathetic and withdrawn as the weeks of relative normalacy flickered by, holing up in her room or in the little attic "safe space" Jane had created for her, watching horror movies and The Walking Dead on Netflix rather compulsively and talking only to her father on any given day, Lisbon on the phone once every few days and, of course, her dog. It just didn't seem healthy to Jane, and Jane had a rather liberal sense of what "healthy" constituted, but still, his concern about her isolating herself was growing.
So Jane had found a private school with a mere 60 kids serving students attending grades 6 through 12 who suffered from severe emotional trauma issues and came from big bucks. The students all came with their own difficult-to-manage social disabilities, and some had neurological issues like epilepsy or traumatic brain injury issues compounding the emotional problems, which made them impulsive and loud and unsuited for the public school system. If they'd been poor, most of them would already have been in juvie lock up or institutionalized. Funny how many greased the gears of compassion.
Many of the kids had extreme cases of ADHD, some were high-functioning autism cases that had been bullied to the brink of suicide, yet others were adopted children with "attachment" issues who had been born in places like Romania and Moldova and seemed normal, until they were disappointed or frustrated, and acted out in ways that would have had them expelled from "normal" schools. A few kids had bad physical scars from nightmares the school couldn't legally disclose, and at least 1 wore a face mask because of heavy burn scarring.
All the kids came from money and the school was founded on the idealistic principles that no "child" was beyond reach and that one's past didn't define their future- that was, if said child had the money to pay for a therapeutic healing environment.
Charlotte would fit in well here, Jane was certain, as he strolled the halls and looked at the colourful oil pastel and crayon and water colour art hanging on the walls of trees and stick families and aeroplanes and cartoon characters, family pets and landscapes...
The school was decorated with diecut cardboard decorations of cartoons and shapes, laminated posters, all items Jane would have expected to see in an elementary school. But somehow, everything worked. The school was called "Mountain Ridge Alternative School" and there was a pretty nifty playground out front, a football field, a track field, a large macadam lot with 4 square lots stenciled on the ground in spray paint, several basketball courts and weather-proofed cedar picnic tables for the kids who liked to play card games or sit and read during "Recess". The youngest student was 10 and the oldest was 21, going on 22.
The school didn't "age out" any student who was making an honest effort to comply with their "educational program" and there was an aide for every 3 kids, minimum, in addition to the teacher leading each class. High-risk and severely traumatized kids got their own aides. More than a few of the kids had their own "service" animals, too, and dogs were more than welcome on site.
Jane interviewed the Principal (who was called the "Head Mistress") and all of Charlotte's prospective teachers, looked at the indoor gym where "school meetings" and "assemblies" were held, the indoor pool, the lunch room slash cafeteria, the "sensory" room (which was used to help calm down kids who were having "trouble being in class"), the nurse's station, the library and the multimedia room, the various science labs and the art studio. It was by far the best place he had found for Charlotte, and about as supportive as he could have dreamed of.
Charlotte had been at home with him for months now and was slipping into something Jane was pretty sure met the qualifications for low grade depression. She was sleeping more and more and was paranoid of people watching her the few times a week Jane managed to draw her out of the apartment to "get some fresh air". A few times she came down from her "lair" with cry-puffy eyes, carrying Dixon (who most of the time was dressed in funky dog t-shirts Charlie bought online from a place called "The Posh Puppy Boutique") and sat on the couch in the living room, watching The Walking Dead with a morose, unhappy look on her face. Jane knew no amount of money thrown at her could fix the wounds in her soul, and he knew that letting her sit at home all day, winding down, wasn't helpful, either. And as much as he loved her dearly, he wasn't enough.
She was 16 and a half and felt broken beyond repair. Jane knew that, without asking her or probing. There was no need to ask, it was obvious. Worse, she had lived for so many years in a state of fight or flight that "normal" life had to feel boring, even existentially pointless. Her neurotransmitters were all screwed up and "peace and calm" to a kid raised by a serial killer playijng sadistic serial killer games had to be inciting nihilism in her soul.
On the day in late March Jane had come home from the "Mountain Ridge Alternative School" with a full colour pamphlet, a printed "FAQ" sheet and a 35 minute "informational" DVD for Charlotte to watch with him, she'd been sitting cross-legged in the living room, cradling Dixon (who today was wearing a black t-shirt which read "Invasion of the Treat Snatcher" in lime green bubble letters and had on what appeared to be a new black leather collar with stainless steel spikes). Dixon was licking Charlotte's face as she watched yet another episode of The Walking Dead, one she had already seen, of course. A large assortment of expensive chew toys and squeak toys were littered all over the living room floor, ignored.
"Charlie, hey," Jane said, coming into the apartment and setting the alarm by the front door, putting the school material on the polished oak dining table and coming into the living room. He'd had the alarm system installed for peace of mind, for both of them. There were two seperate codes, one for day-time when Charlie was sometimes "home alone", in case she had to take Dixon out to "do his business" or decided to go on a walk to the nearby park or to the library, and there was a night-time code, which Jane plugged in around 10 pm, which made him feel safer because it meant Charlie couldn't sneak out and disappear if the inclination grabbed her, as he suspected it often did.
The windows were also alarmed. They opened a few inches and there were plastic stoppers placed on them, so that if someone violently forced them open, the alarm would sound after 30 seconds and wake up half the block. This helped with Charlotte's fear of potential "break ins" involving Red John's "eyes" or unrelated psychos, but it also meant Charlie couldn't try to scale out of the window (even though they were on the second floor of their townhouse, he didn't put it past her to try, if she felt trapped enough).
"Charlotte, hello," Jane tried again when it became apparent his daughter was tuned out and completely absorbed in the show. She picked up the remote control and paused the episode. Daryl was stabbing one of the walkers in the head with what looked like a buck knife.
"Dad, look, Dixon's new t-shirt and collar came today in the mail."
"Yeah, he looks great!" Jane said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. He was dreading this next part. He'd discussed going back to school with his daughter, and even though she claimed she eventually wanted to graduate high school one day "for real", Jane knew she was intimidated by the thought. Who wouldn't have been? She'd only ever been to Kindergarten, and that had been before her life had metastasized into a waking nightmare.
"I visited a school today. Really nice private place, very laid back with great art supplies and lots of space to run and play..." Jane stopped talking. He was describing the place like it was an animal sanctuary and his kid might decide to catch frisbees between her teeth. He tried again, but before he could tell her the name of the school, she asked innocently.
"For Elian?"
Jane had managed to get Elian out of what Charlotte called "the looney bin". He now had his own room with a foster family who had a large ranch house and sprawl of land in Lake Arrowhead, California. Elian had 5 other deeply troubled foster siblings to play with and they were recovering out in the boonies, where it was almost impossible to get into trouble with the law and the slow pace of life was considered therapeutic for such severe cases.
Jane had set the foster home up after getting in touch with his old psychiatrist, Sophie Miller, and telling her the situation. He'd asked if she knew of any homes or families that might be up to the challenge of caring for Elian and she'd said she'd get back to him, and a few days later had put Jane in touch with the Abbott family, who lived in Lake Arrowhead on a ranch with 60 acres, a few horses, a barn for the horses with a hay loft and a large telescope to see the stars at night. They even had a sattelite for getting movies and HBO, and a small pond near their property for swimming.
Jane then picked Elian up from the psychiatric facility he was "imprisoned in" (Charlotte's words) on a weekend pass in February and they (Jane, Charlotte and Elian) had then driven the 383 miles from Sacramento to Lake Arrowhead to meet the family, driving non-stop in "Charlotte's jeep" (except for bathroom breaks and trips through various drive-thrus for fast food), a one way trip lasting almost 7 hours. Elian, "the dog" and Charlotte had sat in the back of the jeep, watching DVDs on the portable DVD player, playing "I spy" and chattering about nothing in particular while Jane drove and listened to them, smiling most of the time. Lisbon had decided to stay back in Sacramento and catch up on paperwork. Jane was on extended leave, but always available to "consult" by cell phone. The situation was about as good as it could be, at present.
Elian had gotten along with the Abbots immediately. His bedroom was large and roomy with an oak, twin-sized captains bed with shelves built into the headboard, an oak desk and chair with a lamp, a TV and DVD combo set on top of a large set of dressers and a walk in closet. The walls were covered with various empty corkboards and installed with planks of wood serving as shelves for models and books and all that other crap boys who'd just hit teenage-hood tended to accumulate.
"I know it looks pretty empty, but we thought if you'd like to live with us, you can tell us what you want in here when you move in," Beth Abbott told Elian as he gazed around the room with huge, eager eyes.
"Can I move in today?" Elian said in his thick, hispanic accent, winking coyly and the Matriarch of the Abbott family only laughed indulgently. There were no schools nearby so Elian would be home-schooled with the other kids if he chose to stay, a plan he readily agreed to. He was shown the horses then, and informed about the family rules and "chore duties" which involved basic hygiene, helping to set and clear dishes, doing one's own laundry and rotating house-keeping chores, all tasks he gladly agreed to. He then met the 5 other kids staying on the ranch and the small "guest house" cabin near the main house. Two kids (both boys, the oldest 18 and the younger one 15) lived in the guest house and nodded politely as he was introduced. In the house there was a 5 year old boy, a 3 year old girl who looked at Elian cross-eyed and then began to whine that she wanted a "toaser studel" and gawky 11 year old hispanic girl who looked at Elian, blushed, and ran off.
He moved in officially 2 weeks later, carrying a backpack with a few changes of clothes, a hair brush, toothbrush, can of Axe and slingshot Charlie had picked up for him as a "farewell present" and they kept in touch with postcards and emails.
He'd started his home-school program about a week after moving in. And Charlotte knew that.
"Dad? The school is for Elian, right?" Charlotte was staring at him. He went back into the kitchen, grabbed the stuff from the table and came back. He showed her the pamphlet and laid the DVD on the coffee table.
"You told me you wanted to graduate. For real, graduate."
"Ugh. Noooooooo. Drop it with the school, okay?"
"Charlotte-" he began, feeling more than a little exasperated. If he wasn't certain she was slipping into what was looking more and more like growing depression, he might have been more lax with the rules, but as it stood... she needed a routine.
"I'm just not ready for school, yet," Charlotte whined, and shifted Dixon in her lap. Jane ignored that comment, retrieved the remote from where it was sitting beside her on the couch and ended the distraction which was Netflix. Charlotte made a face and pet her dog.
"Let's just watch this DVD together, okay? And if you don't think it looks pretty good, for a school, I won't bug you about it. But you have to be fair and objective. A school is not Disneyland." He caught himself. He was lecturing.
Charlotte rolled her eyes and Jane put the DVD in the DVD player and waited while it loaded. A menu with a crisp photo of the school from the outside and a bunch of kids waving at the photographer popped up, along with a menu featuring exciting chapter titles such as "What sort of students most benefit from Mountain Ridge Alternative School?", "What are MRAS discipline policies?", "We stand by our students!", "MRAS summer school and after-school activities" and "Meet the Faculty!"
"Ugh," Charlotte sighed as Jane read the chapters out to her.
Finally he hit the play on the first line "What sort of students most benefit from Mountain Ridge Alternative School?" A spinning series of photographs began to flash onto the screen and a man's voice began to narrate: "Hello, if you're watching this informational DVD then you are probably a young person who has had trouble adjusting to the typical public school environment and you and your parents or caregivers have decided to look for an educational environment more suited to your needs. Does that sound like you? Well, great!..."
Charlotte began to laugh. "This is so cheesy."
"Just give it a chance, okay?"
The narration continued: "At Mountain Ridge Alternative School in sunny Sacramento, California, we specialize in helping young people aged 11 to 21 to meet their educational goals and develop the skills they need to pass State testing required for a Grade 12 diploma in the state of California. Many of our alumni have gone onto Post Secondary Schooling and are succeeding in the fields of their choice today! Mountain Ridge Alternative School is not a regular school, so don't let the word "school" turn you off... our educational community was designed in 1998 to meet the educational and emotional needs of students who have a multitude of educational, behavioral and emotional challenges which make it hard or impossible for them to complete schooling in a traditional educational environment. These special students still have plenty to give and deserve a chance to have a school experience tailored to their specific needs, and that is why Mountain Ridge Alternartive IS an alternative! Our students experience all sorts of unique challenges such as severe ADHD, high functioning autism, behavioral issues related to past experiences of abuse and long-term trauma, epilepsy and more!" The narration continued as a slide show of images of the school, student art, students performing plays, something like a talent show assembly, kids in gym class practicing archery, swimming and even horseback riding flashed on the screen.
"They have horses there?" Charlotte asked, incredulous.
"I think that must have been a day trip, or something," Jane said as a boy of about 12 appeared on the screen, holding a 2 and a half foot robot that appeared to be made out of small Lego bricks and gears and small wires in what appeared to be some sort of computer lab.
That segment of the DVD was over and the next chapter began to play automatically. Various students were being interviewed outdoors about what they liked best about the school. Charlotte began to laugh again.
"Could they have made this any cheesier if they had tried? It looks like a low-budget 1980s childrens' show, minus the hand puppets."
Jane smiled.
"For a school, though, it looks pretty cool, right?"
"It looks like an Elementary school run by idealistic hippies!" Charlotte laughed.
"Yeah, but for a school, it's pretty cool?" Jane coaxed, smiling. The DVD was so cheesy that even if it didn't look "cool" at all, it was impossible not to smile.
A group of young teenagers were now on the screen, jumping on various trampolines screened off with safety nets, doing back flips and laughing. This video had been edited to move in slow motion and what sounded like 80s synth pop accompanied it.
"Fine, for a school it looks... it looks okay, I guess. Like a playground for little kids who otherwise would only be suited for roles in horror movies."
"Okay, so should I set us up an appointment to go and look at the place?"
"I thought you already went and looked at it?" Charlotte said, unable to keep the smirk off her face.
"I did. I mean, would you like me to set up an appointment for both of us to go down and look at it, together?"
"You're going to just harp about school and graduating until I say yes to something, right?"
"Probably," Jane said dryly.
"Can Dixon come with me?"
"Service animals are allowed, so yes."
"Dixon can be in the actual class with me?" Charlotte continued, before planting a kiss on her puppy's head.
"Yes," Jane confirmed, nodded again.
"Sheesh, they must get a lot of work done at this school, am I right?" Charlotte gloated sarcastically. "Between the service animals and the tantrums and the... are they playing Magic the Gathering?" She pointed a finger at the screen. Jane shrugged.
"Okay, so I am going to phone them tomorrow, and make an appointment for the three of us to go over and have a look?"
"Three of us? Is Lisbon coming, too?"
"I meant your dog," Jane explained, reaching over and petting Dixon for the first time since getting home. Dixon licked his hand, then turned back to his owner. "Since he's going to be taking your classes with you, too, right?"
"Whatever, Patrick," Charlotte said in a pretty impressive vocal mimicry of the bored, annoyed teenage girl.
They watched the remainder of the informational DVD then, and when it was over, Jane handed his daughter back the remote control and she put Netflix back on as her reward.
Charlotte began classes at Mountain Ridge Alternative School the first week of April in 2014. Jane made her a lunch with a pudding, juice, pb & j sandwich and a baggie full of crackers, just in case she didn't like the cafeteria food. He drove her to the school with her dog and her backpack, her ruled notebooks and her pencil case and the cell phone he'd gotten for her, so she could phone him if she felt she needed to.
The first day went reasonably well, though Charlotte came home complaining that half the kids were "freaks" and deserved their own sitcom. Over the next few weeks, though, the depression she seemed to be spiralling into began to even out. At least she had a routine, now.
She came home with English papers and science tests, most of them with A's or A+'s written on the front in bright red ink, often accompanied by a sticker or a quick doodle of a smiley face and encouraging note like "Great Job, Charlotte!" or "If you keep this up, we're going to have to fast track you to the next grade!"
It was nice to see, almost felt normal, and with Lisbon coming over on the weekends for trips to the mall to see the occasional movie or go out to eat, or trips to mini golf or the bowling alley, life began to feel almost normal in a surreal 21st century Norman Rockwell kind of way.
Except... sometimes on the weekends or after school, Charlotte would come home from a trip to the nearby park where she'd taken Dixon to chase a tennis ball, and her face would be all scrunched up and anxious. She'd told Jane the first few times that she felt somebody was watching her, maybe from the shadows, or behind a tree.
Jane had tried to be understanding, and had asked if she'd actually seen anybody. She looked down at her shoes then and shook her head. But he knew she was troubled. Eventually she just stopped telling him she was spooked, because she knew even though her father believed she had perfectly valid reasons for being anxious and on edge, he didn't believe Red John was still alive.
But Charlotte wasn't so sure... it seemed almost too easy for Red John to be dead, and for the body to have gone missing. And for it to have been burned so badly beyond recognition that a visual ID had been impossible.
So the fear lingered, and continued, hanging over her free moments when she wasn't distracted by school or emotionally "challenged" peers or homework or chores or "bonding sessions" with Dixon, like a thunder cloud.
There was a well manicured city park not far from the townhouse she now lived in with her father (whom she called "Patrick" most of the time, and "Dad" on special occasions) and it was an ideal spot to take Dixon for a walk. It had an in-ground swimming pool with a small water slide for kids in the summer, gated off by chain link fencing, a fairly generous expanse of bright green, manicured lawns for locals to sit on and read or have picnics on, and an enclosed dog park with a chain link fence around it and large black, steel gated door that swung open and closed and locked to keep the doggies in the park. There was a sign that read "OWNERS MUST PICK UP AFTER THEIR DOGS! MAXIMUM FINE- 2000$!" which Charlotte thought was a bit expensive for leaving dog shit on the ground, but there it was. There was post just inside the dog park with a large, plastic cylinder on it stuffed with plastic "doo doo bags" and another sign which read "these bags are provided for dog owners free of charge to encourage responsible behavior! Please pick up after your dog and help keep our community parks beautiful and safe for everyone!"
There was a 7-11 a mere 5 or 6 minute walk away, and a small lending library about 10 minutes away by bicycle which was open until 9 pm every day of the week (except for sunday and holidays, when it was closed).
So the dog park was a nice place for Charlotte, a place she could take her growing Pit bull puppy to and toss a ball around or frisbee around in and not have to worry about Dixon running onto the street. Sometimes she'd stop by the 7-11 first and get a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes from the young, teenaged middle eastern guy who worked behind the counter and didn't give a damn about selling to minors, and a large size slurpee, usually Cherry Coke mixed with banana.
Then she'd take Dixon to the park, and let him frolic, and be alone with her thoughts, outside, not watched my teachers or aides or Lisbon or Patrick or anybody but her goofy, loyal, unquestioning puppy who bolted around the enclosed dog park every time like it was the first time he'd ever seen the place and he'd just been entered in a competition to see which dog could sprint fastest... even if he was the only dog there.
And then, one day... she'd been in the park, sitting on a wooden bench, reading a book for English class. The kids had been able to choose a novel of their chose to read for a book report, out of a list of 20 books, and Charlotte had chosen "Catch 22" and realized too late that the book was very dense and didn't make a whole lot of sense. So she was reading and squitning, rubbing at her eyes, sipping on her slurpee, picking at the rubber sole of her converse all star sneakers (which would have to be replaced for too long), lighting the occasional cigarette, throwing the tennis ball to Dixon every time he came back with it and looked at her with those eager, hopeful puppy eyes... at first there had been 5 or 6 other dogs and their masters in the park, too, but she'd gotten immersed in the novel and time had slipped away from her.
It was 7:30 pm when she heard Dixon howl out a warning bark and she put the novel down and her 3D lenticular dolphin bookmark inside to mark her spot, and stood up, instantly wary.
Dixon was near the front gate, and he wasn't just barking now, he was snarling.
And it was then that she realized that the other dogs and their humans had drifted away over the last 3 hours and she was alone, save for Dixon and the birds in the trees and the late-day sun filtering through the tree leaves, and she began to feel cold.
"Dixon, come back here! Right now!" She sounded angry, almost, and there was an undercurrent of shaky adrenaline underlining her words. "Dixon! Come!"
And her puppy looked away from where he was standing guard near the front gate, looking across the little residental street into the mounds of bushes on the other side that Charlotte didn't know the name of, hackles up, and he barked again, and snarled at the end of it.
She had never seen Dixon behave this way before, and it frightened her. And as the seconds passed, the sun seemed to disappear behind some clouds, and the bright sunny light disappeared and was replaced with an eerie gray-purple dusky light.
"Dixon!" Charlotte scolded again, and her dog came bounding over to her, now apologetic, and licked her hand as a peace offering.
"What are you barking at, huh? There is nobody there, you silly dog."
Except... was that right? She looked up again at the bushes across the street, running in front of a series of cookie cutter homes that cost hundreds of thousands more than they were really worth, and shivered again. All she could see was the park and the trees, the waste baskets for gum and smoke butts and slurpee cups, the separate garbage for dog shit in doo doo bags.
And then Dixon turned to the side, and snarled at something in the park and Charlotte felt the air stumble out of her lungs and just stop.
There was a lone figure in the park. Black trenchcoat and shades, a black hat on the head, turned downward so she couldn't see the face. Alone. Appeared to be standing and staring, maybe looking at the ground, but it could have been looking at her, too. Dixon's barking began again in earnest then, reaching levels of almost rabid frenzy.
"Dixon, shhh," Charlotte murmured, but her heart was beating slowly and much too hard. Her skin felt cold and dry, but she could feel fear sweat on her brow.
"Just some park weirdo, puppy. You stop that now," she mumbled, wishing that eerie, scared feeling to depart. California had its fair share of weirdos, and sometimes so of those weirdos wandered into parks to stare at shit.
But it was getting late in the day, and it was probably a good time to go on home, now.
Charlotte went back over to the bench she'd been reading on, thinking dangerous thoughts. Had the dark, lone figure been watching her while she read alone? For how long?
She left the half-full slurpee (now, mostly melted) on the park bench and put her book and school notebook and pencil case covered in small renditions of Gizmo from Gremlins into her backpack and zipped it up, then tied up the flap that hung over the front and did up the straps.
She picked the electric bike up off the pebbled floor of the dog park and attached Dixon's leash to his collar, then attached the leash to the bike accessory she'd gotten online, which allowed a dog to be leashed to the side of a bike and run alongside it without worries about the dog being too close to the bike wheels.
Charlotte walked the bike out of the dog park, hairs on her own neck at strict attention now and a cold, sticky sweat beginning to collect like a second skin on her back and neck and arms. She closed the gate without looking back to see that it was latched and started the little electric engine on the bike, then straddled the seat and put one sneakered foot on a peddle. She peddled it slowly, letting the engine run all the while, away from the park towards the 7-11 where there were always people milling about, keeping the black figure in her peripheral vision all the while. She biked down to the end of the street on the main road with DIxon trotting along beside her, tongue lolling out, and when she turned back the figure, who she hadn't consciously seen move even a little bit, was gone.
The chills got worse. He had been there a few seconds before, when she'd glanced over her shoulder, and the park was a large square of green lawn so impeccably cared for it almost looked like astro turf. There were smooth blacktop lines intersecting the park for bike riders and skateboarders, and equally smoothed concrete sidewalk areas for old ladies and their walkers. The park itself was nicely shaded by elegant maples and oak trees, but there was no heavy ground foliage, no large hedges or bushes to hide behind, not even a trash can large enough to act as a cover for a full grown man.
Yet the dark figure, who had stood so still like a shadow cut out with an exacto blade and pasted into her reality, was gone.
Charlotte went straight home, not even stopping at the 7-11 to browse through the comics and magazines, eyes flickering from the road in front of her to her dog running silently beside her to behind her, all the while certain that something might pop out of nowhere and grab her ankle, or appear in front of her like a dark apparition in the early night, or that there would be a squeal from Dixon and she'd suddenly see him torn from her bicycle lead by some invisible phantom.
When she got home and wheeled her bike off the elevator, and brought it into the townhouse with DIxon squeezing in impatiently alongside her, Patrick was already home from his newly reinstated job at the CBI, sitting in the living room and drinking tea and reading some leather-bound book.
"Charlie, hey," Jane said, glancing up from his book, then narrowing his eyes a little in concern before putting the book down on the arm of the lounger he was sitting in.
"You okay, kiddo? You look like you just saw a ghost," he said, not unkindly.
"I'm fine," Charlotte said, running a small hand over her face and pushing her bangs off her sweaty forehead. She could hear Dixon's slightly over-grown doggie toenails clicking on the linoleum in the kitchen and the greedy lapping noise he made as he drank from his water bowl. She thought about telling Patrick of the weird man in the park, but the world was full of weirdos, and California more than most places... everybody knew that.
"You want to order in for dinner?" Patrick said, and he was reading again. Charlotte went back to the front door and made sure the door was locked and latched, then, on impulse, looked out the peephole. Nobody was standing in the hallway outside, like she'd been suddenly certain she'd see, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She was still getting the chills, despite the bright, inviting warmth of the apartment.
"Yeah, sure," she said a moment later, coming back into the living room.
"Chinese? Pizza? Tex-mex? What?" Patrick asked, looking up from his book again as his daughter crossed over to the sofa, dumped her backpack on the floor like only teenagers can really do and sat down. Dixon came up alongside her then, licked the salt off her hands and gave her his best "I love you soooo much" doggie smile, then ran at Patrick and jumped up on his lap and tried to sit in said lap like he thought he might be a small maltese or poodle or something instead of a quickly growing pit bull.
"Whichever you want, I'm fine with anything."
"There is a new Szechuan place Lisbon showed me a few days ago. Great food. How about that?"
"That sounds great, Dad," Charlotte said, and forced a smile on her face. "I'm going to go get a shower, okay? I'm all sweaty from chasing after that dog."
"Okay. It will probably be here in about 30 minutes, okay. Should I just order what I think looks good?"
"Sure," Charlotte said, and then had an intrusively horrific thought of the delivery boy showing up wearing a black trench coat and gloves and black fedora hat and sunglasses in the middle of April in California. She shivered again and went to shower off her fear sweat and get herself back to normal.
Only nutcases continually freaked out about every little stranger who was a bit off. And she wasn't a nutcase.
She wasn't.