Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 59)
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 again for the reviews. I know there are a lot of loose ends and 'what if' scenarios in this story, and I have planned it that way because I find the mystery appealing. In real life, many of us go our entire lives without knowing with certainty any of the answers to the big questions we have. With regards to Red John, I have tried to make him depraved and sinister and as evil as a human being can be, without making him a Disney villain. The study of evil and what makes people do violent and cruel things fascinates me and I don't currently believe anybody is born 100% evil without any redeeming qualities. It is harder, I think, to face up to the truth that people who aren't 100% evil can do evil things because they choose to do them. It makes us feel off balance, because the idea of someone committing wanton cruelty when they have the ability to choose to do something else seems like a spiritual spit in the face- so, in addition to feeling afraid and victimized, we also feel betrayed and on some level, mocked. It's worse to acknowledge people can "freely" choose cruelty over cooperation or kindness than to pretend cruelty is their inherent nature. It messes with our heads, not to mention our hearts, and with good reason.
If any of you guys wants to watch a great movie (though highly under-rated in my opinion) try to stream or get an old copy of the 1986 film "Manhunter" starring William Petersen and directed by Michael Mann. In my top 10, I think.
Also, completely off topic, but I would like to be a novelist in the future. I want to hone my skills and my long-time reviewers are part of the reason why (you've really helped my self confidence grow). If you could think of the parts of this novel where you felt most frightened or uneasy, most sad, etc, please describe them to me. What scenes fell short? What needs work? What about this story do you find unique (I know there is nothing new under the sun, but hopefully there are new and fresh interpretations of the same old)? What, of the top of your heads, makes this fic enjoyable? Thank you guys, in advance.
And now, on with the story...
"As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster. But as an adult... as an adult, he's irredeemable. He butchers whole families to fulfill some sick fantasy. As an adult, I think someone should blow the sick fuck out of his socks."
-Will Graham talking about serial killer Francis Dollarhyde in the 1986 crime thriller movie "Manhunter" directed by Michael Mann
"It's vanilla. He reacts to nothing. It's monstrous."
-Inspector Popil discussing Hannibal Lector's polygraph test results in the movie "Hannibal Rising"
"Strong as I am
There's something about this thing that scares me
Strong as I am
There's something about this thing that dares me
Strong as I am
There's something about this thing that haunts me
Strong as I am
There's something about this thing that taunts me"
- "Strong as I am" by The Prime Movers
"Hey, what's the freak doing?" The speaker was a pimple-faced skinny boy of 13 in Charlotte's homeroom named Jordan. He was elbowing another kid, a pudgy boy named Sam, 14, in the ribs. Jordan's face was split open in a mocking, leering grin.
"I don't know. Being a freak?"
Charlotte had purchased some old Crash Dummies action figures and vehicles from ebay. Long out of production, the action figures were fashioned to resemble old-school vehicle test crash dummies and would fly apart on impact, or when the user pressed an oversized button on their chests.
They came with their own vehicles (cars, planes, trucks) which were designed to fly apart when said vehicles hit a wall or other vertical obstacle. Fun times could then be had by all... because the insightful toy designers of the early 1990s understood fully well that children delighted in witnessing automobile accidents.
Planes crashing out of the sky and lighting up (in one's imagination, of course) like tiki torches were another imaginary delight of kids.
Fun times.
Charlotte had had the toys for a while and spirited them away to school in her backpack.
Patrick had suggested before (more than once and with more than a little insistance) that she might "want" to leave the toys at home, but it was soothing to watch the cars roll, crash and fly apart.
It was soothing to watch the crash dummies fly apart, too.
It was soothing to put the pieces back together, the little arms and legs and heads.
Then put them all back into their little cars and planes, again and again.
Then repeat the vehicle accidents.
It made her feel powerful, and that sense of power soothed something deep and uneasy inside of her. It was like compulsively scratching a deeply obsessive itch and if left to her own devices, Charlotte could get lost in this game for well over an hour without losing interest or feeling the need to interact with another living being.
She was 16 years old and would be 17 at the end of October and yet, action figures and cars weren't off the emotional table. She'd been snatched out of her life at almost-6 and emotionally was still very much stuck there.
Now, she sat in a wooden play structure designed for the 5-10 crowd (built on the property before the school owners decided to specialize in the 10 and up age group) with ramps, climbing ropes and a small metal slide and launched a Crash Dummies' car down the scarred slide, grinning a manic grin as the car shot down the slope, sailed over the wood chips under the play structure, careened bumpily over the black macadam of the 4-square field and struck the red brick side of the school... before crashing into pieces.
Jordan wandered over to the "broken" car and picked pieces of it up off the ground, laughing.
"Playing with yourself again, Charlie?" He teased, and pretended to take an interest in the toy.
Charlotte came down the slide, walked over to him and held out her hand for her toy.
"Give it back," she said simply.
"Do you like being a freak, or does it come naturally to you?" Sam said, getting in on the action.
"You're at the freak school, too, you know," Charlotte countered, and kept her hand out for her car.
"You're so fucking weird. How old are you, anyway? You look like you're ten, but I think you're a lot older. Aren't you?" More taunting from Jordan.
"Why? You interested?" Charlotte grinned back the response.
"Fuck you," was Jordan's eloquent reply.
"You seem to be a little bit too interested in me for someone who doesn't have ulterior motives."
"I'm interested in you because you're a freak," Jordan shot back, and Sam's eyebrows shot up with amusement.
"So, you are interested then?" Charlotte teased back. Jordan's face went a dry, hot scarlet and he threw the Crash Dummies car on the macadam, hard, and walked away, muttering.
"Fucking weirdo bitch," he muttered, loud enough so Charlie could hear and low enough that he could pretend he'd said something else if Julie heard.
Julie, Charlotte's aide, had been watching the interaction from the steps, giving Charlotte room to breathe and fight her own battles. Now, she got up and came over to check on her charge.
"You okay?" She said, picking up pieces of the toy's windshield from the ground and handing them to Charlie.
"He's just a dumbass, is all."
"You can't let him get under your skin. If kids know something bugs another kid, they usually do it more."
"I don't care what he thinks," Charlotte replied blandly, took the tiny pieces of her toy from the aide and clipped them back into place on the car. She picked up the remnants of the Dummies that had been in said car and popped their arms and legs back into their trunks.
"Fuck them."
"Yeah, but remember, you're supposed to try and express yourself without profanity, right?"
"Fuck them," Charlotte said again, a bit louder, watching Julie like a disobedient puppy dog challenging its owner.
"Charlotte, I don't mind if you swear, but your teachers do, and you don't need reflection time or extra homework, right?"
Charlotte considered this. If she got detention or extra homework that would be that much less time Patrick could conceivably expect her to go outside by herself. He was pretty good about coming outside with her when they got home to walk Dixon, but was encouraging her more and more often these days to go out for walks by herself. He tried to soothe her, tried to tell her it was safe, that if she avoided being alone outside by herself for too long that her aversion might develop into a full-fledged phobia. They didn't want that, did they? They had enough stuggles to tackle already, didn't they?
Charlotte knew he wouldn't straight-up force her to do something she was frightened of, but the near-daily little nudges in that direction were beginning to wear on her nerves. Detention or extra homework might be a nice change of pace.
"Charlotte?" Julie prodded as Charlotte faded away into reverie.
"Huh? Yeah. You're right. Sorry."
"Don't say sorry if you're not actually sorry," Julie said.
"Whatever."
The bell rang than. Charlotte popped the action figures back into their car and held it gently in both hands. She followed Julie into the school, eyes downcast.
She wasn't really sure what bullying was, not in the usual sense of the word. After Red John, most emotional taunts and insults seemed little more upsetting than a fine, misty rain. Annoying at best. The words of would-be bullies lacked any real force or impact.
And yet, the idea that some kids might want to bully her, even if they failed to upset her, was a troublesome thought. Why so much cruelty in the world? Even in kids? Is this how Red John had started out? Just picking on others, doing and saying things to try and get a rise out of them, then delighting in said power, in the emotional fall-out of his childish taunts?
It couldn't be that simple, or the world would be overrun with Red Johns, and it wasn't.
Charlotte deposited her Crash Dummies into her cubby and walked over to her desk, slumped into the chair, folded her arms in front of her on the desk and laid her head down. Time for a nap.
Next period was math, and math was always a joy. Not.
The morning at the CBI had been taken up interviewing various witnesses to the fires and quizzing people who had known the victims about the virtues and flaws of those who were now deceased.
Jane stood by in the interview room as Cho led the investigations, and stepped in only when he was pretty sure someone was lying (either deliberately, or to themselves) about their relationship with one of the victims. Jane was pretty damned sure the fires were acts of passion.
Whoever was lighting them and killing off the people found burned to a crisp inside their homes (with one exception, so far) felt slighted by the victims. That was the entire driving force of the crimes. Passion, rage and a sense of being disrespected.
Lisbon and Rigsby were still operating on the assumption that the fires were being used to cover up other crimes, probably thefts. There did seem to be money missing from the bank accounts of some of the victims before their deaths, possibly withdrawn and given to the murderer under threat of blackmail, but the amounts (ranging from 2,000 to 10,000) were so small that Jane suspected they were simply covers to hide the true nature of the murders... which was plain old rage.
If items of value, like jewelery, had been stolen from the individual homes before the fires had been set, it was anybody's guess. Fire destroyed a lot of evidence, especially when accelerants were involved. And people who kept expensive jewelery in their homes didn't tend to inform the world of this fact. There were no insurance policies in the victims names covering jewelery or other high-end items, but that didn't mean they hadn't possessed property of considerable financial worth. How did you look for something if you didn't know if it had originally existed or not, though?
By 10 minutes after 1, Jane was all but jumping out of his skin with anxiety, and not with regards to their current case, either. The symbolic nature of the fires lined up with his old anxieties about Red John and the fire Red John had set ablaze in their shared trailer park as a child, but that was only a coincidence. What was really niggling at Jane was that damned dream. Memory. Whatever it was...
Jane sat in the CBI breakroom, eating a lunch Charlotte had thoughtfully prepared for him (a blueberry muffin, peanut butter and strawberry sandwich, can of Yoohoo and baby carrots with ranch dip). He'd boiled water and was waiting for his tea to steep. Lisbon came into the breakroom, slid some paper bills into one of the vending machines and punched buttons.
A turkey salad sandwich wrapped in cling-wrap fell down into the machine's reservoir and Lisbon pulled it out of the slot, got a cappucinno from the coffee machine and came over to Jane's table with her sandwich and a steaming cup of overpriced caffeinated sugar-water, put her lunch down and pulled out a chair. She sat down beside Jane, looked him over with unmasked affection.
"Hey. That looks like it's got all the major food groups covered," Lisbon said, smiling, nodding at Jane's brown-bagged lunch.
Jane smiled back. "Charlotte made it for me. Cute, right?"
"It's very sweet," Lisbon agreed, and began to unwrap her sandwich. Jane continued to eat his baby carrots, dipping them slowly in their dip, uncertain about how to start talking to Lisbon about what was needling him.
He was used to being in control during conversations, and this topic had the very real potential of going off the rails. That bothered him.
Lisbon caught on, and made the first move.
"You okay? You seem a bit off, today."
"I'm okay, just a little bit tired," Jane said absently, and popped another baby carrot into his mouth.
Lisbon watched him patiently as he chewed loudly. The sound of the baby carrot being masticated was incredibly loud inside his head, and for some reason his imagination supplied him with the visuals of arm and leg bones being fractured and ground to shards.
Jane winced at the intrusive visuals, shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. Shuddered, despite himself. His left arm ached, deep in the bone, some repressed memory. So much that was repressed came out in the body in strange ways. Phantom aches and pains, crawling sensations, hives and psychsomatic bruising. The body said, sometimes, what the mind didn't want to admit to itself.
Either way, if the truth that had been buried was toxic enough, it always found some avenue to express itself.
"Really? Just tired?" Lisbon prompted between bites of her turkey salad sandwich. Jane nodded back, screwed his face up, and sighed loudly. He wasn't doing them any favours by playing games, not when he fully knew what his next steps in the drama of his life had to be.
"I... uh, I didn't sleep particularly well last night, Lisbon."
"Anything you want to talk about?" Lisbon said carefully, lowering her voice into what Jane had long internally come to think of as "soothing Lisbon".
It was the tone of voice she usually reserved for him when he was physically injured or sick, had sustained a head injury and was acting a little bit loopy or... whenever Red John's past crimes were about to be discussed and she felt it was important to speak in a hushed tone out of deference for the dead. In particular, Jane's dead.
Finally he nodded.
"I, uh... don't know how to start this conversation," Jane admitted, somewhat peevishly. He stared at his hands, the tanned lines, the small crescent moons under his nails.
Lisbon's expression grew even more concerned. Jane sighed again.
"Does this have something to do with not sleeping very well last night?" Lisbon guessed. Jane nodded.
"I had a dream," Jane started, staring at the ranch dip, using a baby carrot to draw lazy circles in the ranch dip in its little tupperware cup. Without realizing it, he'd drawn a smiley face in the dip. He glared at the dip, as if it had somehow betrayed him, destroyed the smiley face imprints with another baby carrot. Fuck.
Lisbon waited for more, silent. She knew better than to push him.
"I think... well. It might not have been a dream. But a recovered memory."
Lisbon nodded. Her eyes were dewy with emotion for the consultant she had come to love more dearly than was comfortable to admit sometimes. Jane didn't wear his heart on his sleeve as a general rule. He was an expert at hiding emotions that bothered him. That he was showing them, now, showed an incredible degree of inner stress.
"A memory about...?" Lisbon prompted when Jane lost his voice and settled into starring at the ranch dip.
"Um... yeah, sorry Lisbon. I'm a bit off. I know it. I'll get there."
"You don't have to apologize, Jane." Lisbon said softly.
"I seemed to have a memory pertaining to my early childhood. With... Red John. And by early childhood, I mean toddlerhood."
"Oh," Lisbon said softly.
Jane nodded, brow furrowed as he picked over his thoughts and brooded and decided what he wanted to verbalize.
Finally he put his veggies and dip away, put the half-eaten PB and J back in its bag. He didn't feel particularly hungry anymore.
Lisbon was still silent, waiting for him to speak.
Finally, he spoke. He told her everything. The entire dream and the moral implications, his fears, his confusions.
"Do you think Van Pelt could maybe... do some digging into my early childhood? Do you think she might be able to find out what happened to him? And to me... I mean, if something out of the ordinary did actually happen to me?"
"If anybody can dig that history up, my money would be on Van Pelt," Lisbon said gently.
"Do you think... do you think it's a good idea, Lisbon?"
"I think it's something you need to do for yourself, to move on," Lisbon replied.
"Yeah."
"Yeah," Lisbon echoed. "And I'll be here for you. If you need me."
Jane smiled weakly at Lisbon. He knew she'd be there for him. Still, it was sweet of her to try and reassure him.
Lisbon finished the rest of her sandwich, drained her coffee, smiled at Jane. Stood up. Jane followed her back to the bullpen. Let her do the basic explaining to Van Pelt, who eyed them both with a slightly anxious look on her face. When Lisbon had finished speaking, Van Pelt nodded solemnly.
"Some facilities destroy records after a set number of years, but if anything still exists and has been uploaded into the system, I'll find it. And if there is any trace of his placement anywhere that has been recorded and logged in the system, even if there are no specific details, I should be able to get the basic information for you guys," Van Pelt said speedily.
"Thanks, Van Pelt. We appreciate it. And... keep it on the down-lo, okay?"
"Got it, boss," Van Pelt said immediately. Jane nodded a smile at Van Pelt, looked at Lisbon with a strangely forlorn expression on his face which made Lisbon want to hug him.
"Thanks, Grace," Jane said softly, nodded solemnly, and then, emotionally exhausted, wandered over to his couch and sat down with a deep sigh. He looked drained and more than a little bit pale, like someone fighting the first stages of a particularly bad stomach flu.
"Are you guys going to need me for anymore of the interviews today?" Jane said as he pulled the fleece throw from the back of the couch and laid it over his lap.
"I think we can manage on our own for a bit," Cho replied dryly.
"Okay. Good." Jane puffed up the cushion with Charlotte's face photographically printed on the front, turned on his side and lay down on his couch, cushion under his head as a pillow, face turned inwards towards the stuffed back of the couch, one hand resting over his face, shielding his eyes from the fluorescent lighting of the bullpen. After a moment he pulled the Walking Dead fleece throw up over his face, and Lisbon couldn't help but see the body language and the positioning of the blanket as a subconscious desire to return to the comfort of the womb. Even his legs were slightly bent at the knees, as if he wanted to curl into a fetal position... but just didn't have space on the couch.
You didn't need to be a mentalist to see the strain in that body language, the complete and abject exhaustion. Jane was a complete master, not only at knowing what body language meant in others, but in carefully controlling his own to create the social image he wanted for himself. If the body language he was projecting now spoke of deep anxiety and incredible fatigue, it was either because he was deeply in need of comfort or because he was too exhausted to hide his demons these days, and both possibilities concerned Lisbon.
Jane- not once in the decade she had known him- had put himself in a space of seeming weak by reaching out for comfort, either verbally or in terms of body language. Even when he desperately needed comfort, even when he would have advised other people to seek comfort and reassurance in similar situations, when it came to his own demons and fears? He'd always put on a brave face, kept a stiff upper lip, cracked a smile or an inane joke.
And if he was too exhausted too notice the signals he was giving off, now, that spoke to an incredible degree of stress. Stress that went far deeper than even Lisbon had first suspected.
"C'mon, Charlotte, just do two more equations and then we'll take a break," Julie coaxed.
Charlotte stared at her math book. Stared at the looseleaf paper in her binder. Her forehead was wrinkled in a scowl.
"I can't do this. I can't do algebra," she said, bummed.
"Of course you can. You're smart. You need to pay attention-" Julie cut off. Charlotte was staring towards the front of the class. One of the kids had gotten up to use the pencil sharpener.
Any movement or sound got her attention. Her eyes ping ponged around the classroom. She rapped on her desk with her knuckles, clicked buttons on her fidget cube. Her feet bounced on her kick bands on the bottom of her chair legs. Jane had bought her a battery operated pencil sharpener because she was getting up, over and over, to sharpen her pencils whenever she got frustrated.
Now, she rammed another pencil into the automatic pencil sharpener until the graphite was a sharp tip and stared at the math book.
"It's impossible. My brain doesn't work like this, and I don't understand why I need to learn algebra, anyway. There are computer programs now that work these sorts of problems out."
"It's not about whether or not a computer can do math. Learning to think in new ways and facing frustration is good for you," Julie explained for the thousandth time.
The equation was: 2(4y + 1) = 3y
Charlotte stared at it. Punched more buttons on her fidget cube.
"What do we do with the number outside the brackets?" Julie prodded.
"Multiply the stuff inside?"
"Right. So then... what is the next step?"
Charlotte stared.
"8y + 2= 3y?"
"Right."
Charlotte wrote it down.
"Now what?"
"I don't know?"
"We need to balance the ys, right? So that our equation equals only a single y?"
"If you say so," Charlotte hummed and stuck another pencil in the pencil sharpener. The blades whirred.
"Your pencils are all sharp enough, Charlotte. Come on. Pay attention here."
"This is stupid. I'm never going to need to know this."
"You move the 3 over to the other side and subtract it from the 8, right? So you have 5y = -2, right?"
"Why do you subtract it?"
"That's just how you do it," Julie said simply.
"Why minus two?"
"Because it's on the other side of the equation now."
"This is stupid and it doesn't make sense. How am I supposed to remember this if it doesn't make sense?"
"There are consistent rules for how to do equations. Once you memorize them, it's just a matter of doing basic arithmetic."
"I can't remember the steps because they don't make sense."
Julie sighed, took one of Charlotte's pencils and wrote: 5y = -2
"Now what?"
"Beats me," Charlotte said softly. She wanted to get up and run. She felt edgy and trapped, sitting in a chair, doing stupid math equations, thinking horrible thoughts. Sometimes the thoughts that popped into her head were worse than anything Hollywood had ever thought up for any horror movie, and the graphic violence in those intrustive thoughts stunned her into a near panic. Patrick had said when that happened, to take a deep breath and hold it, breathe out. Repeat that thoughts, alone, couldn't hurt her.
But they scared her. They made her feel insane, on edge. Like she might lose control of her body or act out. The severity of the thoughts, the violence, the blood in them... was deeply unsettling. How was she supposed to sit and remember steps for algebra when scenes of Hell were unravelling in her head?
"Okay, so if 5y = -2, what's the next step?"
"I DON'T KNOW."
"Y = -2 over 5, right?"
"I have no idea."
"It does. We've done these before."
"And they still don't make sense," Charlotte muttered.
Julie sighed. Charlotte got up out of her desk, wandered over to the pencil sharpener bolted to the wall, began to sharpen her already-sharp pencil. She needed to move.
One more stupid math equation, and they could stop for a while. Then it would be silent reading time. She had already read "Man's Search for Meaning" and had chosen, as a second book for her book report the novel "It" by Stephen King.
"It" was a huge book and took so much effort to focus on. Over a thousand pages. She'd thought at first it would keep her attention and it had... for a while. But the story kept going and going and going.
"I'm never going to get through It."
"Hmmm?"
"The Stephen King novel," Charlotte reminded Julie.
"You have two weeks before your next book report is due. You could choose another book. Something slimmer."
"Ahhh, I am sucking at everything. I suck."
"Break things down into their tiniest steps. If you look at a big task in terms of one step, only, you're going to overwhelm yourself. Reading is just a matter of breaking down each sentence and looking at the meaning of each sentence."
"I already know how to read. Why do we have to keep doing book reports?!" Charlotte let out a heavy sigh. She kicked her kick bands harder. She wanted to get up and run around. Make noise. Maybe scream. She felt overstimulated and electrified, on high alert. Every sound in the classroom, every sniffle and cough, drew her attention. When the sunlight shifted through the tree leaves, it caught her attention. The ticking of the clock on the wall, the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum floor, everything.
There was too much to process, too many sounds and shapes and movements.
"One more equation, okay, and then we will go outside and play HORSE for a while."
Charlotte fidgetted again. Rubbed her temples. She was getting a headache and she felt too hot. The air felt stuffy, even though the windows were open, and she could feel plaque on her teeth when she ran her tongue over them. She could imagine all those bad bacteria burrowing tiny little scratches into her enamel, eating away at her teeth. Could see, in her mind's eye, her heart pumping and her lungs inflating and deflating, the little alveoli grasping onto oxygen molecules.
Why was it so hard to sit still? How could the other kids do it so well, sit and work out English and science and math problems in their notebooks, only getting up ocassionally for a drink of water or to use the bathroom?
"I'm thirsty. I need a drink of water," Charlotte said after writing down the first half of the next equation. Julie sighed.
"Okay, let's go get a drink of water."
Charlotte got up, ran into the hall, sneakers squeaking on the tiles. It took all her self control not to let go and just keep running. Run forever, maybe.
It was so hard to just be calm, to be still. To focus.
And the school day was only half through.
"Jane? You awake?" Lisbon was shaking his shoulder gently.
Jane opened his eyes and rubbed sand from the corners. He had a dull, pounding headache and the beginnings of hunger pangs.
"What time is it?"
"Almost two thirty. Van Pelt found some stuff you might be interested in."
"Okay," Jane said groggily, and got up off his couch. He followed Lisbon over to Van Pelt's desk.
"Okay, your birth record... kind of weird. They didn't list you as a twin and you and... your brother... um... your first names start with the same initial. They were filed in such a way that there are two birth records, one sort of sandwiched under the other. But if you didn't know what you were looking for, it would look like only one baby was born."
"That's odd?" Jane said, still half asleep.
"Yeah. There is a box on birth records to mark multiple births, and that box wasn't filled out to indicate a twin birth."
"But there are two birth records?"
"Yeah, but it would be easy to miss," Van Pelt said. "Strange, but possibly just a bureaucratic oversight."
Van Pelt had printed off both birth records. Red John and Patrick had been born 35 minutes apart, Jane being the younger of the two.
"What else?" Jane pressed.
"Not much in the way of early records for either of you. There is a history of early vaccine records for you both, then nothing for a long time."
"About 8 years gap?"
"Yeah. You both seemed to disappear from about the age of 2 to ten. Except... I plugged in the info for Red John... and there seems to be a file on him at a youth facility in southern California from the age of 8 to about ten. Only he was there under a different name?"
"Different name?"
"John Doe, actually. Not very original. The weird thing is, the term John Doe or Jane Doe is used for people who are unknown, where the birthdate and place of birth and identity aren't known. But his birthdate and birth location are located in the file. And the blood type, O negative, is the same as the later blood samples for Red John we have on file. I wasn't sure if it was him, of course, since other kids could easily have been born in your approximate area and at that time. So I did some digging and found a photo of John Doe that had been scanned into the system."
Van Pelt handed Jane a blurry, pixelated, black and white photo of a young boy with a shaved head staring solemnly at the camera and wearing what looked like hospital scrubs. There was a number printed on the front of his V-neck hospital shirt. 01301.
Jane looked at the photo. The child staring back at him could have been a slightly paler, larger version of himself. The eyes were different, the lips thinner. There was malice in the eyes, aggression, but also, Jane was sure, fear in those eyes.
"What sort of facility was this?" Jane said softly, staring hard at the photo.
"It seems to be an off-shoot of juvenile detention involving experimental psychiatric practices aimed at reducing antisocial behavior. The reports on... John Doe... from this period... half the file is blacked out. But he was there, and the little bit that wasn't blacked out gave me the creeps. Apparently some therapies involved forced electroshock and sleep deprivation, as well as the use of an experimental psychiatriac medication called LD-125. I couldn't actually find out what LD-125 was, or what it was expected to do but... Red John... was apparently given this medication. And... put through the program."
"Does the file contain the names of any doctors or program directors or anything?"
"I ran the names in the file. Two out of the three names correspond to older psychiatrists who died in the late 80s and mid 90s. One name popped up, the name of a military colonel named George Clemmons who seemed to be involved in special projects with regards to the Vietnam war. 90% of everything I could find online about this guy was blacked out, but he was alive and working out of Montreal in the 50s. The hospital he put some time in during the 50s was called the Allen Memorial Institute. Part of a hospital called Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. After doing some digging on the place, it very quickly became clear that this hospital was where Ewan Cameron worked during the early MK ultra experiments."
"And this military colonel worked there during the 50s? And also worked at the juvenile facility Red John was admitted to in the 70s?"
"Yes," Van Pelt said, voice wary. She looked down at her keyboard. Sighed loudly.
"When did this George Clemmons die? Does he have any family, maybe, I could speak to?" Jane said, still staring at the photo of Red John at age 8. The tortured gaze. The shorn head so reminiscent of the world war 2 death camps. Red John's child eyes were lit up with an emotion that made Jane feel queasy. Not just aggression or fear, although both those emotional states were present... but something far outside the bounds of sanity, an unhinged, distraught, betrayed look. It was like looking at the eyes of a tortured tiger in a zoo, mad with fear and pain.
"George Clemmons isn't dead. He's in his late 90s, now, but still, technically, alive."
"The same George Clemmons from the file?"
"Appears to be, yes, based on the limited information available and the man's date of birth."
"Where is his location?" Jane said softly.
"He's in an old age nursing home right here in California. He was born and raised on the west coast and stayed here most of his life, except for various military stints in different hospitals in his youth."
"Where in California?" Jane said, looking over at Lisbon.
"Jane, the man has alzheimer's, so even if they let you in to talk to him, he might not be able to tell you much."
"Where in California, Grace?" Jane persisted stolidly.
"San Francisco bay area," Van Pelt said with a grimace.
"That's only a little over 2 hours one way on state route 160," Jane said, rummaging through his memory. "We've been up that way on several cases before. What's their visiting hours like?"
"Monday to friday, 12 to 4. But for family only. I don't know how they'd feel about a visit from a CBI consultant."
"I can be family, if I need to be," Jane said easily, and smiled at Van Pelt. She offered him a wary smile.
"Too late to go today, though," Jane murmured aloud. "Lisbon... want to go up to San Francisco with me tomorrow?"
Lisbon, who had been looking over the files Van Pelt had printed out, nodded. She seemed disturbed by what she was reading.
"I heard about mind control experiments as a kid," Lisbon said softly. "And every so often, we'd get some whackjob in the interview room claiming they were being controlled by nanobots and implants in their brain, but somehow..." Lisbon trailed.
"Somehow you never really took it all that seriously?" Jane finished for her. Lisbon nodded.
"God. This place... was using kids to experiment on?"
"Juvenile delinquents," Jane said tightly, with mock sincerity. "If you make your target out to be morally deficient, you can get away with doing almost anything to them."
"But kids..." Lisbon said softly, eyebrows furrowing with stress and disbelief.
"Even kids," Jane said, nodding. "Maybe especially kids. They're minors and wards of the state. They don't pay taxes and they can't vote. Perfect test subjects, right?"
"And... Jane... for test subjects. They... often need controls."
Jane nodded. Finally Lisbon's meaning hit home. Control test subjects.
For many scientific studies, twins were considered ideal test subjects. You could plot the behavior and reactions of the twin undergoing experimentation against the so-called normal twin and reasonably conclude what behavioral and personality changes were a result of the "therapy" used in the experiment, versus a natural, biological occurence.
"I was the control?" Jane said, looking over at Lisbon, then to Van Pelt.
"It... maybe...?" Van Pelt murmured, uncertain, unable to meet Jane's eyes.
Jane felt and tasted bile begin to fill his mouth. He felt suddenly dizzy, a bit shocky, and like the air was being sucked dry of usable oxygen. Lisbon noticed before he did.
"Jane, come on. Sit down. You're really pale."
Rigsby was there, watching, and imemdiately wheeled a desk chair over to Jane. He sat down, stared at his shoes. His eyes were huge, pupils dilated with fear.
"What's going on, Jane?" Lisbon asked gently. "What are... what's happening in your mind, right now?"
If Peter had been a test subject, had Jane also gone through similar testing? Were his files harder to find? Was his ease with manipulating peoples' emotions and putting them into a hypnotic trance skills he had learned? Or just a coincidence.
"I feel..." Jane started, and then got up off the chair. He half-ran, half stumbled over to a plasticv paper wastebasket and threw up, loud, retching noises. Lisbon looked over at Van Pelt, who was watching the scene unfold, horrified.
"God, Jane," Van Pelt said softly, voice full of anguish. "God."
Lisbon was over at Jane's side almost immediately, rubbing his back as he continued to empty his stomach. Soon, there was only foamy acid and bile coming up. His face was even paler now, his eyes shining and bright.
"Rigsby? Do you think you could get him some tea?" Lisbon said, looking over at the younger agent. Rigsby nodded immediately. He looked like a guilty puppy dog, unsure of what to do to make the situation better, and now he had a task, somethig physical and obtainable.
"Right away, boss," Rigbsy said, and hurried away.
Cho had been only half listening, but as Jane knelt and puked, even Cho took notice. He fumbled in his front desk drawer, pulled out a small tin of mints and came over to Jane. Handed him a mint.
"This should help," Cho said and Jane nodded absently, took the mint, sucked on it. The air around him smelled strongly of vomit and fear.
"Come on, Jane. Let's go sit on your couch," Lisbon said gently when the vomiting was over. Jane nodded, let Lisbon pull him to his couch. She put the fleece throw over his legs, manuevered him until he was lying down, removed his shoes. He let her do these things, was rigid and stiff as a board. Lisbon watched, concern rising every minute.
God... what the hell had happened here? Not only to Red John... but to Jane?
What was this?
Rigsby came back from the break-room, then, carrying Jane's favourite blue tea cup full of tea. Lisbon moved the coffee table in the bullpen over towards Jane's couch and Rigsby gently put the cup of tea down in front of Jane.
"Here you go, buddy. It's chamomile, ginger and lemon zest. Should settle your stomach."
"Thanks, Rigsby," Jane said tiredly, eyes still closed. "I just need a few minutes. Have to pick Charlotte up in about half an hour."
"I can pick Charlotte up," Lisbon said, watching Jane. "You just rest, okay? You don't look like you're in good shape to drive."
"Okay," Jane said softly. No arguments. No deflections. That was worrisome.
"I'll pick her up and bring her back here," Lisbon said, helping Jane as he sat up and pulled the tea cup towards him. She watched him take a few curious sips. He closed his eyes and sighed in contentment.
"Charlotte's going to want to go home. She has gotten pretty... focused on sticking with her schedule."
"I'm sure she'll understand. She can play the PS4 with Rigsby in the lounge. What do you say, Rigsby?" Lisbon looked over at Rigsby and he smiled.
"Sounds fun to me," he said happily.
"Wait... who bought the PS4?" Jane asked in between sips of tea. He still felt dizzy and out of sorts. There was a strange and troublesome sensation in his mind of reality disintegrating, of existing, now, only in an incredibly vivid and lucid dream. The sensation frightened him, but he knew that if he allowed himself to panic, it would only get worse. He had to focus on the mundane, now, the every day. Right now, that was Rigsby, and his videogames.
"Wayne did. So he could play video games at work," Van Pelt said, smiling, answering Jane's question.
"Yeah, but I almost never get to use it," Rigsby said, sadly.
"Yeah, because you're being paid by the state of California to play Playstation," Cho said dryly.
"If agents can get time off for cigarette breaks, I don't know why I can't get time off for video game breaks," Rigsby shot back. "At least I am not polluting the air and damaging my lungs."
Jane, still sipping his tea, smiled.
"Technically, you have a point," Jane said, nodding at Rigsby.
"Thank you." Rigsby said, shooting Cho a look. Cho grinned, went back to his paperwork.
"Let... maybe let Charlotte win sometimes, though?" Jane said as he drained the last of his tea and put the cup back on the coffee table.
"I don't have to let her win. The kid's good." Rigsby said brightly.
"That's code for she kicks his ass," Cho said, piping up again.
"Quiet, you!"
"I'm... I'm just going to rest for a bit," Jane said, settling back down into the cushions of his couch.
Deep breaths. 4 seconds in. Hold. 4 seconds. Slow exhale for 4 seconds. Repeat.
By the time Lisbon was collecting her car keys and pulling on her jacket to go and get Charlotte, Jane had fallen asleep again, with Red John's files scattered on the coffee table next to the empty tea cup. Red John's eyes, caught in a nightmare of a childhood, peered up into the CBI room from the paper they were printed on, full of malice and fear and hate and pain. Funny how some ink printed on paper could translate so much of the human soul.
"Where's Patrick?" Charlotte said, coming over to Lisbon, opening the passenger side door and dumping her backpack in the backseat.
"Your dad wasn't feeling too well, so I thought I'd pick you up."
"What's wrong with him?!" Charlotte demanded, and Lisbon could see her stress level rise. In this way, Charlotte and Jane were pretty different. Jane kept a cool head. He was laid back... annoyingly so, sometimes.
Charlotte was on high-alert for danger all the time. The slightest change from what she considered "usual" had her stress hormones pumping overtime.
"He's okay. Probably a stomach bug. Maybe a migraine," Lisbon hedged.
"Migraine? Stomach bug?" Charlotte pressed.
"He's not feeling well. Wasn't up for driving."
"He's always up for driving," Charlotte said, worry clear on her young features.
"He's also human. He can get the stomach flu, kiddo."
"It's not flu season," Charlotte protested, and eyed Lisbon warily. "What's really going on?"
"Just what I said, Charlie. He's not feeling well-"
"Did he throw up?" Charlotte asked, and pulled her seatbelt over her lap, clicked it into place. Lisbon nodded, scanned the parking lot in front of her for kids. She pulled out of the lot, through the front gate and into traffic.
"He did."
"If it's a migraine, he should have a little bit of caffeine with ibuprofen. Motrin is good for migraines."
"You can tell him when we get back to the office."
"He's at the CBI?" Charlotte queried, reaching back for her backpack, now, fishing her nintendo 3DS out of it. She held the game console in her hands, still focused on Lisbon.
"He is."
"Are you sure its not serious... whatever is wrong with Patrick?"
"I am pretty sure it's not serious," Lisbon said, touched by the adolescent's concern. Charlotte wore her heart on her sleeve. In Lisbon's business, this sort of raw, untainted concern for others was relatively rare, and it was touching.
"What about dinner? Patrick and me were going to have veggie California burgers tonight. At Fatburger."
"You guys might have to reschedule that," Lisbon said, pulling to a stop in front of a street light. Charlotte considered this.
"So what's dinner going to be?"
"You can probably get something from the breakroom, right?"
Charlotte made a face. "The food in the breakroom is disgusting. Soggy meat sandwiches and bruised fruit. Or chips."
"Okay. Want to go through drive-thru?" Lisbon said. She was feeling more thna a little peckish herself, and Charlotte was wound up. Jane would probably appreciate a little bit of time to rest and decompress.
"Can we go to Dairy Queen. I want to get the popcorn shrimp basket with fries and Texas Toast."
"We can do that," Lisbon said agreeably.
"Can I get a blizzard for desert?" Charlotte wondered aloud.
"I don't know. What was your day at school like today?"
Charlotte was silent.
"Any detentions or anything?" Lisbon pressed maternally, expression serious. She had used the same expression with her younger brothers growing up, when she was trying to set standards of behaviour and show them she cared.
"No detentions."
"Okay, then. Maybe a small blizzard is in your future," Lisbon said.
"Large blizzard."
"We'll see," Lisbon said, smiling to herself. Charlotte smiled back, turned her 3DS on, began to play Mario Kart.
After Dairy Queen, Charlotte decided Patrick needed anti-emetic medication, so Lisbon stopped at a CVS pharmacy, ran in and grabbed some motrin, some dramamine and a bottle of Canada Dry ginger ale. Charlotte stayed in the car, playing Nintendo. She was full, and warm and comfortable.
A shadow passed by in front of the car. At first, Charlotte wasn't consciously aware of the change in sunlight. But then... suddenly, she was on alert. A rabbit caught in the shadow of an eagle... or a wolf. The strange feeling of being watched. Her head shot up, eyes narrowed against the onslaught of the moving sunlight, hands frozen on the game console. Staring.
Standing in front of Lisbon's car was a man. The man was wearing a black trenchcoat and a black, wide-brimmed hat. His sea-blue eyes danced with a devilish delight and his face was stretched wide and wild in a shark-like grin. The inside of his mouth was like looking into a black hole.
Charlotte screamed. It was the type of scream someone might make caught in the grasp of a doozy of a nightmare.
The thing with her father's face (close enough, anyway, to turn her stomach inside out) was undeniably Red John. As she watched, his eyes seemed to change colour from their warm sea-blue to an eerie purple-red. The colour of wine.
The colour of deoxygenated blood.
Charlotte stared, horrified. Transfixed. The man wasn't doing anything but standing and blocking the light and grinning his terrible rictus of a grin, but that was horrific enough in its own right.
He didn't have to do anything more. He had done more than enough already.
His smile spoke of death and dismemberment, lost innocence and terror. His smile screamed at her from the other side of the shatterproof windshield glass, without making any audible noise.
His smile shot through the atmosphere like radiation, like gamma rays. She felt weak and sick in its presence, infected and wounded. In the peach, over-bright light of a late Sacramento summer afternoon, she felt almost hypothermic; meat in a meat locker, frozen and dead-cold.
Charlotte moaned in fear, a long, gutteral exhalation, and turned her vision down towards her lap, to the cartoon image of Toad in his go-kart still on the tracks in his safe video-game world, being battered from behind by other Mario Kart characters.
She couldn't look up.
Was he even real? Was he really there?
Was this just her imagination? A flashback, maybe?
Charlotte scrunched her eyes tightly. Sucked in a gaspy, raspy breath and counted to ten. Her skin was covered in gooseflesh, and she still felt chilled to the bone. It was a cliche to say things like "one's blood ran cold", but when you were scared enough, terrified enough, it was true. You did freeze up... not just in movement, but in temperature.
She half expected, any moment, for the car to explode into laughing, screaming flames.
Nothing happened.
Of course, nothing happened.
She eased her eyes back open. There was a man dressed in black... but not a trenchcoat. Just a black windbreaker. He had a black hat on his head, a ballcap, though, not a fedora... and he was pushing a cart away from Lisbon's car.
He wasn't even smiling.
Now he was stopped outside of a station wagon, opening the trunk. Putting groceries inside. He looked to be talking on a cell phone.
Was this who she had seen? Had her mind filled in the rest with details from her worst nightmares? A trick of the light? A trick of a tired, teenaged brain low on caffeine?
"I'm going crazy," Charlotte said to the empty car, and shivered. She suddenly felt like she might burst into tears.
"Keep it together, Charlotte. They already think you're damaged enough."
She breathed in to four. Held for four. Out for four seconds. The sun had passed behind some cloud cover, now, and the first, hazy light of early evening was coming out. Golden light. The sun wouldn't go down for hours, yet, but the dazzling noon-day brightness was fading.
Lisbon came back to the car, then, clicked the lock open on the driver's side door and Charlotte jumped, startled. Lisbon smiled at her, a patient and hopefully reassuring smile.
Charlotte smiled back as Lisbon put the plastic CVS bags in the backseat and got back into the driver's seat.
"You okay?" Lisbon asked, looking the girl over. Charlotte nodded firmly.
She was okay.
Of course she was okay.
"Good," Lisbon said, and turned the keys in the ignition.
Good.
Charlotte unclipped her seatbelt and reached into the backseat for the CVS bags and riffled through the stuff Lisbon had bought. She found a monster energy drink, still cold from the cooler, in the mix, next to the ginger ale and dramamine and motrin. She grabbed it.
"Thanks, Lisbon," Charlotte said, popping the tab on the can of monster energy, taking loud, happy gulps of the stuff. Her eyes were at half-mast and the fleeting image of Red John could have been a dream.
Probably was a dream.
Or maybe... a spirit?
Nah. That was just plain stupid. It was only a dream.
By the time Lisbon's car pulled up into the CBI lot and passed through security, Charlotte had convinced herself that the vision was only a waking nightmare.
Apparently some people with sleep disorders could have "micro" dreams. Moments of REM brain activity while they were still, technically, awake.
In such a state, they could hear and see glimpses of things that weren't really there. Nothing to be worried about, even if it was freaky.
That's all that had happened. She'd been overtired and fallen half asleep.
She wasn't crazy at all.
She wasn't crazy.
Hell, maybe Patrick was even right, and Red John really was dead. And her visions of him had been fantasies, repressed fears, waking dreams. Flashbacks. Whatever.
Stress did funny things to the human mind, and her mind had been under more than a bearable level of stress for most of its mortal existence.
Maybe he really was dead...
And yet, the idea of him being dead felt too easy. It felt like a cheap shot, wishful thinking. Innately dangerous.
Lisbon was undoing her belt, now, climbing out of the driver's side door. Charlotte snatched up her backpack, reached back and grabbed the bag of stuff from CVS and got out of the passenger side. Followed the CBI agent into the government offices, swinging the CVS bag back and forth, back and forth as she got onto the elevator with Lisbon and the doors to the third floor closed with a ding.
"I have a book report due at school in two weeks and am only half way through the book," Charlotte told Lisbon as the elevator rose.
"Two weeks is quite a bit of time," Lisbon said.
"The book is IT by Stephen King," Charlotte informed Lisbon. Lisbon made a face.
"The one with the clown that eats kids?"
"Yeah." Charlotte confirmed.
"And isn't that book like... over a thousand pages?"
"Yeah," Charlotte admitted.
"Ouch," Lisbon said, wincing.
"Yeah."
The elevator stopped moving and a robotic female voice informed them they were on the third floor. The doors slid open and they stepped out into the hallway, eyes adjusting to the relative dimness of the CBI building after the bright light of the late Sacramento summer day.
"I've seen the mini-series. So I can probably just... not read the other half, and pretend like I have."
"Mmm." Lisbon said, not willing to bless that course of action.
"I mean, the only way my teacher would know if I haven't read IT is if she has also read IT, and I doubt that. She doesn't strike me as a Stephen King fan."
"What's at stake with this book report?" Lisbon asked as the two walked towards the bullpen.
"A trip to Legoland in Carlsbad, with Elias, if I get an A+."
Lisbon made an impressed face.
"Do you want to risk that trip?"
Charlotte shrugged her shoulders.
"If you put your mind to it, I think you can probably get through the novel."
"So many pages, though..." Charlotte trailed, cleared the corner and saw Jane napping on his couch. She walked over to him, kicked the bottom of his couch and grinned when he opened his eyes.
"I hear you're not feeling well, so we got you some dramamine and ginger ale and stuff at CVS," Charlotte said, still grinning. Jane smiled back.
"Very thoughtful. Thank you."
"Don't worry about missing Fatburger. Lisbon took me to Dairy Queen for dinner."
"How perfectly angelic of her," Jane said, groaning, pulling himself into a sitting position.
Then Charlotte saw the files spread out on the coffee table. Young Red John with his haunted, hooded eyes peering up like a sentient entity from the dazzling white printer paper. Charlotte stopped in her tracks.
"Is that...?"
"Yeah," Jane said, annoyed with himself for not hiding the files. "Sorry."
"As a kid?" Charlotte said, moving to grab the files. Jane was faster, though, began picking up the pages, tapping them into order on the coffee table.
"Nothing you have to concern yourself with, Charlotte."
"His head was shaved in that photo. Why?"
"Charlotte." Jane's voice was weary. Tired. Charlotte looked from her father to Lisbon, a look of dawning awareness on her face.
"Those papers... is that why you're sick? Why Lisbon picked me up?"
"No, it's just a stomach flu," Jane said flatly.
"Liar. You're lying. It was those papers... let me see them."
"You have to do your homework," Jane said, off his game, looking to Lisbon for help.
"I want to see those papers first."
"Charlotte, the papers don't really say anything new," Lisbon tried.
"Yeah, right. And I'm the queen of the smurfs," Charlotte mumbled and walked away, sulking.
Jane watched her go. Opened the ginger ale and took a few swigs from the bottle. He was opening the box of dramamine and punching out a few capsules when Lisbon spoke.
"Queen of the smurfs?"
"I should have put the files away. Shit."
Lisbon didn't say anything to this, just nodded.
"Thanks for feeding her," Jane said, after swallowing the dramamine. He was still far too pale for Lisbon's liking, but he seemed a little less pulled into himself.
"Don't mention it."
"She's going to be pestering me about those files, now," Jane grumbled. Lisbon came over, sat down next to him.
"Maybe not. Just tell her she can go on a roadtrip tomorrow with us and miss a day of school, and I bet you she'll let the whole thing drop."
"Ehhhh... maybe," Jane said, shrugging his shoulders. "Maybe. How was her day?"
"Unremarkable, I think. But she didn't let me read her log. Said it's for your eyes, only."
"Uh oh," Jane said good-naturedly, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise. "That doesn't sound too promising."
"I get the feeling Charlotte and math aren't on speaking terms, at present." Lisbon said, smiling slyly.
"Ahh."
They sat together on the couch, then, each lost in their thoughts. Jane didn't want to go home, be by himself. Be alone with his swirling, upended imagination.
"If I am coming along with you guys tomorrow," Lisbon started as Jane took a few more swigs from the ginger ale bottle, "maybe I should come over to your apartment tonight? Just so we get an early start?"
"Okay," Jane said, smiling, not fooled one bit. "Very sweet of you, Lisbon. Thank you."
"Of course, Jane," Lisbon said. She reached over, hugged Jane, hugged him hard.
He rested his head on her shoulder for a moment, just rested, peaceful in this tiny pocket of time to be comforted, to have Lisbon near him, to feel her heart beating.
The sound of Charlotte laughing in the new CBI lounge a few doors down from Lisbon's office, the sound of Rigsby loudly challenging the teen to a "death match" floated out into the bullpen. Jane grinned, despite the pressure in his head, the fear in his guts.
These small, seemingly insignificant moments were what life was about. Moments of comfort and safety and friendship in a world fraught with violence and chaos. These were the moments that anchored one's safety, stabilized a person, imbued a soul with the strength to keep going in life when one's path looked too dark and ominous, when paralyzing fear was snapping at one's heels like a rabid dog.
"Good old Rigsby for the save," Jane commented. Lisbon nodded.
"Good old Rigsby."