Fandom: The Mentalist (Chapter 67)
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim… if not his sanity, itself.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading. Things are starting to really heat up for our heroes. You'll see. Reviews, like always, are extremely appreciated. This has been the toughest of all the chapters to write... so far. -Lex
"What you're feeling... and I'm feeling... that's normal. Reality is thin ice, but most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall through until the very end. We did fall through, but we helped each other out. We're still helping each other." -Holly Gibney to Ralph Anderson in "The Outsider" by Stephen King
"People are blind to explanations that lie outside their perception of reality. You never should have come looking for me. You never should have even sensed me, no matter how strong his alibi was. Yet you did." The Outsider to Holly Gibney in "The Outsider" by Stephen King
"You asked me if I'd seen one of your kind before," Holly interrupted. "I haven't- well, not exactly- but I'm sure Ralph has. Strip away the shape-changing, the memory-sucking, and the glowing eyes, and you're just a sexual sadist and common pedophile." - Holly Gibney to The Outsider in "The Outsider" by Stephen King
The rest of their weekend went by, slow in parts (especially when Charlotte struggled with the past, and with memories) too fast when his kid was playing video games or watching her movies. Then it was back to school, and the world, and other kids, and all the emotions and effort those sorts of experiences demanded.
The moments of transient happiness (if "happiness" was, indeed, the right word) Jane had experienced with Charlotte at the dog park faded a little as the days wore on, as he'd known they would.
She had two rather intense nightmares over the weekend and shrieked herself awake. Jane had let her sit on the sofa in the living room and let her watch Netflix until she drifted off, watching her from his reading chair, always trying to maintain a strict balance between being comforting and paternal but giving her the space she needed to be vulnerable and hurt. When she finally fell asleep, on both nights, he'd turned the TV off and arranged a throw blanket over her, moved her a bit so she wouldn't wake up with a sore neck from the awkward angle.
She was a private individual by nature, Charlotte was, and she needed her space. Even though he had done his best to get her to believe that crying or showing weakness wasn't in and of itself weak, he knew she still emotionally believed that showing distress was weak and shameful, and she felt shame about it. So he gave her that space, even when it pained him to do it.
She needed that space, even when all he wanted to do was cuddle her like she was a little toddler again.
Instead, he sat in his chair, near her but hopefully not overbearingly near, and watched cartoons late at night when the dreams whipped her subconscious into a frenzy and her pillows were once again stained with too many tears.
He maintained their schedule, as best as he could, also trying to walk a fine balance between being overly perfectionistic about it (a schedule, after all, had to be maintained to some degree or it failed to be anything at all) and allowing his kid wiggle-room when her past demons came calling.
But they were finding a balance, and he felt good that he had spoken to her about depression, and suicidal thoughts, and how suicidal thoughts in and of themselves could be liars, essentially, and twist a person's view of reality.
Jane made comparisons to how thoughts could begin to take on the "voice" of someone who has been abusive or had bullied or otherwise tormented them, and likened Charlotte's intrusive thoughts (especially the ones which insidiously suggested life was more trouble than it was "worth") to a small, spectral Red John sitting on her shoulder and still trying to muck up her life.
He used the image of the devils and angels from the old Loony Toons cartoons to get his point across, and that analogy seemed to work well for his kid, who was becoming something of a cartoon connoisseur. He needed her to see that not every thought she got while in this healing state was reliable, or valuable, or needed to be paid due consideration. And some of her thoughts were programming, scars in their own right, but psychic scars, whispering words of hopelessness and shame and future failure into her mind with the insidious skill of Red John himself.
Once Charlotte began to understand that much of her shame and depression were throw-backs to Red John's torture and directly related to his actions, she could see that she was still, in many ways, controlled by him, and she had a better chance of not succumbing, at least physically, to her depression. Not in the ways Jane feared most, at least.
But he still kept a close watch on her.
He worked with her on coming up with ideas for her science experiment. Finally, they decided on doing an experiment with training pit bulls, and Jane phoned the local ASPCA hospital and explained the situation. A fair dose of mentalist skill later, and he managed to get his kid the opportunity to go to the shelter and "work" with some of the hard-to-place dogs.
She would walk them and teach them commands (sit, stay, roll over, jump up, shake a paw, drop it and "speak"), and chart the results, using slightly different rewards for each dog.
Different treats (a variety of different flavored large treats as a reward after following four or five commands in a row, versus small, bite-sized treats given after every successful command had been obeyed, versus petting and physical affection instead of food. The name of the project Charlotte came up with (with Jane's help) was: "The effectiveness of different models of positive reinforcement in the training of American Staffordshire Terriers and American Pit Bull Terriers".
In the end, she ended up with 7 different dogs she would work with, three days a week after school (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the local ASPCA animal shelter, initially).
Because of her experiment and online "advocacy" (as she called it) all of "her" dogs were moved out of the high-kill shelters they'd been "surrendered" to and were moved into local foster families in the area, and 4 of the 7 ended up in the same foster home, which cut down on the car trips Jane had to make.
All this in two and a half weeks time. And even on her bad days, Jane could see that Charlotte was proud of the fact that she'd "saved" 7 dogs from euthanasia. Some did, indeed, seem to respond to training faster than others (Jane suspected part of that might be due to the age of the animal and not just the specific treat being offered) but overall, small, bite-sized treats dispensed immediately after obeying a command tended to produce better results in the animals' behavior than one bigger reward given all at once, or non-food rewards.
All of the dogs, however, improved in terms of sociability and potential for adoption, and Jane saw moments where his kid seemed genuinely interested while working with the animals, instead of just going through the motions.
August became September, and Jane worked on Charlotte with "thinking exercises" most days, similarly to how she worked with the dogs. He typed up a list of "truths" to "always remember" and put them in a clear, plastic protective sheet for her.
The "truths" were written as such...
CHARLOTTE'S TRUTHS TO REMEMBER
1. When healing from trauma, it is NORMAL to feel bored, depressed and like things don't matter. Keep acting as if they do, and eventually the brain begins to change.
2. You have already lived through the worst things. Now, you just have to retrain your brain into remembering what fun, joy, awe, hope and trust are.
3. A bad day doesn't mean you are failing. Everybody has bad days. The goal is to, over time, have more "good" or neutral days than bad days.
4. Don't compare yourself to other people. Other people haven't had the life you have had. Compare yourself to past-Charlotte. Seek to improve upon past-Charlotte. Comparing yourself to others is unfair and will lead to feelings of discouragement. It is worse than useless, it is counterproductive, to compare yourself to others.
5. There is no one definition of "normal". Aim for "healthy" and "feeling okay" versus "normal".
6. Feelings are not always accurate representations of reality.
7. When you think a "bad" thought or feel an uncomfortable emotion, ask yourself if it is really your burden, or if it is "leftover" stuff from Red John. Don't give Red John any more power! Even if you can't immediately change the feeling or get the thought to leave, consciously recognize that Red John's opinions and comments DON'T MATTER. Such thoughts and emotions are like mosquitoes buzzing around. They are uncomfortable and stressful, but they don't COME from YOU.
8. You are NOT a psychopath. You are NOT Red John. You have no objective reason to feel shame, nor do you deserve it. You lived the best way you could in impossible circumstances. It was Red John's goal that you would feel shame, guilt, and fear because that made you easier to control, but they are not your emotions to feel. You do not deserve to feel these things. They are residue left by Red John, so try not to obsess about them, and when they bother you, remind yourself they are RED JOHN's residue, and not yours to feel, and focus on something else.
9. If you feel tired but it is daylight, try to stay awake and active. The bed is for sleeping at night, not for "resting" in during the day. "Resting" too much can make depression worse.
10. I am VERY proud of you!
11. Things are getting better every day.
12. You are safe, you are loved and you are wise.
13. Even though you have had many precious things in life stolen from you, the future is full of amazing possibilities, and nobody can steal those possibilities from you without your consent.
14. You're not what happened to you, you're how you respond, day in and day out, to those trials. You are your hopes, dreams, the work you put into things, the kindness you show others, the bravery you show. And I LOVE who you are.
15. When you feel bad, take this list out and reread it. Remind yourself that things are getting better and that whatever is bothering you at this moment is TEMPORARY.
Love Dad
Charlotte took the list with her everywhere. Pinned it to the corkboard above her desk, next to her bed, when she was home. Carried it in her 3-ring binder to school. Read it. Reread it. A bit obsessively, Jane thought, but they were truths she needed to hear and integrate and believe. A little bit of good programming to overcome all the bad, to try and undo some of the bad.
And Jane meant every word, and because he meant what he had written, Charlotte found herself able to, at the very least, hope in his words, if not fully believe in them.
Jane bought her a diary with a lock (she carried the key with her house key and bike lock key on a shoelace around her neck) and he promised her he would never read it or betray her trust in him. He would only ever read it if she allowed him to. And he meant his words, and when he said them, she met his gaze and knew he was speaking the truth.
She'd gotten a diary before, months earlier, following the advice of the doc-in-the-box shrink, but this was different. Trust had developed. And Jane knew he couldn't betray it, and Charlotte saw that in his eyes. As worried as he might be for her, sometimes, he knew more and more that to ever betray that trust would be the absolute worst thing he could do.
So, he got her a new diary. For a new school year, to mark a new passage of time, to mark the almost-one-year-anniversary of their reunion.
He got her some worry dolls, to place her "worries" into before bed each night. They couldn't hurt, and every small step to reduce toxic stress and fear was worth trying.
Jane went back to the CBI more and more often during Charlie's school days, consulting on cases, messing with perps' heads more than usual on the days following the really bad nights, nights where Charlotte had been unusually upset. He got better results on his cases as the days and then weeks passed, and began to sleep a little better. Even dealing with trauma, given time and understanding, could become something of a routine of talking, Netflix, tea and hot cocoa, hugs, and reassurances.
One day at a time. One moment at a time.
Because that's all anybody ever had- the moment right in front of them.
And the days passed and then they were fully back into another school year, Charlotte now tackling a mixture of grades 8 and 9, frustrated and unable to focus much of the time, but trying. Really trying. And that was the important thing.
The science fair project results were tallied, and digital photos were printed of the dogs. The results were posted on poster board, and the dogs were given "permission" to go to the science fair to "display" their commands. Video footage of their progress was taken and played on a portable DVD player, along with photos and write-ups on the products used and different techniques, and a list of resources used (ASPCA hospital volunteer group, different youtube videos, and books on dog training form their local library, PetSmart dog obedience classes and the names of instructors)
Charlotte ended up getting second place for her division in the science fair, a ribbon and a little trophy (silver, featuring a microscope as an icon of eighth grade "science") which read:
"Charlotte A. Jane
September 2014
Second Place Silver Winner
Eighth Grade
Alternative and Special Education Division
Sacramento, California Science Fair"
engraved on the base of the trophy.
She was also given a certificate (suitable for framing) with her name, the name of her project, the year and her second place winner status printed on it. And in those photos, Jane was pleased to see, her smiles were genuine, her eyes smiling as well as her lips, all the microfacial expressions displaying genuine pride and happiness as opposed to the wooden smiles of an adolescent merely being polite for others.
Jane got a frame from an expensive photography studio for her certificate, and the framed certificate and trophy and framed photos from the fair were displayed on shelves in the living room, along with her previous year's school photo and class photo.
Their apartment began to feel more like a home, with a history, and evidence of school work and hobbies and interests and success. There was a timeline now, a sense of stability, of moving forward.
And all of that was very good.
Normal, even, although the idea that aspects of their lives were becoming anything approaching "normal" still seemed a little surreal and dream-like to Jane.
And then, faster than Jane would have thought subjectively possible, it was October. Nearing a year his kid had been with him. An intense year. Too intense. But, all in all, a miraculous year. A lifetime, almost, in a year...
The hot, humid heat of the summer began to cool a little, and the nights became pastel purple a little earlier each day.
Kids began to wear windbreakers and autumn jackets again, jeans and track-pants and sweats in place of shorts and skirts. The evening air was cool and fragrant with the smell of all the expensive flowers and shrubs Californians liked to plant.
It wasn't cold, but cool. Brisk. Lovely weather, Jane thought, and his kid had a healthy glow from the summer sun and her hair was lighter and blonder, now, too, but she seemed less irritable in the afternoons, now that the weather was cooler.
Some of the deciduous trees began to turn color, from green to yellow and orange. Some of the leaves began to fall from their branches, collecting in rustling autumnal collections at the bases of the trees, moving over the sidewalks with delightful whispering noises when the evenings turned breezy.
Halloween was still half a month away when Jane decided it was time they start decorating.
He wanted his kid to get as much joy out of her first real Halloween "back" as was possible.
Starting on October 15th, every day after school. Jane would take Charlotte to a little party supply store and buy a small Halloween decoration. Within days there was a battery operated doorbell on their door, with a motion-censor-operated, bloodshot-eye which rolled in its socket when a visitor approached.
The two times Lisbon had come over (at Charlotte's insistence) and pressed the doorbell, loud, tinny Halloween music and groans issued forth from the little contraption.
Charlotte had feigned ghoulish laughter (HAW! HAW HAW!) at the sound of the doorbell and scurried away to hide so she could "scare" Lisbon after Jane got the door.
The first time she did it, she managed to make Lisbon jump a little.
The second time... not so much.
Jane got a hanging plastic glow-in-the-dark skeleton to pitch off their balcony railing (it was attached to the railing by a rope noose tied around the neck), and zombie arms on stakes to put in the lawn around the front of the building.
Every day, something new was added.
A fabric ghost hanging from a tree near the front parking lot one day.
Halloween themed window clings (jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, witches and black cats) stuck to the front glass door of the apartment building, near the intercom system.
Orange and black lights strung up in the living room near the windows, and a giant light up, plastic ghost positioned on their balcony, overlooking the back parking lot like a sentry.
Halloween was coming.
And Jane planned to make this a good one.
Monday, October 22nd, 2014 3:06 pm PST
Jane sat across from a forty-something dark-haired caucasian man named Brad Putnam in the CBI interview room. The guy was tan, athletic, lean, nice smile, and a total narcissistic sociopath.
He'd scammed many people out of tons of money on so-called "healing spiritual retreats" and sexually assaulted a few of them (both female and male). Jane suspected there were more victims than the four who had come forward with their concerns, but nobody really wanted to talk, especially the men, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why.
Nobody wanted to admit that sort of betrayal had been committed against them, that sort of violation, especially if they had trouble remembering it. Especially not to police officers. CBI agents.
And it would be difficult to prove those sexual assaults, the ones of the victims who had come forward, as much of the DNA evidence had been destroyed (through showers, baths and the laundering of clothes) and the victims only had hazy recollections of the attacks themselves thanks to the influence of a variety of drugs Mr. Putnam had infused in their "healing" tea during meditation "retreats" in isolated areas along the coastline of Big Sur.
One of the victims had held onto some of the tea after her attack, had brought it forward to be tested. The DA would smear her name and say she was just a junkie and was framing his client for money... but...
But, if Jane was right (and Jane knew he was right) the sicko in front of him had also raped and killed at least two of those women, and financially devastated dozens more, draining their bank accounts and slim life-savings while they were under the influence of drugs he'd dosed them with. Without their consent, of course. The drugs, part.
Two of the women linked to his organization had been missing for over a month, and last week, a body matching one of the missing women had been found, in pieces, thrown in a marina near the guy's fishing boat.
It reminded Jane of the "Dexter" show that Charlotte watched (much to his vexation) on the weekends. Jane knew why Charlotte liked Dexter; Dexter was likable, in some ways he had some of the traits of Red John- and even though Red John had brutalized her, he was charismatic and there was a bond there, however toxic and however similar to Stockholm Syndrome that bond happened to be... but the show also helped to normalize extreme violence, and on some level, that had to feel comforting to Charlotte, to watch a show where extreme violence and pain were presented as almost mundane, as prosaic.
Something everybody went through, and quite often, to boot.
People gravitated towards homeostasis, even when their conditioning and upbringings were Hellish.
However, when their conditioning and upbringings had been Hellish, almost universally they tended to normalize the extreme dysfunctionality of their lives, seek the familiar. This was one of the reasons abuse, for instance, tended to be generational. It wasn't so much genetic, in Jane's belief (the propensity for beating or raping one's own children) but a function of normalizing one's own experiences... and then carrying them on, generation after generation.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, and all of that.
Except... in Charlotte's case, the devil she'd known had implanted and infested her mind with fears that so-called normal life was one huge charade, that nothing truly was normal (or safe), and that trying to seek out "normality" was dangerous. The devil she'd known had made devils out of normal, everyday, healthy, functional habits, in order to keep her under his control.
So, it made perfect sense to Jane why his daughter liked Dexter, why she binge-watched it on Saturdays after her chores and homework were done, but right now, the surface similarities to the show were a bit much too handle.
Unlike in "Dexter", this particular sociopath didn't target other sociopaths or "bad" people, he went after perfectly-decent, non-psychopathic people (mostly young, naive women) he viewed as weak and expendable. Often women who had been through abuse or trauma and were trying to heal and were grasping at straws, looking into "alternative" forms of healing, desperate to "reclaim" their "broken spirits", to become one with nature, one with the "Goddess".
The "Goddess" touch had been an especially vile touch, Jane thought darkly, watching the scumbag in front of him ramble on about nothing...
And, also unlike Dexter, this guy wasn't careful, wasn't fastidious. He hadn't wrapped the body pieces in plastic or weighed them down, just thrown them overboard like they were fish guts, like nobody would ever find them, or if they did... like he was cocksure he couldn't have the murder pinned to him.
Of course not, because this asshole thought everybody on the planet was stupider than he was and that salt water destroyed all DNA evidence. Not entirely true, and the guy hadn't been careful.
Jane re-ran the details through his mind.
The body parts had been dumped within walking distance of his boat. At the same marina. And the same woman he'd had contact with.
It made Jane's blood boil.
And the guy knew Jane knew, and knew there wasn't enough physical evidence (yet!) to tie him to any of the crimes (not the hazy sexual assaults, the other missing woman or the dead-woman-in-pieces), and was having a good old time grinning at Jane and letting his mask slip, just enough that Jane could be certain he was looking at what he thought he was, but not enough to risk imprisonment.
Not yet. But soon.
That's why, by 3:10 pm, Jane still hadn't left to pick his daughter up from school. Jane excused himself from the interview room with a smile when he realized how late the day had gotten, went into the break room and plugged in his daughter's cell phone number. Charlie picked up on the second ring.
"Patrick?"
"Hey, kiddo. Yeah, it's me. I lost track of time and will be a bit late picking you up."
"School is almost out," Charlie said plaintively. Jane smiled at the sound of her voice.
"Yeah, I know, Charlie. I'm sorry. I'll explain more to you later, okay?"
If he didn't explain at least the basics of why he was late, his child had a marked tendency to worry herself sick thinking up fantastic scenarios which were (almost always) far worse and scarier than the reality.
"Okay," Charlotte breathed. "School gets out at 3:30 pm. Even after school study is over by then, I mean. Can you make it for then?"
"No, see," Jane said slowly, and rubbed at one of his temples, "that's why I'm phoning. I'm going to be there a little closer to four. I haven't left the office yet."
"Oh. Are you okay?"
"I'm perfectly fine, I just got distracted with an interview."
"Oh," Charlotte said. Jane could hear the usual classroom noises in the background. Shoes squeaking on linoleum, coughing, kids chattering amongst themselves, the teacher droning on in the background. They seemed to be talking about the differences between plant and animal cells. Basic biology stuff.
Charlotte liked biology and science in general, at least in theory, but Jane knew her well enough to know that, these days, five minutes of sitting mostly-still was about her limit for concentration. After that, she tended to fidget and spin her pencil on her desk, play with the little sensory toys she'd been allowed to take to school for the sake of her teacher's sanity.
You had to pick your battles, sometimes.
"Can I talk to Julie?"
"Julie? Why? I've been good today and..."
"I just want to see if she can hang out with you until I get there," Jane explained, working to keep his tone light. He felt snappy and irritable and wanted to get back into the interview room. Nail that bastard to the wall.
Rigsby came into the break room then, went to the soda pop machine, slipped some coins into the machine and hit a button. Jane heard the sound of a can of soda falling down into the tray at the bottom. Rigsby came over to Jane, sat down in a chair very close to where Jane was standing, popped the tab on his soda, took a loud slurp and plainly proceeded to eavesdrop on Jane's conversation.
"Yeah, hi, Rigsby," Jane said to the younger man so Charlotte would know what was going on.
"Is that Charlotte? Tell her hi for me," Rigsby said, directing his comments towards Jane's cell phone.
Charlotte heard him and decided to yell back: HIII RIGGGSSSBBBYYYY!
Rigsby heard the yell came through the earpiece. Jane shut his eyes at the sudden, loud noise. Winced a little. Sighed.
Rigsby was smiling broadly now.
"I like that kid, she's a good egg," Rigsby said to Jane approvingly, still speaking loudly enough so Charlie could hear his comments and Jane smiled a strained smile at him. Walked to the other end of the breakroom, away from the general vicinity of Wayne Rigsby's mouth.
That was quite enough of that.
On Charlotte's end, Jane heard his daughter's teacher reproach her mildly for yelling in the classroom. Ask her if she needed a break. Charlotte said yes, and then Jane heard the sound of the phone being shuffled, of his kid, walking, the sound of a door squeaking open and closing again.
"They need some WD-40 for that damned door, I mean, sheesh, with the money you parents pay for us nuts to go here, you think they'd at least make sure the doors didn't squeak like something out of a 1950s horror movie," Charlotte began. Speedy. Oh, she was running on fumes, alright. Her attention span was shot, her day had apparently been very long.
Jane cut her off before she could really get going.
"Okay, is Julie there with you?"
"Yes, but I don't need a babysitter."
"Can you put Julie on the phone just for a minute, anyways, please?" Jane said as calmly as he could.
There was the sound of the phone switching hands. Then Julie's voice.
"Yeah, hi, I was wondering if you could hang out with Charlotte a bit after school today, I'm going to be about half an hour late?" Jane started.
Rigsby was still listening to the conversation as if watching a soap opera. Jane rolled his eyes at Rigsby, held the phone away from his mouth so he could speak to the CBI agent.
"Don't you have some work to do or something, Rigsby?"
"I just love watching you be a Daddy," Rigsby said with a broad smile, in slight trolling-mode now. " It's just so... gratifying. And. Besides. I don't want to go back to that interview room, alone. That guy gives me the heebie-jeebies."
"There's a very good reason he gives you the heebie-jeebies," Jane said mildly, "But if you're going to stay, don't yell anything out that's going to get my kid all excited. Her impulse control flies out the window when she hears your voice, and we're working on getting her to use her indoor voice at school. Be cool, Wayne."
Rigsby grinned even wider at this. Nodded.
Most of the office (at least Lisbon's crew, at any rate) knew that Charlotte had a "slight crush" on Rigsby. Maybe not a crush-crush, in the usual sense of the word, but she seemed to blush a fair deal around him, and grinned like a nut when he appeared. Shared her chips and skittles and snacks from the vending machine with him and then would stare at him, unblinking, as he ate them. So... it was Charlotte's version of a crush.
And it was adorable in its own way and had become something of an ongoing joke (the nice kind) around the office. And Rigsby seemed to delight in his role.
Jane returned the phone speaker to its position in front of his mouth.
"Yeah, sorry, just something I had to take care of on my end," he said to Julie in an apologetic tone.
Nodded as his kid's aide said something to him.
"Okay. Yeah. Well, as long as you can stay. Would be much appreciated. Okay. Thank you."
Jane disconnected the phone call.
"We have to wrap this interview up. Charlotte's aide can only stay with her until 3:45 pm at the latest and it takes a good 20 minutes to get there. And that's if the traffic's good."
"Yeah, and the traffic starts getting bad around..." Rigsby glanced at the analog clock on the wall above the garbage can next to the Pepsi machine. "Around right now."
"Yes, it does," Jane confirmed. "So let's wrap this up and send Mr. Spiritual Advisor to prison, where he belongs, what do you say?"
"I still am not sure he's guilty of all that stuff," Rigsby said shaking his head as if seeing something gross left on the road by a semi-truck. He followed Jane out of the room. "But he definitely gives me the heebie-jeebies. He most definitely gives me the heebie-jeebies."
"You and me both, Rigsby," Jane agreed.
Monday, October 22nd, 2014 3:40 pm PST
Jane pulled the Citroën out of the CBI parking lot at 3:40 pm, later than he'd wanted to leave... but he'd managed to fluster the pervert (and killer, Jane knew) Putnam into putting his foot in his mouth and saying some things which had given Lisbon and the rest of the team reason to hold him overnight. While they could dig up more.
After exiting the security-guarded back gate, Jane had waited until his car was out of sight of any of the CBI cops who might be mulling around (some of them had axes to grind with him) and then pushed the Citroën ten over the legal speed limit until he reached the school.
He knew his daughter's aide had to leave at 3:45 pm at the latest (she had somewhere she "really" had to be and couldn't stay any later than that) which would leave Charlotte outside by herself on the playground or alone on the basketball court.
And that bothered Jane. Alone at home would be one thing. Or even outside walking Dixon.
But the school was somewhat isolated, and Charlotte was, at least socially, defenseless. Not counting Red John, the teen years were tough. Kids could be real "Lord of the Flies" assholes when it came right down to it.
But Jane's unease was more than potential bullies.
The reason for his unease- which he allowed to flutter over his conscious mind only in brief flashes- made the hair on the back of his neck stand up straight.
Even though Jane was pretty sure Red John was dead, it was now October.
October 31st, 2003 (or the 30th, that hellish night had been a long one and the exact times of death of his wife and the little girl who, it turned out, hadn't been Charlotte.. .their bloody, awful deaths... their murders... had been difficult for the M.E. to pinpoint), well... if he allowed himself to entertain paranoid delusions... and just on the off-chance, one chance in a thousand, maybe... their anniversary was cycling back into his waking reality.
Gave him chills to consider it, and if he had the power to control time, he'd skip October altogether.
His and Red John's "anniversary" was approaching. The date of so much bloodshed.
All of it. All of Red John's utterly chaotic, demonic bullshit in his life, always resolving around that damned holiday of spooks and ghouls and blood-suckers.
Things which went "bump" in the night. And boy, how hard some of those "things" bumped when they were in a tizzy.
Halloween.
Halloween had been when Red John had first killed his family. In practical terms. For the purpose of crushing his own twin brother and indelibly marking his soul.
It had been Halloween.
Halloween had been when Red John had first come into his adult life and shattered that life as best he could. The first day of the darkest half of the year, indeed.
And Halloween... when he was a child... though it was blurry and the details were out of focus... Halloween had been the time when Red John had lit that awful fire and committed what was probably his first murder. Or, at any rate, his first solo murder.
And when he had beheaded Jane's cherished dog, Lucky.
"LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO! LOOK WHAT YOU FUCKERS MADE ME DO! LOOK WHAT YOU MOTHERFUCKERS MADE ME DO! A DOG! A DOG! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?! ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THIS FUCKING SHIT-EATING DOG?! ARE YOU?! YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!"
And, of course, Charlotte had come back to him almost a year before the current date, and almost at the exact time she'd been taken, ten years earlier. Which, as wonderful and miraculous as that was, was also its own very real trauma, and the unveiling of a new viper's pit of traumas they both had to deal with.
The full-cycle of Red John's mind-fuckery of his life, like a moon passing through all its phases. A big, fat blood-Red-John-moon.
And that moon rose on Hallo-fucking-ween.
Fucking Halloween.
It would be worse than idiotic to deny the connection, especially when Red John had gone out of his batshit-crazy mind to try and sear that connection into Jane's mind and soul.
Halloween was important.
Halloween was to be respected.
Halloween was when Red John came out to play... to really play.
Play with baby brother. And with baby brother's darling family, by extension.
Lisbon was in his life now; and Lisbon was family, too. In every which way that mattered.
Jane ran back over the date and the details as he drove and weaved through traffic, and the skin over his knuckles drew taut as he considered the Red John problem from various angles, skin growing bloodless and bone-white under the flesh as he gripped the comfort gel steering wheel of the Citroën and analyzed his own exsanguinated life.
Charlie had come back at that exact time, too, almost as if she had been sent.
Maybe she had been sent.
Not consciously directed, perhaps, Jane was pretty sure she would have mentioned that or let it slip in other ways if that had been the case... but subconsciously fine-tuned and manipulated so that she'd take off at that time?
So that her reappearance would line-up with grinning, fire-lit faces and children decked out in red devil costumes?
That was more than a possibility, it was a definite probability, a likelihood.
Dollars to donuts, as they'd said in the Circus when Jane was growing up.
Dollars to fucking donuts.
Maybe it had been an accident or a coincidence that she'd managed to escape on that date.
But maybe, and much more likely, Red John liked Halloween for some reason besides the obvious shlocky-kitsch appeal and had left an "escape slot" open for his troublesome little abductee-protégée.
Jane wasn't court-of-law sure.
But deeper down, in his heart and lungs and innards, in the darkest waters of his worst subconscious intuition, he was certain.
Charlotte had been forced or manipulated back to her long-lost father at that specific time- that month and day- because even her "free will" was a single brick in the collection of Red John's manipulation-skills-of human-behavior-lego-bricks set.
It wasn't a set most people had ever heard of and certainly not recommended for children; not a pirates or space-robots or ice-planet set.
It was the metaphysical, manic, frenzied, devastate-entire-communities-through-sexual-torture-and-prolonged-murder set.
Very exclusive.
You could only get a copy of these exclusive building blocks- Jane thought sullenly as he sped through traffic- after years of CIA-funded torture and electroshock "therapy" at Redrock Boys Home in sunny California.
But as far as playthings went, every "brick" Red John owned- every insight into human weakness and pain which had allowed him to so adroitly collect the life of another human victim- was precious.
Every insight into the deadly pitfalls of human blindness which had allowed him to painstakingly build a monstrous, imaginary sculpture (with fangs and claws, no doubt) to sit on the imaginary mantle behind his gloating eyes... was precious, too.
And Red John had amassed a huge collection of these handmade monsters over the years, built brick by bloody brick.
They were his progeny.
Charlotte was Jane's baby.
But all his kills, all the screams he had compelled into existence with a knife or a scalpel or a hacksaw... those were Red John's babies.
Red John's "creations".
Because, Jane mused- as he came to a red stop light and grimaced at the loss of seconds- Red John didn't view the deaths he was responsible for as losses, at all.
To Red John, they had never been "destructive".
To view his kills as "destructive" required more empathy than Red John possessed when you really thought it through... and Red John lacked empathy the way thalidomide victims lacked limbs.
There was no real malice there, either.
There was only the void of empathy, and the desire to make something more.
And that was where so many criminologists went wrong, Jane mused, and the realization made him clench his jaw. Made the muscles in his neck harden to rock.
Because the truth of it- that to Red John and others like him- murder wasn't a destructive act at all, but one of utmost creative fortitude, that insight was so blatantly obvious when you empathized with the killer.
That was the supreme irony of it.
The part most people could never do, even if they dedicated their lives to the understanding of the psychopathic mind.
The very idea that something was "destructive" implied a sense of loss, a sense of something important in the world being taken away or erased from existence.
And Red John had never viewed his victims as important in their own right.
So where was the loss?
And if there was no loss, then how could the act of killing them be destructive?
His victims were only important to the degree that they could bleed and gasp and beg and plead and scream.
In their pain, they bellowed out their life force.
In their death, at least to Red John, they became so much more through the dying process than they ever could have been if left to live out the rest of their natural days.
Jane's jaw clenched and twitched again as he continued to think. Really think.
Really put himself in Red John's position.
Stare into the abyss.
And it was uncomfortable as hell, that transition.
Like having a swarm of wasps sting your brain tissue to red, weeping welts.
He wanted to think of other things, now, but he wasn't done with this train of thought, not yet...
He fought his way back, fought to keep the line of Red-John-logic alive...
Victims.
Red John's victims...
No value in and of themselves.
Their only value could come from him.
And he couldn't create life. All he could do to "enhance" them was make them scream and bleed and cry and die.
Ergo, only in death- in death, he controlled like an Old Testament God incarnate- did they have any value.
In the most twisted of ways, Jane thought, in Red John's most-twisted-of-minds, the master manipulator had been imbuing his victims with worth.
By killing them.
He viewed them as creations, the creations of corpses, the creations of voids, the creations of black holes in lives...
Scenes of screams and dripping blood and snotty, red-faced sobbing which could be run through the projector of his warped mind and play out over and over whenever he wanted against the backdrop of his eyelids.
His home-made mental movies.
His obliteration of entire lives, and the rebound effect of those deaths on families and communities?
Those were his multi-step brick monsters.
All his kills, and all the steps leading up to the grand climax which was the death rattle of each human victim?
All creations.
Red John was a playful boy, indeed.
Jane felt chilled, cold.
Because it had always been easier to see sadism in Red John, true malice.
Easier to hate him that way.
And maybe, under the current definition of "sadist", Red John fit the bill.
But when you thought him through, thought through his version of logic, step by step, brick by brick... there was nothing there.
Not malice. Not hatred. Not sadism. Only the illusion of sadism.
Like a vampire, there was no reflection.
There was only Red John's twisted view of creation.
And seeing Red John that way, in flashes of stressed insight, was somehow much more terrible than the years of knee-jerk assumptions about his malicious and evil nature.
At the end of the day- at least on a subconscious level- there was a lingering hope that the true sadist, full of rage and malice and bitter scorn, could be reasoned with.
But how did one reason with the void?
With a mind no more "cruel" in practical terms than a prion or virus?
The simple answer was: you couldn't. You didn't.
You couldn't reason with that mind, even if it wore camouflage which suggested otherwise.
To Jane, that realization was all the more chilling, and even though it was only October 22nd in California and nowhere close to "cold" in any objective sense, Jane suddenly felt himself reaching out and fumbling with the dials to turn on the heater in his car.
Another stop light on the way to his child's school forced Jane to stop the car again.
He was grinding his teeth back and forth, back and forth, and couldn't stop.
Jane forced himself back to his previous chain of thought.
Red John was a void.
For the sake of a hypothesis, to look at Red John another way, to try and put the pieces, Jane had to consider Red John was devoid of malice.
There was no malice there. Assuming there was- based on the effect of his crimes on surviving victims and their families- had, perhaps, been a crucial mistake.
That was why... why Red John had always been a step ahead of everybody else.
It was the same reason novel viruses could spread out of small areas and cause global pandemics before anybody knew what was going on.
Because there was nothing left to reason with. There was only Red John's driving force, his bloodlust.
And the illusion of a mind capable of being "reasoned" with.
Red John had been hunting, all this time, while Jane had been chasing mental shadows, had been trying to lure his big brother into a confrontation which would never happen.
Could never happen.
Why?
Because Red John couldn't be emotionally manipulated into anything.
Not anything.
No matter what.
Most psychopaths could, but not Red John.
He was programmed with a different code than most.
Red John's sole motivating force was internal, and it had its own timetable, like the weather or the seasons or the position of the earth in its orbit.
And because of that, Red John had always kept ahead of his baby brother, and the police, and everybody else who knew of his existence and wanted a piece of him.
He wasn't tied down by any emotion which could be exploited.
It was a common misconception that most psychopaths lacked emotions.
They felt emotions... just a limited range. They were capable of fear, too, if the fear was about their own, immediate, physical survival or exposure of their true, unmasked selves.
They were capable of disgust. They were capable of rage. They were capable of superficial pleasure as a result of ego-stroking by others or "masturbation" of their own egos through displays of intellectual superiority and boasting.
Hence, why so many serial killers did things which were flat out "stupid" when it came to self-preservation and avoiding detection.
These emotions- superficial and limited as they were- were how many of them were caught.
Because those emotional states could be predicted, and plotted, and exploited.
Charted by clinicians.
But, if one looked at the profile differently, read him a different way and operated on the assumption that Red John... had nothing there.
Not rage. Not fear.
Not even disgust.
Only the instinctive prompt to act in ways which would suggest he might have those emotions.
Camouflage to hide from the forensic psychologists and criminologists.
He was something new.
Some psychopath-variant, a new thing, a thing created by CIA funds and true human evil.
The people who had created him presumably had possessed something resembling consciences but had chosen to forsake those for the sake of job security or money or possible blackmail threats.
But Red John, as he was, now?
He was just an emotionless killing machine with a pre-programmed set of drives designed to mimic the superficial emotional range of the more "normal" sadistic, power-driven psychopaths.
It was a clever disguise, really An interesting working theory for Red John's prolonged "success".
And one Jane couldn't have really imagined prior to knowing about Red John's CIA-funded "education".
He'd been... conditioned to mimic the limited psychopathic range of shallow emotions possed by most serial killers, because that deceptive appearance of the more "normal" psychopathic emotional range would throw profilers off his scent, slow them down, allow him a better chance of long-term success, of remaining free.
The CIA had given Red John an insidiously clever form of camouflage by making him behave in ways which would almost universally be incorrectly profiled by most clinicians.
Except, maybe... by those who had helped to create him.
In which case... they'd need a marker. Some way to identify him and plot him and track his movements, wouldn't they? To make sure his kills were really his?
Something besides fingerprints, maybe, since Red John hadn't left any at any of his crime scenes.
The bloody smiley face?
If that was the case, the bloody smiley face had never been painted on the walls above his victims to mock or torment the police or the surviving family members of the victims.
It was a call sign, a beacon to its creators.
A programmed impulse. The way the shadow government responsible for creating him in the first place could follow his movements.
Like a radio collar on endangered wildlife.
Like an RFD tracking chip in a wolf.
Fuck.
This rabbit hole was deep.
Jane rubbed at his temples, hard, rubbed at his eyes. If he was right about this chain of thought- and he thought there was a good possibility that he was- then the police and the CBI and even Red John's own twin brother had wasted the last decade chasing their tails in circles.
Fuck. Fuck.
Jane pushed forward, kept making connections...
If he was right about this line of thought then... what? What, Jane? You almost have it...
Even Red John's cat-and-mouse games weren't "real" the way some serial killers' were. They were camouflage, too, not there to torment others or display his "superiority" over them... only there to slow them down and lead them off his scent by poisoning the profile.
His cat-and-mouse games, using this model, would then have been designed to create an inherently flawed profile if someone not in the CIA's upper ranks tried to take their pet project out of the experiment.
Out of the playing field of general society.
Red John's appearance of playing with others, then, was probably not even a conscious decision on his part to slow others down, either. Just... an impulse.
A deep-seated, primal drive instilled in him at Redrock.
Jane sucked in a breath. His head was hurting. And he was still ten minutes away from his kid and feeling more desperate as the seconds passed.
(FOLLOW THE LINE OF THOUGHT! FOLLOW IT THROUGH TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION!)
Most serial killers, on some level, wanted to be caught.
They wanted to be caught so they could gloat and mock law enforcement officials and have their time in the sun playing games with cops and FBI shrinks and have books written about them.
Because they had the emotional need to gloat, to feel superior.
But not Red John.
Like a vampire in an old storybook, Red John only craved blood. Not literally, not to the point of ingesting it (although Jane had to consider that literal blood consumption might also be a part of his pathology to some marked degree) but just as an expression of his "creativity".
And why "create"?
For the same reason most people had children.
Because... because...
Was it his link to immortality? His raison d'être? The smallest brick in his toy box, the piece which couldn't be analyzed anymore, or reduced to a smaller size?
Or maybe his reason for "creation" wasn't even that eloquent. Maybe it simply came down to the simple fact that the CIA had wiped his brain and mind and emotions clean and reprogrammed him from the ground up to be what they wanted him to be, in which case, the people who had created the torture Red John had been put through needed to be profiled in order to understand what Red John's next move might be.
If that was the case, then as far as Red John was concerned, he didn't kill for any reason at all, because "he" did not even exist as a being with a separate identity and set of desires, anymore.
Only the CIA with their desire to make... whatever it was they were working on with these experiments... would have any motive to make him kill, and if human history had taught Jane anything about human nature it was the simple, chilling fact that when you got a bunch of humans (usually men, historically, but women were equally as brutal) together and removed them physically from the general vicinity of the battleground or test site so that they didn't feel personally, physically threatened by their choices, well... disconnected humans were all-too capable of almost unimaginable cruelty in the name of "scientific inquiry" when they didn't have to witness the fall-out first-hand.
It was why the people who planned and ordered wars generally didn't serve in them. Why the scientists who had created the first atom bombs had stayed far back from the initial blasts and let military guys drop the fruits of their labor. Why most people who demanded the death penalty didn't volunteer to see it happen directly, and why most women who aborted their pre-term babies would scream at the top of their lungs that they were educated and knew what they were doing, but couldn't stand to look at the remains of what had been their fetus. Why most meat-eaters couldn't watch shows about factory farms without feeling sick.
The list went on and on.
It was easy to commit almost preternatural cruelty when you could delude yourself into believing it wasn't all that bad, and view it from a safe, blurring distance.
"So," Jane said tiredly, aloud, willing himself to continue this long chain of logic, to see it through to the bitter end, "Go back to Charlotte. She started his new cycle."
Go back to Charlotte...
Had Charlotte come back, a year ago, on Halloween, of her own free will?
It would appease Red John's (instinct to appear to have an) ego to have control over Charlotte's most cherished possession; her ability to define herself by her freedom of movement, her ability to escape.
Just another blood-red brick in the maniac's plastic toy box.
And all these facts and disquieting theories pointed- in beating, strobe-red neon- to a single date of warning.
Because...
in quiet moments when the shadows seemed longer than they could possibly ever be...
...Jane found himself surmising that if Red John was still alive...
(Dear God please let the bastard be dead, just let him be DEAD!)
...and if he did plan to strike again...
then he'd probably make his move around Halloween.
Halloween.
Maybe Halloween was another one of Red John's calling cards, a date which allowed the CIA techs following him to confirm his identity if combined with the red smiley face? Like a series of passwords on a project?
Except, most of Red John's "crimes" didn't take place on or near Halloween.
Most of his kills didn't even take place in October.
"They only take place on Halloween, or near Halloween... when they involve... me," Jane whispered as he pushed harder on the gas peddle.
He was Red John's twin.
The "control" in the experiment.
The pieces were starting to fit more and more easily now, like putting together a huge jigsaw puzzle in his mind, only there was no actual picture on the puzzle, just a field of blood red.
And the puzzle was 50,000 pieces large. Minimally.
"Halloween is always about me, in connection with the smiley face, because I am his twin... I am his control...there will be no deviation from this because these two items together are how they are not only keeping track of him... but a track of me... in relation to him."
Jane felt a strange tingling begin in his hands at the thought.
He hadn't allowed himself to consider that- being the subject's twin- he, himself, might still be being watched, and cataloged, and analyzed.
Hadn't allowed himself to go there, maybe.
Hell, he worked at the fucking CBI. The CBI! He would be easy to keep track of by the CIA if that's what they were doing!
Jane suddenly felt like the bottom was falling out of his world. His job at the CBI, even Lisbon... no...
Lisbon. No.
No.
She couldn't be part of it, too.
He was just getting paranoid now. Of course.
He blinked, hard, and told himself to breathe.
"Now you have a slightly better understanding of what Charlotte feels like all the time, don't you?" He said aloud.
He was surprised to hear himself bark out bitter laughter in response to his question.
His voice held no humor.
His kid was alone at her school and if the CIA's experiment on his brother was still ongoing, that meant that he was marked.
His daughter was marked, too, no doubt.
And Halloween was the deadline.
Halloween.
A little over a week away.
"The ancient Celts believed that on Samhain (pronounced Sow-in), otherwise known these days as Halloween, the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest, allowing other beings- mostly those of the non-corporeal variety- to cross over into the physical, earthly realm. The ancient Celts were the progenitors of many Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups of human beings, including those commonly referred to as "Irish" in modern times..."
Jane said these words aloud.
They were part of a school report Charlotte had done on the origins of Halloween at the start of October, and while he wasn't certain he had every word memorized exactly, he was pretty sure he did.
The school was approaching now, a few blocks away, but the thoughts wouldn't stop.
The weird "crossing over" aspect of Halloween allowed some nuts who dilly-dallied around in the darker circles of occult belief to stretch their insanity to the point where they could convince themselves it was possible to capitalize on this "thinning of the veil".
Gain more "power" from the dead and the ghouls, control them, perhaps even become possessed by them.
Jane knew this from his own research. He'd helped Charlotte with her project (for history class, she'd said it was for) and then he'd gotten sidetracked by his own curiosity.
Blood magick, possession, the acquisition of supernatural power through the use of demonic forces and incantations and sacrifice... mostly animal sacrifice in modern times, though human sacrifice was universally considered much more "powerful".
In particular, the sacrifice of virginal children and infants.
All sorts of fuzzy, warm ideas.
Stuff that was right up Red John's alley.
Such insanity certainly paired nicely with Red John's preoccupation with death and dying, spirits and power, and occult blood rituals, themes he seemed to be obsessed with not just on Halloween, but year-round.
Jane had come to understand (it had dawned on him slowly over the years even before Charlotte had reappeared but had been confirmed by her comments and disclosures) that for Red John, each one of his kills had been a blood magick ritual.
A way of gaining more power... from non-human entities, of course.
And of course, it was total madness, had to be, but Red John had believed, and that belief had given him an incredible degree of confidence, an incredible amount of charisma.
More to the point, there was no end to flaky nuts willing to follow charismatic leaders in California, even if they happened to be serial killers.
But the big things, at least for Red John- and at least in terms of their intrusion into Jane's life (and by default, his family's lives)- had always reached a crescendo on Halloween.
Because Jane now realized, that was how Red John was being tracked, and how Red John's "control"- his younger twin brother- was tracked and compared.
"Halloween also marked the beginning of the "darkest" half of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere) and was also known as the Celtic New Year..."
In Jane's case, in a very dark way, Halloween had come to represent some very dark, new beginnings, indeed.
The death of his family (even if that little girl hadn't actually been his child so savagely slain and propped up like a discarded mannequin, Jane had firmly believed it had been her); the reappearance of his "dead" daughter, like a resurrection from a Biblical story. A symbolic resurrection, if nothing else.
Red John before he was Red John, holding up his dead dog's head like some bloody trophy, screaming hysterically...
To use a phrase of Rigsby's, the whole business gave Jane the "heebie-jeebies".
He was obsessing now, of course, but like the old saying went, genius was 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, and when you were a genius in the mentalism trade, "perspiration" equated to obsessional thinking.
Inspecting and reinspecting every little detail.
Then: committing said details to memory.
Then: running the facts of the case through different hypothetical scenarios (mentally, of course, and sometimes in real-time, if possible) until "reasonable certainty" was achieved.
This "reasonable certainty" ended up looking like magic or supernatural insight to the uneducated masses, when in reality it was just a string of mental code which analyzed known facts and ran them against past experience, memorized data and cues from the people involved.
Cues from the people involved, including but not limited to: Microfacial expressions. Body language. Gait. Vocabulary level. Metaphor use. Style of dress and external social cues displayed through the use of accessories in addition to basic clothing style. Pupillary dilation, and if someone was brave (or stupid) enough to let Jane feel their pulse, pulse rate, and strength was also a piece of the puzzle. Smells associated with the person.
Unaccounted disparities between estimated baseline intelligence and logic or illogical excuses or alibis could also be hallmarks of deception.
Scanning the face for signs of duping delight.
All of these external cues were just segments of information to be memorized, too.
Then: confidently present your "findings", but frame said findings as "psychic insight". Complex thought processes were more impressive to most people if presented in terms which spooked the audience (ie: the person doing the complex, sophisticated thinking isn't really doing complex, sophisticated thinking and logically ruling things out, but is "psychic")
Then: Public opinion and mob-mentality took over, and even the originally-unconvinced gawkers were swayed by the belief of the majority of the audience.
Because, Jane knew, most humans were little more than hairless chimps who followed the direction of the masses.
Most humans believed that if the majority of those around them "believed" something was right or correct, it was- no matter how educated they were and how much they might initially have thought something different.
The Milgram experiments had more or less proven this tendency in humans.
It was a weakness all humans shared to greater and lesser degrees (save for, perhaps, psychopaths... who by nature experienced an inherent emotional disconnect from others and seemed to run low in the mirror-neuron department).
Once you knew that weakness was there, you could construct ways to exploit it.
Jane thought of what he did as mental lock picking. But his words weren't the lock pick tools.
His obsessiveness was.
It made everything else he did possible.
When you were obsessive enough, and ran the mental code often enough, and looked for "bugs" in your thinking, you could increase confidence and effectiveness of your "code", of your "program", until your success rate neared 100%.
And success, of course, bred more confidence, which bred more success.
But a tendency to obsess was the most important trait to becoming a good mentalist.
All other traits, including curiosity, were secondary.
And Jane had to be a good mentalist, now.
Nothing else was more important right now.
Because... October was 75% complete for the year, and if Red John was still alive, dollars to donuts, he'd strike on Halloween.
And if he, Jane, was obsessive by nature (and he was, he knew), how much more obsessive must Red John have been, to have outsmarted him time and time again and play such long-standing cat-and-mouse games, games which had no emotional drive behind them?
Jane rubbed at his eyes and saw neon data and symbols.
Words and images and numbers and dates which almost seemed to glow against the red-orange-black of his eyelids when he blinked.
Red John was their project.
But... he was their project too.
He'd always been their project.
Jane stared without blinking through the windshield and pushed the gas peddle to the floor.
All he could think of now: he had to get his kid.
"I have to get Charlotte."