Fandom: The Mentalist (Chapter 68)
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: Hey guys, very busy right now but didn't want to leave the true-blue readers hanging after that last chapter. Like always, reviews are much appreciated. - Lex
"There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment." - Hunter S. Thompson
"Survival is the ability to swim in strange water." - Frank Herbert
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
Monday, October 22nd, 2014 4:05 pm PST
Jane pulled into the parking lot at Charlotte's school at 5 minutes after 4 pm. She'd been on her own 20 minutes, maximum, but he felt uneasy. The thoughts about Red John- new and scary thoughts- buzzed through his mind. His brain felt like a giant ant farm and the worker ants had hauled crack cocaine back to the colony, and everybody was in a tizzy. His head even seemed to tingle and burn and his vision seemed a bit blurry. Fatigue, stress and growing anxiety warred for dominance and his breath tasted hot and sour in his mouth.
Jane took a deep breath, held the breath for four seconds, blew out slowly for four seconds. Repeated the breath work. He fumbled around in the glove compartment, pulled out some tic tacs and upended a dozen into his mouth. Sucked on them.
It was a little trick to prevent hyperventilation when one felt unusually overclocked. Worked for him, at least.
He looked through the windshield and scanned the grounds for Charlotte and couldn't immediately see her. His heart rate bumped up another dozen beats per minute and he gently honked the horn, eyes still scanning... and then he saw her.
She was on the playground structure, meant for the younger kids, of course. Monkey bars, a metal slide, a wooden climbing structure. She was surrounded by younger boys in the 12-14-year-old range, a little pack of them, and for the first few seconds, Jane assumed she was playing something like "tag".
But then he saw her face.
It was pale except for two darkening circles of red on her cheeks, her eyes were wide, bulging ohs of fear or pain or something else she didn't deserve and couldn't carry the weight of for much longer (Jane was sure of this, suddenly, and the skin on his knuckles turned taut and off-white as he choked the steering wheel like a skinny neck). Her mouth was grimacing.
Her eyes were... screaming.
She was yelling something and trying to get something back from one the boys...
Jane narrowed his vision, saw a flash of white paper in what looked to be a plastic protective sleeve, and it hit him all at once. The "truths" he had written and printed out for Charlotte.
Fuckers.
The little bastards had her "page of truths" and were reading from it, playing a sadistic game of keep-away as Charlotte hurried from one to the other to try and get her property back.
Her truths back.
Her face was a near-scarlet mask of humiliation, dread, anger and betrayal all warring for dominance and choking each other out.
And the little fuckers were loving every minute of her anguish.
He caught a glint of light on her cheeks. Probable tears. Tears wanting to become a geyser, Jane knew, and that would only make all of this so much worse.
"Don't cry, Dad's here. I'm coming," Jane hissed out in a brittle monotone as he stared at her, transfixed by her pain.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...
Jane felt something hot and cruel throb in his head, in his temple. His pulse, maybe. He clenched his teeth, felt his hands clench into fists. Fucking little assholes.
What the fuck are you waiting for, Tricky boy? A fucking invitation?
He got out of the Citroën's driver's side, slammed the door and jogged over to the play structure.
Tendons in his neck hard and tight as steel cables, eyes focused like lasers in the head of a killing machine from one of those stupid science fiction horror movies Charlotte was always going on about.
He tried to keep his walk easy and unconcerned, a nice little stroll in the mid-autumn afternoon to pick up his kid from school.
Everything is fine and dandy.
Charlotte's face in his vision, warped and twisted in pain like she was a walking, talking, impossible escapee from an Edvard Munch painting.
A bit of 21st-century magic, perhaps? The Scream escapes the gallery?
Fuck.
Jane was about twenty feet away when he heard what the kids were saying. One of the boys was looking at Charlotte's paper and reading in a halting voice.
The little orator was a poor reader and more than likely a little delayed across a whole bunch of other milestones, and it was just a crying shame he was the one reading, because now Daddy-Tricky-Boy was going to have to emotionally flay him and leave his emotional innards on the outside for the other young adolescent assholes to feast on.
Because when you wanted to stop bullies in a heartbeat, compassion and reason didn't stir their hearts to remorse or introspection. At least not when they were in their little hyena laughing-dog packs.
Anyone older than 20 who wasn't a naive idealist knew that.
The only thing that really got those damned fool mocking tongues to stop wagging in a hurry was the threat of their own torment coming back on them and biting them in the ass.
Jane winced and crossed the remaining distance in a light jog, inwardly wincing.
This wasn't going to be pretty, and Patrick Jane, CBI consultant and protective (and rightly so!) father with Mr. Psychotic twin on the loose, well...
Jane didn't exactly enjoy mentally disembowelling children.
For. Fuck's. Sake.
But his child was more important. Of that, he was resolute.
The unfortunate soul currently reading from Charlotte's prized piece of paper had a voice full of laughter. A tone full of ill-earned mockery.
That would make this next bit easier.
"There is no one... def...def...def...uh...def...uh?... def-un-uh-shun?... of... "normal". Aim for "healthy"... and "feeling okay"... versus "normal..."
The kid sputtered these words with a sneer on his doughy little acne-speckled face.
Jane looked up at the kids. Younger kids, but in that early adolescent stage of development where cruelty often mixed with a need for social approval.
Charlotte was nearly scarlet now, humiliated almost to the point of losing consciousness, Jane suspected.
The boys stopped as Jane continued to walk towards them. Their eager, curious eyes turned to him, locked on him. Looks ranged from ashamed and fearful to defensive all the way to gloating.
Fuck them all, really.
"Hey, Charlotte," Jane said to his daughter casually, flashing her a confident smile. "Get your stuff and let's go, okay?"
An everything-will-be-okay-just-trust-me smile.
She had stopped trying to get her paper back from the little shits when she registered he was approaching, humiliated as much by the fact that he was witnessing this most-brutal of social interactions as the fact that a quarter of her classmates were getting their rocks off tormenting her, Jane suspected.
She was looking at her dusty Converse all-star sneakers and cringing in humiliation, eyes bulging at the ground below the play structure and the dust and all the things which seemed to be written in that dust, all the fractured hopes of someone sensing they will always be different, and mocked, and tormented.
Eyes full of some dangerous certainty that maybe all the fighting just to breathe and sleep and heal and eat and grow and be "good" is simply... in the end, and after all the painful, exhausting fighting and trying and struggling... maybe... maybe not reallllly worth it, after all?
Jane's blood felt both hot and cold, seeing that look on her face.
Eyes bulging at dust and that soft rubber-pavement shit schools now used under playground equipment like it was something altogether different and safer than concrete. To keep the kids safe from bruises and bumps.
There was no real way to keep the kids safe from the coming-of-age emotional torture, though, was there?
No feisty pink-shirt brigade had really managed to put an end to the malice in little children's hearts, had they?
No facebook rally cry had managed to circumcise the almost-universal need the young human animal had to exploit perceived weaknesses in their kin.
Pity.
Charlotte kept staring like the ground was miles away. Black and hot pavement, shimmering through the veil of sticky mid-fall heat and her own unshed tears.
To Charlotte, the ground was just so much old, black blood under her feet again, Jane suspected darkly.
As the thought connected consciously in his mind and he had the subjective experience of thinking it, he caught a flash of crystalline light falling from his daughter's face.
The strange symmetry of moments in time lining up in seemingly meaningful ways. Synchronicity, some might call it.
Others would call it coincidence.
Her tears were now falling in almost perfect time to his conscious realization of her despair.
Black in her (dilated) eyes to match the expanse of rubber ground beneath her, and falling tears.
And blackness that was so much more than pupillary dilation.
And that little nanosecond wink of light from her direction twisted Jane's heart and made it pulse and cringe in his chest with both empathy and rage.
A thought came to him like a blow to the head: MAYBE THE JANES REALLY ARE A TOUCH PSYCHIC AFTERALL, HUH, TRICKY BOY?
He felt a wave of vertigo and shook it off.
The look in her eyes was one he had seen before, in the distant, anguished souls of "jumpers" on high-up ledges right before they gave up and dropped off for a permanent dirt nap.
Jane felt chilled at the look of her, suddenly certain on some level that this event- this shit-storm playing out right here and now- might lead to something very bad, indeed.
He swallowed what felt like a clot of snot and tears and the gulp was painful.
"Hey, Charlotte," he said again, suddenly desperate to hear her voice.
She didn't speak or even acknowledge him, and Jane felt a blast go off in his head, shrill as a fire alarm.
All of these thoughts and sensations and realizations passed through Jane's preternaturally analytical mind in the span of one or two seconds.
Before he could speak again, one of the boys spoke up.
"Are you Daddy?" One of the boys, one without the paper, called to Jane. He was elbowed by another kid, and they both snickered.
"As a matter of fact," Jane said with icy calm. "I am. Playing a little game of 'let's torment the pariah', are we?"
The kids weren't expecting Jane's confidence or the way he stood staring up at them, analyzing their faces and heights and clothes with such intensity. Some of them stopped sniggering in a hurry.
"Charlotte's a nutcase," one of the bolder, stupider ones called back to Jane. The kid was sitting on the top of the monkey bars, all long, tanned limbs, like a spider monkey with a human face.
"You go to this school?" Jane said pleasantly, making direct eye contact.
No response.
"Because if you don't, I'd say it's pretty lame of you to come here and harass the students," Jane continued with practised ease.
"I go here," the kid muttered, rewarding Jane with a dark look. Jane nodded to himself.
Yup.
Stupid.
Or so damaged he was a masochist.
"This is a school for children and adolescents with severe behavioural, learning and developmental issues," Jane continued on, still looking at the boy on the monkey bars. He finally broke eye contact and slowly met each kid's eyes in turn.
"As far as the rest of society is concerned, you're alllll nutcases," Jane taunted playfully, and a few of the kids hurried to suppress looks of shock and surprise at his comment.
Adults weren't supposed to talk like this. Especially not to kids years away from the legal driving age, on the side of being stuck with bikes and skateboards.
Jane quickly scurried up the side of the rope ladder, dusted his hands off on the front of his suit pants.
The kid holding the plastic-protected list of "truths" now looked uneasy, with Jane so close. With Jane breathing a little bit harder than he should have been and staring just a little too hard and long without blinking.
Yeah.
The kid tried to pass the paper to another boy, but Jane was faster, grabbed the sheet, pulled it from the boy's sweaty, grimy hands.
"I'll take that, please," Jane said in that same disconcerting, good-natured tone that didn't match up with the look in his eyes even a little, tiny bit. Cognitive Dissonance tapdanced across the kid's features.
"We might be weird," the kid on the monkey-bars called mockingly, interrupting Jane's long, hard stare, forcing him to break eye contact with the little Pillsbury doughboy, "but we don't need a list of bullshit to carry around like a baby blanket. Only freaks do that!"
"Hmmm," Jane said, nodding as if considering the merit of the boy's words.
"Yeah. You're one of the tough kids, huh? Like to posture and act tough for societal acceptance? How's that working out for you?"
The other kids were silent now, watching Jane as if mesmerized.
"I sort of expect the tough kids to be hiding in the bathroom smoking cigarettes or marijuana or something. Maybe playing something dumb like "bloody knuckles" or looking at nudie mags and making fun of each others' mothers. Not playing with girls. I guess the tough kids have become a little more sissy since my day..."
"We're not playing with girls!" One of the other boys barked out suddenly.
"Charlotte looks like a girl to me," Jane said reasonably. He nodded to Charlotte.
"Charlotte, why don't you go wait in the car while I have a chat with your friends?"
That was all she needed. She kept her eyes downcast, ran down the slide and walked to the car with her head down. Jane watched her walk, waited until he saw her get into the passenger side of the Citroën. The door slammed. She slouched out of her backpack, dumped it unceremoniously on the car's floor below her feet.
"Charlotte is a girl? Hard to tell," the kid on the monkey-bars goaded Jane. "I thought girls were supposed to be hot?"
Jane met another kid's eyes. Jerked his head in the direction of the kid sitting on the monkey bars.
"What's monkey-boy's name?" Jane said calmly.
"Lucas," the kid Jane was staring at said immediately, in a slightly subdued tone of voice.
"Lucas Dero," another kid added helpfully. Jane nodded.
"Lucas Dero," Jane said thoughtfully. "Lucas Dero... I think I've heard that name before. Why do you go to this school, Lucas?"
"None of your business," Lucas sneered from the shelf of monkey-bars, feet swinging back and forth.
"Awww, so you're ashamed, then," Jane said, holding up his hands. "I get it. All sorts of humiliating reasons a kid like Luke, here, might go to this school. Bedwetting? Cruelty to animals? Anything like that? Maybe you lit your mother's bed on fire? Am I in the neighbourhood?"
Jane was smiling, but his eyes were deadly.
Some of the other kids barked out uneasy giggles. The mention of Lucas and his mother's bed dimly registered in their little pea-brains as something potentially sexual, which was what Jane had hoped for without being explicit.
Lucas stared at Jane, eyes blazing. Not sure how the tables had managed to flip so quickly, not enjoying this new game.
Jane turned back to the other boys, the followers.
"Anybody know why Lucas goes here? He didn't actually light Mommy's bed on fire, did he?"
Multiple heads shook back and forth, no.
"Shut the fuck up, already," Lucas snarled from the monkey-bars.
Jane looked back at Lucas. "I bet I could figure it out," he said, grinning, and walked down the slide. Jumped up and held onto one of the monkey bars and pulled himself up on top, like Lucas.
"Haven't done this in a while," Jane remarked to no one in particular and settled into a comfortable looking slouch on top of the monkey bars.
Lucas backed away a bit, crab-walking backwards away from Jane.
"If you're so tough, you can't possibly be scared of a few personal questions. I mean, the only way I can see you not answering is if you're ashamed or embarrassed, but I am guessing you don't get embarrassed. Because you're a bad-ass, am I right?"
"Fuck you, asshole, and that ugly cunt you call a daughter," Lucas answered back.
Jane felt a vein begin to throb in his temple. He kept his smile in place.
"Eloquent," Jane said, grinning wider. "You have a lot of anger in you, don't you, Lucas? I wonder what that's all about? I suspect it has something to do with your enrollment here..."
Jane gazed back at the Citroën, looked over the grass, which was beginning to turn brown from lack of water. Charlotte's head through the passenger side window glass was still down, slumped and humiliated. Jane turned back to the bully.
"Kids who pick on others almost always have a history of being picked on, themselves. Most of the time it starts before they're even potty-trained, and of course it's not their fault, but such abuse seriously warps a little kid's personality," Jane said calmly and looked over at the other kids. They were staring at this impromptu speech, amazed.
"Prolonged, early abuse tends to either make kids mean and antisocial, or it tends to cause a brutal form of self-hatred, a passive acceptance of pain, a sense that it is inevitable, even deserved. There are other ways these sorts of early traumatic childhood events can play out, of course, but in Luke's case I think it's pretty clear we're dealing with a little boy with serious personality deficits and a marked lack of empathy."
Eyes were now flickering from Jane to Lucas and back again. Uneasy smirks and body language which told Jane most of the kids wanted to get the hell out of dodge. Worried, of course, that Jane would eventually, inevitably, begin to profile each of them, in turn. Profile them and get it right.
And how much fun would that be?
"Someone so mercilessly tormented and damaged that he no longer has any real ability to connect with others in any meaningful way, and, instead, goes through life mowing others down, making victims out of others, in a desperate bid to feel some of the power so mercilessly stolen from him. School bullying," Jane said, nodded at the school beyond them, "rarely causes this sort of rage. If not at school, then... at home," Jane said softly, as if he was conducting a therapy session.
Lucas's eyes flashed angrily.
"Why don't you just take your crazy daughter and get out of here? Nobody cares what you have to say," Lucas muttered, but his eyes held a savage hatred, a look the young Red John had nursed and carrier around like a security blanket.
"I think I'm right. If I wasn't, I don't think you'd be looking at me with so much obvious hostility. You'd be annoyed. You wouldn't be pissed. And..." Jane glanced over at the other kids, who were all watching him with undivided attention, "they do seem to be a little interested in our chat," Jane added.
"Fucking get out of here. You're a freak like your daughter!"
"Explosive temper," Jane remarked mildly, not in the least threatened. "Rage. Antisocial tendencies. The future's not looking so bright for you... and somewhere deep down inside, you know that, don't you, Lucas? And it terrifies you. Or. It should. Maybe you're too damaged, or maybe just too stupid, to even see what's coming down the line."
Lucas stared at him, amazed. No, adults weren't supposed to talk to kids like this.
"Charlotte has issues, yeah. I suspect every single one of you kids does. In fact, I know you all do because I've read your school files," Jane bluffed.
"You boys," Jane said, raising his voice a little, gesturing the boys on the play structure who were watching silently, "You all have issues, serious issues, some so shameful to you, you would do anything- simply anything- not to draw attention to them or be found out. You know you do. That's why you go to this school. It's also why you're following this loser like he's a rock star because on some level you honestly believe that if you just go along with this bullshit, he'll not turn this rabid hatred burning in his soul on you, and you'll be safe."
Jane pulled a pack of gum from his suit pocket, carefully removed a stick of juicy fruit (Charlotte's favourite), popped the gum into his mouth and returned the foil wrapper to his pocket. He held out the pack of Juicy Fruit to Lucas like a peace offering.
"Fuck you, freak," Lucas snarled back.
Jane shrugged, completely unprovoked by the kid's language.
"Lucas is the school bully. None of you wants him turning his sights on you and picking on you, so you go after a girl. Shameful, really, but understandable."
Some of the kids were looking down, embarrassed by Jane's description.
"But you," Jane said calmly, looking back at Lucas, "You bully because it makes you feel tough. Because inside, deep down, you know you're weak. All deliberate cruelty comes from a place of weakness. Weak people trying to mimic strength and fucking up."
Lucas just stared at Jane, unblinking. Jane continued, narrowed his eyes, scrutinized the boy with obvious dispassion.
"Probably were beaten or neglected, treated very poorly, and you've built up a lot of rage over the years. Probably so much rage you can no longer attend any normal school, so your parents... whom I am betting aren't your birth parents, since kids like you aren't delivered by the stork and abuse severe enough to cause your issues is usually severe enough to be investigated by Child Services, not to mention the fact that abusive parents wouldn't bother to seek an expensive school like this for their son, not if they were the source of his deeply rooted emotional problems... and foster parents generally don't have the funds or the inclination to do much more for their charges than feed them ramen noodles, so that means adoption, most likely. Probably something like Reactive Attachment Disorder, a severe case, and-"
"Shut the fuck up! You know nothing about me, fucker!" Lucas screamed, but he made no move toward Jane.
"There's that rage again, Lucas. You really need to work on that, because these little outbursts of yours are dead giveaways. When you get angry and yell like that, everybody within a mile's radius knows I'm right. If I was wrong, you wouldn't display such a severe and obvious emotional reaction," Jane said, smiling. "But you already know that, don't you? Of course, you do..."
Jane considered the sky, more grey than blue now, and a smell on the wind like a field on fire, Black smoke in the distance, towards the city centre. Somebody's poorly maintained barbeque, maybe. Or an electrical overload. Sparks shooting from wires and the smell of singed carpeting. Life could change in an instant. Jane hoped they had insurance...
Turned back to the kid.
"And, I do know about you. I know all about you," Jane continued. He reached in his pocket, pulled out his CBI badge and displayed it for Lucas. He flashed the badge at the other kids who were watching. Put it back in his pocket before they could get a decent look at it.
"Every time you start spitting and sparking like a roman candle, I know I've hit a nerve. And all these guys, they know it too. Don't you, boys?"
Lucas looked over at the other boys. Back to Jane. Furious. Jane smiled back.
"I'm a criminal profiler. It's how I make my living. I analyze the personalities and motivations of some very, very bad people. I catch them. And I put them in prison. In order to do that, I have learned exactly how to read people. It's a science, you know. And once you get good at it, you can read people like a book."
Black billowing masses in the distance now, churning angrily through the sky, making the distance hazy and smokey and dark before it's time.
The wonders of synchronicity.
"I can read you like a book, Lucas. I could turn around and tell all these kids exactly why you're here. Exactly why you wake up gasping in the night and sometimes pee the bed. Why you still use a nightlight. Want me to do that? Will that convince you that I do, indeed, actually know a lot about you?"
Lucas stared at Jane. He looked like he wanted to hit Jane. Maybe something much worse. But he was using his hands to hold on to the monkey bars and was in no position to strike out.
Jane smiled as if the boy's reaction was a funny little joke.
"You kids?" Jane said, looking back over at the other boys. They looked downright uneasy now, some close to full-fledged panic, maybe... worried Jane might turn his all-seeing eyes on them, start to divulge their personal secrets, the stuff they felt small and ashamed and broken about.
"Are you going to bully Charlotte again?" Jane asked the staring clump of followers.
A few of them mumbled "nos". The rest immediately shook their heads.
"Why don't you go on home, then? You're better than this garbage, following the orders of a miserable little bully who is probably going to be serving time before he's 21. Each and every one of you are better than this," Jane said and nodded at Lucas.
The other kids began to climb down off the playground structure and walk away. Some were walking a bit faster than Jane suspected they did most of the time. A few were walking side-by-side, heads meant in shame, exchanging whispered words.
Jane turned his steel trap of a gaze on the instigator.
"You," Jane said, looking back at Lucas. "What is the world going to do with you? You might think you can do whatever you want, but I have bad news, kid. In a few years, the sorts of traits you're displaying now aren't going to get you laughs and high fives at school. You're going to be in a world of hurt," Jane said softly, and as he said the words he realized... it was true. And that took a bit of the joy out of his smile.
He was pissed, but he wasn't cruel.
He was terrified for Charlotte, but he wasn't a sadist.
"What the fuck do you know, freak?" Lucas challenged. Jane had to give him credit; most adults- let alone kids- didn't keep challenging him. Not like this. Jane considered his thin frame and pinched features and the look of loss and fear he thought he could glimpse the shadow of deep in the boy's eyes, hiding behind his mask of hatred. His heart felt heavy and there was a lump in his throat.
So much pain in the fucking world. Jane cleared his throat.
"I know my full-time job is putting criminals away in tiny cages, and I know from reading their personal histories that a lot of them carried on as you are, now," Jane said softly.
Lucas stared, angry but... what was that? Concerned? Was that concern?
Jane licked his lips quickly, encouraged.
"Not a nice life, prison time. It's not nearly as cool as the movies and comic books would otherwise have you believe. After the first... I don't know, year, or so, most of the novelty wears off. That old joke about not dropping the soap? That's true, by the way. "
"Like I'm going to go to prison for making fun of your freak daughter!" Lucas shot back. Jane forced himself to remain calm.
"No, you won't go to prison for childhood bullying, that's true. But you won't be a child in a few years, and antisocial behaviour has a tendency to escalate. But hey, what do I know? It's just my job. I am sure you know more. More than me. More than your teachers. More than everybody, of course, because you're a doomed little narcissist looking at the light coming down the tunnel and too cocky to realize it's a train. And you'll beat the odds, of course," Jane said, and though he was calm, he couldn't help the mocking tone which bled into his words as he wrapped up his speech.
"You'll be that one in a million who continues to escalate his cruelty but gets along in life and does well. Sure. Become the CEO of Nintendo or some such shit. CEOS often display psychopathic traits, so maybe if you can control your anger you won't rot in prison. We'll see."
Jane jumped down off the monkey bars, job done, wiped his hands (now sweaty from the heat and holding onto the steel off the monkey bars) on his pants again.
"You're not going to bully Charlotte anymore," Jane said calmly, meeting the kid's eyes.
"Oh? Who's going to stop me?"
Jane sighed.
"I'm talking to you man to man right now, Lucas, so wise up and pay attention because your attitude is self-destructive. My guess is you have burned through all your placement options and the next options after this are maybe a lock-up juvenile home or hospital or something. Trust me, you wouldn't enjoy any of them. You have it pretty cushy here. It would be a smart idea not to rock the boat anymore. You can be smart, can't you? I bet you're capable of being intelligent, and nobody in your life has given you a good reason to show just how smart you really are. Not yet." Jane smiled at the boy.
Open. Genuine. Terrifyingly open and genuine.
This wasn't a bluff. It wasn't a game anymore.
Too much fucking pain in the world and the vast majority of it was unnecessary.
The kid would perceive these words as a veiled threat, Jane knew... and so what if he did?
The brat was torturing his child, and she was tortured almost to death, emotionally drained almost to the point of psychic exsanguination.
The October air suddenly was even hotter and dryer in Jane's lungs, tasted tangy and a little acrid on his tongue from the smoke wafting their way; felt hot on his teeth.
His nose burned with heat and something like an acidic throb... like he might get a sudden nose bleed. He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbed at it, wiped a tanned hand over his eyes.
No more. She couldn't deal with... one more fucking thing.
The look in her eyes, head down, face burning, eyes distant, was the look of the terminally condemned, the look of someone who has finally internalized and come to believe that their place in life is suffering, that whatever the reason for it, it's ultimately justified. That their abuse is penance for their guilt, and that even shame is warranted.
Why else would the Universe keep torturing her, if it wasn't deserved?
That peace of any kind, for any reasonable duration, is beyond hope. That was her look, that was what Jane had seen.
And without hope? Treading water in the black, endless sea of pain and despair?
Jane could feel the coldness inside of him, battling with the heat in his head, behind his eyes, heat like a sudden fire inside of him, like a strangely intense allergic reaction.
Jane kept the smile on his face and eyed the boy, and his eyes glittered like cut diamonds, beautiful and deadly. The sharpest points in the world.
Lucas stared at Jane, furious, enraged... but now a little bewildered, too.
Some slow, plodding relative of suspicious fear moved over the lenses of his eyes, visible only to Jane and others like him, people who were skilled in reading microfacial expressions and seeing all the tiny little physical reactions which denoted physiological change as a result of emotional processing.
He let the little bastard slowly clue in. Kept the smile plastered on; kept his hands from balling into stony fists.
"Be smart, Lucas. Stop acting like a jerk. It doesn't look good on you," Jane said smoothly, turned his back and calmly walked back to the car.
He was about thirty feet from the monkey bars when he felt what felt like a small rock or pebble whiz past his head.
He turned back and saw Lucas standing below the monkey bars, now, stuffing his pockets with small rocks which had somehow made their way onto the black safety pavement.
"Keep making those intelligent decisions," Jane called back as if he didn't care one way or the other what became of the kid. He turned around again. walked back to the car, pulled open the driver's side door and slammed it shut.
Charlotte was deadly quiet in her seat, staring at her lap.
"He'll leave you alone, now," Jane said softly, put the keys in the ignition, started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
Charlotte didn't say anything in response. Jane let her be.
Jane drove in silence, eyes flickering between the road and his daughter. Charlotte sat slumped, gazing out the passenger side window. He knew she was humiliated, wanted to hide, maybe even disappear.
But sometimes keeping silent right after events like this allowed the event to grow in importance, become magnified in the psyche.
"That kid will almost certainly leave you alone, now," Jane said softly as he stopped at a red light.
"Hmm," Charlotte answered in a low tone. She hadn't yet made any mention of the dark plumes of smoke in the distance, the smell of burning wafting around them. And she usually noticed all those sorts of external threats, sensing Red John's potential presence at any and all displays of chaos in the world. Not today, though.
"Big fire from downtown," Jane remarked and that caused her to glance towards the front windshield, in his direction.
"Yeah," she said, staring at the black smoke.
"Somebody probably got drunk and had a barbeque or something," Jane continued.
"Maybe," Charlotte murmured.
"You know, I got bullied as a kid, too," Jane added, fishing for any sort of comment longer than a single syllable. Charlotte didn't need to know right at this moment that he'd been bullied by Red John as a child. That would only complicate the conversation.
"Bullies have short memories and a constant need for power over others. The good news about that is that both bullies and their followers tend to forget the details of what they do on any given day. Short memories, short attention spans..."
That wasn't entirely true, but Jane suspected most of the kids involved would be penitent, silent, if for no other reason than they were probably shitting themselves at present. Worried about getting in trouble.
When human decency and compassion was low or non-existent, you could still, as a general rule, count on the human animal to display some degree of self-preservation instinct. In fact, Jane suspected, when empathy and compassion were low, the desire to cover one's own ass usually was heightened.
Threatening environments tended to make humans distant and solemn and pulled into themselves, following assholes only as a means to avoid being targeted, themselves. If you knew how to analyze and read the followers, you could manipulate them back out of that subservience by showing them how dangerous and rabid their leader was.
That was, until mob mentality and hysteria took over, and then the adrenaline was usually pumping too hard for rational arguments and logic to get a foothold in their minds.
Jane considered the tyrants of history and their brutal crimes. Countless innocents macheted to death and lying in pieces on roads in Rwanda while most of the world watched with relative indifference. Hitler's troops swarming, not because most of them (Jane suspected) bought the Fuhrer's logic or believed in his philosophies but because, once the Nazi engine hit critical mass, to disobey was a death sentence. Self-preservation.
Most human beings were relatively weak-willed followers of average intelligence. Hence, they made up the majority of the population. And their fear and desire to guard themselves and their closest loved ones was a powerful tool in the hands of a psychopath or sadistic personality.
But they usually had self-preservation instincts that the grossest of the tyrants lacked, and they could be swayed.
"It would be relatively easy to get Lucas permanently discharged from your school," Jane said when it became clear Charlotte wasn't going to add anything to his comments.
She glanced over at her father.
"How?"
"Kid's behaviour violates the basic standard of care the other parents expect their children to receive. The school is a special needs school, and while antisocial personalities are special needs in the most basic of ways, they do not belong at a school with a predominantly vulnerable population of kids just trying to get through the day and deal with their shit. That sort of kid sucks up more resources and attention from staff than his guardians are rightfully paying for, and his psychological... deficits... put the other kids at risk. Make that case to a layer, especially the layer of the school and they will put pressure on the school to boot his ass."
"Maybe," Charlotte said glumly.
"Do you want him gone?" Jane said with perfect sincerity.
Charlotte stared at him. Her eyes were tired and haunted and so incredibly old for her physical age. She sighed.
"I just want him.. not to be so mean."
Jane nodded his head at her pensive, sad face.
"He didn't become mean overnight, and he won't unlearn those behaviours overnight, either. And in the meantime, he is doing damage to the other students. Even if you are willing to endure his bullshit, Charlie, there might be other kids at that school who will inevitably end up on his shit-list, and not all kids are as strong as you are."
"What do you mean?" Charlotte asked softly.
"Lots of bullied kids, if they lack appropriate support in their lives or are dealing with more than they can emotionally handle... kids like Lucas? They become the last straw. You ever hear the saying 'death of a thousand cuts'?"
Charlotte considered his words. Finally shrugged.
"I don't know. Maybe."
"It means that one relatively minor but upsetting incident in a person's life is likely to be brushed off. The person has enough support and they can compensate for the occasional bad thing in life."
"Like a bully?"
"Yeah," Jane nodded quickly.
"But even small stresses add up. A parent yelling at some kid. Feeling stupid because they are dyslexic and are called to read in class. A dirty look from someone on the city bus for no reason. Someone swearing at them. A bully. A round of the flu. An F on something they worked hard on and thought they'd pass... and on and on. Each of those seemingly minor stresses is like a small cut in the psyche. Just one or two or a handful and you have a bad day but you get some sleep, eat some pizza, do something you like for the weekend and they scab over and begin to heal and you go on your way. But if life keeps cutting you more often, faster than you can emotionally bounce back, you become drained. Every stressor begins to overwhelm the recipient. Things begin to snowball in the person's head. Even really trivial things like a power outage or getting dog crap on their shoes... it all begins to escalate in their mind and they become overwhelmed, and because they are overwhelmed their ability to self-soothe is diminished, so even the minor stuff begins to seem huge. They get weaker and weaker and then some asshole like Lucas comes along and delivers a death blow..."
"Deathblow?"
"Death of a thousand cuts. A thousand little things drain you and you emotionally bleed to death, the same way you might if you received one huge, fatal stab wound from life. Because it's not just the big, flashy traumas in life that cause damage. Mundane stress, stuff that is considered just a part of life, can be just as damaging if there is too much of it."
"Deathblow?" Charlotte repeated.
"Some kids are already struggling at your school and are dealing with more than they think they can handle. And Lucas pushes them over the edge."
"You mean... suicide?" Charlotte said.
"Yes. Or a breakdown. You've seen those videos and ads on Facebook and stuff about the bullying epidemic, right?"
Charlotte nodded.
"That's what I am saying. So even if you are strong enough to keep putting up with Lucas Dero's crap- and I know you are- and you don't want to cause waves? The next student he targets might not have your emotional resources. And Lucas could cause something very bad to happen. Indirectly."
Charlotte was silent. She pulled some gum out of her backpack, took out a stick, popped it in her mouth. Chewed hard.
"Or directly," she added.
"What?" Jane nudged.
"He once brought a little mouse to school. Didn't look wild, looked like a pet store mouse. He taped a firecracker to it. Before I could do anything, he lit the fuse and the mouse..." Charlotte trailed.
Jane nodded. His heart hit the inside of his chest like a kick, hard and almost painful.
"He really shouldn't be at that school. You never told me about the mouse."
"What was there to say? There was a little mouse, and I saw him with it, and I knew he is a crazy little shithead and I didn't have the guts to go and punch him and take the mouse, so the mouse ended up inside out all over the pavement?"
Jane was very still. His eyes flickered back to the black smoke, the haze of downtown Sacramento.
"You would have saved that mouse if there had been any earthly way to do so," Jane said softly.
"I could have grabbed it from him."
"And then, what? He tugs harder on it, rips it, and it breaks apart in half in your hands? With a human being like his... they are unpredictable. You already know that."
"Looked like a baby mouse. Very little. Lucas said it was a feeder mouse."
Jane nodded sadly.
"I don't think they should sell live animals to people to feed to other animals in tanks. It's unnatural. In nature, the mouse is eaten or it gets away. It's not trapped in a glass aquarium for days on end before it gets weaker and weaker from dehydration and swallowed by a snake."
Jane could see water filling her lower eyelids.
He nodded.
"Can I play my video games? I am done talking, I think."
"Yeah," Jane said softly.
Jane pulled the car into a mini-mall parking lot. Charlotte looked up.
"Why are we here?"
"Just need to pick something up. You okay in the car with your Nintendo for 10 minutes?"
"Sure," Charlotte said blandly and went back to her game.
Jane smiled to himself, slipped out of the driver's seat, slammed the driver's side door.
Charlotte didn't look up.
He came back 10 minutes later, as promised, carrying a large cardboard box in his hands. Charlotte still didn't look up, remained focused on her video game. He opened his driver's door, passed her the box without fanfare.
"What's this?" Charlotte said as the box was placed on her lap.
"Open it," Jane said, grinning from ear to ear.
Charlotte opened the cardboard flaps. There was a small box sitting on top of a mouse cage. The sudden woodsy scent of pine chips.
The smaller box had air holes perforated in the side and drawings of hamsters and gerbils and rats and mice printed on its side. In bold lettering was the alert: LIVE ANIMAL.
Charlotte could hear pitter-pattering. Little feet. What sounded like tiny little squeaking, barely audible and higher than high-pitched. Even though she was still pale and her features were still pinched with stress, Jane saw interest fill her eyes.
The corner of her mouth tweaked upwards in amusement.
"You got me a mouse because school sucked today?"
"Mice, actually. Since I think they need company, right? Two little girls. From the feeder bin."
Jane smiled at his daughter, glanced down at the box, back up at her eyes. She looked at him, and the tears that had been filling her eyes fell when she blinked. She opened the cardboard top flap of the box with the airholes, looked inside.
"Oh, they are so cute!"
"The cage has a wheel and a little house thing inside. Not the biggest cage, but I figure we can always get something better another day. There are woodchips and food in the bag, too."
Charlotte was still staring at the mice.
"Hi, babies," she said softly.
"There will always be jerks like Lucas Dero in this world. And those types of people cause a lot of damage and a lot of pain. But... you being who you are, Charlie? You have power. You might not feel like it, but you do. Life can also have great compassion in it, and mercy, and hope," Jane said and made himself stop speaking. If he wasn't careful, he would launch into a speech.
Charlotte was still gazing at the baby mice.
"So unfair the other ones are going to be eaten. Life can be so cruel," she murmured.
Jane nodded even though she wasn't looking at him. He knew she'd sense the movement, maybe see the movement from her peripheral vision.
"It can be cruel. And there is a lot of pain. But there is a balance, too, I think. Not in the lives of individuals, necessarily, but overall. Spanning over all the lives as a whole, maybe. A balance," Jane said.
Charlotte was still staring at the mice.
"It doesn't feel balanced," she murmured.
"That's because you got targeted by a psycho. Because you were one of the unlucky individuals. And we see reality from the point of view of our individual place in it, versus seeing everything at once. But...even snakes, in nature, don't do what Red John does. Most animals kill for survival, to eat..." Jane said softly.
"That doesn't really help if you're the person being eaten," Charlotte said, and she reached a finger into the box, stroked one of the mice.
"No, I suppose it doesn't," Jane said. "But... you saved those two, today. That's worth something."
"You saved them," Charlotte said, and pulled her finger out of the little cardboard carrier box, carefully folded the top flaps back into place.
"No, you saved them. I just bought them," Jane said.
Charlotte stared at her father, unsure.
"What you put out into this universe has a way of becoming real," Jane said and turned the keys in the ignition.
"That sounds like what you'd normally call woo-woo shit," Charlotte mumbled, gripping the sides of the big cardboard box with the cage and woodchips and food and tiny rodents nestled away in their carrier box, being driven away from an alternate timeline, an alternate reality, an existence ending in the open mouth of a snake and an endless descent down a dark, constricting throat.
Every moment of the drive home, they were moving farther and farther from that alternate timeline.
"You can't just buy me a pet every time I have a bad day in the world," Charlotte said when they pulled into the parking lot at their apartment complex.
"I know," Jane said patiently. "But today was a really bad day, I suspect. And I don't suspect there will be a lot more of those going forward."
Charlotte exhaled loudly.
"Let's hope," she said.
Jane waited until Charlotte hauled the mouse stuff up to her attic hidey hole. He'd suggested she keep the mice in the attic in case one or both managed to escape. As friendly and relatively harmless as Dixon was, he was also huge when compared to baby mice, and over-exuberant.
And not all tragedies were deliberate. Most weren't.
Charlotte nodded at her father's suggestion when the car finally pulled into its parking space and got her backpack off the floor of the Citroën, dumped it on the pavement, got out of her seat, shrugged the backpack onto her thin shoulders, pulled the cardboard box full of rodent goodness out and placed it on the asphalt of the parking lot, slammed the passenger-side door closed. Picked up the box with her new pets and stared at Jane.
"Yeah, the attic is a good idea for them," she vocalized. Jane smiled.
"You okay with pizza tonight? I don't want to cook anything and I suspect you have homework," Jane theorized. Charlotte nodded.
"New pets and pizza in one day? Can I stay up late, too?" She was smiling.
Jane considered her question.
"You want to stay off school tomorrow? Chill with the mice tonight, do homework and stuff tomorrow?"
"Really?" Charlotte queried.
"Why not?" Jane said, shrugging his shoulders.
Charlotte nodded. There was some colour in her face again. That was good.
She could see the wisdom in keeping the mice and their cage far away from the exuberant puppy dog. She was getting pizza. She was playing hooky in the morning.
The day had been rough, but there were redemptive qualities to it.
Jane smiled, watching her. This day would linger in her mind for a long while, he suspected. But hopefully, the mice were a pleasant dopamine dump and would offer an evening of distraction as she thought of names, set up their cage, made toilet paper tunnels and empty-coffee-can play structures for them. Ate pizza and fed scraps of it to her puppy and maybe the baby mice, and watched Netflix.
They walked to the stairs of the apartment complex together, began to go up.
Already she was going over potential names for them, "Hocus and Pocus" and "Trick and Treat" being some of the contenders, looking at Jane to see his responses. He nodded and smiled at all the names.
"You like them all equally? You can't like them all equally," Charlotte said by the time they reached their floor.
"They're your mice. You name them whatever you want. Whatever feels good to you. Maybe chill with them a bit, get to know their personalities a bit before you name them. You weren't named as soon as you were born," Jane said, pulling the house keys from his pocket, unlocking the front door, going to the alarm box on the wall, entering the security code...
"I wasn't?" Charlotte asked, and carried the mice into the kitchen, placed them on the kitchen/dining table while Dixon ran up to greet his humans, jumping and pawing the air and dancing around them in a flurry of happy excitement. Charlotte smiled at her dog, bent down to pet him, reassure him he was a good boy, scratch his ears.
Jane shook his head in response to her query.
"We spent some time with you first, trying on different names, seeing what fit. We had a list of names we were considering, but it still took some time to get to know what would suit you after you arrived," Jane said.
Charlotte smiled, imagining the scene. Her mother holding her in a baby receiving-blanket, the newborn on her chest, and her father watching over them, smiling, about as happy as a human being could chemically and biologically get.
"You should get their cage set up now. They are good at chewing their way out of thin cardboard barriers," Jane said sagely and nodded his head at the small dining table and the box on its surface. Charlotte nodded, shrugged her backpack onto the kitchen floor, refilled Dixon's water and food bowl and gave him a handful of milk bones to keep him engaged while she transported the rodents.
"Yeah, okay. What time is dinner?" She called, carrying the box out of the kitchen and down into the hall. Jane could hear the sound of her shifting the box in her hands, pulling on the cord to release the attic stairs. He could hear the sound of her on the stairs.
"Maybe 6, 6:30?" Jane called in response to her question.
"Okay!" She called back.
The sound of her footfalls on the stairs. The yawning, slightly creaky sound of the stairs being pulled back up.
Jane nodded, hurried to his room, pulled his address book with the black leatherette cover out from the door in his desk. Flipped through pages until he found what he was looking for.
Now... to get Lucas Dero permanently relocated away from his daughter.
He hadn't been able to protect his kid from the crappy events of this day, but he could see to it that the prime instigator and little sadist involved was removed from her life and didn't have another chance to mess with her head.