Fandom: The Mentalist (Chapter 69)
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:
Hi, guys. Sorry for the long delay between uploads. Merry Christmas. I hope to have another chapter written and up before or by December 25th, as a Christmas gift to you all. Even if it means overdoing on Monster energy drinks. Also, I know in the early chapters I made Charlotte's birthday around Halloween, but for those of you who have the time or inclination I would appreciate if you guys could let me know what date I made her birthday (am really busy right now, want to try and get another chapter up, but don't want to muck up that detail) ;) - Lex
"Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face." -Jim Butcher, Storm Front
"Paranoia is just the bastard child of fear and good sense." (Charlie)
Poor thing, let's give it a last name and raise it right." (Jace)
"You want to get it a puppy, too?" (Charlie)
"Sure. We'll call it Panic. It and little Paranoia can play together at the park and scare the hell out of all the other kids." (Jace)
-D.D. Barant, Back from the Undead
Jane put on the kettle and waited at the kitchen table for the water to boil.
He considered the events of the day, and his daughter's reactions and how such a wake-up call about the psychopathic proclivities of her peers might affect Charlotte in the long term.
Being raised in the shadow of an almost preternaturally sadistic human being had left Charlotte strangely isolated from the more socially acceptable forms of sadism and cruelty.
Charlotte knew what cruelty was, and what hatred and anger and violence were, but Jane suspected that her understanding of these so-called darker facets of the human psyche was- in terms of everyday functioning- larger than Life and overblown. It was one thing to come to terms with a rogue monster like Red John. Hell, even understanding that a secretly funded, CIA-controlled cadre of Red Johns was at work in the world and causing all sorts of chaos had to be a destabilizing realization to live with.
Sadly, Jane knew, the most common forms of evil were not rogue, CIA-controlled psychopaths playing out, in real-time, torture-induced fantasies. The most common faces of human cruelty sported banal and prosaic masks.
If Jane did his job properly- and he planned to with every fiber of his being- the biggest threats to Charlotte's emotions and spirit in the future would not be lone serial killers or deep-state funded psychiatrists utilizing electroshock "therapies" to create alternate personas in tortured test subjects, but the every day, malicious, stupid actions of homo sapiens lashing out at the world in a lame subconscious attempt to prop themselves up and try to appear dominant and superior. Humans had been playing the same daft game of bullying the individuals they thought were weaker, of lying and stealing and manipulating with callous disregard for others' emotions, for tens of thousands of years.
Most of them, psychologically dangerous as they were, never picked up a knife and gutted anyone like a deer.
Charlotte was just beginning to learn that sadism existed on a bell curve and that the far more common manifestations of sadistic personalities presented themselves as taunts and jeers and bullying. And that such shitty behavior could escalate.
Most stress the human-animal faced was far more nuanced, socially acceptable and insidious than Red John's larger-than-life antics.
What must it be like for Charlotte, Jane mused, to fight tooth-and-nail for so many years to escape the clutches of her nightmare Guardian, only to come to the realization that every human being walking the planet contained various degrees of the dark sickness which propelled Red John through life? That most of them managed to keep the more brazen aspects of their shadow selves under control (at least most of the time) and abide by the law of the land (at least most of the time), but that every day, so-called "normal" people could and would be deliberately cruel for their own twisted reasons?
How on Earth would she react to that, now, still just beginning to heal and trust?
As if in response to Jane's thoughts, the water in the kettle began to scream on the burner.
Jane immediately got up from the kitchen table and went to the stove.
He turned off the element, pulled the kettle off the burner and poured a cup of boiling water into his waiting teacup.
He took his tea back to the table and sat down, watching the swirling steam as his bag of Mandarin Ginger Tetley's steeped. He glanced down at his wristwatch, counting the seconds.
His kid had been upstairs in the attic for a quarter of an hour and Jane knew exactly what she was up to. He could almost see her assembling the wire cage and attaching the little plastic running wheel to the bars.
Filling the bottom with the cedar wood chips. Or were they pine? Jane wasn't a wood expert and had spent so much of his life in populated areas that the smell and look and shape of nature eluded him.
But she had already dumped the woodchips in the base of the cage, assembled it, put food in the bowls...
Handling each baby mouse with care and reassuring each of them that they were now safe and sound. Eyes glistening, looking at the dark beady little eyes staring back at her; tiny quivering prey babies in the hands of a giant who could so easily crush them.
Charlotte wouldn't crush them, of course, and maybe they weren't quivering with her any longer. Animals were generally trusting. They responded to simple kindness with an almost painful openess.
She'd kissed them and stroked both little, fuzzy heads with almost reverent consideration and affection, Jane knew. Those baby mice which were still so little that their noses were much shorter than they would eventually become, giving them a slightly odd puppyish look.
A few minutes Jane assigned to her careful ministrations and cuddles. A few more minutes, Jane knew, were spent finding an ideal location for the cage and moving around tables and shelves.
If his mentalism skills were still intact, he predicted that Charlotte would be plodding down the stairs in her stocking feet any minute now.
Jane bobbed the tea bag in his cup, lifted it out of the water and dropped it on the kitchen table. He picked up the cup and sat, eyes closed, inhaling the fragrant steam and just as he was about to take a sip of tea he heard his kid's loud footfalls on the pull-down stairs.
"Still got it," Jane murmured to himself and took a sip as a reward.
Charlotte came into the kitchen and met her father's eyes.
"I'm going to go down to the recycling room and see if anybody left any cardboard or toilet paper tubes or coffee cans. Anything like that. Going to make the mice an obstacle course."
"Cool," Jane said amiably. "Have fun."
"Did you order the pizza yet?"
"Not yet. You want veggie Deluxe with pineapple?" Jane asked, sipping his tea.
Charlotte nodded.
"You know I do," she said.
"Did you..." His kid sucked in a nervous breath. Jane waited patiently while she marshaled her courage.
"Did you phone anybody about Lucas Dero yet?" Charlotte asked with hesitation.
"I'll get around to it," Jane said calmly, "don't you worry about it."
"I'm not worried," Charlotte breathed. "I'm just..."
"You're just worried," Jane said. Meeting her eyes. Nodding his head.
"I don't know why I feel so scared of him," his kid said dully, "I mean, after Red John, it doesn't make any sense. He's just a little pissant. A little jerk..."
"It makes perfect sense," Jane soothed.
"Lucas displays personality traits you understandably and immediately associate with torture and death. Not to mention, social approval is one of the driving behavioral forces of our species. On an evolutionary level, and now, for you, on a subconscious level, being excluded from the so-called popular group is associated with banishment and likely starvation. Even if consciously you know being in the popular-kid-crowd doesn't really matter, you still retain the genetic memory of the inherent dangers associated with any sort of social stigmatization."
Jane took a sip of tea and looked pointedly at his teenager.
"So yeah, Charlie, being afraid of little Lucas- the-budding-psychopath-Dero makes absolute, irrefutable sense. "
Charlotte stared at Jane with her eyebrows raised in amusement.
"Don't you find that talking like you do leads to a certain level of social stigmatization?" She was grinning a little now, half-trolling.
Jane smiled back, delighted. He liked verbal banter, verbal sparring.
"Talking like I do, given my race and gender and level of confidence generally entices the majority of humans I interact with to treat me with deference. The three-piece-suit doesn't hurt either, nor does my ability to quickly and effectively induce hypnotic states," Jane finished up and took another sip of tea. It felt warm and familiar and comforting in his throat, warming him from the neck down, anchoring him to the present and to his calm.
"When I talk anything like how you talk, I just get people staring at me like I have two heads and one of those heads has hydrocephalus," Charlotte said.
She walked to one of the kitchen cupboards and pulled out a glass juice tumbler with Disney characters printed on the side in enamel paint. She then went to the sink and filled the glass with tap water before coming back to sit at the table. Stitch grinned up from the exterior of the glass tumbler, superimposed against the clear water, almost like he was swimming...
"I thought you were going to mosey on down to the recycling room and glean a bunch of trash for your pardoned mice?"
Charlotte laughed at her father's description.
"You pardoned them," Charlotte shot back.
"No, I didn't," Jane replied immediately. "I just bought them. You pardoned them."
"Whatever," his kid said and drained her tumbler of water in a few fast gulps. She sat looking down at the empty glass.
Jane watched her.
"What is it?" he asked gently when she kept staring at the glass. Her expression seemed... lost.
"I'm going to be seventeen, soon," Charlotte murmured. "I'm going to be seventeen. That's almost legal adult age. And even though in some ways I feel at least seventeen, in so many other ways I'm not ready to be anywhere near adulthood. And I just feel... sad. Sad."
Jane nodded. "You're feeling grief," he said.
Charlotte looked up at him.
"Some birthdays," he said, "Are painful. Especially if you feel like you got gyped on the years leading up to them. You reach this point in your life where Society with a capital
'S' expects you to have all the skills and experiences of somebody who lived a typical, average life. And if you don't have those skills, because you were denied the environment necessary to develop them, the grief of that loss is compounded with fear, and with shame."
Charlotte kept staring at the empty glass. Jane continued.
"And that same Society looks down on anybody who can't or won't act or behave in a way they deem normal for that age group. I suspect you feel very much like how a child in a coma for a decade might feel. Your body has aged but your mind and emotions have not because you were denied your birthright to grow up in a sane, functional world. Except in your case, not only were you denied the right of growing up, but you were also tormented and traumatized as well, so I suspect some part of your mind knows that you will not only miss out on the so-called normal adolescent experience but that you have many years of healing ahead of you, too."
Charlotte sighed wearily. Her shoulders slumped. Her body was physically somewhere around eleven. A very tired, very stressed, very malnourished eleven. Her expression held a strange combination of irrefutable innocent and marked cynism. She was both older and younger than her chronological age, but not where she should be. And it hurt.
Jane took another sip of his tea and let his words sink in. Charlotte kept staring at the water tumbler. Finally looked up with pained, wounded eyes full of recognition. Jane's words, as brutally honest as they were, were also a relief to the degree that they were a validation of her current emotional state. Of the painful mental struggle, she was in, trying to live day after day in that grief and sense of confusion and disconnect.
The truth could be painful as all Hell, but living alone in the dark, nebulous abyss that was denial and confusion was so much worse.
Jane began to talk again, hoping his understanding of her mind would offer comfort and hope. Something like a light in a very, very dark place full of the echoes of the tortured cries of her past. He hoped.
"Depending on how you look at that healing period, you might feel like not only is your childhood and most of your adolescence gone but also the early adult years you haven't even lived yet, because you know that instead of having the life you want at seventeen and eighteen and nineteen, you're going to be playing emotional and social catch-up. Any of that resonate with how you feel, kiddo?" Jane asked softly.
Charlotte nodded dejectedly.
"Is there any way to get rid of the sense of loss?" she asked without meeting her father's eyes.
"You know," Jane said, "After Red John... and your mom... back then... after I lost your mom and you, the sense of loss and grief felt so strong inside me... It almost felt like a new physical part of my body, a new organ maybe. I'd get this heaviness in my chest and this hard, hot feeling at the back of my eyes and a tightness in my throat like my own esophagus had metamorphosized into a boa constrictor and was trying to consume me from the inside out."
Charlotte stared at her father with something like wonder and awe in her eyes. Her expression was that of a young human being experiencing their first real epiphany. She stared down at the table for a moment, lost in thoughts and memories, before looking back up at Jane. She nodded at him to continue.
"The sense of grief," Jane continued, taking a breath, "Became so strong and so pervasive that after a while it wasn't just baggage I was carrying around but my entire waking reality. I couldn't think of anything else or feel anything else. Just an ongoing, seemingly interminable sense of loss and pain and regret. It permeated everything, not just emotionally and cognitively, but it also seemed to be with me in every cell. Physically. That's the only way I can really describe it, but I think you might be able to relate?"
Charlotte was watching him with hungry eyes, starving eyes, willing him to continue. To know she wasn't alone. To hear his words.
Jane sipped his tea and considered his words, how he would phrase his sentences. How to be both honest and clinical to the degree that such distance was necessary to maintain his own objectivity, while still maintaining empathy and offering hope. He swallowed what felt like a small, tepid marble.
"A lot of psychologists and psychiatrists talk about depression as if it's strictly this chemical goof-up on the part of the brain and the neurotransmitters. It's true that some people develop cases of depression without evidence of an obvious, external cause. But there's a reason for everything. My grief and regret piled up and piled up inside of my mind and somewhere along the line, they stopped being grief and regret and turned into life-threatening depression. And of course, my neurostransmitters were messed up. But the grief and regret came first. Not the other way around."
Charlotte nodded soundlessly in understanding.
"And in that headspace, I would have done absolutely anything to feel some relief. So Charlie, please, believe me when I say I understand as much as another human being can. I understand what you're going through and I know how badly you just want me to say that, yes, pain like this will just go away someday. But the truth is, the pain doesn't so much as go away as other things in your life begin to take up more and more of your time and attention, and those distractions make the pain feel less intense."
A few more sips of tea. Then no more tea.
He placed his own empty teacup down on the table's surface, pushed it with the tips of his tanned fingers over to sit beside Charlotte's empty water tumbler.
"And as you consciously focus less and less on the undeniable loss of what used to be your life, you find new experiences and new souls and new dynamics you never would have been exposed to if you weren't trying so hard to get through all the bad days."
Jane stopped talking a moment, just sat and stared and looked at the teacup, and the water tumbler with Stitch grinning like an idiot and his daughter's narrow, slumped shoulders, the black cotton material of her rock hoodie, the downward angle of her head. Her hair was unbrushed and looked like it had sand in it.
"Like Lisbon?" Charlie asked softly. "Like how Lisbon came into your life, and how, now, she is so precious to you?"
Jane shifted in his seat. Looked up at his daughter.
"Yeah," he said, softly. Nodding. "Lisbon is a good example of what I'm talking about. At this point in my life, I can't imagine my life without her. But when I met her I couldn't imagine I would ever feel a connection to another person, a sense of love, ever again. It was unthinkable. Until it happened."
"If Red John hadn't killed Mom, you never would have met Lisbon," Charlotte murmured, testing the waters.
Jane nodded solemnly.
"At the same time," he said after a long moment of no speaking, "there's nothing in the world I wouldn't do to turn back the clock and have your mother back. Nothing."
"Even if it meant never knowing Lisbon?" Charlotted wondered.
Jane nodded, but he wasn't agreeing. "That's where my mind stalls out. Your Mom dying is something I'd do anything to take back. At the same time, knowing Lisbon and having her in my life is something I'd do anything to keep."
"That's a paradox," Charlotte whispered.
Jane nodded.
"It is. And I can't say I haven't spent a lot of hours thinking about it, either. When you love someone, you will do anything to keep them or get them back if they are taken from you. But if you meet someone you love because of the loss of another loved one..." He trailed off.
He had loved Angela more than any other woman in the world. She'd been his soulmate. At the same time, Lisbon was precious to him. The idea of never knowing her stung and stung sharply.
It was a paradox, as Charlotte had said.
"As for your sense of grief," Jane said, perking up a little bit, "I would do anything to give you back what was stolen from you, but I can't. But if there's any light in all that darkness, anything which mitigates the emotional pain you're lugging around with you like an invisible ball-and-chain, it's this: adulthood, in and of itself, isn't what you fear it has to be."
"What do you mean?" Charlotte mumbled.
Jane looked at her pointedly. She didn't give an inch, not even a flicker of acknowledgment.
Jane sighed to let her know he wasn't fooled by her dumb act.
"I don't want to make you uncomfortable, Charlie, but most of what society associates with adulthood are superficial behaviors you've already, willingly, engaged in yourself, to a large extent. Smoking, paying rent, drinking alcohol, driving a car. There are a few other behaviors people largely consider prerequisites for adult life, like getting a job that pays more than minimum wage or paying a mortgage or voting. But, you know what? Those rules are arbitrary. As are the tacit rules about what adults do together with other adults. People follow them because most people aren't able to truly think for themselves. They want to be directed because if they are told what to do they feel less responsible for their lives and by extension less responsible for the inevitable pain in their lives. Most people are unable to accept that their own actions or lack thereof contribute to their own suffering in any way, shape or form. So they follow the crowd's rules, or what they assume are its rules..."
Charlotte was still playing dumb. Jane got back to the point.
"The stuff you're worrying about, Charlotte? The behaviors and acts which gross you out? More than gross you out, really. Repulse you? That stuff never has to be part of your life. Not unless you want it to be. And even if it's not, you'll still be an adult. A grown up."
Charlotte broke eye contact with Jane and began scraping at some gluey translucent splotch on the table surface which had somehow escaped the wrath of the Scotch-Brite sponge.
"Don't know what you're talking about," she offered lamely, in a voice so soft Jane could hardly hear her.
"Do you want me to be more specific?" Jane asked gently.
"I..." She trailed off. Was silent. Not by choice, but by fear, and embarassment.
"I think you have some idea what I'm talking about," Jane said softly. It was the same voice he'd used on Lisbon numerous times when the cases they were working had her panicked. The same soft lilt he'd used in Lisbon's hypnotic induction, to relax her. To soothe her.
Charlotte, instead, squirmed in response to his words and the tone of his voice. Kept scratching with her thumbnail at the hardened splotch of pancake syrup stuck to the table's surface.
"Okay," Jane whispered, infinitely calm, infinitely understanding, "We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to. But that... stuff. That stuff that scares you and makes you feel embarrassed and need to get in the shower, that's not what being an adult is about. Those sorts of relationships are things you can opt out of. So, if some part of you is scared or anxious about the subject which shall-not-be-named, you can let yourself relax a little bit. Because it's optional."
He could hear her breathing, heavy and ragged. Choked with anxiety. He hoped sincerely he hadn't pushed too hard, hadn't driven her to the point of tears, because she hated to cry, especially in front of others. He looked at her, studied her, a line forming between his eyebrows, eyes filling with compassion and empathy.
"Still don't know what you're talking about," Charlotte said after a moment. "I think you've been working too hard, Dad; because you're rambling. You're not making any sense. I'd say you were in the sun too long, but it's October."
Jane decided to play along.
"I must be confused, then," he said, and got up. Put his teacup in the kitchen sink.
"Is the reason you didn't call Lucas's parents because you knew I'd come downstairs when I did and we'd have this talk?" Charlotte asked. She got up and put her glass tumbler in the kitchen sink next to Jane's lonely teacup, eager, Jane knew, to change the subject.
"I suspected as much," Jane said.
"How?" Charlotte asked.
"It's kind of what I do," Jane said, smiling just a little. "I understand human behavior. I'd like to believe I'm pretty good at it, too."
Charlotte nodded.
"I'm going to go get the cardboard for the mice now," she said and slipped out of the kitchen.
Jane heard the sounds of his kid squishing her feet into her sneakers without bothering to untie the laces.
"Take Dixon with you," he called after his daughter. The direction would be something she would roll her eyes at, something typical and a welcome distraction from her awkwardness.
Immediately there was the sound of the pitbull's nails clacking on the linoleum floor near the front door. The sound of Charlotte acknowledging the dog and his almost-certainly-full bladder.
The sound of the door opening, then closing. Muffled noises of his kid and her dog outside, descending into the night and the future, and all the apprehension tracing along that linear thread of time.
Jane considered his words and decided their little talk had been more or less a success.
Better a few moments now of awkward tension then years of unnecessary anxiety.
But... next time he'd get Lisbon to talk about anything related to sex.
It probably wouldn't go over any better than if he brought up the subject, but at least Charlotte didn't eat her Cookie Crisp at Lisbon's kitchen table every morning.
Charlotte had gone down into the bowels of their apartment building where the dumpsters and recycling bins were kept, as Dixon tapdanced his way merrily beside her, nails clickety-clacking on the paved concrete, happy to be included in whatever adventure the dog seemed to think was heralded by the use of the building's poorly-lit elevator.
The concrete enclosure which housed the apartment dumpsters and recycling bins (and led to an underground Parkade through a separate door) smelled musty with faint olfactory undertones of motor oil and related petroleum products. The temperature down here was always about 10 degrees cooler than the outside air- except maybe in the dead of winter- and was poorly illuminated by fluorescent tube lighting embedded in the ceiling's concrete.
Charlotte felt her skin itch and eyes widen as she walked towards the blue recycling bins. Dixon charged on ahead of her, his stubby tail wagging furiously, and began to sniff the floor around the bins.
Charlotte walked a bit faster, suddenly desperate to find what she needed and get the hell out of Dodge. By the time she reached the recycling bins, Dixon had already lost interest in whatever had seemed so important mere seconds ago and had bounded over to the huge, stinky dumpster to sniff around the base of the metal box with so many delicious smelling and slightly rancid drips and streaks covering its oxidizing exterior.
A large pool of dark, iridescent motor oil had pooled around the bottom of the dumpster and even though motor oil (with its strangely beautiful liquid gradient of rainbow colors) looked absolutely nothing like a pool of congealing blood, Charlotte was suddenly reminded of blood.
She shivered and flung open the lid of the blue recycling bin she was standing in front of and began to rummage through the contents of flattened, recyclable cardboard boxes and tubes.
Almost immediately she found an intact shoebox and a few paper tubes left over from what had once been rolls of paper towels. The shoebox would make a great nesting box and the tubes could be put to use as funky little mouse tunnels.
She put the tubes in the shoebox and the lid back on top and proceeded to the next recycling bin.
This bin had been designated for metal and plastic containers and was nearly full to the top, which meant she didn't have to lean into the bin and thrash around, bent over at the waist like a street urchin reduced to dumpster diving for survival.
She'd dumpster dived as a kid when Red John took off on some kills and decided (for whatever reason) to spare her the trauma of joining in. He'd decided at the same time to spare her the trauma of eating and the burden of having money with which to become overstimulated at the grocery store, and days of drinking tap water until her stomach ballooned out and her piss lost all hint of yellow had inspired her- at the plucky ages of 9 and 10, to try her hand at collecting used beer and soda cans.
It wasn't a childhood activity she could really claim to miss.
She didn't spend long, now, deliberating about her options. The empty Country Crock margarine container and the fragrant shell of a can a Folgers coffee were good enough. As the seconds passed, Charlotte felt more and more uneasy, haunted and watched. Time to get out of here.
She was thinking how this creepy, subterrestrial room would make an excellent setting for the opening of a horror movie- maybe something involving zombies- when she heard rustling and movement coming from inside the dumpster.
Her vision immediately focused on the shadowy dumpster.
Dixon, too, had stopped sniffing around the base of the delicious garbage locker and was fixated on whatever was making those strange little rustling noises from its interior.
His ears perked up at attention- at least as perked up as they could be without having been cropped. Charlotte gulped down what tasted like a phlegmy chunk of bile and felt the large muscle in her left calf begin to twitch spasmodically.
She had a sudden and nightmarish mental image of Red John half-buried in the dumpster's garbage innards, face smeared with errant streaks of ketchup and partially coagulated milk clumps.
A ridiculous fantasy, to be certain, but one which seemed to inhale all of the available oxygen in this musty, gloomy room (which had so suddenly revealed its true nature as a large concrete coffin).
Dixon looked over at his master, canted his muscular head to the side and made a guttural pleading noise.
"Hello?" Charlotte queried, worrying her lower lip with her teeth, feeling completely ridiculous.
Any normal person would just leave and chalk the unexplained noises up to products of an overactive imagination.
As she considered what to do next, Dixon's stance transformed into one of aggressive inclination. The tendons in his burly neck stood out in sharp definition against the short, smooth hairs of his coat.
Low, menacing growl sounds issued from between his liver-colored, rubbery lips. A crystal-fine strand of drool dropped from his lips and left a tiny dime-sized mark on the concrete floor.
"What is it, boy?" Charlotte whispered through the aching sting of her esophagus and trachea and edged closer to her dog.
"What is it, puppy?"
Another ominous burst of rustling came from within the dumpster, as if in response to her questions.
Charlotte took hold of Dixon's heavy leather collar and tried to physically move him away from the metal heap of garbage. He held firm, defiant, and the eerie growling noises he was making became louder.
Charlotte felt the sense of being watched increase and glanced up to find a fat, dirty sewer rat sitting on top of a bulging Hefty brand trash bag, watching the girl with black, beady little eyes which somehow were both disinterested and highly interested at the exact same time.
Fucking thing was just sitting and staring, fat and plump, expression unknowable. Something sinister about it, though.
Fucking thing.
Charlotte felt her entire nervous system suddenly light up as if struck buy an electric shock (a taser or electrical wall socket, maybe) and an involuntary shriek of revulsion burst out of her mouth.
A low, sickened moan of revulsion.
And still, the little bastard just kept sitting and watching, still as a statue but without any air of fear.
Dixon was jumping up and hammering against the side of the steel garbage bin like a maniac, now, body energized with a hysterical, primordial desire to grab that fat, greasy fucker of rodent eyeing them both (with a somehow absurd look of superiority on its filthy face);.
Grab it like a hated squeak toy and shake it back and forth and back and forth until it stopped staring.
It kept staring (somehow looking something like offended, now, Charlotte noticed herself thinking) but now was making unnerving little chittering noises with its yellow, overgrown fangs.
"Not fangs," Charlotte told herself in a low voice. She said the words out loud and even though she had whispered, her voice seemed to boom in the concrete cavern. The sound of her breathy voice was mocked by the increasingly loud shh-shh teeth noises. Enamel scraping on enamel.
Fucking thing was chittering at her. Something like that.
Rats didn't have fangs.
Rats had teeth very much like rabbits, and rabbits didn't have fangs at all, did they?
And this particular rat just had unusually overgrown bunny-teeth in maybe a really ugly shade of Cheetos-orange, but this thing was still just a (relatively) small rodent and probably more frightened of the hairless ape girl and her hysterical dog... than they were of it.
That was what Charlotte told herself, but she didn't really believe that nonsense.
Bunny rabbits, for one thing, hadn't spread the black death. They didn't have a documented history of biting and trying to eat sleeping babies in their cribs and bassinets.
The rat kept its beady gaze on them and its body seemed to sway a little... like maybe it was rocking itself for comfort.
The air felt both too hot and too cold. And somehow sticky, and greasy, both at once.
The unnerving sound of the rat's teeth scraping together back and forth and back and forth continued like some sort of dental maraca impersonation (this rat obviously had greater issues to consider than damaging its enamel) and Charlotte felt her highly detailed visual imagination ask the wordless, age-old question all hominids asked themselves when seeing a new animal sitting above them and looking down on them: Would this rat suddenly leap on to her neck and shoulders and begin to scratch and bite?
Did rats do that sort of thing?
Could rats be rabid?
"Dixon!" Charlotte ordered sternly, as her thoughts became suddenly more graphic than she could stomach. She was afraid to move. She was a few feet from the rodent, but what if it jumped on her? What if it was provoked by any sudden movements?
"Dixon, come on, we're going!" She heard herself say with a strange calm she didn't feel at all.
She moved, and thankful, the rat didn't lunge or jump or try to do its impersonation of a jaguar taking down whatever jaguars ate.
Dixon began to whine as she dragged him forcefully away from the dumpster with its cornucopia of delicious, rancid odors quite literally topped with a plump King Rat (Charlotte could now see the proportionately huge testicles of the thing as she backed away and her vantage point shifted).
She considered that as much as Dixon loved vanilla ice cream, the dumpster, and its unwashed rodent monarch was almost certainly Dixon's preferred form of a sundae.
Not tapped with a marachino cherry, either.
Marachino cheries were all fine and dandy for humans, but for Dixon, a stinking, wriggling, plump, oily rat sitting on top of its prized heap of garbage was the truly irresitable topping for a garbage sundae.
King Rat hadn't moved but held his position like an army General on the top of a hill, determined to see his war down to the final death rattle.
King Rat also held a (mostly fleshless) yellowing chicken bone in his tiny, pink little fingers like a scepter.
She hadn't consciously even seen the chicken bone before. She hadn't been looking at its little hands, not when she was close to it.
How precious.
Probably a remnant of what had recently been a KFC or Louisiana Famous Fried value pick item.
All hail the king!
"Dixon!" Charlotte snapped at her dog and began to drag him out of the rat's impromptu palace with increased fervor. He was struggling against her, barking.
The cage and stuff Jane had purchased for the saved baby mice would have to suffice because King Rat could have his garbage.
Shoeboxes.
Coffee cans.
Prized and inadequately washed-out Country Crock margarine tubs with their missing lids.
All of it.
The mental image of the filthy thing crawling all over the cardboard and tin recyclables and dragging those massive, peach-fuzzy testicles over every single surface as he inspected his newly donated refuse made Charlie want to throw up just a little bit.
She'd read somewhere that rats and mice regularly urinated everywhere they went to mark their territory. Was rat piss the main cause of that musty, mammalian odor near the dumpster?
Could rats carry lice?
Charlotte suddenly felt itchy; felt tiny, invisible insects crawling over her legs and belly and breasts and places she didn't want to think about.
She planned to wash her hands like an unmedicated obsessive compulsive with the Dial antibacterial liquid hand soap when she got back upstairs, and then take a long, hot shower.
The mice could make do with their mass-produced, flimsy plastic wheel.
Somewhere in the seemingly eternal, slow-motion retreat, she'd lost sight of the rat (glancing down at Dixon, probably), and when she blinked or looked back up, it was gone.
And the most ridiculous thought came to her, fluttering around in her head, trapped inside her skull, like a panicking bird.
The thought was this:
The rat was one of Red John's "eyes". One of his spies.
He had moved onto rodents, now, somehow.
Or... or it was an omen.
Either way.
Either way, that fucker was bad news.
She took the elevator up with Dixon to the ground floor, feeling colder than the temperature difference of the basement or even the outside world suggested was plausible given physical parameters. Shivering.
Night had fallen and the sky was awash with that rgey-orange hue Sacramento had every night, light up from the inside with light pollution and what would one day become smog. The outside of the apartment complex was lit up with sporadic pools of peach-orange sodium vapor street lights. Eventually, they would probably be replaced with energy-efficient white LEDs, but presently, they were still that retro orange-peach, dotted around the periphery of the parking lot and lined up along the residential streets like sentinels. One guardian a US postal drop box. One guarding a squat fire hydrant which looked almost like a gnome in the gloom.
Charlotte clipped Dixon's leash to his collar and took him over to a narrow strip of dried grass to have his evening pee and number 2, waiting while he went, dutifully picking up the prize with a scented plastic doggie bag.
There was a pair of teenagers with white faces standing under one of the street lamps nearest the building, watching her with surly expressions.
Charlotte tied the doggie-waste bag and held onto the tied ends. The teenagers looked like something out of a nightmare.
One was wearing a black hoodie, one had on a black denim jacket and some sort of dark rock or punk nad t-shirts. Studs on his denim jacket caught and refracted the street light. Their faces were done up in white makeup, and the eyes of the girl were rimmed in heavy black liquid ink.
Just watching her, and watching Dixon. Staring with eyes which seemed darker than they possibly could be, even given the low light levels.
As Charlotte stared at them, the boy brought a hand (which had been resting, unseen, out of view, by his side) and put what appeared to be a lit cigarette to his lips. Took a deep inhale, blew a cloud of gray-blue smoke (which looked gray-orange in the light) out through his blackhead-speckled nose. Still... both staring at her.
These could be two of Red John's eyes, too, for all she knew. Charlotte glanced away, tried to seem at ease, but the gaze of the pair felt like invisible radiation against her back, almost hot.
"Good boy," Charlotte said to Dixon, softly, who was looking up at her, expectantly, wondering what the trouble was and why they weren't going for their walk.
But she didn't want to go for a walk right now. The world was full of watchful eyes, and there was too much of a sense of menace in the air, hanging like an almost perceptible smell in the air, just slightly out of conscious range. That "smell" of menace, Charlotte knew, would smell like a mix of something wooden burning, and old blood, and gasoline and car motor oil. Instinctively, without conscious consideration, that was the aromatic mixture which to her mind denoted threat.
She tugged on Dixon's leash and walked away from the gaze of the teenage goth kids (or whatever they were) stiffly, feeling like her legs were suddenly lacking healthy patellas, head angled downwards and gaze on the warm, speckled orange concrete below her. The pavement around the apartment was smooth as a baby's butt.
Would be excellent for skateboarding, Charlotte mused, still walking. She hadn't skated in a long time. It had been fun, she supposed... when she had done it. When she had been able to pretend her life was something other than what it was. The smooth shhhhhh sound of the wheels against the concrete, the almost-effortless gliding of her thin, hunched body through the night, past cars, past silent houses with their lights stupidly turned off, and hedges full of shadows which probably housed countless monsters.
Shhhhhh-shhhhh, and she had propelled forward in the night, a young kid with blood on her hands, small, pale face drawn and pulled, sometimes with a bruise around her mouth or eye as a gift from Red John, backpack snug on her back with a few bucks and a new toothbrush and a little pocket knife she'd purchased at a yard sale for a buck.
Like the wheels of her old skateboard had been trying to soothe her.
Shhhhhhh-shhhhhhh. The sudden jostle of her body and board as she whipped up over a crack in the pavement, reestablished her balance, continued on into the night...
She had never had the courage, not back then, to just stay on the board and keep going and disappear. She'd had Patrick Jane's CBI address and government phone number scrawled on a piece of torn loose leaf in black magic marker, tucked inside the belly of a beanie baby with a tiny slit in its abdomen which she had then repaired with crazy glue. She'd had the address for the CBI, and the phone number, and a newspaper clipping for Patrick for years, inside that beanie baby. And a skateboard, and her own finger prints and DNA running through her veins which would prove she was Jane's kid, and fear and horror and revulsion and every other reason in the world just to keep on in the night, gliding away between the cars.
Every reason not to skate back home to the shadowy den of the wolf.
But she'd always gone back, time after time, head lowered, skin prickling, walking like a condemened inmate about to face old sparky.
She walked that way now, head down, shoulders slumped, loyal dog trotting alongside her, indifferent to the horrors of the world.
Maybe those kids and the rat were some of Red John's eyes. But honestly? That was a batshit crazy idea.
More likely the rat was just a rat that was hungry and had found a good deal of refuse and somewhere warm to curl up in their basement oasis of garbage and cardboard. And the kids were probably just regular kids, consumed with their own universes of adolescent angst, eyeing the girl on her own, feeling superior because there were two of them dressed alike and playing by the same social rules, and only one of her.
That they were all dressed in varying shades of black and struggling in the same world of fear and judgment didn't matter.
Humans would clump together and attack. Bully and ostracize. It seemed to be what they did.
Charlotte reached the ground floor elevator, pushed the upward pointing arrow with the hand holding the bag of shit.
Her breath felt hot and caustic in her lungs, and she was certain that it probably smelled like week-old garbage.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened, smooth and silky as if they were oiled regularly, and she scampered inside, trusty dog by her side.
"Okay, thank you. Yes, you have a good night, too," Jane said. He was smiling. He hit the end button call on his cell phone, put the phone back down on the dresser in his bedroom. He still had it.
He'd phoned Lucas Dero's adoptive parents. At first, the exasperated woman on the other end had been so overwhelmed and stressed, she'd been practically screaming. How dare he threaten her son? How dare he humiliate him in front of his friends? She hoped he had a very good lawyer. Blah, blah, blah.
Jane sucked in a breath and felt her pain. Her agony. Her despair at trying to raise a kid with such severe attachment issues that, on a good day, the most they could probably hope for was that there hadn't been a phone call from the school or a lack of pins jabbed in the family dog.
Jane calmly described the situation, using his most lulling, hypnotic tone. It was a tone of voice that contained all the peace and promise of escape as the sound of ocean waves, gently lapping the shore. No judgment, no aggression, just peace and warmth, and patient understanding. Her words became less sharp and ragged. Her breathing corrected itself. He kept the tone and repetition up until he knew he had her in a place of calm and peace, knew she was listening to him and that her heart rate was a good 20 beats a minute slower.
He explained that he hadn't threatened her son. That he worked for the CBI and was concerned for her son. That the boy was displaying antisocial traits at school and was an ongoing psychological risk to the other students. That was the first tact; make them see that the child they were legally reponsible for posed a very valid risk of bringing a lawsuit crashing down on their heads. The school was full of troubled and emotionally challenged and challenging children, but most of them were not manipulative or antisocial. Jane then soothed, clicking into next gear, and suggested that maybe the psychologist who had recommended them to the school or the school to them had been off base. That the initial intake interviewer for the school had failed to ask the pertinent questions which would have caught the fact that the school wasn't the right place for their kid.
This tact removed some of the guilt from their decision, made them more likely to listen. It didn't absolve them, or reduce the urgency of the problem, but in the short-term it was compassionate and let the harried mother feel that, at least, at the very least, the parent on the opposite end of the phone understood that other people were involved with the placement of their kid in said school, and that other people were being paid to help guide them, and were doing a poor job of it (Jane had no doubt that the boy was in therapy and seeing a shrink and he wasn't wrong in that assumption).
The mother sighed and her voice trembled.
"They said if we didn't put him there, the next step would be a mental hospital," she had breathed into her end of the line, and to Jane, she sounded near tears. The dreaded mental hospital scenario. The scarlet letter forever branded into the psyches of adoptive parents, heralding their personal failure to save their adopted kiddos through the power of love and organic eating. As if problems of this nature were the sole amalgamation of a foster parent's flaws or faults.
Jane soothed her. Explained that, perhaps, the jump to a mental hospital from special school was short-sighted. He worked for the CBI, and he had resources, knew people. Even the most well-intentioned of clinicians didn't know everything. Jane could ask some of his work associates to research potential resources for her. There were live-in schools for such children which weren't hospitals, which weren't sterile wards and locked, buzzing doors. Many of them out of the country. The kids could come home on weekends and holidays sometimes, have visitors, after periods of treatment to fully assess them.
The woman on the other end told Jane she'd looked into them. All of them were more expensive than they had the money for. Even the current school was taking a huge financial bite out of their chequing account.
"I've done some favors for quite a few people and can probably get you a reduced rate, or a scholarship," Jane said, immediately. He didn't know if he could do this, and at the same time, he was certain he could. Clinicians were even easier to figure out and manipulate than harried, stressed-out parents.
Such a school like that would be ideal for their child. It would give him round-the-clock, 24-hour care and allow them, the parents, and other children in the home, a chance to rest and recharge. Jane would be more than happy to take care of the details and phone her back in a day or two.
The poor woman did sound like she was crying towards the end of the phone call. Jane told her she could call him by his first name, Patrick, and assured her everything would be okay. Everything will be okay.
Everything will be okay, Sarah.
I know it's been a very hard time, but with the right care and treatment, your son will begin to heal and it's not too late for him. Let's work together to give him the best chance, okay?
She had sniffled and said okay.
Jane gave her his work number and his cell number, requesting she not phone after 10:00 pm or before 7:00 am.
"Of course not," she quickly agreed, before thanking him profusely.
"Thank you so much, Mr. Jane... Patrick. Patrick. Thank you. I can't tell you what this phone call means to me. Again, I am sorry for my earlier tone. We have just been so overwhelmed, here-"
"I completely understand. You're doing the very best job you can do, with limited professional resources. We'll remedy that together, okay?"
"Okay," the poor woman breathed. "And yes, I will keep Lukey home from school until I hear back from you. I didn't know he was bullying your little girl. I am so sorry about that."
"His behavior is not your fault, and she will be okay," Jane soothed, hoping the second part of that comment was actually true. "She's been through a lot, but she's a fighter. But as a parent with a special child, I am sure you can appreciate why I am so concerned."
"Of course I can understand. I am so sorry, again, for Lukey's behavior. Please tell your daughter we are very sorry for his... bullying," she said, and the word "bullying" held so much resentment and repressed anger that Jane immediately knew this woman had been bullied herself in school, probably well into high school. He had a gut feeling that part of the reason she had decided to adopt such a high-risk, special-needs child was that, in an idealistic, naive and very kind way, she wanted to give an underdog with limited prospects for a family a chance at happiness and completeness.
Unfortunately, reality did not care if you were a kind or generous or naive or idealistic person out of your depth. Reality with a capital R, when it was pissed and had reason to do so, attacked like a rabid dog. Reality could bite, and bite deep and the type of lockjaw often associated with such bites was not viral and there was no known-tetanus shot for it. You become despondent and cynical and lost hope. That was reality could do for such people, people who allowed romantic visions of love and charity to cloud their logical thinking.
"You've already apologized for him, Sarah, and it's not your burden to apologize for him in the first place. We'll get this sorted out. Please watch him this Halloween. There'll be lots of opportunities for impulsive ideas to escalate," Jane said, not unkindly.
Lucas Dero's Mom immediately agreed. Halloween. Yes. She would watch him like a hawk.
"You can tell your daughter that he won't be at that school to bug her anymore and that we're going to get him the help he needs. Please have a good night, Mr. Jane, and your daughter, too," the soft, tired voice on the other end of the call said in a breathy sigh. She sounded like she was taking a deep breath- a real deep breath- for the first time in years, maybe.
Probably, that was true, with a kid like Lucas.
"Okay, thank you. Yes, you have a good night, too," Jane said. He was smiling.
He still had it.
He disconnected the call and put the phone down on his dresser.
He heard the front door open and close shut, heard the sound of Charlie kicking her sneakers off, of Dixon's nails on laminate flooring.
Perfect timing, too.
Jane slipped out of his bedroom, wandered casually over to his kid, who was sitting on the couch with the remote, flipping through television stations.
"Where's the stuff for the mice?" Jane said casually, falling down into the couch cushions next to her, as laidback as could be.
He caught an involuntary shudder.
"They have enough stuff with their wheel, I think. Don't want them getting loose."
Jane raised his eyebrows.
"But you were so intent on building them a maze and playground," he said, probing for more details.
Charlotte muted the television and turned to look at him.
"Do you think Red John can control animals?" She said, not an ounce of sarcasm or mischief in her tone. Serious.
Jane considered her words.
"I think Red John is dead and unless an animal has been domesticated and trained to act a certain way, even Red John- while alive- couldn't control them so much as terrify them," he said gently. "Why?"
Charlotte shuddered.
"Charlie? You know I will just keep at you till you tell me because I can't stand not knowing things. Can't stand the mystery. It eats at me-"
"There was a rat in the basement," Charlotte cut him off. "On top of the garbage in the dumpster. Just looking at me. It had a chicken bone in its hands like a scepter or something, was eating the flesh off an old chicken bone. I thought it might jump on me and scratch and bite my face."
Jane shuddered at her description.
"I'll put in a request for properties to lay some traps down there, tomorrow," Jane said immediately.
"Traps?" Charlotte said, voice getting lower. "But... those would kill the rat, right?"
"There was a saying I heard a lot growing up in the circus, with all that litter and junk food. For every rat you see, there are ten nearby you don't see."
"But a trap would break his neck," Charlotte murmured.
"That's generally how it's done, yes," Jane said, looking at her even after she turned her attention back to the screen.
"It was just a rat, maybe. Maybe kind of a bold rat. And he spooked me. But doesn't that really mean he deserves to have his neck broken? From his point of view, maybe I was intruding on his garbage stash."
"Somebody else will probably see a rat that bold, and the trap requests will go through all the same," Jane said simply.
"Let somebody else report him, then. I don't want to be responsible for him dying, even if he is a rat," Charlotte said and shuddered again at the memory of the creature.
Jane just watched her. Amazed by his child.
"You have such a good heart, kiddo," he said after a moment. "A really, really good and kind and clean heart."
Charlotte considered his comment.
"Clean?"
"Yes. Clean. You worry about that. Because of all the thoughts and impulses, Red John's trauma has left you with. You feel infected and dirty. You don't have to be ashamed and you don't have to pretend otherwise, because I know. I understand. But you're not dirty and he didn't corrupt you and you have a clean heart. A clean soul."
"Not a clean mind, though," Charlotte said and tapped the side of her scalp, finger bobbing against her blonde waves.
"That's a result of trauma. And it willl get better and better with time."
"It isn't getting better though. It's getting worse," Charlotte murmured.
"Part of the healing process," Jane said with absolute confidence. "You need to process a decade's worth of crap before you can start to heal. Like... lancing a psychic infection. All those gory, intrusive images are the pus and infection leaking out. But after it is lanced, it will start to get better. Be less intrusive, less destabilizing."
"You can't know that for certain," Charlotte complained and began flipping channels with the mute still on.
"Nobody can know anything with absolute certainty," Jane soothed, "but I do know with almost-absolute certainty that, at the very least, you don't have to worry about Lucas Dero anymore."
"Hmmm," Charlotte murmured, still distracted by the TV. Then she looked over at Jane. "Lucas? Why? You phoned his parents."
"I phoned his mom. Told her I would help get Lucas into a good school for children with his specific type of emotional needs, a treatment center in the country somewhere that will give the rest of their family time to rest."
"You said you'd help them?" Charlotte said, smiling a little.
"Yeah. Why?"
"That's very kind of you, Patrick. You have a good heart, too."
"Thanks," Jane said, grinning.
They ate take-out pizza for dinner, Charlotte curled up on the couch. They compromised on a movie to watch together. Jane suggested Stephen King's "Children of the Corn" from 1984, a movie that had enough trauma and violence in it to keep his kid's attention, but one he did not think would reinforce her existing traumas.
The story was about an isolated, rural town whipped into a frenzy by a psychopathic boy preacher named Isaac, a boy whose profound charisma allowed him to instill seeds of distrust and fear in the town's children. This fear and distrust culminated with the murder of every adult over the age of 19. The boy, apparently, was taking directions from a supernatural force called "He who walks behind the rows". Jane thought the movie would have been just as strong or stronger without the supernatural element.
All but two of the kids in town, under the control of their fear and the frenzied, parochial (often screamed) teachings of Isaac fell under his command, blindly following orders and committing atrocities while part of the group, atrocities they would never have been psychologically able to commit on their own or without the group's blessing.
It was a movie, and one that wasn't particularly spooky (compared to most of what Charlie gravitated towards) but it was also a good opportunity for Jane to wax philosophical, to discuss social dynamics (especially in young humans) and the scary realities of how groups of people, whipped into a frenzy, could be reduced to horrible actions.
"You're analyzing me, even when we're just hanging out eating pizza and watching a movie, right?"
"Hey," Jane said, putting up his hands in a 'don't-shoot' gesture. "I compromised by letting you watch a horror flick on a school night."
"But... I'm not going to school tomorrow. You promised, remember?"
"I know you're not going to school tomorrow. That's why I said okay to the horror movie."
"But you're still using it as a tool to analyze me and reinforce some teaching about young kids and bullies, I think."
"I think you might be right," Jane allowed with a grin.
"You know, if you had grown up in a normal enviornment, you might have turned into a psychologist. Or a psychiatrist," Charlie said, grinning back.
Jane made a face, and his kid chuckled.
"And pay all that money to know what I could learn for free? No thank you."
"You're better at figuring people out than most psychologists and shrinks, anyway."
"Thank you, bedbug," Jane said, intentionally invoking Charlie's childhood nickname.
"Mom hated that nickname," Charlie laughed.
"I know. That's why I called you that. The reaction was funny."
Charlie laughed, and Jane laughed.
"Irish people are sort of trolls, aren't they?" Charlotte asked when she stopped laughing.
Jane shrugged. "Maybe not all. But I, kind of, am."
"Kind of?"
Jane chucked a throw pillow at his kid. This got another laugh.
"There are only eight days left," Charlie said, turning back to the movie.
"Eight days left?" Jane said, momentarily lost.
"Till Halloween," Charlie said, voice little more than a whisper- as if speaking too loudly might create some horrible reality for them to face, might call something out of the ether and make it manifest in the real world.
"It's just Halloween. It's going to be okay."
She turned back to her father with large, spooked eyes. "I'm scared, Patrick."
Jane nodded. Shifted closer to his kid. Gave her a hug before she could resist, or pull away.
When he was back in his own space he nodded.
"I know," he said. "But it's still going to be alright."
"Let's hope so," Charlotte said, but she sounded old and cynical and Jane could have worked with something if she had sounded uncertain, but she sounded very certain. That was the problem.
Very certain that they were not going to be alright.
Very certain that everything was going to fall apart.
Jane went back (at least on the surface) to watching the movie, eyes shifting between his kid and the movie. Watching her body language and the rise and fall of her chest, the movements of her hands and fingers, the expressions on her face.
Watching everything.
He was watching everything.