Fandom: The Mentalist (Chapter 71)
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim… if not his sanity, itself.
Author's Note:
Thanks for the reviews. This gets harder to write as we approach the climax of this story. I know what has to happen and in basically what order, but the themes and imagery are taxing and a bit draining. At the same time, this fic is a beast and I need to complete it. Thanks again for the reviews and kind comments. Take care guys. - Lex
"Have you seen me?
I've been wandering
Out by the road
Trying to get home
He used the garbage bag and nail gun
Do you think I look like someone
You could use to have fun?
I tried to run
But he's not done with me"
- Have you seen me by Nicole Dollanganger
"Focus?
We didn't even notice
We awake in a place
We can barely recognize, yeah
Hypnosis" - "Less Than" by Nine Inch Nails
Charlotte watched Jane's car pull away. Jane raised a hand and waved. She nodded back. Not his fault, not really. Not any of this.
But it wasn't her fault either, really. Maybe it was.
Maybe not.
Oh well.
She looked down at her watch. Most of the kids had cell phones, and she had a cell phone too, but she felt comforted by her watch. Little black Timex, somewhat waterproof, with a blacklit display for dark places. A tiny piece of reality (date, time, digital compass) to carry with her, strapped to her wrist. As long as she had it, she knew the day, she knew the time.
Rigsby had given it to her. He knew she liked retro things.
She looked down at the watch now, turned her wrist to see the LED diplay.
5 minutes to 9. The bell would go crazy at 9 and all the little looney toons would shuffle into the school and go to their respective classes (most of the worst and obnoxious, of course, seemed to be in all of her classes) and retain about .08% of the crap the "system" thought looney toons would need to know when they graduated from public school and went on to serve the world as janitors and headcases picking up litter from the sides of highways.
What a fucking waste of time. High school.
Even more for the basket cases of the world who, even at a glance, gave off completely nutso vibes.
Nobody was going to hire any of them.
Charlotte opened the front door of the school, big glass door freshly cleaned (already collecting a few greasy finger prints again, such was the constant decay of life), went to the girl's bathroom and pulled out the small plastic bottle of castor oil she'd got at the drug store.
She broke the seal on the lid, pulled off the plastic safety wrap, let the little plastic screw on top fall to the ground (kicking it across the linoleum floor and under one of the bathroom stalls like a hockey puck) gulped the light brown syrup down in two chugs. Made a face. Gross.
Tasted like drinking liquified scotch tape.
Just the smell was revolting.
In the front of her bag, a small bottle of ipecac. She unscrewed the cap on the top and took one chug and put it back in her bag.
Turned the water on from the faucet, cupped her hands and took a few handfuls of water into her mouth as a drink.
"Fucking nasty," Charlotte told her reflection. The water was a pale yellow and warm and tasted metallic with a strong chlorine aftertaste. The water wasn't much better than the castor oil and ipecac but rinsed out the residue a little bit.
She opened her backpack again and shuffled through the contents. Pulled the Pepsi out of her lunch bag and popped the tab and chugged half of the can before taking a breath.
That helped with the taste.
She wandered back into the hallway. Couldn't see Julie yet, but class hadn't started yet. She went to her homeroom, sat at her desk (the school had their names laminated and taped to their desks like they were in the first grade or something) and sat down at her desk, arms crossed over the faux-wooden surface, head down, head already starting to pulse and groan.
Now to wait.
She heard the bell go and the storming and stomping of feet and young voices that- even in fifty more years- would always sound younger to her than the inside of her own mind.
So many young voices chittering and chattering they were a buzz of nothing and nonsense, the background soundtrack to existential nihilism.
Kids began to file into the room, some pushing, some using their so-called "outside" voices.
She kept her head down and didn't look at them.
She felt the blood pulse strongly in her right temple, above the earth, a hot and thick pulse against her skull. Felt the beginnings of a migraine and that loose, uneasy, jittery feeling in her chest and stomach which usually preceded an anxiety attack.
She was beginning to feel hot and sweaty, was beginning to feel something like a large stone in her belly and taste salt in her mouth. Wouldn't be long now.
She heard Julie say "good morning, Charlotte," and heard the sound of a chair being pulled over to her desk and the sound of the little plastic chair's feet screeching on their over-polished tiles. Their teacher was talking, saying good morning, getting everybody used to the school day again (it was a whole process, repeated every day), pulling them back into the fun and magical world of learning which was neither fun nor magical.
Charlotte kept her head down.
The room felt like it was spinning, a little bit, and vertigo wasn't usually part of the package with ipecac or castor oil, but it was part of the package with stress and withdrawal. Her hands were cold and clammy, stomach starting to gurgle and ache.
"You okay, Charlotte?" She heard Julie say. Charlotte lifted her head. Her hair felt sweaty and she felt the need to vomit increasing.
"Don't feel good. I need to use the bathroom," she told Julie, and didn't wait for a response, but got up and very stiffly began to walk out of the classroom. Julie could come for the gastric fireworks if she wanted.
"Charlotte?" Her teacher, wondering what she was doing. As of she was a dog and just the sound of her name was going to make her stop and answer, or something. She made a go away motion with her hand and continued out the door. Wandered down to the girl's room again and went into one of the stalls and began to retch.
She heard the door open and the sound of footsteps.
"Charlotte? You okay?" That was Julie's voice, sweet and early 20s and full of a strange sort of naive hope for the world that Charlotte knew was worse than useless (it was potentially deadly for Julie). But the sound of that sweet Disney princess voice, the concern and the gentleness and strangely untraumatized sanity made the teen's stomach clench hard. Something inside of her twisted, some ball of pain and grief that usually served its time as a stomach.
She puked again in response to Julie's question and her Cookie Crisp and Sunny-D and can of Pepsi all came up, foamy and full of acid, burning her nose and throat.
When she was done retching and her stomach felt hollow and achy and "done", she flushed and got up, went over to the sink and washed her face. Julie was standing there impotently, looking appropriately concerned. How much of that concern was real, versus what Julie thought was her responsibility as someone trained in this job earning 21 bucks an hour?
"Do you want to go to the nurse's office?" Charlotte heard her say.
Charlie shook her head.
"I don't feel good. I am going to call Patrick." It wasn't a question.
"Okay," Julie said. Charlotte pulled out her cell phone, turned her back on Julie, pushed numbers that meant nothing and then ended the call. She began to talk to nobody.
"Hey, Patrick? Yeah, I don't feel good. I am throwing up. Can you come pick me up?"
She waited for a beat, for the imaginary reply.
"Why not?!"
Time to sound appropriately disappointed and cranky.
"No, because I think I am going to get sick again. Everything is spinning."
Another beat of time for imaginary-Patrick-Jane to ask questions, to talk.
"No, I can't wait till pick up."
She felt another wave of nausea. Wished Julie hadn't followed her in here. This bullshit conversation was tasting more and more like bullshit with each passing second.
"Yeah, okay. Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say."
She put her phone away.
"Fuck," she mumbled at the direction of the toilets to seal the deal. That exasperated, eternally teenage swear word. You only pulled that word out and whispered it like that when you were a teenager and you were legitimately bummed out.
Charlotte turned the green lasers in her head which most people thought were her eyes on Julie.
"He's interviewing somebody in a murder case or something and can't leave," Charlotte told Julie softly and turned the water on again. Cupped her hands and brought another handful of water to her lips. Washed her mouth out and spat.
"Fuck, I'm thirsty."
"What did he say?" Julie asked.
Charlotte went to the paper towel dispenser and grabbed at brown paper towels. A few dropped out of her hands and fell to the floor. She left them. She balled the other paper towels up clumsily, wiped her face and nose and mouth with them and stuffed them in the garbage. Even though most of the vomit had gotten in the toilet and there were only trace amounts of bile in the water on her face, the paper towels still smelled like death.
The entire room stank of vomit.
"He is going to send a taxi to pick me up and email the principal. He can't get me today because he is doing interviews all day and it sounds obviously pretty important. Big CBI dick and all that. The state of California will fall apart into complete chaos without the amazing Patrick Jane there every day to play superhero." Pull it back.
Julie was looking at her with a mixture of sympathy and concern.
"It must be pretty important," Julie started.
"Isn't murder, always?"
Charlotte tried to sound bitter. Patrick was choosing his CBI job over her, and she was the annoyed teenager with the sudden attack of stomach flu. Annoyed, but not too annoyed, because otherwise the adults might get involved. Had to play this carefully.
"Well, at least you get to go home, right?" Julie said, trying to brighten the mood.
"Yeah. At least I get to go home," Charlotte repeated.
She walked back to her classroom and went to her desk. The talking stopped. Her teacher asked her a question but the girl ignored her, grabbed her jean jacket and her backpack.
The teacher was going over photosynthesis in plants, but hadn't they already done that unit?
Whatever.
Didn't matter anyway, all of this crap was- essentially- useless and a way to keep kids from roaming the streets and starting fires and stuff. It wasn't actually useful information, in the survive-in-the-future sense.
"Going home," she finally said to her homeroom teacher. "Feel sick. My dad is sending a cab to pick me up."
"Okay. Is Julie going to wait with you?"
Fuck, no. Damn it.
"Okay," Charlotte heard herself saying.
She glanced down at her watch. 9:32 am.
Julie followed her out the front steps and they sat in the shade, watching small birds hop across the pavement, charming as antique tin wind-up toys. What were those little birds, anyway? Starlings? In the distance, there was the sound of cars. The air was warm and still, but Charlotte felt cold and chilled, hypothermic. The cold was in her bones. The cold was terminal. She shivered again.
"I left something in my locker. Can you wait here for me?" She asked her aide after a minute of sitting. The young woman nodded.
She went back into the school. Went back to the bathroom. Checked to make sure it was empty, glancing under the stalls first. Pulled out her phone again and phoned the blacktop taxi company. Ordered a taxi to the front of the school and hung up.
Now to wait.
"Hey, Jane?" It was Van Pelt. Jane had been resting on his couch with his eyes closed and his hands interlaced together over his stomach. He opened his eyes and smiled at Van Pelt, sat up.
"What can I help you with, Grace?"
"Actually, maybe I can help you. Your kid accessed your CBI email account again."
"I thought she might," Jane said earnestly. "What did she write?"
"Emailed the principal of her school pretending to be you and claimed she is sick and taking a taxi home. You, of course, are busy all day and don't want to be disturbed."
"Of course not," Jane said, smiling despite himself.
He'd never had the opportunity to go to high school, but he'd always imagined that playing hooky might be one of the best aspects of being a teenager in school. The rush of breaking the rules and rebelling. Fun times.
What was the use of adolescence without rebellion? Jane had always considered the overly-compliant kids to be psychologically stunted, stuck in their parent's molds without even a generation's worth of psychological or emotional distancing. People didn't evolve if they didn't eventually test the rules and see how the game was played.
Charlotte had done this a few times before.
He'd set his password to something relatively easy for her to guess, but not so easy as to be obvious that he knew she was accessing his email.
Her childhood nickname and her date of birth. It had taken her about 20 tries to get it, but she'd gotten in before she'd given up in frustration, which was what Jane had been going for.
So far, she'd used his email to ditch school a few times now and just roam around downtown Sacramento for a few hours. Never going far. Wandering around. Going to the 7-11, the library, the movie theater. Just needing to be alone, Jane knew, needing to be away from his eyes and the eyes of the clinicians and therapists and teachers at her school.
She needed breathing space. Everybody did. And if everybody did, that meant Charlotte needed to breathe even more often.
"You ready to go?" That was Lisbon. She was standing in the bullpen, addressing her team.
More specifically, addressing Jane.
"Charlotte has decided to take the day off from her very expensive school. Just accessed my email again," Jane said, looking Lisbon straight in the eyes.
Lisbon sighed, concerned.
"She okay?"
"Very edgy this morning. I threw away the last of her weed."
"Ahh," Lisbon said, nodding. No other explanation needed. Kids and their pot. They got flustered when the weed went away suddenly.
"You want to stay here today, then? Or go home?" Lisbon asked.
Jane shook his head.
"She needs her space. Needs to blow off steam. If I go home, she'll just ditch another day because she won't feel relaxed with me hovering."
"She's going to go home, though, right?" Lisbon clarified.
Jane hunched his shoulders. "Sometimes she goes home. Sometimes she goes to Chuck E. Cheese's and wastes money she is stealing out of my wallet. Sometimes to the library. Sometimes to the 7-11..."
"How many times has she done this, Jane?" Lisbon said and ran the rest of Jane's comments through her brain again. "Wait... she steals money out of your wallet?"
"I give her money, but she needs to feel like she is in control, calling the shots. Hence, theft. I honestly don't think she's a klepto or anything."
"Isn't the need to feel in control one of the main reasons kleptomaniacs steal compulsively in the first place?" Lisbon countered, but Jane was shushing her.
"She just needs to know she has options if the people in her life turn out to be dangerous. She is keeping her Dickensian skill set sharp. It's trauma based. You really have to admire her desire to survive at any cost."
"At your cost, I'd say," Lisbon muttered.
"It's a fear-based reaction, Lisbon. Like how children raised in prisoner of war camps would compulsively steal food and hide it, even after being liberated. You learn young people are nasty and cruel and will do things to you straight out of your very worst nightmares, and the takeaway, by default, is that you can only really count on you to save you. Hence... theft. I'd be worried if she wasn't stealing from me."
"I am not sure that excuse will work in court when she gets busted for stealing from somebody with a less enlightened viewpoint," Lisbon started, stopped. Jane was smiling, and that bugged Lisbon because he seemed to let behavior Charlie was doing which was not okay, be okay.
Then again, Jane spent his life breaking the rules, so why would he really care if his traumatized, struggling kid did?
Cho and Rigsby were watching the exchange now, not sure what the plan for the day was.
They were used to Jane being their consultant, his funny little comments, the way he put perps on edge and seemed to know almost from the beginning of a case who was who and who needed to be in handcuffs.
"Half a dozen times, maybe?" Jane guessed, shrugging.
"What?" Lisbon blanked. To her way of thinking, half a dozen acts of theft and running AWOL was concerning.
"You asked how many times she has taken off from school and had a play day on my dime?"
Lisbon sighed. "And each time... using your CBI email account to fool the principal?" Lisbon clarified.
Jane grinned a proud, happy grin. Like he was talking about Charlotte taking her first baby steps. Look at my baby girl, surviving and thriving, Lisbon! Look at her will to live and not be controlled!
"We have to talk about that, then, because she can't be accessing your CBI email like this. I suspect you know that already. It's a security issue," Lisbon started and Jane sighed and nodded and waved her away.
"I'll have a little talk with her," he said, standing up, getting his briefcase and his papers.
That was waaayy too easy. Lisbon watched Jane stride over to her, almost... what? Happy? Excited?
"You will have a talk with her, and I will be monitoring your account from now on just in case you forget," Lisbon muttered.
Rigsby, Lisbon realized, was watching her and Jane like he was entranced in a soap opera. Even Cho looked a little intrigued. Lisbon sighed.
"So, you're coming with us?" Cho said finally, and it seemed to Jane that his voice sounded... hopeful?
Jane smiled broadly and nodded.
"Charlotte's almost 17. A big girl now. It will do her good to have some time to herself and play hooky," Jane mused aloud.
"I wish my Dad had been like you," Rigsby blurted, and then, to Jane's amusement, began to blush heavily.
"I wish my Dad had been like me, too," Jane said, trying to take away whatever embarrassment Rigbsy was feeling.
Lisbon let out a short bark of laughter.
"Don't give him a bigger head than it already is, Rigsby," Lisbon said on her way to the elevators, moving quickly.
Jane could almost see the daily check light superimposed on the back of her eyes, the list of things she wanted and "had" to get done today in a timely and professional manner.
Type As lived lives of constant stress.
Cho nodded. Rigsby smiled. Van Pelt, at her computer, looked up. Also smiled.
And then they (minus Lisbon, who was already there) were walking towards the elevators.
Time to go catch bad guys.
The taxi pulled up and was waiting.
"Charlotte, it's here..." Julie said and gently tapped her on the shoulder.
Charlotte lifted her head groggily. Her head was pounding and she felt like she might be sick again. She reminded herself that in a few hours, she'd have a ton more marijuana, have her ativans, be feeling good and tropically warm.
Just get through the next few hours.
The girl nodded and got up, walked over to the taxi and got into the passenger seat. She pulled her Nintendo from her bag and turned it on, more to hear the background music than anything else.
The Legend of Zelda theme music was soothing to her.
"Where to?" the cabbie asked. She'd already told the call dispatcher where to when she'd phoned the first time, but apparently, this guy hadn't gotten the message.
"The Greyhound bus station on mountain street near east bay? Do you know it?"
The cabbie nodded and fidgeted with his meter. They hadn't started yet and already she "owed" him 12 bucks.
It was so shitty how cabs did that, Charlie mused darkly. Charged you a flat fee before you even got in the car.
Was stealing, practically.
It didn't matter though. Liberation didn't come cheap.
The cabbie tried to ask her questions, but she told him simply she didn't feel well, just wanted to rest, and then he reached forward and turned on the radio, flipping it until he got to the light pop-rock station, speeding through traffic like getting her to the bus station was a game and he would win a prize if he got her there in half the usual time.
Most cabbies, Charlotte mused, were extroverts. Always with the small talk, even when it wasn't wanted, and if no small talk, on came the radio.
Or maybe he could smell the vomit lingering on her breath and didn't want to take a chance.
That was more likely, really.
Charlie kept her head down, using her backpack as something of a lumpy, hard pillow. Finally, the cab pulled to an abrupt stop and she looked up with tired, bloodshot eyes.
The Greyhound station. The sky was blue and bright, so incredibly blue it almost looked like a field of glowing neon. The sunlight made her wince.
She rifled through her backpack, found her wallet, pulled out five 5 dollar bills and handed them to the cabbie. Told him to keep the change.
Then she was out in the fresh air again. The sunlight was warm on the fabric of her hoodie, against the cold denim of her jeans. Inside her clothes, she felt frozen, like a rack of lamb taken out of the deep freeze to defrost. A deep, achy coldness like she might never be warm again.
It felt nice to stand in the sun and smell the air, tinged faintly with the scent of flowers. There was also the smell of car exhaust, and something sandy, and a million other nuanced smells all mingling and coming together. Sacramento in the last few days before Halloween.
If she really tried, she thought she could smell candy corn and caramel apples and snack sized Hershey bars carried along on the wind.
The candy smells, she was pretty certain, were just her imagination. So was the faint odor of old blood under all that candy.
Amazingly, it was only 9:55 am. She was making good time.
She took in three or four, deep, calming breaths. Tried to focus on what she needed to do, one step at a time, one tiny step at a time.
"Like that Bill Murray movie from the early 90s," Charlotte told herself weakly, trembling all over, "baby steps to four oh clock. One tiny baby step at a time, and you can do anything..."
Go to the ticket counter.
She walked over to the guy in charge of selling tickets, walking slowly, eager to get her ticket but also eager to be in the sunlight again and feel the warmth again.
The ticket cashier looked bored, was middle-aged, reading a newspaper behind a sheet of laminated unbreakable glass with a slit in the bottom to exchange paper money and credit cards. The newspaper was one of those cheap tabloids with the word "scandal" printed several times of the front, different overly made-up faces blankly staring into the camera lenses of the paparazzi in shock.
"One youth ticket to San Jose, please. Return trip with short stop. Soonest trip you have."
The man didn't talk, just nodded and entered the info on his computer, plugged in the amount on the cash register. Charlotte handed him the money for her ticket in fives, waited while he counted the money and then he slipped her the ticket.
"Bus leaves at 10:30 am. No animals. No smoking on board," the man said, not really paying attention to what he was saying, repeating everything like a well-trained robot. He still was reading his damned newspaper.
Charlotte wanted to tell him that humans were animals, technically. Thought better of it.
This guy didn't look bright enough not to make an issue out of that.
"Okay. There are bathrooms on board, right?"
He nodded immediately.
"No smoking in the bathrooms, either," he added.
Charlotte made an annoyed face to let him know she got the message.
"Bay 5," he added.
"Thanks," Charlotte muttered and rearranged her backpack on her thin shoulders, walked over to the benchmarked "bay 5" and sat down. Waited.
Shut her eyes and breathed the air and felt the warm, comforting heat of the sun on her face and shoulders and jeans. It felt good to sit in the sun and get warm, under a blue sky with lazy, drifting clouds, and know that, pretty damned soon, she'd be in San Jose and Keef would be there and she'd have more ativan and more marijuana and be able to breathe a little easier again.
"Just a few more hours," she told herself out loud. "Baby steps. Take it one minute at a time. You've been in much worse places than this before."
Checked her watch again. Almost 21 minutes to wait.
There was a series of vending machines near the ticket office. Charlotte got back up, drifted over to the vending machines and put a five dollar bill into the first machine. Got a bag of peanut butter M&Ms and a can of ginger ale and went back Bay 5 to wait. She focused on chewing the candies, one at a time, slowly, until they were paste in her mouth. Then a small sip of ginger ale.
Deep breaths.
And feel the sun.
It was going to be okay.
They had just arrived at the crime scene when Van Pelt phoned Jane.
Jane answered immediately, curious, and walked closer to Lisbon. He put Van Pelt on the loudspeaker.
"Um, you wanted to be alerted if Charlotte left that area you designated as the safe zone?" Van Pelt started.
Jane nodded, even though the young computer tech couldn't see him. Lisbon mouthed the words "safe zone" with a somewhat skeptical look on her face.
"Grace? You're on speaker, okay? Lisbon can hear you too. Saves time."
"Okay, well, at first I thought she might be taking a strange route home, but she is heading really fast now, south, southeast on the interstate."
"What?" Jane's voice was immediately tinged with concern.
"Was hanging around the Greyhound bus depot on Old Mountain road for maybe 20 minutes, and now is heading south. Probably in the last bus that pulled out."
Jane looked at Lisbon with haunted eyes.
"Go," Lisbon told him sternly. "We'll fumble along without you for one day..."
Jane nodded and told Van Pelt thanks. Hung up the call. Sprinted to his Citroën and used the fob to unlock the car when he was still a good 20 feet away.
He got in the driver's side and started the car, slammed the door and sped out of the parking lot, not bothering with his safety belt.
"You better be okay, kid," he told his reflection in the rearview mirror as the car weaved through traffic. A few cars beeped and honked at his silver bullet of an automobile, and he ignored them completely.
The HOT DOG pin Rigsby had given Charlotte had a very small, very up-to-date RFID chip inserted between the front plate of the button and the tin backing. Jane had known Charlotte would accept a small gift from her crush, given as an apparent afterthought, without questioning it. There was a secondary chip in the wristwatch Rigsby had given her, in case she lost her bag or the pin fell off.
In this way, he'd been able to monitor her movements when she was out of his general range.
Not as good, of course, as his first choice, which was an RFID chip injected into her arm, or something like a tracking device on her ankle, but there had been no way to politely and kindly suggest either of those scenarios and no way to pull either of them off without her noticing and becoming more spooked than anything else.
At a red light, Jane scrolled through the list of contacts on his phone, found Charlotte's cell number and called her. The phone rang.
And rang.
"Pick up the damned phone, Charlotte, and I might consider knocking a few weeks off your inevitable jail time," Jane said through gritted teeth.
The phone went to his kid's digital voice mail.
"Hey, you got Charlotte here. I don't feel like picking up the phone right now. Leave your message and I will consider getting back to you in a semi-reasonable time-frame if I happen to feel like it later..."
Jane swore under his breath. Sometimes his kid was just a little too much like him for comfort.
"Charlotte? Where are you? Just phoned the school to tell them I am going to be working late and would be sending Lisbon to get you, and it appears you have already left for the day. With my apparent blessing, too, strangely enough. Answer the phone or phone me back. I am not happy right now."
He left the message and disconnected the call. Scrolled to the app Van Pelt had installed on his phone, the little RFID tracking app which showed a continually updated map of Sacramento. His kid was a small red dot, moving much faster than he liked down Interstate 280.
Jane went through the contacts again, got his kid's school aide, pressed the send call button.
A few rings and he heard Julie's professional young voice.
"Mr. Jane? Is everything okay?"
"Charlotte didn't have my permission to leave school," Jane said quickly. Gave Julie a few seconds to process that.
"Oh no! She really was sick, though. I was there when she got sick and..."
"Yeah, I get that. Did she tell you where she was going? How did she leave school?"
"A taxi," Julie said immediately.
"Do you remember the company?"
"I think black top cabs? I am sorry, I wasn't really paying attention. I just assumed-"
Jane nodded at the phone, exasperated. He didn't have time for Julie's guilt.
"I get that. Look, if for any reason she phones you or gets in contact with you, will you tell her to stay put and phone me?"
"Isn't she picking up her phone?" Julie said quickly, and the young woman's concern seemed to bloom into something closer to panic.
"She isn't picking up her phone," Jane confirmed. "Listen, I am going to try and phone that taxi company you just gave me and see if anybody remembers her, okay? I will be in touch."
"Okay. Keep us posted," Julie said, and the call was disconnected.
Another red light. Damn it. Seemed he was getting all the red lights today.
Jane found the taxi company on google, punched in the number and hit the connect call button.
Someone picked up right away.
Jane related the story. Had they sent any cabs to the special education school out by Mill Pond road in the last hour or so?
They had?
Okay, this was a CBI matter and the child they had transported was in potential danger.
Jane gave his credentials and waited while the dispatcher plugged him through to the cabbie who'd been assigned to his kid.
Jane relayed the same story, heart thumping hard in his chest.
Yes, the cabbie had picked up the girl. Very pale and fidgety. To Jane's immense relief, she was alone, not accompanied by any adults. Looked and smelled sick.
He'd dropped her off at the Greyhound station near Mountain Road, and that was the last he had seen of her.
"You guys don't ask for confirmation or anything from an adult when transporting an obvious minor child?" Jane snapped, but the cabbie wasn't in the same universe.
"She paid me. She phoned me. I just pick up and deliver," the cabbie said. "And there was an adult waiting with her when I pulled up."
"There was?"
"A young woman, but obviously an adult. Maybe mid-twenties, sitting with her by the front steps. Looked legit enough to me. I'm not paid to parent other peoples' kids, just take them from A to B."
"Yeah, whatever, thanks," Jane snapped back and disconnected. He pressed his foot down ever so slightly on the gas peddle. The real-world effect was his car picked up another 15 miles per hour.
More honking cars, but Jane was a good driver.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Patrick had phoned her.
She had seen his call come through and had her phone on airplane mode. Like she was supposed to, when she was at school. She left it alone, barely breathing, hoping he wouldn't leave a message.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he was just checking in.
But a minute later she was alerted she had one new voice message.
She listened to his phone message.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Well, this day was very quickly turning out to be shit.
She tried to see where she had gone wrong.
Julie hadn't suspected she was playing hooky, she was pretty certain of that. The cabbie had been clueless. She was appropriately sick. She'd used Patrick's work email before to take time off school. and it had always worked before.
So why now?
He'd phoned her only after she was on the greyhound, heading to San Jose. Not before.
Could be just plain luck. Weird timing.
Or...?
Charlotte's eyes widened slightly as the pieces came together. Red John had taught her that most coincidences in life weren't coincidences at all.
She flipped over her backpack and gently took off the adorable little beagle button with the words "HOT DOG" in bubble letters, the pin Rigsby had given her because they were buddies and for no other reason at all.
She pressed on the button with her right finger and thumb, pressing and squeezing. Felt something a bit off. Maybe just her imagination, but something small and metal, about the size of a grain of rice, the size of those small alien implants people sometimes had removed from their noses...
With her teeth, she began chewing the edge of the button. That didn't work. She fumbled through her bag, pulled out her swiss army knife, pulled out the smallest blade, and used the blade as a lever to pry the front of the button off.
There was a tiny grain of metal soldered inside the button, near the butterfly clutch which attached the pin to her bag. Hidden inside, a tiny grain of metal.
She pulled hard on the little metal grain. It was soldered fast. Didn't come off.
"For fuck's sake... he's tracking me?"
Her words came soft and bitter. She reached over to the window, opened it just a little bit, and dumped the button (now broken into two halves) out into the rushing wind.
That was such a Red John move.
Such a dopey Red John move. Like she was a dog, or something, and needed to be tracked!
Hell, even the photo on the button had been of a dog.
Had that been conscious on their part? A dog button for a tracked dog? Or a coincidence?
Charlotte bristled. Replayed Patrick's message again. Listened to him explain that he had phoned the school because he was going to be late, and Lisbon was coming to get her.
All lies.
He had phoned because his property was moving outside of its designated living area.
Charlotte ground her teeth. Her head was pulsing. Felt like someone was trying to split it open through the middle with a dull butter knife. By itself, the pain was bearable for a handful of minutes, but each minute over about ten was increasing the desire to cry, to be weak, and now this...
She got the advil liquigels out of her case and dry swallowed two.
Considered what to do.
Charlotte's little red dot on his RFID tracking app had stopped moving and was resting, apparently, by the side of Interstate 280. Just resting in the middle of nowhere, far from any fast food joints or video arcades or anything remotely connected to civilization.
Jane felt his anxiety increase.
He pressed a few buttons on the tracking app on his phone and changed over to the RFID chip in the wristwatch.
It was sitting on the side of Interstate 280, too, within a few feet of its button sibling.
Why wasn't she phoning him back?
He floored the gas, finally turned and was out of the busiest part of the city, pulled the Citroën through the tail end of a yellow light (incurring more honking and beeping) and was finally out on the interstate proper. Gunning the engine.
He'd left the greyhound station a few blocks behind, intent only on following his kid's signal.
Neither chip was showing movement.
He pushed the car to its maximum speed. Flew down the interstate.
After ten minutes, he knew he was close. His car, denoted in green, was edging closer and closer to the beeping, flashing red dots.
He pulled the car onto the shoulder of the highway and glanced around, using his tanned hands to block out some of the sunlight.
No Charlotte. If she had been here, she wasn't here now. But the RFID chips were still active, flashing on the screen of his cell.
He walked slowly around, eyes scanning the ground, bright and unblinking, kicking at beige dust.
He heard it before he saw it. The crunch of metal under his foot, partially hidden in the sun-baked dust at the edge of the California interstate.
The HOT DOG button from Rigsby had been broken in half. Jane picked it up and inspected it carefully, saw small indentations where- he was almost positive- his kid had used her pocket knife to open the button up and look inside.
He filled in the rest immediately.
She had gotten the voice message from her father. Having skipped before, she expected this round of hooky to go uneventfully. She would have played the events of the morning back through her mind, looking carefully for any faults or mistakes on her part, any reason why Jane would be phoning her.
Eventually, trained to be on guard by Red John, she would have inspected the button on the front of her bag, the gift from Rigbsy. Had no doubt pressed and squeezed the button with her fingers, hard, trying to feel if anything was inside.
When she felt the chip, she'd taken out her knife and pried the top of the button off, to be certain.
Jane could only imagine how confused and disoriented she must have been to see the tracking chip in the button, in the apparent gift from her crush. She would feel angry and hurt, and bitter.
Any mature understanding of why Jane had gone to such lengths to watch and follow her would be lost in a flood of teenage angst and irritability. Compounding the problem was the "stolen" marijuana, the drug she saw as her property and right to possess, so carelessly thrown away by her egotistical, know-it-all father.
Jane kept his eyes on the ground as he walked. Finally found the wristwatch with the tiny glass screen display cracked over the LED numbers.
That interpretation of events was almost certainly as close to the reality as Jane was going to get without Charlie filling in the blanks, but he still couldn't get the achy terror and stream of "what ifs?" in his mind to go away.
His heart was beating too hard, and his kid's disappearance a mere three days away from Halloween wasn't lost on him.
Was she running away? Terrified of what Halloween could mean, for herself, and for him? For Lisbon?
Did she see herself as bad luck? Was she terrified that if she stayed near Jane throughout the upcoming holiday of ghosts and ghouls, that something terrible might happen?
Had she been conditioned in some terrible fashion by Red John? To return to a preselected time and place, of which she was consciously unaware?
Jane didn't know.
He walked numbly back to his car with the pieces of the broken button in one hand and the wristwatch in the other, a growing, numb terror in his chest.
She'd been moving south on the interstate. Had stopped at the Greyhound station.
So, logically, if he kept south and he upped the speed, he should meet up with the bus.
She had to still be on the bus.
She had to still be on the bus.
Jane closed his eyes for a brief moment, praying a silent prayer to whatever power might be out there that still gave a damn, and then was back on the road again, moving faster than before, feeling sweaty even though the air conditioning was on and it was late October.
Charlotte went to the washroom, sat on the seat of the Greyhound's bus and tried to breathe. She couldn't think.
Why had Jane decided to track her? Or did Jane even know about that? Was Rigsby tracking her for some reason?
Did Rigsby work for Red John?
No, that couldn't be it. Patrick had phoned her when the RFID chip in the button (and there had probably been one in the wristwatch, too, but she hadn't had the desire to waste time and check)... it couldn't just be a coincidence that Jane had phoned her only after the tracking chips began picking up speed on the greyhound.
Could it be a coincidence?
She didn't know what to think anymore.
She only knew she felt itchy and anxious and desperate to escape her stress and nightmares and guilt and shame and fear and thoughts of Red John and crazy school for the hopelessly broken...
Dixon's smiling dog face came to her, his deeply compassionate and affectionate eyes. Puppy. So innocent.
So what, now?
What now?
She washed her hands with the pink liquid soap from the metal canister (why was 90% of the liquid soap in places like this that strange bubble gum pink color?), dried them on the sides of her ripped jeans and went back to her seat to brood.
DId Patrick know where she was? Patrick was pretty good at finding people and figuring out their motivations.
Even now, he could be just behind them on the road, speeding down the interstate, zeroing in on her bus like a hawk after a mouse.
The thought of that suddenly made her feel frightened, a level of fear she didn't think she could feel with regards to her birth father.
But there it was.
Strong and vibrant, trying to become blinding, trying to provoke a panic reaction.
There was only one door on and off the bus.
Who was trustworthy in this scenario?
Her cell phone, probably, could be tracked. She considered ditching that out the window, too but held back.
What was the game plan, here?
Was she going to run away after a year over an RFID chip in a button? Over a potential misunderstanding?
The fear and what-ifs were hard to think through.
If the fear was right and just, then she had every right just to bolt and never come back.
Maybe Patrick had his reasons. Maybe he was worried she might be abducted by Red John and wanted a way to follow her in a scenario like that.
Maybe that was all it was.
Or maybe it was something more sinister.
She thought of Lisbon's soft, green eyes. Her gentle face. The way she treated Patrick, and the way she'd treated Patrick's screwy, long-lost daughter.
Lisbon had always been kind to her. Almost like she, Charlotte, was her own child- as if the damage imparted to her soul by Red John was somehow also damaging to Lisbon. Kindness and pain in her eyes, deeper compassion than what was healthy for a lady cop in the CBI.
She couldn't just disappear, right? No money, no good fake ID, Red John maybe still alive, nowhere to go, just miles and miles of unfeeling, indifferent California desert for a home.
That wasn't a good long-term plan.
There were perverts in the world, rapists and psychos in the desert that liked to carve people up with all sorts of sharp objects.
Just disappearing was a crackerjack screwy plan.
She scrolled through her phone and found Lisbon's cell number. Connected the call and waited with her heart galloping in her throat while the phone connected.
Lisbon answered the call immediately.
"Charlotte? Where are you? Are you okay?"
Lisbon was still at their crime scene but put one hand to her ear to block out the ambient noises and drifted away from the rest of the CBI team. Rigsby looked at her with hopeful eyes at the word "Charlotte" and Cho gave him a look which told him to get back to work.
"I don't know how to answer that," Charlotte said slowly.
"Are you hurt? Are you alone?"
"I'm alone," Charlotte said slowly. That seemed safe enough to admit.
"Nobody forced you, then, to leave school?"
"I was going to take the greyhound to San Jose and meet a friend. Pick up more marijuana and ativan," Charlotte sputtered, somewhat desperate to clear her conscience because she didn't know if she'd be seeing Lisbon again. "I just want to sleep through the night. Patrick wasn't even supposed to know."
Lisbon listened, expression softening. The fear and strain left her face bit by bit with each syllable Charlotte uttered and were replaced with empathy and concern.
"Okay, well, Jane... he has issues with feeling safe. And making sure the people he loves are safe."
"There was a tracking chip in the little beagle button Rigsby gave to me, did you know that?"
Charlotte's voice trembled. Lisbon sucked in a steadying inhalation of breath.
Just stay calm.
Explain.
"I did know that. I told Jane that idea might backfire, but you know how your Dad is."
"Why didn't you tell me? I am not a dog. I am not a prisoner," Charlotte said slowly, testing the ideas behind each word, trying to figure out if any of them were true.
"No, you're not. Charlotte... you can understand, after everything that has happened, everything you have been through, why Patrick wants to keep you safe, though, right? Why the idea of not knowing where you are, even for a few minutes, might terrify him?"
There was silence on the other end as the girl considered Lisbon's words.
Lisbon was about to talk again when Charlie began to speak.
"He can't keep me safe. Isn't that obvious to him by now? He couldn't keep me safe when I was little, and he can't keep me safe now. He thinks he is so smart, but I am smarter than him, it would seem."
Lisbon shut her eyes. Felt waves of emotional pain break through her at the sound and feel of the teenager's words. So much pain in this family. So much anguish for Jane. So much terror and betrayal for Jane's little girl.
And how could it ever be made all right?
Where they all just playing pretend, working toward a future which could never, actually, be a reality?
Lisbon remembered her CBI training. How to engage someone in a crisis, someone upset and lost.
"I know he wanted to keep you safe. I know he would do anything to go back in time and reverse what happened."
"But he can't," Charlotte said flatly. "It's done. There is no going back. The past is the past and there is no undoing the past."
She sounded so lost, and alone. Tragically old and exhausted. It was unnerving.
"Can you tell me where you are?"
"What did Jane tell you?"
Lisbon answered immediately.
"Van Pelt phoned him and told him you were heading south on Interstate 280. Jane, he worked out an area he thought was reasonable for you to have to yourself if you needed time to be alone. He asked Van Pelt to inform him if you left that area."
"Van Pelt knew about this too?"
She sounded even more hurt now. Like the whole CBI team was in on her humiliation.
"He wanted to give you space, but keep you safe at the same time."
"A better way to do that would have been to trust me," Charlotte said through what sounded like gritted teeth.
Lisbon sighed.
"He does trust you. It's not you that he doesn't trust."
"Because when you trust somebody, you track them with a tracking device?" There was bitter laughter in the girl's words.
"It's not about not trusting you. It's about Red John and your safety. Jane just wanted to protect you."
"I threw the tracking device and the button out of the window. It's on the side of the highway, now," Charlotte said bluntly. "And the watch, too. Good luck tracking me now, coppers."
Lisbon winced. Could imagine Jane's terror, seeing his kid's tracking dots on the app just stop moving in the middle of nowhere.
She pulled her notebook out of her front breast pocket and wrote "get Jane on speaker but keep him quiet"
She walked over to Rigsby and put a finger to her lips. Shhh. Put Charlotte on speaker and let Rigsby hear the kid's babbled upset.
Rigsby nodded, walked away for a bit, phoned Jane and muttered the message, came back aiming his own cell phone in the direction of Lisbon's.
"Why are you taking the bus to San Jose, Charlie? Sorry, I am scattered today," Lisbon said, looking at Rigsby's stern, concerned face.
"I thought Risby liked me. But he was just... he was just pretending," Charlotte said in what was almost a whisper.
Rigsby opened his mouth to say something and Lisbon sent him a sharp look. BE QUIET. Rigsby nodded and continued to hold the phone out so Jane could hear. He looked down at his feet like a puppy in trouble for wetting on the carpet.
"Rigsby does like you. Your dad, he is very persuasive. You know that" Lisbon said, trying to soothe.
"That's still no excuse. Rigsby is a lot older than me. He should know how to deal with Patrick by now, and say no to his stupid ideas."
"Well, why don't you tell that to Rigsby yourself the next time you see him?" Lisbon asked.
"I can't think. I need to get my pot. I was only going to get pot and more ativan. Patrick wasn't even supposed to know, and now I am going to be in trouble. Probably grounded all through Halloween, too, right? So much for trick-or-treating."
"I am sure Jane will still take you trick-or-treating," Lisbon tried to soothe, both heartbroken and softened by the kid's priorities. Normal little kid stuff. Trick or treating.
She didn't understand how serious this was, just taking off like this. She didn't or couldn't see or grasp the danger.
This was all about her boundaries and privacy being violated. Lisbon nodded to herself. Tried to remember her own moods and feelings from her adolescence, when the adult world seemed unfairly harsh and critical. When the rules felt one-sided and ridiculously childish.
How much worse was that sense of alienation for Charlotte, raised in the shadow of a sadistic serial killer, taught to stay calm and watch murders, and punished with torture for her tears? Even the most basic safety measures would feel like an intrusion for her, an insult, almost. That wasn't a logical position, but emotionally, it made sense.
Of course, she didn't understand why Jane wanted to keep her close. Not when she'd been surviving through the worst experiences a human could endure from early Elementary school age. Surviving and going it alone. Brainwashed, bit by bit, to believe the horrific was the norm.
They'd tried to give her a normal life since she'd come back. As stable as was possible. But was that just a joke, really? Was that like putting papier mache legs on a double amputee and telling them with enough hard work they could run the Boston marathon?
Any and all concern would feel like an imposition. A sign that the adults in her life, now, thought she was stupid and incompetent.
To process their behavior in any other way would mean looking at very, very painful things without deflection and without sugar-coating the severity of her life.
She wasn't psychologically ready to do that. Maybe never would be.
"If Red John is still alive, Halloween will probably be when he strikes. It might be too dangerous for me to be around for Halloween, anyway," Charlotte began, testing the thought. Testing if she could do this.
"Charlotte, you can't run away right now," Lisbon said as calmly as possible. "That would be a bad idea. Potentially, very dangerous."
"If I tell the Greyhound bus driver I am sick, he might let me get off the bus before the next stop. I could tell him I will puke if I don't. I could hitch a ride and stay with friends and come back after Halloween, and that way if Red John is watching me, I won't lead him to you guys and..."
"Charlotte!" It was Jane's voice, coming through the speakers on Rigsby's cell phone.
A beat of silence. Lisbon found herself wincing, her heart beating in her mouth.
"Patrick?" Charlotte's wounded, upset voice over the speakers.
"You're not in trouble, okay? I will take you trick or treating or whatever you want to do. I understand, I really do, why you took off. I know you didn't mean to upset anybody," Jane said, and his voice sounded strained and near panicked, even to Lisbon.
"You tracked me like I was a dog," Charlotte sulked. Patrick's panic was apparently lost on her.
"I am sorry about that. I shouldn't have done that without telling you first."
"You shouldn't have done it at all!"
"Okay. We can talk about that later, okay? We can talk about that all you want. I'll even pay you to talk to me, you can charge me a fee for the headache. 50 bucks an hour."
"You're just saying right now I am not in trouble. But later, when you pick me up, I will be in trouble again. I know how this works."
"How what works?" Jane said, playing dumb. Charlotte sighed in response.
"I promise you, you're not in trouble," Jane said, and he had never sounded more passionate and earnest and strained in all the time Lisbon had known him.
A very pregnant pause of silence.
"I am supposed to meet my friend Keef at 1:30 to pick up more ativan. And more marijuana. To replace what you threw away..."
Rigsby grinned at that, a huge grin like he was maybe going to start laughing. The situation was awkward, but Charlotte's pot complaints struck, it would appear, a chord with Wayne Rigsby. Either that or the strain was getting to Rigsby and laughter was how he blew off steam. Lisbon shot him a steely look and most of the deranged clown smile leaked back out of his expression.
"I'm going to get in touch with the Greyhound bus driver and get him to stop at the nearest stop, okay? And I am going to pick you up there. Okay?" Patrick's voice, still flustered as all fuck but not so insanely close to a heart attack.
"What about Keef? He is just going to waste half his day, then? How is that fair to Keef?"
Another badly repressed grin from Wayne Rigsby. Lisbon knew the younger agent was anxious as hell, and that any slightly normal comment was a relief to him. Knew herself the urge to laugh at Charlotte's comments, the ones which seemed so off-base. She gave Risby a very stern look.
DO NOT LAUGH.
"I'll write Keef a check, okay? Pay him well for his lost time. Double whatever you stole from my wallet to pay for him."
"That doesn't help. I still don't have my ativan and pot, then."
Rigsby looked back at his feet and this time, he did bark out a tiny bit of laughter. Before Lisbon could begin to shush him, he began to nod. He understood.
Stress was weird.
"We can talk about all that, too. Okay? When I pick you up. I am going to disconnect now. And you are going to stay on the bus, right?"
Silence.
Lisbon looked up at Rigsby. He was laughing silently into his hands. Well, this was just peachy.
"Charlotte?" That was Jane's voice, more insistent than impatient.
"Yeah, yeah, fine," the teenager said in a crabby tone of voice. "I will do you a favor so you don't have a heart attack, Jesus..."
"Okay. Thank you. I am hanging up the phone now. Lisbon, please keep her on the line."
"Okay, will do," Lisbon said a little too loudly. Rigsby's cell phone went dead and he disconnected the call. Put his cell back in his suit pant's pocket and looked at Lisbon with an eager, uncertain expression.
What now, Boss?
Lisbon motioned him to go get busy with their case. She took Charlotte off speaker phone and walked over to her car.
"Charlotte?" Lisbon said gently when she was in her car and had relative privacy.
"Why does he want you to keep me on the line? I'm not suicidal or anything. Way to overreact, CBI."
"He... he wants to make sure you're okay. He is terrified you might just disappear. You can understand that fear, right?"
Another beat of silence.
Charlotte's voice, when she spoke, was very small and somewhat ashamed.
"Yes."
"Okay. So if it makes him feel better, let's just keep talking to each other. Okay?"
"Mmhm."
"What bus did you take? Can you tell me?"
"Not sure. Bus from Sacramento to San Jose. Left at 10:30 am, I think. Bay 5. Jane knows from which bus depot."
"Okay," Lisbon said, making furious notes on her pad of paper.
"You guys might be making a very big mistake, though."
"How is that?" Lisbon asked.
"People I care about die around Halloween. It's almost Halloween. I really think I should disappear for maybe a week. I will come back in early November, okay?"
"No. You just told your Dad you're not going to do that, remember?"
Silence.
"Charlotte, you promised him."
"This is a bad idea," Charlotte said again. Lisbon knew she was afraid. Afraid of the future, afraid of not having weed and benzodiazepines to blunt the worst of her panic, afraid of Red John possibly still being alive, afraid that if she got too close to Jane or Lisbon or Van Pelt or anybody on the team, they would somehow end up dead. Afraid that maybe Jane and Lisbon and Rigsby and Van Pelt and even Cho were not what they appeared to be, were potential threats.
So many layers of terror.
Had to be Hell to live with that terror all the time, unsure which of her fears were legitimate, which were overblown and examples of catastrophic thinking, which scenarios she might not be taking seriously enough given the threat because of so many years of desensitization, which she might be overreacting to.
Had to be Hell to be that off balance and uncertain all the time. It was exhausting just to consider it.
There weren't exactly books written on how to calm down a severely traumatized adolescent who had been brainwashed and tortured for years by her genius, mentalist uncle. A teenager isolated and gaslighted and exposed to authority figures only so she could be made to believe authority figures were either incompetent or malevolent.
No books written on this precisely fucked up can of worms, a scenario designed and executed by rogue agents within their own government's military-industrial complex.
This was a new psychological territory for Lisbon. For Jane, too, Lisbon knew.
She kept talking to Charlotte, trying to get her to engage, but the kid was exhausted, it would seem, was answering in only one word, monosyllabic responses.
That was still better than nothing, Lisbon thought.
So much better than no words at all.
The Greyhound bus was idling in the parking lot of a truck stop. The front door was open and the driver was standing outside.
Jane pulled his car up in a cloud of dust and got out. Jogged over to the driver. Showed him his CBI badge and asked some questions.
The driver made a face and pointed to the truck stop restaurant. Jane turned immediately and caught sight of Charlotte sitting in one of the booths with a strawberry milkshake, watching everything intently. When Jane turned, Charlotte seemed to duck down in her booth a little. Jane smiled at her, raised a hand to tell her he was cool, they were friends. She was not in trouble.
Charlotte did not wave back. Watched her father warily.
"Can I get this bus back on the road now, or do you need me to stay for more questions or something?" the bus driver asked, eyes darting between Jane and the kid in the restaurant window and the open bus door.
"No, everything is secure now. You may go now. Thank you for your help," Jane said, smiling just enough to make the man feel important.
The driver nodded and started back to the bus. Stopped.
"Take care of that kid, okay? She looks pretty sick."
Jane inwardly winced. Nodded.
"Will do. Thanks, again."
The bus driver got back on the bus and the doors made a hissing noise as the hydraulic gear pump sprung to life. The big black tires began to move and the Greyhound pulled out of the lot leaving behind a fine cloud of dust and sand.
Jane turned back to his kid. She was watching him intently. Her face was white and strained except for two bright circles of color high on her cheeks. Scared, anxious, bewildered eyes and cracked, dehydrated lips.
"Stay calm, Patrick. She didn't mean to scare the shit out of you. She's already scared shitless herself. Stay calm. Be kind," Jane said to himself, slowly, under his breath. Waved at his kid again. It was the complete opposite of a power move, an exposure of his proverbial belly.
His kid seemed to flinch at the movement. Took an obvious sip of her milkshake. Jane walked slowly to the front of the Diner and opened the front glass door.
Walked slowly through the restaurant (godawful country music was playing on the digital juke in the background, barely audible but still the soundtrack to Hell). He found Charlotte in the last booth, sitting with her back to the wall, big pink milkshake in front of her, eyes ancient and haunted.
Jane felt himself wondering if his kid's choice of drink was a subconscious desire to placate him. He liked strawberries and cream. One of his favorite snacks when she'd been tiny. A strawberry milkshake was basically the same thing, blended up.
She seemed to flinch and sink a little deeper down in her seat as she saw Jane approach.
Cowering, almost.
Jane did not like that reaction.
He didn't like any of this.
This would not do.
"Hey, Charlie," Jane said amiably and slid into the booth directly opposite his kid's. A pretty little waitress floated by, wearing a dress almost the same pale pink as his kid's milkshake.
Jane raised a hand.
"Can I get another strawberry milkshake here?" Jane called calmly. The waitress nodded fervently, drifted away to go get his order.
Jane turned back to his kid. She watched him with the overly large eyes of an owl. Her hands were trembling on the sides of the frosted glass she held.
"Busy morning?" Jane asked Charlotte, trying to get back into his groove. Charlotte slurped at her drink.
Looked down at the Formica surface of the diner's table.
Jane counted to four. Told himself to talk softly. Slowly.
"I can see you are pretty shaken up. I don't want you to be scared."
Charlotte glanced up at him, eyes squinting just the slightest as she analyzed his facial expression for hints of manipulation.
The soul in her eyes was beyond exhausted, beyond worn out. Jane felt the adrenaline in his bloodstream begin to go away. Felt familiar, ancient grief begin to throb with each heartbeat instead.
"Why don't we have a talk, okay? We'll get as much as we can sorted out. You're not in trouble and nothing bad is going to happen. We'll just drink our milkshakes and talk. That okay?"
"Don't try to hypnotize me," Charlotte warned, and she pulled the milkshake closer, in front of her. A shield. A milkshake shield.
"I'm not trying to hypnotize you. I am trying to get my own heart rate to come down," Jane said and smiled sadly. Breathed.
Charlotte watched him carefully. Her eyes scanned his face and his shoulders and hands, the aisle behind him, flickered over the other booths, then back to his face again.
Jane gave her time.
"Let's just have a talk, okay? You and me?"
Charlotte stared at him with heavily dilated eyes.
"We can talk," she said slowly, and there was something like pain in her voice, some sense that, at least in Charlotte's own mind, she thought this was a dangerous move but was doing it anyway.
"Thank you," Jane said, and he hoped the gratitude he felt came through in those words.
Charlotte nodded just a little, rigid as a board.
"You talk first," she told her father, and she had never in recent memory seemed so small and vulnerable to him.
"Okay," Jane agreed, nodding. "I'll talk first."