Thanks to mwalter1, StealthXHuntress, xxpoeticjusticexx, Jisbon4ever, Jisbon, tromana, HeatherCornwell, ch19777fan and zombienath for reviewing chapter 3.
The warning I added at the beginning of the story? This is one of the chapters with darker parts, even though it's not the darkest chapter of the story. (So there's no reason to wait for daylight to read it, Pav. *smirk*)
I listened to your screams of pleasure,
and I watched the bed sheets turn blood red.
~ Ashtray Heart, Placebo
They drove out to the crime scene together. The sun was just beginning to rise when Lisbon steered the car through bumpy side roads with grassy slopes and rampant hedges that skimmed over the car windows. After a while, Jane stopped teasing Lisbon about her "snail pace" and remained uncharacteristically silent until the car stopped in front of a small, outlying residence on the edge of a housing complex.
Jane stared at the dark windows. According to the phone call Lisbon had received, the dead body of a woman was waiting for them. Lisbon reached for the door handle. For an instant he considered hiding his personal connection to the case.
"I've been here before." Jane stated calmly, his eyes still fixed on the house.
He felt Lisbon's scrutinizing gaze on him before she finally spoke. "Define 'been here before'."
Jane couldn't stand looking at her when he told her about his nightly excursion to a bar and the woman he met there. He had nothing to feel guilty about, but he still couldn't help it.
Lisbon looked at the pad in her hand and bit her lower lip, an unmistakable sign that she tried to stifle any emotion.
"Louise Tate?"
Jane nodded. The women hadn't given him a last name, but her first one was definitely Louise.
He saw Lisbon doing the math, linking the evening he refused her invitation with the night he slept with another woman. Now he just hoped that Louise didn't die in the same night or Lisbon would never let him live this down.
"Can you handle this case?" She finally asked and got out of the car.
He assured her that he was alright, even though he was not entirely sure that this was the truth.
Jane's first impression when they entered the house was that there were way too many people in the small kitchen. The last time he was here, the room had a nice and cozy atmosphere, but now it was stuffy and noisy. Lisbon went over to Rigsby and Cho who were talking to the sheriff and the coroner.
"Her daughter found her. She's been dead for less than sixteen hours." Jane heard and felt relieved. Now he could pretend that this was just a case like all the others before.
He became bored, but didn't want to join the conversation of the others. Police small talk just wasn't his cup of tea. Instead he looked at the shelves to get a clearer image of the victim's personality. One night with her surely wasn't enough to really get to know her. Jane spotted a cow-shaped cookie jar and opened the lid to appease his sudden hunger with the result that five pairs of eyes stared at him when the jar mooed.
Jane smiled apologetically and decided to leave the kitchen. In the small corridor he studied the pictures on the wall. Louise riding a horse. The daughter and the deceased husband in various stages of their life. Louise and her daughter dressed up for prom night. Jane was sure that becoming an orphan didn't hurt less just because the girl was already grown up. He felt a familiar sting when he recalled that the daughter had discovered her mother's body.
The pictures and the corridor ended in front of the ajar bedroom door. He hesitated. His fingertip touched the smooth, painted wood and he froze in place. For a moment he had a clear and detailed vision of what he would find inside that room.
Red-tinted wall.
Bloody patterns on pale skin.
Two broken fingernails.
Butterfly-shaped spatter on the headboard.
He closed his eyes. Maybe his imagination was just running wild. Maybe Louise got killed by another guy she picked up at a bar. But he had had that kind of vision a handful of times before and he despised them as they contradicted everything he believed in.
Lisbon's voice let him snap out of his dark revery. Her conversation with the local sheriff seemed to draw to a close. He felt panic rise. She could not be at his side when he first saw the victim. In this case he needed to do this alone and hopefully he would have recovered until she joined him.
Resolutely Jane pushed the door open and was instantly hit by a strong sense of déjà vu .
The smell - coppery, sickeningly sweet.
Light - diffuse through closed curtains.
The drawing - happy, horrifying.
A body - abased, discarded.
Instinctively he looked beneath the bed, but this time there was only one victim.
He turned away brusquely, gagged.
The face on the wall smiled down at him and he felt – no, he knew – that this was the deed of the same person who took his wife and daughter's lives. The realization left him strangely unsurprised and accepting. Somehow he always knew that this wasn't over, until now he just chose to fool himself by pretending that he could leave it behind once and for all.
Before he got a chance to start analyzing the situation, Lisbon joined him. Her eyes scanned the room until they came to rest on Louise Tate's body. She inhaled sharply, cursed under her breath.
"This is a damn massacre."
Jane flinched.
"Sorry." She added with a side glance at the consultant.
"That's okay. I hardly knew her."
Lisbon now openly stared at him, but he refused to face her and focused at a rare unmarred portion of Louise's skin.
"Did she tell you anything? Nasty break-up? Violent ex? Anything?" Lisbon asked.
"Her husband died a few years ago and I don't think she had a serious relationship with a man after that. Her daughter goes to college out of state, she's probably here on holidays now. I got the impression that she was alone most of the time, but she didn't mind that too much. She loved her work at a law firm though and I think she was very good at it."
"The sheriff said she was unemployed."
"Really? Huh. I guess she made the job up then."
"Anything else?"
"We didn't talk that much and apparently she lied to me when we did."
"Any little detail can help, you know."
Jane felt himself getting angry, an irrational anger that made him want to hurt Lisbon.
"Well, she made those weird grunting noises right before she came. Is that useful information?"
Lisbon looked rather confused than angry. He couldn't stand being in that room with her and Louise's corpse any longer. "Listen, I'll just get out of your way, let you do your job. I'll wait outside."
He pretty much fled, ignored the look Rigsby gave him, and didn't rest until he found a bench not far away from the house and sat down. All his new-found calmness and optimism were gone. Instead he once more felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. It was one thing that the person who killed his family was still at large, he unconsciously suspected that. It was absolutely frightening, however, that the murderer had followed him to California and once more targeted people who belonged to Jane's circle of acquaintances. Immediately he thought of Lisbon. Did the killer know about their close connection?
He should probably run and leave her and all his friends at the CBI behind to protect them, but he wasn't even able to get up from the bench. Right then he didn't trust his legs to carry him, so he just stayed put. People came and went. A hearse drove up and Jane averted his eyes until it left with its gruesome freight.
Almost an hour later, Lisbon, Rigsby and Cho finally showed up and suddenly Jane's concerns went into an entirely different direction. The team, being as thorough as usually, would discover the connection between this case and the one in Florida. He had trouble breathing, but desperately tried to appear sanguine.
"You okay?"
"Sure." He beamed at Lisbon, but was fully aware that she didn't believe him at all.
"It's harder when you knew the victim when it was alive."
"Lisbon, I am fine."
"If you say so..." She left it at that and he was grateful. "We're ready to drive back to the office."
He didn't want to be there when they found out. He absolutely wasn't brave enough to see Lisbon's face when she learned everything about him that he kept from her. So Jane tried to placate her with chitchat about the lovely weather, his urge to take a walk and to take a cab home later. Lisbon didn't leave until he promised to call when he needed a lift and her obvious concern even made him smile genuinely for the first time since they arrived at the crime scene.
Jane watched them drive away, feeling a pang of regret that he probably ruined his life once more. Soon, despite the fact that his wife and daughter had a different last name, one of the team would stumble across Jane's roles as the devastated husband and father, temporary suspect and pitied member of the society. They would find out how he used to earn his money. Lisbon would see him with different eyes, which would be the worst consequence.
They would investigate Warren Harper, who without a doubt was still an inmate of the Florida State Prison, but would soon appeal for clemency. Given the incriminating evidence and his former confession, he would probably stay in custody for a while longer. Sooner or later someone would come up with the idea that this recent killing was the deed of a copycat or accomplice, but Jane didn't believe this at all. The same person who killed his family also killed Louise Tate, it was as simple as that. Unfortunately, unlike in all the other murder cases he and the team had solved, this time he didn't even know where to begin.
He decided to actually go for a walk until everyone else left and he had the house for himself. The thought of going in there again terrified him, but he knew that this place might provide him with a better sense of the killer's personality. He called Lisbon, to tell her that he'd go home now and take the rest of the day off. A blatant lie, but a necessary one to keep her off his back.
The greenness of the little wood behind the estate was surreal. Dazzling sunlight shimmered on the leaves. The vivid colors and the heady aroma of soil went to his head. All the more menacing the dimness of Louise Tate's house was for him, when he entered it two hours later. Someone had let down all the shutters and turned the rooms into a cenotaph where time seemed to stand still. The urge to flee was overwhelming, but he managed to suppress it. Cautiously he felt his way down the corridor into the bedroom. His claustrophobic mind demanded more light, so he switched on the bedside lamp.
Illuminated spots of blood on it, in various sizes.
Jane backed away from the upsetting object. Unfortunately, the room was full of those. The drawing on the wall caught his attention. He had stared at the one in his own bedroom so often, but he never understood its meaning. A happy face with a stream of bloody tears. It was childish, in a way, contradicted the violent crime that happened before its creation. And maybe that was all it was, a weird method of making amends.
He turned around, his vision once again tainted by a flurry of redness. Jane closed his eyes, but the blood was still there. Its smell penetrated his nostrils, settled down on his body to be absorbed by his skin. He imagined ruby bugs crawling all over his arms, his neck. Suddenly he was sure that the killer was there, watched him. Waited, for the perfect opportunity to introduce himself. Panicked, afraid to lose his mind once and for all, he just wanted to run away. His shoulder crashed into a wall. The impact made him struggle for air. He slumped to the ground and stayed there.
Maybe an hour passed, maybe several. It was easy to lose track of time while being surrounded by something as eternal as death. Incapable of doing anything, he just sat and watched the small line of daylight at the lower end of a sloppily closed sun-blind disappear. He was never one to save himself. His thoughts left his grave surroundings and revisited Lisbon's home. He wondered if she was still at work. Did she already know about his past?
He slowly reached for the phone inside his jacket pocket. When his hands stopped trembling, he dialed Lisbon's number. She answered after the second ringing, her voice neutral and wide-awake.
"Where are you?" Jane asked stupidly.
"At home. Jane, are you..."
He didn't let her finish her question. "I'm inside Louise Tate's house."
A brief pause, the she spoke again in a calm, composed tone. "Do you want me to get you?"
Only when he agreed, Jane realized that this was his reason for calling her in the first place. He pulled himself together and stepped outside the house. The night air was wonderfully chilly and slowly revived him. Still every small noise - cracking twigs, nocturnal animals – made him cringe. Once he imagined seeing a face at Louise's bedroom window, but when he turned around only the blank pane stared back at him. It seemed to take ages until the headlights of Lisbon's car pierced through the darkness and made him heave a sigh of relief.
He stumbled toward the car, sank into the passenger seat.
"Thanks."
"No problem, I was awake anyway."
Then she didn't say any more for the rest of the drive and neither did he. The night rushed past the car windows, dark and cold as water. One side glance at Lisbon's face, illuminated by oncoming traffic, and Jane knew that she was already aware of his family's tragic fate.
That she still took him home to her place surprised him, but he was grateful that she understood he wasn't able to spend the night alone. Without looking at him, she collected the files and computer printouts from the couch. He flinched when he spotted the state seal of Florida on one of them. His pained expression caused her movements to become less agitated.
"We'll talk tomorrow. Get some sleep." She told him when she handed him his usual blanket.
"I never meant to hurt you." Then his voice failed him.
Lisbon rested her hand on his shoulder. She didn't hug him, didn't say anything to comfort him, and he was glad about that. She just silently sat there, her soothing palm never leaving his shoulder, until he was done crying.
"Try to get some sleep." She finally said.
Jane was exhausted, but he also was still haunted by the presence of evil he had felt in the Tate house. Old sores, never really healed but until tonight deliberately ignored, got reopened. There was too much to think about, to be afraid of, that he was sure he wouldn't sleep a wink. As soon as Lisbon would turn off the lights and he would lie alone on the couch, the darkness would fill with nameless perils. Whispering and tittering all his fears would assail him.
"Can I sleep in your bed tonight?"
Lisbon blinked, her hesitation almost palpable.
Then, an epitome of toughness again, she agreed. "Okay, but no funny stuff. And no snoring."
It was the first time he saw her bedroom. It had a warmer color and was less messy than the rest of the house. A reflection of the real, concealed Lisbon, he liked to believe.
He took off his shoes, socks and jacket, but didn't dare to undress any further. Almost fully clothed he slipped under the covers. When Lisbon laid down next to him, he wrapped his arms around her from behind without thinking. It was a reflex, an inconsiderate expression of the closeness he felt to her that night, and he noticed her stiffen in his embrace. Endless seconds later, just when he wanted to retreat and apologize, Lisbon finally relaxed and snuggled into him.
"Night, Lisbon." He said, and she switched off the bedside lamp.
Her hair smelled of tea, a warm, earthy cinnamon scent. She felt warm and alive and perfect in his arms. He failed to remember the last time he held someone like that. Lisbon sighed, moved slightly.
"Lisbon?" He whispered after a while.
"Hm."
They both lay completely still. He felt the air change around them. Blooming. Radiating. His heart was beating too fast, mingled with her heartbeat against his chest. It was wrong even considering it, he knew that. Especially now, especially after the events of the day. But Jane, sick of being too coward to actually live, still did the unthinkable. He turned Lisbon around in his arms and kissed her and, after a moment's indecision, she returned his kiss.
TBC...