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Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, Invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,
Ah! she did depart!
Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveller did come by,
Silently, invisibly,
He took her with a sigh.
-William Blake, Love's Secret
Red Tiger Hymn
The last person slips through the open gate, glancing nervously right and left. He's late, and he doesn't want his companions angry.
Things always…messier, when his companions are angry.
"Tyger, tyger," whispers a voice from the shadows.
The last person doesn't even twitch. "Did He who made the Lamb make thee?"
"Leave him alone," says another voice. "We know it's him. Who else would it be?"
"True," says the shadow-voice reluctantly. "You're late."
The last man shrugs and steps into the dim light. He's wearing dark clothes and a blue tiger mask. His eyes gleam from the slits. "I was held up."
Another slinks from the shadows and snorts. A pale white tiger mask roars silently at the newcomer. "We agreed to put this first."
"There's no point in ruining our cover," says a black tiger mask. The white stripes on its face are bold and it snarls viciously.
The blue tiger, in comparison, is still and calm. "So I take it you all have heard?"
The white tiger snorts. "Of course we've heard. It's all over the news! What is he thinking, letting it get this out of hand this early?"
"Quiet," the black tiger hisses. "He knows what he's doing."
"But still," the white argues. "It's dangerous, letting a young one get this much publicity this quickly. Todd Johnson got half the attention, and look what happened to him. Patrick Jane found him out in less than three days."
"Johnson was an idiot," the black snaps. "We all knew that. He was never going to be anything more than a toy, a little sideshow. He was never going to be one of us."
"We've never been discovered," the white tiger shoots back. "We've all been hunting for years, and no one's ever linked our kills. This young one's been active for less than a week and Patrick's Jane's on his case!
"Calm down," the blue tiger breaks in quietly. "That in of itself is an impressive accomplishment. Maybe he's the one?"
"To complete the circle?"
The blue tiger shrugs. "Maybe."
"A new tiger," says the black one, tapping the snarling mask. "We haven't had a new one for a while. All the young ones have been failures."
"Yes," the blue tiger says, sighing heavily. "I had hopes for O'Laughlin, though."
"O'Laughlin?" the white tiger scoffs. "He was only in it for the money. He was a jackal, not a tiger."
The blue tiger shrugs. "I liked him."
The black tiger taps the mask again. "A fifth and final member," he says thoughtfully.
"The red tiger, to complete our circle," the blue says. "Fitting, I think."
"Should we approach him?"
The blue tiger laughs, his mask still and serene. "No," he says. "No, let him find us. Our mutual friend will point him in the right direction soon enough. He is still very young. No doubt the boss is testing him."
The two other masked people nod, accepting.
"When should we meet again?"
"A week," the blue tiger says.
The roaring white huffs and the snarling black mutters, but they both nod again.
"Keep an eye on the young one," the blue tiger orders. "Watch the progress. We will discuss him or her again in a week."
"Fine," the white tiger mutters. "Assuming Jane doesn't catch him first."
The blue tiger laughs, and the other two get the distinct impression that he's grinning underneath the mask. "Perhaps this tiger will be a bit more than Jane can handle."
"One can only hope," says the black.
"Until we meet again," the blue tiger rumbles. "I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart."
The three tigers touch hands, and say together "trembling, cold, in ghastly fears, ah! she did depart!"
"Rusty Moore," Lisbon reads, fighting the urge to crumple the paper in his hands. "What the hell is this guy doing here?"
Jane shrugs and paces, shoes clicking off the wooden floor. They're back at HQ and Lisbon holds the official AFIS hit on their vic's fingerprints—Rusty Moore, the cook from the Todd Johnson case last year, who attacked Keely Farrow the night she died.
But he's not from the Rio Linda area, so what the fuck is he doing stabbed to death in a chicken farmer's warehouse?
"It's all connected," Jane says, pacing.
Lisbon watches him go back and forth, back and forth, and it makes her head hurt. "Stop that," she says. "You're not helping anybody."
Jane gives her a long look and keeps pacing.
Of course.
"Sit down before I tackle you."
He gives her another look and apparently decides she being serious (which she is) and collapses into the nearest chair.
"Rusty Moore," he mutters, rubbing his forehead. Lisbon offers him a bottle of aspirin and he takes it, popping three without even reading the dosage.
"Do you think this new killer is trying to send us a message?"
"Oh yes," Jane says, leaning back. "A very big message."
"Know what it is?"
He smiles thinly. "Not yet."
Lisbon sighs. "I didn't think so. Let's go over what we've got." She stands and crosses over to the tack board. "Rusty Moore." She taps his picture, the mug shot from when he was arrested last year. "Former murder suspect, convicted of aggravated assault, spent ninety days in jail before he was paroled."
"Found dead in a chicken farmer's warehouse," Cho adds. "The owner, Mr. Brandon Simpson, has no connection with the vic or, as far as we know, Red John."
"We can rule him out," Jane says, standing also. Lisbon glares at him and he promptly ignores her. "He has nothing to do with this."
"How do you know? We haven't even interviewed him yet."
"The warehouse lock was broken," Jane says. "Very cleanly, probably with a hammer or some sort of blunt object. Why would Mr. Simpson want to damage his own property? Also, he's a big, strong working man, perfectly capable of smashing that cheap little lock with a good kick."
Lisbon turns that over and nods. "Okay. We can rule Simpson out then, for now." She crosses his name off the list. "So Simpson's warehouse was broken into, and Rusty Moore tortured and killed there. Our ME estimates he was killed at about two in the morning, and he was found close to nine. What was Moore even doing in Rio Linda? That's way outside his paroled range."
"Making a run for it," Jane says immediately. "His clothes were worn and nondescript—he was trying to blend in. He had on old Nikes, good for running, and there was nothing in his pockets but some cash and a bus pass."
Lisbon nods. "Reasonable conclusion. So Moore skips out on his parole and ends up in Rio Linda, where a killer happens across him, takes him to a warehouse, and butchers him."
She chews her lip, looking over the meager evidence.
"Rigsby, Cho, you guys go canvass all the bars within a two mile radius of the warehouse. If that doesn't work, check homeless shelters. Flash his picture around, see if anyone heard or saw anything."
"You got it, boss," Rigsby says, scooping up his jacket. Cho pops an aspirin—for his back, probably—and they're off.
"Van Pelt, you check the Rio PD database, see if there's anything similar to this in there."
The redhead nods.
"Jane, you wanna go back and see what you can see?"
He shrugs. "Let's go."
Lisbon nods. "Okay. Van Pelt, call Wainwright too, get him up to speed. Tell him where Jane and I are going."
Van Pelt nods again, and they're gone.
"So you think this is Red John," Lisbon says, when they're in the car and still (still) stuck in traffic.
Jane, who's been fairly quiet the whole ride, nods. "Has to be," he says. "This has to be one of his students."
"Students?" Jesus. "You think he's teaching people how to be killers now?"
"It looks like it. Look at Todd Johnson. Young sociopath with homicidal tendencies, needing a little direction in his life, a little guiding hand to point him in the right way. Red John stepped in and showed him that way, taught him how to refine his craft, to enjoy his impulses."
"That's sick," Lisbon mutters. Red John as a teacher?
"Remember Jared Renfrew, a few years ago?"
Unfortunately, Lisbon did. Jared Renfrew, the idiot who thought he could run from Red John and ended up dead in a Tijuana bathtub with a hooker and a message written in his own blood.
"He is man, Renfrew wrote, but what if he didn't mean man?"
Lisbon blinks. "You think he meant something else?"
"Many," Jane says quietly. "I think Renfrew meant to write he is many."
More than one Red John, Lisbon thinks, and her head hurts. "Like Todd Johnson and Timothy Carter," she says.
"Exactly. A network. A network of Red Johns, of killers."
"And you think Rusty Moore's killer is part of this group?"
"He wrote tyger, tyger, Lisbon." Jane looks away, out the window at the crawling traffic. "That's what Red John said to me in the hotel, and what Todd Johnson said just before he died. It's their calling card to me."
"Why you? Why did Red John and his pack of psychos pick you, out of thirty-seven million people in the state?"
Jane shrugs. "I taunted him," he says quietly. "And he tried to break me, but I came back. I interest him."
Lisbon tightens her hands on the wheel. "You interest him."
"Brett Stiles thinks he loves me."
She nearly chokes. "What?"
Jane shrugs, and it doesn't take a mentalist to see how jerky the movement is. "He says that what Red John does, taunts me, takes from me, saves me, on occasion, is a form of love."
Lisbon shudders and can't stop her hand from going to her crucifix. "I won't let him near you," she says fiercely.
Jane smiles and pats her hand. "It's not me I'm worried about."
"You think he'll come after us?"
Jane shrugs again, that same harsh, jerky movement. "Maybe. Not today. He's given me a new challenge, you see, and I need you. He knows that."
"A new challenge," she murmurs. "So, what, he pits all his underlings against you, to see if they can hold up."
"Maybe. I don't know." He looks tired, like he's barely slept. "Moore's murderer wrote tyger, tyger on the wall in Moore's blood. It's not a smiley face, but it's a calling card. Red John wants me on this case."
"Then maybe we should take you off."
Jane looks at her again. "You really want a repeat of last time?"
She flexes her fingers, remembering almost involuntarily the feel of Sam Bosco's blood slipping underneath them. "No," she says softly. "No I don't."
"So we work this case, and maybe catch another one of Red John's lackeys."
"And get one step closer to the man," Lisbon says fiercely. Or men, but she doesn't say that.
"Right," Jane says, and it sounds hollow. "One step closer."
They pass the rest of the drive in silence.
When they get to the warehouse again, it's much quieter. A few LEOs are still hanging around, guarding the location, and they nod when Lisbon flashes her badge.
Inside, it's much less busy and she can get her bearings in here now that the body is gone.
"What do you see, Jane?"
He walks around the room carefully. "What do you see?"
Lisbon resists the urge to roll her eyes and goes along with it. "Um, everything's very neat, has its own place."
Brandon Simpson keeps all his farming equipment in neat order. Everything has a place, from the chicken wire to the tools.
All except one pair of pliers, it would seem.
"There," she says, nodding at the tool where it sits propped up in the corner, and Jane smiles.
"Very good. A pair of pliers, used, I'm guessing, to bend the lock on the back door out of shape so no one could surprise him while he worked. Anything else?"
"The writing on the wall suggests narcissim," she says. "He's taunting us. He purposefully drew us, specifically you, into the investigation, which suggests he doesn't think he'll get caught."
"Good," Jane says. "Anything else?"
Lisbon shakes her head.
"Well the Biblical verse suggests religious delusions. This is possibly a man who thinks God speaks to him, or he is God. Since it is a verse from Revelations, I'm going with the second theory."
"So he thinks he's God?"
Jane shrugs. "Or a Biblical character, maybe an angel or a Horseman of the Apocalypse."
"So, what, he's cleansing the world?"
"Maybe." Jane continues walking. "There's a drop of candlewax here that would support that theory—candles are an integral part of many religious rituals.
"Now the sheer violence of the attack indicates a very angry individual. He went after Moore with everything he had. He didn't hold back at all, even in the slightest. So this probably isn't his first kill, but it's definitely his first ritualistic one. There haven't been any other cases in the area with writing on the walls. This writing is clumsy. The killer smeared his own work a few times. He's not used to it yet, but he got both his messages across."
"So we have a narcissistic, deluded, relatively inexperienced killer who thinks he's God?"
Jane shrugs again. "Possibly. He's also highly organized. He chose a warehouse he knew wouldn't be in use and he made sure there was enough space inside to work. He picked a man who skipped parole, who was, by definition, trying to remain inconspicuous so people wouldn't notice him."
Lisbon nods, processing all of this. "We need more information," she says. "How did he restrain Moore, for one thing? There's no evidence of ropes or tape or physical restraints of any kind. The ME's thinking drugs, but she doesn't have a tox screen yet."
"Drugs would fit," Jane says. "A paralytic, maybe."
"I'll pass that on. Anything else?"
Jane shrugs. "Not right now."
Lisbon nods. He's holding something back, probably, because he's Jane, but she's willing to let it slide for now. "Okay. Why don't we meet up with Cho and Rigsby, see if they've found anything? We can always come back later, and we need to wait for the forensic stuff anyway."
Jane nods, and together they step out of the warehouse into the bright sun.
Lisbon punches Cho's number in and waits for him to pick up.
"Yeah, boss?"
"Jane and I are done at the warehouse. Where are you? We'll join you."
"Club on Eight and Maplewood. The Silver Dollar."
"Okay. Found anything yet?"
"No."
"Damn. Meet you in fifteen."
"Okay, boss." Cho hangs up and Lisbon beckons to Jane. He stops his intense scrutiny of the side of the warehouse and follows after her, deep in thought.
She's nearly to her car when her phone rings again, and Van Pelt's number flashes across the screen.
"Hello?"
"Boss, I found something."
"What?"
Van Pelt pauses, and Lisbon's heart sinks. "I think I found some more victims."