Author's notes:
Thank you to the great writer Sue Shay for her support, encouragement, and guidance on this chapter and the whole project! In addition to her current romance-and-family story, "Ready or Not," Sue has begun a series of drabbles entitled "It's Over." Check 'em out!
I do not own the TV show The Mentalist and get no compensation from it. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes only.
Warning: This chapter contains violence and adult situations.
Notes on the chapter title follow the end of the chapter.
Chapter 17: Let's Face The Music And Dance
Patrick Jane stopped to rub his eyes. How many hours had he been in this room alone? He had lost count. It looked like a hundred other conference rooms in a hundred other small town police stations.
Forgive me, Teresa. I have to keep at this.
The door at the far end opened and a familiar face appeared.
"Take a break, Jane."
"I can't. Gotta keep going."
Cho walked over beside Patrick.
"When I stepped out three hours ago, you were in the exact same place in the exact same position with the exact same look on your face. Come on, Rigsby got us some sandwiches. And he got you some fresh tea."
"I've gotta keep with it."
"What? You want me to order to take a break? I can do that, you know."
"But I have to…"
Cho placed a hand on his shoulder, an action so unlike him it made Patrick stop mid-sentence. He looked up from the papers scattered in front of him.
"Patrick. I understand. We all need your best work right now. But stretch your legs. Come with me for a minute."
Scooting his chair out, he rose.
"Just for a minute, Kimball."
CBI had taken over the community's police station, evicting the local officers from their space. Cho had called in CBI agents from around the state to meet up there to begin round-the-clock operations against Red John and his minions.
Before Cho left Sacramento to come downstate, Patrick told him about Wainwright's secret room in the CBI building. Driving a van loaded with the contents of that room, Cho and Van Pelt met up with Patrick and Rigsby at the police station. Together the four of them placed the materials in a secure room the locals used for interrogation. After unloading the van, Patrick shut himself off from the world to work with what Wainwright had put together. The only person he communicated with was Cho. At intervals Cho would join him in the room to update what was happening outside. Patrick would apprise Cho of what he had pieced together, and the two men would proceed to bounce ideas off each other.
Cho's not Teresa, but he's still good.
"Anything new?" Cho asked as they walked into the back entrance of the break room. Beyond there Patrick could see the main floor space of the building, now filled with CBI agents bustling about. In one corner Rigsby and Van Pelt interviewed a local cop, a Detective Smith, someone who Wainwright's notes suggested could be a Red John minion.
"I feel I'm on the cusp of something. But then again Wainwright felt so too." Patrick rubbed the back of his neck after taking a sip of tea. "Have Rigsby and Van Pelt made any headway with that Smith guy?"
"Not yet. Rigsby says he can tell Smith's hiding something."
One of the first fruits of Patrick's review of the Wainwright files was that local detective. Combining what he found in the files and what they had discovered since Wainwright's murder, Smith looked more and more suspect.
A commotion distracted the two men from their sandwiches. As agents were leading Smith to a holding cell, he grabbed a gun from one of them. In response, Rigsby, Van Pelt, and half-a-dozen other agents drew their weapons.
"You don't understand. None of you do. No one understands what Red John has done for me, the life that he's given me."
Well, there's a confession. Wainwright would have been proud of me for proving out his theory.
"Calm down. Don't do anything rash." Rigsby motioned for Smith to drop the weapon as he spoke.
"I will not shoot a brother officer of the law, no matter that you fail to understand the greatness of Red John."
"That's good to know. Now put down the weapon." Rigsby motioned again for the man to set the gun on the floor.
"But I cannot betray Red John." Detective Smith raised the gun to his head.
"No, no, don't…" Agents all cried out to the man as he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.
Patrick winced at the sight.
As he knelt over the body of the Detective Smith, Patrick's gaze searched for something, anything to provide a clue about where Red John was. Trouble was, nothing stood out. The guy was a typical detective on a small town police force.
"According to his summary notes, Wainwright thought Smith was a fairly new recruit for Red John. I haven't been able to go through all of his detail notes yet, but let's assume he was right."
"Here's his billfold and the other stuff in his pockets." Rigsby handed three plastic bags to Patrick.
He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Restaurant receipts, credit cards, dry cleaning ticket.
A veteran detective, one on the job for years, would be careful about how he kept information.
Then a brainstorm hit Patrick.
But he might slip up using a technology that was newer for him…
"What about his car?"
"It's out in the parking lot. A CBI team is going over it now," said Van Pelt.
"Does the car have a GPS?"
Van Pelt looked at a clipboard.
"Yes."
"Bring it in here."
After Van Pelt retrieved the GPS, she joined Rigsby, Cho, and Patrick in a vacant conference room. Patrick seized the GPS from her hands.
"Smith might have typed an address related to Red John into the GPS."
Cho nodded in recognition.
"He might not have thought about the list of previous addresses that stayed on it."
Patrick fiddled with the touch screen on the GPS.
"Exactly. I'm pulling up that list right now; we need to check out all of these locations. Maybe he slipped up."
For two hours Patrick and the team went through the addresses on the GPS. They dismissed most as routine, many of them for crime scenes that Smith went to. One though caught Patrick's attention immediately. He cross-checked it with Wainwright's notes.
"This is the address for the only Red John murder in this town. Was Smith assigned to it?"
Rigsby pulled up crime reports on a computer screen.
"No. He was not."
"And yet he went there. More circumstantial evidence on Smith."
The team whittled the list to six addresses they could not explain.
"These six need checking out."
"Let's go."
Rigsby and Van Pelt took three while Patrick went with Cho to check out the other three. When the quartet walked outside to their cars, the sunlight on Patrick's face felt good. It also focused his mind on someone always in his thoughts.
Please forgive me, Teresa. I want to come home to you. But I have to keep going for the sake of Angela, Charlotte, Luther, Sam Bosco, all of Red John's victims, and the rest of us left behind to grieve.
Since leaving the police station with the list of addresses, events moved with a speed that astonished Patrick. He watched as Cho coordinated different CBI teams that moved around the outside of a warehouse.
Maybe this time we've got you, Red John. And it will be thanks to Luther Wainwright.
The warehouse, on Cho and Patrick's list of three to check out, had seemed like just another nondescript building at first. Surveillance revealed something else. Like worker ants moving to and fro around an anthill, a steady stream of people went in and out. The team identified several as being among Wainwright's list of suspected Red John minions. As more and more signs pointed to the warehouse as Red John's headquarters, Cho set up a raid on the facility.
Now Patrick crouched behind a dumpster. Beside him, Cho made hand signals to the CBI agents leading individual teams. The stillness of the twilight filled him with a mix of nervous energy and dread. Cho had told him to stay behind at the station, but Patrick refused. He had to see, to witness what happened. Eventually Cho gave in, but he made Patrick wear the same protection gear everyone else did.
On Cho's signal, the calm shattered as the raid began. While caught by surprise, Red John's minions put up a stiff fight. A man from inside the warehouse made his way out with a grenade and hurled it at an undercover CBI vehicle. His throw came up just short of the van, but the impact of the explosion tipped it over. Shrapnel embedded in the side of the dumpster above Patrick's head, and debris rained down on Cho and him. Taking a rifle off his shoulder, the man took aim at the van. That was the last thing he did as sharpshooters took him out.
Small arms fire erupted all around Patrick. As the CBI agents made their way inside, he crawled close to the ground behind them. The mix of Red John's people they found inside startled him - young, old, men, women. But all had one thing in common; they were armed to the teeth. Some put up more resistance than others.
One figure inside the warehouse stood out from the rest. He wore a mask and directed the others' actions as he scurried from one point to another. Cho and Patrick glanced at each other with the same thought.
Red John!
As the agents closed in, Red John pulled his minions back into a tight knot around him. Slowly they backed down an aisle toward an office along the wall of the warehouse. The minions kept up their fire while Red John barked out orders behind them.
Suddenly, one of the minions, a young man, broke ranks. Moving away from the group, he held up his hands and knelt on the floor. He yelled at the agents in front of him, "I surrender, I surrender."
The sounds of gunfire trailed off as Cho yelled for the man to stretch out on the ground. His body shaking, he lowered his hands to the concrete floor. Agents held their fire as he complied with Cho's order.
Bang.
The man crumpled on the concrete floor, blood gushing from a wound in his back. Red John had at last fired his weapon - to shoot his own man. The action froze the whole scene for a moment.
"Shoot, shoot, keep it up."
Red John's shout prompted the group around him to resume firing. A bullet slammed into the forklift that Patrick was using for cover, yet he still had to go on, to trail the agents as they pressed forward, to see the events unfold.
Red John and his circle of people had made their way to the end of the aisle, across from the office. His minions had put up a resistance that astonished Patrick. They had to know that it was futile, yet they kept up the fight. Behind them, Red John continued to call out orders.
When they backed up to the door of the office, Red John opened it. Then he turned back to the thinning ranks of minions in front of him, still putting up volley after volley of bullets. He pulled out two guns and began firing himself. Not at the CBI agents closing in but at his own people. The action was short and brutal. Shots to the head took out all but one of the minions. A middle-aged woman who was merely wounded cried out in anguish. Red John pointed a gun directly in her face and pulled the trigger. Because of his position, none of the CBI agents could do anything about it. Everyone watched the horror unfold.
You're a complete bastard to do that to your own people.
With all of his minions outside the doorway dead, Red John ducked inside and slammed the door. Using caution the agents advanced toward the office. From where he crouched, Patrick could hear jostling noises from the inside.
A blinding flash lit up the warehouse, and an instant later a shock wave followed that knocked over all the CBI people including Patrick. As debris rained down, smoke and fire gushed out from where the office had been. Blown off its hinges, the door Red John went through moments before flew through the air to land in a splintered mass beside Patrick. A smear of blood coated the middle of it. Looking back to the office, or where it had been moments before, he saw CBI agents advance toward it, guns leveled, with Cho in the lead. When Cho stepped inside the office, Patrick could see him shake his head as his face contorted. Agents fanned out to survey what was left, and soon Patrick heard them yell out "clear" again and again. After a few moments, Cho and the others removed their helmets, and he beckoned Patrick forward.
The disgust Patrick saw on Cho's face from afar did nothing to prepare him for what he saw when he made his way over to stand next to Cho. The last group of minions, what was left of them anyway, littered the room. In the center of a twisted mass of bloody limbs and smoking debris was the masked reason for all the carnage. In something akin to a stupor, Cho and Patrick stood over Red John's body. Rigsby and Van Pelt, their rifles slung over their shoulders, joined them. The quartet stood in silence while other agents moved back and forth around them.
As an agent passed by carrying a box of vinyl gloves, Patrick plucked out a pair. Looking to the other three, they nodded permission. Kneeling beside the corpse, he lifted the mask. After all these years, what he saw surprised him.
Red John was a man. Just a man. Someone Jane would pass on the sidewalk, stand in line behind at the grocery, or sit next to at a restaurant. No one would give him a second thought. He was…ordinary. Yet so much evil came from that one, nondescript man. Patrick shifted his gaze up to Cho. In response he shook his head. There were no words to say.
Bedlam commenced outside. As the warehouse transformed into a crime scene, a flood of vehicles, equipment, and people arrived. Agents and local police set up a perimeter around the building to fend off reporters who collected in the parking lot. Helicopters, some law enforcement, some media, circled overhead with search lights that flashed across the damaged walls. Scores of technicians arrived to handle evidence. Within an hour, upper-level bureaucrats and politicians arrived to claim credit for the success.
Those political hacks always show up when things go well.
Sitting on the tailgate of a CBI lab truck, Patrick sipped tea from a paper cup and drank in the scene. The short burst of action would be followed by the long slog of process.
Luther would be proud of what we accomplished because of his work.
"You were a better man than I, Luther Wainwright," Patrick spoke into the chilly night air as he raised his cup in salute.
And I really mean that.
A hand gripped his shoulder. He turned to find Cho smiling at him.
Smiling!
"You're a good man too, Jane. All your work with his materials paid off."
"Thanks. Red John was right about one thing. Wainwright was a genius."
The soft expression in Cho's eyes caught him further off-guard.
"Jane, we're gonna be here a long time. A long, long time."
"I know. What do you need me to do now?" Tossing his empty cup into a trash bag next to the CBI truck, Patrick stood.
"Go home. We'll take care of this."
"Go home?"
"You deserve it. Get out of here. She misses you as much as you miss her."
Patrick did the most un-Jane-like thing he had done in years - he grabbed Cho in a tight embrace.
"Thank you."
"Alright. Let go of me. A simple goodbye would have worked. Go!"
"Goodbye!"
How long had it been since Teresa set foot outside her condo? She had lost track. It was like a chain had tethered her to her sofa. Pizza boxes, half-drunk cans of soda, and empty tissue packs cluttered the surface of the table in front of her.
A sound by the door riveted her attention. Familiar scratching noises around the key hole made her sit upright as she trembled in anticipation. Now she heard the key turn in the lock. She gaped at the door knob as it twisted around.
A whoosh of cool air that made her shiver flooded the room when the door swung open. Half rising to her feet she craned her neck for a better view as a figure walked in. A figure with blond, disheveled hair, a suit hanging limp on his shoulders, and sad eyes that drooped like the bag he was carrying.
Teresa's world - and his - changed in an instant. The only sound in the place was the squeal that escaped her mouth.
He came home to me!
Patrick jerked his head around to see her as he dropped his bag. Like two magnets drawn together, they stumbled, tumbled toward each other across the objects between them. With her arms outstretched, she crossed the final inches between them as if she were lunging to the finish line of a race.
When the tips of her fingers touched his chest, a jolt of electricity surged across her whole body. She felt his hands surround her shoulders to pull her to him. In turn, she reached her arms around his neck to sate her intense desire to be as close to him as possible. Their grip on each other was like a vise as their sobs of thanksgiving filled the air. For a moment she held still to smell him, to touch him, to simply savor his presence.
Then Teresa looked into his eyes while she lifted herself onto her tiptoes. With more force than she had meant to use, she drew their faces together for a kiss. What she got instead was a collision of their noses. Pulling back amid laughter from both of them, she saw his eyes crinkle with delight. This time she closed the distance with care as they moved by instinct to join their lips.
I've got to seize his lips, capture them to make up for the days of despair that kept us apart.
She lifted her hands to cup his cheeks, willing them both into a firmer kiss. Their kissing continued as Teresa pressed against his body. When at last they broke to catch their breath, Teresa rested her face against Patrick's neck. She reveled in the feel of the rise and fall of his chest underneath her hands.
Her body still plastered against him, she became aware of a new sensation stirring within her. At the same time she sensed a change in the way he held her. Standing on her tiptoes once more, she blew a hot breath into his ear and caressed his earlobe with her tongue. She noticed a further physical change in him, from below. Now she opened her mouth to nibble on his lobe and noted the delicious shudder it produced across his whole body.
Patrick pushed her away from him, but only so he could kiss her again. The hardness of their lips joining inflamed Teresa. As they kissed his arms moved downward to her hips to raise her off the floor. In response she lifted her legs to encircle his body. Feelings of thanksgiving had given way to an urgent desire, something primal.
Patrick pulled back from the kiss. Their eyes met again, a silent question exchanged. Teresa answered for them both with a nod. With one arm still wrapped around her hips, he brought his hand up to finger the top button of her blouse. He stopped once more as if to ask permission. Instead of a nod this time, she answered by reaching her hand for the top button of his shirt.
Clutching her close, he carried her down the hallway to her bedroom. As she continued to unbutton his shirt, Teresa rubbed her cheek against Patrick's. The rough, unshaven stubble against her smooth skin aroused her even more.
When they reached her bed, he laid her down with a gentleness that warmed her heart. It soon turned to lust as he first undressed himself and then undressed her. Freed of constraints, their hands roamed over their bodies to explore each curve, each feature, each sensitive point.
It didn't dawn on her until later that the first words either of them spoke came during their first union that night. As their passion peaked and they moved as one, he brought his kiss-swollen lips beside her ear. In rhythm with their actions, Patrick whispered a half-moan, half-growl, "Teresa, Teresa, Teresa."
It was enough to tip her into ecstasy.
To be continued.
Author's notes:
Notes for Chapter 12 already mentioned "Let's Face the Music and Dance," and another favorite recording of it is Ella Fitzgerald's version on her album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook.
Readers interested in the songs and movies mentioned in this story can check out a Youtube playlist titled "Mentalist - I Remember You - playlist for fanfic story."