The Palm Springs mortuary stood in the midst of one of the most God-forsaken heat zones that Ronnie Masters had found herself in during the past three years. She parked her bike in the shade of the rented CBI van, hoping it wouldn't be molten to the touch when she returned to it. Shrugging off her leathers, Ronnie stripped off her sweat-soaked t-shirt and pulled a fresh, black button down over her tank top.
She'd shown up ten minutes late.
Tucking her shirt into her dark wash jeans, Ronnie grabbed her backpack and her keys and hiked up the walk to the mortuary. Once she'd swiped off her sunglasses and flashed her badge, the desk attendant had pointed her in the right direction and she soon found herself marching down the eerie, chilly hallways towards the examiners room.
Seeing Lisbon and Jane through the window in the door, Ronnie pulled it open and slunk in sheepishly, nodding in apology to the boss. She snuck over to the stoic, well-built Asian man in the corner, trying not to cause a disturbance while the mortician was running down her report.
The woman wore a brightly-colored hair cap, providing the only pop of vibrance in the cold, dark-toned room. She held a clipboard, circling two tables where two bodies lay, pale, beneath sheets.
"Cho," Ronnie greeted, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes skated across the room while Cho returned the greeting with a silent glance in her direction before dropping his attention back to the notebook in his hands.
"Is that Jane?" Ronnie's eyes were on the wandering blond consultant. He was getting too close to one of the corpses, leaning in like he was going to sniff it. "I thought he was suspended." Few men got away with circumnavigating CBI top brass like the consultant did, much to the ever growing irritation of unit leader Teresa Lisbon.
"He's Jane." Cho responded, as though that explained everything. And it did, sort of.
"—27, married, no children; they were found at her listed residence; T.O.D looks to be early Saturday evening. On Alison, we have the same stun-gun marks, followed by binding with tight black plastic ligatures, frenzied cutting and stabbing assault of the torso, and subsequent abuse of the viscera." The mortician's monotoned report concluded simply, offering little more information than even Ronnie knew from the progress email she'd received that morning.
Her half-lidded eyes, bored and glazed over, passed around the room, landing briefly on Jane before returning lazily to Lisbon.
Cho stuffed his notebook back in his pocket and crossed his arms, mimicking Ronnie. "Textbook Red John." He stepped in closer to the bodies, seeing the injuries for himself once more.
Edging away from the cold examination tables uneasily, Ronnie shot a careful glance at Jane, who still stood leering over the corpses, expression focused. Few cases had come up over the years with the monstrous serial killer's MO. Every time one popped up they faced a nightmare of an attempt to keep Jane under control. The serial killer had the unparalleled ability to provoke Jane to the point of uncharacteristic daring, regardless of any consequences.
That fact made Lisbon's job a living nightmare.
"Who found the bodies?" Lisbon questioned, eyes turning to Cho. She tossed a nod in greeting to Ronnie, expression softening at the sight of the other female team member.
Cho nodded to the closest corpse. "This one's husband; coming home from the airport Sunday morning with his brother." After a second of silence, his shoulders moved as he stiffly turned to check on his partner.
Nausea started in Ronnie's gut, washing over her uncomfortably. The cold, dark room with the two bodies lying naked on the tables left her feeling sick to her stomach. She patted a clumsy hand against Cho's elbow to get his attention, not realizing that she'd already had it, mumbled, "I'm gonna wait outside," and then hurried from the room in search of fresh air.
Memories crawled around inside her brain like spiders, tugging and pulling at her focus until she couldn't think straight. Every time. Every freaking time.
The light in the hallway hit her like a baseball bat to the nose, her full-body flinch apparent to the passing doctors and visitors. Lungs clenching, Ronnie ignored their stares and stepped across the expanse of the hall to sit in a chair and set her backpack down beside her, pulling out her laptop. If she couldn't be in the examiner's office, getting firsthand information, then she could be digging into the casefile that was being compiled by the CBI as she logged in.
She balled her hands into fists, driving them into her knees. Every time she walked into one of those clinics, her memories followed her in and locked the door behind them. Teeth grinding, Ronnie punched her knee angrily.
It had to get easier at some point, right?
A few minutes after she got her head back under control, the office door opened and out stepped Lisbon, Cho, Rigsby, and Jane. Cho held the door open for the others, but his eyes were searching the hall for Ronnie, falling on her quickly. He gave a small sigh, letting the door swing shut after his team.
He and Rigsby wandered over to Ronnie while Jane and Lisbon moved further down the hall to talk to a man sitting near the waiting area.
She didn't look up but watched them get closer in her peripheral.
"Hey, what was that about? You okay?" Rigsby kicked her boot lightly, a teasing smirk lifting his lips at the new opportunity to hound her about something. Besides the newly-appointed van Pelt, of Lisbon's team Ronnie had the least experience working with Rigsby.
That didn't stop him from making jabs at her every chance he got like a seventeen-year-old football jock.
Not long after being instated on the homicide unit, Ronnie had all but become Cho's official partner. Things ran smoothly that way. Ronnie and Cho had similar interests, similar ambition, and nearly identical temperaments. She didn't have as much patience for Rigsby as Cho did, she shared few words with Lisbon, and Jane used her just as much as he used the rest of them.
Cho had a straight shot personality, resounding with Ronnie's untrusting disposition. She'd never doubted him or his word since joining the unit, a feature she couldn't claim for anyone else she'd met in recent years.
Ronnie just tilted her laptop screen so Rigsby could see it. "I missed the debrief this morning; figured I should read up on the facts." She kicked him back, her bike boots scuffing the side of his expensive dress shoes.
None of them had been to the crime scene yet, mercifully, which meant she hadn't missed too much. Whatever Jane was already surmising about with Lisbon was based in supposition over all of their heads.
Cho sat next to her, staring at the open casefile. "I texted you earlier," He said, not taking his eyes off the laptop screen. His attention appeared to be divided between observing the files on the computer and watching Lisbon talk to the man down the hall.
"You did?" Ronnie pulled the cellphone from her backpack. A text appeared on the screen from Cho, reading, "Headed to the coroner. Just meet us after."
He knew about her apprehension and had tried to keep her away; she only wished she'd seen the text earlier. He must be getting tired of her bolting out of morgues by now. "That would have been nice to see twenty minutes ago."
Cho merely shrugged and settled back in his chair.
THE MENTALIST
"Red John enters here." The man taking point on CSI, Brett Partridge, flaunted around the crime scene, and just about bumped into Lisbon. He drew back, arms raised like he'd touched something disgusting. "Excuse me. He comes around here. He waits for her, expecting her to come in alone. Only thing, her friend Tannen chose the wrong night to come over for a Richard Gere and ice cream orgy."
Lisbon's expression remained unimpressed while Ronnie's barely hid her disgust of the tech's macabre theatrics. They'd worked with Partridge a number of times before, and each time she forgot the particular flavor of disturbing that colored his personality. She assumed her brain had chosen to suppress those memories to protect her.
Brett Partridge continued: "So Red John zaps them both with his trusty gun and...excuse me...grabs a five iron from the bag here," He seized a golf club from a bag against the wall and lifted it over his head, bringing the iron dangerously near Cho's head.
The detective ducked right as Ronnie gave his jacket a yank, pulling him out of the way. Her glare only darkened towards Partridge. Given a few moments alone with him, she'd offer him a demonstration of the damage allegedly done with the five iron.
Her simmering rage only quieted when Cho put a hand to her arm briefly in thanks before clasping his hands in front of himself once more.
If she whipped Brett Partridge like a dusty carpet it would be Cho's neck on the chopping block.
"—and BAM! Crushes Tannen's skull. Then takes his sweet time dealing with Alison how he likes. She's a nice big girl, so unless he's pretty strong, I guess he grabbed her by the arms..."
Ronnie barely noticed Jane leave the room, far too busy staring at Brett. She couldn't bite her tongue any longer. "Are you serious?"
He turned wide eyes on her, eyebrows lifted. "As the grave, Arnold," he snapped his gum glibly and winked at her.
The exaggerated reference to her stature did not go unnoticed by any of the agents in the room, worsening their opinions of the man before them. His grave comment alone had Rigsby shifting in place, glancing around to see if anyone was going to jump down the guy's throat or if he should do it himself.
"You're pathological, Partridge," Ronnie muttered, stepping in closer to observe the blood in the carpet where the man had been laying. By no means a forensic pathologist, she made little since of the messy carpet and blood patterns, but she need only commit the scene to memory for the subsequent report. "Maybe show some respect."
Brett pointed the golf club at her, so close it nicked her ear. "Don't tell me how to do my job, butch." He panted with indignation like an eight year old, his outstretched arm shaking.
Affronted by the threatening gesture, Ronnie bristled, rising abruptly. She stepped away from the iron, about to tell him off and bend the offending object over her knee just to see the look on his face.
Cho didn't give her that much time. He yanked the golf club out of Brett's hand and swung it at his chest, forcing him to catch it.
Brett grunted at the light impact, holding the iron with both hands, his face frozen in shock.
Innocently, brushing down his jacket, Cho nodded towards the direction Jane had gone. "The other crime scene is back here."
Brett raced ahead of them, bounding around the corner to stand before a garish red smiley face painted on the wall. "There she blows. The classic Red John smiley face. Drawn in the victim's blood clockwise with three fingers of his right hand wearing a rubber kitchen glove. I'm stoked to finally see one in the flesh." He turned back towards Lisbon, an excited smile on his face.
Ronnie stared. "Dude,"
"This isn't Red John." Jane, staring at the bed, sounded haunted and troubled, but certain.
Brett scoffed. "Right."
Jane stood unimpressed with the CSI tech's attitude, along with the rest of the team. "Red John thinks of himself as a showman, an artist. He has a strong sense of theater. In all of the previous killings, he made sure that the first thing that anyone sees is the face on the wall. You see the face first and you know. You know what's happened and you feel dread. Then, and only then, do you see the body of the victim. Always in that order. Here it's the opposite. The first thing you see is the body and you have to look around to see the face on the wall. It doesn't play nearly as well, does it?"
Ronnie followed his motions, building the scene in her head. As far as previous history went, Jane had a point. She glanced up at Cho, only to see that he seemed just as convinced as she felt.
Lisbon still looked peeved by the whole situation. She didn't like Jane jumping to conclusions, but she also didn't like Brett's gross, childish glee. "Depends on your taste, I suppose." She shrugged at Jane, unrelenting.
"No. Come on. The killer could have painted on the correct wall, here. But he didn't, because he didn't know better, because he isn't Red John." Jane didn't bother gauging the rest of their reactions—the only person he needed to sell being Lisbon, and the only person he needed to ignore being Brett, who wouldn't be ignored.
The slimy man himself leaned forward as though speaking to a child. "Wow. Interesting."
Ronnie crossed her arms, irritated. If only Partridge would get his sorry butt out of their way, they could get going with the investigation. And if he didn't get out of their way quickly, she'd be the first to run interference and make it happen.
Jane turned to Brett, unimpressed. "You know what your problem is, my friend? You enjoy your work a little too much. You're a ghoul. If you don't get horny reading Fangoria, I'm Britney Spears."
Ronnie had to turn away and stare curiously at the disgusting smear of blood on the wall to hide her grin.
"I resent that," Partridge sputtered.
"This is you trying to redeem yourself, is it?" Lisbon had her hands in her pockets, her face carefully schooled against laughing directly in Brett's face. She'd quickly surpassed the rest of the team in learning not to laugh when Jane humiliated someone in public, though they all knew her well enough to see when she was secretly enjoying the scene.
The consultant remained unrepentant, but polite. "I'm sorry. He irks me. He's irksome. You don't need me here."
Ronnie glanced up as he left the room to see Cho concealing a smile behind his hand.
THE MENTALIST
The crime scene imagery left a far worse impression on Ronnie than did actually being there. Whoever did the camera work made a shaky shot of the smiley face on the wall and then panned down to the mangled and bloody body lying on the bed. Ronnie stood against the wall in the bullpen, watching the video from behind Cho and Rigsby. Most murders weren't so theatrically grotesque.
She couldn't scrape memories from her brain—working for her mother, hiding weapons, hiding drugs; the images in her head had the same cold, dead feeling that she had to get away from in the morgue.
Beside her, Lisbon beheld the video footage with some contempt. "So yeah. This one doesn't fit the pattern." As much as she hated to concede, Jane's earlier points had panned out just as he'd said.
Cho turned away from the screen, not eager to watch it loop back. "So Jane was right. We do have a copycat."
Lisbon moved around van Pelt, who had gotten stuck with unpacking equipment in the sheriff's office. The boss remained unconvinced. "Or we have Red John trying new things. Or we have Red John making a mistake. We don't know. We'll work the evidence until we do know. Go talk to the husband."
Ronnie made fleeting eye contact with her as she moved towards her desk, enough to understand that she had been included in the directive. The younger, bigger woman gave a nod as Rigsby verbally acknowledged the order.
Despite the command, none of them jumped to work. The imagery still looped uncomfortably in their minds, the legend of the criminal mastermind Red John fresh in their thoughts. No one wanted to put themselves into the jaws of a big rusty bear trap.
Lisbon turned on her heel, gaze skating over the men who refused to make eye contact. "What are you waiting for?"
They moved then, Rigsby getting up and going for the keys and Cho reaching for his jacket. Ronnie pushed herself off the wall slowly, drawing his attention. "You coming, Masters?"
She nodded, running her hands through her hair once. "Right behind you, Cho."
Most homicides didn't turn her stomach so sour. Something about the bodies and the symbolism stirred up her past like a dark, ashy snow globe.
SIX YEARS AGO
"Ronnie!" The raspy, grating voice of her mother hit her ears like gravel. The older woman was on a loading platform, about to step into the trailer of a semi truck. A torn, old backpack slung across her shoulders, she held a short barreled rifle in her hands, nodding aggressively towards Ronnie.
The twenty-year-old daughter had been caught in her escape by a furious gang leader, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. He'd been scammed out of two million dollars by her mother, and therefore understandably upset.
Ronnie was the only one besides the gang still in the warehouse, screaming for her mother's help. She snapped her head back, catching the gang leader in the nose. He let up just enough for her to get a few long strides closer to the loading dock.
The men were after her, looking for a hostage, for ransom, for leverage. They caught her hair, her clothes; she tripped and they had her again, three of them holding her pinned.
Panic stricken, she turned her face towards her mother, pleading desperately. All the woman had to do was fire into the warehouse, shoot away the men who held her daughter. She had the distance and the time to do it, but instead of aiding her daughter, she reached into her backpack and retrieved a hand grenade.
Ronnie's mother pulled the pin, tossed the grenade into the warehouse with Ronnie and the gang, and ordered the semi to pull out.
PRESENT DAY
A home video of Alison and Price played on the tv, depicting a water gun game. They were both happy, both teasing and playful, enjoying a warm summer's day.
Sitting on the couch, watching the video, was Price, tears in his eyes. "I lost a beautiful, precious angel." He murmured, wiping at his face.
Rigsby and Cho stood in view of the television, watching along with him. Ronnie stood against the wall behind them, eyes on Price and his friend. She had her hands tucked in her pockets, less than thrilled to sit around and watch home movies with suspects.
"Yes, sir. Good-looking woman." Cho answered reflexively, causing Rigsby to shift uncomfortably.
Ronnie glanced at her partner, somewhat surprised at the response. He rarely weighed in like that, instead preferring to hold his silence when possible.
But Cho hurried on, ready to finish the interview. "I'm jumping right in, if you don't mind, Price. You missed the tournament cut on Friday, yes? But you didn't come home until Sunday. What did you do with the rest of your time in Fresno?"
The homeowner appeared to be unappreciative of his line of questioning, the lines around his mouth tightening. The implication that he'd somehow snuck around in secret and killed his own wife angered him deeply, as it should have. He stood, meeting Cho's eyes briefly. "I get this. You guys can't catch the real killer, so you want to lay this one on me?"
Ronnie glanced from him to the man on the couch, gauging their reactions to such a suggestion. Neither man seemed particularly committed to condemning or redeeming himself, withholding any comments.
"No, sir. If we have confirmation of where you were, it lets us exclude you from the investigation." Rigsby told him gently.
"I was with a massage therapist." Price admitted after some hesitation. He shot a look over at Ronnie. "Did you have to bring your guard dog?"
She lifted an eyebrow, amused.
Cho ignored the question. "Name?"
Price paused, thinking back. He didn't seem to be having much luck. "It had Lady in there somewhere." He swirled his glass and shrugged. His behavior oozed aloof arrogance, much to the annoyance of the agents requesting his sincere compliance.
Tag, the man on the couch, rolled his eyes. "It'll be on his credit card bill." He looked just as distressed as the husband did, with his eyes red and his knees pulled up to his chest.
Price gestured to him gratefully. "There you go. Pleasure meeting you boys." On his way out of the room, he passed by Ronnie with a small smile. "Easy, girl."
She considered barking at him, just for kicks.