Mentalist Fic: The Red and the Grey, Chapter 6/?
Title: The Red and the Grey
Author: Bloodwrites
Rating: T for this part (some mention of graphic violence)
Spoilers: Through season 3 finale, none for season 4 (that I know of, anyway)
Plot: While Jane attempts to make inroads back to the CBI, a new nemesis appears on the scene to avenge Red John's death
Chapter 1 can be found here
Chapter 2 can be found here
Chapter 3 can be found here
Chapter 4 can be found here
Chapter 5 can be found here
Chapter Six
Jane was racing for the exit before Lisbon even knew what the hell they were looking at. The guard yelled after him and alarms sounded, but all that chaos receded once she realized what was in the innocent-looking wooden box. Lisbon had seen the original crime scene
photos - it had felt like a violation looking at them even then, when they'd been investigating Red John… Like she was looking into the
darkest parts of Jane's soul.
But this… A smiley face the size of a quarter, a curly-headed blonde figure cradling a tiny, bloodied family. Lisbon felt sick, just being near it.
She ran down the stairs after Jane and the guard, her cell phone in hand. The stairwell was dark and smelled like puke - because this was Jane, so God forbid he choose a normal place to live, now that he'd finally broken down and gotten an apartment. She slipped halfway down the last flight to the first floor, righted herself just in time, and a few seconds later was in the lobby with her heart pounding. The alarm was still going up on the third floor, sirens wailing outside, a few residents wandering around trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
Jane was outside. The guard had already caught up to him, the two of them fighting - not arguing, not the usual annoying Jane banter, but actually fighting, while he put Jane in handcuffs.
"You have to let me go - I can find her. She's still here. She's not far, I guarantee that she's watching all of this." Jane whirled and nearly got away, but the guard - a small man, but wiry and faster than Lisbon expected - grabbed him by the arm and forced him to his knees.
"Goddammit, Jane, you need to calm down," the guard said. He didn't look happy about any of this - in fact, he looked worried as hell. A squad car came skidding up to the curb next, and two cops were on Jane before Lisbon really knew what was happening.
"You don't have to do that," Lisbon said, finally finding her voice.
By now, Jane was on his belly on the concrete, his hands on the back of his head, one of the cops poised with a knee in the small of his back.
"Easy, easy," Jane said. "Let's be reasonable here. If you'll just let me up, I can explain everything - "
"Shut up, Jane," Lisbon snapped. She turned to the cops. "This is all a misunderstanding - I was here the entire time, there's no reason for any of this."
"It doesn't look like a misunderstanding to me," the
cop kneeling on Jane said. He was a big guy, with a seventies moustache
and a beer gut. "He ran, right? You run with the lojack and you go back
to jail - no passing go, no two hundred bucks."
"Look, you Neanderthal," Jane started.
"Jane!" Lisbon warned. By now a larger crowd had gathered, along with another two squad cars. Fan-freaking-tastic.
"Look, I'm with the CBI," she said. She flashed her ID, dialing LaRoche at the same time. "I'm telling you, this is all a misunderstanding. Let him go."
Seventies 'stash just stared at her. "I can't just - "
"Yeah, actually, you can," she said. She gave them that steely look that used to make Tommy fold like a card table whenever he was giving her crap and she'd had enough. "You get in trouble, you put it on me. But I'm telling you, I've got this."
The cops looked at the guard, who nodded his okay. They uncuffed Jane and helped him to his feet, where he brushed off his clothes and looked indignant. LaRoche answered the phone. He sounded like he'd been roused from a dead sleep, though it wasn't even eleven o'clock.
The cops got back in their squad car and peeled out, obviously pissed. The crowd began to disperse. Jane looked like he was about to make a break for it, so she took the phone away from her ear and gave him her most threatening glare. Not that that ever made a bit of difference, where he was concerned.
"If you run again, I'll cuff you myself - and I won't be nearly as gentle."
He made a face, but at least he stopped moving.
"It's Agent Lisbon, sir," she said, finally addressing LaRoche. "There's been an incident at Jane's apartment building. You may hear from some people, but I just wanted to let you know I have everything under control. And I have something I'd like to bring in to the lab for
analysis."
"Is Jane all right?"
She was surprised at the question - and even more surprised at how sincere LaRoche sounded when he asked it.
"Yes, sir - he's just a little shaken up. He'll be fine."
Actually, Lisbon had no clue whether Jane would be fine or not. He definitely didn't look fine.
Once she was off the phone, she made the guard take Jane's monitoring device off his leg, and told him to go home. If she was gonna lose her job over this, might as well do it right, right? Then, she and Jane went back upstairs to his apartment.
Jane moved slow, like a little more weight was added to his shoulders with every step. She thought of the two of them in his apartment before all this happened - the dance he'd insisted on, the way he'd laughed…
He was different since he got out of jail - there was no denying that. Lisbon still couldn't figure out if this was just another Jane angle (which it probably was, who was she kidding?), or if something really had changed for him when he killed Red John. Against every sensible bone in her body, she'd wanted to believe things really were different. For his sake - and her sanity - it would be nice to think Jane was ready to join the human race again.
And now this.
"I'm gonna take this over to the crime scene guys," she told him once they were back outside his door, nodding toward the dollhouse. "They can dust for prints, check for DNA."
"They'll only find what she wants us to find."
"Maybe - maybe not, you don't know that. As far as you could tell, though…" she shifted, uncomfortable with where this conversation would lead.
"What?" Jane asked. "Is that what I found when Red John slaughtered my family?"
She met his eye. "We'll figure this out, Jane. You've just gotta give me a little time. Have some faith."
He nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked so weird without his three-piece suit. So… Human. She wasn't sure she cared for the change. He seemed more dangerous this way, somehow.
"Thank you," he said. His eyes slid from hers, back down to the miniature murder scene. "I'll go with you, if you don't mind. I'd like to take a closer look myself."
"Yeah, of course. Just get your stuff. I'll make sure the judge knows I okayed all this, so you don't get in trouble."
He barely acknowledged her words. Lisbon stood outside the door, listening while he grabbed a change of clothes and turned off the crappy little radio they'd been listening to before. When he came back out he was in his uniform - his hair a little wild, a little more scruff than usual, but still with the neatly pressed three-piece suit. He seemed like a different man.
They didn't say much of anything on the way to the CBI. Lisbon glanced Jane's way every so often, hoping she could draw him out again, but he was focused on the scene passing outside his passenger's side window. The whole thing sucked, as far as Lisbon was concerned - not just because there was apparently some lunatic out there making twisted little dollhouse homages to Red John, but because now
there was really no way in hell she could stay mad at Jane anymore. She'd been hoping to nurse that grudge a little longer. It was so much
easier to deal with Jane when she was pissed at him.
Now, though…
"So, I suppose I'm forgiven now," he said. Reading her mind, as usual.
"Because of this? Please," she said. "This might get you the sympathy vote from the rest of the team, but you've gotta try a lot harder if you want to get on my good side."
She glanced at him, and was rewarded with the tiniest flicker of a smile before he went back to staring out the window.
***
Brett Partridge was thrilled when Lisbon brought the dollhouse in to the lab. Lisbon had never actually seen Jane resort to violence before, but she figured if there was anything that could push him to it, this was it - on her orders, he stayed outside the room with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, peering inside the doorway.
"Whoa," Partridge said. "Look at the detail on this thing. I bet that's real blood in there, too."
Lisbon glanced at the door. Jane was leaning in the doorsill, his gaze following the forensics expert's every move.
"That's what we want you to look at," she said. "Check for DNA, prints, anything you can find."
"Weird that your guy chose this scene, huh?" Brett said.
Lisbon looked at him for a second, not sure what he was asking.
"Not something from the crime scene photos," he explained. "I mean - you look at the detail, the perspective, and it's almost like somebody was actually there, watching this play out. Hiding in a closet, looking in a window… It's sick, man."
He said 'sick' with a smile, his tone suggesting he was having way too much fun with this. A ghoul - wasn't that what Jane had called him once?
His words registered after a few seconds; Lisbon felt her stomach drop. She looked toward the door again.
Jane was gone.
"You'll put a rush on those results?"
Partridge shrugged. "I'll do my best, but money's tight these days, and time's tighter."
"Just make it happen."
She left before he could argue.
***
Lisbon found Jane in her office, sitting on the couch with a steaming cup of tea. He looked up when she came in.
"That man's a psychopath," he said. "I'm telling you - one day we're going to find sweet old women hacked to pieces in his basement."
"He's good at what he does."
"Of course - we're all good at what we're most passionate about. Doesn't make him any less of a lunatic, though."
It was midnight by now - most of the building dark, except for a couple of lights in the hallways, a random computer monitor, the red glow of an exit sign down the hall. Lisbon went to her desk and sat, but it felt weird being so far away given the questions she knew she'd need to ask. She stood once more. Walked stiffly back to the couch, and sat down beside Jane.
"Jane."
"You've seen the file?" he asked.
She looked at him uncertainly. "File?"
"My file - my family's file. The murder. You've seen the photos."
Right. That file.
"Yeah."
She paused, still not sure how to handle this. Dammit - why couldn't he just have normal-sized skeletons like everybody else on the planet? A thing for women's underwear, maybe a steamy affair with a second cousin or something?
"That wasn't a photo in the file," he said.
"It would be easy enough to imagine it, though," she said. "You know Red John was trying to torture you - it would've been natural for him to go a step further in his head, maybe play out how you'd react." Just the thought was enough to turn her stomach.
He stared at his tea cup. Lisbon had never known any men who drank tea, before Jane. Her father, all her brothers, uncles, cousins, every guy she'd ever dated - they were all coffee drinkers. Well… Coffee, or something stronger. She never would've imagined a guy could be attractive to her, with a little blue tea cup in his hand.
"Someone was there," he said, after a few seconds. He stared into space, seeing something Lisbon was pretty sure she wouldn't have survived. She was a fighter, sure, but… Jesus. Everybody has their limits.
"You don't know that, Jane."
"Of course I know that - that scene wasn't the product of someone's overactive imagination. It wasn't just some fantasy. I was there -
believe me, I know exactly what that room looked like. No one else could have known."
"So, what are you saying here?" Almost before the words were out of her mouth, she wished she hadn't asked.
"You really want me to spell it out for you, Lisbon? Red John was there. And maybe this Ellie Jennings was with him - or maybe he just took snapshots while I tried to put my wife and child back together again." He swallowed hard, his eyes locked on the wall. "But the fact remains… Red John stayed. He murdered my family, and then he lay in wait to watch my reaction. He was there the whole time."
***
By the time the rest of the team got in the next morning, Jane was asleep on the couch, and Lisbon was beginning to seriously question the wisdom of completely skipping a night's sleep. Once Jane had passed out, though, she'd taken advantage of the peace to pull his file. She'd gone back to the lab and compared the crime scene photos in Jane's file with the dollhouse Ellie Jennings had left, her skin crawling the whole time. Jane was right - not all of the details matched. But, like he'd said, it didn't look like this was some fantasy scenario - it looked like this had been the scene before the police got there, and someone had been there to see it firsthand.
When Rigsby and Van Pelt got in - within minutes of each other and smelling of the same soap, just like old times - Lisbon rounded them up and motioned them into the lab before they woke Jane, still fast asleep on her couch.
"What's up, boss?" Rigsby asked. He glanced back toward Jane's sleeping form, forehead furrowed. "What's Jane doing here?"
"Ssh - don't wake him. I need to show you guys something."
They followed her into the elevator and down to the basement level, where Brett Partidge and his lab were housed. It was just after eight o'clock but the day was in full swing, with agents around every corner; Lisbon was pretty sure she knew exactly what the water cooler talk would be about for the next week or so. When they got to Partridge's office, she could hardly contain her anger when she found Partridge with three agents - none of them remotely connected with crime scene investigation, and all of them attractive females - looking over the dollhouse.
"Agent Partridge, if you'll excuse us," she said coldly.
He gave the women a meaningful nod, and they high tailed it out of there. Partridge stood his ground, though.
"You can't throw me out of my own office."
"Do you have lab results for me? Fingerprints?"
"We just got the thing a few hours ago - "
"Then I don't need you here. And maybe I should remind you that this is an ongoing investigation and, as such, details should not be shared with anyone outside the immediate investigative team."
Rigsby and Van Pelt were still in the doorway; Lisbon could practically feel the curiosity coming off both of them. She waited for Partridge to get in some smartass parting shot, relieved when he stayed quiet. She wasn't sure she could restrain herself much longer.
When he was gone, Rigsby and Van Pelt came in and gravitated toward the dollhouse immediately.
"What is this?" Rigsby asked. "It's like the dollhouse from hell."
"Is that - " Van Pelt stopped short once she got a better look. "Oh my gosh. This is what Red John did?"
"Jeez, are you kidding me?" Rigsby stooped low to get a good look inside, peering in through the front door.
"Somebody left it outside Jane's door last night," Lisbon said.
"He must have freaked out," Van Pelt said. She turned away after a few more seconds, like she couldn't stand the sight of it anymore.
"He's pretty shaken up," Lisbon agreed. "I wanted to give you guys a heads-up, though - Jane thinks whoever sent this might have been in the house when…" She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. The night was catching up to her fast.
"He thinks Red John might have stuck around after he got done killing Jane's wife and daughter," she finished.
"Why?" Van Pelt looked horrified.
"To watch him fall apart," Rigsby said grimly.
Lisbon nodded. "There are a few differences between the crime scene photos and what's shown here. Jane says it's consistent with the way things played out."
"How does he know whoever this was didn't just fantasize the whole thing, working backward from the crime scene photos?" Van Pelt
asked.
"There are some things they only would have known if they'd been there," she said. Once Jane had suggested it, Lisbon had
gone back through. The differences she'd found between the scene in the dollhouse and the one shown in the crime scene photos was enough to make her sick.
Van Pelt started working through the same comparison, Rigsby peering over her shoulder.
"Oh my god," she said. Her eyes filled with tears.
"What?" Rigsby continued looking from the photos to the dollhouse, oblivious. "I'm not seeing it."
"Look at the way his daughter was found," she said. She handed him the photos and walked away.
Rigsby blanched. "Jane dressed them before he called the cops. Took out the…" He shook his head. "Jeez. Who does that to a kid?" He sat down heavily in Partridge's office chair. "So, you're saying Red John… What? Hid out in the closet or something and watched Jane find his family?"
His jaw hardened. "I'm sorry - you guys can feel however you want, but I'm glad he killed the bastard. If it'd been me, and somebody did something like this to the people I love…" His eyes settled on Van Pelt before they drifted away, still haunted. "I would've done the same thing. I'd probably go crazy first, but if it was the last thing I did, I'd make the bastard pay."
"Thank you for the vote of confidence," Jane said. Everyone turned on a dime, three faces fixed on his.
"There's no reason to look so guilty," he said easily. Only his eyes gave him away - flat and dull, just a hint of shock there.
"I just figured it'd be good if we were all on the same page," Lisbon said.
He nodded. "Of course."
All three of them stood awkwardly while Jane stared at the dollhouse. Finally, he cleared his throat.
"I'd like to take a closer look."
"Of course," Lisbon agreed. "Take as long as you need. We'll just be back in the bullpen."
"Rigsby, do you smell anything odd with this? Anything at all?" he asked, before they could leave.
Rigsby looked at him blankly. "Huh?"
"The smell… Just lean in, get a good whiff. Close your eyes."
Rigsby looked pleadingly toward Lisbon. She just shrugged, so the agent dutifully closed his eyes and leaned in close.
"It doesn't smell like anything."
"Don't be ridiculous - everything smells like something. Focus."
Rigsby looked self-conscious for a second or two before he leaned in again. A few seconds passed in silence while he sniffed the dollhouse like a hound dog trying to pick up a scent. Lisbon had the unacceptable urge to laugh out loud - another sure sign that she was way too tired.
"Well?" Jane finally prompted.
"Paint - I think part of this must've just been painted, not too long ago. And flowers."
"Flowers?" Jane asked. "Not perfume?"
Rigsby straightened and opened his eyes. "Nah - I don't think so. It smells kind of… I don't know, earthy."
"Van Pelt, you try," Jane ordered. He was still standing in the doorway. Despite everything, Lisbon felt a twinge of annoyance.
"Jane, maybe you should just smell it yourself," she said, trying to be at least a little bit gentle given the circumstances.
"No - I'd rather not, if you don't mind. Please. Grace…"
While Grace was sniffing massacred dolls and miniature furniture, Cho arrived on the scene.
"Hey - I was supposed to pick you up this morning," he told Jane the moment he saw him. "You could've called. Why's Van Pelt sniffing a dollhouse?"
Lisbon glanced at him. "Long story - I'll explain it in my office. Jane?"
He held up his hand, a signal to hang on. Van Pelt finally nodded.
"Wayne's right - it's not perfume, it smells like flowers. And dirt. A garden, maybe."
"Or a greenhouse?" Jane asked. He was watching them sharply. Waiting.
Van Pelt considered the question for a few seconds before she nodded. "It could, I guess - I'm not really sure, though. It's hard to say."
"Of course," Jane said. "Thank you for humoring me. I'll be with you all in a few minutes."
Rigsby, Van Pelt, and Cho filed out. Lisbon remained behind, however, watching as Jane slowly closed the distance between he and the dollhouse.
"If you need anything…" she said.
He didn't answer - just nodded, circling, his whole body tensed.
Lisbon left him.
Chapter 7 can be found here.