Mini Bang Fic:
Title: Resurrection
Rating: T for themes
Summery: Just another murder in another California town...or is it?
Authors Note: Written for the Mentalist Big Bang 2011/2012. THis is a mini bang. Word count ~1,500. Special thanks to sprl1199 for the wonderful beta and miss_peg for the cheer leading and the art. Art can be found here.
Resurrection
The wind stirred the tress, rustling the leaves. It was a nice evening. Clouds drifted across the moon causing shadows to disappear momentarily and then reappear. He’d been watching her for a week now-her and the others-but tonight was her turn.
She was lucky; they all were.
He’d not planned to do this, not yet. He’d orchestrated the whole thing with that idiot at the mall: had the guard steal the gun and cell phone. That charlatan had even gotten charged with murder. But then he’d gotten off, which was just frustrating and beyond idiotic. Who in their right mind would acquit a man of any wrongdoing when he admits to killing someone!
But that wasn’t the reason he was here tonight. He was here because Mr. Jane had taken his, his¸ Rosalie to see that mad man. To feel his face. He might not come to visit her anymore-he’d gotten too close, too attached-but she was still his. And Mr. Jane had violated her beyond what he deemed acceptable OR he was willing to overlook.
And that was why he was standing in the shadow of this seemingly normal house in a seemingly normal neighborhood in California. It was a bit further than he would have liked-murder as a message being so crass and unoriginal-but this would do. This would get their attention; let them know that they had sinned by bringing in Rosalie.
He waited for the car to pull out of the driveway. This woman’s husband worked the overnight shift. He wouldn’t be home for the next eight hours, and when he came back, there would be a present waiting for him: another soul waiting to be enlightened by his intervention.
He watched as the car drove out of sight before making his way to the back of the house. He knew that he would be able to shimmy open the back door.
The house was quiet, just the way he liked. He made his way down the hall, silently pushed open the door and walked in. The woman was in bed-he could only assume she was sleeping. He walked up to the bed, leaned over the woman and covered her mouth with his hand. As the women woke up and tried to scream, he easily subdued her.
This was going to be good.
~*~
Lisbon smiled as she pulled into the gates of the CBI building. The sun was shining, and all was right in the world. Or at least, in her corner of it.
It had been over a month since Jane had mentioned Red John and the possibility that he might still be alive. Sure there was a lingering doubt in the back of her mind (Jane was right more often than not after all), but he had never been logical when it came to Red John, so she tried not to think about it.
She walked into the bullpen and smiled at the members of her team that were already there.
“Good morning!” she called out smiling as she walked to her office. This was going to be a good day; she could feel it. She sat at her desk and began to work on the final touches for some of the cases that the team had wrapped up recently.
“Boss, we’ve got a case,” Cho said, popping his head into her office a few moments later.
“Alright, tell the team to pack up.” She picked up a few files that she had pulled out. “Have you seen Jane this morning?”
“Not yet, want me to give him a call?”
“No, I’ll call him and have him meet us at the crime scene.” She picked up the phone to call him as Cho walked out.
She frowned when the phone went straight to voice mail. She left a message anyway hoping that he was simply screening calls, but having a feeling that he wasn’t.
The crime scene was a few hours from Sacramento. She struggled to figure out why the team had been sent there: it was a standard home invasion robbery gone wrong in a not-too-small town in central California. There must be a political connection, she thought as she absently checked her phone. She’d called their erstwhile consultant twice more while they were on the road; both times his phone went to voice mail. The closer they got to the crime scene, the more worried she got.
The house that they finally pulled up in front of looked like every other house on the street: well trimmed lawn, pale colored paint, two stories, two car garage. If it weren’t for the yellow police tape and the mass of police cars parked around it, there would be nothing to differentiate it from any other house near it.
A feeling of apprehension was hanging in the air, and there seemed to be a lot of tension from the officers that were outside. Lisbon noticed that there seemed to be a lot of cops for a homicide, even one in a place that didn’t usually see violent crime. That was never a good sign.
As they made their way into the house there was an odd silence. Usually there was talking, even joking, at crime scenes. Anything to keep the horror of the crime from getting to the officers too much. But here there was none of that. What little conversation there was, was hushed and hanging around the edges of the room.
“Are you with the CBI?” A plain clothes officer asked, walking up to the team.
“Yes, Agent Teresa Lisbon, and this is my team. What’s wrong?” She didn’t see a point in beating around the bush.
He looked at her and sighed. “No hiding anything from you guys is there? The victim’s husband, George, works the night shift as a security guard. When he came home this morning, he said that Deborah, that’s the victim, wasn’t up like she usually is. He went up stairs to see if she was all right and, well…You better come see for yourself.”
They followed the conservatively dressed man up the stairs. He seemed to drag his feet as if he had no desire to go back to the murder scene. At the top of the stairs he turned to the only door that was closed. He took a deep breath and pushed open the door, standing aside so that the rest of the team could see inside.
Lisbon didn’t have to look long before she turned and walked to the other end of the hall. The rest of the team quickly followed.
“There’s no way. Jane…he shot him!” Rigsby said in hushed disbelief at glancing back at the still open door.
“Maybe it’s a copy cat?” Grace said, ever the optimist.
“Any one heard form Jane?” Lisbon asked, worry in her voice. She was the only one who knew that Jane clamed Red John was still alive. She hadn’t believed him. She’d like to believe that it was a copy cat, but there was no way. It was too perfect to have been anything but the real thing.
“No, not yet.” Cho said, not looking in the open door way.
And then, almost as if they had summoned him, Jane came up the stairs. He saw the team standing there, white as ghosts, before turning and looking at the open door way. The color drained from his face, he looked like he was going to faint.
Lisbon rushed toward him at the same time as he turned and ran down the stairs, back outside.
She caught up to him in the bushes, dry heaving.
“I knew he wasn’t dead, but that…I never expected…”
“I didn’t believe you. I didn’t want to. I wanted him to be dead, Jane. I wanted him to be long-gone.” She stood close to him, not touching, but being there just in case.
And she wanted to sob. She wanted to cry. For the broken man in front of her and the man who had lost his wife last night. For everyone else that would come up against the monster and fail. And she wanted to tell Jane that they would find him, that this woman would be the last one to die, but she knew it was an empty promise.
They wouldn’t be able to stop him. They had come close so many times had they come close-but still he eluded them.
And so they stood outside a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood while the perfect serial killer was across the street with the rest of the neighbors watching. And he was laughing inside. They would never find him. He would always win.
Always.