The Mentalist - S1E1 - Pilot

Chapter 11

Later that night, Jane met with Dr Wagner in his office for a chitchat. This was the meeting that Jane had built up in the past few days. Soon, the crowning moment of his plan would come. But before that, he had to survive this conversation.

"So... why is it you can't sleep?" Wagner asked the uncomfortable-looking Jane.

"Because I can't get the good pills before talking to a doctor."

"Hm. And you don't like talking to doctors."

"Meh, you know, they always wanna be the smartest person in the room, don't they? When in fact that's me, obviously."

Both of them chuckled for different reasons. A few moments of staring and thinking later, Dr Wagner replied.

"You protect your core self very fiercely. What do you think is the reason for that?"

Jane chuckled again. "You know, this is exactly how I imagined it would be. You gonna ask me about my mother?"

"Do you want me to ask you about your mother?"

"I just wanna sleep."

"So what is it that keeps you awake?"

This comment slowly wiped the smile off Jane's face, as he sunk into the depths of his memories.

— Flashback, 5 years earlier —

"What's his name? Red John?" Davis says.

"That's right, Red John. Uh, he's killed at least eight women that we know of. The police asked me to try and get a psychic fix on him to see if I could get a sense of who this man is."

"Uh, how do do that exactly, get a psychic fix on someone?" Davis asked in a theatrical manner.

"Well, Davis, true demonic evil burns like fire. It-it burns with a terrible cold, dark flame. I force myself to look into that flame and I see an image of the evildoer. In this case, Red John. He's an ugly, tormented little man. A lonely soul. Sad. Very sad."

Later one night, when Jane drove back home and walked up to the bedroom in his grand mansion, he found the door closed, with a printed note stuck to the door. It read:

"Dear mister Jane,

I do not like to be slandered in the media, especially by a dirty money-grubbing fraud.

If you were a real psychic, instead of a dishonest little worm, you wouldn't need to open the door to see what I've done to your lovely wife and child."

Jane slowly cracked open the bedroom door and found the classic Red John smiley face painted on the wall.

— —

"Mr Jane?" Dr Wagner brought Jane back into the real world. "What is it that keeps you awake?"

The actor in Jane took hold of him at this point. He sighed in despair, as he mentally concocted a story for the good doctor.

"Um... You know, when I was a boy, we had a farm. It's a lot of work. I was kind of a lazy kid."

"Yes?"

"I'd always be trying to get my little brother Jimmy to get my chores for me. One day, I promised him a dollar if he'd cut the firewood. Well, he opened up an artery in his leg on the saw and he bled to death... died... doing my chores for me."

"You know... that's almost exactly the same thing that happened to Johnny Cash."

"Is it really? Wow. That's spooky."