Chapter 11: The Devil’s Candle
The department store had the harsh, unforgiving light of a surgical theatre. Teresa moved through the aisles with a predatory efficiency, the stroller basket and a handheld plastic bin filling with items chosen for utility and anonymity. For Beth: a package of plain white onesies, a two-pack of soft cotton sleepers with tiny ducks on them, extra diapers, a stack of rice cereal jars, a bulb syringe, a travel-sized bottle of baby wash. For herself: two packs of cheap cotton underwear, a three-pack of socks, a simple navy blue long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of nondescript grey sweatpants. For Patrick, as per his note: a pack of white boxer briefs, black socks, a heather-grey hoodie and a pair of loose-fitting charcoal drawstring pants. She added a six-pack of canned chicken noodle soup, a plastic bowl, and a spoon.
At the checkout, the teenage cashier yawned as she scanned the items, her eyes lingering for a second on the holstered gun on Teresa’s hip before flicking away with practiced disinterest. “Long night?” the girl mumbled, shoving everything into two large plastic bags.
“Something like that,” Teresa said, handing over cash. The weight of the bags cut into her palms as she hooked them over the stroller handles. Beth, who had been dozing, began to fuss, a thin, reedy sound that tightened the muscles in Teresa’s neck.
“Shhh, sweetheart. We’re almost done.”
But the whining intensified into full-throated, hungry cries as Teresa pushed the stroller along the cracked sidewalk toward the distant glow of the bus depot. The sound echoed off the storefronts, a beacon of need. Panic, cold and sharp, needled her ribs. A crying baby on a late-night bus was a spotlight. It invited offers of help, questions, remembered faces. It was exactly what they couldn’t afford.
Her eyes scanned the street. A few blocks down, between a pawn shop and a shuttered cafe, a modest spire rose against the night sky, a simple cross illuminated by a single floodlight. St. Bartholomew’s.
She altered course without a second thought, pushing the stroller faster as Beth’s cries hit a crescendo. The heavy wooden door yielded with a groan. The familiar, enveloping silence of a church after hours hit her first, then the scent—old wood, beeswax, faint dust, and the lingering ghost of incense. It was the smell of her childhood, of countless Sundays with her mother and brothers, of whispered prayers after her mother’s death. A deep, automatic calm seeped into her bones.
Just inside the vestibule, she stopped. She adjusted the nursing tank under her shirt, pulled a lightweight cotton blanket from the diaper bag, and draped it over her shoulder. Prepared, she pushed the inner door open.
The sanctuary was dark save for the ruby glow of the sanctuary lamp near the altar and the votive candles flickering in a side alcove. She pushed the stroller quietly down the left aisle, its wheels whispering on the stone floor. About halfway down, she slipped into a pew, parking the stroller at its end.
Sitting, she unclipped Beth, who was now working herself into a frantic, hiccupping state. “Okay, okay, I know,” Teresa murmured, settling the baby in the crook of her arm. She arranged the blanket for modesty, guided Beth to nurse, and let out a breath she felt she’d been holding for days.
The desperate sucking sounds gradually softened into rhythmic, contented gulps. Teresa leaned her head back against the hard wood of the pew and closed her eyes. The immense quiet of the space was a physical presence, holding her. She traced the familiar features of the statuary in the dim light—the sorrowful face of Mary, the agonized Saint Sebastian. This was a place of suffering acknowledged and sanctified. Her own fear, her guilt, her bone-deep exhaustion—they weren’t out of place here. They could be laid down, if only for a moment.
She began to pray. Not the formal prayers of her youth, but a silent, desperate stream of consciousness directed at the vague, comforting darkness of the altar.
Please. Let him be safe at that diner. Let the IDs be there. Let us get to San Diego. Keep Beth healthy. Keep her hidden. Forgive me for… for everything. For the anger. For the fear. For not being stronger. Wrap Patrick in something… something that shields him from himself. From what he might do.
Her hand stroked Beth’s soft hair. The baby’s eyes were closed, her lashes dark fans against her cheeks. Her sucking slowed to a sleepy, occasional flutter.
She’s so innocent. She doesn’t know any of this. She just knows she’s hungry and tired and loved. Let that be enough. Let my love be a wall. Let it be enough.
Teresa kept her head bowed, her profile hidden. She was just another shadow in a church full of them. A mother nursing her child. A woman with trouble. Nothing unusual. She let the sanctified stillness seep into her, a temporary antidote to the corrosive vigilance that had been her life for days.
Time dissolved. Beth finished, her mouth going slack. Teresa shifted her gently, patting her back until a soft bubble of air escaped. She cradled her against her shoulder, rocking slowly, side to side, in the ancient rhythm. The only sounds were the faint hum of electricity and the soft sigh of Beth’s breath.
She must have dozed. A sudden chill made her jerk awake. An hour had passed. Beth was deeply asleep, a warm, heavy weight. Moving with exquisite care, Teresa placed her back in the stroller, bundling her in the blanket. She tucked the plastic shopping bags around Beth’s feet to secure them.
She genuflected toward the altar out of ingrained habit, her knee touching the cold floor, then pushed the stroller back up the aisle. The wooden door shut behind her with a solid, final thud, sealing the peace inside.
The bus depot was a bubble of stale air and fluorescent glare. Teresa kept her gaze forward, ignoring the weary glances from a man in a stained jacket and a woman clutching a duffle bag. She bought a one-way ticket to San Diego from a clerk behind thick plexiglass, paid in cash, and accepted the slip of paper without a word.
Their bus was called. As she maneuvered the stroller toward the loading bay, Beth began fussing again. Teresa’s heart hammered against her ribs. Please, not now. Just be quiet a little longer. She jiggled the stroller, offering a pacifier Beth angrily rejected.
“Traveling with little ones is the hardest,” a woman’s voice said, too close.
Teresa turned, her hand instinctively moving closer to her hip. A middle-aged woman with a kind, tired smile stood nearby, holding a small suitcase. “The noise just gets to them, all the strange lights and smells.”
“Yes,” Teresa said, her voice clipped. She angled her body, putting herself between the woman and the stroller.
“I had four. You just learn to block it out.” The woman’s eyes drifted over Teresa, missing nothing—the practical clothes, the gun, the lack of luggage except for plastic bags. A flicker of something—curiosity, concern—crossed her face.
Teresa gave a tight, meaningless smile and pushed the stroller forward into the harsh yellow light of the loading bay, away from the woman’s searching eyes, the crying of her child ringing in her ears like an alarm.
The bus engine coughed to life with a diesel shudder. Teresa settled into a window seat near the back, the stroller folded and stowed over her head and her bags between her knees and the seat in front. Beth’s cries softened to whimpers, then ceased as the vehicle’s motion lulled her, tucked into her car seat on the seat beside Teresa. The woman with the kind smile took a seat several rows ahead and did not look back. Teresa watched the depot’s lights slide away, then the city, until there was only the black ribbon of highway and the rhythmic strobe of oncoming headlights. She placed a hand on the bundled form beside her, feeling the rise and fall, and finally allowed herself to close her eyes.
The Skyline Diner was a beacon of fake cheer in the industrial darkness, its chrome trim and neon script glowing like a stage set. Patrick’s rental car crunched to a halt on the gravel at 1:28 AM. He had used the time after Teresa left to put his Citron in longterm secure parking and rent a more nondescript vehicle. The air outside was cold and smelled of distant fertilizer. He pushed through the glass door, a bell jingling with pathetic enthusiasm.
The place was a relic. Red vinyl booths, a checkerboard floor, a long counter with stools bolted down. A tired waitress in a pink uniform wiped a Formica table with a rag. A fry cook’s silhouette was visible through the pass-through, grease smoke hazing the air. Two other patrons, a trucker reading a paper and a man in coveralls staring into a coffee mug, occupied opposite ends of the room.
Patrick’s eyes went immediately to the fourth booth from the door. His breath caught.
On the table, centered perfectly on a paper placemat, a single red votive candle burned. Its flame was unwavering in the still, greasy air.
Time seemed to slow, the hum of the refrigerator compressing into a high-pitched whine in his ears.The candle. There was no reason for it to be there. It was completely out of place. It was on the exact table that the documents were taped under. That wasn’t a coincidence, it was left for him. A message written in fire. He had been here. Red John had been here. Which meant he knew about the meet. It only took Patrick a few seconds to realize why it was a votive candle. Teresa was Catholic.
He’s seen them.
The thought was an ice pick to his sternum. Patrick moved, his body operating on a cold, automatic precision that bypassed the screaming in his mind. He slid into the booth, his back to the room. His fingers brushed the underside of the table.There. A manila envelope, secured with duct tape. He ripped it free, stuffed it inside his jacket.
His hand closed around the base of the glass votive. The wax was warm, almost hot. He snuffed the flame with his thumb and forefinger, a sizzle of pain he didn’t feel, and pocketed the candle.
He approached the counter. The waitress looked up, her eyes dull. “Coffee?”
“Did you see who left the candle in that booth?” His voice was calm, too calm, a flat pane of glass.
She blinked, slow. “Candle? No, honey. That wasn’t there when I cleared that table last. Must’ve been while I was in back.”
Patrick turned to the pass-through. “You see anyone at that booth in the last hour?”
The cook, a man with a sweat-stained t-shirt and a permanent squint, flipped a burger without looking up. “People come, people go. I cook. I don’t host.”
No one saw anything. Of course. Red John was a ghost who made other people blind.
Patrick was back in the car, the engine roaring to life, gravel spraying before the door was fully shut. The envelope sat on the passenger seat like a toxic companion. He didn’t open it. The IDs were irrelevant now. The candle was the only document that mattered.
He drove. The highway unspooled under a black, starless sky. The rational part of his mind, the part that was a scalpel, began its work. The candle meant proximity. It meant Red John had been close enough to Teresa and Beth to draw a connection, to make a point about watching. But a candle in a diner wasn’t a crime scene photo. It was a taunt. If he had harmed them, there would be more. There would be a lock of hair. A piece of clothing.
She prays so sweetly.
The note, when he found it tucked inside the envelope with the driver’s licenses and social security cards, was typed on cheap printer paper. It stopped his heart for three full beats. He forced air into his lungs, forced his eyes to track the words again.
Does she know the Devil watches?
The church. She’d gone to a church.He knew her. When stressed, when scared, she sought stone and silence and ritual. It was her ground wire. Red John had seen her there. He’d been close enough to see her pray, to see Beth. The bus depot was public, but a church at night was intimate, vulnerable. Rage, white and pure, flooded Patrick’s system, tightening his hands on the wheel until the plastic creaked.
He didn’t slow until he hit the city limits. He went to the bus depot first, a different, colder panic driving him. He shoved a twenty through the slot to the night clerk, a man with the watery eyes of someone who’d seen every kind of leaving.
“A woman. Late thirties.Severe, pretty. Armed. With a baby in a stroller.Last night. Did she buy a ticket?”
The clerk peered at him, then at the twenty. He coughed, a wet sound. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember her. The kid was fussing. Bought a one-way to San Diego on the 11:15.Boarded. Looked like she was carrying the world in two plastic bags.”
The relief was so physical it felt like vomiting. His knees buckled slightly. He braced a hand on the counter. They were on the bus. They were en route. They were gone from here, from the place Red John had marked.
He walked the surrounding blocks, his head pounding. The meaning of the candle coiled in his gut, a sickening puzzle. The church was the key. He needed to see it. He found Saint Bartholomew’s within fifteen minutes, its locked doors and darkened windows like a sealed tomb. He pressed his forehead against the cool wood of the main door, imagining her inside, on a pew, head bowed. A target.
She prays so sweetly.
He checked his watch. The bus was a twelve-hour journey. She had maybe seven hours until arrival, until she could safely use the burner phone at a new location. Seven hours of radio silence. Seven hours for the taunt to curdle into action.
He found a motel two blocks over, a single-story U-shaped building with rust-stained air conditioners dripping water onto cracked concrete. He paid for a room with cash, a space that smelled of bleach and mildew. He placed the stolen votive candle on the rickety desk.
He sat on the edge of the bed, the springs groaning. The note lay beside the candle. Does she know the Devil watches?
It wasn’t just a taunt. It was an invitation. A summons to the oldest game. Red John had shown him his hand—he was watching, he was close, he was enjoying the view. But he’d left the IDs. He was allowing the game to continue. He wanted Patrick to scheme, to continue the chase.
Patrick’s mind, starved of sleep and saturated with adrenaline, began to clear, to cool, to calcify into a single, sharp point. Drawing Red John out wasn’t enough. He needed to draw him in. He needed to build a trap the devil would walk into willingly, believing it was his own design.
He had seven hours to invent a sin compelling enough to be a sacrament. He picked up the candle, rolled the cool glass between his palms, and started to plan.
The plan that formed in the motel’s damp silence wasn't a series of steps but a feeling, a specific texture of inevitability he needed to create. He needed to become a wound Red John couldn't resist pressing. He slept for ninety minutes, a shallow, twitching dive into a black pool, and woke with the taste of copper in his mouth.
When the burner phone finally rang, the sound was like a bone snapping. He stared at it for two full rings, the plastic shell suddenly monstrous in his hand. He saw Teresa in that church pew, head bowed, Beth a soft weight against her. He saw the shadow beside the flickering votives, holding their lives in his hands.
He pressed answer. “You’re there.”
“Yeah. We’re in. It’s a two-room suite, like you said. It’s… fine.” Teresa’s voice was sandpaper rough from the bus, but underneath it was a thin wire of relief. It lasted a second. “Jane? What’s wrong?”
He could hear Beth making soft cooing sounds in the background. The normalcy of it was a physical ache. He said nothing.
“Jane. Talk to me. Right now.” Her tone shifted, agent-mode slicing through the fatigue. “If something puts my daughter in danger, I need to know. I will vanish. You will never find us.”
“The IDs are useless,” he said, the words dropping like stones.
A pause. He could picture her face, the calculations beginning behind her eyes. “The quality was bad? The photos?”
“Red John was there first.” Patrick closed his eyes. “He left a votive candle on the table that the envelope was underneath.”
The line hissed with empty distance. “A votive. That’s… that’s part of some plan of yours, isn’t it?” Her voice was suddenly desperate, seeking the old Jane, the manipulator who was always three moves ahead. “This is you baiting him. Tell me this is you.”
“It’s not.” The flatness of his denial extinguished that hope instantly.
“Then he may have this number. That phone is no longer safe. Get rid of it” Teresa responded urgently.
Patrick shakes his head, even though Teresa can’t actually see it. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” He can hear the disbelief in her voice.
“Lisbon, if he was going to kill you he would have done it at the church.”
He was silent for a beat too long, and in that second Teresa put it together. A sharp, indrawn breath, and then she spoke again, her voice tinged with dread. “The church. He saw us at the church?”
“Yes.”
“But how?” The question was a whisper, ricocheting with possibilities. “The street was empty. I was careful. How did he find us there?”
Patrick let the hopelessness he felt colour his words. “Transit camera maybe, if he’s monitoring feeds. Or he was just… out. Hunting. He might have followed you from the bus depot. He might have been in the next pew.” Each suggestion was a barb, making the threat feel omnipresent, inescapable.
The silence stretched, taut and terrible. He could almost hear her mind racing, discarding options, finding none.
Her next question, when it came, was the crucial one. It held not just fear, but a detective’s cold curiosity. “Then why didn’t he kill us? He was right there. In a closed, quiet space.”
This was the heart of it. The game. Patrick leaned his forehead against the cold motel wall. “Because you’re not at the centre of his game. He sees this as being between him and me. You and Beth… you’re set dressing now. Atmosphere.” He swallowed, hating the words. “He wants to keep me in the game. If he hurts you, really hurts you, I might… break. If I get close to the two of you I might quit. Move on. He can’t have that. So as long as you two don’t pull me off the board, he’s decided to let you be. For now.”
“For now,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do?” Her voice was steadier now, bracing for his answer.
“I’m going to meet him. I’m going to try to end it.”
Another pause. He could see her, clenching the phone in her hand, her knuckles white. “And if you can’t? If it’s a trap and you can’t end it?”
“Then I’ll reassure him.” Patrick’s eyes opened, fixed on the blank wall. “I’ll prove I’m still playing. That I’m more committed than ever. That’s the only other move.”
“No.” The word was immediate, fierce. “That’s suicide. You call the police. Right now. You call Cho, you call Rigsby, you give them the location, you let them handle it.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“I can’t, Teresa!” The emotion finally ripped through, raw and ragged. “Don’t you see? Bringing them in, it’s a violation of the rules. He’ll see it as me forfeiting. And then the only move left for him is to burn down the set dressing. To make a point I can’t ignore.”
He heard her breath hitch, a swallowed sob. She knew he was right. It was the monstrous logic that had governed their lives for years.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the apology encompassing everything—the church, the diner, the motel room, the bed in her house a lifetime ago. “For all of it. Every second of it.”
“Patrick, don’t you—”
“Tell Beth I love her,” he said, the sentence coming out in a rush. “Please.”
He ended the call. He pulled the battery from the burner phone, then did the same with the new prepaid. He sat on the edge of the bed, the silence in the room absolute and screaming. The plan was in motion. He had just handed Red John the perfect lever: a man saying goodbye.
Now he had to make himself findable. He picked up the blank votive candle, the lighter fluid, and the knife. He had a different message to send, one written not in typed words, but in fire and blood. He had to build an altar the devil would recognize as his own.