Hmmm i've seen almost every episode of this season twice. i just read a very odd theory. there's something very fishy about the way theory 12782 is a "fan fiction". how many fan fictions do we ever see on this website? and how many theories tie together loose ends from this season far so creatively. im not saying its right. 

but heres a warning. if you read this theory, consider there is a very, very, very small chance you are reading poilers

NOT A THEORY, A QUESTION

If Jane thinks that Red John is one of his suspects, and that he has 3 dots on his shoulder, what made him think that it is bertram or smith??? why not mcallister who got killed?? soo many questions i hope episode Red John answers them all... I think we are about to witness a big twist...

I've just watched the episode...!!!!OH MY GOD.

*Please don't ask me to spoil in the comments, because I won't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWYpReqi678&feature=c4-overview&list=UUamPGTREfS0YRJBkC7cBHPg

I hate to be wishy washy. Especially within 10 minutes of commenting on someones theory but that person's theory got me thinking...especially with how Heller and other writers have been toying with their words. Here is the writer from this last week about the explosion

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/mentalist-red-johns-identity-cbi-656671

Was it particularly difficult seemingly killing three Red John suspects -- Sheriff Tom McAllister, Visualize leader Bret Stiles and FBI agent Ray Haffner -- at the beginning of the hour? Was that always the plan?To be honest, that was one of the easiest things I had to come up with because Ken Woodruff wrote the episode before mine [titled "Fire and Brimstone"]. All I had to do was write, "Fade in. The house has blown up." I will say, fewer body parts made it in than were on-set that day, which was a personal regret of mine. I understand that you can't get everything out of life, but there was more than a foot there. Our show isn't normally that gory, but we wanted to make very clear that that was a human foot and there were dead bodies in there.

Now look at the italics and underlining. Is that sentence one that means..."some suspects were killed." Or does it just plainly say "there were dead bodies?" Because, as an earlier person mentioned, Jane could get cadavers and set up the whole thing. Everyone of those guys could be in on it...getting RJ. Jane finally had to go all out to beat RJ so he basically played his game and made the ruse so large that it would make RJ come out. 

Now, I will admit, I would normally call b.s. on these things because it makes it seem like the show jumped the shark. But the writers are perfectly riding the fence on what they give us. So yes those are body parts and yes they are dead bodies. But did it say those are those people's bodies? There were sheets all over the house covering furniture.

Sean Barlow, his voice, his apperance,  his ring in the in the promo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z77P7ebT0QI

Wait. I got it!
It all makes sense now.
CBS has done everything in their power to make us think that they goofed and let the cat out of the bag that Sheriff is RJ. Well, they'd have only goofed if he was. He isn't!

But he is still alive. No way he got burned to a crisp when he was standing with Smith, Bertram, and Jane and they all fine.

He escaped. He may even be helping Jane but that's beside the point.

I think the scenes we've seen with him in the upcoming episode. Running into glass window, running through cemetery, etc., isn't him running from Jane, but from either Bertram or Red John.

If Bertram is NOT Red John, then he is high ranking member of Blake. If he is, well, there you go.

I think Bertram could be RJ, but I think a better twist would be Michael Kirkland bc of the voice and the out-of-left-fieldness of it all.

So I think that while Sheriff definitely shows up in the next episode, his running and bullet holes are the work or Bertram or RJ, probably Bertram.

Either way, I think that either Bertram or Michael Kirkland is most definitely RJ.

We won't know for sure until Sunday!

I find Michael Kirkland as likely..... but there's just one thing that doesn't add up, Bob Kirkland clearly told Jane that his brother MET red john and changed because of it, so it kind of rules him out...unless it's like in star wars where obi tells luke that his father supposedly "died" but what he meant was that he had undergone a transformation, Anakin->vader, Michael Kirkland->Red John..hehe