Red 1-2-3 (25 page)

Her hands fumbled with the lock and she almost passed out when she heard a loud, blaring noise coming from somewhere close, but from some different world.

She gasped. Electric shock coursed through her body. She dropped the keys to the floor. She staggered backward like someone shot with a gun or struck hard across the face, almost falling. She had to seize the countertop to keep her balance. She could feel sweat on her forehead, and she gasped out a small, terrified gurgle. The noise sounded again.

Car horn
.

As promised, the auto service had arrived.

178

22

Jordan maneuvered along rows of well-worn texts in the school’s library.

She found many books about the rise of the Ottoman Empire or root causes of the First World War. There were entire shelves devoted to the Reformation and endless volumes assessing the Founding Fathers or the Great Depression. There was precious little about how to avoid being a murder victim.

She felt a little crazy as she wandered up and down the stacks looking for some breezy, cheery title like
So, You Don’t Want to Be a Homicide Victim?: Twelve Easy Steps You Can Take at Home to Avoid Becoming Another
Statistic.

Murder as a weight loss program,
she imagined.

So far, her research had primarily been concerned with trying to understand famous crimes so she could glean some sort of “anti-information”

from them. Her reasoning was simple: If she understood what bad guys did, then perhaps she could avoid making the same mistakes their victims had. She had read about the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti and the bank-robbing-and-murder sprees of John Dillinger. Billy the Kid and the 179

JOHN KATZENBACH

twenty-one notches on his Colt revolver had fixed her attention, as had Charles Manson, who might not have actually killed anybody, but was regarded as an infamous murderer. She had surveyed the fiction shelves and found some Agatha Christie, which seemed quaint and dated, and some John le Carré, although she felt only slightly like a spy operating in shadowy worlds and didn’t think his books could help her. Elmore Leonard might have been more useful, and maybe George Higgins, but she saw they seemed mostly about mobsters in Florida and Boston, and that wasn’t really what interested her, because the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t some Mafia type or low-rent gang sort. There was even a shelf containing a relentless bunch of books with the word
prey
splashed sensationally and unapologetically across each title page, and though she felt this was what she was trying to avoid becoming, she didn’t feel these books would teach her very much.

She took her laptop to a corner of the library where there were small cubicles for students to use preparing term papers or researching English class essays. She did a Google search for
stalking
and came up with over forty million entries in less than a second. She scanned some of these, from what appeared to be government or police organizations. They didn’t help either.

Each began with the eminently wise admonition to “limit contact with the obsessive personality.”
Great,
she thought.
That’s a big goddamn help.

Her problem stemmed from the fact that all the connections between her and the Big Bad Wolf had been his to begin with. It simply wasn’t the same as an estranged boyfriend or a deranged classmate or coworker. On the one hand, the Wolf was completely anonymous. On the other, he was so close she could feel hot breath against her neck.

And none of the websites—like none of the books on killing—gave her the slightest idea what to do next.

So,
Jordan thought,
you are sort of on your own and not on your own at
the same time, because there’s always Red One and Red Two.

She looked across the library. There was an assistant librarian at a desk in the corner and perhaps a half-dozen other students either wandering 180

RED 1–2–3

through the stacks or hunkered down with a pile of books. The assistant librarian was a middle-aged woman bent over a copy of
Cosmopolitan
and obviously killing the last few minutes before she could chase the students from their research and lock up. The students were bookish types who would have been ashamed to sneak some unattributed Wikipedia information into whatever paper they were writing, a practice universally frowned upon by the faculty but regularly employed by almost the entirety of the student body.

She knew the Wolf wasn’t there. It made no difference. He had created the impression that he was always close by, as if he was in the next cubicle, smirking behind a stack of research materials as he watched her.

She asked herself,
How can I tell when I’m safe and when I’m not?

This question reverberated within her. She stood up sharply, pushed all her books aside, slipped her computer into her backpack, and walked quickly out of the library. On the steps, surrounded by early night, she realized that the Wolf could be there. Or could not.

Uncertainty dogged her every stride.

She hunched her shoulders against the chill and headed back to her dormitory. She expected to pass another night neglecting her assignments and tossing fitfully as sleep tortured her.

I can’t run away. I can’t hide. Just the opposite. I have to get close enough so
I can see him clearly.

Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.
The word repeated in her head like an unwanted melody, so much so that she almost missed the sound of her cell phone ringing. She reached first for the throwaway that Karen had given her. But it was her other phone buzzing.

Mom? Dad?
she thought, knowing that it wouldn’t be.

Sarah was also outside in the early evening, letting cold air flow steadily over her, but not really feeling the chill.
Remarkable,
she thought,
how a
little bit of terror keeps you warm.

She had been unable to remain inside her house. The ever-present television set had failed to distract her. Memories and fears had coalesced into 181

JOHN KATZENBACH

a stew of anxiety, and she had known she had to do something, but was unable to think of what that something might be.

Go to the movies? Ridiculous.

Go out to dinner alone? Don’t be stupid.

Head to a local bar to drink? That would be really smart.

So, for lack of any other idea, thinking that it was incredibly foolish to make herself so vulnerable but unable to withstand the buildup of tension within her, she had tossed on a pair of jogging shoes and taken a walk.

Up one block she traveled, down the next, then across a few streets, as haphazardly as possible, with no fixed direction. She had passed a few homes where once she had visited friends and neighbors, but she did not stop.

From time to time she had come upon other people, usually out exercising a dog, but on almost every occasion she had hunched up her shoulders and buried her head and neck into her coat and refused to make eye contact.

She did not think that some businessman home from work at the office and taking Fido or Spot out for an evening bathroom break would turn into the Big Bad Wolf, but she also knew that this possibility was as likely as any.

Why wouldn’t some guy walking his mutt be a killer?
In fact, the only people she discounted were those whose dogs were irrepressible and had that dog-demand and dog-need to greet any stranger on the street with a wag and a sniff. And then, after roughing up the ears and stroking the neck of the third such dog that accosted her despite the apologies and admonitions of its owner, she abruptly asked herself:
Why wouldn’t a killer have a friendly dog?

The idea that
it
didn’t seem right
hardly comforted her.

She half-hoped the falling night would make her a poor target. The other half within her hoped that the Big Bad Wolf would just seize that moment to end things. It was almost as if resolution was more important than life.

She was unaware of how long she walked. The blocks stretched into miles. The neighborhood changed, then changed again. She turned first one way, then the next, and finally, feet starting to complain with raw blisters, she turned back and limped her way home. By the time she stood outside her home, she was breathing hard and exhausted, which she considered a good thing. Her knees ached a bit and for the first time she felt cold.

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RED 1–2–3

She did not immediately enter. Instead, Sarah stood beneath her entranceway light, door key in hand.
Maybe he broke in while I was out,
just like he does at Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house, so he can
wait comfortably inside for me.

She shrugged and slid the key into the lock. For an instant she felt as if she had exhausted all the fears she could hold within her, the same way there always comes a point when one can cry no more tears. From inside, she suddenly heard her home phone ringing.

No one had called her in months.

Karen had stayed behind long after office hours were finished for the day. The nursing staff, the receptionist, and even the night janitor had all departed. A solitary lamp threw shadows against the wall.

She remained at her desk, deep in erratic thoughts.

That she was always scared was a given.
But how scared should I be?
Like the “pain” scale on the wall of her office, she thought she should be able to rate her fear.
Right now, I’m at 8. In the comedy club I was at 9. I wonder
what 10 will feel like.

Instead, she started to repeat over and over, “Red One, Red One, Red One,” in a low, raspy, but singsong voice that sounded like she was developing a common cold, when she knew that it was more tension that had stripped her throat of melody.

She looked up at the ceiling and realized that the words sounded eerily similar to the little boy’s refrain of “
Redrum, redrum, redrum
”
from the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of Stephen King’s novel
The Shining.

So, Karen tried to run the two together. “Red One,
redrum,
” she said out loud.

Karen had just given herself an inner push, trying to energize weakened muscles and frayed tendons into pulling together to get up and head home, when her desktop phone rang.

Her first instinct was to ignore it. Whatever inquiry from whatever patient could go to the answering service, who would inform the caller to dial 911 if it was life-threatening or else to call back during regular office hours.

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But, hell, you’re here,
she told herself.
This is your job. Someone’s sick.

Answer the damn phone and help them.
She reached out and picked up the receiver and answered, “Medical offices. Doctor Jayson speaking.”

She heard nothing but silence on the other end.

The absence of sound can be far worse than any scream.

Red One froze at her desk.

A few minutes later . . .

Red Two nearly lost her balance and had to slam back against a wall to keep from falling to the floor.

A few minutes later . . .

Red Three stood stock still as darkness flooded around her.

None heard anything other than breathing for the first few seconds.

Each was nearly overcome with the desire to hang up or throw the phone across the room or into the night or rip it from the wall socket. They did not do any of these things, although Red Three cocked her arm and nearly let loose, before slowly returning her cell phone to her ear.

Each Red waited for the person on the other end to either say something or hang up. The time seemed fierce, relentless.

Each truly expected something frightening, a disembodied cold voice that said, “
Soon,
” or “
I’m coming for you,
” or even some demonic laugh right out of a Hollywood B movie.

But none of these words or noises came. The quiet merely persisted, as if swelling in timbre and reaching a crescendo, like an orchestra gathering for the final symphonic notes.

Then, abruptly, it was gone.

Red One slowly returned the phone to its cradle on her desk. Red Two did the same. Red Three slid her phone back into her pack. But before they stepped away, they all did the same thing: They checked the caller ID

on their phones. None allowed even the vaguest hope that this number would lead anywhere near the Big Bad Wolf.

184

23

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf lay crumpled in bed like a discarded piece of scratch paper. It was shortly after the sun had come up, and she stared across twisted sheets and pillows at her husband, who slept peacefully beside her. She listened to the steady, even sounds of his breathing and knew from long experience that his eyes would flutter open just as the clock on the bureau reached 7 a.m. He was utterly consistent in this and had been throughout the years of their marriage, regardless of how late he’d tucked himself into bed the night before. She knew that he would stretch by the side of the bed, run his fingers through his thinning hair, shake a little like a lazy dog roused from slumber, and then pad across the bedroom to the bathroom. He might complain about morning joint stiffness and arthritis.

She could count the seconds before she would hear the water running in the shower and the toilet flushing.

This morning everything would be precisely the same.

Except it wasn’t.

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf assessed every crease in her sleeping husband’s face, counted the dark brown age spots on his hands, and noted the gray hairs 185

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in his bushy eyebrows. Each item in her husband-inventory seemed as familiar as the weak morning sunlight.

She could feel an argument bubbling up within her:
You know this man
better than you know anyone other than yourself
versus
Who is he, really?

She had slept precious few hours and felt the nasty sort of exhaustion born of tossing and turning throughout the small hours. And when she had managed to sleep, her dreams had been remorseless and unsettled, like childhood nightmares. This was something she had not experienced since the days of her heart troubles, when fears would shake her night. A part of her wanted very badly to rest and forget, but it was overwhelmed by too many questions, none of which she could ask out loud.