Red 1-2-3, page 37
The three Reds didn’t respond, but the Big Bad Wolf continued anyway. “There’s no strong woodsman coming through the door with his trusty axe. There’s no loving grandmother safe and hidden in the closet ready to emerge and embrace Little Red Riding Hood. There’s only one real ending to the story, and it’s the only ending that was ever possible.
The first ending.”
They were all silent.
“You could never save yourselves. Not once I started.” He grinned.
“You are all smart,” he continued. His voice was almost friendly. It had a kind of familiarity that suggested the banter between old friends meeting in an unexpected manner. “That’s why I picked you in the first place.
And you are all clever enough to see there is absolutely no way out for you tonight. You should never have come here. You should have let me do whatever I was going to do. Or maybe you should have killed us both upstairs. Maybe you could have done that. And maybe even, like Red Two says, you can kill me now. Maybe, just maybe, you are that angry and scared. But are you also capable of killing her?” He nodded his head toward his wife. “Because she’s completely innocent,” he lied easily. “She hasn’t done anything.”
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The Wolf shrugged his shoulders. “Now, that takes a special kind of evil.
Killing someone just because they are in the right place at the wrong time.
Or maybe the wrong place at the right time. That’s hard, even for an experienced professional. You think you have that strength? Can you be that evil?”
He smiled again. “One, two, three,” he said. “Three little psychopaths.
Or, perhaps not.”
Karen’s head spun. It was as if someone had loosed some scent in the room that was causing her to be unable to think clearly. She imagined that everything the Wolf was saying was true. They would never be free. Kill the man, and I’m no different from him. Maybe. Let the man live, and always wonder if he’s stalking me again. Maybe. Kill the woman, and live forever with guilt. Maybe. She felt nauseous.
At her side, Sarah’s hand shook. The gun suddenly felt incredibly heavy, and she was unsure whether she had the strength to continue to hold it.
She wasn’t even certain she had the physical ability to pull the trigger. It was as if all the energy had been drained from her muscles. Beside her, Jordan slumped back against the wall with a groan.
And directly into that moment of weakness for all three Reds, Mrs.
Big Bad Wolf blurted out, “It’s just a book, you see. It’s only the book he’s writing. No one has to die tonight.”
The silence in the room crowded them for what might have been only seconds, but which seemed far longer.
“Find the words,” Karen whispered to Jordan. The youngest nodded and left the room.
All writers need stories, Karen thought. They steal from their own lives and from the lives of people around them. They steal from their families and their friends. They steal from history and from current events. They rob news articles, what they see on the street, overheard conversations, and sometimes they even steal from each other.
Then she heard Jordan shout, a half-scream, half-cry, the sound that someone who has cut herself accidentally might make in surprise and shock.
Karen’s eyes went instantly to the Big Bad Wolf, who snarled, some of his offhand, unafraid appearance abruptly slipping away. She realized, He knows.
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“You go,” Sarah said to Karen. She quickly waved the gun in the direction of Jordan’s explosion. Sarah had slumped down on the floor across from the two Wolves, her back up against the wall, her weapon balanced on knees drawn up to her chest, trained on the two captives.
Karen heard Jordan yell out, “In here!” and she followed the sound of the voice, which seemed to shake with some new tension. As she entered the room just down the hallway from the kitchen, she heard Jordan sob. That’s not right, she thought. Red Three is strong. She’s been tough from the start.
What she saw first when she entered the Wolf ’s office were tears streaming down Jordan’s face. The teenager wasn’t able to speak. She just gestured at the wall.
It had not taken Jordan more than seconds to find the locked office door. Locked door. This is obvious: Go inside. Nor had finding a key been hard—there was one on the Wolf ’s chain, hung right by the front door.
It was only when she stepped inside and saw what he’d accumulated there that she had really started to lose control.
Pictures. Schedules. Outlines. A wicked hunting knife.
It amounted to a detailed study of each of their lives and the means to end them.
Karen followed Jordan’s eyes and saw a long-distance shot of her sneaking a smoke. She saw Jordan on the basketball court. She saw Sarah outside the liquor store. A collection of all the familiar places, image upon image, gathered together into a montage of deadly obsession. Close-ups. Long lens shots. Action images next to pictures that seemed more like still lifes. Lists of favorite places and daily breakdowns, maps and bird’s-eye views of their homes, offices, school—the intimacy of their day-to-day lives. But what she saw that went beyond the shock of seeing their personal histories detailed was the energy she knew must have gone into creating everything on the walls. It was as if all three Reds were standing naked in the Wolf’s office. The violation was profound. It was as if they had never had a private moment. The Wolf had been close by their side every second—they just hadn’t known it.
It was the investment of time and dedication to death that finally overwhelmed her. Karen felt her knees weaken, and she dropped down.
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From the other room, Sarah called out, “What is it?”
Karen replied weakly, “It’s us.”
Jordan was overcome with rage. She grabbed Karen by the shoulders and jerked her up, shaking her. “We’ve got to kill him!” she said hoarsely.
“Look at this! What choice do we have?”
Karen did not respond. All she could think was: If we kill him, how do we get away with it? And if we do get away with it, what will that do to us?
He’s the killer. Not us.
Her shoulders slumped. Jordan released her and with an angry, anguished cry approached the wall and started ripping down every picture. She tore into every representation of their lives. She clawed at each element of the mural in front of her. Paper flew around her in shreds. She was sobbing something guttural.
Karen reached out to stop her, but hesitated. Destroy it all, she thought.
She joined in, grabbing at a picture and tearing it into tiny pieces, flinging it across the room, both of them feeling that by wrecking everything the Wolf had built to kill them, they could somehow free themselves.
As Jordan beat senselessly on the display, showering pieces of the design of their deaths throughout the room, Karen turned and saw the computer and the pages of manuscript on the writing desk beneath a leather-bound scrapbook. She reached for her billy club and was about to smash the screen, when Jordan said, “Wait.”
She paused in mid-blow.
“If all this is up here,” she said, pointing at the debris from the wall, “do you suppose even more is in there?” Jordan nodded at the computer at the same time as she reached out for the Wolf ’s personal scrapbook, opening it to pages of reviews and accounts of murder.
Karen nodded.
“What else is there?” Jordan asked.
And in that moment of hesitation, surrounded by all the signatures of obsession, Karen saw an answer.
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Karen spread three items out on the floor directly in front of the Big Bad Wolf. If he’d been able to stretch his foot out, he could have touched them with his toe.
His computer.
His manuscript.
His scrapbook.
She said nothing. A fourth item—his hunting knife—was in her hand.
She waved it in the air idly, as if trying to cut atmosphere. She just wanted the Wolf to stare at these things for a few minutes, digesting what she might be able to do with them.
He shifted in his seat.
Karen wondered for a moment: Has anyone ever spent this sort of evening with a serial killer and lived? She suspected the answer was no.
She gave the Wolf a wry, small smile that she hoped would unsettle him further. Inwardly, she was warning herself: Push. But don’t push too hard.
Act, but don’t overact. Medical school didn’t teach me anything about the 357
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stage. I had to learn that for myself. She wondered whether any comedian had ever faced as hostile an audience as she had this night.
She left Red Two and Red Three across from the Wolves, not saying anything to them while she went first to the kitchen, then to a bathroom. It did not take her long to find what she needed: Plastic baggies. Scissors. A bread knife with a serrated edge. Cotton swabs. A black marking pen.
When she returned to the living room, it looked to the others as if she’d been on a very odd shopping trip. She was grinning, even though her ribs throbbed where she’d been struck. This was all performance on her part, but she also knew how to not let an unruly crowd upset her routine. Keep telling jokes. Don’t let up. Don’t let the heckler or the disruptive asshole take over the show. You’re in charge.
She began singing disjointed snatches of a hit 1960s song. No matter how clumsily she did it, she knew that the Wolf would probably recognize her version of the tune Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs once made famous: Little Red Riding Hood. She hoped it would irritate him.
She waited for a moment, picked up the scrapbook—idly flipping through a couple of sheets, using the hunting knife to turn them—and looked up: “So, how many people have you killed?”
The Big Bad Wolf didn’t immediately answer. His eyes narrowed and his smile widened. He had a sudden surge of confidence. His hands and feet might be restrained, but Red One was engaging in conversation. This was seductive. “None. One. A hundred. Do you mean on the page or in my head or in real life? How many do you think?” he replied.
Karen looked at the Wolf. She tried to pick out some feature in his face, some indication in the way he sat on the couch, some body smell, or posture, some tone of voice—anything that would give away what he was. It was like staring into a shapeless gray-blue sea in the last minutes of daylight. The ripples of waves on the surface hid all the currents that could join together with winds and tides when darkness fell to suddenly become dangerous. That was where his power lay, she understood: in the unprepossessing appearance that obscured his true nature.
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Beside him, Mrs. Big Bad Wolf ’s entire body shook with rage. She scowled and nearly shouted her answer to the same question: “What makes you think he’s killed anyone!” she burst out. “I checked! I even spoke with the cops. There’s no proof of anything! He’s just a writer. I told you, he has to research!”
Karen nodded, ignoring what Mrs. Big Bad Wolf said. “You always get away with it, don’t you?”
The Wolf shrugged. Not a yes. Not a no.
She turned to Mrs. Big Bad Wolf. “And you . . .” she began, but then she swallowed her question. She could see every answer she needed in Mrs. Big Bad Wolf ’s face. Your life is changing tonight, too, isn’t it?
Karen shuddered. She took a deep breath and turned back to the Wolf.
“What do you really like to use?” she asked. “Guns? Knives?” She waved the hunting knife in the air again. “Your hands? Something else? How many different ways are there to kill someone?”
“There are advantages to every weapon, and disadvantages, too,” he responded smugly. “Every thriller writer knows that.” He glanced over at the manuscript on the floor in front of him. “It’s in the book,” he added sharply.
Karen the doctor and Karen the comic had learned one lesson from both her lives that she was applying at this moment. “Can you kill someone with uncertainty?” she asked.
She continued, coldly, fingering the blade, but speaking about something different: “Is doubt a weapon?”
Again silence crept into the room. Karen used it just as she would have a moment on the stage. Make him think. Make him wonder. Make him unsure.
All these words were as effective as razors.
“Have you ever imagined what it is like to be a victim?” Karen asked.
All three Reds saw the Big Bad Wolf ’s face freeze. Doubt can do that, Karen thought, as if making a diagnosis. His wife, on the other hand, merely looked confused, as if she didn’t understand the question.
Karen stepped forward. She put the Wolf ’s knife on the floor and picked up the scissors. The first thing she did was cut a lock of his hair. This went 359
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into a baggy. Then she swiped a cotton swab in the blood congealing on his throat where Jordan had nicked his skin. This, too, went into a baggy.
She used the black marking pen to identify each, carefully writing the time and date on the outside. Then she held up her surgical-gloved hand and snapped the sterile surface as if it were a rubber band. She whispered to the Big Bad Wolf, “I suspect your fingerprints are all over that computer.
Shouldn’t be too hard for an expert to obtain them. But ours are not.” She snapped the glove in his face a second time. She took out another cotton swab. “Open wide,” she said, just as if she were in her office.
The Wolf clenched his teeth together. Karen looked at him. “Come on now,” she said, in a pleasant voice that hid all her fury. It was the tone she would have used with a scared pediatric patient, reluctant to do as asked.
He opened his mouth. She swabbed the inside. “A few extra cells,” she said. She dropped this swab into another plastic bag. Then she moved over to Mrs. Big Bad Wolf. “Same drill,” she said.
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf looked genuinely astonished as a lock of her hair disappeared into a bag with her name on it, followed by a blood sample and a swipe from the inside of her mouth.
Karen took her collection over and placed it all in Sarah’s duffel, alongside the hunting knife. “We’ll be keeping that,” she said smugly. Then she took one of the cell phones and quickly snapped several pictures of both the Wolves. She took close-up shots, being careful to get images from full front and profile. “Smile,” she said. Neither Wolf did.
When she was finished, she turned to the Big Bad Wolf. “Tell your wife what we’ve done,” she said.
“Blood. Hair. DNA. It’s the medical version of who we are,” he said.
The softer his voice, the greater his fury, Karen thought. She ignored this.
“Maybe not medical,” Karen said, shaking her head. “Do you think forensic might be a better word?” Then she added, “I wonder if there’s anyone out there who might be interested in those samples. You think there’s a cold case cop somewhere who might find them . . . I don’t know . . . intriguing?”
She smiled. “Here’s the situation. All this material is going into a safe place. Maybe a safety deposit box. Maybe a lawyer’s office safe. Maybe 360
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we’ll just dig a big hole somewhere and bury it. Maybe we’ll send it all wrapped up with a nice red bow to one of those police agencies. Of course, we could do that today. Or tomorrow. Or maybe next year. It’s up to us, and we’ll figure it out. But you can bet it will be someplace you could never find. Your computer, the scrapbook, your manuscript . . . we’re taking everything tonight. Three people will have access to that stash: Red One, Red Two, and Red Three. Maybe . . . we’ll let Sarah—because she’s the one you will never be able to trace—pick out a nice hiding place somewhere far away. Or maybe it won’t be her, it’ll be me that hides it. Or Jordan. She’s real good at keeping secrets. Anyway, you will know, from this second on, should anything, anything at all, ever threaten any of us Little Red Riding Hoods again, the remaining Reds will know what to do with this stuff. Have you got that?”
The Big Bad Wolf nodded. His face had darkened. All three Reds imagined that every muscle was straining to rip free of his duct tape bonds. His anger would be murderous. But as they watched, they saw throbbing veins on his neck relax and a frightened resignation slip unbidden into his eyes.
It was as if he saw a different kind of restraint, far tighter than duct tape, binding him.
He had become them. They had become him.
Karen’s smile had disappeared. For an instant, she thought, How many people have you killed? And she understood with a doctor’s understanding of death that there was nothing she could do about the people who had already died. But she could immunize everyone else from that moment on. So, she used the flat tone of voice that she would employ if she were delivering harsh news of a virulent and inexorably fatal illness to someone she truly hated.
“You gave us nothing but uncertainty, and then you were going to kill us. Now we’re giving you the same. You will never be able to hear a knock on the door without thinking it’s the police. You will never look up and see a cop car behind you and not think that this time it’s all over, or walk down a street and not imagine that some detective is following you.
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of freedom. When you go to bed at night, you will not know if the next day your little fucking pathetic life is going to end. And it’s not just the cops. No, I imagine there just might be some family members of victims out there who would be interested in these connections. Or maybe some defense attorneys who can use this stuff to set a client free. And I wonder just how some poor fucker who has spent fifteen years on death row is going to feel about you. I don’t think he will be generous.”
She gestured toward the items. “Think of all this as a disease. A terminal one.” She hesitated, then added, “Don’t try to run. If you disappear, we will know it—and all this will be . . . properly distributed. And don’t think that you can say goodbye to us and find some other poor woman to kill, and get your kicks that way. Someone new dies, some new Red wherever she might be, and this lands in the right hands. It’s just all over for you.
