It was nothing. Nothing. You’re alone and jumpy.
The house is empty. It always is. Just two cats. Maybe they made the sound. Maybe they knocked over a lamp, or a stack of books. They’ve done that before.
The steam curled around her, but she had the sensation the water was no longer warm, that it had turned icy. She took a deep breath, shut off the shower, and stood in the stall, listening. Then, instantly, she thought: If someone is out there, switching off the shower will tell them I’m about to get out. She jammed her finger twisting the shower dial back on, and she jumped as too-hot water spilled over her back.
Conflicting thoughts screamed inside her head.
It was just anxiety. Nothing was there.
Straighten up. Step out. Act your age. Stop behaving like a child.
She turned the shower off a second time. The air seemed cold to her, as if a window was open.
This is a cliché. Like a bad horror film. There should be a dark John Williams Jaws-like score playing relentlessly in the background.
Then a more complicated thought: Did you shut down the alarm properly?
She went over in her mind’s eye every step of the procedure, pushing each button of the security code, seeing the LED lights go from red to green. Did they? She was stifled by uncertainty. She could hear her own voice echoing within her, shouting advice, insisting, You’re acting like a fool. Get out. Get dressed. Get the day going.
But she remained locked in position.
She thought, The noise came after I shut off the alarm. Was someone waiting for those indicator lights to change color?
It took Karen an immense amount of willpower to step from the shower and grab a towel from the rack by the door. She wrapped herself up and then paused to listen again. She could still hear nothing.
Dry off. Go get your clothes. Dab on a little makeup. Come on, just like every day. You are hearing things. Hallucinating noises. You’re on edge for no reason. Or yes, there is a reason, but it’s not a real reason.
The water was pooling beneath her feet and with a terrific effort that made her gasp out loud, she rapidly dried herself off, then dragged a stiff brush through tangled hair so quickly that had she not been so unsettled, she would have shouted at the self-inflicted pain. She stopped. This is crazy. Why am I brushing my hair if someone is waiting to kill me? She gripped the brush handle like a knife and kept it in her hand as if it could be a weapon. Then she hurriedly approached the bathroom door that led into the bedroom. Closed, but not locked. A part of her wanted to simply lock the door and wait, but it was the flimsiest of locks, just a turn-button on the handle, and wouldn’t prevent the weakest, most incompetent intruder from breaking in.
Karen imagined him on the other side of the door, listening for her, just as she was listening for him.
She could not picture a person. All she could imagine were shiny white bared teeth: an image from a children’s story.
Then, just as swiftly, she told herself that she was being ridiculous. There’s no one there. You’re just acting nuts.
Still, it took another surge of will to open the door, then step into the bedroom.
It was empty—save for the two cats. They lounged on the bed, already bored.
She listened again. Nothing.
Moving as quickly and as quietly as she could, she grabbed at her clothes and pulled them on. Underwear. Bra. Slacks. Sweater. She slammed her feet into her shoes and stood up. Being clothed reassured her.
She went to her bedroom door. Again she paused to listen. Silence.
Small noises seemed to surround her: a ticking clock; the scratch of one of the cats shifting position on the bed; the distant sound of the heating system switching on.
Her own labored breathing.
She imagined that no noise would be way worse, and then she told herself that this made absolutely no sense. No fucking sense, she thought.
It’s my goddamn house. I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone . . .
She stopped. She picked up her cell phone from her bureau, flipped it open, dialed 911, and then poised her thumb over the call button.
This made her feel armed, and she began to slowly walk through the house, holding the cell phone like it was a weapon. Kitchen empty. Front foyer empty. Living room empty. Television room empty. She went from room to room, each quiet space both reassuring her and making her more nervous. At first she couldn’t bring herself to throw open a closet door; a part of her expected someone to jump out. The rational part of her warred with this sensation, and with another large effort she tugged open each closet, only to be greeted by clothes or coats or piles of stray papers.
She was hunting for a noise. Or evidence of a noise. Something that would make the fear that surged through her make some rational sense. She could find nothing.
When she was finally half-persuaded that she was alone, she went back to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of hot coffee. Her hand shook slightly. What did you hear?
Nothing. Everything. She let the coffee fill her, let the adrenaline rushing through her ears settle. She wondered, Can a letter make a noise? Can an anonymous threat make a sound?
In an erratic mix of tensions, Karen grabbed her coat and headed out to her car to go to work. In her confusion and anxiety, for the first time in years she neglected to put out the cat food.
7
Jordan walked across the campus in the early evening gloom, going back to the library, a distant redbrick building with bright light flowing from large plate glass windows that threw odd cones of illumination across the grassy lawn. The cold breeze seemed to predict a change in the weather—but it was impossible for her to tell whether it would worsen or improve.
Like most students out after the night started to tumble around them, she had been pacing quickly, slightly hunched over, bent to the task of getting from one brightly lit spot to the next, as if time spent on the dark pathways was unsettling or dangerous. She thought, It probably is, but found herself slowing nonetheless, like an engine running out of fuel, until she finally stopped dead in her tracks and pivoted around, surveying the world around her.
It was all familiar, all alien, at the same moment.
She had spent nearly four years on the prep school campus, yet it did not seem like home.
She could see inside dormitories—she could name each one. Behind the windows, she saw students bent over textbooks, or sitting around in conversation. She recognized faces. Shapes. An occasional loud voice that seemed to come from nowhere, but which she knew emanated from some dorm, pierced the night, and it seemed to her that she knew who was speaking but just couldn’t quite connect a face to the elusive sounds. From adjacent walkways, she could hear footsteps, and she could make out the darkened forms of other students. Some of the shrubbery and the trees seemed to catch the light that came from the student center or the art building in their swaying branches and toss it haphazardly across the lawn, as if taunting her with shadows.
She thought, In the real fairy tale, the Big Bad Wolf tracks Little Red Riding Hood through the forest. Nothing stops him. Nothing gets in his way. He’s like relentless. He fucking knows everything she’s going to do before she does it. It’s like he’s at home and she’s just a stranger in the woods. She’s got no damn chance at all. Not even when she thinks she’s safe because she gets to Grandmother’s house, because the wolf is already there and pretending to be the person she thinks can protect her.
What does that tell you?
She imagined that the man who had designated her for death could be in any shadow. He could be hiding behind any tree. He could be watching from any dark space or from behind any closed window.
Jordan took a quick stride forward, angling a few steps toward the lights of the library, feeling an electric surge of fear coursing within her.
Then, ab
ruptly, she stopped.
Again she slowly looked around. A part of her still wanted to believe that the letter and the threat it contained were all part of an elaborate practical joke. If so many people hate you, she thought, it makes sense. Students like to pick on the most vulnerable. Despite all the well-meaning bans on hazing and emphasis on friendliness at the school, there was always an undercurrent of tension. Jealousy, anger, sexual predation, illicit drug or alcohol use—all the things that caused frightened parents to send their children away to avoid what existed in the shadow school.
Why wouldn’t murder?
Jordan remained frozen in place. Her eyes drifted to the dark edges that surrounded her. She tried to identify shapes, but the night made them seem like hundreds of pieces of several jigsaw puzzles all mixed together. Each belonged to a single answer, each could be joined with others to make a single clear picture, but all tossed together, they formed an impossible and incomprehensible mess.
For a second, the fear-wave within her made her unsteady. The breeze seemed to swirl around her, threatening to pick her up and shake her. She felt cold and sweaty all at once.
She lifted her head, like an animal seeking a strange scent.
Alone is good, she thought. It might have been a contradiction to all good sense, but she clung to it, speaking to herself, as if the Jordan walking through the darkness could have a conversation with the Jordan filled with doubt and worry.
If you told someone, if you shared the threat with anyone, all they would do is tell you what they imagine you should do. They won’t have any damn idea whether it’s right or wrong. That’s what the Wolf will want. He wants you to listen to others—a friend, although you don’t have any; a teacher, although there are none you trust; an administrator, who will be more worried about the school’s image than your life; or your parents, who have no time for anything but themselves and who probably would find it better if the Wolf succeeded and you were no longer out there creating a problem for them to fight over.
Jordan actually managed a wry grin. She cast her eyes about, searching every odd shape and dark corner. Alone in the woods, she thought. Well, you’re goddamn right about that.
She started to move forward slowly, only one thought ricocheting around within her:
Alone is the only way to win.
Not knowing for an instant whether to believe herself, Jordan hurried out of the darkness toward the lights of the library. She intended to read much more that evening. Not history or science or foreign languages, like all the other students at the school. Jordan had decided to study murder. She thought it was fortunate that she was such a quick learner. And she also told herself that this was one course she could not afford to flunk.
The Big Bad Wolf had awakened early in the morning in order to do some work in the final minutes of dark before dawn light filled his small office. This was always a productive time. Most people, he believed, awakened sluggish and irked at the thought of another day of soul-deadening routine, in a fog until they slammed down a cup or two of coffee.
Not him. The Wolf was filled with enthusiasm and excitement over the coming day, because he had planned something he thought would be truly inventive and unsettling. He imagined it was the way an athlete would feel awaiting the opening whistle of a big game. Murder, as he’d written, lent itself to sporting metaphors.
Words crowded the screen in front of him. His focus was intense. As always, he spent a few moments considering his position in the world of violent death.
As he typed furiously, in an almost a stream-of-consciousness style— though he detested that type of writing, because he thought it lazy and indulgent—he imagined himself some sort of existential hero. Grendel, he believed. Hannibal Lecter. Raskolnikov. Meursault.
I am not precisely an assassin, although we share many qualities. An assassin has some political fury behind his act. Whether this is John Wilkes Booth leaping from the balcony to the stage shouting “Sic semper tyrannis!” or an anarchist taking aim at the archduke riding in his car down the wrong street in Sarajevo or even a Borgia plot that imagines death as the easiest way to consolidate power. To an assassin, the end justifies the means. That same quality may be true for me and my three Reds and for many murderers—but the difference lies in the approach. The assassin settles in to the Book Depository’s sixth floor and aims down the barrel of his Carcano 6.5 mm carbine at the president’s head and remembers his Marine Corps training as he gently squeezes the trigger. “Red mist,” they call it now in shooting circles. But for me, that moment is the easiest. It is the buildup that creates the real excitement of that inevitable gathering together. I do not imagine that an assassin gains the same pleasure as I do in planning the act. Perhaps it is the difference between foreplay and orgasm, between being an attentive lover and merely being eager to conclude. Maybe.
But the thing that distinguishes me from an assassin is the nature of our intimacy. While we each may have studied our victims with precision, the assassin hates what he intends to kill and wants to make some allegedly important point. Everything he does is designed for that moment. A death is scheduled to create a vacuum that the assassin believes will be filled by what he wants. In a way, this is limiting. My own approach with the three Reds is far more intense. I have no political restrictions on my design. The three Reds are part of a grand design. What I plan is far closer to art than politics. I may have important points to make, but these are like brushstrokes, not loud speeches. I won’t be leaping from any balcony to a stage shouting “The South is avenged!” but someday soon I will be just as famous.
For me, it’s not about hatred. Instead, I am in love with my three Reds.
But each love is different.
Just as each death has to be different.
A powerful smell of bacon began to penetrate the office. The Big Bad Wolf craned his head, and he could hear sizzling coming from the stove. The popping noise was likely to soon join with the more subtle sounds of eggs being scrambled and the toaster ejecting slices of toast. It would probably be sourdough, which Mrs. Big Bad Wolf made in her own electric bread maker, and which she knew was his favorite.
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf liked to prepare large breakfasts. Most important meal of the day. He remembered that phrase from the movie Ordinary People. When did it come out? Twenty years ago? Thirty? Donald Sutherland was seated across from Timothy Hutton in their Lake Forest mansion and was trapped by his son’s grief and confusion and trying desperately to inject some sort of understandable normalcy into their day-to-day turmoil. Except he was thwarted when Hutton hesitated and Mary Tyler Moore, who played the cold and damaged mother, swept the breakfast away from her son and dashed it into the sink and the disposal.
The Wolf pictured the scene. It was pancakes, he thought. The actress had made pancakes. Or maybe French toast. I’m sure of it. Then he doubted himself. It might have been waffles.
He didn’t like pancakes as much; they made him feel overfull and sluggish, unless there was really fancy Vermont maple syrup purchased from a gourmet market available. He hated the fake syrup the big grocery chains carried. It tasted like oil to him.
Again the wolf smiled. I am a gourmand of breakfasts, he thought, and a gourmand of killing.
He heard his wife calling his name. He closed up the computer and encrypted the latest files, using a predictable password: Grimm. He was suddenly famished. Even the greatest killers need to eat, he told himself as he pushed back from his desk. It’s just that they feed on more than eggs and bacon and freshly baked sourdough bread.
He thought he needed to make that point in his manuscript, but it could wait until later. He was also stretching his imagination. There were a few necessary upcoming excuses he needed to make to his wife. Places he needed to be and things he needed to do that he didn’t want to be questioned about. This was something that really intrigued him: the need to appear normal when
great things were in motion around him. He thought: The backdrop music of my life needs to be a simple, solitary violin. No huge symphonic chords that attract attention. He smiled. And no heavy metal screeching guitars, either.
From down the hallway, he heard a cheery, “On the table. Eggs and bacon.”
“Coming, dear,” he shouted to Mrs. Big Bad Wolf, not unpleasantly, eager to get the day started.
8
Mrs. Big Bad Wolf collected the breakfast dishes and dutifully scraped the remains into the trash compactor before loading knives, forks, plates, and cups into the electric dishwasher. As usual, her husband had carefully sliced the crust edges away from his toast, using only the crisp center portion to sop up the runny eggs. She had seen these orphans on his morning plates for fifteen years, and although she thought it wasteful, and a part of her believed the crust was the best part of the toast, she never said anything to him about this eccentricity. Nor had she ever—even though she knew he would invariably do this when she put the plate in front of him—sliced the edges off for him before they sat at the table.
This morning she was late for the work that she more often than not disliked, and she knew she had a desk piled up with mundane duties that would drag on throughout the day. She imagined that after putting in her eight hours the list of to-do items clogging her calendar would be only modestly diminished. She envied her husband. Her workaday life seemed devoted to ever-increasing amounts of the deadly same, over and over. He, on the other hand, was the creative force in their relationship. He was the writer; he was special. He was unique, like no man she’d ever known, and that was why she married him. He provided vibrant color in her dull dirt-brown world and nothing made her feel better than introducing him to coworkers, saying, “This is my husband. He’s a novelist.” She sometimes berated herself by thinking that all she brought to their relationship was comprehensive health insurance and a regular paycheck and the occasional hurried bout in bed, and then she would dismiss this awful idea and persuade herself that even if it seemed like a cliché, every great writer needed a muse, and she surely was his. This idea made her proud.
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