Red 1-2-3 (9780802192844)

by Katzenbach, John

  31

  Outside the window Jordan could see nothing except growing darkness. Her angle through the glass showed empty playing fields blending into distant stands of trees that marked the beginning of undeveloped conservation land. This was typical of private schools in New England: They favored the woody, isolated, forest look that gave visitors the impression that there were no distractions from the world of studying, sports, and the arts that was cultivated at the school. Jordan knew that in other directions there were bright lights, loud music, and all the typical sorts of trouble that teenagers routinely found.

  She waited patiently for the psychologist seated at a desk across from her to finish a conversation with a local psychiatrist who specialized in pharmacological solutions to teenage angst. They were discussing a prescription for Ritalin, the preferred drug to deal with ADHD. The psychologist, a frowsy, angular young woman probably only about ten years Jordan’s senior but trying hard to look more mature, was being careful not to use any names, because Jordan was present. The issue appeared to be a refill order that shouldn’t have been necessary. Jordan knew exactly why this anonymous student had run out of Ritalin early: because he had sold some or had some stolen, or maybe both. It was a favorite party drug.

  Fun for some, she thought, and now the kid can’t concentrate enough to get his history term paper finished. She wanted to laugh at the dilemma, and the pathetic way the student had tried to talk the psychologist into getting more pills. Jordan knew the school monitored the number of pills each student was supposed to have on hand at any given time: just enough for a once-a-day respite from distraction.

  The psychologist gestured in the air as if to make a point and then, with the phone still to her ear, waved in Jordan’s direction, a just a minute motion that turned Jordan back to the window. She could just make out her reflection in a corner of the pane—pale, as if the image was of some different Jordan. That’s Red Three, not Jordan, she decided.

  In that moment, Jordan wondered whether the Big Bad Wolf had electronically visited the YouTube entry for Red Two. It had not taken Jordan long to post two messages on the website: RIP Red Two and We will miss you, your friends 1 and 3.

  She didn’t know if he would see them. But she thought they were a nice touch.

  The psychologist hung up the phone with a chorus of “Okay, okay, okay” before slumping back. She smiled. “So, Jordan, tell me about what you saw last night.”

  She doesn’t waste any time, Jordan thought. “Maybe if I had a prescription for Ritalin . . .” Jordan began.

  The psychologist managed a laugh. “That was a pretty predictable conversation, wasn’t it?”

  Jordan nodded.

  “But unsuccessfully trying to talk the staff out of a class two substance isn’t the same as seeing a woman kill herself,” the psychologist said.

  Straight to the point, Jordan thought again. “We were driving back to school after the game. I was the only one staring out the window. I spotted the woman climb up on the bridge barrier and saw her jump. Then I screamed. Just a natural reaction, I guess.”

  The psychologist bent forward, expecting more.

  Jordan shrugged. “It wasn’t like I killed her.”

  But now she’s free, Jordan thought. It was a little like seeing someone else get a gift that she particularly wanted. She envied Red Two.

  Jordan shifted in her seat. The psychologist was asking more questions, probing feelings, impressions. It was inevitable that she would try to steer this conversation into some discussion about her parents, her grades, and her bad attitude. Jordan waited for this to land in front of her, replying as succinctly as she could. She just wanted to get out of the psychologist’s room with as little damage as possible and get back to the task of saving her life. She was willing to say anything, behave any way, or act as appropriately as she possibly could to achieve that result.

  Nothing I say here means anything. For a moment she considered telling the psychologist everything. The letters. The video. All about becoming Red Three. It was like telling herself a joke, and she had to stifle a smile.

  And what will she do? She will think I’m crazy. Or maybe she will call the dean. He’s a well-meaning idiot and he’ll call the police. More well-meaning idiots. And then the Big Bad Wolf will just disappear into the woods and wait until I’m on my own again, and he’s free to do whatever he wants. Maybe I’ll get a year or two and then I’ll be Red Three all over again. And I know what he will do then.

  Jordan could hear herself replying to the psychologist’s questions, but barely paid any attention to what she was saying. The words coming out from between her lips were flimsy and had no real connection to what was happening to her. She believed the real forged iron and steel was within her, safely stored away for the time being, being held back for when she truly needed it. That will be soon enough. The Big Bad Wolf is our problem, she told herself. And we’re going to solve it ourselves.

  She smiled at the psychologist, idly wondering whether a smile was actually the right bit of performance, thinking that perhaps the fastest way out of the office and the meeting was to concede some small bit of trauma, so that the shrink would have something to write in a report to send to the dean and everyone would think they were doing their job. Jordan considered this for a moment and said, “I’m a little afraid of having some really bad nightmares. I mean, I can see that poor woman as she jumped. It was so sad. I would hate to be that sad myself.”

  The psychologist nodded. She wrote something down on a pad of paper. Sleeping pills, Jordan thought. She’s going to give me a prescription for sleeping pills. But just a couple so I can’t kill myself.

  There was a single weak light over the entrance to Health Services, and Jordan paused for an instant as she exited to survey the nighttime stretching in front of her. The Health Services building was tucked off on a side street in one of the less-frequented parts of the campus, so Jordan realized that she would have to pass through a great deal of darkness before reaching a spot where other students were likely to be walking the pathways.

  Hunching her shoulders against a wind that had picked up, she hurried forward.

  She had not traveled more than a half-dozen strides when she saw the figure in the shadows, right where a large oak tree brushed up against the back of one of the now-empty classroom buildings. It was like seeing a ghost. Jordan nearly stumbled and fell. She had the sensation of her heart stopping, then starting again, all in the same microsecond.

  The figure was dressed in black. A scarf and hat obscured his face. The only feature that seemed to glow with life were his eyes.

  She lifted a hand, sweeping it through the nighttime in front of her, as if she could erase the vision. The figure remained still, watching her. Slowly, she saw the man raise his hand and point directly at her. The voice seemed muffled, as if the breeze had steered it toward her from a dozen different directions.

  “Hello, Red Three.”

  A part of her was riveted in place. A part was panicked, as if it had broken loose from some mooring inside her. She wanted to break into a run, but her feet felt mired in the ground. It was as if fear had bisected her body and that, like droplets of mercury hitting a floor and scattering, parts of Jordan were spreading in different directions. Jordan felt conflicting commands racing through her head, all out of control. She felt weakness in her knees spreading infection-like through her body and she thought she might crumple to the ground and crawl into a fetal position and just wait. It’s happening now ran through her head, followed by He’s going to kill me now!

  As if struck, Jordan staggered back.

  The figure seemed to melt into the thick black trunk of the tree. It was as if Jordan could no longer focus her eyes, could no longer differentiate between human form and shadow. Involuntarily, she raised both arms and held them out in front of her face, as if to ward off a blow.
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  There was a strange sound surrounding her that she couldn’t recognize at first, and then she understood it was her own breathing—shallow, raspy, and devolving into a childlike whimper.

  She looked around wildly, thinking, Someone help me, but she couldn’t form these words with her tongue and lips and scream them out. There was nothing except darkness and silence.

  When she returned her eyes to the figure, it was gone. Like an act in a magician’s stage show, it had disappeared into shadow.

  Run now, she shouted to herself.

  She turned away from where she had seen the figure and launched herself forward. She was an athlete, and she was fast. She wasn’t burdened by a backpack jammed with books or a prom queen’s high heels; there was no ice on the pathways. Her stride lengthened, her feet striking the black macadam of the path with slapping sounds that were like gunshots echoing from far away. She pumped her arms and sprinted, desperation driving her speed, and the only thing she could think was that it wasn’t going to be fast enough. She could feel the Wolf behind her, closing the distance, jaws snapping at her heels, teeth reaching for her.

  The sensation that she had only seconds left to live crushed her and she wanted to cry out that it was unfair, she wanted to live, she didn’t want to die there, that night, at a school she hated, surrounded by people who weren’t her friends. She gasped out the words Mother, help me! even though she did not want her mother’s help, because her mother never helped anyone other than herself. She felt like a small child, little more than a baby, helpless and defenseless, panicked and afraid of dark and thunder and lightning, though the world around her was still and calm.

  Just at the second she felt a hand seizing her from behind, Jordan stumbled. The world seemed to spin about, and she was tossed down, sprawling like a skater who loses an edge. She threw her hands out to brace her fall and let out a small scream. The hard path surface scraped her palms painfully as she banged her knee. Pain shot through her, and she was momentarily dazed. She was prone on the cold ground, but she had the presence of mind to roll over and kick out at the Wolf that she knew had nipped at her heels, sending her into the tailspin. She could hear her shrieks, “Get away! Get away!” as if they were coming from some other place. Everything seemed disjointed, disconnected, unreal and alien.

  She fought back. Tears filled her eyes. She punched and battled, using every muscle, tendons stretched to breaking, smashing out against the darkness that threatened her. She could feel her hands showering blows against fur, flesh, and sharp bared teeth that tore at her; she could feel spittle and hot blood flying into her face, preventing her from seeing clearly. She felt herself being grabbed and lifted up, and she scratched and clawed, using every fiber of her being because she wasn’t willing to die right there. She fought as hard as she could.

  Against nothing.

  It took seconds that seemed much longer than any space of time Jordan had ever experienced—even the end of a close game, where tension and time coalesced to make everything seem to speed up or slow down, as if the rules of nature had been suspended—or Jordan to realize: I’m all alone.

  No Wolf.

  No killer.

  No dying.

  At least not yet.

  Jordan lay back, spread-eagled on the cold ground. She could feel heat rushing from her body. She stared up into the black night sky and saw stars blinking into light. She shut her eyes and listened. Familiar sounds crowded her ears: a distant car accelerating, noisy students from a dormitory, a few chords on an electric guitar accompanied by the belching notes of a saxophone. She squeezed her eyes tight, before they suddenly shot open.

  Footsteps.

  She gasped again and sat up. She looked right, then left, her head swiveling back and forth.

  No one. “But I heard him . . .” she whispered, as if arguing with herself. Red Three thought one thing. Jordan Ellis thought another.

  She listened hard, and imagined she heard a fading, distant wolf’s howl—unmistakable . . . impossible. She knew it had to be a hallucination, but it seemed real. It was a little like being trapped in a different era, in a different world, where predators maneuvered freely after the sun set. She knew she was a part of modern life, with all the lights and energy of progress, but the forlorn cry she heard clearly belonged to a far different time. It both existed and didn’t exist.

  Jordan scrambled to her feet. Her jeans were ripped and she could feel sticky blood on her palms and her knee. She urgently searched the shadows around her for another sight of the Big Bad Wolf.

  But nothing except shades of black greeted her.

  Feeling panic slide away from her, and urgency replace it, Jordan started to run again. Though this run was at a more controlled pace, she knew that she had to get back to somewhere bright as quickly as she could.

  When the cell phone rang in her purse, Red One was standing at the top of the stairs leading to her basement carrying a tray with a salad and a ham sandwich and a bottle of water. She had called out to Red Two, who was waiting for her below, out of sight, concealed from any prying eyes.

  She set the tray down and tore the phone from the satchel.

  “Yes? Jordan?” Karen said.

  “He was here, he was right here, he was waiting for me and he chased me—at least, I think he did—but I got away. Or maybe, I don’t know . . .” Jordan spoke in a rush, her excited words barely understandable. Then the teenager’s voice trailed off into silent confusion.

  The physician of rationality took over. “What exactly did you see?”

  “I was at Health Services. They made me go see a shrink because they thought I’d be traumatized after reporting Sarah’s suicide . . .”

  “Except you knew—”

  “Yes, of course, I knew she was okay, that was the plan, but when I came out, there was a man in the shadows, I saw him, but then he wasn’t there . . .”

  “Are you sure?”

  Red Three hesitated. Jordan wasn’t at all sure of anything. Fear, she understood, creates confusion. So she wasn’t completely honest.

  “Yes. I’m sure. Pretty sure. He spoke to me. I heard him call me Red Three. At least, I think I heard that.”

  “How could he have known you were at Health Services?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’d been following me earlier, and I didn’t notice and he just waited outside.”

  “Okay,” Karen responded slowly.

  “Karen,” Jordan said abruptly.

  “Yes?”

  “I feel so alone.”

  Karen wanted to say something reassuring, but did not know any words that would help. Instead her mind was churning with ideas. “You’re sure as you can be that it was him?”

  “Yes. As sure as I can be.”

  “You’re not alone. We’re all in this together,” Karen said, although she didn’t completely believe this. “Look, Jordan, hang in there. I’ll call you back later.” She closed the phone and looked at Sarah.

  “Grab your things,” she said, with a sea captain’s brisk decisiveness. “We have a couple of free minutes. The Wolf was out stalking Jordan, so we know he’s not outside here right now. We’ve got to move.”

  “Is she okay? Should we go see her?”

  “She was scared. But she’ll be okay, I think. We have to stick to the plan. He can’t know you’re alive. We have to keep you hidden. It’s the only way.”

  Sarah nodded. All she had was a small duffel bag with some spare clothing that Karen had loaned her, Karen’s comedy-club laptop computer, and some sheets of paper filled with information about a dead woman named Cynthia Harrison. The bag also held her dead husband’s gun. That gun was the only part of Sarah Locksley’s former life that remained intact.

  Moving as quickly as they could, each understanding that something had happened that night that should
scare them, the two women burst from the house and hurried across the yard to Karen’s car. Karen jammed the key into the ignition and spun the tires in her dirt-and-gravel drive as she accelerated.

  “They’re expecting you at any time,” she said. “And he won’t know where to look anymore, even if he does suspect something. At least you’ll be safe while we do what we have to do.”

  Neither Red One nor Red Two actually believed that statement in its entirety. Maybe, both thought, there were small parts of their lives that might be safe.

  But not the whole.

  The front door closed with a thud. She heard a jacket being tossed on a hook and boots being shoved into a closet.

  “Hi, dear. Sorry I’m late.”

  “That’s okay. Dinner will be ready in a couple of minutes.”

  “I just want to take down a few notes, then I’ll be out.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Totally cool. Just totally cool. She went to the appointment like you said she would. I saw her go inside. It was great. I mean really great. Just the sort of scene that will really help the book. I just wish I’d been able to go into the office with her so I could have listened in. But I can make that part up, no problem. Getting teenage language right on the page is a challenge: hell, it has been since J. D. Salinger sort of defined the entire genre. But these little details are what make the story come alive when I put it all together. I really owe you one.”

  Mrs. Big Bad Wolf felt a surge of pleasure. She had been unsure whether her husband would want to know about the meeting or not when she had called him. Now she felt like she was truly a part of the creative process.

  “That’s what I’d hoped. That’s why I called. So, if you owe me a favor, maybe you’ll do the dishes tonight?”

  The Wolf kissed his wife on the cheek, then pinched her rear end, making her squeal a little with pleasure and slap at his hand with mock indignation. “Yes. Absolutely.” Both of them laughed. “I’ll just jot down some ideas for the next chapter, wash up, and I’ll be ready to eat. I’m completely starved.”