Red 1-2-3 (9780802192844)

by Katzenbach, John

  Mrs. Big Bad Wolf removed her hand from the telephone receiver. “We’re all okay. Just fine. It was a mistake. The dog set it off,” she carefully repeated. “Our all-clear code is Inspector Javert. That’s J-A-V-E—”

  “Thank you,” said the voice. “That’s a cool code. Very literary. I saw Les Misérables on Broadway. I’ll reset your system from here.”

  Mrs. Big Bad Wolf replaced the receiver on its hook.

  “Now we should just kill them both,” Jordan said. The words coming from her lips surprised her. The weak, scared-outside-in-the-shadows Jordan had been shunted aside and replaced by the fierce, uncompromising, murderous Jordan. It had happened in the matter of seconds. Perhaps, she imagined, it was shaken loose inside her by the physical contact; being slammed against a wall can open up unseen resources that are rarely called upon. Regardless, she felt a cold, homicidal urge come over her, and she moved the knife blade back and forth just slightly, tearing the surface of the Wolf’s skin, so that a thin line of blood started to trickle down to his chest and stain the top of his pajamas. She bent forward, leaning her head down, so that her lips were next to his ear. “You thought it would be the other way around, didn’t you? You thought you would be holding the knife to my throat, huh? And then what were you going to do?”

  He didn’t answer. He wore a snarl on his face and he could barely contain his own rage. He wanted to wrap his hands around her neck. Any neck. But he was locked in position.

  Sarah struggled to her knees. She had her gun in both hands, holding it straight out. She was right in front of the Wolf with the barrel of the weapon pointed at him from perhaps six inches away, aimed right between his eyes. She thought, Pull the trigger and you end everything. Start over again right now and the new you will be safe forever. The Wolf was bracketed by the two Reds. The gun and the knife were like deadly parentheses.

  “I thought you were dead,” the Wolf said bitterly.

  “I went to your service,” Mrs. Big Bad Wolf said piteously from across the room, where she suddenly slumped onto the bed, tucking her knees up under her arms like an unhappy child. She spoke in a whiny tone, as if this trick was a cheat and unfair.

  “I am dead,” Sarah answered brutally without taking her sight off the Wolf. She squinted down the barrel. “Jordan’s right,” she said coldly. “Let’s kill them both right now.”

  The Big Bad Wolf felt his muscles constrict. He breathed in sharply. He fantasized himself bursting forward, miraculously slamming Jordan’s knife aside, wrestling Sarah’s pistol away from her with a single immense and magical tug. He would kill them all. Right then and there. Right on the floor of his bedroom, in front of his wife. He would save her. They would kill together. He could hear the sharp reports from the gun. He could see the bleeding forms of the three Reds in front of him. He would win. It was always supposed to be that way.

  And then, suddenly, he could not move.

  Inwardly he shouted commands: “Move legs! Hands! Arms! Now!” Outwardly he remained frozen. And he thought, Am I going to die now?

  Getting older was inevitable. Being forgotten was something he understood. Getting caught was always a possibility.

  But being murdered had never occurred to him.

  “No, please,” Mrs. Big Bad Wolf moaned. A small stream of blood was dripping down from the edge of her mouth where Sarah had landed a lucky punch. Her hair was frizzed out in a tangle of knots. She had paled and the doctor in Karen thought she had seen the woman age years in the space of seconds. She suddenly wondered about the woman’s heart. It could give out any second. We’ll have caused a heart attack. Is that homicide? Or is it justice?

  Mrs. Big Bad Wolf turned to Karen. “Please Doctor, please . . .” She swung around toward Jordan, “Jordan, you’re a good girl, you can’t—”

  “No I’m not,” Jordan furiously interrupted her. “Maybe I was once, but I’m not anymore. And I can.” It was obvious what can implied at that precise moment. Jordan gripped her knife more tightly.

  “Wait,” Karen said. The other two Reds looked at her. “We don’t know enough yet.”

  Red Two and Red Three stared at her quizzically.

  “Before we kill them, I need to know everything,” she said. She felt an ice within her. It was as if for the first time since she’d received the Wolf’s letter, her life was coming into focus. Clarity had finally bubbled up close to the surface, where she might just be able to seize it. She bent down, lowering her face close to the Big Bad Wolf’s, so that her breath washed over him.

  “My oh my, what big eyes you’ve got, Grandmother.” She smiled with a harshness that she did not know she possessed.

  “You remember that, don’t you? And where it comes from? A fairy tale. Can you believe it? A goddamn fairy tale that none of us have read since we were kids. Anyway, the proper response is: ‘All the better to see you with, my dear.’”

  She was nearly whispering. “Can you say that?”

  The Wolf did not reply.

  “I think you can,” Karen said.

  Duct tape is remarkable stuff, Karen thought as she taped Mrs. Big Bad Wolf’s hands and feet together. Better than a rope and knots. Sticky and convenient. I bet real criminals happily use it all the time.

  The two wolves were side by side on the living room couch, immobilized by the wrappings of gray tape. They looked a little like awkward teenagers on a first date—not quite touching, slightly ridiculous. Mrs. Big Bad Wolf was having trouble controlling her emotions. They seemed to careen around within her willy-nilly. Her husband, on the other hand, had descended into a sullen anger. He wasn’t saying much, but his eyes tracked each of the Reds.

  “All right,” Karen said, stepping back and admiring her handiwork.

  Red Two and Red Three were a few paces behind her. Each still wielded her weapon. “What now?” Jordan asked.

  None of the three Reds was aware of the tidal change that had taken place in the small house. The Big Bad Wolf was completely alert to the difference. It was well within his area of expertise.

  He laughed, just slightly. “You’ve made a mistake,” he said. He held up his taped wrists. “Big goddamn mistake.”

  “What mistake?” Jordan blurted out.

  The Wolf smiled.

  “You know nothing about killing, do you?”

  The three Reds did not answer this. He didn’t expect them to. “In a fight, in self-defense,” the Wolf lectured softly, keeping his voice low and even, which only seemed to underscore his knowledge, “you can do almost anything. Remarkable things. It just depends on how desperate you are. Stab someone with a knife. Pull the trigger on your big hand-cannon. Beat in somebody’s brains. It’s a very simple thing to defend yourself in battle. Anyone can find the strength to win and do whatever it takes in all that heat and blood and struggling.”

  He leaned back a little in his seat. “But now we’re not fighting. The battle is over. You’ve won. But you haven’t, really, because now you will have to kill. In cold blood. It’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it? But you can all feel it, can’t you? Any of you think you have that particular kind of strength? A fight is one thing. Murder is something very different.”

  The three Reds were quiet.

  The Wolf didn’t seem frightened or even all that put out by the situation. “A mother, she could heartlessly kill to defend her children. A man might without thinking if he was defending his home and family. A soldier will to protect his comrades—doesn’t even need a command. But that’s not what we have here tonight, is it? Which one of you thinks she can be a killer? Who is going to be first?” He started to laugh.

  Karen was taken aback, almost as if the psychology of the moment had slapped her across the face. Jordan realized she was suddenly hot. But we won!

  At that moment, Sarah pushed past the other two Reds with a slippery burst of energy.
“You think we can’t kill you?” she shouted. She stepped quickly across the room and thrust the gun barrel up against the Big Bad Wolf’s forehead. His wife whimpered, but he merely grinned.

  “Prove me wrong,” he challenged. He kept his gaze directly in Red Two’s eyes, belying the gamble he was taking.

  Sarah thumbed back the hammer. Her finger tightened on the trigger. She let loose with a long, angry groan.

  And then she stepped back.

  “Not so easy, is it?” the Big Bad Wolf said.

  She immediately thrust the pistol back against his forehead. “I can do it,” she said fiercely.

  “If you could, you already would have,” he calmly replied.

  Red Two and the Wolf quivered slightly. Karen and Jordan were sure she was going to pull the trigger. And they were both sure she would not.

  Karen spoke first. “Sarah, step back.”

  A second passed, then another, and finally Sarah lowered the hammer on her pistol and moved away from the Wolf.

  “You see, you think you’ve accomplished something here tonight,” he said, almost gloating. “But you haven’t. You know nothing about killing and I know everything. You know nothing about me, and I know everything about you. And that will mean you will always lose and I will always win.” He smiled again. “You want to know something that’s obvious to anyone who really knows murder?”

  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.”

  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.

  “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.

  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 J
ordan 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.

  43

  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 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.