Red 1-2-3 (18 page)

Appetizer. Main course. Dessert. Each stage of murder had its own tastes.

He wrote down:
I want to let each phase run its course.
The Wolf was acutely aware that as in any relationship, a murder needed to be fulfilling at every level. Like machine-gun bullets, words leapt at him:
Threat. Fear.

Process. The moment. The follow-up. Memory.
Any slippage at any point would detract from the overall experience.

He hesitated again, this time letting his eyes scan his latest entry on the computer screen.
What makes a book really work?
he wrote at last.
It must
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take risks. It must suck the reader inside the story. Every character has to be
fascinating in his or her own special way. It must make it a paramount necessity for readers to turn each page. This is equally true for a novel of manners or
a science fiction thriller. The same rules of murder apply to writing. What good
is telling a story that doesn’t resonate long after the final page has been read?

Doesn’t the killer face the same question? Both writer and killer are engaged
in creating something that will last. The writer wants the reader to remember
his words long after the final page. The killer wants the impact of the death to
linger. And not just for him, but for all the others the death has touched.

Murder isn’t about a single killing. It’s about a ripple through the lives of
many.

He drummed his fingers against the wooden desktop, as if this rapid tapping would accelerate his thoughts into new words that he could write down. For a moment he envied artists who simply drew a line on a blank white canvas and let that small motion define everything that was to follow.
Painting, that’s easy,
he thought
.
He understood that the similarity between a killer and an artist was that both already had firmly in their mind a finished portrait of what would emerge when they drew their first stroke. This notion made him grin.

Then he wrote at the top of a new page:
Why I Love Each Red.

The Wolf sighed. He told himself,
It is not enough to tell readers how you
expect to accomplish their deaths. You need to explain why. In the fairy tale,
it’s not just a fine meal that the wolf wants as he stalks Little Red Riding Hood
through the woods. He could sate that hunger at any point. No, his real starva-tion is far different and it has to be addressed with intensity. The wolf wants
to eat. But he also wants a relationship.

Again, the Wolf hesitated. It was dark outside, the afternoon having given way to night, and he expected Mrs. Big Bad Wolf to arrive home shortly, the way she did every day, just a few minutes before 6 p.m., letting out a cheery “I’m home, dear . . .” as she passed through the front door. The Wolf never immediately responded. He allowed her a few moments to observe his overcoat hanging on its customary hook, his umbrella in the 127

JOHN KATZENBACH

stand in the vestibule, and his shoes thoughtfully removed by the living room entrance, replaced by slide-on leather slippers. Her pair, which matched his, would be waiting for her. Then she would tiptoe past his closed office door—even if she had grocery bags in her arms and could use a little assistance. He knew she would immediately go to the kitchen to fix their dinner. Mrs. Big Bad Wolf felt that making certain he was overstuffed was a key element to fueling the writing process. He didn’t disagree with this.

So, as soon as he heard pots and pans clatter in the kitchen as the meal began to get under way, he would call out an answer, as if he hadn’t heard her entry. “Hiya, honey! I’ll be out in a sec!”

He knew his wife enjoyed the bellow from behind the office door, so he shouted out his greeting regardless of his mood or the moment happening on the page in front of him. He could be writing about something as mundane as the weather or something as electric as how he intended to kill. It made no difference. He still raised his voice so she could hear him.

They played the same lively tunes daily:

“
How was your day?
”

“
What’s going on at school?
”

“
Were you able to work hard?
”

“
Did you get around to paying the electric bill?
”

“
There are some odd jobs around the yard we need to get to.
”

“
Would you like to have Chinese for dinner tomorrow?
”

“
Shall we watch a movie on the TV tonight, or are you too tired?
”

“
Maybe we should take a cruise this year. There are some great sales on
Caribbean trips. We haven’t had a real vacation in months. What do you
think; shall we make a reservation and start saving our money?
”

The Wolf heard a distant rattle. It had to be the front door. He waited, and then he heard the expected greeting. This signaled him to start the electronic process of closing up everything he was working on and encrypting it. All this was actually unnecessary. The wall of photographs was incriminating enough—a factoid he knew from his discussion with the detective.

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“Killers—the type who like to plan, not the thug robbing a convenience store or doing in some competitor in the drug business with a whole lot of automatic weapons fire—like to keep souvenirs,” the policeman had told him in a smug, self-satisfied tone of voice.
As if he really knew what he was
talking about,
the Wolf said to himself. The cop had been very helpful, and had answered all his questions, although sometimes the policeman had sounded like a teacher trying to explain things to a distracted elementary school class.

But securing the files made the Wolf feel his privacy remained intact when he shut down his computer. It was a little like turning off a machine but switching on his imagination, because each Red would glow in his thoughts right through the remainder of the humdrum evening that awaited him.

If you are a plumber, make sure you wear your utility belt and carry your
tools. If you are a salesman, make sure you maintain that glib, quick, handshaking demeanor at all times. And if you are a writer, make sure you ask
questions like you’re looking for information to put on a page.

“I’ll be out in a sec!” he called, just as he did every night and precisely as he knew she expected him to. “Just finishing up in here!”

Meat loaf,
he thought.
That would be great tonight. With gravy and
mashed potatoes.

And then, if his wife wasn’t too tired, after they’d finished clearing the table and doing the dishes, a movie. They rarely went out to the cinema anymore, preferring to hunker down in front of their wide-screen television. The Wolf was very sensitive to the fact that Mrs. Big Bad Wolf worked hard at a job critically important for their lives—it paid the creditors and allowed him to be who he was—and with her past heart problems, even with the recent clean bill of health, he didn’t like to create stress in the household. He rewarded her with loyalty, which helped provide a nice quiet, private life for the two of them.

It was the least he could do. If he thought she needed something special, he would surprise her with the occasional night out to a nice restaurant or 129

JOHN KATZENBACH

front-row tickets to a local acting company’s rendition of
Macbeth
. These outings helped cover up the inevitable disappointment he could see in her eyes when from time to time he announced he had to go out alone “on research.”

This night he thought he’d check the on-demand television listings and attempt to find something funny and romantic that wasn’t too modern.

He didn’t like the latest crop of films, which substituted gross-out for slapstick. He preferred classics. The Marx Brothers and Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, right up through Steve Martin and Elaine May. He knew about Judd Apatow, but couldn’t really understand what the kids saw in his brand of cinematic comedy. He and his wife would agree on one of the old-time channels, and he would sit in his reclining chair, and she would plop down in the adjacent love seat. She would fix them each a bowl of vanilla ice cream with some chocolate sprinkles on top right before the movie started.

They would laugh together and then head up to bed.

To sleep.

He suspected that he actually did love his wife. He still enjoyed making love to her from time to time—although in recent months he’d pictured one of the three Reds beneath him as he covered his wife. He didn’t think she had ever noticed this distraction.
Perhaps,
he thought,
it makes me
more intense.
But he was also aware that since her illness, the moments of coupling had diminished. Frequency was down to maybe once or twice a month, if that.

His desire was still intact, however. And he took some pride in the fact that even as he was closing in on getting truly old, he didn’t need the little blue pill to help him perform. But the idea that he might look for sex outside of his marriage had never occurred to the Wolf.

He strayed—but only in his imagination.

The Wolf looked at the computer screen and the page in front of him with his new chapter heading. He read it out loud, but quietly: “Why I Love Each Red.”

Then, still speaking softly, he answered the question.

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“Because of what they give me.”

True passion,
he thought. He needed to capture that intensity on the pages of his book.

He imagined that stalking them and planning their deaths was a little like having an affair. He didn’t think of it as cheating, however.

Certainly, they were like lovers waiting patiently for him. But, each in her own way, they were also like faithful wives.

131

17

The three Reds drove in Karen’s car to the largest local enclosed mall, where she dropped Jordan at the east entrance by Sears, then drove around and delivered Sarah to the west entrance near Best Buy. After waiting a few minutes, Karen steered her way to the top floor of the parking garage adjacent to the mall. She turned her car around so that she could see if any car had followed her up. She shut off the engine and switched off the headlights and waited exactly seventeen minutes. The advantage of this parking garage was that it had separate ramps for heading up and heading down. At the seven-teenth minute, she fired up the engine and raced down the circular drive, tires squealing against the pavement. She accelerated across the expanses of vacant parking to the mall’s north exit. “Follow that,” she muttered to herself.
I don’t care how damn clever you imagine yourself to be, Mister Wolf.

As before, when she had first met with Red Three, she had a distinct sensation that it was important to not allow herself to be followed, although she was unsure precisely
why
. A part of her felt completely ridiculous. She had adopted evasive steps when she returned home in the evening and when she went to work in the morning. She had driven like a crazy person 132

RED 1–2–3

when she had picked up Red Three. Now she was repeating the same erratic formula—and she was pretty certain that the other two Reds were doing the same thing—and she could not answer the essential question:
Why are you doing this?

She answered herself:
So he doesn’t kill you in a parking garage.

Then she hesitated, gasping out loud as if there were no air in the car, realizing,
Anything is possible. You don’t know how he’s going to kill you.

The physician within her recognized paranoia.
Except there’s nothing
made up about this. No delusions. It’s real.
She tried to think back to her brief rotation as a medical student in a psychiatric wing of a large state hospital, but whatever lessons she had learned in those weeks had dissipated through years of internal medicine.
All my—no, all
our
—behavior
is being defined by fear.

She closed her eyes tightly.

Put a name to it,
she told herself. This was impossible. She tried to think:
Fear of heights. That was acrophobia. Fear of spiders? That was arach-nophobia. Fear of dying?

Thanatophobia.

What she felt seemed like a combination of those and every other fear she could draw from her heart.

Put a name to it,
she repeated to herself.

Easier said than done.

Karen tried to clear her mind of various deadly images that began to intrude wildly on her imagination, and tried to concentrate on watching for the other Reds.
Guns. Knives. Poisons. Choking.
All she could see were dozens of murders, all spread out like a bloody buffet before her, and as if caught in a nightmare, she was being forced to choose one.

She wiped her hand across her face. She could feel sweat beneath her arms. Her breath was short and raspy. She looked around. There was no obvious reason to be on the verge of panic. There was no lurking figure in a shadow staring at her. There was no man racing toward her brandishing a weapon. There was no set of auto headlights burrowing into her from behind.

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But all these things were there, even if they weren’t there.

Her eyes swept around the empty spaces of the shopping mall. “Come on,” she whispered out loud, speaking to the other two Reds. “I want to get the hell out of here.”

Within seconds of her arrival, Red Two and Red Three emerged through the wide mall doors, walking swiftly toward her. They had each traveled haphazard routes through the shops, hurrying down aisles, ducking in and out of toilets, backtracking, riding escalators up and then down, crossing paths twice before joining up and exiting. Trailing them would have been difficult, even with the smaller-than-usual crowds of people inside the cavernous building.

“Think that will work?” Sarah asked breathlessly as she launched herself into the car.

“Sure,” Jordan replied confidently from the backseat.