Red 1-2-3 (30 page)

At the same moment, she could hear a firm voice she didn’t immediately recognize yelling within her: “
Do it, Sarah, do it now!
”

It took every bit of effort to stand. She could feel her pulse racing. Her legs were still weak. She knew her face was heart-attack pale.

First she took one step, then another, as she turned her back on all her sorrows. She stumbled at first, drunkenly putting one foot in front of the other and picking up momentum.

Then Sarah ran.

Near panic, filled with fear, but increasing speed with every stride and understanding that she had no other route, Sarah raced into the growing darkness.

One block flew by her, followed by a second. Sarah didn’t try to pace herself; she sprinted. She could barely see the buildings she swept by.

Find the river,
she thought.

Running desperately hard, trying to leave all memories behind, she dashed forward. The sidewalk narrowed slightly on the approach to the bridge, but she pounded to the top. Then she stopped, gasping for breath.

The bridge had four lanes of roadway and stretched across a portion of the river just beneath Western Falls. There was a treatment plant nearby which used the natural flow of the river to help cleanse sewage. The water was dark, fast, turbulent, and dangerous; more than one fisherman working the stretch above had slipped and died in the powerful currents created both by the demands of the plant and the twenty-foot drop forged by nature and helped by turn-of-the century engineers. But the plant barely worked anymore and the industries that had sprung up nearby had closed, 216

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so now the only thing that seemed to have life were the black, rain-choked, swirling waters.

Even the small fence supposed to keep people from getting too close to danger was in disrepair. A faded yellow sign warned passersby of the risks. Not many people used the footpath by the bridge. She stripped off her overcoat and let it sink, crumpled up, to the ground. She felt a sudden chill against her neck.

It was a fine place for someone consumed by despair to die.

Sarah bent over, trying to catch her breath. She looked up suddenly.

Soon,
she thought.
Any second now, Red Two.

Fourteen points, eight boards, a pair of assists, and we won by eleven.

Red Three had taken her customary seat alone in the back of the school’s van. Even with her solid, nearly spectacular contribution to the team’s victory, she was still left alone on the road trip. There had been a few perfunctory “good game” and “way to go” hand-slapping reactions in the immediate aftermath, but by the time the steam from the showers in the away-girls locker room had dissipated and the last brush had been drawn through wet curls, Jordan was back to her routine outcast status, which was what she had counted on.

She sat with her face pressed up against the glass in the window by the back row. It was cool against her forehead, but she felt hot and sweaty. The other girls on the team were lost in various conversations. The coach was driving and the assistant coach was in the front seat.

Jordan had played at this other school a half-dozen times since making the varsity. She knew the route the van would travel back to her school.

She knew how long it would take and what streets they would pass.

She had adopted a forlorn, lost look, as if her thoughts were elsewhere, when they were actually riveted on what she could see outside.
At the stop-light, we’ll take a right. Five minutes. Maybe less.

She could feel her body tighten with tension. The muscles on her arms were taut, and her legs seemed like rubber bands being pulled to breaking.

It was like the locker room anxiety before the start of a big game.

217

JOHN KATZENBACH

It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you.
Doubt crept into her, settling alongside fear.
He’ll never stop. Not until we’re all dead.

Jordan tore her eyes away from the window. The coach was driving slowly and cautiously, because the unwieldy van was hard to handle on the slick highways. The assistant was going over the stat sheet from the game, using the light from the dashboard to read off numbers. Her teammates were continuing to talk about boys and parties and classes and tests and music and assignments and all the usual stuff that occupies teens—talk about nothing and everything, all at once.

She returned her gaze to the window.
We go left, then past the apart-ments and the bodega where they probably sell under-the-counter drugs along
with overpriced foodstuffs. There’s a stop sign, which he will only pause at,
because this shortcut takes us through a bad part of the city and he’s got a van
filled with rich white girls and that’s potentially a bad combination. So he’ll
accelerate a little, even in the bad weather, right up the street past the empty
warehouses and onto the bridge.

She gritted her teeth. It was a little like Jordan could see it all happening seconds before it did. She could feel the Big Bad Wolf ’s presence, just as if he were seated beside her, breathing heavily into her ear.

The engine sound increased as the van picked up speed.
Now!
Jordan told herself.
Do it now!

She took a huge deep breath and then let loose with an immense, terrified, full-throated panicky scream that exploded in the confined van.

Sarah took one last look down the roadway, then vaulted the fence.

She hesitated above the black, swirling waters.
Goodbye
to everything,
Red Two,
she told herself.

The van swerved wildly across an empty lane, the driver-coach almost losing control at the piercing shriek from the back. Jordan had pushed partway onto her feet and was pointing furiously out the window into the creeping blackness of falling night, her arms waving wildly.

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“She jumped! She jumped! Help! Help! Oh my God! The lady, she was standing there by the bridge, I saw her jump!”

The coach wrestled the van to a stop and managed to throw on his emergency flashers. “Everybody stay where you are!” he shouted. The assistant coach was struggling with his seat belt and trying to open his door. He yelled, “Someone call 911!” as he went through the door and ran to the concrete barrier by the side of the bridge to search the pounding ink-sweep of water. The other girls were all shouting incomprehensibly, craning their heads in the direction Jordan pointed, a cacophony of fear and panic. One had grabbed a cell phone from a backpack and was furiously dialing for help. Jordan abruptly slumped down, head still pressed against the glass, moaning and starting to sob uncontrollably, deep, guttural sounds of despair mingling with, “I saw it. Jesus Christ. I saw it. She jumped, she jumped. I saw her jump . . .”

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28

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf was oddly familiar with the turbulent emotions swirling around within her. She had been through illness that had threatened to steal her life, she had experienced the clammy belief that her body was about to betray her, and she had once before faced up to the idea that imminent death awaited her.

And she had survived. But she was not sure she could survive what awaited her now. She wondered:
Can the truth kill me?

She knew the answer to that question:
Of course it can.

Her head filled with furious admonitions.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. You
should never have opened that office door. Before you did that stupid thing, you
were happy. Never open a locked door. Never.

Across the room, the Big Bad Wolf was shuffling through the day’s mail, discarding just about everything into the plastic bin they used for recycling, grimacing at the occasional bill that appeared in the midst of flyers, catalogues, and letters marked “Important” which were only false come-ons for new credit cards or requests for donations to political parties or causes. Mrs. Big Bad Wolf noticed that her husband kept a few of these; 220

RED 1–2–3

she knew that he made small contributions to cancer and heart research.

These were a few dollars here or there, donations that prompted him to joke, “I’m just trying to make sure we get into heaven.”

She was unsure whether heaven was any longer a possibility for either of them.

“So, shall we watch some television?” the Wolf asked as he finished with a flourish, tossing the last useless letter into the trash.

The answer, Mrs. Big Bad Wolf knew, was routinely
yes,
followed by their taking their usual seats and flipping through the usual channels to find the usual shows. There was something wondrously reassuring, almost seductive, in the idea that she could simply say
yes
and shuffle back into the way things had been. With popcorn.

She was torn. A large part of her insisted that she just keep her mouth shut and let everything slide inexorably back into the life that made her so happy. But a small portion of her acknowledged that nothing in the world was as crippling as uncertainty. She had been through that with disease, and now she wondered whether she could ever take her husband’s hand and hold it in her own again without frightening, lingering doubts.

While this debate raged within her, making her almost dizzy with anxiety, she heard herself say, “We have to talk about something.”

It was a little like someone else had entered the room and some other Mrs. Big Bad Wolf was speaking out loud, in an overdramatic, theatrically ominous tone of voice. She wanted to shout at this intruder, “
You keep
your mouth shut!
”
and “
How dare you come between my husband and me?
”

The Big Bad Wolf turned slowly toward her.

“Talk?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Is there something wrong? Are you feeling bad? Do I need to take you to the doctor?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Well, that’s a relief. Is there some problem at work?”

“No.”

221

JOHN KATZENBACH

“Well, okay. Let’s talk. It’s something else, I guess. So what’s on your mind?” He didn’t sound anything other than mildly bemused. He gave a little shrug and gestured toward her as if inviting her to continue.

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf wondered what her face looked like. Was she pale?

Was it furrowed with fears? Did her lip tremble? Did her eye twitch? Why couldn’t he see the distress that she knew she was wearing like a loud and colorful suit of clothes?

She felt unable to breathe. She wondered if she would fall to the floor choking. “I . . .” she stopped.

“Yes. You what?” he responded. The Wolf still seemed oblivious to the hot-iron agony that encased his wife.

“I read what you’re writing,” she said.

The grin on her husband’s face faded quickly. “What?”

“You left the keys to your office when we switched cars the other night.

I went in and read some of the pages by your computer.”

“My new book,” he said.

She nodded.

“You were not supposed to do that,” the Wolf said. The timbre of his voice had changed. The amused tone had been replaced by an even, flat sound, like a single dissonant note on an out-of-tune piano played over and over. She had expected him to cry out in outrage and anger. The equa-nimity in his voice frightened her. “My office, what I’m working on, that belongs to me. It’s private. I’m not ready to show it to anyone. Even you.”

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf wanted to say, “
Forgive me
” or “
I’m sorry. I won’t do
it again.
” She was suddenly confused. She was unsure who had done the worse thing: herself, for violating her husband’s space and work, or him—

because he might be a killer.

But she swallowed all her apologies like sour-tasting milk. “Are you going to kill them?” she asked. She could not believe she was asking that question. It was beyond blunt. If he replied
yes
what would that mean for her? If he said
no
how could she believe him?

It never occurred to her that she might be putting herself at risk merely by asking.

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He smiled. “What do you think I’m going to do?” he said. The timbre in his voice had changed again. Now he spoke like someone going over a grocery list.

“I think you intend to kill them. I don’t understand why.”

“You might get that impression from what you read,” he replied.

“There are three . . .” She’d started a question, but stopped, unsure what the question should be.

“Yes. Three. It’s a unique situation,” he replied to something she had not asked.

“Doctor Jayson and that girl at my school, Jordan—”

“And one other,” he said, interrupting. “Her name is Sarah. You don’t know her. But she’s special. They are all very special.”

This word
special
seemed to be wrong, she thought, but she could not say how or why. She shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand at all.”

“How much did you read?” he asked.

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf hesitated. The conversation wasn’t going as she’d thought it would. She had confronted her husband and asked him if he was a killer, and this should have made everything clear, but instead they were talking about words.

“Just a little,” she said. “Maybe a page or two.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Big Bad Wolf knew this was the truth, but it felt like a lie.

“So you don’t really know what the book is about, do you? Or what I’m trying to achieve in what context. If I asked you about plot, or characters, or style, you couldn’t really answer, could you?”

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf shook her head. She wanted to cry. “It’s about killing.”

“All my books are about killing. That’s what mystery and thriller writers do. I thought you liked them.”

This comment, maybe even intended as a criticism, struck home. “Of course I like them. You know that,” she said. It sounded like a plea coming out of her mouth. What she wanted to say was, “
Those books are what
brought us together. Those books saved my life.
”

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