Red 1-2-3 (38 page)

“This is my home,” Karen said, rolling down the window. “What’s happening?”

“Do you have some identification, please,” the cop responded.

She produced her driver’s license. He took it from her, seemingly not noticing her quivering hand, looked at it, measured her face against the picture on the card before handing it back.

“We’ve already checked the house,” he said. “There’s another cruiser up there. Will you follow me, please?” This question was spoken like a command.

274

RED 1–2–3

Karen did as she was told. The police car in front of her garage was occupied by two officers, one of whom was an edgy young woman who kept her hand on the butt of her holstered 9 mm pistol. The other was a substantially older man, slightly potbellied, with gray tufts of hair that protruded beneath his cap.

Karen felt her knees go weak as she exited her car. She was afraid she was going to stumble and fall on her face, or that her voice was going to crack with fear.

“Hello, Doctor,” the old cop said, cheerily. “You were lucky you didn’t come home early.”

“Lucky?” Karen asked. It was all she could do to squeeze out the single word.

“Let me show you.”

He led Karen past the front door—which was wide open—to an adjacent window. It was broken, with glass shards fanned out on the floor inside.

‘That’s where he got in,” the cop said. “Then when the phone rang—

that’s what the security company does: They call your house, and if you answer they ask for a code, and if there’s no response within six rings, they call us—anyway, phone rings, burglar sees the caller ID, panics, maybe grabs something, sprints out the front door, and heads off into the woods, or off to wherever he’s parked his car. It took us a few minutes to get here, but he was long gone, and—”

“How many minutes?” Karen interrupted. Her voice seemed pale, as if her words had somehow lost their color.

“Maybe five. Ten at the very most. We were fast. One of our guys was just a couple of miles up the main road, looking for speeders. He got turned around, hit his lights and siren, and got up here quick.”

Karen nodded.

“I already called a window guy. Hope you don’t mind. We keep some names on file at headquarters of guys who will come straight out, day and night . . .”

“No that’s fine.”

275

JOHN KATZENBACH

“He’ll be here any minute. Fix up the broken glass. Get your alarm system back online. But while we’re waiting, we’d like you to just check out the house, see what was taken before the bad guy ran. The insurance people, you know. They want as much in the police report as possible when you make your claim.”

Again Karen nodded. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Her imagination was crowded with too many possibilities:

It was the Wolf.

No, it was too clumsy. He would be sophisticated. Clever.

Why would someone else break in? It can’t be a coincidence.

Did he come to kill me?

She didn’t know what to say to the policeman. Instead, she just walked slowly through her house, searching for some sign that something was missing. But other than the glass spread about beneath the broken window, she could see nothing. It was almost as if whoever it was had broken the window, jackknifed into her house, and made an immediate turn and exited.
That can’t be the Wolf,
she told herself.
He would want something.

And the Wolf would have known I wasn’t here.

With the cop hovering over her shoulder, she went into every room, checked every closet, opened every door, and switched on every light.

Nothing was missing. This merely confused her more.

Midway through her survey, a middle-aged man from Smith 24-Hour Glass Repair showed up and rapidly began work on her window. The repairman had greeted the cops as if they were relatives, which Karen guessed might be the case.

“Anything?” the gray-haired cop asked.

“No. Everything still seems to be in place.”

“Keep looking,” the cop said. “Sometimes it’s not so obvious, like a wide-screen TV ripped from the wall mount. Do you keep cash or jewelry around?”

Karen searched through drawers in her bedroom bureau. Her meager collection of earrings and necklaces was where she had left it that morning.

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RED 1–2–3

“Nothing missing,” she said. She knew she should feel reassured, but instead she felt queasy, nauseous.

“Lucky. I guess that alarm system did its job. We’ve had a number of break-ins in this part of town. Snatch and grab mainly.”

Karen did not feel lucky. She continued to survey her house. Something still seemed wrong, and it took her a second to realize that Martin and Lewis were nowhere to be seen. “I have two cats . . .” she started.

The cop glanced around. “Live alone, ought to have a big, mean dog.”

“I know that. But they’re not here,” she replied. “They’re inside cats—

you know, don’t really go out.”

The cop shrugged. “They probably took off fast as hell out the front door right behind the bad guy, just as scared as he was. My guess is they’re hiding in some bush someplace close by. Put out a bowl of food on the rear deck after we leave; they’ll be back soon enough. Cats, you know, they can take care of themselves pretty good. I wouldn’t worry. They’ll show up when they get hungry or it gets too cold. But I’ll put it in my report anyways.”

Karen thought she should call for Martin and Lewis. But she knew they wouldn’t come. Not because they wouldn’t obey her summons. Because she was absolutely, 100 percent completely certain they were dead.

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34

The Big Bad Wolf held a nine-inch hunting knife in his hand, balancing it on his palm. It had a satisfying weight—not too heavy to be unwieldy, but not so light that it couldn’t be used to cut through skin, muscle, tendons, and even bone. He placed his thumb against the serrated blade but stopped himself from the temptation of drawing it across the razor-sharp edge. Instead, he moved his index finger to the flat side and gently stroked the length of the knife, reaching the tip and stopping. After a moment, he scraped at a little dried blood near the handle, before reaching below his desk, bringing out a spray bottle of disinfecting kitchen cleaner, liberally applying it to the entirety of the knife, and then carefully wiping every surface to destroy any lingering DNA.

“You don’t want to be mixing cats’ blood with Reds’ blood,” he said out loud. But this was spoken barely above a whisper, because he didn’t want Mrs. Big Bad Wolf overhearing anything. And, he reminded himself, she would definitely not have approved of killing cute little pussycats, even if he had told her it was essential to the overall plan.
She might be unsure
about murder, but not about cat killing.

278

RED 1–2–3

They hadn’t even clawed him. He wondered for a moment what their names were. That was a detail that should have shown up in his research on Red One’s life. He hated slippage.

Be meticulous.

The details of death need to be measured out, anticipated, designed to the
absolute second. The documentation needs to be equally precise. The descriptions you write need to be pitch-perfect.

“Don’t forget,” he said, “you are also a journalist.”

He was in his office, surrounded by his pictures, his words, his plans, and his books.

“We have arrived at the end game,” he said, this time pivoting to the wall of pictures and addressing each Red. He pointed the knife at the images. He wanted to do a Muhammad Ali I-Am-the-Greatest! victory dance, but fought off the urge, because nothing was truly finished yet.

The Wolf brandished the blade once more in the air, slicing fantasy throats before lowering it to his desktop. Then he gave his desk chair a little push so that he spun about and wheeled over to his bookcase. He pulled out several volumes: the late John Gardner’s
On Becoming a Novelist,
Alice LaPlante’s
The Making of a Story,
Stephen King’s
On Writing: A
Memoir of the Craft.
He placed these books beside the copy of Strunk and White’s
The Elements of Style
that he kept handy at all times. He smiled and thought,
Some crazy killers read the Bible or the Koran to find scriptural
justification and guidance. They believe there are messages in every holy word,
meant just for their own ears. But writers believe Strunk and White is the
de facto bible of their craft. And I prefer John Gardner because his advice is
so thoughtful, although he was a little crazy himself. Or maybe he was just
eccentric—he rode a Harley-Davidson, lived in the wilds of upstate New York,
and wore his silver hair down to his shoulders—that he seemed crazy at times.

Just like me.

He moved the knife over beside the books as if they were coupled.

Then he wrote:

A knife is both a wonderful and a poor choice for a murder weapon. On
the one hand, it provides the intimacy that the killing experience requires.

279

JOHN KATZENBACH

Psychologists and low-rent Freudians believe that it represents some sort of
penis substitute, but obviously that oversimplifies matters significantly. What it
does is bring the necessary proximity to murder, so that there are no barriers in
that final moment between killer and victim, which is the nectar we all drink.

It links us beyond partners, beyond twins, and beyond lovers.

On the other hand, it is damn messy.

Blood is both a killer’s desire and his enemy. It spurts uncontrollably. It
flows quickly. It seeps into unwanted spots—like the soles of one’s shoes, or
the cuff of one’s shirt—and leaves little microscopic reminders of the killing
moment that some stodgy cop with a microscope can actually find in a later
investigation. This makes it the most dangerous substance to come in contact
with.

One of the best theories about the infamous 1892 Fall River murders
done by Lizzie Borden—“Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother
forty whacks, When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one . . .”—is that she stripped naked to murder her parents and after she had
finished, she bathed and dressed herself, so when the authorities showed up
there was nothing incriminating about her.

Except, naturally, the two dead bodies in the house.

You can’t be taking anything away from a murder site—like an article of
clothes or a lock of hair—that you are not 100 percent certain about, and you
have to know every second that this item might bring about your eventual
downfall.

He stopped, his fingers above the keyboard, and thought:
I’m not like so
many cheap killers; I don’t need a gory souvenir. I have my memories and all
those nicely detailed newspaper articles. They’re like reviews of my work. Good
reviews. Positive reviews. Ecstatic, super, praise-worthy reviews. The kinds of
reviews that get four stars.

He bent again to his writing:

Risk, of course, is always enticing and blood is always a risk. A proper killer
needs to understand the narcotic, addictive quality it has on the soul. You can’t
ignore it, but nor can you be enslaved by it.

But managed risk is the best.

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RED 1–2–3

Balance is important. Shooting someone with a gun, or even an antique
bow and arrow, gives one the necessary distance to remove many of these subtle
threats to detection at the same time that it increases other pitfalls that can lead
to detection. Did you steal that gun? Are there fingerprints on the bullet cas-ings? But my antipathy toward guns is different: I hate separation. Every step
back from your Red diminishes the sensation. You categorically do not want to
walk away from a carefully plotted murder with a sense of incompletion and
frustration.

So, the careful killer anticipates problems and takes steps to avoid them.

Sees that with every choice come issues. Surgical gloves, for example. You want
to use a knife? Good choice, but not one without dangers. Those gloves are a
must-have bit of paraphernalia.

He balanced thoughts.
It will be the knife. Just as the Wolf relies on his
teeth and claws, my knife will achieve the same. There won’t be anything
anonymous when they see that blade.

For a few minutes, he worried over his words. He was concerned that his tone was a little too familiar and that he spoke a little too directly to his planned readership. He wondered for an instant whether he should redo the most recent passages. John Gardner in particular, and Stephen King as well, went on at length about careful planning and the value in rewriting.

But he also didn’t want to overwork the spontaneity out of his manuscript.

That’s what will bring the readers into the bookstores,
he thought.
They will
know they are with me every step of the way.

The same as Red One and Red Three.

He quickly spun away from his desk, scooted across to his bookcase, and ran a finger up and down the spines of the books collected there. On the third shelf, he found what he was searching for: the late newspaper columnist Tom Wicker’s account of the uprising and takeover of Attica Correctional Facility,
A Time to Die
. He scoured the opening pages with his eyes until he found the passage he wanted. It was the author’s lament that despite acclaim as a reporter and writer, in his own eyes he had done little to “signify” his life.

281

JOHN KATZENBACH

He laughed out loud.
That’s not going to be my problem.
He turned back to his computer, hunching over, writing feverishly.

I have studied. I have inspected. I have watched. A killer is like a psychologist and like a lover. One must know one’s target intimately. Red One is most
vulnerable in the space between her front door and her car. Night is better
than morning because when she comes home she is scared of what awaits her
inside. She doesn’t focus on the distance between her car—safety—and her
front door—possible safety, potential threat. That was a side benefit of my little
break-in. It forces her to concentrate on what might be within her walls waiting. As in the story of Little Red Riding Hood, she will expect me inside. The
distance between the car and the front door is less than twenty feet. There is a
bright light by the front door, which comes on before she arrives in the dark.