Red 1-2-3

13

The Big Bad Wolf dressed carefully-an old tweed jacket, blue button-down shirt, slightly frayed at the collar and cuffs. Wrinkled striped tie. Khaki pants that had faded and scuffed brown shoes.

He placed a slender brand-new high-tech digital voice recorder and a small notebook into an old green canvas shoulder bag, along with a collection of cheap pens and a paperback copy of his last book. The novel sported a serrated-edged, bloody knife on the silver and black cover, even though there was no character that used such a knife on any of its pages.

He paused, turning to the mirror just at the moment he slid his tie snug to his throat, and remembered a nasty complaint he’d made to his former publisher trying to point out this discrepancy. “The damn cover artist didn’t bother to read one fucking word I’ve written! He couldn’t even pass a true/false quiz about what’s in the book!” Outrage and insult, expressed in a frantic, no-compromise voice. He’d been summarily ignored. Apparently redesigning the book jacket was an expense they weren’t willing to accept. The memory gave him a sour taste and made his face redden, as if the affront weren’t fifteen years old, but had just happened that morning. His new book, he thought, wouldn’t get such short shrift.

He checked his appearance in his wife’s full-length mirror, spinning around like a teenage girl on prom night. Then he topped it off with horn-rimmed eyeglasses that he perched on the end of his nose and an old tan trench coat that seemed to flop shapelessly around his body and flapped with every step he took. Through the bedroom window he could see it was a damp, raw day, and he considered an umbrella, but then realized that a few raindrops and some breeze mussing what remained of his thinning hair would probably make him look slightly disheveled, which was precisely the image he was working to establish.

He was a man of utter precision, but he would appear to any observer to be more than just a little disorganized and totally head-in-the-clouds harmless.

He made a mental note to add a new chapter to his current book called On Blending In.

When you’re special, when you’re truly unique, he told himself, you need to hide it carefully.

He gathered himself, checked his wristwatch, and imagined where each Red was at that moment. He could hear their voices. Trembling. Scared. He considered the sensation of their skin beneath his fingers. Goose bumps. He took his time picturing them, as if he could fill himself with something stolen from them.

He spoke out loud, imitating voices appropriate to reading a children’s book aloud. He looked at Red One, Red Two, and Red Three.

High-pitched, sniveling: “Oh, what big eyes you have, Grandmother…”

Firm, deep, growling, and in control: “Yes. All the better to watch you with, dear. And you, dear. And you too, dear.”

Then he laughed as if he’d just told them the funniest, most outrageous knee-slapping, back-pounding joke, turned, and made his way out of his house. It seemed to the Wolf that he could hear laughter echoing behind him. He walked quickly toward his car and the sounds faded away. He did not want to be late for his appointment.

Outside the police station, it was spitting light rain. Not enough to soak anyone, just enough to give the chill a damp, nasty feel. He hunched up his collar and hurried across the parking lot.

The station was a modern building, in sharp contrast to the stately brick Victorian designs that had housed the town’s other departments for decades. His town-just shy of a size to be considered a city, but larger than a quaint village-was like many in New England, a mishmash of old blending with the new. There were tree-lined streets of singular antique beauty next to developments that screamed of undistinguished postwar hurry-up-and get-it-built squares and rectangles.

A pair of tall oak trees guarded the walkway leading up to the police station. They had just shed their leaves and looked like twin skeletons. Just beyond these there was a concrete set of stairs that led to a wide set of glass doors. He headed in that direction.

There was a gray-haired, potbellied uniformed officer behind a bullet-proof glass partition, which seemed to the Big Bad Wolf to be unnecessarily excessive. It was unlikely any desperado was going to break through with guns blazing. The police department itself was typical for a town that size. It had a three-member detective branch and a patrol segment. It had specialists in domestic violence and rape and a traffic squad that turned a significant profit for the town annually with the number of tickets it wrote for speeders. It even had a modest fraud office, which spent its time handling calls from elderly residents wondering if the e-mail they received from a Nigerian prince asking for money was legitimate. Like any modern, organized department, each element had its own cubicle, and there were helpful signs on the walls directing him through the warren of police work.

It did not take the Big Bad Wolf long to find Detective Moyer, sitting behind a cluttered desk and a computer screen filled with FBI lookout notices. Moyer was a large man who sported a jolly look that made him seem more suited to department store Santa Claus than major crimes detective. He shook hands with an enthusiasm that matched his bulk.

“Glad to meet yah,” the detective boomed. “Man, this is an unusual request. I mean, most of the time when some citizen has some questions it’s because they want their brother-in-law followed because they think he’s dealing drugs or cheating on his wife or something. But you’re an author, right? That’s what the chief’s public relations assistant told me.”

“That’s right,” the Big Bad Wolf answered. He dug about in his satchel and produced the bloody-knife paperback. “Here,” he said, with a grin. “Dramatic proof. And a gift.”

The detective took it and stared at the jacket.

“Cool,” he said. “I don’t read many mysteries. Mostly sports books-you know, like about championship basketball teams or famous coaches or breaking the four-minute mile. But my sister’s husband, he’s like addicted to these things. I’ll give it to him…”

“I’ll sign it for him,” the Big Bad Wolf said, producing a pen.

“He’ll get a kick out of that,” the detective replied.

The Big Bad Wolf finished with a flourish. Then he produced the small digital recorder. “You don’t mind?” he asked.

“Nope,” Detective Moyer answered, smiling.

The Big Bad Wolf smiled in return. “I really like getting my research right,” he said. “You really don’t want to make mistakes on the pages. Readers are sensitive to every word. They’ll call you on an error faster than…”

He let his voice trail off. Detective Moyer nodded.

“Hey, it’s the same for us. Get second-guessed all the damn time. Except for us, well, it’s real. Not made up.”

“That’s my luxury,” the Big Bad Wolf joked. Both men smiled, as if sharing a small secret.

The Big Bad Wolf pulled out his notebook and pen. These items were more like props. They allowed him to avoid eye contact when he wanted to. The digital tape recorder would capture every answer accurately.

“And sometimes it’s really helpful to have both notes and exact words,” he said.

“Sort of redundant systems,” the detective said. “Like on an airplane.”

“Exactly,” the Big Bad Wolf replied.

“So what is it you want to know?” the detective asked.

“Well,” the Big Bad Wolf said slowly, hesitantly, before beginning to probe. “In my new book, I have a character stalking a person from afar. He wants to get closer, but he doesn’t want to do anything that will attract the police, you see. Wants it to be just one-on-one, if you get what I’m driving at. Got to have it all play out before the cops get involved.”

The detective nodded. “Sounds tense.”

“That’s the point,” the Big Bad Wolf answered. “Got to keep readers on the edge of their seats.” He smiled and clicked on the recorder and bent to his notebook, as the detective rocked back and forth in his desk chair before starting to describe in friendly, substantial detail just exactly what the police were-and were not-capable of doing.

As a general rule, Mrs. Big Bad Wolf always took an entire hour for lunch away from her desk in the dean’s office. When the weather was nice, she would make a quick salad or sandwich in the school’s dining hall, then go outside and sit beneath the trees, where she could be by herself and idly watch students pass by. When the weather was poor, as it was this day, she would head inside with her meal to any of the small spots around the campus where she knew she would be left alone: an alcove in the art gallery, a bench outside the English department’s offices.

This day, she hunkered down in an empty lecture room. Someone had written on a blackboard: What does Marquez mean at the end? Honors Spanish, she told herself, but she was just guessing the assignment had been One Hundred Years of Solitude. She tore through her light meal and then sat back in her chair and opened up a copy of her husband’s last book, which was the novel with the serrated-knife jacket. She had already read the book at least four times, to the point where she could actually quote some passages verbatim. She had not let him know she could do this-it was a part of her love that she liked to keep to herself.

He also did not know that shortly after she’d learned about his complaint to his publisher about the jacket cover, she had sent the editor at that house a furious letter, underscoring the same problem. They had been married barely a year, but loyalty, she thought, was an integral part of love. She had harangued the editor that the jacket was misleading and inappropriate and told him that she would never buy another novel from that publisher again. Uncharacteristically, she had filled her letter with violent threats and rampaging obscenities. Carried away, she at least had the good sense to not sign her name.

The lecture room was hot. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she allowed herself to daydream, she often imagined herself in some sort of public setting-a restaurant or a movie theater or even a bookstore -where she would have the opportunity to loudly verbally assault the editor-all the editors-who hadn’t seen her husband’s genius. In her imagination, she was able to gather them together, alongside all the film producers, newspaper critics, and occasional Internet bloggers who had failed him or been snide and less than complimentary.

When she painted this inward portrait, the men-they were always small, sallow, balding men-reeled under her volley of criticism and humbly admitted their mistakes.

It gave her great satisfaction.

Every author’s wife would have imagined the same scenario, she believed. It was her job.

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf opened her eyes and let them drop onto the open pages and creep over the words gathered in front of her. She placed her finger in the midst of a paragraph describing the very beginning of a car chase. The bad guy gets away, she reminded herself. It’s very exciting. When she was a little girl she hadn’t been popular in school, and so she had descended into the safety of books. Horse books. Dog books. Little Women and Jane Eyre. Even after she grew up, titles and characters remained her truest friends.

Every so often she wished she had been blessed with the right sort of eye and the command of language that would have turned her into a writer. She longed for creativity. In college she had taken writing courses, art courses, photography courses, acting classes, and even poetry courses-and been decidedly mediocre in all. That invention had always eluded her, saddened her. But she gave herself credit for coming up with the next best thing: life at the side of someone who could create magical things.

She stopped reading. She could feel a quivering inside of her. What she held in her hands was beautiful-but it was familiar. She left the book open on her lap and leaned back and closed her eyes a second time, as if in her darkness she might picture her husband’s new story unfolding right before her. There would be a relentless killer, she knew, and a clever detective hunting him down. There would be a woman at risk. Probably a quite beautiful woman, although she hoped that after the expected large bust and long legs, he’d modeled the character after her. The book’s pace would be steady, filled with unexpected and surprising twists and turns that, no matter how outlandish, would build toward a dramatic confrontation. She knew all the requisite elements of a modern police-thriller.

She kept her eyes closed, but reached out with her hands as if she could touch the words she knew were being created almost in front of her.

Mrs. Big Bad Wolf stroked nothing but empty air.

After a moment, she felt a little cold, as if the heat in the room had suddenly slid away. She sighed deeply and packed up her paperback and her lunch utensils and took a quick look at her watch. Her lunch hour was almost finished; it was time to return to work. There was a faculty meeting that afternoon, which her boss, the dean, would surely be attending. Maybe she could steal a few moments to read familiar passages when he was out of the office.