Red 1-2-3

15

Red Two stared from the questionable safety of her house at the car parked across the street. She had first noticed it perhaps fifteen minutes earlier, as she had staggered aimlessly about her living room, pistol in one hand, some pills in the other, unsure which to use first. Ordinarily she would have paid no attention to a nondescript car pulled to the side of the road just beyond the reach of a streetlamp’s glow. Someone in search of an address. Someone stopped to make a cell phone call. Someone momentarily lost, seeking their bearings. This last possibility made Sarah think, Maybe someone like me.

But Sarah Locksley suspected that nothing was ordinary in her life any longer, and despite the gray-black gloom of rapidly falling night, she could just make out the shape of a person seated in the car. Man? Woman? The shape was indistinct. For a moment or two she watched through her window, waiting for whoever this was to exit the car and walk up to one of her neighbors’ front doors. A light would go on, a door would swing open, there would be voices raised in greeting and maybe a handshake or a hug.

That would have been my life not so long ago. No more.

She continued to wait, counting seconds as her mind blanked to everything except the steady accumulation of numbers.

The expected scenario didn’t materialize. And when she reached 60 with the figure remaining obscured inside the vehicle, her pulse quickened. Like a picture slowly coming into focus, some sort of off-kilter algorithm coalesced in her mind: I’m alone waiting for a killer. It’s almost dark. There’s a car parked across the street. Someone’s inside, watching me. They’re not just visiting the neighbors. They’re here for me. She slammed herself to the side as the formula took shape within her, dodging out of the sight of the person she suddenly absolutely 100 percent knew was staring back at her with murderous intent. Sarah hugged against the wall, breathing hard, then crept sideways to where she could just tug a small amount of worn chintz curtain away, and peered out at the vehicle.

Evening sliced away her ability to see clearly. Shadows slipped like razor blades across her sight line. She ducked backward, as if she could hide. She had an impossible thought: He can see me, but I can’t see him.

Sarah twitched. She quivered. She thought This is it and thumbed back the hammer on her weapon. It clicked into position with an evil sound.

A hidden part of her-the reasonable part-understood that this couldn’t be the way a killer would work. He would be cautious, prepared, and precise. The first moment she would be aware he was beside her would be her last. The Wolf wouldn’t simply park out in front of her house and then after a suitable wait, giving her enough time to get fully ready, march up to her front door and announce, Hi! I’m the Big Bad Wolf and I’m here to kill you.

But logic seemed slippery and elusive, and it took tense muscles and a sweaty grip to grab any away from her imagination.

Wait, she abruptly insisted to herself, that’s exactly what he does in the fairy tale. He comes right up close to Little Red Riding Hood and she can only recognize that his eyes, his ears, his nose, and finally his teeth aren’t quite right.

She craned her head forward once again and stole another glance at the car.

It was empty.

She shrank back again, trying to imagine how she could make herself seem small, feeling the wall closing in on her almost like it was pushing her into the light. A panicky voice within her-she knew it was the drugs and the booze and the despair-screamed at her, Run! Run now! And she looked around wildly for an exit, although she knew there was none. For a single instant she had a vision:

Sarah flings open the back door.

Sarah dashes across the lawn in back, vaults the old wooden fence.

Sarah flees down the space between houses. Dogs bark. Neighbors hear her urgent footsteps and cry out in alarm. The police are summoned. They arrive, sirens blaring, just in the nick of time.

Sarah is saved!

She sucked in air and held her breath. The vision faded. She knew: There is no escape. Not out the back. Not out the front. I can’t fly away through the ceiling. I can’t bury myself in the basement. I can’t become invisible. Her mouth was dry and she had trouble making her eyes focus, as if they both had suddenly decided to betray her. The hand with the pills dropped them all to the floor, where they rattled and bounced away from her. The hand holding the gun seemed to be dragging her down, as if the weight of her husband’s pistol had suddenly increased tenfold. As fears and doubts sparked through her body like so many explosions, she was unsure whether she would be able to lift the weapon and whether she would be able to summon the strength to pull the trigger when the time arrived and she faced the Wolf.

And then, just as abruptly, she saw the weapon raised up in front of her, gripped in both hands, and she realized she had bent into a shooter’s crouch.

For a moment Sarah wondered whether it was some other person steering the weapon. It was as if she was only peripherally connected to the gun. She wondered when she had last taken a breath. Her lungs demanded air and she gasped out like a swimmer breaking the surface.

Bizarre, contradictory thoughts like I’m ready for anything or I’m dying now raced through her.

She wanted to speak out loud, say something strong and brave, but when she tried the words “C’mon, damn it, I’m waiting,” they croaked and shattered and were only barely comprehensible.

The doorbell rang.

It was a cheery chime, three notes that made absolutely no sense to her.

A killer rings the doorbell?

She found herself half-hopping, moving almost crablike as she crossed the living room, gun still raised. She paused in front of her door.

The bell rang again.

Why wouldn’t he ring the bell? Or knock on the door? Or just call out her name to announce he was there? Hello-o-o, Sarah! It’s the Big Bad Wolf. I’m here to kill you…

She suddenly had no idea what a wolf would do. Nothing happening made any sense to her. It was all Alice in Wonderland: Up was down, front was back, high was low.

She could feel her finger tightening on the trigger. It occurred to her to simply fire. The bullet will go straight through the wood and kill him where he stands. It seemed like a good idea. A really good idea. Almost sensible.

A part of her stifled a laugh from bursting out. What a joke, she thought. What a great slap-your-knees and wet-your-pants joke. I’ll just shoot him right through the door.

She aimed the pistol, leveling it right at the spot where she imagined the Wolf’s chest would be. It was like doing measurements in her head: Is he tall? Short? Don’t want to miss.

The gun quivered, yawing back and forth like a small ship being slammed by storm waves. She saw her left hand reach out and seize the doorknob, defeating what seemed like an eminently fine plan and replacing it with something completely foolish. She imagined that she was opening the door to death.

With a single, mighty lurch, she flung the door wide. In the same motion, she released the knob and reached back with her left hand and steadied the pistol. She was bent slightly, leaning forward and ready to fire.

Silence stopped her finger on the trigger.

Two women stared across the threshold at her. Their faces seemed shocked beneath the wan porch light. Someone inhaled sharply, but Sarah was unsure whether it was one of the two women or herself.

The two of them seemed frozen. Looking into the gaping barrel of a pistol with the hammer cocked has a way of discouraging most ordinary conversation.

They can’t be the Wolf, Sarah thought. Two Wolves? But her finger caressed the trigger. Somewhere deep in her understanding, she knew that the slightest pressure would fire the weapon.

After a heartbeat in which Sarah fully expected to hear the thunderous roar of the gun as she killed whoever it was standing in front of her, she watched completely dumbstruck as one of the women slowly pulled a woolen knit navy watch cap from her head and carefully shook free great waving locks of strawberry-red hair, never taking her eyes off Sarah and her gun.

Then, as if following suit in a card game, the other woman-older, face lined with concerns-lifted her hands and unpinned her hair, which fell like a dull sheet of fading embers to her shoulders.

“Hello, Red Two,” the older woman said. “Please don’t kill us.”

Sarah was ashamed of the way the house looked.

For the first time in days, she was aware of the trash and debris-the empty liquor bottles and prepared-food containers, candy bar wrappings, and potato chip bags that were littered around the space. She was also embarrassed by the Home Alone defense system spread beneath windows and across doorways. She wanted to apologize to the two women and explain that this really wasn’t like her, except that it would have been a lie and she thought it would be unwise to start her dealings with Red One and Red Three with such an obvious falsehood. So she kept her mouth shut and watched the reactions of the two others as they surveyed the landscape of despair.

It was Red Three who spoke first.

“I’m Jordan,” she said. “Do you have a picture of your husband and your daughter? The ones who died?”

Sarah was taken aback by the question. It seemed incredibly intimate, as if she were being asked to remove her clothes and stand naked.

She stammered her reply. “Of course, but…”

And then her words faded away. She went to a bookcase in the corner and brought out a framed picture of the three of them, taken shortly before the accident. Wordlessly, she handed it to Jordan, who looked at it carefully and then passed it over to Karen. She, too, examined the photo carefully.

There was a small silence. Sarah thought that usually someone examining a photograph like the one of herself, her child, and her husband taken on a summer day at the beach would say, Isn’t that cute or They’re sure beautiful. But she realized those responses were meant for the living. She was suddenly not exactly angry, but upset, or uncomfortable, and she reached out for the picture.

“What are you looking for?” Sarah asked.

“A reason,” Karen replied.

It took Sarah a few seconds to understand that Red One wasn’t searching for the reason why Red Two’s husband and daughter had been killed. She didn’t want to hear about a runaway fuel oil truck and the capriciousness of fate.

“Or maybe an explanation,” Jordan said. She wasn’t talking about the accident, either.

“How did you find me?” Sarah started.

Karen looked over at Jordan, who shrugged. “Your video on YouTube. It ended with a picture of a headstone. I fired up the computer and then worked backward from those names.

“It didn’t take me that long,” Jordan continued. “The local paper had a story about the memorial service at the fire station. They had a color picture. You were there. With this…”

Jordan pointed at Sarah’s red hair. She remembered how bright Red Two’s hair had looked spread across mourning black.

Sarah thought she should say something, but fell into silence. After an uncomfortable moment, Karen spoke up. “We shouldn’t stay here,” she said. “We need to go to a safe place to talk.” Sarah seemed about to say something, so Karen spoke quickly, stopping her before she spoke. “Look, when Jordan and I first met yesterday, one thing we realized is that if and when the three of us are together, it increases our vulnerability. All of us being in the same spot, at the same time, makes us all into a much simpler target.”

“It’s kinda like us getting together is what he really wants and he throws a hand grenade at us,” Jordan said. “Boom! Red One, Red Two, and Red Three all disappear at once.” Cynicism mingled freely with anxiety in her voice. Karen didn’t bother to expand on the hand grenade concept, although a part of her thought, It makes as much sense as anything. Because none of it makes sense. Or all of it does.

“But we’ve still got to talk, to figure out what we’re going to do…”

“I know what we’re going to do,” Jordan muttered beneath her breath. Karen didn’t turn toward the youngest of the trio. Instead she kept her eyes fixed on Sarah. “So, we need to go someplace where we know we can plan without being watched.” Her eyes flicked over to the large living room window. “We don’t know,” she said, “we can’t be sure he’s not right out there…” Her voice trailed off.

Sarah felt dizzy. She thought there were a hundred things she needed to say, but all of them escaped her tongue. What she managed was, “Let me get my coat.”

“Hey,” Jordan said briskly. “Bring the gun.”