Red 1-2-3

Prologue: The Unwanted Mail

Red One was standing by helplessly watching a man die when her letter was delivered to her isolated house in a rural part of the county.

Red Two was dizzy with drugs, alcohol, and despair when her letter was dropped through the mail slot in the front door to her split-level suburban home.

Red Three was staring at a failure, thinking that more and far worse failures were awaiting her, when her letter arrived in a mail depository just down the stairs from her dormitory room.

The three women ranged in age: Seventeen. Thirty-three. Fifty-one. They did not know one another, but they lived within a few miles of each other. One was an internist. One was a public middle school teacher. One was a prep school student. They had little in common, save for one obvious detail: They were all redheads. The doctor’s straight auburn hair was beginning to show gray around the edges, and she wore it pulled back sharply in a severe style. She never let it flow freely when she was at her medical practice. The teacher was luxuriously curly-haired, and her bright red locks fell in wild electric currents from her head to her shoulders, disheveled by the unlucky hand that fate had delivered her. The prep school student’s hair was slightly lighter, a seductive strawberry color that would have been worth singing about, but it framed a face that seemed to pale a little bit more each day, and blanched skin that seemed lined with care.

What linked them together much more than their striking red hair, however, was the fact that each, in her own way, was vulnerable.

The white envelopes, postmarked New York City, were common security-tinted envelopes available with self-sealing flaps that could be purchased in any office supply store, grocery store, or pharmacy. The message within was printed on plain white 20-lb. weight common notepaper by the same computer. None of the three had any of the forensic skills necessary to tell there were no fingerprints on the letters, nor was there any telltale DNA substance-saliva, a stray hair, skin follicles-that might give a sophisticated detective with access to a truly modern laboratory some idea who mailed the letters had the letter writer been in some national criminal database. The letter writer was not. In a world of instant messaging, e-mail, texting, and cell phones, each letter was as old-fashioned as smoke signals, a carrier pigeon, or Morse code.

The opening lines were delivered without salutation or introduction:

“One bright, fine day Little Red Riding Hood decided to take a basket of delicious goodies to her beloved grandmother, who lived on the far side of the deep, dark woods…”

You undoubtedly first heard the story years ago when you were small children. But you were probably told the sanitized version: The grandmother hides in her closet and Little Red Riding Hood is saved from becoming the Big Bad Wolf’s next meal by the brave woodsman with his sharp axe. In that retelling, everything ends happily ever after. In the original, there is a far different and much darker outcome. It would be wise for you to keep that in mind over the next few weeks.

You do not know me, but I know you.

There are three of you. I have decided to call you:

Red One.

Red Two.

Red Three.

I know each of you is lost in the woods.

And just like the little girl in the fairy tale, you have been selected to die.