Red 1-2-3

29

The sergeant who took her statement thought Red Three was on the verge of hysteria, but he was a twenty-year veteran of the force, with two fourteen-year-old twin daughters at home, and so he was accustomed to sorting through the high-pitched noise that stressed teenagers used for language, although secretly he wished they all had a volume switch that he could just dial down a little.

He wrote down in his notebook phrases like I saw her jump and She disappeared over the edge and One second she was standing there and the next she was just gone that Jordan had ripped from between sobs. He tried to get her to give him an accurate description of the woman she saw throw herself from the bridge, but Jordan was limited to a wild-eyed, arms-waving Dark clothes, hat, medium height, mid-thirties.

The cop interviewed the coach, the assistant coach, and all the other players and dutifully listed everyone’s cell phone number. None had seen what Jordan saw. They all had reasonable explanations for why their attention was elsewhere.

He offered to call for an ambulance, as he feared that Jordan, who continued to alternate between tears and a kind of icy, withdrawn, flat look, was going into shock. Indeed, the cop believed that the reaction the teenager had was the most compelling evidence of a bridge suicide. She saw some damn thing, he thought.

None of the other officers in the half-dozen patrol cars spread out across the bridge had come up with much of anything other than an abandoned jacket. The flashing red and blue lights of the patrol vehicles reflected off the damp roadway, and made it difficult for the officers searching up and down the narrow walkway to find any evidence. High-powered flashlights carved out small slices of black surface when shone down on the rushing waters. Eyeball examinations of the area found few signs of suicide; there was a telltale muddy footprint of a woman’s-sized running shoe at the beginning of the bridge’s footpath, and there was a scuff mark in the cement where Jordan said the mystery woman launched over the edge.

But the overall lack of overt indications of death didn’t surprise the policeman. This wasn’t the first time he had been called to the bridge for a reported suicide. It was a preferred spot. There was plenty of leftover despair in the small, fading mill town, where manufacturing jobs had been replaced by illicit drugs. He-like many of his neighbors in the town-knew that the strong currents would sweep a body downstream, maybe toward the treatment plant, possibly over the falls. The force of the unforgiving waters might carry it miles down the river. It was also possible that the body was hung up on the debris that littered the river bottom. It had sometimes taken weeks for authorities to recover bodies that went in at that spot, and there were some that were never found.

He was already writing his report in his head to leave for the morning detective crew. It would be their problem to follow up. Find a name. Notify next of kin. The fact that there seemed no ready proof available to the cop didn’t mean that it hadn’t happened. He just wanted to finish his part of the case. Police divers and a boat crew would wait until daylight before they started with their hunt for the body. They won’t be happy when they get this order, he thought. It was dark and dangerous work in ink-colored waters, and likely to be completely futile.

Better chance that body will show up by accident. Maybe a fisherman will snag it one day this summer. That would be some surprise to reel in.

He placed a hand on Jordan’s shoulder. “Would you like me to call an ambulance, have the EMTs check you out?” he asked her gently, switching from cop tone of voice to father.

Jordan shook her head. “I’m okay,” she replied.

Her coach interjected, “We have support staff at the school who can help her if she needs it. Trauma specialists.”

The cop slowly nodded. This sounded like snobbery to him. “You sure?” he asked again, directing his question to Jordan. He didn’t like the coach, who seemed a little put out by the whole event. Like it’s some big inconvenience some woman killed herself as you happened by, the cop said to himself. “Easy for me to call,” he added to Jordan, who was wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and whose rapid-fire breathing seemed to be slowing to normal. He didn’t mind making the coach wait longer on the bridge in the cold drizzle, and in his experience the EMTs were far better at dealing with sudden shock than just about anyone else.

“Thanks,” Jordan said. Her voice seemed a little stronger. “But I’m okay. I just want to go back to my dorm.”

The cop shrugged. It was always tempting to see anyone ordinary and young caught up in any sort of police event through the eyes of his own kids, but his years of police work had given him a thick skin and a crusty exterior. He had his statements. He had contact numbers for everyone in the van. He had ordered other patrolmen to continue to fruitlessly investigate the area.

He’d done all he could that evening.

The cop saw the coach dialing a number on his cell phone. “Who you calling?” he demanded.

“School heads,” the coach replied. “They will want to know why we’re late. Need to keep the dining hall open. And they’ll arrange for someone to speak with Jordan tonight, if necessary.”

The cop thought this was actually the coach making sure he wouldn’t be blamed for getting back to campus late.

“Well,” he said, “all of you are free to go. If there’s any need for a follow-up, someone will be in touch.”

“You will have to contact the dean’s office if you want to talk to any of the kids,” the coach said.

“Really?” the policeman said. He didn’t add, “The hell we will,” which was what he thought. He just let the skeptical tone he used with the single word convey that impression.

He watched the team climb back into the van. Some of the girls still seemed upset, and were holding hands or hugging each other. He noticed that no one threw an arm around Jordan.

The cop took note that Jordan made her way to the back of the van and that she sat alone.

He gave her a little friendly wave, which wasn’t very professional, but which came naturally to him. He was pleased when he saw a flitting smile on Jordan’s face, and a shy return wave.

Damn, kids can be cruel, he thought. He knew he wouldn’t get home before his own daughters had gone to bed, but he decided then that he would look in on them and maybe just spend a few minutes watching their sleeping faces. He knew his wife would understand why he needed to do this without asking any questions.

It was not until early the following morning that the detectives assigned to complete the suicide investigation received a call from two clerks who worked in a local motor vehicle registry office. They had been waiting at the bus stop and spotted the letter Red Two had nailed to the tree, and had obeyed the message and called the police. They were smart enough not to touch anything, and they were dedicated enough to wait for a detective to arrive and take possession of the letter and the photograph, even though this made the clerks late for work.

At more or less the same time, Red One was seated across from a woman just a little younger than her, but twice her size. The woman wore close-cropped hair and had massive arms and girth to match. One ear was riddled with at least a half-dozen earrings, and the edge of a tattoo peeked out from beneath her blouse. She was the sort of woman who gave off the impression that she rode a Harley-Davidson chopper to work and that for fun she challenged lumberjacks to arm-wrestling contests, which she rarely lost. Karen was astonished, however, by the soft tone of voice the woman used.

“Here’s what we can do,” the woman said. “We can protect your friend. We can protect her children. We can provide a safe place for them to transition to a new life. We can assist them with social work advice and legal help as they adjust. We can set them all up with therapists as well, because a number of really prominent local psychiatrists volunteer their time here. We can really help them get started anew.”

“Yes?” Karen said, because she heard but attached to the end.

“Nothing is foolproof,” the woman said.

A distant sound of children laughing penetrated the walls. Karen guessed it came from an upstairs day-care center.

“What do you mean?” Karen asked.

The woman leaned back in her desk chair, rocking backward as if relaxing, but keeping her gaze fixed directly on Karen’s face, measuring it for reactions.

“I’m required by law to say that.”

“But there’s more, right?” Karen asked.

The huge woman sighed.

“Here at Safe Space we are three city blocks from the police station. It is manned around-the-clock, all year. Response time from there to our front door, following a 911 call, is less than ninety seconds. We have an arrangement with the police-there’s a code word that the entire staff and all our clients learn-that means that some man has shown up and means to do something violent, so the police respond in force, weapons drawn. We put this in place after an incident last year. Perhaps you remember it?”

Karen did. Headlines and breathless news reports spread over several days. A man, his estranged wife, two children aged six and eight, and three policemen. When the shooting stopped, the wife and one of the officers were dead and one of the children was seriously wounded. The estranged husband tried to kill himself, but had expended all the bullets in his revolver, so he knelt on the sidewalk, gun in mouth, pulling the trigger and clicking uselessly on empty chambers until he was handcuffed and taken away. The case was still in the court system. The man was now claiming temporary insanity.

“My friend is worried about her husband’s tendency to violence,” Karen said. Then she shook her head. “That makes it sound like a common cold. The man is a flat-out savage. He’s beaten her badly, time and again. Broken bones and black eyes. He’s threatened to kill her. She has nowhere else to turn.”

“That’s why we’re here,” the huge woman said. Karen could sense anger within her words, directed toward some anonymous man. In this case a fictional man. The story Karen had made up involved a friend, two little children, an abusive husband, and the wife’s plan to run away before he killed her. Karen had taken common truths and rolled them together. She knew the director of Safe Space wouldn’t ask too many questions.

“So, it would be three-your friend and the children…”

“I think the children can be sent to family where they will be safe. But the husband will pursue my friend right to the edge of the world and off it, if he has to. He’s obsessed and crazy.”

“I don’t know if separating-”

“He doesn’t care about the kids. They’re not his anyway, so they are just in the way of whatever he’s going to do. It’s my friend who is in danger.”

“I see. And is he armed?”

“I don’t know. I would assume so.”

Karen wondered just what sorts of weapons the Big Bad Wolf had handy. Handguns. Rifles. Swords. Knives. Bombs. Bows and arrows. Poisons. Rocks and sharpened sticks. His hands. Razor blades. All were potentially lethal. Any might be what he was intending to use on the three Reds.

“How about your friend? Is she armed?”

Karen pictured Red Two’s gun. She wondered if she could figure out how to load it, aim it, and fire it. She did not even dare contemplate the killing part of the equation.

“No,” she lied.

The director paused. “I’m not supposed to say this,” she said. She lowered her voice almost to a whisper, leaning forward. “But I won’t allow another incident like the one last year.”

She raised her hand and placed a large semiautomatic pistol on the desk. It was black and heartless. Karen stared at it for a moment and then nodded. “That makes me feel substantially better,” she said with a small laugh.

The woman removed the pistol to her desk drawer. “I take combat classes at the gun range.”

“A wise hobby.”

“I’ve become an expert shot.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“When will you be bringing your friend in?”

“Soon,” Karen said. “Very soon.”

“Intake is round-the-clock. Any time is the right time. Two in the afternoon. Two in the morning. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I will tell the staff to expect a new guest at potentially any time.”

“That would be most helpful.”

Karen gathered her things. She sensed the interview was at an end, but the director had one final question.

The director looked at her closely. “It is a friend we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

Red One had one more stop to make before going to her office for the remainder of the day. It was a place she’d been many times before but that, even with her medical training and experience, she found too sad for words.

One of the things she’d always noticed about the hospice center at the retirement home was that the lights in the entranceway were bright, harsh, fluorescent, and unforgiving, but as one worked his or her way deeper into the building, they softened, the shadows grew larger, and the white walls turned to shades of yellowish gray. The building itself seemed to reflect dying.

Bagpipes, she remembered from her last visit.

The hospice nurses were a little surprised to see Karen. They hadn’t called her. “Just checking on some old paperwork,” Karen said breezily as she swept past the desks where the nurses hung out when they took momentary breaks from the relentless dying that filled the rooms. She knew that explanation was more than enough to give her privacy.

She went into a small side room with a copying machine, a coffeemaker on a table, and three large black steel filing cabinets. It did not take her long to find the manila file that she needed.

She took this back to her desk and opened up the computer, adjusting it in front of her. For an instant, she was tempted by the stale package of cigarettes in the top drawer, waiting for her. She realized that she hadn’t had a smoke in days. Good for you, Mr. Big Bad Wolf, she thought. Maybe you’ve helped me finally kick the habit. So when you kill me you’ll be saving me from a really nasty end. Can’t thank you enough.

Cancer was what she was looking for in the file. Not exactly the disease. But it was what killed the person whose file she spread out on her desk.

Cynthia Harrison. A common enough name, Karen thought. That’s good. Thirty-eight years old. Young for breast cancer. That was sad. But just three years older than Red Two.

A husband. No children. Probably that’s how she found out the bad news: when she couldn’t conceive. They started to run some routine fertility tests and troubling indications showed up in the results. Then it would have been a rapid treadmill of doctors, treatments, and never-ending pain.

Cynthia was in hospice for just three weeks, following unsuccessful radiation that was followed by equally unsuccessful surgery. They sent her here because it’s the least expensive place to die. If she’d stayed in the hospital it would have cost thousands. And they knew she had just long enough for folks to make the right arrangements.

She checked the funeral home information and saw which of her colleagues had signed the death certificate. It was the surgeon. He probably wanted to sign and forget about his failure. She wrote all the necessary information down on a pad of paper, all Cynthia Harrison’s vital statistics: Date of birth. Place of birth. Last address. Profession. Next of kin. Social security number. Relevant medical history. Height. Weight. Eye color. Hair color. Karen parsed every detail she could from the extensive hospice file.

After she closed the paper file, she found all of Cynthia Harrison’s computer entries in the hospice archive. These she moved to the trash bin. Then she electronically emptied the trash. She knew that someone skilled would be able to find it all, if driven to do so. But she doubted anyone would be.

Then she walked down the hallway to one of the nursing stations. It was a simple matter of finding a red-colored Danger! Infectious Medical Waste plastic bag and a large sealed container where needles, used sample cups, and anything that might have picked up some powerful virus or deadly bacteria were tossed.

“Sorry, Cynthia,” she whispered. “I wish I’d known you.” Except now I do, Karen finished the thought. She rolled up the entire file tightly and snugged it into the plastic bag, sealing the top carefully before dropping it into the closed bin designed for the sole purpose of keeping everyone safe.

Red Two danced.

She waltzed with an invisible partner. She tangoed to sexy electric beats. She bowed across the room to empty space, as if following the stately steps of an elaborate Elizabethan galliard. When the music changed, she started to twitch and shake as if on a modern dance floor. Dancing with the Stars, she thought. No, Dancing with the Wolf. She mimicked ridiculous ’60s dances like the Frug and the Watusi that she remembered her parents demonstrating at silly moments. At one point, she even launched into the Macarena, gyrating her hips suggestively. Eventually, as exhaustion crept into her steps, she became balletic, moving her arms above her head slowly and spinning about. Swan Lake, she hoped. She had seen a performance as a teenager. Stirring. Beautiful. It was the sort of magical memory that an impressionable fifteen-year-old girl never forgets. Once she’d expected to take her daughter to see a similar show. No longer. In the small world of the basement, she lifted her arms above her head and tried to raise herself up on her toes, like the dancer playing a white swan would, but it was impossible.

Her music was contradictory. None of the songs that filled her head matched her movements. Rock and roll wasn’t like square dancing, even if that was what she did.

Red Three had left her an iPod with several playlists designated Waiting Music. She did not recognize all the performers-she had never heard of David Wax Museum or The Iguanas and had no idea who someone named Silina Musango was or who made up a group called The Gourds. But the music Red Three had selected for her was irrepressible, enthusiastic, uplifting, and she appreciated the joyous rhythms and the wild energy incorporated in every song.

Red Three was trying to help, Sarah realized. Damn thoughtful of her. She knew that after I killed myself, I’d be isolated and a little crazy.

Smart girl.

Red Three had created another playlist, but Sarah didn’t listen to this one, because she didn’t think the time was yet right. She knew it would have far different sounds and selections. This playlist was titled Killing Music.

When fatigue finally overcame her, Sarah pulled out her earphones and slumped to the cement floor of Red One’s basement. It was cool beneath her cheek. She knew she was making herself filthy. Dust and grime were everywhere, and she could feel sweat streaking her forehead and dripping from her chin, but she did not care. The air was hot and thick as a result of the furnace in the corner having kicked on to heat the house. There wasn’t a window, so she could not look outside. She knew only that she was hidden and that even if the Big Bad Wolf were parked outside watching the front door, he wouldn’t be able to see her. A part of her thought that if she shut off the single overhead bulb that filled the room with weak light, it might be the same black turbulence as the river waters that she’d faked diving into.

The night before, when she’d run through the growing nighttime to where she knew Red One was waiting for her, she’d imagined Red Three’s piercing scream. I bet it convinced everyone.

She curled up into a ball.

Sarah died last night, she thought. Suicide note and “Goodbye, I’m gone forever.” They will bury me beside my husband and my daughter. Except it won’t be me. It will be an empty coffin.

She knew she was destined to become someone new. She wasn’t at all certain she liked this. But until she was reborn, she would only be Red Two.

A deadly Red Two, she told herself. A homicidal Red Two. A cold chill of ferocity slid through her, surging up against uncontrollable rage.

But then she abruptly gave in to all the emotions reverberating within her and sobbed uncontrollably on the floor as she cradled not a picture of her dead family, but the.357 Colt Magnum.