Red 1-2-3

35

Red Two asked herself, What should you say about your own death? Or, maybe, what would you like someone else to say? Was I a good person? Maybe not.

Sarah struggled with the ideas that flooded her head. She felt trapped between life and death. The muffled sounds of gunfire were like distant thunderclaps, penetrating the thick ear protectors she wore. In the booth next to her, the Safe Space director was banging out quick shots from a Glock 9 mm, filling the air with angry explosions. Sarah lifted her dead husband’s weapon, held it out steadily with both hands the way she had been shown, and aimed down the sight at the black cartoon of a fierce man grasping a large knife, wearing a snarl and a scar, and painted with a target in his chest. She pulled the trigger three times. She doubted if the target looked much like the Big Bad Wolf.

The recoil sent shock waves through her arms, but she was privately pleased that it didn’t make her stagger back or fall to the ground as she’d expected.

She looked up, squinting down the firing range. She could see that two shots had landed just outside the target, but a third had torn the paper dead center. She didn’t know whether this was the first shot or the last, but she was pleased that at least one would have proved fatal.

“Attagirl,” the director said, leaning around a small partition that separated the shooting galleries. “Try to get a handle on how the weapon will pull one way or the other when you’re rapid-firing. And, you know, empty the chamber. Fire all six rounds. You better your chances that way. We’ve got plenty of ammo and plenty of time.”

Plenty of ammo is right, Sarah thought. Plenty of time isn’t. She cracked open the cylinder to reload from a box on the shooting platform at her waist.

Sarah Locksley, born thirty-three years ago. Happy once. Not so much anymore. Dead in a river, killed by a psychopath who drove her to further despair by threatening to murder her, except she had nothing left to live for anyway because some goddamn out-of-control fuel truck driver ran through a stop sign.

She lifted the gun and aimed again.

That won’t work. This is a memorial service. A little sadness and mainly nice, safe things said about someone whose life was cut short by tragedy.

That’s me. I’m the someone. Or maybe, it’s the ex-me.

The target loomed in front of her. She narrowed her eyes and hummed to herself to block out the noise of other weapons being fired.

Not a word about the truth of Sarah Locksley.

She smiled. A part of her wished she could go to the service. It would certainly help for her say goodbye to herself. So long, Sarah. Hello, Cynthia Harrison. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. And I’m delighted to take over your life.

She could hear the gunshots echoing around her, and the gun jumped in her hand. Cynthia Harrison, she thought, I wonder if you would be embarrassed or disappointed or angry to know that the very first thing I do with your name is kill a man. A very special man. A wolf who most assuredly deserves to die. After all, he’s killed me once already.

This time four of the six shots landed dead center, and the fifth tore a hole in the target’s forehead.

Twenty minutes before the service was to begin, Red Three took the video camera she’d obtained at the mall and placed it in a spot where it was trained on the people who would come through the doors, stop and sign a “remembrance” book, then take their seats in the small room. It was set to record two hours’ worth of video, which Karen had insisted to the funeral director be the length of the service.

She glanced toward the front of the room. Karen had put together a montage of photographs of Sarah and her dead family. There were bouquets of white lilies on either side of the pictures, which were mounted on a sheet of white poster board and placed on a tripod in front of the few chairs the funeral home had put out. There was a small podium with a microphone.

A part of Red Three wanted to stay. She imagined she could hide behind a curtain, remaining still, holding her breath. But she knew there was danger in staying behind, even if hidden. So instead she ducked out minutes before the first people pulled into the funeral home parking lot. She wore a dark hooded sweatshirt beneath her old parka, and she pulled this up over her head and walked away as quickly as she could from the funeral home toward a nearby bus stop.

For the first time in days, she knew she wasn’t being followed. This didn’t make sense to her, but Jordan wasn’t about to reject the sensation, because it made her feel like she was doing something that might just help save her life.

When the bus wheezed up beside her and its doors opened with a familiar hydraulic whoosh, she climbed in. Jordan was aware that she was breaking any number of school rules by being off campus on a Saturday without permission. She did not care. She imagined that breaking a few onerous regulations was the very least of the trouble she was racing toward. Breaking rules is bad, she thought. Killing is worse.

This notion made her smile, and she had to fight to keep herself from bursting out in laughter.

Karen was in a side room, dressed in a trim black dress, looking as proper as a Puritan, poring over two sheets of paper on which she’d written a small speech, using details that Sarah had given her about her life.

The words on the page streamed together. She felt like a dyslexic, every letter jumbling and tumbling across the paper willy-nilly, threatening to short-circuit everything she planned to say. Just as she did before going on stage with a new comedy routine, she did some breathing exercises. Slow in. Slow out. Settle the racing heartbeat.

“I know you’re here,” she whispered. One of the funeral directors, across the room from her, looked up with a practiced, hypocritically wistful look, and Karen realized that he thought she was speaking to her dead friend, not a killer.

“People are starting to arrive,” the funeral director said. He was significantly younger than the man she’d spoken to earlier in the week, but he already had down pat the solemn, sonorous tones of loss. She guessed he was a son or a nephew being shepherded into the family business, and this particular memorial service was definitely not a funeral home challenge. No need for the boss to be there. No casket. No body. Few flowers. Just some random sentiments.

If he’s out there, it will be because he needs to know and he wants to see and he wants to hear. Karen could feel her pulse quickening at the thought that she was going to be standing up in front of the Wolf. “I’ll go out now,” she replied, weakly.

Earlier, she had placed a stiff-backed chair near the microphone. Smiling, nodding her head to people streaming in out of the parking lot, she went to it. She knew none of the faces that returned her smile. Each stride she took was walking deeper into a spotlight. As if speaking some oriental mantra, she kept telling herself that he wouldn’t kill her right there. Not now. Not now. She had never heard of anyone murdering someone at a funeral home in front of assembled mourners. Bringing death to a place of death. This seemed so unreasonable that she tried to use its improbability as a reassurance.

Karen had never given a eulogy before, and certainly not for someone she barely knew and who actually wasn’t dead. She thought the whole thing would be comic if it weren’t the only thing she could think of doing that might keep her alive.

Don’t speak ill of the dead, she thought. She wondered where that maxim had been coined.

Karen was pleased at the turnout. She had not known whether there would be five people or fifty. Zero had been a possibility, but the number was going to exceed her top guess. That was good. Perfect, even. Large numbers will make him feel safe. He will think he can blend in. If no one had come, he probably would have shied away, not willing to risk standing out in an empty room. She could feel electricity, not unlike what she felt going on stage.

Be good. Be persuasive. Make Sarah seem dead. She had given many performances, but none, she thought, had been nearly as important as this one.

Karen glanced over at a woman and a man. The woman was holding the hand of a small boy wearing a white shirt that was too tight and a red tie that had already come loose around his neck. The boy was leaning against an older sister, probably thirteen or fourteen, who was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. The family paused in front of the photo display and spent a respectful few moments looking over the collection of pictures before taking seats. A former elementary school student, she realized, and a younger brother who doesn’t want to be here at all.

Not a wolf.

The room began to fill up-a great variety of men and women of all ages, accompanied by a few children. The phony solemn music the funeral home piped in with hidden speakers flowed around her like smoke, almost as if the music could obscure her vision. She waited until the stream of people pausing to sign the remembrance book dwindled, and then she stood. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the young funeral director throw a small switch on the wall, and the music stopped in mid-note. She looked out over the gathered crowd briefly and launched into her speech.

“I’d like to thank you all for coming. This is a great turnout, and my dear friend Sarah would have been pleased to see so many people.”

She wanted to make eye contact with every person in the room, on the off chance that she could recognize the Big Bad Wolf just by the glint in his eyes. But instead, she kept her head down, as if moved by the emotion of the fake service, hoping that Jordan’s camera was doing the job for her. She read words that meant nothing, trying to sound deeply respectful when what she wanted was to scream.

It was all a gamble, she understood. Maybe he’s smart enough to stay away and this is all for nothing.

But maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s drawn here, because the scent he’s been pursuing is just too strong and he’s not able to stop himself. That was what the three Reds were counting on.

She thought of the old saying: Curiosity killed the cat.

Maybe it can kill a wolf, too.