Red 1-2-3

3

Panic One.

Panic Two.

Panic Three.

After reading their letter, each Red panicked in her own unique way. Each Red mistakenly thought she was maintaining control over emotions that seemed suddenly explosive. Each Red imagined she was reacting to the threatening words appropriately. Each Red believed she was taking the right steps. Each Red felt that she-and she alone-could keep herself safe, if safe was what she actually wanted to be. Each Red assessed the stated threat to her life and reached a dizzyingly different conclusion. Each Red was unsure whether she was truly in danger or just ought to be annoyed, although neither alternative made complete sense. Each Red struggled to grasp the truth of her situation, only to be stymied. Each Red slid into confusion without knowing that was what she was doing.

None of them were completely right about anything.

Karen Jayson’s first instinct, after absorbing the shock delivered by the words on the page, was to call the local police.

Sarah Locksley’s initial impulse was to find the handgun that her dead husband had kept locked away in a steel box, hidden on a top shelf in the small room that had doubled as his home office.

Jordan Ellis did nothing except flop down and curl up on her bed, doubled over as if cramped and sick.

Karen’s conversation with the detective was brutally unpleasant. She had read the letter thoroughly twice, and then slapped it down on the kitchen table and angrily seized her telephone from a hook on the wall. Her imagination reeled with barely contained fury. She was not accustomed to being threatened and she hated the coy fairy-tale underpinnings of the letter, so the officious, determined, well-educated I’m not scared of anything or anyone side of her rapidly took over. So, who are you, some big bad fucking wolf? she thought. We’ll see about that. Without really considering what she would say, she dialed 911.

She expected the dispatcher who answered to be helpful. She was wrong.

“Police. Fire. Emergency,” he said.

She thought the voice sounded very young, even with the curt words.

“This is Doctor Karen Jayson over on Marigold Road. I believe I need to speak with a detective.”

“What is the nature of your emergency, ma’am?”

“Doctor,” Karen corrected him. She instantly wished that she hadn’t.

“Okay,” the dispatcher responded instantly, “what is the nature of your emergency, Doctor?” She could hear a tired end-of-shift contempt in the way he forced out the word.

“A threatening letter,” she answered.

“From who?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t signed.”

“An anonymous threat?”

“Yes. Precisely.”

“Well, you better speak with someone in the detective bureau,” the dispatcher said.

That’s what I said, Karen thought but did not say.

She was put on hold, presumably while the phone line was switched. The local police force was small and occupied a stolid brick building in the center of the closest town, just off the main common, adjacent to the town’s only ambulance and fire station and across from the modest town hall. She lived in the countryside at least five miles away and the only time she passed the police headquarters was when she took her weekly Saturday morning trip to the Whole Foods Market nearby. She guessed that most of the police work was dedicated to keeping the highways safe from bored and speeding teenagers, stepping between husbands and wives who had come to blows, and working with the nearby bigger city forces on drug investigations, because many dealers had come to understand that being out in the rural sections allowed them considerable peace and quiet while they cooked up crystal meth or chopped up rock cocaine for distribution on much harder urban streets and nearby colleges. Karen wondered whether there were more than ten actual police officers on duty at any time in her town and if any had even the smallest amount of sophisticated training.

“This is Detective Clark,” a sturdy, no-nonsense voice came over the line. She was relieved to note that this policeman at least sounded older.

She identified herself and told the detective that she’d received a threatening letter. She was surprised that he did not ask her to read it to him, but instead launched into a series of questions, with the most obvious first.

“Do you know who might have sent it to you?” he asked.

“No.”

“Does it have any identifying marks that might indicate-?”

“No,” she interrupted. “A New York City postmark, that’s all.”

“You have no idea who the writer is?”

“None.”

“Well, have you been through any personal issues-”

“No. Not in years.”

“Have you made any enemies at work?”

“No.”

“Have you recently had to fire an employee?”

“No.”

“Have you had any run-ins with neighbors? Like maybe a nasty dispute over a property line, or your dog got out and chased their cat, or something like that?”

“No. I don’t have a dog.”

“Has there been anything out of the ordinary in the last few days or weeks that you noticed, like telephone hang-ups, or vehicles following you on your way to or from work?”

“No.”

“Have you had any recent thefts, or a break-in either at your home or office?”

“No.”

“Have you lost your wallet or a credit card or some other type of personal identification?”

“No.”

“How about Internet? An identity theft, or-”

“No.”

“Can you think of anyone, anywhere, for any reason who might want to harm you?”

“No.”

The detective sighed, which Karen thought was unprofessional. Again, she did not say this out loud.

“Come on, Doctor. Surely there’s somebody out there you might have crossed, maybe even inadvertently. Did you ever misdiagnose some patient? Fail to provide some medical service that caused someone to get ill, or even to die? Ever been sued by some unsatisfied customer?”

“No.”

“So you can’t think of anyone…?”

“No. That’s what I told you. No.”

The detective paused before continuing. “How about someone who might want to play a practical joke?”

Karen doubted this. Some of the other performers she met at comedy clubs had what she considered pretty far-out senses of humor-and there was a style of punking other comedians with pranks that verged on the sadistic and cruel-but a letter like the one on the kitchen table in front of her seemed way beyond any comedian’s idea of good fun, no matter how twisted he or she was. “No. And I don’t think it’s very funny.”

She could imagine the detective shrugging on the other end of the line. “Well, I’m not sure there’s much we can do right now. I can have regular patrol cars frequent your street a bit more often. I’ll have an announcement made at our daily staff session. But until there’s some sort of overt act…” The detective’s voice trailed off.

“The letter isn’t an overt act?”

“It is and it isn’t.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well,” Detective Clark said in a voice that was probably designed for giving a lecture to a high school class about the law, “a written threat is a second-degree felony. But you say you have no enemies-at least, none that you are currently aware of-and you haven’t done anything to warrant a threat and no one has actually done anything, other than write this harassing letter…”

“I think, Detective Clark, that someone saying ‘You have been selected to die’ might register as more than merely harassment.” Karen knew she sounded overly stuffy and stiff. She hoped that this would energize the policeman in some way, but it had the opposite effect.

“Doctor, I think I’d just chalk it up to some bizarre moment, or someone with a lousy sense of humor, or someone who wants to mess you up a little bit for whatever reason and forget about it until something actually happens. Unless, of course, you see someone following you, or someone raids your bank account or something like that. Or else they demand money. Then maybe…”

He hesitated before continuing, “The cases we see where there is a threat-well, usually we’re talking about a stalker. Someone obsessed with a teacher or a coworker or a former boyfriend or girlfriend. But it’s always someone they had a relationship with. The threat is part of some larger picture of compulsion. But that’s not what you’re saying, is it? Do you think you’re being stalked?”

“No. Or I don’t know.”

“Well, look at your life. Anything else unusual?”

“No.”

“Well, there you have it.”

“You mean there’s nothing at all I can do?”

“No. I mean there’s nothing we can do. You should certainly take some precautions. Do you have an alarm system in your house? Better get one, if you don’t. Maybe get a big dog. Take a much closer look at the people you’ve come into contact with over the past few months. Start to put together a list of anyone you might have crossed, or anyone you might have wronged. Maybe take a closer look at all your patients, and consider their families. Maybe someone you’ve been treating with less-than-great results has a psychotic brother-in-law or a cousin that just got out of prison. Think about that. Usually in threats like these people can’t see the person doing the threatening even though they’re standing right next to ’em, because they just don’t expect it.”

The detective continued to drone on. “You know, you could consider a private detective service, see if they can’t trace the letter-but that’s damn difficult. An e-mail? Well, that they could manage. But an old-fashioned letter? Even the FBI has trouble with that sort of thing. Remember those anthrax letters? Or the Unabomber? Big-time hassle even with all their modern, up-to-date resources. And here in our small town we don’t have anywhere near their capabilities or manpower. Hell, even the state police don’t. But, if I were you, the most important thing is coming up with that list of who there is out there you’ve managed to offend, because there might be someone you’re just totally unaware of. Most likely that’s it. You come up with a name, even ten names, well, I’ll be more than happy to go have a real direct and not-too-pleasant conversation with them. Put the fear of God and the mighty resources of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts into them. Until then…”

“You mean threatening to kill someone isn’t a crime you want to investigate?”

“Well, I’ll file a report so your complaint becomes a part of the legal record. But to be frank, Doctor, people make idle threats all the time.”

“This doesn’t seem idle.”

“No. But you just don’t know, do you? It’s probably nothing.”

“Yeah,” Karen said. “Probably.”

She hung up. Except if it isn’t, she said to herself.

Sarah Locksley was quivering when she slowly walked through the door to her dead husband’s small office. It was a narrow room, with only a single window in the back with the blinds shut and a scarred old oaken desk with an out-of-date computer on it. It was where he’d done their taxes and paid their bills and off and on worked on a memoir of the dangerous months that he’d spent driving supply trucks and heavy machinery up and down the Baghdad Airport Road in the early part of the Iraq war. The idea all along was that when she got pregnant again, it would be turned into the nursery for the new baby.

There were framed pictures on the walls of the two of them on their wedding day, then the three of them, and of Sarah and their daughter. There was a Red Sox pennant signed by several of the players after the 2004 championship and a picture of her husband with his National Guard unit during their deployment. There were some other memorabilia, photographs, the sorts of knickknacks and silly stuff one collects that have small meanings-a seashell painted in pink and orange with a big heart in the middle that she’d bought him as a joke on a Valentine’s Day; a gimmick fake trophy fish, a fad a few years back, that sang a tinny version of “Take Me to the River”; a scale model of a black turbo Porsche that occupied a corner of the desk. This had been a birthday gift. One exhausted, colicky night shortly after their daughter was born her husband had made a series of jokes about why he needed something utterly irresponsible in his life instead of all this dedicated-parent stuff-and he was going to buy a sports car, preferably the most expensive and fastest he could find. He’d laughed wildly months later when he’d opened up the brightly wrapped toy car.

In all the time following the accident that killed her family, she had entered the room only two or three times, and each time she had not lingered, but had grabbed whatever it was she’d gone in for and then quickly shut the door tight behind her. The same was true for her daughter’s room, just next door. Each had been left as it was on the day the pair of them had died. Sarah knew that it wasn’t unusual for people who were grieving, but entering either of the rooms scared her, because when she did, she thought she could hear her daughter’s or her husband’s voice echoing in the shadows and she could feel their touch on her skin. It was like they were crying for her, and the eerie sensation of their touch and the hallucination of their voices always caused her to break down sobbing.

He had promised her many times he would get rid of the gun. He hadn’t had time.

Of course, she thought, as she stood in the doorway afraid to even turn on the light, there hadn’t been time for anything that they had planned. The trip to the Grand Canyon. The trip to Europe. The bigger house in a nicer suburb. A new car. They hadn’t known this, of course, because if they had, things would have been different. At least this was what she imagined, but there was no way to be certain.

She glanced across at a bookshelf that was jammed with his favorite mystery novels and thrillers, alongside a number of World War II and Vietnam memoirs that her husband had been studying as he’d worked on his own. On the very top shelf concealed behind well-read, dog-eared copies of Val McDermid and James W. Hall and John Grisham, there was an old military surplus olive-drab metal ammunition case, with a combination lock keeping it shut. That was what she’d come in to get.

She knew the combination. It was their daughter’s birthday.

“I’m sorry,” she said out loud, as if apologizing in advance to the pair of ghosts who were watching her. “I’ve got to get the gun.”

Her husband had been a lieutenant in the local fire department. She taught children. He put out fires. She corrected spelling tests. He rode in a red fire truck, sirens blaring. It was never going to be a life with exotic vacation homes and large black Mercedes-Benzes. There was little ostentatiously first-class about them. But it was always going to be a good, solid, American life. They were always going to be middle-class, liberal, and respectable. They bought their clothes at the local mall and watched television together at night after dinner. They rooted for all the New England professional sports teams and considered a trip to Fenway Park or Gillette Stadium for a game to be the ultimate indulgence. They would be union members and proud of it. They would complain about their taxes, and occasionally work overtime without pay because they loved their jobs. And there was never a night that they fell tired into bed in each other’s arms that the two of them hadn’t looked forward to the sun rising.

Sarah thought that was even true on the last day of her life, the day Ted had swept little Brittany up and held her above his head, tickling his daughter so that she was red-faced with laughter before he carefully strapped her into the car seat in the rear of their six-year-old Volvo. She had seen him fasten his own belt before giving a jaunty wave, grinning, and taking off.

Nine blocks. Grocery store. Death.

It was not an equation anyone would ever have imagined. There was no actuarial table, no sophisticated algorithm that could project the heating oil fuel delivery truck that ran the red light and slammed into them. She had always hated that detail madly. It was nearly summertime. The weather was mild and warm. No one in New England was still using an oil burner. There was no need for the truck to be on the road.

They were properly belted. The air bags instantly deployed. The Volvo’s steel frame, designed to crumple protectively upon impact, had performed exactly as its engineers had designed.

Except none of it worked, because they were both dead.

Still hesitating in the doorway, Sarah said, “Look, Teddy, someone says they’re going to kill me. I promise I won’t get it and use it on myself. Even if I really want to, I promise, I won’t do that. Not yet, at least.”

It was almost as if she needed his permission to find the ammunition box and get the gun. Both of them had been raised in devoutly Catholic households and there was that profound prohibition against committing suicide. A sin, she thought. The most reasonable and logical sin she could imagine, but a sin, nevertheless.

She thought she was a complete coward in so many different ways that she could hardly count them. If she were brave, she could have decided to kill herself. Or, if she were brave, she would have decided to go on with her life and not let it disintegrate around her. If she were brave, she would have dedicated herself to something meaningful, like teaching special education in the inner city or going on missions to help AIDS babies in the Sudan, as a way of honoring her dead husband and dead child.

“But I’m not brave,” she said. It was sometimes hard for her to tell if she had been talking out loud or not. And sometimes she had entire conversations in her imagination that ended up with some sentence blurted out that made sense only to her. “Definitely not brave.”

But, she thought, I still need the gun.

It was, she guessed, some leftover frontier gene that lurked within her. Someone makes a threat, and like a cowboy in a Western, she would reach for her weapon.

She paused in the doorway for another moment. Her eyes scanned the room-and then she launched herself inside, moving rapidly. It was as if by looking around she would be inviting the memory attached to each item to punish her further. She went directly to the bookcase, pushed aside the novels that hid the dust-covered ammunition box, seized it, and then retreated as fast as she could, slamming the office door shut behind her.

“I’m sorry, Teddy, darling, but I just can’t stay in there.” She knew this was a half-thought, half-whisper.

Holding the olive-drab ammo box under her right arm, she lifted her left hand to the side of her face, blocking the sight of her dead daughter’s room. She did not think she could handle another conversation with a ghost that day, and she hurried down the hallway back to her kitchen.

She was still naked. But there was something about getting the weapon and the reverberating noise from the threatening letter that made her suddenly feel modest. She plucked her clothes from where she’d discarded them, and tugged them back on.

Then she took the letter and put it next to the ammo box on a coffee table in her living room. She dialed the combination and reached inside. A cold black Colt Python.357 Magnum rested on the bottom, next to a box of hollow-point bullets. She removed the weapon, fiddled with it for an instant, and finally cracked open the chamber. Seeing it was unloaded, she carefully steered six live rounds into the cylinder.

The gun seemed incredibly heavy in her hand, and she wondered how anyone had the strength to lift it, aim, and fire. She used both hands, and adopted a shooter’s stance as she had seen in television melodramas. Using two hands helped, but it was still difficult. A guy’s gun, she thought. Teddy would always want a real guy’s gun. Not some flimsy little girly shooter.

This thought made her smile.

She looked down at the words on the letter.

“You have been selected to die.”

Sarah put the gun down on top of the typed page

That might be true, she silently told whoever it was that was out there planning to kill her, but I’m more than half-dead already, and this is one Little Red Riding Hood that isn’t going down without a fight. So come on. Give it your best shot, and let’s see what happens.

Sarah was astonished at her response. It was the exact opposite of what she’d expected herself to think. Logic suggested that because she wanted to die, she should do nothing and just open her door to the Big Bad Wolf and let him kill her and put her out of her misery.

But instead, she spun the cylinder of the gun, which made a clicking sound before coming to a halt. Okay, let’s see what you’ve got. I may be alone, but I’m not, really. She had absolutely no desire to call her aging parents, who lived in the eastern portion of the state, or any of the people she once thought of as friends but whom she now ignored. She did not want to call the police or an attorney or a neighbor or anyone else. Whoever it was that had selected her, well, she was going to face him all by herself. This just might be crazy, she told herself, but it’s my choice. Whatever happens, it’s okay with me.

And oddly, she felt a sense of warmth, because for a fleeting instant, she thought her dead husband and her dead daughter just might possibly be proud of her.

Jordan seemed frozen on her bed, hunched into a fetal position. She wondered whether she should ever move again. Then, as seconds blended into minutes, and she heard some of the other girls in the dormitory returning-voices raised, doors slamming, a sudden burst of laughter, and a fake wail mocking whatever phony trouble someone had-Jordan began to stir. After a few more moments, she sat up and swung her feet to the floor. Then she picked up the letter and reread it.

For an instant, she wanted to laugh.

You think you’re the only Big Bad Wolf in my life?

It was almost like get in line. Everyone else-from her estranged and constantly arguing parents, to the faculty at her school, to her ex-friends who’d abandoned her-was in the process of killing her off. Now, added to that was some anonymous joker.

She suddenly felt rebellious, confrontational. She still figured that whoever wrote the letter was just taunting her. Prep school students could be incredibly inventive and incredibly cruel. Someone wanted her to react in some manner that would amuse him. Or her. She reminded herself to not rule out girls just because the letter writer promised violence. Some of her female classmates were capable of administering astonishing physical beatings.

Screw you, she thought. Whoever you are.

Jordan picked up the letter and began to go over it carefully, the way she once would do when she was absorbing a detailed question on a difficult test.

The words on the page seemed to leap at her. The letter didn’t seem juvenile. It had a more sophisticated tone than that of her classmates. But Jordan knew she needed to be careful before she reached any conclusion. Just because it didn’t read like it came from another teenager didn’t mean that one hadn’t written it. Like Jordan, many of her classmates had actually absorbed the language lessons taught by Hemingway and Faulkner, Proust and Tolstoy. Some were capable of very sophisticated prose.

She stepped across the room to her small work space. Desk. Laptop. A jar of pens and pencils and a stack of unused notebooks. In a top drawer, she found a tan folder that she usually used for collecting stray class notes in one location. She put the letter into the folder.

Okay, what’s the next step?

Jordan felt cold inside. She realized there was little right then that she could do, or should do, but one thing did jump out at her. “It would be wise for you to keep that in mind…”

She nodded. All right. You want me to learn about the real story of Little Red Riding Hood. Well, that I can damn well do.

It was time for basketball practice. After working up a sweat on the court and showering, she would have plenty of time to go to the school library and find the Brothers Grimm. She was pretty much flunking everything, so spending her time analyzing a centuries-old fairy tale because she was either being stalked by a crazy killer or was the butt of some elaborate joke by a mean classmate made perfect sense to her.