The patient was seated on the exam table, wearing a johnny-gown and a smile. “Hello, Doctor,” she said.
“Hello, Mrs…” Karen glanced quickly at the folder to grab the woman’s name. She hurriedly said it, trying to cover up her failure to greet her as she did all her patients: with a familiarity that implied that she had spent the entire day studying whatever medical issues the patient had. Ordinarily she had no trouble remembering the names of her patients, and inwardly she berated herself for the lapse. She knew that stress sometimes caused blanks in the memory. That an anonymous threat could intrude on her day-to-day life seemed horribly wrong.
She had absolutely no idea that her greeting that day actually should have been: “Hello, Mrs. Big Bad Wolf…”
Nor had she any inkling that sitting patiently in her small waiting room, reading an out-of-date copy of the New Yorker, was the man who secretly longed to catch a glimpse of the doctor whom he’d dubbed Red One.
6
Death is the big game and one that everyone plays and everyone loses at the final whistle. But murder is slightly different, because it is far more like that moment within each game when the outcome is decided. We sit in the stands, never knowing when that precise second will arrive. Will it be this goal, or that free throw, or the base hit with the man on second, or the defensive back failing to make a tackle? Perhaps it’s the moment when the referee blows his whistle and points to the penalty spot. Murder is more like sport than anyone knows. Murder has its own clock and its own rules. Like sport, it’s about preparation and determination. It’s about overcoming obstacles. Someone wants to live. Someone wants to kill. That is the playing field.
He looked at the words on the computer screen. Good, he thought, People reading this will start to understand.
Karen awakened exhausted from a night of restless dreams at 6 a.m., her customary time in the morning, a few moments before her alarm clock would have rung. She had always had an inner clock that would wake her up shortly before the hotel wake-up call or her alarm. Her habit was to roll over and punch the off button on the alarm, thrust herself up from beneath a handmade quilt she’d acquired at a local crafts show many years earlier, and make her way to a pink exercise pad set up in a corner of the bedroom, where she would indulge herself with exactly fifteen minutes of yoga stretches and exercises before heading to the shower. In the kitchen, the automatic coffeepot was already percolating. The clothes she had selected for that day’s work were set out the night before, after she checked the weather report. Routine, she insisted, set her free, although there were mornings when it was hard to persuade herself this statement was true.
She sometimes thought her entire world was constructed upside down, or perhaps back to front. She devoted all her organizational energies to her medical work, and thought of her comedy as liberating. Two Karens, she told herself, who might not even recognize each other if they met on the street. Comic Karen was creative, spontaneous, and quick-witted. Internist Karen was dedicated to her work and patients, steady, organized, and always as precise as illness allowed. Her two sides seemed to share little, but had managed to accommodate each other over the years.
This morning, she wondered if perhaps she needed to create a third.
She glanced over toward the alarm system pad that had been installed on the bedroom wall two days after the letter from the Big Bad Wolf had arrived. It blinked red-letting her know that it was on and functioning. She felt an odd discomfort. She had to get up, turn it off so that the motion detectors mounted in corners throughout the house would not catch her instead of the fictional bad guys they were designed to raise alarm about. She needed to get the day started. But she lingered.
Predictability is my enemy, she thought.
Someone unknown sends me a threatening letter, and I do exactly what every book, manual, or website says to protect myself. That was what made sense. A checklist. Call the police. Inform the neighbors to be on the lookout for any strange activity. Her isolation made that difficult, but she had still dutifully called the families that lived closest to her.
Simple, straightforward calls: “Hi, this is Karen Jayson down the block. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve received some anonymous threat. No… No… the police don’t think it means anything much, but I just wanted to ask some of the neighbors to keep an eye out for anything unusual. Like strange cars parked on the road or something. Thanks…”
The responses had been solicitous, concerned. Of course everyone would keep eyes peeled for any suspicious behavior. The families with small children had reacted strongly-wondering whether they should keep the kids indoors until this formless threat had dissipated, as if it were some oil slick on the surface of the ocean. The weather being what it was, which was lousy, Karen thought it unlikely the kids would be outside anyway.
Her next call had been to the alarm company, which had promptly sent out an overly enthusiastic workman to install the system, all the time happily and ominously opining about how you can’t be safe enough and people don’t understand how much danger is lurking out there before managing to sell Karen an enhanced security package with a monthly charge deducted from her credit card.
She had subsequently gone through the entirety of the policeman’s recommendations: Get a dog. No, she hadn’t done that, but she was considering it. Get a gun. No, she hadn’t done that, not yet, but she would consider it. Call a private detective. No, she hadn’t done that, but she was considering it. In fact, she realized, she was considering everything and nothing all at the same time.
How is any of this going to keep me alive? Wouldn’t the Big Bad Wolf have visited all the same online advice pages, read all the same words, and figured out all the same things?
Wouldn’t he know precisely what all the experts suggested she do? How smart is he?
Martin and Lewis had already set off the system twice in the two days it had been functioning. This meant that either she had to get rid of them or figure out some way to make it work in concert with cats. This seemed an insurmountable problem. It dogged her as for the first time in years she ignored the exercise pad and made her way into the shower.
Warm water and suds cascaded over her body.
She scrubbed herself vigorously, soaping every spot she could reach once, then twice, and finally a third time, as if soap could erase the lingering sense of exhaustion from her unsettled night. She held out a hand against the tile wall, steadying herself against the flow of water. She felt dizzy.
Her eyes were closed when she heard a sound.
It was not a recognizable noise, nothing clear-cut like a car door slamming, or a radio being switched on. It wasn’t loud-not a crash! or a clang! It was more like the first second of a hissing kettle, or a stiff breeze rustling through nearby tree branches.
She froze in position. A sudden burst of adrenaline coursed through her body so that she felt like she was abruptly spinning a million miles per hour, though she was immobile. Steam surrounded her like a fog, clouding her comprehension. The noisy flow of water obscured recognition.
What was that? What did you hear?