The first opened in the trees, and then blended into a woman wearing a physician’s long white lab coat smoking in a corner of some anonymous parking lot at some distance. The woman looked to be about her mother’s age. Jordan waited until the video ended. It was short, as short as hers was. Then she clicked on the second and saw the same rush through the woods blurring into a younger woman coming out of a liquor store. This woman seemed to be distracted. She watched the woman get into her car. Jordan’s fingers were hovering over the keyboard, about to stop the video, when she saw a new image pop up in the box screen. It was slightly out of focus, but she saw two names on a headstone.
She grabbed a pencil and paper and wrote down everything she could before the picture faded away. Then she replayed the video a second and a third time, to make sure she had all the information from the grave.
Two names. One date.
Then she went back and watched the white-jacketed woman a second time, trying to make out a street sign or a business, anything that might tell her something. But a white-coated woman smoking in a parking lot could be anyone and anywhere. She did not have to read the web address to know she was looking at Red One and Red Two.
The red hair told her that.
Her first instinct was to whisper to the screen, “I’m here! I’m right here!”
She hesitated.
For the first time, she really understood: I am not alone.
Before, it had seemed abstract. Two other women? Where? Who? But now she could see them. And they could see her, if they tried.
She tried to control her thoughts. For a moment she imagined that everything in her life was whirling about out of her grasp but that this one thing was the only important thing, and if she couldn’t do anything about everything else, she knew she had to be disciplined and smart about what she did in this single arena. There is only one school, one family, one world, she told herself. The Big Bad Wolf and you and you and me. He will know what we are all doing. He’s watching. You can count on that.
She minimized the YouTube window and opened up Gmail. It took her a few minutes to create a new account with a new electronic address: Red3@gmail.com.
Then she returned to YouTube and posted the same message beneath each video:
It’s Red Three. We must talk.
She posted a link to her video and hoped that Red One and Red Two would see what she had done and mimic her. She tried to send mental waves of thought out to the two other women: The Big Bad Wolf will see this. Don’t imagine for an instant that he hasn’t tapped into these videos and isn’t monitoring them every minute, expecting you to do what you’ve done.
She tried to encourage herself but wondered whether she was opening up some door that she did not want to see inside. A world of shadows, she thought.
She did not have to wait long for an answer. The counter on her video suddenly clicked to 6.
She held her breath counting the seconds it would take for someone to watch her video.
Then her computer pinged with her “new mail” sound.
Karen Jayson watched.
She gasped as the shaky camera left the forest and focused on a distant figure. She whispered out loud, “But she’s just a child!” as if there was something inherently unfair in the age of Red Three.
She told herself to be cautious, that it could all be a trap. But even as she warned herself, her fingers were flying across the keyboard, tapping out a message on the computer she used for her comedy. It wasn’t as if she really imagined that switching computers afforded her any new security, but she was happy enough with the illusion that this side of her might still be secret from the Big Bad Wolf.
She followed suit. She created a new e-mail address. Red1@gmail.com.
Then she wrote:
Who are you?
And who is Red 2?
13
The Big Bad Wolf dressed carefully-an old tweed jacket, blue button-down shirt, slightly frayed at the collar and cuffs. Wrinkled striped tie. Khaki pants that had faded and scuffed brown shoes.
He placed a slender brand-new high-tech digital voice recorder and a small notebook into an old green canvas shoulder bag, along with a collection of cheap pens and a paperback copy of his last book. The novel sported a serrated-edged, bloody knife on the silver and black cover, even though there was no character that used such a knife on any of its pages.
He paused, turning to the mirror just at the moment he slid his tie snug to his throat, and remembered a nasty complaint he’d made to his former publisher trying to point out this discrepancy. “The damn cover artist didn’t bother to read one fucking word I’ve written! He couldn’t even pass a true/false quiz about what’s in the book!” Outrage and insult, expressed in a frantic, no-compromise voice. He’d been summarily ignored. Apparently redesigning the book jacket was an expense they weren’t willing to accept. The memory gave him a sour taste and made his face redden, as if the affront weren’t fifteen years old, but had just happened that morning. His new book, he thought, wouldn’t get such short shrift.
He checked his appearance in his wife’s full-length mirror, spinning around like a teenage girl on prom night. Then he topped it off with horn-rimmed eyeglasses that he perched on the end of his nose and an old tan trench coat that seemed to flop shapelessly around his body and flapped with every step he took. Through the bedroom window he could see it was a damp, raw day, and he considered an umbrella, but then realized that a few raindrops and some breeze mussing what remained of his thinning hair would probably make him look slightly disheveled, which was precisely the image he was working to establish.
He was a man of utter precision, but he would appear to any observer to be more than just a little disorganized and totally head-in-the-clouds harmless.
He made a mental note to add a new chapter to his current book called On Blending In.
When you’re special, when you’re truly unique, he told himself, you need to hide it carefully.
He gathered himself, checked his wristwatch, and imagined where each Red was at that moment. He could hear their voices. Trembling. Scared. He considered the sensation of their skin beneath his fingers. Goose bumps. He took his time picturing them, as if he could fill himself with something stolen from them.
He spoke out loud, imitating voices appropriate to reading a children’s book aloud. He looked at Red One, Red Two, and Red Three.
High-pitched, sniveling: “Oh, what big eyes you have, Grandmother…”
Firm, deep, growling, and in controclass="underline" “Yes. All the better to watch you with, dear. And you, dear. And you too, dear.”
Then he laughed as if he’d just told them the funniest, most outrageous knee-slapping, back-pounding joke, turned, and made his way out of his house. It seemed to the Wolf that he could hear laughter echoing behind him. He walked quickly toward his car and the sounds faded away. He did not want to be late for his appointment.
Outside the police station, it was spitting light rain. Not enough to soak anyone, just enough to give the chill a damp, nasty feel. He hunched up his collar and hurried across the parking lot.
The station was a modern building, in sharp contrast to the stately brick Victorian designs that had housed the town’s other departments for decades. His town-just shy of a size to be considered a city, but larger than a quaint village-was like many in New England, a mishmash of old blending with the new. There were tree-lined streets of singular antique beauty next to developments that screamed of undistinguished postwar hurry-up-and get-it-built squares and rectangles.