So, as soon as he heard pots and pans clatter in the kitchen as the meal began to get under way, he would call out an answer, as if he hadn’t heard her entry. “Hiya, honey! I’ll be out in a sec!”
He knew his wife enjoyed the bellow from behind the office door, so he shouted out his greeting regardless of his mood or the moment happening on the page in front of him. He could be writing about something as mundane as the weather or something as electric as how he intended to kill. It made no difference. He still raised his voice so she could hear him. They played the same lively tunes daily:
“How was your day?”
“What’s going on at school?”
“Were you able to work hard?”
“Did you get around to paying the electric bill?”
“There are some odd jobs around the yard we need to get to.”
“Would you like to have Chinese for dinner tomorrow?”
“Shall we watch a movie on the TV tonight, or are you too tired?”
“Maybe we should take a cruise this year. There are some great sales on Caribbean trips. We haven’t had a real vacation in months. What do you think; shall we make a reservation and start saving our money?”
The Wolf heard a distant rattle. It had to be the front door. He waited, and then he heard the expected greeting. This signaled him to start the electronic process of closing up everything he was working on and encrypting it. All this was actually unnecessary. The wall of photographs was incriminating enough-a factoid he knew from his discussion with the detective. “Killers-the type who like to plan, not the thug robbing a convenience store or doing in some competitor in the drug business with a whole lot of automatic weapons fire-like to keep souvenirs,” the policeman had told him in a smug, self-satisfied tone of voice. As if he really knew what he was talking about, the Wolf said to himself. The cop had been very helpful, and had answered all his questions, although sometimes the policeman had sounded like a teacher trying to explain things to a distracted elementary school class.
But securing the files made the Wolf feel his privacy remained intact when he shut down his computer. It was a little like turning off a machine but switching on his imagination, because each Red would glow in his thoughts right through the remainder of the humdrum evening that awaited him.
If you are a plumber, make sure you wear your utility belt and carry your tools. If you are a salesman, make sure you maintain that glib, quick, handshaking demeanor at all times. And if you are a writer, make sure you ask questions like you’re looking for information to put on a page.
“I’ll be out in a sec!” he called, just as he did every night and precisely as he knew she expected him to. “Just finishing up in here!”
Meat loaf, he thought. That would be great tonight. With gravy and mashed potatoes.
And then, if his wife wasn’t too tired, after they’d finished clearing the table and doing the dishes, a movie. They rarely went out to the cinema anymore, preferring to hunker down in front of their wide-screen television. The Wolf was very sensitive to the fact that Mrs. Big Bad Wolf worked hard at a job critically important for their lives-it paid the creditors and allowed him to be who he was-and with her past heart problems, even with the recent clean bill of health, he didn’t like to create stress in the household. He rewarded her with loyalty, which helped provide a nice quiet, private life for the two of them.
It was the least he could do. If he thought she needed something special, he would surprise her with the occasional night out to a nice restaurant or front-row tickets to a local acting company’s rendition of Macbeth. These outings helped cover up the inevitable disappointment he could see in her eyes when from time to time he announced he had to go out alone “on research.”
This night he thought he’d check the on-demand television listings and attempt to find something funny and romantic that wasn’t too modern. He didn’t like the latest crop of films, which substituted gross-out for slapstick. He preferred classics. The Marx Brothers and Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, right up through Steve Martin and Elaine May. He knew about Judd Apatow, but couldn’t really understand what the kids saw in his brand of cinematic comedy. He and his wife would agree on one of the old-time channels, and he would sit in his reclining chair, and she would plop down in the adjacent love seat. She would fix them each a bowl of vanilla ice cream with some chocolate sprinkles on top right before the movie started.
They would laugh together and then head up to bed.
To sleep.
He suspected that he actually did love his wife. He still enjoyed making love to her from time to time-although in recent months he’d pictured one of the three Reds beneath him as he covered his wife. He didn’t think she had ever noticed this distraction. Perhaps, he thought, it makes me more intense. But he was also aware that since her illness, the moments of coupling had diminished. Frequency was down to maybe once or twice a month, if that.
His desire was still intact, however. And he took some pride in the fact that even as he was closing in on getting truly old, he didn’t need the little blue pill to help him perform. But the idea that he might look for sex outside of his marriage had never occurred to the Wolf.
He strayed-but only in his imagination.
The Wolf looked at the computer screen and the page in front of him with his new chapter heading. He read it out loud, but quietly: “Why I Love Each Red.”
Then, still speaking softly, he answered the question.
“Because of what they give me.”
True passion, he thought. He needed to capture that intensity on the pages of his book.
He imagined that stalking them and planning their deaths was a little like having an affair. He didn’t think of it as cheating, however.
Certainly, they were like lovers waiting patiently for him. But, each in her own way, they were also like faithful wives.
17
The three Reds drove in Karen’s car to the largest local enclosed mall, where she dropped Jordan at the east entrance by Sears, then drove around and delivered Sarah to the west entrance near Best Buy. After waiting a few minutes, Karen steered her way to the top floor of the parking garage adjacent to the mall. She turned her car around so that she could see if any car had followed her up. She shut off the engine and switched off the headlights and waited exactly seventeen minutes. The advantage of this parking garage was that it had separate ramps for heading up and heading down. At the seventeenth minute, she fired up the engine and raced down the circular drive, tires squealing against the pavement. She accelerated across the expanses of vacant parking to the mall’s north exit. “Follow that,” she muttered to herself. I don’t care how damn clever you imagine yourself to be, Mister Wolf.
As before, when she had first met with Red Three, she had a distinct sensation that it was important to not allow herself to be followed, although she was unsure precisely why. A part of her felt completely ridiculous. She had adopted evasive steps when she returned home in the evening and when she went to work in the morning. She had driven like a crazy person when she had picked up Red Three. Now she was repeating the same erratic formula-and she was pretty certain that the other two Reds were doing the same thing-and she could not answer the essential question: Why are you doing this?