But this e-mail seemed to play into his current needs, and he reserved a space for the seminar, paying the $50 fee with a credit card and getting directions to a hotel convention room for the talk. It was going to be a two-hour drive to just outside Boston, but he felt it would be worth the trip. The Wolf liked to think that he was constantly on the lookout for small pieces of information. Little details of crime made his writing come alive, he believed. In that regard, he imagined himself like all the other writers of crime fiction.
This notion of joining a pack amused him. Because I’m not like any of those others struggling to find a good agent and get a book contract and maybe a movie deal for their detective series.
It was to be an evening session-which he didn’t like. He no longer enjoyed driving at night. His eyesight was still good enough, but the creeping early winter darkness seemed to slow his reactions down, which made him tentative behind the wheel. This sensation of vulnerability or mortality-he hated it-reminded him he was steadily aging. This caused him, in turn, to feel more energized when he thought about the three Reds.
Killing, he wrote, brings out the youth inside.
Do you remember what it was like when you had your first kiss? The first time you touched a girl’s breast? The first time you caressed a knife blade with your thumb and drew a little line of blood? Do you remember that taste? Or the first time you hefted a loaded pistol, and placed your index finger upon the trigger, knowing that all the power in the world would be released with just the gentlest tug?
Perfection.
Those are the passions that constantly need to be restored and renewed.
The Wolf reluctantly set aside his musings on murder and devoted some time to drearily writing down questions for the seminar speaker and trying to anticipate the scientist’s answers. He thought of himself as a dedicated graduate student preparing for an oral exam. This would be the final step before being awarded a doctorate. This idea made him grin. A higher degree in killing. Still, he considered it necessary to be prepared for the seminar. He wanted to be able to display enough understanding that expert knowledge would flow back toward him. It was like knocking on the door to a sophisticated, exclusive club, demanding entrance.
He did make one more note in the chapter he was working on: To be a truly successful killer, you must always be eager to learn. Too many death-row inmates stare out between iron bars waiting for that final bad word from the warden and wondering where exactly everything went so wrong. “I’m sorry. All your court appeals have failed. Would you like a priest? And chicken or steak for that last meal?” If you don’t educate yourself about death, death will decide to educate you. And you don’t want that lesson.
This, he thought, was probably obvious to every reader but deserved being stated in clear, concise prose anyway. Sometimes, he told himself, you have to be totally explicit. Pornographically clear. In words and in killing.
Jordan counted quietly to herself. One step. Two. Twenty, twenty-five, and thirty. She angled across the open quadrangle, measuring carefully, ignoring the other students walking to late classes.
In her hand, she clutched a small video camera. She had borrowed it from one of her dorm mates, a slightly younger girl who seemed less intent than the others on either taunting her remorselessly or taking pains to avoid her. Jordan imagined that it was used mostly for out-of-bounds fun-maybe taking incriminating pictures of other girls making out with football team boys or breaking the school rules by drinking wildly at parties.
Moving across the campus, Jordan periodically lifted the camera and looked back through the lens. When the distance seemed right, she stopped and checked the viewfinder. Then she smiled and took a quick glance around.
“That’s where you were standing,” she whispered to herself. She half-lifted her hand to point, as if there were someone standing next to her.
Jordan had duplicated the first shot the Wolf had taken of her in her Red Three YouTube video. The distance was approximately the same. The angle was nearly identical. She had done her best to gauge the light to replicate the time of day.
She was stopped a few feet outside a small space between a science lab and a boys’ dormitory. It was a dead-end alleyway-no longer than eight or ten feet deep-that was blocked by a gray concrete wall at the back that connected the two buildings for no apparent purpose. There were several trash bins located at that end and the wall was scrawled with obscenities and vaguely pornographic drawings, phone numbers, and protests of undying love or promises of oral sex. It was not unlike a typical bathroom stall wall in a bus station.
Both buildings were the ubiquitous redbrick so familiar to schools and colleges, covered with tangled ivy, although the cold weather had stripped all the branches of leaves. The space seemed almost cavelike. It was, Jordan thought, a bad place for trash containers, but a fine place to hide for a few moments while sneaking a video.
Had to be last spring term. Plenty of greenery, she thought. And the evening shadows would have made this spot dark, while the last bit of sunlight hitting the quadrangle would have made it possible to see me clearly.
She bit down on her lip. It was a smart place to choose for a secret videotaping. Jordan stepped back slightly, looking first right, then left. No one could see what you were doing unless they accidentally walked right past and happened to look directly at you.
In her imagination, it was like she was conversing with the Wolf-as if she wanted him to hear how much she had already figured out about him. She stared at the spot she believed he’d occupied. She wanted to whisper something defiant, but no words came to her. She pictured him-a lurking man’s dark form that seemed part animal, almost cartoonlike-lowering the camera, wide wolf’s grin on his face, teeth bared. Again, she let her eyes travel the adjacent areas. Plenty of parking on the side street just twenty yards away. A few quick steps and you would be gone. No one would know what you’d been up to. So, you must have felt pretty damn safe.
Jordan worked hard to reconstruct every element of the filming moment in her head.
You couldn’t just wait here for hours, hoping eventually I would happen by and you could take your pictures. That would be far too suspicious. Someone might spot you and maybe call security. No one’s allowed to just hang out around the school. So that’s a chance you wouldn’t take. Any smart wolf would know to be far more cautious, right?
Her throat felt sore, her mouth dry.
You had to know when I was going to pass by. Maybe not exactly, but damn close. You had to have a sense of timing. My timing. You know my school. The smart wolf knows exactly when he can spy on his prey in complete safety.
That observation told her something.
You must know the same things for Red One and Red Two.