The Big Bad Wolf drove by the house slowly, stealing glances at the windows, hoping to catch a quick glimpse of Red Two. No luck. He accelerated and went around the block.
Just one time more, he told himself. Maybe you’ll get lucky. He knew he had to be disciplined. A car rolling past a house more than twice would surely be noticed. Two times was the maximum. That way he looked like someone who had accidentally missed an address and was retracing his path. He grimaced as he steered the car down Red Two’s street for the second pass. He could feel his heart rate increase and a drop of sweat gather beneath his arms. He wanted to laugh out loud. Like a forlorn teenager in love, he told himself, moving slowly, deliberately, staring at dark windows.
Red Two sat at her kitchen table. She had a sheet of pink flowered stationery in front of her and she tightly gripped a pen. Night was creeping into the house, but she didn’t stand and turn on the lights, preferring to work in the shadows.
Sarah carefully chose each word on the page. When you’re writing for the very last time, make it all count. The page filled up slowly. Sad words about her husband. Tormented words about their child. Tortured words about her loss.
But she held back all the angry words about the man who wanted to kill her, but whom she intended to cheat.
27
Red One held a very short list in her hand. Do this. Then do that.
Karen had absolutely no confidence that even a small part of their plan would work and total confidence that it would all work. She ricocheted between contradictory doubts and beliefs like a stray gunshot deflecting off a shiny steel surface.
She was seated behind the wheel of a rental car, a nondescript gray Chevrolet four-door that she had sent her nurse out earlier that day to bring back for her. She had traded keys with the same nurse, before asking the young woman to head out on some made-up errand driving Karen’s car.
The nurse had been mildly surprised, especially when Karen had dressed her in her own overcoat and had pulled a knit woolen cap down over her blond hair. Nurses were accustomed to grudgingly following directions from doctors, regardless of how crazy, dumb, or mysterious these directions might appear to be, and the nurse had seemed satisfied with the cryptic explanation: “I think this guy I had a bad breakup with has been watching me, and I’d like to avoid some ugly confrontation.” Her nurse had much experience with her own never-ending series of bad boyfriends, so this all seemed to make some sort of bizarre sense to her.
She had readily taken off in Karen’s car in the opposite direction-letting Karen sneak from her office undetected, or so she hoped. She had assigned superhuman capabilities to the Big Bad Wolf. He didn’t need sleep, food, or drink. He could render himself invisible or soar in the air above like a hawk hunting for prey. He could follow her scent like the Wolf he was, picking up Karen’s odors on the barest of breezes.
But this evening she hoped he would be following the wrong person.
She looked out through steamed-up windows at the world around her and reassured herself: You are alone. The rental car was parked on a gloomy, deserted street, not far from some decrepit warehouses that had once housed mills and manufacturing businesses but now sported boarded-up windows, chain-link fences, and rusty barbed wire stretched over doorways. Swathes of graffiti marred the walls. It had been nearly half an hour since any other vehicle drove past, and no one had wandered down the cracked and crumbling sidewalk. It was a sad, lonely, and abandoned part of the small city, unsettling in the growing shadows. It looked like a Hollywood set for a murder; the faded redbrick of the adjacent buildings was stained with grime and cold rain spat heartlessly at the black macadam. A yellow streetlight did little to dispel the growing dark. Karen was parked in a spot that cried out abandoned and forgotten, as if some disease had carved all the life away. It was the type of place where nothing good seemed possible.
But it was the best spot for what she had to do.
She looked at her watch. For an instant, she was nearly overcome with a shapeless sadness. She did not form the words It’s happening now in her head, but she could feel her pulse quicken.
Sarah pulled her car into a bus stop no-parking zone and cavalierly made sure that she was illegally blocking the space.
For a moment she closed her eyes, afraid to look out the window. It was the first time she had been to the juncture of roads that had crushed her life so abruptly.
But, just as surely, she knew it was the only place to leave what she intended to leave behind. The location would speak as loudly as any final message she could write. Quickly, keeping her head bowed and her back to the intersection, she slid from behind the wheel and moved just beyond the clear Plexiglas hut where folks waited in bad weather for the bus to arrive. It was empty, as she hoped it would be.
On the opposite side of the sidewalk behind the bus stop there was a large oak tree, which provided a bit more shelter and shade in the summer. Sarah looked at the barren branches and thought, They would have bloomed fully by that day. Lots of green leaves. They would have rustled in the breeze. It’s a nice sound that quietly reminds people of the fine days to come.
Sarah was carrying a large satchel. She tugged out a small hammer and some nails as she walked up to the tree trunk. She took a determined, workman’s stance and removed an 8-by-10 glossy picture of her husband, herself, and their daughter, taken about a year before the fatal accident. She had carefully covered it with plastic see-through wrap to protect it from the drizzle that fell around her.
She nailed the picture to the tree trunk. Eye height.
Working rapidly, she took a large pink envelope from her purse. This was encased in a waterproof clear plastic bag. She nailed this directly beneath the picture, using two nails to make sure it wouldn’t fall to the ground. The hammering noise was like pistol shots fading into the evening gloom.
The outside of the envelope had a simple message written in large letters and strident red ink: GIVE THIS TO THE POLICE.
Not very polite, she thought. Not even a please or a thank you. She turned and stole a look toward the intersection. She stopped suddenly, as if hypnotized, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. They were coming that way. The fuel truck was speeding through the stop. They were probably laughing when it happened. Maybe he was singing. He always liked to sing in the car to our daughter. It was silly and he would make up the words to songs, but she would giggle helplessly because no one in the entire world could possibly be as funny as her daddy. Sarah choked. She could hear the screech of tires and the terrible sound of impact and metal twisting. It was an explosion of memory and her hands shook and she could not help herself; it was as if all the muscles in her body had been suddenly sliced through. She fell to her knees like a supplicant in a church, staring at the place where all her hopes had died.
Her hands involuntarily lifted up and covered her face. For a moment she held them there, as if playing the child’s game of peekaboo. She had the terrible thought she would never be able to move, ever again.
At the same moment, she could hear a firm voice she didn’t immediately recognize yelling within her: “Do it, Sarah, do it now!”
It took every bit of effort to stand. She could feel her pulse racing. Her legs were still weak. She knew her face was heart-attack pale.