He placed a hand on Jordan’s shoulder. “Would you like me to call an ambulance, have the EMTs check you out?” he asked her gently, switching from cop tone of voice to father.
Jordan shook her head. “I’m okay,” she replied.
Her coach interjected, “We have support staff at the school who can help her if she needs it. Trauma specialists.”
The cop slowly nodded. This sounded like snobbery to him. “You sure?” he asked again, directing his question to Jordan. He didn’t like the coach, who seemed a little put out by the whole event. Like it’s some big inconvenience some woman killed herself as you happened by, the cop said to himself. “Easy for me to call,” he added to Jordan, who was wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and whose rapid-fire breathing seemed to be slowing to normal. He didn’t mind making the coach wait longer on the bridge in the cold drizzle, and in his experience the EMTs were far better at dealing with sudden shock than just about anyone else.
“Thanks,” Jordan said. Her voice seemed a little stronger. “But I’m okay. I just want to go back to my dorm.”
The cop shrugged. It was always tempting to see anyone ordinary and young caught up in any sort of police event through the eyes of his own kids, but his years of police work had given him a thick skin and a crusty exterior. He had his statements. He had contact numbers for everyone in the van. He had ordered other patrolmen to continue to fruitlessly investigate the area.
He’d done all he could that evening.
The cop saw the coach dialing a number on his cell phone. “Who you calling?” he demanded.
“School heads,” the coach replied. “They will want to know why we’re late. Need to keep the dining hall open. And they’ll arrange for someone to speak with Jordan tonight, if necessary.”
The cop thought this was actually the coach making sure he wouldn’t be blamed for getting back to campus late.
“Well,” he said, “all of you are free to go. If there’s any need for a follow-up, someone will be in touch.”
“You will have to contact the dean’s office if you want to talk to any of the kids,” the coach said.
“Really?” the policeman said. He didn’t add, “The hell we will,” which was what he thought. He just let the skeptical tone he used with the single word convey that impression.
He watched the team climb back into the van. Some of the girls still seemed upset, and were holding hands or hugging each other. He noticed that no one threw an arm around Jordan.
The cop took note that Jordan made her way to the back of the van and that she sat alone.
He gave her a little friendly wave, which wasn’t very professional, but which came naturally to him. He was pleased when he saw a flitting smile on Jordan’s face, and a shy return wave.
Damn, kids can be cruel, he thought. He knew he wouldn’t get home before his own daughters had gone to bed, but he decided then that he would look in on them and maybe just spend a few minutes watching their sleeping faces. He knew his wife would understand why he needed to do this without asking any questions.
It was not until early the following morning that the detectives assigned to complete the suicide investigation received a call from two clerks who worked in a local motor vehicle registry office. They had been waiting at the bus stop and spotted the letter Red Two had nailed to the tree, and had obeyed the message and called the police. They were smart enough not to touch anything, and they were dedicated enough to wait for a detective to arrive and take possession of the letter and the photograph, even though this made the clerks late for work.
At more or less the same time, Red One was seated across from a woman just a little younger than her, but twice her size. The woman wore close-cropped hair and had massive arms and girth to match. One ear was riddled with at least a half-dozen earrings, and the edge of a tattoo peeked out from beneath her blouse. She was the sort of woman who gave off the impression that she rode a Harley-Davidson chopper to work and that for fun she challenged lumberjacks to arm-wrestling contests, which she rarely lost. Karen was astonished, however, by the soft tone of voice the woman used.
“Here’s what we can do,” the woman said. “We can protect your friend. We can protect her children. We can provide a safe place for them to transition to a new life. We can assist them with social work advice and legal help as they adjust. We can set them all up with therapists as well, because a number of really prominent local psychiatrists volunteer their time here. We can really help them get started anew.”
“Yes?” Karen said, because she heard but attached to the end.
“Nothing is foolproof,” the woman said.
A distant sound of children laughing penetrated the walls. Karen guessed it came from an upstairs day-care center.
“What do you mean?” Karen asked.
The woman leaned back in her desk chair, rocking backward as if relaxing, but keeping her gaze fixed directly on Karen’s face, measuring it for reactions.
“I’m required by law to say that.”
“But there’s more, right?” Karen asked.
The huge woman sighed.
“Here at Safe Space we are three city blocks from the police station. It is manned around-the-clock, all year. Response time from there to our front door, following a 911 call, is less than ninety seconds. We have an arrangement with the police-there’s a code word that the entire staff and all our clients learn-that means that some man has shown up and means to do something violent, so the police respond in force, weapons drawn. We put this in place after an incident last year. Perhaps you remember it?”
Karen did. Headlines and breathless news reports spread over several days. A man, his estranged wife, two children aged six and eight, and three policemen. When the shooting stopped, the wife and one of the officers were dead and one of the children was seriously wounded. The estranged husband tried to kill himself, but had expended all the bullets in his revolver, so he knelt on the sidewalk, gun in mouth, pulling the trigger and clicking uselessly on empty chambers until he was handcuffed and taken away. The case was still in the court system. The man was now claiming temporary insanity.
“My friend is worried about her husband’s tendency to violence,” Karen said. Then she shook her head. “That makes it sound like a common cold. The man is a flat-out savage. He’s beaten her badly, time and again. Broken bones and black eyes. He’s threatened to kill her. She has nowhere else to turn.”
“That’s why we’re here,” the huge woman said. Karen could sense anger within her words, directed toward some anonymous man. In this case a fictional man. The story Karen had made up involved a friend, two little children, an abusive husband, and the wife’s plan to run away before he killed her. Karen had taken common truths and rolled them together. She knew the director of Safe Space wouldn’t ask too many questions.
“So, it would be three-your friend and the children…”
“I think the children can be sent to family where they will be safe. But the husband will pursue my friend right to the edge of the world and off it, if he has to. He’s obsessed and crazy.”
“I don’t know if separating-”
“He doesn’t care about the kids. They’re not his anyway, so they are just in the way of whatever he’s going to do. It’s my friend who is in danger.”
“I see. And is he armed?”
“I don’t know. I would assume so.”
Karen wondered just what sorts of weapons the Big Bad Wolf had handy. Handguns. Rifles. Swords. Knives. Bombs. Bows and arrows. Poisons. Rocks and sharpened sticks. His hands. Razor blades. All were potentially lethal. Any might be what he was intending to use on the three Reds.