She paused, and whispered, “No lies, no lies, no more lies. No longer.”
“How do we guarantee that?” Sarah asked. “How do you ask a question that someone can’t answer with a lie?”
She knew the answer to her question.
So did Karen.
Jordan reached down and suddenly the others saw the knife in her hand. The thin, sharp blade caught a streak of diffuse light slipping through one of the laboratory’s windows and glowed like silver mercury.
39
Red One thought it was like inventing an edgy stage routine for a difficult, unruly audience.
Red Two thought it was like a grade school child’s papier-mâché project, pieced together with string and tape.
Red Three thought it was like studying for a hard examination in a course where she had skipped too many classes.
None of them actually called it what it was: preparing to kill someone.
Each of them created her own part of the whole. That had been Karen’s rough idea, and she had insisted upon it-although precisely why, she could not have fully explained to the other two Reds. It just seemed to her that shared effort made sense, in a vaguely democratic way. None of the three Reds knew that the Big Bad Wolf would have found this aspect of their hurried and haphazard plan totally delicious and decidedly smart; he would have admired the inevitable confusion three people operating independently to create one profound killing would have created for any follow-up investigator.
The Wolf had honed his own design down to what he considered a satisfying simplicity. It was similar to the famous family fun board game that rested on some dusty shelf in virtually every play room or summer vacation cottage: Clue. Except, for him, it wouldn’t be Colonel Mustard in the pantry with a candlestick. It would be the Wolf with a hunting knife when they least expect it. In actuality, the Wolf had entered into a Zen-like phase of murder: The actions were subordinate to the interpretation. He twitched with excitement in front of his computer screen: They are already dead. It’s the words that accompany the deed that are important. I have to bring people along with me on this journey. Arriving at the killings, it has to be utterly tempting for every reader; they can’t feel revulsion, they need to feel their own lust. It needs to be like driving past an accident on the highway: You can’t help but look even though you know indulging your morbid curiosity makes you somehow less of an honorable person.
The three Reds and the Big Bad Wolf had reached the same decision: Hurry up and kill.
Everyone’s future depended upon it.
Jordan left the library late in the afternoon, a copy of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in her backpack. She was interested only in the opening chapters, which she had read through twice before skipping to deep in the middle to identify what had tripped up Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. She had also gone to the school’s modest selection of films and found the original version of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs-which she had never heard of-and the first installment of Wes Craven’s Scream on a shelf. These were supposed to be signed out on a nearby sheet. She started to put her name down, and then realized it might be better to ignore this requirement.
Back in her room, she put the first movie into her computer’s drive and took out a pad to jot down observations and notes. She had spent hours earlier in the day poring over Internet entries describing various crimes, but all with a pair of critical themes: random killing and home invasion. Jordan reminded herself that by the end of the day, she would have to destroy everything she had written down.
As the idyllic English countryside in the movie came up on the screen in front of her, she also knew that she would have to wreck her computer. She paused the film, and wrote a quick e-mail to her estranged mother and father:
Mom and Dad… My damn computer keeps freezing up and it totally like lost an important paper I’d been working on so I have to redo the whole thing and it might be late which would affect my grade. I’m sending you this e-mail from a friend’s laptop. I need to get a new computer asap because finals are coming up. I can get it at the mall today okay, but I’ll use your credit card.
She knew that neither of her parents would refuse this request. They would likely be pleased that she had communicated something with them, if only the need for some money. She thought adding the bit about the lost paper was clever, because they would never deny her something that might be the difference between flunking and passing a course. And her request might provide them with something to argue about, Jordan believed, which would be an added advantage.
The computer she was staring at had a footprint inside its memory that was every bit as incriminating as a fingerprint left at a crime scene. Jordan smiled, and turned back to the movie. She was pleased that she was becoming a criminal.
All that hard work and studying is paying off, she thought.
Three pairs of men’s running shoes. Three different sizes. Identical make and model. Three different sporting good stores to purchase each in cash. Her shopping list was extensive and the seemingly random manner in which she had to buy items added to the hassle. Ordinarily, Sarah would have complained about the added errands and the complicated, roundabout way she had invented to accomplish them, but now erratic, nonsensical behavior was a strength and not a deficit. She imagined some detective arriving at the mall and staring incomprehensibly at the competing shoe stores, unable to understand why some killer went and bought the same item in three places instead of just buying all three pairs at once. This had been a suggestion Jordan made: “Don’t do things that make obvious sense.”
The Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen shouting, “Off with their heads! And then we’ll have a trial.” Sarah looked around her at the most common staple in the American world-the shopping mall-and thought she was living an upside-down existence. I’m a dead woman purchasing items to kill with. It all seemed like some huge cosmic joke. She burst out in laughter-a few other shoppers turned and looked oddly at her-and then she went back to her duties.
Sarah worked her way through obtaining the items that she was assigned. She bought the first black hood at an outdoors chain that specialized in climbing gear and kayaks. At this place, she also acquired three matching sets of skin-tight black synthetic long underwear and three small, high-intensity flashlights. She went to the rival chain to buy two other hoods. She also bought a fish billy-an 18-inch-long polished wooden club with a leather strap that fit over the wrist that sportsmen used to subdue very large and feisty fish. She went to a store that featured leotards and dancing gear for three pairs of ballet slippers. In a hardware store she purchased a roll of gray duct tape, a set of screwdrivers, and a heavy rubber mallet.
Then, as if working without any rhyme or reason, she returned to the sporting goods store and added three black hooded sweatshirts to her list of purchases. At a nearby luggage specialty store, she bought the three cheapest small canvas duffel bags they had: one blue, one yellow, and one green.
When she walked out into the midst of the mall, surrounded by other shoppers carrying oversized paper sacks stuffed with cheap Chinese-made clothes and Korean electronic items, Sarah did a small dancer’s pirouette. If people stared at her for an instant, that was fine with her. She felt free. Unlike the other two Reds, she knew she could flee at any moment.