She stood up and turned slowly around. The clothing she wore didn’t even rustle.
Jordan looked around her. The only light in the room was from an outdoor streetlamp just beyond her window that pushed a yellow glow into a few corners. It was like packing for a vacation-she was worried that some key item would be left behind. Only on this occasion it wasn’t a bathing suit or a passport that she was afraid she would forget.
The mere act of dressing for murder made her hands twitch. Her breathing was shallow. Her throat was parched and it felt like her right eyelid had developed a tic.
She wondered where all her bluster, confidence, and bravado had fled to. Now, just when he might have a name, and an address, and suddenly become something other than a vaporous threat, her confidence was evaporating. She felt like a small child, afraid of the dark. She wanted to whimper.
An immense part of her protested that it would be smarter to strip off the killing clothes and hide under the covers of her bed and just wait patiently for the Wolf to come for her. She fought this desire off, reminding herself that the other two Reds were counting on her.
Imagining that she was entering into the last night of her life as she once knew it, Jordan went to her door. It was the most crippling sensation: It was as if over the time she had been stalked by the Wolf she had grown accustomed to a certain kind of fear, but this night promised to replace it with a totally different kind, when she’d just gotten used to the first kind. She wanted to scream. Instead, she listened carefully to make certain that none of the other girls in the dorm were up, either studying or taking a late night trip to the bathroom.
At some point or another, every student in the school had snuck out of a dormitory after hours, defying hard and fast rules, risking expulsion. Nobody, she thought, ever did this for the reason I have. No late night assignation with a boy. No late night drug or alcohol run. No just-less-than sadistic late night prank being played on first-year students. This was something different.
She put her hand on the door handle, and as she opened the door she felt as if it would be a new Jordan who would take the first step out into this utterly new world, leaving old Jordan behind forever.
She eased out of her room. The slippers concealed her footsteps but she walked gingerly, afraid that the old wooden boards in the floor might creak and groan in a telltale way. Each step, the person she once was steadily disappeared behind her. It was like leaving a shadow behind.
When she managed to work her way slowly through the front door, the cold air greeted her. She shivered as she pulled off the ballet shoes and tied on her new running shoes. Even though she could feel sweat beneath her arms, the bitter cold felt close to overwhelming as she made her way to the rendezvous with the other Reds. Jordan was afraid she would freeze in position, and so she raced through the night.
Sarah’s exit from the women’s shelter was equally stealthy. Her problem was making it past the night security guard-a volunteer from one of the local colleges who came on at nine and stayed, bleary-eyed, until the morning shift: a retired police patrolman, who arrived with fresh coffee and donuts. The night volunteers were taught to always err on the side of caution. Any disturbance, anything out of the ordinary, could result in a call to the shelter’s gun-toting boss, or 911.
So Sarah waited for nearly an hour, poised on the second-floor landing just out of sight, knowing that eventually the young woman would get up to stretch, or go to the bathroom, or head into the side office to pour herself a cup of coffee, or maybe just drop her head down on the books and take a nap.
Her husband’s gun was in her duffel bag, along with a change of clothes. But at this moment, she was dressed exactly as Jordan was, down to the sound-muffling ballet slippers. Karen would be wearing the same outfit.
Sarah didn’t even glance at her wristwatch. She wanted to say some sort of prayer designed to make someone go to the toilet. Her entire body was rigid with anticipation.
She licked her lips, which were suddenly dry and cracked. She felt embarrassed, dumb. All her thoughts had been bent toward what they would do when the three of them arrived at the house where they believed the Big Bad Wolf lived. Suddenly she almost burst out laughing, but stifled the sensation. It wasn’t anything amusing as much as it was the accumulation of fears.
We’ve got it all fucking backward, she thought. It’s the wolf that goes to the three little pigs and blows their houses down, except for the smart one, who built his house out of brick and stone.
Wrong fairy tale.
It had not occurred to her that her first problem might be insurmountable: simply getting out of a place designed to keep people protected without being seen. She suddenly felt like she was in the oddest kind of jail.
She heard a shuffling from below. She leaned forward, listening. This was followed by the sound of a book being slammed shut. She heard, “Goddamn, this stuff is impossible. I hate organic chemistry, I hate organic chemistry, I hate organic chemistry,” repeated in a frustrated, angry tone.
After a second or two, the phrase “I hate organic chemistry” turned into a haphazard, invented song, one second being sung high-pitched, next in a basso profundo. She heard footsteps crossing the foyer. Then she heard the bathroom door open and close, and she launched herself down the stairs, tiptoeing to stay quiet, hurrying to get outside. It was crucial that the world thought the woman now named Cynthia Harrison was asleep in her bed.
41
The three Reds waited in the rental car a hundred yards away from the house. They should have been going over the last details of their plan, such as it was, but mainly they were quiet with their own thoughts. It was shortly before three in the morning. Karen had simply pulled to the side of the road and parked beneath a large oak tree. Jordan was in the backseat, Sarah the passenger. Karen placed the car keys on the floor and made certain that the others knew where they were. Then she distributed three sets of surgical gloves, which they all shakily pulled on. All three sets of eyes swept up and down the block. Other than an occasional outdoor light left on by a forgetful home owner, the street was dark and asleep.
Language was at a bare minimum. None of the three Reds trusted their voices not to quaver, so they choked out words laconically. It was as if the closer they got to murder, the less there was to say.
“Two doors,” Karen said. “Sarah and me, in back, breaking in. Jordan, if the Wolf tries to get out the front, you’ve got to stop him. When we’ve made it inside, we’ll let you in.”
They all nodded.
None of them spoke the question-“If it is the Wolf”-although each of them had the same thought.
Nor did Jordan ask: “What do you mean ‘stop him?’” or “How exactly do I stop him?” or finally, “What happens if I can’t stop him and he gets away?” Uncertainty had bred with finality; all three Reds had entered into some odd sort of state that traveled well beyond reason. It was a fairy tale of their own making.
“Upstairs and to the right. Has to be the master bedroom. That’s where we’re going. Move fast. They will be asleep, so we will have the element of surprise, but breaking in will probably wake them.”
“Suppose…” Sarah started to ask, then stopped. She suddenly realized there were hundreds of supposes and that trying to anticipate all of them was impossible.