And directly into that moment of weakness for all three Reds, Mrs. Big Bad Wolf blurted out, “It’s just a book, you see. It’s only the book he’s writing. No one has to die tonight.”
The silence in the room crowded them for what might have been only seconds, but which seemed far longer.
“Find the words,” Karen whispered to Jordan. The youngest nodded and left the room.
All writers need stories, Karen thought. They steal from their own lives and from the lives of people around them. They steal from their families and their friends. They steal from history and from current events. They rob news articles, what they see on the street, overheard conversations, and sometimes they even steal from each other.
Then she heard Jordan shout, a half-scream, half-cry, the sound that someone who has cut herself accidentally might make in surprise and shock. Karen’s eyes went instantly to the Big Bad Wolf, who snarled, some of his offhand, unafraid appearance abruptly slipping away. She realized, He knows.
“You go,” Sarah said to Karen. She quickly waved the gun in the direction of Jordan’s explosion. Sarah had slumped down on the floor across from the two Wolves, her back up against the wall, her weapon balanced on knees drawn up to her chest, trained on the two captives.
Karen heard Jordan yell out, “In here!” and she followed the sound of the voice, which seemed to shake with some new tension. As she entered the room just down the hallway from the kitchen, she heard Jordan sob. That’s not right, she thought. Red Three is strong. She’s been tough from the start.
What she saw first when she entered the Wolf’s office were tears streaming down Jordan’s face. The teenager wasn’t able to speak. She just gestured at the wall.
It had not taken Jordan more than seconds to find the locked office door. Locked door. This is obvious: Go inside. Nor had finding a key been hard-there was one on the Wolf’s chain, hung right by the front door.
It was only when she stepped inside and saw what he’d accumulated there that she had really started to lose control.
Pictures. Schedules. Outlines. A wicked hunting knife.
It amounted to a detailed study of each of their lives and the means to end them.
Karen followed Jordan’s eyes and saw a long-distance shot of her sneaking a smoke. She saw Jordan on the basketball court. She saw Sarah outside the liquor store. A collection of all the familiar places, image upon image, gathered together into a montage of deadly obsession. Close-ups. Long lens shots. Action images next to pictures that seemed more like still lifes. Lists of favorite places and daily breakdowns, maps and bird’s-eye views of their homes, offices, school-the intimacy of their day-to-day lives. But what she saw that went beyond the shock of seeing their personal histories detailed was the energy she knew must have gone into creating everything on the walls. It was as if all three Reds were standing naked in the Wolf’s office. The violation was profound. It was as if they had never had a private moment. The Wolf had been close by their side every second-they just hadn’t known it.
It was the investment of time and dedication to death that finally overwhelmed her. Karen felt her knees weaken, and she dropped down.
From the other room, Sarah called out, “What is it?”
Karen replied weakly, “It’s us.”
Jordan was overcome with rage. She grabbed Karen by the shoulders and jerked her up, shaking her. “We’ve got to kill him!” she said hoarsely. “Look at this! What choice do we have?”
Karen did not respond. All she could think was: If we kill him, how do we get away with it? And if we do get away with it, what will that do to us? He’s the killer. Not us.
Her shoulders slumped. Jordan released her and with an angry, anguished cry approached the wall and started ripping down every picture. She tore into every representation of their lives. She clawed at each element of the mural in front of her. Paper flew around her in shreds. She was sobbing something guttural.
Karen reached out to stop her, but hesitated. Destroy it all, she thought. She joined in, grabbing at a picture and tearing it into tiny pieces, flinging it across the room, both of them feeling that by wrecking everything the Wolf had built to kill them, they could somehow free themselves.
As Jordan beat senselessly on the display, showering pieces of the design of their deaths throughout the room, Karen turned and saw the computer and the pages of manuscript on the writing desk beneath a leather-bound scrapbook. She reached for her billy club and was about to smash the screen, when Jordan said, “Wait.”
She paused in mid-blow.
“If all this is up here,” she said, pointing at the debris from the wall, “do you suppose even more is in there?” Jordan nodded at the computer at the same time as she reached out for the Wolf’s personal scrapbook, opening it to pages of reviews and accounts of murder.
Karen nodded.
“What else is there?” Jordan asked.
And in that moment of hesitation, surrounded by all the signatures of obsession, Karen saw an answer.
43
Karen spread three items out on the floor directly in front of the Big Bad Wolf. If he’d been able to stretch his foot out, he could have touched them with his toe.
His computer.
His manuscript.
His scrapbook.
She said nothing. A fourth item-his hunting knife-was in her hand. She waved it in the air idly, as if trying to cut atmosphere. She just wanted the Wolf to stare at these things for a few minutes, digesting what she might be able to do with them.
He shifted in his seat.
Karen wondered for a moment: Has anyone ever spent this sort of evening with a serial killer and lived? She suspected the answer was no.
She gave the Wolf a wry, small smile that she hoped would unsettle him further. Inwardly, she was warning herself: Push. But don’t push too hard. Act, but don’t overact. Medical school didn’t teach me anything about the stage. I had to learn that for myself. She wondered whether any comedian had ever faced as hostile an audience as she had this night.
She left Red Two and Red Three across from the Wolves, not saying anything to them while she went first to the kitchen, then to a bathroom. It did not take her long to find what she needed: Plastic baggies. Scissors. A bread knife with a serrated edge. Cotton swabs. A black marking pen.
When she returned to the living room, it looked to the others as if she’d been on a very odd shopping trip. She was grinning, even though her ribs throbbed where she’d been struck. This was all performance on her part, but she also knew how to not let an unruly crowd upset her routine. Keep telling jokes. Don’t let up. Don’t let the heckler or the disruptive asshole take over the show. You’re in charge.
She began singing disjointed snatches of a hit 1960s song. No matter how clumsily she did it, she knew that the Wolf would probably recognize her version of the tune Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs once made famous: Little Red Riding Hood. She hoped it would irritate him.
She waited for a moment, picked up the scrapbook-idly flipping through a couple of sheets, using the hunting knife to turn them-and looked up: “So, how many people have you killed?”
The Big Bad Wolf didn’t immediately answer. His eyes narrowed and his smile widened. He had a sudden surge of confidence. His hands and feet might be restrained, but Red One was engaging in conversation. This was seductive. “None. One. A hundred. Do you mean on the page or in my head or in real life? How many do you think?” he replied.