Red 1-2-3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

way.
    Each Red mistakenly thought she was maintaining control over emotions that seemed suddenly explosive. Each Red imagined she was reacting to the threatening words appropriately. Each Red believed she was taking the right steps. Each Red felt that she—and she alone—could keep herself safe, if safe was what she actually wanted to be. Each Red assessed the stated threat to her life and reached a dizzyingly different conclusion. Each Red was unsure whether she was truly in danger or just ought to be annoyed, although neither alternative made complete sense. Each Red struggled to grasp the truth of her situation, only to be stymied. Each Red slid into confusion without knowing that was what she was doing.
    None of them were completely right about anything.
    Karen Jayson’s first instinct, after absorbing the shock delivered by the words on the page, was to call the local police.
    26
    RED 1–2–3
    Sarah Locksley’s initial impulse was to find the handgun that her dead husband had kept locked away in a steel box, hidden on a top shelf in the small room that had doubled as his home office.
    Jordan Ellis did nothing except flop down and curl up on her bed, doubled over as if cramped and sick.
    Karen’s conversation with the detective was brutally unpleasant. She had read the letter thoroughly twice, and then slapped it down on the kitchen table and angrily seized her telephone from a hook on the wall. Her imagination reeled with barely contained fury. She was not accustomed to being threatened and she hated the coy fairy-tale underpinnings of the letter, so the officious, determined, well-educated I’m not scared of anything or anyone side of her rapidly took over. So, who are you, some big bad fucking wolf ? she thought. We’ll see about that. Without really considering what she would say, she dialed 911.
    She expected the dispatcher who answered to be helpful. She was wrong.
    “Police. Fire. Emergency,” he said.
    She thought the voice sounded very young, even with the curt words.
    “This is Doctor Karen Jayson over on Marigold Road. I believe I need to speak with a detective.”
    “What is the nature of your emergency, ma’am?”
    “Doctor,” Karen corrected him. She instantly wished that she hadn’t.
    “Okay,” the dispatcher responded instantly, “what is the nature of your emergency, Doctor ?” She could hear a tired end-of-shift contempt in the way he forced out the word.
    “A threatening letter,” she answered.
    “From who?”
    “I don’t know. It wasn’t signed.”
    “An anonymous threat?”
    “Yes. Precisely.”
    “Well, you better speak with someone in the detective bureau,” the dispatcher said.
    That’s what I said, Karen thought but did not say.
    27
    JOHN KATZENBACH
    She was put on hold, presumably while the phone line was switched.
    The local police force was small and occupied a stolid brick building in the center of the closest town, just off the main common, adjacent to the town’s only ambulance and fire station and across from the modest town hall. She lived in the countryside at least five miles away and the only time she passed the police headquarters was when she took her weekly Saturday morning trip to the Whole Foods Market nearby. She guessed that most of the police work was dedicated to keeping the highways safe from bored and speeding teenagers, stepping between husbands and wives who had come to blows, and working with the nearby bigger city forces on drug investigations, because many dealers had come to understand that being out in the rural sections allowed them considerable peace and quiet while they cooked up crystal meth or chopped up rock cocaine for distribution on much harder urban streets and nearby colleges. Karen wondered whether there were more than ten actual police officers on duty at any time in her town and if any had even the smallest amount of sophisticated training.
    “This is Detective Clark,” a sturdy, no-nonsense voice came over the line. She