Free Red 1-2-3 by John Katzenbach Page A

She knew that stress sometimes caused blanks in the memory. That an anonymous threat could intrude on her day-to-day life seemed horribly wrong.
    She had absolutely no idea that her greeting that day actually should have been: “ Hello, Mrs. Big Bad Wolf . . . ”
    Nor had she any inkling that sitting patiently in her small waiting room, reading an out-of-date copy of the New Yorker, was the man who secretly longed to catch a glimpse of the doctor whom he’d dubbed Red One .
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    Death is the big game and one that everyone plays and everyone loses at the final whistle. But murder is slightly different, because it is far more like that moment within each game when the outcome is decided. We sit in the stands, never knowing when that precise second will arrive. Will it be this goal, or that free throw, or the base hit with the man on second, or the defensive back failing to make a tackle? Perhaps it’s the moment when the referee blows his whistle and points to the penalty spot. Murder is more like sport than anyone knows.
    Murder has its own clock and its own rules. Like sport, it’s about preparation and determination. It’s about overcoming obstacles. Someone wants to live.
    Someone wants to kill. That is the playing field.
    He looked at the words on the computer screen. Good, he thought,
    People reading this will start to understand.
    Karen awakened exhausted from a night of restless dreams at 6 a.m., her customary time in the morning, a few moments before her alarm clock would have rung. She had always had an inner clock that would wake her up shortly before the hotel wake-up call or her alarm. Her habit was to 56
    RED 1–2–3
    roll over and punch the off button on the alarm, thrust herself up from beneath a handmade quilt she’d acquired at a local crafts show many years earlier, and make her way to a pink exercise pad set up in a corner of the bedroom, where she would indulge herself with exactly fifteen minutes of yoga stretches and exercises before heading to the shower. In the kitchen, the automatic coffeepot was already percolating. The clothes she had selected for that day’s work were set out the night before, after she checked the weather report. Routine, she insisted, set her free, although there were mornings when it was hard to persuade herself this statement was true.
    She sometimes thought her entire world was constructed upside down, or perhaps back to front. She devoted all her organizational energies to her medical work, and thought of her comedy as liberating. Two Karens, she told herself, who might not even recognize each other if they met on the street. ComicKaren was creative, spontaneous, and quick-witted. Internist Karen was dedicated to her work and patients, steady, organized, and always as precise as illness allowed. Her two sides seemed to share little, but had managed to accommodate each other over the years.
    This morning, she wondered if perhaps she needed to create a third.
    She glanced over toward the alarm system pad that had been installed on the bedroom wall two days after the letter from the Big Bad Wolf had arrived. It blinked red—letting her know that it was on and functioning. She felt an odd discomfort. She had to get up, turn it off so that the motion detectors mounted in corners throughout the house would not catch her instead of the fictional bad guys they were designed to raise alarm about. She needed to get the day started. But she lingered.
    Predictability is my enemy, she thought.
    Someone unknown sends me a threatening letter, and I do exactly what every book, manual, or website says to protect myself. That was what made sense. A checklist. Call the police. Inform the neighbors to be on the lookout for any strange activity. Her isolation made that difficult, but she had still dutifully called the families that lived closest to her.
    Simple, straightforward calls: “Hi, this is Karen Jayson down the block. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve received some