Pulsing reddish light that turned to a very bright white light and went straight down for a second and vanished.

Walking in neighborhood when at around 9 PM I observed a unique reddish light pulsing (not blinking and not super bright) SSE of me, with no distinct separate lights but seemed more than one singular light, maybe moving slowly or appearing to move slowly because of its trajectory, or maybe it was still, hard to say as I never stopped walking. Its average intensity didn't change aside from the pulsing and I Kept an eye on it as I walked, but the immediate homes I was walking past obscured my view at times. Initially assumed it was likely a low aircraft, as planes are pretty common to see in that general area of the sky and the pulses were at a regular interval - I could also see white headlights of a plane further south down near the horizon. While catching it in a gap between two rooftops in the area where I was expecting to see the reddish light, was a much brighter white light, falling straight down, like a very bright shooting star. I ran to clear the next house (2-3 seconds), but there was no sign of anything in that part of the sky anymore. I continued to scan the sky and watched the distant plane as it slowly approached, identifiable as a plane by the clear individual lights as it passed me to the east heading north. It seemed like the area where the reddish light was seen was more to the west of that plane's flight path.
I checked a flight tracker replay at home and saw the northbound plane, around 9:05, but nothing else that matched what I saw preceded it.
Sky was clear with no cloud cover.