The Butcher (4 page)

Taking a deep breath, he continued to pick through the crate, sorting through the clothing. Maybe he'd find pictures of Lucy, maybe even a diary. At this point, he'd take anything. He'd spent his entire life being hungry for information about his mother, and the more he sifted, the more certain he became that this stuff had to belong to Lucy. Why else would the Chief have locked it all away?

Matt's fingers touched something hard. Peering into the crate, he could see the tops of a dozen or so large glass Mason jars sitting at the bottom, the kind of jars his grandmother used when she made fruit preserves. He reached in, then hissed when something sharp pricked his finger.

Swearing under his breath, he peered closer. He'd forgotten that something had shattered when the crate had fallen, and he'd just discovered what it was. Reaching in again, slowly this time, he grabbed hold of one of the jars and took a good look.

And almost dropped it. What was inside the jar was most definitely
not
his grandmother's fruit preserves.

Staring at the glass container, his brain seemed unable to process exactly what he was looking at. A human hand appeared to be floating, sort of, in a greenish, murky liquid. The skin was super-pale, almost white, and two of the fingers looked partially decayed. It was a small hand, but definitely an adult hand, and female. Looking a bit closer, he could detect some kind of sparkly nail polish on two of the fingers.

Confused, he placed the jar gently on the floor beside him, where Elmo, who'd come back, immediately began to sniff it. His mind sifted through a variety of explanations for what it could really be, because surely it wasn't an
actual
human hand. A quick glance into the crate again confirmed that there were more hands inside more jars.

But they couldn't be human. Of course not, because that would be, like, totally and completely fucked-up.

Movie props. Of course. When Matt was a teenager, his grandparents had taken him to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, and they'd watched some live presentation on special effects, props, and movie makeup. Maybe his grandfather had bought a few of these hands for shits and giggles, and forgot to tell Matt. Maybe these hands were supposed to be . . . a gag gift. For . . . horror buffs.

Neither of which fit Matt, or his grandparents.

Still, his brain struggled to find some logical reason why the hands could in no way be human.

Never mind that the skin was beginning to separate from the muscle and bone.

Never mind that some of the fingernails were beginning to detach from the fingers.

Never mind that it all looked so completely real, Matt thought he might throw up.

And the other jars in the crate were the same. Hands. Hands. And more hands.

And they were all
left
hands.

Okay, so they were real. Matt sat on the floor, stumped. But there could be reasons for that, too.

Maybe his grandfather had kept evidence from a crime scene he'd worked years ago before he'd retired from the Seattle PD. Cops did that, didn't they? While Matt couldn't really understand the appeal, clearly the Chief had enjoyed his job, and maybe these were some kind of souvenir, kept here to remind the old man of his glory days, when he'd been the most famous hunter of killers that the city of Seattle had ever seen. While Rufus Wedge was by far the most famous killer that Edward Shank had caught, he most certainly hadn't been the only one. Edward had been a homicide cop for a long time before becoming chief of police; murder had always been the old man's specialty.

Swallowing the sickening feeling welling up inside him, Matt put the jars slowly back in the crate. Realizing after a moment that the tops weren't level, he pulled them back out, and peered into the plastic once again. At the bottom of the crate in the corner was a worn leather scrapbook and a VHS videocassette. Moving aside the tape, he stared at the scrapbook, running a finger over the scratched reddish brown leather cover. He wasn't really going to open it, was he? Whatever was inside was bound to freak him out even more, but still . . . how could he
not
look? He needed an explanation.

The glue that bound the pages together was old, and the scrapbook made a cracking sound when he opened it. It was filled with newspaper clippings . . . and hair.

Ignoring the newspaper articles for the moment, Matt examined the swatches of hair that were taped into the pages. Unlike the hairbrush, which contained tangled strands from actual use, the scrapbook contained bunches of hair that were neatly trimmed. All brunette, ranging from medium to dark brown. Neatly taped.

Neatly labeled, too. First names only. Rebecca. Joan. Sandy. Gwen. Sarah. Lori Ann. Jasmine. And on and on. Touching the strands lightly, he knew this wasn't doll hair. The swatches felt real.

The newspaper articles were dated from 1978 to 1985. There were over two dozen clippings, and the last one, dated April 26, 1985, was one Matt had seen before, because it had been framed above the piano when he was growing up. The headline, in thick black letters an inch tall, screamed
BUTCHER DEAD!

Matt closed the scrapbook, stuffing the articles back inside, relieved. Thank God, it all made sense now. His grandfather had kept a crate of stuff from the Butcher. Bringing down Rufus Wedge had made the Chief's career, and he'd obviously wanted souvenirs to remember it by. Was it weird? Hell, yes. But catching killers had been his grandfather's job. Nothing about that had been normal. Edward Shank had never been the warm, sparkly-eyed grandpa who read bedtime stories and tucked him in. The job had always come first, and the Chief had been damned good at it. Matt may not have understood that as a kid, but he sure as hell understood it now.

The VHS tape was still lying innocently amid the pile of clothing, and Matt picked it up. A standard black Memorex, no label. Curiosity getting the better of him, he stood up, leaving everything else from the crate on the kitchen floor.

A few steps later, he was in the living room, where his brand-new fifty-five-inch high-definition TV was set up with an old DVD/VHS combination player he'd been meaning to replace with a Blu-ray at some
point. Not that he ever had the time to watch movies. He'd bought the TV so he could watch the Seahawks.

Slipping the tape in, he pressed play. The VHS player groaned to life, and the soft whirring sound of the tape rolling filled the quiet room.

His grandfather appeared on the TV screen, looking younger than Matt could personally remember. The Chief's hair, completely white now, was still salt-and-pepper in the video, and the lines on his face were less prominent, the shoulders a little broader. He was standing in what looked like . . . the garage?

On the Chief's decades-younger face was a grin that stretched from ear to ear. The setting behind him was a tad fuzzy, but Matt could make out the long work table. That table was still in the garage, and it was huge, measuring eight feet long and almost five feet wide.

And on it was a female body. Totally nude. From the distance of the camera, it was difficult to tell how exactly old she was, but she was definitely young, probably a teenager. Canvas straps were fastened tight around her shoulders, torso, and ankles, and though she couldn't move too much, she was squirming. A cloth had been stuffed in her mouth. She couldn't make a sound, but her eyes, huge and terrified, were screaming.

“It's showtime,” Edward Shank said directly into the camera. He was smoking a cigar, and Matt didn't have to smell it to know that it was cherry-flavored. The Chief's voice sounded exactly the same as it did now—deep, authoritative, almost melodic. It was like he was speaking to Matt personally, and every inch of Matt's body was rock solid with tension as he watched his grandfather on the large TV screen. The Chief winked into the camera, then reached for something beside the woman's bound feet.

A cleaver. Stainless steel with a wood handle. Super-sharp.

The Chief picked it up, and never had a kitchen tool looked so deadly. In fact, Matt had a similar cleaver in the kitchen right now, minus only the
wood handle. It had been a graduation present from his grandfather when he'd finished culinary school. A shudder ran through Matt's entire body.

Holding it up, Edward grinned, the cleaver gleaming under the garage's fluorescent lights. Then, without a word of warning, he chopped off the young woman's left hand. Her body writhed in agony, as much as it could under the restraint of the straps. The severed hand fell to the floor noiselessly, and blood from the stump of her arm gushed onto the sealed concrete.

“Now that that's out of the way,” the Chief said, “let's get to work.”

Matt's insides, already Jell-O, went cold.

Over the next two minutes, he watched. He couldn't seem to look away, and he wasn't sure he could even blink. So he watched. Even in grainy, dulled-out color, the sickening images of his grandfather torturing the poor young girl seared into his brain like a cattle prod. He watched, stone still, as his grandfather did things to her that he'd only ever seen in horror movies. But the difference was, this was real. There was no scary music, no special lighting or effects. Just her pain, and her screaming.

Edward burned her with the cigar. Cut her with the cleaver. Climbed on top of her and raped her. Then strangled her, his face making almost no expression until the end, when he looked directly into the camera and smiled.

The screen faded to black. Then a cardboard white sign appeared, containing words written in thick block letters. Unmistakably his grandfather's handwriting. Unmistakably his grandfather's fingers holding the sign.

AUGUST 22, 1974. JESSICA. AGE 14.

Edward Shank, former chief of police of the city of Seattle, had been the Butcher.

Feeling something tickling his face, Matt touched his cheek. It was covered in tears.

Samantha Marquez did not like the word
obsessed
. It suggested a lack of control, which she greatly resented. She much preferred the word
determined
. She frowned into her phone even though Detective Robert Sanchez couldn't see what he referred to as her “Kermit Face.”

“I'm not obsessed, I'm researching,” she informed him. “It's a lot of work to write a book, Bobby.”

“I don't doubt that, my sweet,” Sanchez said with a chuckle. Sam could make out the not-so-faint sounds of laughter in the background. The Seattle PD detective had called her from his home, and his three teenage sons made a lot of noise. “You've published two books already, so you clearly know what you're doing. But you gotta have a life, too. How's that boyfriend of yours? He move into the new house?”

“He's all moved in and renovating the backyard.”

There was a small silence as Sam waited for the inevitable next question. But Sanchez, who'd known her for over twenty years, seemed
to know better. Instead of asking why she wasn't living with Matt, he said, “Lunch this week?”

“Of course.”

“I'll call you. Don't work too hard. It's not healthy to be obsessed.”

“Shut up, Bobby.”

“Don't you Kermit Face me,” he said before disconnecting, and she laughed.

Although, looking around her messy living room strewn with newspaper clippings, photographs, and scribbled notes on random pieces of paper, it wasn't hard to understand why he would think she had an obsession. A lot of writers were obsessed when they worked, and usually Sam was able to separate her job from the rest of her life. But this time, the project she was working on was personal.

So far, she'd published two true-crime books on specific murderers who lived in the Pacific Northwest. The first was called
Enraged: The Killer Next Door.
It was about a Vancouver, Washington, man named Harold Bunch, a mild-mannered accountant who'd come home early, sick with stomach flu, only to find his wife in bed with another man. He stabbed both his wife and her lover to death, and was currently serving back-to-back life sentences at the Washington State Penitentiary, a place where Sam had spent considerable time conducting interviews with Bunch.

Her second book was about the serial killer Ethan Wolfe, also known as the Tell-Tale Heart Killer. He'd been a graduate student at Puget Sound State University, Sam's alma mater, and the homeless shelter where he'd volunteered had become his hunting ground. The book, aptly titled
Hungry Like the Wolfe,
was currently sitting at number nine on the nonfiction bestseller list for the Northwest region. Not too shabby for a sophomore effort.

Despite her success, Sam's publisher hadn't been too keen on her third proposal, which was to write about the Beacon Hill Butcher. The Butcher had been a huge case, yes, but it was old news, a story that had been big nearly thirty years ago. The publisher had changed their tune, however, when they learned of Sam's possible personal connection to the killer. Sam's theory was that her own mother, Sarah Marquez, had been a victim of the Butcher . . . which meant the Butcher wasn't Rufus Wedge at all.

Her mother's case, still unsolved, had long gone cold, and Sam was determined to get Detective Robert Sanchez to put it back onto the burner. After all, it was how she'd met Bobby. Just a rookie back in 1987, Sanchez was the police officer who'd first responded when her mother's body had been found.

Sam had only been two years old then, and what few memories she had of that time were foggy at best. Her mother, Sarah, had been young, only seventeen when she was murdered, a high school dropout and full-time employee at McDonald's. Sam owned exactly one picture of the two of them, and it now sat framed on the side table beside the sofa. Looking at it always filled Sam with a sense of loss she couldn't quite pinpoint; it didn't feel exactly like grief, but it ached nevertheless. It wasn't that she missed her mom—she couldn't really remember her mom—or that she felt particularly sad. It was more like a sense of . . . longing. There was a hole inside her that never seemed to fill up, no matter how much Sam tried to stuff it with friends, relationships, work, and wine.