The Butcher Read online

  Elmo appeared out of nowhere, nudging and winding around Matt’s legs, his long tail vibrating as it always did when Matt first came home. Then he jumped up onto the kitchen table and proceeded to sniff every inch of the crate.

  “Any idea what’s in here, buddy?” Matt said, stroking the cat’s fur thoughtfully. With his other hand, he fingered the locks. “Should I call the Chief? It’s obviously his crate, so he probably has the keys.”

  Elmo didn’t have an answer, but he did continue to smell the crate, bumping up against it, his little pink tongue eventually darting out to lick a bit of moisture off the sides. As Matt headed to the fridge to grab a cold beer, the cat bumped the crate again with his head. This time, the bump was a little too hard, and the crate slid off the edge of the table before Matt could stop it. The crate hit the floor with a loud shatter.

  “Shit!” He put his beer down on the counter. “Elmo, goddammit!”

  The cat scampered away.

  “Oh, hell,” Matt said again, kneeling down. The crate had landed on its side and the locks were still intact, but now the lid was cracked at the joints. He wouldn’t need his grandfather’s key to see what was inside now, because the box was open. And whatever was inside didn’t smell too good. He wrinkled his nose at the odor emanating from the crate. Something inside had broken and was now oozing a greenish liquid. A puddle was forming on the white kitchen tile.

  “Just awesome,” Matt said to himself. “And what the fuck is that smell?” Whatever the liquid was, it smelled like rotten eggs. Probably sulfur. Grabbing a paper towel from the counter, he mopped it up. Then he lifted the broken lid and took a look inside the crate.

  The contents were jumbled, and it took Matt a moment to process what he was looking at. He’d assumed, like his contractor, that this was the Chief’s crate, but the first thing he saw was a ladies’ hairbrush. He turned it over in his hands, curious. There was nothing particularly interesting about it, except that it was filled with strands of very long, dark hair. His grandmother’s, before she’d turned gray? He pulled a strand free and examined it. No, he didn’t think so. The hair was too long, and his lola’s hair had always been short.

  Putting the brush aside, he sat on the floor and began picking through the rest of the crate’s contents. Various items of clothing lined the top, all ladies’ stuff, mostly smaller sizes. He pulled out a black T-shirt, well worn and clearly well loved. Size small. He recognized the iron-on picture of the eighties alternative band on the front right away. The Cure. Nice.

  Under the T-shirts were also a half dozen brassieres. Amused, Matt picked up a pink lace bra and looked at it closely. It was cheap and frilly, but still kind of sexy, the kind of thing Sam would never wear. Had his grandfather had a mistress or something back in the day that nobody ever knew about? There were a dozen or so pairs of women’s underwear in the crate as well. Curious but a little uneasy—Matt had loved his grandmother and the thought of the Chief having an affair was unpleasant—he scooped one of them up, only to drop them like they were on fire a second later when a thought occurred to him.

  Good Lord, could these be his mother’s things?

  It seemed entirely possible. Lucy Shank was a drug addict, and had died in 1985 of a drug overdose at the age of sixteen, when Matt was only a baby. He’d only ever seen a handful of pictures of her, and none of them had been taken past the age of fourteen. Lucy was a super-touchy subject with his grandparents, and whenever he’d tried to ask them questions about their only child, they’d murmur vague comments like “She was always a troubled girl,” and “She’d be so proud of the man you’ve become,” as if that somehow explained the person she was. It was frustrating, so he’d stopped asking questions about his mother a long time ago. And it was useless to ask questions about who his father was, as his grandparents simply didn’t know.

  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 n
ewspaper 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.

  5

  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.

  Sam had no idea who’d taken the one and only picture, but she knew it was snapped in front of the very first Starbucks, in Pike Place market, on a hot summer day. Her mother, dressed in a patterned halter top, cutoff denim shorts, and a pair of Converse Chucks, looked even younger than seventeen. Two-year-old Sam was dressed identically, her chubby arms wrapped tight around her mom’s slender waist. Both mother and daughter had thick dark hair, big brown eyes, and toothy, genuine smiles.