The Butcher

by Jennifer Hillier

Taking one final look around, Edward’s gaze once again lingered on the antique piano. His eyes misted as memories of Marisol came rushing back. God, how he missed his wife. The house hadn’t been the same without her these past few months. Reaching out, he once again touched the dent on the side of the Mathushek, left there from when he’d smashed her head into it four months ago. At least he’d managed to get all the blood out of the carved roses before calling 9-1-1, despite his arthritic hands. One must always be careful cleaning up after a kill.

Matt took his time driving, minding the signs posted everywhere that said SPEEDING ENDANGERS OUR KIDS, which was interesting considering there were hardly any kids in Sweetbay. It would make more sense to change the signs to SPEEDING ENDANGERS OLD FARTS.

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.

There were fourteen dead women in total—all young, like Sam’s mother had been—ranging in ages from fourteen to nineteen. Each one had been brutally raped vaginally and anally, sometimes with a blunt object, and then strangled to death. Each one had been missing a left hand that was thought to be chopped off with a cleaver just below the wrist bone (thus earning the Butcher his moniker). Each one had been burned with a cigar and found in a wooded area, buried in a shallow grave loosely covered with leaves. The bodies were found all over the Northwest, from as far south as Eugene, Oregon, right through Washington State, all the way up to Langley, British Columbia. The Butcher’s kill zone.

Sam was determined—not obsessed, thank you very much—to prove that her mother was one of the Butcher’s victims. There were several similarities. Sarah Marquez had also been raped vaginally and anally, both with and without a blunt object, and strangled to death. She’d been found in the woods a few minutes outside Olympia, Washington, buried in a shallow grave covered with leaves. In Sam’s professional—yet determined—opinion, this was more than enough to explore the Butcher as Sarah’s murderer.

She had, of course, discussed all this with former police chief Edward Shank, who’d generously answered all of her questions. The Chief wasn’t buying her theory, of course, but neither did he disapprove of Sam’s current work in progress. In fact, her boyfriend’s grandfather seemed to be very interested in what she came up with, and often called to ask how the research was going. He’d even bought her a textbook for Christmas called Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniques, which was the same textbook police officers used to study homicide before taking the detective’s exam. It was complete with graphic color photos of actual crime scenes and the methods used to investigate. Sam had been ecstatic. Edward had also offered to write a foreword for her book, which she believed had ultimately been the reason she’d been able to sell the book to a publisher.

there were a few nurses on staff that were diddle-worthy, not that his pecker worked anymore (it had died around 2001, and only that marvelous drug known as Viagra could raise it from the dead now), but it was still nice to ponder. Certainly the female residents were nothing to get excited about. Most were halfway to dying, and the ones that weren’t were so damned wrinkled you couldn’t tell their pussy holes from their belly buttons.

She might not be interested on appearing on her boyfriend’s reality show, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be at the dinner to support him. She loved him, despite how difficult things had been lately. And frankly, she wasn’t sure why they were so disconnected now, and why Matt could never seem to make time for her, and why he’d become so strangely private ever since moving into the Chief’s old house.

first, creating the Butcher had been a strategic career move. Catch a serial killer, get famous, get promoted. Edward had planned it all from the start. You didn’t make chief of police by catching smalltime criminals nobody remembered. But then . . . he’d gotten to like it. More so than that even, he’d started to crave it.

Sam thought the Butcher killed her mother? But the Butcher was the Chief. Matt felt the blood drain out of his face as the realization sank in. His grandfather murdered his girlfriend’s mother. This was no longer a clusterfuck. This was a living nightmare.

Edward couldn’t do it the way he used to anymore, not unless he drugged them. And that, of course, took all the fun out of it. It was only truly enjoyable when they were conscious of their fear, knowing death was imminent. It was the look in their eyes that turned him on. That look, the moment they understood that they were going to die, was what Edward craved. Did this make him a psychopath? He didn’t think it was that simple. People killed other people for lots of reasons. It was just that psychopath was such a trendy word, something folks liked to bandy around as a way to explain why people did bad things. But Edward knew better. Some folks just liked doing bad things. In his opinion, there was no need to question it. It was why he’d stayed a cop and had never been interested in working for the FBI when they’d come calling after he’d brought Rufus Wedge down. Edward had never had any interest in analyzing the whys . . . because the whys really weren’t that fascinating. Besides, everybody had hobbies. Some people golfed. Some people fished. Some people hunted deer. Edward killed. Because he liked it, goddammit. It was really that fucking simple. And the kills had helped his career. He’d felt great satisfaction in creating the Butcher, and almost as much satisfaction when he accepted his promotion to chief of police.

He’d always put his career before his relationship with Sam, but could anyone blame him? He’d had an incredible wave of success for someone so young. But here was the thing . . . he missed her. He missed her in a way he didn’t think was possible. He missed her laugh, he missed her smile, he missed her face. Sam had always been there for him, always doting on him, always so proactive about making sure they had plans to see each other, always thinking up fun things for them to do. But in the last few weeks, she had stopped all that. She hadn’t been around at all. She wasn’t interested in his reality show. She’d stopped coming by the restaurant to say hello. She hadn’t slept over at his place in weeks, not since he’d moved into the Chief’s old house. Other than that weird night when she’d snuck into his house only to catch him watching a porno, she seemed completely uninterested in his life. And he hated it. Because he realized now that he’d been taking her for granted, and that his life seemed less somehow without her in it.

“So what brings you by?” Jason finally said. “Oh hey, I guess I can turn on my phone now. Hooray.” There was no way Matt could admit that he’d come by to try to catch Jason alone with Sam. Because—and this was no way a knock on his girlfriend—what would Jason want with good old Sam, when he clearly had his hands full with Lilac? Who looked like that? Not that Sam wasn’t pretty, because she was a beautiful girl in her own right, but let’s be real here. Sam wasn’t five foot ten with legs from here to China.

What a cocksucker

Edward hadn’t felt this good in years. No. Scratch that. He hadn’t felt this good in two decades. His intention wasn’t to kill Gloria, but, much like urination and sex, killing could be hard to stop once you started. At least in his experience. His groin twitched at the memory, and he smiled.

The Chief’s Cadillac was in Matt’s driveway when he pulled up, and he groaned. He was in no mood to see his serial killer grandfather today, or any day, for that matter. He’d managed to avoid the Chief for the past few days. The man was bad news.

“I . . . what?” Sam frowned, trying to understand what Sanchez had just told her. “What are you saying? The Butcher killed PJ? Why would he do that?” “No, he didn’t kill PJ,” the detective said. “I didn’t say it was an exact match. But there is family relationship between whoever killed PJ and whoever killed Bonnie/Joyce. The lab tech discovered it by accident—he thought he’d mixed the samples up. Turns out both sets of DNA share certain markers that prove they’re father and son. The father killed Bonnie/Joyce. The son killed PJ Wu.”