The Butcher

by Jennifer Hillier

Rufus Wedge, otherwise known as the Beacon Hill Butcher, had been the most wanted man in the Pacific Northwest for a long time. The manhunt was now over.

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.

One must always be careful cleaning up after a kill.

Sweetbay Village might be fancy, but it was still essentially a storage unit for elderly people with nothing but time to kill until death came for them.

It was that feeling again, that sense of longing for something she couldn’t remember ever having.

Fuck it. She needed to talk to Edward Shank. He’d spent a good chunk of his career catching killers. He would know the answer to this.

“Not everyone is all bad or all good. Good people do bad things every day, and bad people do good things every day.”

control. Like ducks on the water, it was all smooth sailing on top and paddling like mad underneath. He was certain Marysville PD was scrambling to make sense of the crime.

Half the time she forgot to tell him things, and the other half of the time she didn’t tell him because she was pretty sure he wouldn’t care.

Because he realized now that he’d been taking her for granted, and that his life seemed less somehow without her in it.