The Butcher and The Wren

by Alaina Urquhart

He doesn’t necessarily look like someone entangled in depravity. He appears innocuous, and, at times, could look downright wholesome. That’s why it all works.

A wolf in lambs clothing

“A stiff ever answer you back?” he teases. Wren looks him in the eyes before slamming the door shut and walking to the driver’s-side door. “You’d be surprised how many secrets the dead have told me.”

At least she cares

He responds instead by aggressively grabbing Matt’s face and planting a deep kiss right on his mouth, biting hard enough on his bottom lip to hear a satisfying crunch. Sometimes he allows himself to give in to hedonistic instincts, and rarely does he regret it. “You came here willingly. Remember that,” he growls as Matt’s mouth fills with blood.

Ick

This was the only time he had ever overlapped. Katie and Matt arrived at his home while Meghan was still partially alive. It wasn’t the plan, and it was risky, but sometimes improvisation is necessary when the right people show up.

Slip up?

exclaims. “I’m calling it. They’ll be worm food by the weekend.” He is almost dead right, which leaves Jeremy a bit disappointed.

Predictable= easy to catch

“It’s life, son. You don’t let something suffer needlessly. And besides, there’s a pecking order. Some are on the top, and some are here to provide something to those on the top. This doe’s sacrifice will provide good meat,”

Normal advice but given to an already warped kid?

“Apparently, you wound yourself out of reality for a second there. I said your name twice before you snapped out of it.”

I relate to this sooo much after work.

There are no arms embracing her back. She pulls her head back to look up at their faces. When she studies their tear-stained eyes, they just see through her.

Hallucinations

“My god. That was the worst dream I have ever had,” she chokes the words out to the empty bedroom, swinging her legs over the side of her bed.

Dream or premomition?

“He chose such hotel-art humans,” Leroux says this without looking up. Wren raises an eyebrow, wanting to ask him what he means. Before she can, he continues. “Forgettable, but not invisible. Fine, but not amazing or impressive,” he clarifies.

Noticeable but not too much so

He crouches down and pulls a handkerchief from his back pocket. Using it as a makeshift glove, he carefully picks a bright white business card from its place in the cement. As he lifts it to look at the front, Wren notices his face go pale. The business card is from the front desk of the medical examiner’s office. Under the official seal is Wren’s full name and title. Her professional contact information is across the bottom. Wren takes a step forward, reaching a gloved hand out to hold the card herself. Leroux hands it over, a look of confusion painted across his face. She smooths her fingers over the raised OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER seal in the right corner. This is an old card design—Wren had painstakingly redesigned them herself about six months ago—but it’s definitely hers. This card is clean, so clean that it was likely placed here recently, and intentionally. Whoever left it here did so after the victim’s body was removed, and the crime scene tape was hauled away. It wasn’t there when they initially arrived at the scene. They’d have noticed. Someone did this to send a message.

Message to back off?

“Cal!” she exclaims. “You scared the shit out of me. I swear, after three hours of this crap, I am in a complete daze.” Even after an entire semester, it still takes a moment for Jeremy to react to his alias at school. He had registered as “Cal” using fake documents. It’s amazing what administrative burnout can allow to fall through the cracks. Even though he inhabited the role during school hours, he still couldn’t quite get used to the name.

Blending in to find victims

He stares down into her wide eyes and patiently waits for complete incapacitation. When it finally comes, and her body falls limp, he throws her into the trunk of her own car and takes a quick moment to breathe and to collect his thoughts before proceeding. When his adrenaline has subsided, he snaps a glove onto his right hand, takes the vial of ketamine from his other pocket, and pulls some of it into a small syringe. Feeling around on Emily’s arm for a suitable vein, he locates one and injects the dose to ensure her continued confusion when the chloroform wears off.

Practiced technique

“Well done, Cal,” he says to himself.

Chameleon or more like a spider?

“Fight or flight, girls. Fight or flight,” Jeremy whispers to himself.

Gets off on fear & control

“It’s a fucked-up little rhyme, huh?” He grins again and pulls the blade out in one swift motion.

Wtf

Wren’s worst fears are confirmed as she sees lines of scratch marks chaotically crisscrossing the ancient wood. It looks like something out of a horror movie. Like The Silence of the Lambs. The broken fingernail embedded in the stone of the infamous pit Buffalo Bill used to store his victims is forever ingrained in Wren’s memory, and now she’s confronted with a similar reality off-screen. Some of the marks have traces of blood smeared across them, and a quick look at the victim’s hands shows that she had used them to claw and scratch until they bled. At some point in her entombment, she was conscious enough to realize where she was.

Sick fuck

It’s for all these reasons that she chose the name for herself.

Witness protection?

Seven years ago, Wren Muller was Emily Maloney,

Oh shit

He had missed the mark.

His slip up

Now she knows Cal was the Bayou Butcher. He had killed several women and men before her and is doing it again.

Why 7 years later?

She meets his gaze with a stony calm before standing up and crossing the room. He lifts himself off the floor as she returns to his side with the bracelet. She drops it into his waiting palm, and he turns it over twice. “E,” he says, appraising the charm. “For Emily,” she adds. “That’s my bracelet. He took it the night he abducted me. I found it with the rest of Emma’s effects. He left it for me to find.”

Oh crap

in control again. “Is someone out there?” A man’s voice echoes out through the night, snapping Jeremy back to attention. Flashlights appear at the far end of the dirt path. “Are you hurt?” a second voice calls out. Jeremy can see the shapes of the two men entering the path. He claps his hand over Tara’s mouth before she can cry out for help, but panic starts to creep into his veins. They heard Tara. He didn’t scout out this location ahead of time tonight. He had acted on impulse, and he didn’t consider the hunters sitting in the very same ground blind locations that he had once occupied with his father.

Uh oh