The Butcher and the Wren(28)

“Read me the plot number where the red X is.”

Leroux raises an eyebrow and is clearly exasperated.

“What?” he complains, but looks down at the map, smoothing the evidence bag out to see the numbers better. “The print is unbelievably tiny. One five oh … three. What is this all about?”

“One five oh three … one five oh three … one five oh three,” Wren repeats to herself softly as she scoots her body back toward the dead woman’s. With a gloved hand, she taps the watch, and it blinks back to life. She swipes, and it asks again for the four-digit passcode. Wren types the numbers, hesitating before hitting the final digit. Her breath hitches as she gives it a quick tap. The watch opens to reveal one application on the screen: the alarm.

“Wren!” Leroux’s voice raises with a clear tone of frustration. Wren tries to calm her heartbeat thundering in her chest. “Are we leaving, or …? Tell me before doing anything else!”

“I found something, John,” she answers finally, looking behind her. “She has a brand-new smartwatch on her wrist that doesn’t match the state of the rest of her. It was clearly placed on her postmortem. That plot number? One five oh three? Well, that is the watch’s passcode, and I am now staring at the only open application. The alarm.”

Wren pauses and sees Leroux’s face drop. He rubs his eyes, handing the bag to another officer.

“How long?”

Wren looks at the alarm application. The only one on the screen is set for two p.m.

“Forty-five minutes from now.”

“We gotta move. Landry, Cormier, and Fox, you’re with Will. Go on ahead and clear the cemetery. I’ll follow with Muller.”

Flushed, he turns back to Wren.

“Get out of there. Let’s go.”

Wren crawls out toward the opening. She spots her technician hovering to the side and beckons to her.

“Call the office and get a couple of transporters out here,” she instructs, and watches as the young woman immediately hits a button on her phone.

Wren haphazardly snaps the gloves off her hands and dusts her knees as she hastily follows Leroux through the crowd now forming along the cordoned-off perimeter. People’s faces are twisted in fear, lurid curiosity, and confusion. They whisper to one another and crane their heads to try to catch a glimpse of the now conspicuous action. Lively music still blares from a farther stage, but the band directly ahead has cut its performance short. Wren hadn’t even noticed until now.





CHAPTER 17





SEEING THE BULLET FROM HIS Glock hit its intended target feels satisfying in a way Jeremy can’t describe. He could have hit Katie and Emily, too, with ease, but he isn’t finished playing yet. It’s a meal too delectable not to draw out, bite by bite.

He watches Katie and Emily running aimlessly through the verdant grounds. Jeremy keeps them in his sight and allows them to feel like they have created a safe distance between themselves and him. Katie is frantically wiping Matt’s brain matter off her face and stumbles, falling behind. She is foolish, and Matt was practically a Neanderthal, but at least Emily is a fighter. She brings the challenge. He notices one of the flashlights flicker, dim, and go dark, as it bounces through the thick overgrowth.

Down to one light.

He smiles and picks up his pace a bit as “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult begins to play, moving with the music. He is the Reaper tonight.

Katie is sobbing loudly across the tree line, and her voice reaches a pitch not unlike that of a rabbit suddenly confronting a bloodthirsty predator. Jeremy glances at his watch and allows a grin to slowly form across his face. It has been a few hours since he dropped his guests out here, and as he watches Katie takes a clumsy step, with her right leg lifted higher than a natural stride requires. The drugs are taking effect. He is starting to feel giddy at the realization that his experiment is working.

After reading about the Jamaican ginger poisonings during Prohibition, he felt inspired. In the Deep South during the early 1930s, some brilliant minds conjured a form of Jamaican ginger, or “jake” as it was better known, that was able to pass through the US Justice Department’s rigid regulations. With the help of an unwitting MIT professor, they created a formula that used tricresyl phosphate because it was able to pass the tests without ruining the taste. This revolutionary bootlegger recipe ultimately resulted in a plethora of patrons walking with their legs stretched high and their toes unable to extend upward. The paralyzing epidemic that became known, somewhat dubiously, as “jake leg,” and allowed researchers to determine too late that tricresyl phosphate is actually a dangerous neurotoxin that causes nerve cell death and damage to the myelin sheaths that aid in vital muscle movements. When ingested in substantial amounts, the chemical will cause gastrointestinal distress and partial paralysis in the limbs. And after daily injections of the chemical through her IV lines, Katie seems to be presenting with a rousing case of jake leg right on time.

Katie begins screaming to Emily that her leg is going numb, and Jeremy can see Emily desperately trying to convince her to push forward. He smiles as Katie withers down into a ball, pressing her knees into the swampy earth. He begins closing the gap between himself and them. He can see Emily weighing her options as she fearfully scans the tree line in front of them with their remaining light. Katie is sobbing and gagging, and Emily tries to hoist her to her feet with an arm around her waist.