The Butcher and the Wren(35)
Wren dumps out the green bag with the victim’s effects, transferred over to the medical examiner’s office from the hospital where she took her last strained breaths hours earlier. The contents spill onto the steel table beside her body. There aren’t many things inside of it. Her dirty, stained clothing was cut off her body while the doctors attempted to save her life at the ER. The back of her shredded white T-shirt is brown with old blood. There is dried vomit on her right sleeve, likely having dripped onto it after she lost consciousness. Her jeans are caked with mud. Wren is determined to figure out precisely what was done to this woman before her untimely death, but at the same time is terrified to discover the truth. She knows that this woman’s last lucid hours must have been full of things even horror movie directors can’t fathom.
Wren casts aside the clothing and returns to the bag’s emptied contents. There is only one thing left. The only other possession the victim was transported with is a bracelet that, according to the accompanying report, was taken off her left wrist. Wren’s eyes lock on this piece of jewelry. The bracelet is delicate and has a dangling silver anatomical heart charm with a small engraved E on its side. Her pupils focus and refocus, as if in disbelief. With her gloved hand, she touches it. She is looking to prove that it’s really there, in the room with her, and half expects her fingers to pass through it. Instead, they connect with the cool metal, first the charm and then the rest of its length. It’s real, and it’s here.
Her thoughts are chaotic. They speed through her brain in undecipherable patterns. She imagines the inside of her mind sounds like a scratched CD skipping endlessly. She knows this bracelet. It belonged to her in another life. Now she stands in the place where she usually feels her most competent and strong, light-years away from the version of herself that once wore this bracelet, holding it again in her hands.
This bracelet belongs to Emily Maloney.
This bracelet belongs to Wren Muller.
CHAPTER 25
JEREMY CAN’T HELP BUT THINK about how his grand return has gotten off to such a rocky start. Seven years. Seven years of plans and work has led up to this unsatisfactory showing. He watched the disaster unfold from what should have been a pleasurable vantage point yesterday, forced to remain hidden on the outside of the cemetery observing helplessly as his plan broke apart. Failure is never an easy pill to swallow, but for Jeremy it is like ingesting broken glass. He successfully evaded it for most of his life, yet somehow he’s now awash in it.
He had planned it out so carefully, choosing victims and methods of murder that would trigger specific memories for people who had been working his case since the beginning. He had left clues, not all of which were subtle. The pages of “The Most Dangerous Game” he had shoved down that one woman’s throat were almost comical in their obviousness. It was perhaps hubris to display his power over these frantic little creatures trying to catch him, but he was committed to calling out to Emily. He wanted to remind her of her former life, her real life. He could almost feel her return to that place in her mind where she was still a scared little rabbit running from him in a dark swamp.
After all these years, it is her escape that echoes most loudly in his mind. Walking into his arena that morning seven years ago and seeing Emily’s escape route stretch out in front of him was excruciating—not in the least because he had to immediately dispose of Matt’s and Katie’s bodies and get to work on covering up any traces of his experiment. He had lived in that failure for years, perfecting his work and making sure not only that he would never feel that way again, but also that she wouldn’t breathe her last breath without him finally being the one to snatch it from her. Her death is his to orchestrate.
Now, watching another meticulously planned moment shatter to pieces, he is seething. He pulled the strings too hard on his puppet show. He could feel them fraying from the pressure and snapping to reveal the man behind the curtain. The scene had been almost perfect, almost the show he had intended to create.
It can still be salvaged, and there is work to be done, but now all he can hear is the fresh memory of the satisfying sounds of shovels diving into the earth over and over again. The breaths, labored and fast. The group inside the blue tarps grunting and puffing out air. The officer and paramedics were filthy with cemetery dirt, all using their arms and hands to scoop the soil away before a man in his seventies politely pushed his way to the front of the crowd holding two spades in his grip. Jeremy can’t remember ever seeing such a rare display of true kindness before or since, but despite this unforeseen civilian aid, he had been confident in their imminent devastation.
Admittedly, it had been risky. Something of this magnitude required a leap of faith, but he had leapt, nonetheless. His bells had chimed, and he had found their emphatic sound euphoric, blasting through the silence like an inappropriate joke. Crude and imposing. Jeremy had turned to face the street and leaned his back against the cemetery wall like a satisfied lover.
But, of course, everything that followed eclipsed any satisfaction he had previously enjoyed.
“You’re up! She has a pulse!”
The words haunt him now. Even a day later, he can hear her say them again and again, her tone dripping with imperiousness. She had loaded these words from her quiver and launched them from a tautly pulled bowstring with the force of a seasoned archer. They impale him even now.
At first, Jeremy had panicked at the thought that his unexpectedly surviving victim had seen his face, that she knew his name and even his alias. But he had quickly comforted himself in the knowledge that even if she had somehow survived paralysis and severe oxygen deprivation, she wouldn’t have been mentally sound enough to put him in any real danger. The muscle spasms and almost constant seizures suffered in that tiny box would have caused lasting neurological damage. Her brain destroyed.