The Butcher and the Wren(49)
He could end it now. He could reach out and snap her neck before she ever realized there was someone next to her. He could plunge the screwdriver into her temple or slit her throat with his blade. He could snuff out her life in an instant. The feeling is overwhelming for a moment, and it almost overrides his plans completely.
But just as quickly as it came, the feeling leaves. Jeremy knows that isn’t the way their story ends. Emily won’t gasp her last breath without knowing who took it from her. He stands again and lightly crosses to the doorway on the other side of the room. Facing the bedroom, he turns the knob and holds it in position while he silently closes the door. Once safely out of the room, he slowly releases the knob back into its original position and makes his way to the top of the stairs for a slow descent to the main floor.
He exits the house the same way he entered, and as he creaks the basement window closed, he takes a sharp breath of night air into his lungs. Touching his thumb to the ring on his pinkie finger, he walks the tree line once again and disappears into black.
CHAPTER 32
WREN LOOKS AT HER PHONE. The message notifications and news alerts pile up mockingly on her home screen. There’s a missed call from Leroux, and a follow-up text at the top of the barrage urging her to call him back. Richard squeezes her shoulder in a small show of comfort. He sits down across from her at the table in their kitchen. His face is kind. She feels empathy for him and his position in this. It’s an impossible situation to react to, and somehow he is doing it perfectly.
“You don’t have to be part of this, Wren,” he says after a moment or two of shared silence.
She looks up, eyes tired and mind blurry. The hits haven’t stopped coming over the last few weeks. After Leroux dropped her off, she tried desperately to take her mind off the case, but more details kept bubbling to the surface. She couldn’t get the image of the other victims out of her head, especially poor Emma on the cold, sterile table. And then it hit her. The hemlock. Such a strange and unique murder weapon. In fact, it’s so rare that she’s only ever seen it once before in her career.
“I know. And thank you for saying that, but I have to tell the others what I know,” she replies, playing with her rings on her fingers. “I’ve been working this case for weeks. And I’ve been living in the Butcher’s shadow for years. No matter what the conclusion is, I have to help.”
Richard nods, leaning his elbows on the table.
“I trust you. Just take it at your own pace, okay? Call John back when you’re ready.”
“I suppose there is no time like the present,” she replies and stands up, already beginning to pace as the phone rings in her ear.
“Muller, hey,” Leroux answers after two rings.
“Hey. Before you start, there’s something else I need to tell you. Remember that case I had a few years back? An older woman brought into the ER by her adult son. She had a history of depression, a few past suicide attempts, and he said that he thought she might have ingested something in another attempt that evening. She was reportedly convulsing significantly and having trouble breathing.” Wren pauses, waiting to hear if Leroux remembers the details of the case. “She ended up with me not long after being brought into the hospital because of what we later found to be hemlock mixed in with her nightly glass of red wine.”
“Hemlock? People use that stuff?” Leroux asks. Wren can almost see him shaking his head, desperately trying to understand the connection here.
She continues, “Poor thing was almost shattered to pieces from the muscle convulsions. She barely made it ten minutes in the ER before heading my way. It is a horrific death, and for that reason, not an obvious mechanism for suicide. But there was no indication of external foul play.”
“I actually do remember this. Wow. What was that? Two, three years ago? We all questioned it, sure, but like you said, there was nothing concrete to go off.”
“I have only come across one other hemlock death in all my years as a medical examiner. The woman we found at the cemetery.”
“You think they are connected.”
“It’s him, John. I know it.”
“What was the woman’s name in the other hemlock case?”
“Mona. I remember she looked like a Mona. I already looked it up in the system. Her full name is Mona Louise Rose. Next of kin listed as Jeremy Calvin Rose.”
Leroux sighs on the other end of the phone. Wren takes a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut as she paces.
“Well that name isn’t new. We spoke to Philip Trudeau. You were right, he’s the same guy you thought he was, and Jeremy Rose is a name he floated to us.”
Wren suddenly feels light-headed. It’s undoubtedly the result of the information flooding her already overloaded brain with no sleep and a steady diet of vending machine fare over the past few days.
Leroux powers through the silence. “I had someone who was at the bar last night come forward. He saw a guy leave with the victim. His description wasn’t all that helpful. Just mentioned that the suspect had smiled at him, and it was memorable somehow.”
Wren isn’t surprised that a witness mentioned Cal’s smile specifically. His smile was memorable, mainly because it was slightly crooked. Something about it was charming and gave him a strange air of ease when he flashed it.