The Butcher's Son

by Grant McKenzie

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You are not that stupid.”

  Ian had to agree, he wasn’t.

  *

  The Bowery brothers dropped Ian off in front of Children First. True to the gorilla’s word, they didn’t harm him, although even beneath his hood Ian could feel the inner struggle making Rory twitch. Several times, the younger brother kicked at the walls of the van just to make some noise.

  Ian knew it would take only one flint-edged comment to spark the brother’s temper and ignite his fury, but decided his own body was already too battered and bruised to guarantee a worthwhile outcome.

  He let it be. For now.

  But, as Ian had told Rossella’s grandfather over breakfast, he came from a long line of stubborn men, and that meant never forgetting an injustice, nor a beating owed.

  21

  Ian spent the morning with clients and catching up on reams of government-mandated paperwork. He enjoyed the face-to-face work, breaking down the barriers of anger and resentment that were an inevitable part of supervised visitation, but found himself struggling to keep his focus when it came to writing reports.

  The Anderson case, in particular, was a mess as both parents were so angry at each other they couldn’t see how it was ripping their son’s life apart.

  “Maybe you guys need to get into a boxing ring,” Ian suggested. “Cody and I can be judges.”

  Both parents stared at him in shocked disbelief.

  “I don’t want to hit my wife,” said the husband.

  “Oh, but you do,” said Ian. “I can hear the venom in every word that leaves your lips. You believe your spouse’s transformation is an affront to your manhood and you want to punish somebody for it. If she was having an affair, you’d know what to do. You would have somebody to hit. Well, guess what? The other person in this triangle is inside your wife and he’s aching to get out. So let’s step in the ring and sort this out once and for all.”

  “You’re insane,” said the man.

  “I don’t know,” said the woman. “I like the idea.”

  “What about you, Cody?” asked Ian.

  Cody shook his head and moved closer to his mom protectively. His mother had started on testosterone injections and her body was changing, but for the moment, she was still a she — at least outwardly.

  “Okay,” said Ian. “If boxing is out, then we need to talk…about everything. Outside of this room, I need both of you to work on your issues as parents. Resolve this anger. But in here, our focus is Cody. That will mean answering some difficult questions, but the more Cody understands about what is happening and why, the easier his acceptance of the future will be.” Ian’s eyes softened. “Your son loves you. Both of you. If he didn’t, he would have relished the idea of watching you knock each other’s teeth out. A lot of parents I work with would kill for that bond with their kids. So let’s nurture that and move forward.”

  *

  The Crown Royal had originally been shuttered by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission for a long series of complaints involving the action word ‘punched’: patrons punched employees; employees punched patrons; patrons punched patrons, etcetera. Naturally, this was just the tip of the iceberg as one OLCC inspector made the mistake of entering the women’s washroom on a Friday night. It took twenty-two stitches to close the slash on her face.

  Ian entered and headed for a stool at the bar. Interior lighting was turned low — ignoring the antiquated bylaw that illumination must be bright enough to read a newspaper — and the exterior windows painted near black so that serious drinkers wouldn’t be disturbed by the passing of day. Ian walked straight until he stumbled into an empty bar stool and climbed aboard.

  It was going to take a minute for his eyes to adjust before he knew if Jersey had arrived or if he was sitting here alone.

  “What you drinking?” asked a disembodied voice from behind the bar.

  “Something dark,” said Ian, thinking he was making a joke.

  “You got it.”

  When the bartender returned, he slid over a pint of Sinistør Black Ale — at least that was the logo printed on the glass.

  A hand landed on Ian’s shoulder and Jersey said, “What you drinking?”

  “Something dark,” repeated Ian.

  “Appropriate.”

  “I thought so.”

  Jersey ordered a spicy tomato juice.

  “You should always order alcohol in a place like this,” said Ian.

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s the only thing that’s sterile.”

  “Why I add the hot sauce.”

  After Jersey’s drink arrived, Ian paid for both and added a generous tip.

  “Your cops here?” he asked.

  “In the corner booth.”

  Ian caught the bartender’s attention again. Because of the tip, he was over in a heartbeat. Ian explained that he wanted to buy a round for the two men in the corner booth.

  “I’ll bring it over,” said the barman.

  With the drinks being poured, Jersey and Ian moved in.

  “Mind if we join you?” asked Jersey.

  “Drinks are on the way,” added Ian.

  The two men looked at each other, then shifted their gaze over to the barman to see what he was pouring before nodding.

  “Portland PD?” one of the men asked Jersey.

  “Jersey Castle, homicide. This is my friend, Ian Quinn.”

  “Bill Bennett, robbery homicide,” said the man. “That’s Detective Jim Donald, retired.”

  The four men shook hands as the drinks arrived: a pint of red ale and shot of low-shelf bourbon each.

  “Cheers,” said Bill as he made a serious dent in the pint. When he put the glass down again, he added, “What can we help you with?” He was talking to Jersey, not the civilian.

  “We’re looking into an old case of yours and hoped you could help.”

  “Which one?”

  “Augustus Quinn. He was a family butcher.”

  Bill’s eyes narrowed as he moved his attention to Ian. “Your name is Quinn.”

  “Augustus was my grandfather.”

  Bill raised his shot glass and clinked it off his partner’s before draining it in one gulp.

  “That was a nasty case,” he said. “Sorry for your loss.”

  “I saw the crime scene photos,” said Ian. “Nasty doesn’t cover it.”

  Jim’s hand was shaking as he drained his shot and followed it with a long swallow on his pint. Unlike his broad-shouldered partner who seemed to be faring relatively well in retirement, Jim had the frailness and pallor of someone rotting from the inside out.

  “Your report said the case was dropped due to lack of evidence,” said Ian.

  “That’s right,” said Bill.

  “The place was teeming with evidence,” said Jersey.

  Bill shrugged. “Sure, by today’s standards, but back then we needed more than science. Without an eye witness—”

  “My father witnessed it,” interrupted Ian.

  “Without a reliable witness,” said Bill. “Your father’s statement was all over the map, and then he vanished before we could interview him any further.” Bill’s eyes hardened as they studied Ian’s face. “That was damn peculiar.”

  “Did you interview Walter Zelig?” asked Ian.

  “Sure we did. He was nowhere near.”

  “According to who?” asked Jersey.

  “He had an alibi,” interjected Jim, his tongue thick with drink. “Iron fucking tight.”

  Bill fired a steely glare at his friend. “Yeah, we had nothing to go on.”

  “Why did you interview him, then?” asked Ian. “If you had nothing to go on, how did his name even come up?”

  Bill drained his glass and waved at the bartender for another round. He remained silent until the drinks arrived, watching Ian closely to make sure he paid before relaxing.

  Bill clinked glasses with his partner and they both drained their shots.
/>   “Okay,” said Bill. “Fuck it, we know it was bullshit. A lot of stuff back then was. Zelig was a big shot in the neighborhood with the usual friends in high places. It was easy to turn a blind eye to the regular trade: broads, booze, gambling, drugs. I didn’t like the drugs coming in, saw it wreck too many lives, but what ya gonna do? He paid okay, but more importantly he paid our bosses. We kick up a fuss and it’s us who’re out of a job, you know? We had mouths to feed.”

  “Did you suspect him in my grandfather’s murder?” Ian asked.

  “Suspect him? Zelig fucking did it, man. No doubt. We just couldn’t say nothing.”

  “Why did he do it?” asked Jersey.

  “His daughter had gone missing, right, Bill?” Jim said as though experiencing a rare moment of clarity. “He blamed the butcher. Even sent a series of goons after him, but they disappeared, too.” Jim laughed as he lifted his pint to his lips. “Four fucking heavies he sent. Poof. Gone.” He took a long pull of his beer. “Your grandfather was a fucking magician.”

  “That’s why his end was so bloody,” added Bill. “Ice Pick lost the plot. He carved your grandfather to pieces.”

  “Never got his daughter back though,” slurred Jim over the rim of his glass. “That’s still a fucking mystery.”

  22

  It was dark by the time Ian returned to the butcher’s shop. Driving on autopilot, he had been halfway to the suburbs before remembering he didn’t live there anymore. Turning back toward the city core, he fought against a pang of loss and a craving to head to the darkest corner of The Crown Royal and wallow in self-destruction.

  Two large metal containers were parked in front of the store. The sealed unit contained whatever meager possessions the packers had found in the house that morning, while the second container was open at the top and being slowly filled by trash removed from the shop by the cleaning crew. Most of the garbage appeared to consist of broken glass and chunks of rotten baseboard that had crumbled at the slightest touch.

  Looking at it, Ian wished he had asked the crew to gut the apartment before cleaning since he had no attachment to anything of his mother’s it might contain.

  Don’t think on that too long, he warned himself to keep any pangs of guilt suppressed where they belonged. The only Quinn who didn’t run away found himself butchered inside his own store.

  Inside, Ian found an envelope taped to the display case that contained a key to the moving container, a phone number to call when he had it emptied, and a scribbled note from Clark letting him know they could park the trash bin for a few days if he wanted to dump any other stuff.

  There was also a P.S.

  We’re ready to remove the boards over the front windows, but you should look at getting a security system in place first. This neighborhood isn’t what it used to be. I can recommend somebody if you want. Call me.

  Ian turned to the large plate window, dark behind the sheets of plywood, and imagined this room with the reintroduction of daylight. Of all the rooms in the building this was the one he had enjoyed the most. It was also the only one where he ever remembered seeing his grandfather smile.

  Despite everything, Augustus had truly loved his trade as he expertly seduced customers into trying a new cut of meat or special recipe he was excited about.

  Ian phoned Clark and asked him to go ahead with getting security installed, offering to pay him a general contractor’s fee to take charge of it. Clark agreed.

  After hanging up, Ian pondered heading upstairs to look at the cleaned apartment, but the locked door in his grandfather’s secret bunker screamed louder.

  *

  Descending the ladder with the brass key retrieved from the safe secure in his pocket, a nervous dread churned Ian’s stomach.

  Upon touching bottom, the dread climbed up his throat and squatted like a bilious lump whose main aim seemed to be in making it difficult to breathe.

  The room was icy cold, and seeing it for the second time, it looked even more like a jail cell than he had first considered. The walls, floor and even the ceiling were smooth, sound-dampening concrete without a single window or natural source of light. Somebody could be locked down here for years and nobody would ever know. Apart from the sparse furniture, it reminded Ian of the solitary confinement cells at Alcatraz.

  During a family vacation to San Francisco and Alcatraz Island, a tourist guide locked him in “The Hole” for less than a minute. Helena and Emily refused to enter, but Ian’s natural curiosity made it impossible to resist.

  He still remembered the density of the darkness and how his imagination whispered, This is where madness is born.

  Removing the key from his pocket, Ian approached the steel door in the corner. The metal was cold to the touch and the key needed to be forced before crunching into the lock. Once the key was flush, Ian turned the lock and pushed the door.

  The room beyond was Alcatraz revisited. Looking not like a room at all, but a void of pure blackness.

  Ian reached into the abyss, slapping at the wall until his hand landed on a switch. Two bare bulbs glowed to life in the ceiling revealing a larger room than the first, but with one noticeable difference. This room had been created in a rush.

  The walls were rough, unfinished concrete with jagged chunks of rock sticking out in places where they had been hurriedly jammed as though to block something from getting inside.

  In one corner was a collection of abandoned tools: two shovels, a pickaxe and a weighty sledgehammer. Beside the tools were two industrial-sized bags of quicklime, a common ingredient for making cement. Quicklime had other uses, too. One being the elimination of odor from decomposing flesh.

  Most disturbing was the floor. An uneven covering of loose dirt and scattered gravel, the ground had settled over the years to reveal a grid pattern composed of six large indentations. Each indentation was the size and shape of a grave.

  Panic clutched at Ian’s chest as he took in the graves, a voice whispering behind his ear, Some doors are never meant to be opened.

  He recalled the rumors Mr. Palewandram told him about, young women arriving at his grandfather’s door never to be seen again.

  Was Augustus capable of murder?

  Wrong question, he told himself. The same hot-tempered blood that flowed through his grandfather’s veins also coursed through his own, and Ian knew exactly what he was capable of.

  Tearing his gaze away from the indentations, Ian walked the room’s periphery, searching for any clue that it had served a purpose other than a secret burial site.

  There was nothing.

  “Shit!”

  Taking a deep breath, Ian considered his options. The first was simple, lock the door and pretend to have never found the place. Unfortunately, he had been born with the curse of curiosity, making such an option impossible. Option two was call Jersey, but that felt premature. That left option three.

  Ian draped his jacket on a rung of the ladder outside, rolled up his sleeves, and grabbed one of the shovels. He selected an indentation at random and began to dig.

  It took some effort to crack the hard shell of compacted dirt and gravel, but soon shovelfuls of dirt began to pile up on its edge.

  The body wasn’t buried deep.

  When a brownish ear was exposed, Ian knelt down and used his hands to carefully scrape away the dirt covering its face. He wanted to vomit, not from any stench or revulsion, but simply from fear of what he had found and what it meant.

  The quicklime used to eliminate the odor of putrefaction had also inadvertently preserved the body, not unlike mummification. In Augustus’s day, quicklime was a popular ingredient shown on detective TV shows as a foolproof method of quickly making a dead body dissolve. Unfortunately, like a lot of Hollywood shortcuts, the exact opposite was actually true. Quicklime was a preservative of flesh.

  A large clump of clay broke away like a mask, exposing bushy black eyebrows resting above sunken eye sockets; a bulbous nose with a sizable wart over one nostril; thin, reedy lips curling a
way from crooked teeth…and beneath a weak chin, the decaying remains of a starched shirt collar and tie.

  Ian felt a heady rush of relief.

  It was a man.

  Wiping cold sweat off his brow with the back of a mucky hand, Ian retrieved the shovel and moved to a second grave. After ten minutes of digging, he exposed a second face.

  With stubbled cheeks, thick Magnum P.I. mustache, and a glaring gold cap glistening from between furled lips, it was also male.

  Ian recalled what the drunken cop had said in the bar earlier that day. “Four fucking heavies he sent. Poof. Gone. Your grandfather was a fucking magician.”

  Not a magician, then, just more predator than prey.

  Two of the graves were empty, as though Augustus had been expecting more trouble and decided to plan ahead. Ian wondered if one of the graves had been meant for Zelig.

  Filthy, his arms, hands and face covered in grave dirt and decayed biological material that he didn’t want to think about, Ian retreated from the room, locked the door and ascended out of the hole.

  He would need to call Jersey, but saw no reason to rush.

  The bodies had remained hidden this long, and it wasn’t like they were going anywhere.

  *

  Slipping the brass key back into his pocket, Ian realized that a shower would be useless without a dry towel and fresh clothes to change into.

  With a weary sigh, he plucked the key to the storage container out of the envelope and ventured outside. The street was quiet, almost peaceful apart from the dull roar of traffic on the overpass a few blocks east that allowed most commuters to forget this once vibrant neighborhood even existed.

  Half of the streetlights had either been vandalized or simply fallen into disrepair, leaving a patchwork quilt of light and darkness that added an ominous quality to anyone hoping for an evening stroll.

  Opening the container, Ian felt a stirring behind him. Turning, he saw a tall, thin man standing across the street with two large dogs by his side. It was the same man he had seen on several occasions before.

  “Can I help you?” Ian called out.