Grimm: The Chopping Block

by John Passarella

  The large man strode toward Gino, reached into his pocket and withdrew a ring of keys.

  “You, little piggy, go to hell before me.”

  As the man towered over him, Gino finally noticed that he wore a white apron, a butcher’s apron, discolored—no, stained… stained with dried blood. Not a stretch to believe the blood was human. The butcher dropped to one knee beside Gino and reached for the heavy iron collar around his neck.

  Gino pulled away from the man, as far as the chain would allow, which wasn’t far enough. The butcher grabbed Gino’s hair in one hand, knuckles pressing painfully into Gino’s scalp as the man’s other hand fitted a key to the padlock dangling above his clavicle. He fought to overcome his paralyzing fear, grasping for the rage that had infused him only moments ago. Free of his collar and chain, he would have a chance to escape. He tensed, waiting—

  —and felt the cold metal fall away from his chafed throat, the hinge at the nape of his neck uttering a single squeal of protest as the collar fell away.

  Gino lunged at the much larger man, desperation providing the brief spark of adrenaline needed to fire his muscles.

  But the butcher growled, a sound that couldn’t have come from a human throat, and a meaty fist snapped out and struck Gino across the jaw. Gino imagined it felt like a right cross unleashed by a heavyweight boxing champ in his prime. One moment he was lunging forward with deadly intent, ready to wrap the chain connecting his wrists around the butcher’s throat, the next he was staring up at the ceiling, not quite sure how he had fallen.

  He gasped for air, like a fish tossed on the deck of a boat, helpless to avoid the club. Rubbery-limbed, he tried to protest as the butcher looped one fist around the wrist chain and dragged him across the floor and up the wooden stairs, his head awkwardly striking each step on the way up.

  Once through the open doorway, the butcher dropped him to the floor and locked the door behind them. Gino tried to speak but the words came out jumbled.

  “Don’t—you do—don’t have to do this—you can end this.”

  “Quiet,” the butcher said, grabbing the wrist chain again. “This will be over soon.”

  At the end of the hall, another door awaited them.

  That’s where he takes them, Gino thought, terrified, his mind racing. The place where they scream.

  Gino’s iron chains rattled against the cement floor, and clanked together as he rolled onto his stomach and tried to stand. But the butcher moved so fast that Gino’s hands and feet could gain no purchase.

  The door swung open, revealing an uneven cement floor angled toward a drain in the corner. Though the butcher had apparently hosed the floor, some streaks of blood remained. A long metal countertop stood in front of the far wall next to a large walk-in cooler in the corner, large enough to hang several sides of beef.

  Before he had time to dwell on what the walk-in unit might contain, his attention turned to a metal crossbar on the floor, attached to a cable that rose to the ceiling and came down again at an angle to a winch with a hand crank.

  “What—what is that?” he asked, his mouth almost too dry to speak.

  But he didn’t need to ask. He knew. The question was merely a stall for time, to slow down the process, for him to think of a way out of his current predicament. He just needed some time to think. A little more time—

  The butcher released Gino’s wrist chain so he could close the door. He strode to the counter and strapped on a thick leather belt slotted with knives in various sizes. Lastly, he picked up a leather sap and slapped it against his palm, as if testing its weight.

  Gino scrambled to his hands and knees a moment before the blow came down on the back of his head. With a groan he collapsed, managing to roll onto his back but unable to control his arms or legs. He watched helplessly, his vision shifting in and out of focus, as the butcher fitted a hook attached to the crossbar through a link in his ankle chains.

  Time seemed to stutter, jumping ahead in irregular intervals, with moments of lucidity interspersed between fear and confusion. Gino’s bare feet rose in front of him, followed by his legs, dragging him closer to the center of the killing room.

  In one dizzying moment, he turned his head and spotted the butcher now standing in the corner, effortlessly turning the winch’s crank, lifting Gino into the air inch by inch, his weight dangling by his raw ankles. Finally, his head cleared the floor. Upside down, he tried to thrash, to pull himself free of the hook, but his weakness and the weight of his body betrayed him.

  “No! Stop! You son of a bitch!” Gino yelled. “Stop it now!”

  He rose higher still, until his hands waved inches above the floor.

  “Please! You can stop this before it’s too late!”

  Again, the butcher reached for Gino’s hair to expose his throat.

  Gino batted at the man’s hands, whipping his chains defensively at the butcher’s face. His whole body swayed beneath the crossbar. Incredibly, the butcher backed away and walked out of his line of sight.

  Gino sucked in great gasps of air, trembling with this apparent reprieve.

  “Good! You can stop this,” he said. He twisted his body, trying to see where his captor had gone. The sap worried him. “I won’t tell. I can’t. I haven’t seen your face.”

  Chains rattled behind him, yanking his arms up and behind his back, pulling his shoulders painfully. A moment later a lock snapped and his wrists were pulled tight against the small of his back, effectively hogtieing him upside down. The butcher came around to face him again, black eyeholes offering no human connection at all, nothing he could appeal to for mercy.

  “What will happen to me?” he asked. “Will they—the people upstairs—eat—?”

  “In time, piggy,” the butcher said. “After I bleed you, gut you and put you in the cooler to dry-age, your time will come. Tonight, they want the French girl.”

  Cherise!

  “No,” he said, pitifully. “Don’t. Not her.”

  He’d thought at least he’d saved the girl, given her a chance. But he’d only given her false hope, a few hours before the end.

  His own hope gone, only morbid curiosity remained. “Why?” he asked.

  The butcher pulled a thin knife from his leather belt and placed the sharp tip against Gino’s throat, under his right ear.

  “Time to show my face, piggy.”

  With that, the butcher pulled the cloth hood from his head with his free hand. As his face appeared, something strange happened. His features shifted, bones rippling and reforming beneath the flesh into a shape completely inhuman. Gino had been right all along. The butcher of men was a demon.

  Gino couldn’t stop himself. He screamed at the top of his lungs.

  The butcher waited, enjoying the moment to its fullest, and then he sliced Gino’s throat open from ear to ear.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As she had an early morning appointment with a potential rental client scheduled for the next day, Sheila Jenkins decided to leave Kim’s bachelorette party at La Porte Bleue earlier than the rest of the ladies. Truth be told, in the short amount of time she’d been in the private party room they’d hired for the occasion, she’d had her fill of fondue and wine. She couldn’t recall if her headache had been simmering earlier in the day or if the revelry had triggered it, but she was no longer having fun. She felt guilty for cutting out early, but if she stayed, she feared she’d become a wet blanket on the festivities. Besides, she barely knew the other women—all close friends of the bride-to-be—with the exception of Kim’s older sister, Lisa.

  They had graduated high school together, followed by a two-year encore as BFFs at Mount Hood Community College before going their separate ways. For Lisa, that had meant a business degree, a husband and two children—a boy and a girl, naturally; for Sheila, the intervening years featured a real estate license and an ill-advised marriage, followed by a why-the-hell-did-she-wait-so-long divorce.

  Although Sheila had no issues with Kim—their interactions were
pleasant and polite rather than chummy—she felt she was really there to catch up with Lisa rather than celebrate the upcoming nuptials. But, as host of the party, Lisa had little time to spare for Sheila, and before long, Sheila felt she had become conspicuous by her outsider status. The others sent her furtive glances, then she overheard whispered questions, all amounting to the same thing: “Who is she again?” “Oh, right, the sister’s friend.”

  When Lisa informed Sheila it was a little black dress party, where only the bride wore another color—Kim chose an electric fuchsia—Sheila had thought she might blend in, another face in the crowd. But she had little in common with the other women, coworkers or long-time friends with shared jobs and clubs and routines, with their own private little verbal shorthand, honed over the years. On another night, without commitments hanging over her head, Sheila might have made the effort to crack the code, but she chose the path of least resistance instead.

  With the legitimate excuse of a budding headache and an early morning appointment, she tapped Lisa on the shoulder and whispered her intention to leave. Lisa flashed her a sympathetic face, but the gesture was fleeting, almost perfunctory, and the offer to walk her out of the restaurant vanished without a trace as another moment of head-pounding hilarity erupted around the table. So Sheila slipped out, depressingly certain that no one would miss her.

  She picked up her linen jacket on the way out, crossed the street and tried to remember where she’d parked her five-year-old silver Camry. Parking had been at a premium when she arrived and she’d managed to find a spot on a side street a few blocks away from La Porte Bleue. As she walked on her two-inch heels along the uneven asphalt, she felt a little wobbly.

  Should’ve had more fondue, she thought, and less wine.

  Lightheadedness on top of the building headache lent the streets around her a surreal quality, as if she’d stepped out of one world into another. A shroud of mist caused surrounding streetlights to glow eerily. A chill in the air made her shudder. Then she wondered if the chill had been responsible, or her sudden isolation. Reaching into her clutch purse, she pulled out her keys.

  Down a narrow side street, she spotted her Camry in front of a white Ford Econoline van with a THOMAS ELECTRIC sign on the side, the lower case L taking the form of a stylized lightning bolt. As she passed the van, she glanced through the driver’s side window, a quick peek, not wanting to attract a stranger’s attention when she felt a little tipsy and vulnerable. Not when the world seemed to have skipped off its track. But nobody sat in the van.

  She exhaled suddenly, unaware until that moment that she’d been holding her breath as she approached the van.

  With the tension gone, she mentally kicked herself for not switching on her business persona at the party. She should have passed out her Forrester Cade Realty business cards, asking for referrals, mentioning available properties. But even as she entertained the idea, envisioning that alternate reality where she shamelessly promoted the business—which had seen better days—she rejected the notion. She couldn’t be that person, making the event all about her, grabbing the bride’s spotlight and shining it on herself. Of course, that kind of behavior would ensure she’d never receive invitations to any social gatherings ever again.

  So there’s a positive, she thought, laughing at her self-pitying, misanthropic mood—and promptly dropped her keys.

  Crouching down to scoop up the plastic key fob, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. A car door squeaked behind her. She stood up straight—without her keys—and backed away as a dark shape rushed her from the van.

  She squealed in fright, as if jolted with electricity.

  The driver must have been hiding below the window line of the van, waiting for her to pass before jumping out. He pointed down to her keys.

  “Let me help you with that.”

  “No! I don’t need any—”

  Instead of reaching for the keys, his gloved hands came at her face.

  His own face began to transform into something hideous, as if he were becoming evil incarnate. Too startled to scream, unable to find her voice, she stared in horror. An instant later, strong hands wrapped around her neck and clutched her jaw, twisting violently. Something snapped, a sharp spike of pain overwhelmed her, and then nothing—

  * * *

  With practiced efficiency, he carried the woman’s body back to the van, slid the unlocked side door open, tossed her in, and slammed the door shut. Five seconds from start to finish. He fetched her car keys, stuffed them in his trouser pocket and returned to the van.

  After starting the engine, he swung the van around her Camry and drove down the side street, unnoticed. Later, he’d remove the large magnetic Thomas Electric signs he’d slapped on each side panel of the van and replace them with one of the other half-dozen signs he carried in order to confuse witness descriptions of his vehicle. And, later still, he’d come back and dispose of the car to muddle the trail for the police. But first he needed to dump the body. The car could wait.

  In a few days, none of it would matter anyway.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Despite a late and interesting night with Juliette, Nick Burkhardt arrived at the precinct before Hank, who dealt with the all-day challenge of getting from points A through Z on a pair of crutches. Only fair to cut him some slack. Wouldn’t have been so bad if either of his two biggest cases had some forward progress. Too much to hope the two cases might be somehow related, but they couldn’t have been more dissimilar.

  The Cracher-Mortel menacing Portland brought his victims back from apparent death, for some unknown endgame. Meanwhile, the bare bones killer had gone out of his way to make sure his victims were definitively dead, removing tissue and organs, chopping the bones into manageable pieces and, according to the ME, boiling them either with or without the flesh attached.

  They knew the identity of the Cracher-Mortel’s victims: Lilly O’Hara and Richard Mulpus; the bare bones killer’s victims remained anonymous, pending IDs through dental records. And while they knew the “zombie” case involved a Wesen perp, the bare bones killer might be human or Wesen.

  If Nick had to bet one way or the other, he’d put his money on Wesen involvement. Or maybe he was simply reluctant to assign this level of depravity to a fellow human being. Not that many Wesen weren’t fine, upstanding citizens. By Grimm standards, his tolerance of most Wesen was unusual, judging by their shocked reactions when they realized he wouldn’t kill them indiscriminately. Still, some of the things he had seen…

  By the time he settled at his desk with his first cup of office coffee, the lab results from tests on the evidence collected from Guerra’s cavern were waiting in his inbox. As he’d expected, based upon the row of mounted antlers in the Mordstier’s back room, the bones outside the cabin were confirmed as belonging to a deer. None of the blood tested in the dwelling was human. And, cherry on top, none of the weapons collected was a match for the murder weapon.

  He called out a greeting to Hank as his partner navigated the office on crutches and finally reached his desk, next to Nick’s.

  “Coffee should be hot,” Nick said, nodding toward the extra mug he’d made for Hank when pouring his own. Letting Hank walk on crutches while attempting to carry a cup of coffee back to his desk, qualified as partner abuse. “Unlike our cases.”

  “They’re too fresh to be cold cases,” Hank said, settling in and situating his crutches so they’d be close at hand but not a tripping hazard. “We need a new word.”

  “Chilly?” Nick suggested. “Infuriating? Headache-inducing?”

  “Lab results in?”

  “Guerra’s clean,” Nick said, then added, “In the legal sense.”

  “So not the bone killer.”

  “Probably not.”

  “On the plus side, he racked up enough charges to keep him out of circulation for a while,” Hank said. Softer, “That’s one angry Wesen.”

  “Still waiting on IDs on our victims,” Nick said. “No official COD
or time of death.”

  “Something will turn up,” Hank said.

  Nick had a feeling the next thing that turned up would be a third victim.

  * * *

  Decker had told Monroe he would meet him at Portland Precision Pilates and, true to his word, he had already arrived by the time Monroe swung his VW Super Beetle into a parking space across the street from the studio. Monroe had harbored doubts his friend would show up. Good start, he thought. But then he noticed the unreformed Blutbad had disregarded Monroe’s advice to wear comfortable, non-restrictive clothing. He’d swapped the knit watch cap for a battered leather Confederate hat. A subtle message to Monroe that Decker was a rebel at heart? He still sported the black leather jacket, over a flannel shirt, ratty jeans and work boots.

  Easily removed, the hat, jacket and boots weren’t a problem, but Monroe had doubts about the flannel shirt and jeans. He worried that an early failure would discourage Decker from continuing down the reformed path. If Monroe planned to mentor Decker, he needed to model patience without downplaying the difficulty of achieving and maintaining a reformed lifestyle.

  With that in mind, Monroe had scheduled a beginner mat class at a studio. Seeing others make natural mistakes, learn from them and work toward proficiency, even at a basic level, should provide motivation to stay the course. In theory.

  Monroe climbed out of the car, slipped two coiled foam floor mats under his arm, and crossed the street, flashing an encouraging smile.

  “Hey, brother,” Decker said, pushing himself off the wall against which he’d been leaning to shake Monroe’s hand vigorously. “Ready and waiting.”

  “How did your ‘thing’ work out?”

  Decker furrowed his brow, shook his head, confused. “Thing?”

  “Your meet-up?” Monroe prompted. “At Shemanski Park Market?”