Grimm: The Chopping Block

by John Passarella

  “Right,” Monroe said. “But a concussion is serious business, Nick. Maybe you should take the day off.”

  “Juliette put you up to this?” Nick asked, smiling.

  “No. Not at all,” Monroe said quickly. “But, you know, maybe you should listen to her.”

  “I’m fine, Monroe. Really.”

  “Gonna introduce me to your friend, Monroe?”

  Nick turned, startled, as a tall, muscular man wearing a black watch cap, flannel shirt, worn jeans and boots stepped into the room. He could have been a biker or a longshoreman. Nick wondered if he was also a Blutbad. He gave off a Wesen vibe. Or maybe it was simply the fact that so many of Monroe’s friends were Wesen.

  “Of course. Nick, this is an old friend, Decker,” Monroe said. “I haven’t seen him in years. We’ve been… catching up. Decker, Nick is a Portland homicide detective.”

  “You don’t say,” Decker said, raising his eyebrows. “Homicide detective. Wow.”

  “What do you do for a living, Decker?” Nick asked.

  “Odd jobs, mostly,” Decker said, shrugging. “Manual labor. I’ve done a little bit of everything and anything that requires elbow grease and determination. How do you know Monroe?”

  “I helped Nick out on a case,” Monroe interrupted nonchalantly. “He’s been staying with me for a little while until—until some things get worked out.”

  “Friends helping friends,” Decker said. “That’s what it’s all about, man.”

  “Right,” Nick said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll be out of your way in a couple minutes.”

  “No problem, Nick,” Monroe said. “Decker and I were about to check out a t’ai chi class.”

  “T’ai chi,” Nick wondered. “Not Pilates?”

  “Turns out Pilates isn’t Decker’s cup of tea,” Monroe said. “But, it’s a process, you know, finding the right thing.”

  Nick sensed a story lurked beneath the comment, and a bit of unspoken frustration, but he was running late and Juliette was waiting outside, so he simply nodded, excused himself and headed to his room. By the time he’d changed and come back downstairs, Monroe and Decker had left. Nick locked the door on his way out.

  When he climbed into the passenger seat, Juliette turned to him.

  “That guy with Monroe…?”

  “Decker,” Nick said. “Old friend of Monroe’s.”

  “Wesen?”

  “Yes,” Nick said, then backtracked. “Probably. I mean, I assumed he was but I didn’t see him woge.”

  She nodded—still adjusting to the details of Nick’s life as a Grimm—and pulled away from the curb.

  * * *

  Before leaving Nick at the Portland Police Department building, Juliette had him promise again that he’d take care and contact his doctor if he experienced any post-concussion symptoms. But considering her examination of the wound earlier, her concern seemed overly cautious. True, the real danger of concussions lay in what could happen beneath the skull, not what presented on the scalp. And yet, after that brief examination, she had a hard time believing he’d been hit over the head with a crowbar.

  Nick had insisted it was a glancing blow and scalp wounds tended to bleed a lot. He’d been lucky, that’s all. It could have been much worse. But it wasn’t. She had to let it go. The problem might be in her own head. Fear of losing him again. Not to memory loss this time, but to some other mishap. And really, she couldn’t think that way. Nick was a homicide detective and faced potentially dangerous situations all the time. She’d worry herself sick if she dwelled on all the things that could go wrong.

  She stopped at Fuller’s Coffee Shop before heading to Roseway Veterinary Hospital, and ordered the biggest cup of coffee they had. Nick had grumbled about his missed sleep, but her night had been worse in a way. She’d been so afraid of falling asleep and not waking him at regular intervals, she’d progressed through the entire night on a series of unsatisfying catnaps. When she’d slept long enough to actually slip into REM sleep, she’d had anxiety nightmares which startled her awake. In them, she’d forgotten to turn off the stove, or she’d misplaced test results, or Adalind Schade’s cat crept through the house, waiting to pounce on her.

  Overall, a restless night, and now she had visions of giving herself a caffeine IV as soon as she arrived at the clinic. Zoe, who staffed the reception desk, would understand. That girl knew how to burn the midnight oil, leaving no after-hours club unexamined until dawn’s early light. Zoe often joked she was part-vampire. Juliette idly wondered if there were vampire Wesen. She’d have to remember to ask Nick. Good thing she hadn’t thought of that last night, or it would have been more fuel for the nightmare fire.

  She’d been hoping for a calm, going-through-the-motions day with maybe a lunchtime nap. Could she lock her office door and disconnect her phone? That idea transformed from wistful notion to something she intended to schedule on her calendar as soon as she sat down to finish her coffee. And evaporated five minutes into her shift.

  She heard a woman sobbing in the hallway and, without stepping out of her office, Juliette knew.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  She took a deep breath and returned to the reception area to greet the Bremmers.

  But this time, Melinda had come alone with Roxy. Melinda crouched beside the dog, down on one knee, petting her head. Lethargic, Roxy hardly moved, barely a flutter to her closed eyes, a slight twitch of one ear.

  Melinda looked up at Juliette. Tears had streamed down her cheeks, creating dark streaks of mascara. At that moment, Juliette doubted the woman cared much about her appearance. She was consumed with grief for her dog.

  “She’s just like before,” Melinda said. “One good day, and now…”

  “Roger,” Juliette said. “Give me a hand.”

  Roger nodded, left his computer station behind the reception desk with Zoe to help Juliette carry the yellow lab back to the examination room. Melinda followed, fingers pressed to her face.

  “After Barry left for work, I realized she hadn’t come downstairs.”

  With a sympathetic look, Roger backed out of the room and closed the door behind him.

  “Logan filled her bowl before he left, but she hadn’t eaten anything,” Melinda continued. “I found her upstairs, in Logan’s room. She’d vomited on the floor. For a moment, I thought she—she was so still, I thought—but she was trembling, weak.”

  All of the dog’s original symptoms had returned. She’d had a one-day reprieve, a complete turnaround, and now this. Juliette remembered telling herself not to question a “win” but now it seemed as if that turnaround had never happened.

  “I thought it was a miracle, how she recovered,” Melinda said, stroking the dog’s coat over and over as she spoke. “We kept her away from Logan’s car and its leaky radiator. She stayed out of the garage. We made sure of it. We were so grateful, we never wanted anything like that to happen again. But now—now, I don’t know how I can tell Barry and Logan that she’s… how can I tell them?”

  Juliette had placed her palm on the miserable dog’s head, feeling the warmth of its life against her skin. She wanted more than anything to give Melinda back her miracle and somehow restore Roxy’s health. But the pragmatic part of her acknowledged the dog was running out of options, and cautioned her against offering another dose of false hope. If nothing else, she could give Melinda and her family a little more time to adjust to what was happening.

  “Leave her with me,” Juliette said. “Let me run some tests, so we know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  “O—okay,” Melinda said, swiping at tears and making the mascara streaks more pronounced than before. “You’ll call me…? When you know?”

  Juliette nodded. “As soon as I know something, I’ll call.”

  As the woman bowed down to kiss the dog’s head and whisper in her ear, Juliette reached for a box of tissues on the nearby counter and handed them to the woman.

  “Thank you,” Melinda said, first bl
owing her nose, then wiping her eyes with fresh tissues.

  “You’ll be okay driving?”

  Melinda nodded. “That I can manage,” she said. “The rest…? I don’t know.”

  “We’ll get through this,” Juliette said. “We’ll do what’s best for Roxy.”

  Melinda pressed the wad of mascara-stained tissues against her lips to stifle a sob. Then she nodded several times, a motion stiff with suppressed emotion. Juliette hugged her. Not a strictly professional response, maybe, but a human one. And, at the moment, that was all she had to offer.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As soon as he arrived at the precinct, Nick checked his desk and his email inbox for any updates. The first message he read contained discouraging news. The scrap of faux-parchment paper with the geometric symbols and possible numeric sequence or code that Nick had bagged at the vacant lot came back negative for prints. Likely exposed to the elements for weeks, the paper’s only evidential value—if it had any at all—was in the images printed on the paper. Proximity to the dump site was the only connection between the scrap of paper and the murders. But anyone who passed by the lot could have been the source of the litter. And, honestly, the paper could have been blowing in the wind for weeks before coming to rest in the lot.

  Captain Renard had commandeered a conference room as a war room of sorts for the bare bones murder investigation. Two large freestanding corkboards stood side by side, blocking a set of windows, one for each burial site. As dental record matches came back, names and photos of the victims filled the boards. Similarly, stacks of case folders and open missing person files began to accumulate on the long conference room table.

  Over a dozen sets of remains had been found at the vacant lot site—including a family of three tossed into one group mound—which appeared to predate the Claremont Park site. Bones from the vacant lot were three to four weeks old, whereas the Claremont Park victims had been buried within the past two weeks. A GPR team had located two more sets of bones at the park site.

  With information accumulating quickly, Nick and Hank had, for all intents and purposes, moved into the conference room, forwarding their desk phone calls to the conference room lines. Wu continued to bring them forensic updates and missing person files, while Captain Renard appeared to demand update requests every few hours.

  Wu rapped on the doorframe.

  Nick looked up from a stack of folders.

  “Patrol unit spotted Sheila Jenkins’ car outside a twenty-four-hour pharmacy,” Wu informed him. “Lot’s never completely empty, so nobody reported it. But a store employee recalled seeing it there the day before. Chalked it up to car trouble.”

  “Don’t suppose the vic’s head or hands were in the car,” Nick said.

  “Crime scene’s dusting for prints, checking for fibers, blood, bodily fluids and so on,” Wu said. “But anything as large as a head or a pair of hands, they would have noticed by now.”

  “So that’s a ‘no,’” Hank said, sitting within arm’s reach of his crutches but nowhere near his sense of humor. It had been one of those days.

  “Any news on the other vics?” Nick asked.

  “More dental record matches are coming in,” Wu said, flipping through his notes. “Monica Jackson; African American female; twenty-five; on vacation from Atlanta, Georgia with three friends. Friends went whitewater rafting. Monica opted out, took a winery tour instead. Never returned to their hotel room.

  “We’ve also got a family of three on vacation, cross-country drive from Delaware, camping, hiking, et cetera. Nikos… Kostopoulos, his wife, Sophia, and fourteen-year-old son, Stephen. Wife’s sister had been feeding the son’s pet guinea pigs. She reported the family missing after a week with no contact.” He flipped a page. “And yet another vacationer, also recovered from the second site; Steve Phan, Vietnamese amateur nature photographer. Quite a following at some of the online photo sharing sites. Last image he posted is almost four weeks old.”

  Nick took the photos Wu had brought with the IDs and posted them on the second corkboard. A few others located in the vacant lot had come back as vacationers. Nick walked over to the first board, which displayed photos of Marie Chang and Luis Posada, plus two index cards with question marks for the most recent victims.

  “You can replace one of the question marks,” Wu said, taking another photo out of the folder he carried. “Lee Mi-Sun, forty-two-year-old unmarried Korean woman, manager of Little Shop of Gifts. She locked up the shop ten days ago. Never heard from again. Owner found her keys on the ground outside the locked door. Probably grabbed while her back was turned.”

  Nick took the woman’s photo and placed it on the Claremont Park board, next to Chang and Posada. Then he stepped back to study the whole picture.

  “Looks like the killer changed his MO,” Nick said. “The older site—the vacant lot—is filled with the remains of tourists. As if the killer spent time stalking people whose absence might go unnoticed for a while.”

  Hank nodded. “People out of touch with work and family.”

  “No cause for alarm,” Wu added. “Even vacation postcards take forever in the mail.”

  “Then two weeks ago, give or take,” Nick continued, “he switches dumping ground.”

  “Tag team killers,” Wu suggested. “First hands it off to the second.”

  “That’s not it,” Nick said. “Bones are prepared the same, buried the same way. That part stays consistent.”

  “He switched because he’s nervous,” Hank said. “Too many bodies buried in one place. Doesn’t want to risk more trips there.”

  “Maybe somebody noticed,” Wu said. “Spooked him.”

  “Both good reasons,” Nick said. “But he’s also changed victim profiles. Now he’s killing locals.”

  “People who will be missed sooner,” Hank said.

  “He’s impatient,” Wu said, spitballing. “Accelerating his routine.”

  “No,” Nick said. “That’s not it. Too many bodies at the first site. His pace hasn’t accelerated. It was fast from the start.”

  “Then what?” Hank asked. As Nick’s partner, he could tell when Nick was working toward a conclusion.

  “He doesn’t care anymore.”

  “About being caught?” Wu asked, confused.

  “That’s not it,” Hank said. “Is it, Nick?”

  Nick shook his head. “The shallow graves bothered me,” he said. “Short term concealment at best. Storms, heavy rains, foraging animals, dogs out for a walk. You name it. Those bodies would be discovered sooner rather than later.” Nick tapped the Claremont Park board. “He’s taking locals now because his timeframe is shorter.”

  “What timeframe?” Hank asked, giving Nick a curious look after a brief glance at Wu to see if he’d caught on.

  Probably wondering if I have some previously undisclosed Grimm power of psychic intuition, Nick thought. But he was spitballing as well, same as Hank and Wu.

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. “Not exactly. But the reason why he’s killing them, whatever it is, it’s almost over.”

  Wu frowned. “What if his reason for killing is that he’s a howling-at-the-moon, live-bug-eating maniac?”

  Hank indicated the two boards with a sweep of his hand.

  “He doesn’t have a type,” Hank said. “Adults, teens—even children. Male and female. Multiple ethnicities.”

  “An equal opportunity psychopath,” Wu concluded.

  Hank shook his head, deflated. “There’s no pattern.”

  “Maybe that’s the point,” Nick said. “Variety.”

  The conference room phone rang. He leaned across the table and picked it up.

  “Detective Burkhardt.”

  “Hello, Detective. Harper here.”

  Nick covered the receiver. “Medical examiner,” he said to Hank. Then, “Dr. Harper. Good news, I hope.”

  “Got something on the bare bones cases I think you should see.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  * *
*

  “Give it up, brother,” Decker said.

  He was sitting in the Super Beetle passenger seat beside Monroe on their way to the T’ai Chi Circle Center, his knee bouncing up and down with nervous energy. Now and then he started slapping his palm against his knee, as if keeping time with a tune playing in his head.

  “What?”

  “How the hell long have you been bosom buddies with a genuine Portland homicide detective?”

  “Not long,” Monroe said. “Long enough.”

  “Is he…?”

  “What?”

  “You know. One of us?”

  “Blutbad? Nick?” Monroe asked and chuckled. “No. No way.”

  “Not a Fuchsbau?” Decker asked. “Like that gal of yours—Rosemarie?”

  “Rosalee,” Monroe corrected reflexively. He’d only mentioned Rosalee in passing, accidentally, not wanting his old life to confront his new one. He didn’t want to reminisce about the bad old days, and that’s inevitably what would happen if his two worlds collided.

  “No, Nick’s not Wesen,” Monroe said, preferring to end the discussion about Nick without letting slip that he was a Grimm. Decker might freak out or lapse or—Monroe had no idea how he’d react and didn’t want to find out. But Decker refused to abandon the topic.

  “Interesting,” he said. “So your life on the wagon involves friendship with local law enforcement. That a case of keeping your enemies closer?”

  “Nick’s not an enemy,” Monroe said, growing frustrated with Decker’s us-versus-them mindset. “Look, he’s a friend, simple as that. We met over a case. I didn’t plan it. Just one of those random, serendipitous things, you know? You meet new people. It happens. I do have other human friends.”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, for instance, Juliette,” Monroe said.

  “And she’s…?”

  “Nick’s girlfriend.”

  “Ah. I see. Anyone else?”

  “Sure,” Monroe said, immediately drawing a blank. “Hank Griffin.”

  “Right,” Decker said. “And this Hank guy—you met him how?”