Grimm: The Chopping Block

by John Passarella

  The round ripped through Ray’s spine and ricocheted off the side of the Dumpster. Ray stumbled backward in a collapsing, uncontrolled stutter-step, and flopped to the ground, staring up into the evening sky as he bled out in the smelly alley.

  Tossing the gun on the passenger seat, he backed out of the alley in a smooth, cautious arc, then drove away, signaling as he switched lanes, traveling a couple miles per hour under the speed limit.

  * * *

  Aunt Marie’s trailer was a treasure trove of Wesen lore and weapons to combat them, but after flipping through several old tomes and illustrated journals, Nick had found nothing specifically dealing with the circle-and-triangles symbol.

  Many different types of Wesen had been known to eat human flesh and organs, or employ specific human body parts as ingredients in various remedies. Which helped explain why Lamar Crawford had colluded with the Wesen responsible for the bare bones murders. He must have clung to the possibility that they could whip up a cure for his fatal illness with spare parts from the humans they butchered.

  Aunt Marie’s journals listed various species of Wesen who might consume human flesh and organs, and discussed those who believed that sliced-and-diced or liquefied or powdered human organs possessed magical healing abilities, but he found nothing related to the symbol on the flyers. Nick was missing a bigger picture, a conspiracy of silence about something that happened every twenty years, possibly less often.

  In addition to researching the symbol, he’d checked for references to Rio and found nothing other than the usual Grimm hunting and killing instructions with notations about potential dangers and difficulties. In other words, more of what he’d been accustomed to reading in these pages.

  With a sense of futility, he left the trailer, locked it behind him, and drove from the lot to Monroe’s house. Though the Blutbad hadn’t recognized the symbol immediately, he had his own arcane reference materials for research. And, unless something turned up there, Nick would have to wait for somebody to break the code of silence about the cannibalistic event, or hope a witness to one of the abductions came forward.

  Meanwhile, judging by television, print and radio coverage, the press was having a field day raking the entire Portland Police Department over the coals for ineffectual investigative methods. Multiple murders, the remains of abducted tourists found in shallow graves, and not a single viable suspect had been brought in for questioning. Captain Renard parroted the official line of “pursuing multiple lines of inquiry,” a response only marginally more substantial than “no comment.”

  Somehow, the cannibal aspect of the murders had not leaked to the press, but that revelation could not remain secret indefinitely. And once that lurid detail hit the airwaves, panic would immediately follow. Nick dreaded the idea of conducting a murder investigation in the middle of a media circus. But, without a new lead to crack the case, that scenario was unavoidable.

  Worst of all, Nick faced the real possibility that the murderers would skip out of Portland before he found them, as they must have done in Rio all those years ago, and who knew how many times before that. Whatever event was happening in secret would end soon, and the cabal would pack up their cleavers and meat saws and disappear for two or more decades, to start all over again, in some other unsuspecting city.

  I can’t let that happen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  When Nick arrived at Monroe’s house, the Blutbad was already deep into researching the image on the flyers. The old books spread across the table looked like a re-enactment of Nick’s last hour or two inside Aunt Marie’s trailer. But Monroe’s books had been passed down along Wesen rather than Grimm family lines, most of them probably the former property of Monroe’s grandfather, a real old school Blutbad.

  “Anything?” Nick asked. “I struck out at the trailer.”

  “Sorry, Nick,” Monroe said. “If I had found anything, believe me I would have called or texted or something.”

  Nick paced the room, feeling as if the answer hung suspended in the air in front of them, just out of reach, that they were one intuitive leap away from solving the mystery. Connect the right pieces and the confusing image will shift into focus.

  “Talk it out,” Monroe said. “Go over what you know.”

  Nick nodded, willing to try any new approach that might jar some tidbit loose.

  “Two shallow grave sites, the most recently used site discovered first, by accident, when a father and son stumble upon human remains while geocaching. Otherwise, we might not have known about this until… it was over.” Nick stopped pacing and corrected himself. “No. The mountain bike kids discovered the second site accidentally too.”

  “Which points to what, sloppiness on the part of the murderer?”

  “That’s what I thought,” Nick said. “But Crawford indicated that this big event was winding down. Maybe the murderer figured he’d be long gone, along with the other conspirators, before the bones were ever found.”

  “So… expediency?”

  “Right,” Nick said. “And his miscalculation leads to the discovery of the remains, giving us a small window to catch those involved before it ends.”

  “Go on.”

  “The ME discovered that the bones had been boiled, that flesh had been cut from the bones with knives and a meat saw, confirming the cannibal aspect of the murders.”

  “So people are abducted, cooked, and, probably, fed to others.”

  “He started with tourists,” Nick continued. “People who might not be missed for days or weeks. But the more recent dumping ground contained the remains of locals.”

  “Acknowledging the shortened timeframe for discovery.”

  “And Crawford, before killing himself, clearly indicates more than one person is involved, that it’s part of a bigger conspiracy. The flyer links him to the second site, where I recovered a piece of an identical flyer.”

  “Identical except for the addresses.”

  “Right. Gloved guy in a hoodie and sunglasses drops the flyers at four locations, each with an address that points to one of the other locations. I located all four addresses. A closed loop.”

  “Four locations above reproach,” Monroe said.

  “At least three of the four, anyway,” Nick said. “These conspirators might meet at the community center.”

  “But it’s unlikely they would be, you know, chowing down on human flesh in a community center.”

  “Maybe it’s used as a meet-and-greet or a place to organize their… activities for later,” Nick said, trying ideas out loud to see if any made sense.

  “So Crawford reveals this conspiracy,” Monroe said. “But he doesn’t participate. He’s helping them for a cure.”

  “Which they never deliver,” Nick said. “He realizes too late they lied to him, and kills himself to protect his family.”

  “That’s a big commitment,” Monroe said. “Shoving a gun in your mouth and blowing your brains out.”

  “He had, at most, a month or two to live. Once he accepted the fact that the promised cure was never coming, he sacrificed that time to keep his family safe.”

  “I’m just saying, two months or not, that’s a hardcore exit,” Monroe said. “If he was desperate enough to do something that drastic to keep his family safe…”

  “What did he know?” Nick said, nodding. “Techs are combing through his computer—”

  “Which he nuked before biting down on his gun.”

  Nick sat down at the table. “He knew the identity of some of them,” he said. “And he knew what was happening. He placed that restaurant equipment order for them.”

  “Nick, if they are killing and eating so many people,” Monroe said, a bit awkwardly, knowing that Blutbaden could easily be involved in the murders, “they would need a restaurant-sized setup. Think about it: they are butchering humans, storing meat and cooking, I’m guessing, a lot of meals.”

  “Crawford’s restaurant was a front,” Nick said. “He placed the equipment orders know
ing full well the shipment would be hijacked. The driver was collateral damage.”

  “Or an appetizer,” Monroe said solemnly.

  “The killer has been abducting various races and ethnicities, both genders, children, teens and adults,” Nick said. “But typical serial killers often have an identifiable victim type. Variety seems important to this one.”

  “Nick, he’s not picking the victims,” Monroe said. “He’s fulfilling orders. It’s the cannibals or the cook who is requesting the variety.”

  “Many meals,” Nick said, nodding. “If this really is a rare event, they’d want to… sample many types of human meals.”

  “Let me see those flyers again,” Monroe said, reaching across the table. He spread them out like a poker hand made up of very large cards. “They’re not exact.”

  “Right. Each one has a different address.”

  “No,” Monroe said. “Something else.”

  Nick circled around the table and looked down at the four pages.

  “You’re right. The circle and triangles are redrawn for each version.” He stacked the four sheets and held them up, close enough to an overhead light that he could see through the pages. Each circle and surrounding series of triangles beneath the first page looked like ghost images. He took away two pages, and the difference became clear. Then he switched to the other pair to confirm his findings. “Look at that,” Nick said, pointing. “On each page, one of the triangles is out of whack.”

  Monroe took the flyers and spread them across the table again.

  “Decker—my old friend you met when Juliette dropped you off—he thought the drawing might be the sun,” he said. “Circle and rays coming off it. But the acute triangles all face inward, toward the circle. If you were drawing the sun, wouldn’t the rays point away from it?”

  “You’d think so,” Nick said. “And on each page, the triangle closest to southwest—imagining the circle as a compass—is turned to the side.”

  “Nick, that’s an invitation.”

  “An invitation to what?”

  “Hold on,” Monroe said, grabbing one of the books nearby with decayed binding. He flipped through it and stopped when he saw a semicircle illustration on a page. Spaced evenly around the semicircle were three acute triangles, the middle one pointing away from the semicircle. “That circle is not the sun,” Monroe said as he tapped the illustration. “It’s a table, surrounded by chairs. The chair facing away is called the”—he traced some lines of text in German with his index finger—“Leeren Stuhl. The empty chair.”

  “An empty chair?”

  “That’s the invitation,” Monroe said. “There’s an empty chair waiting for you—well, not you, of course, but anyone who figures out what the invitation means. It’s starting to come back to me. I think my grandfather used to talk about—the man was incorrigible—about this old world—and, by old, I mean, really old world—tradition among a secretive group of Wesen who would host an elaborate traveling feast where the main course was ‘long pork.’”

  “Human?”

  Monroe nodded, abashed. “Supposedly it lasted a whole month. Very hush-hush. Never the same city twice. And rare! One of those once, maybe twice in a lifetime happenings, like a solar eclipse or the appearance of some named comet. Anyway, my grandfather always dreamed about finding an invitation close to home and sneaking off to enjoy the, uh, festivities. Of course, I thought it was a myth. Some kind of Wesen fairy tale. Mostly, I thought my grandfather made it up.”

  “Does that book say anything else?”

  Monroe skimmed the entry. “Not much,” he said. “Membership is hereditary and members generally don’t speak about it to nonmembers. Ah… here it says they call themselves the Silver Plate Society. Sounds very upper crust and snobby, in a, you know, cannibal sort of way.”

  “Silver,” Nick said. “Like a silver anniversary?”

  “Every twenty-five years,” Monroe marveled, nodding. “That sounds about right. Say you attend at twenty-five years of age. Maybe you go again at fifty. But, seventy-five? Assuming you’re still alive, you might not want to fly across the globe for a month-long gorging fest.”

  “And this time, the gorging fest is in Portland.”

  “Lucky us.”

  “It is an event for them,” Nick said. “You’re right. Judging by the number of victims we found, they are gorging nonstop for the entire month. If they wait twenty-five years for this and may not live to see the next one, they won’t want to waste a day.”

  “A fair assumption.”

  “And if they are using industrial-grade restaurant equipment,” Nick continued. “This is not a mobile pop-up restaurant. They are in a fixed location.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  Nick opened his mouth to reply but his cell phone rang, cutting him off. He checked the caller ID and took the call.

  “What’s up, Hank?”

  “Patrol unit found Ray Swartley.”

  “Is he talking?”

  “Not unless it’s from beyond the grave,” Hank said. “Somebody shot him in the throat, blew out his spine.”

  “Gotta run,” Nick told Monroe. “Figure out how to accept the Leeren Stuhl invitation. I want you in that empty chair.”

  Monroe followed Nick to the door, shaking his head. “Seriously, Nick, that’s not funny.”

  As Nick hurried to his car, he called back to Monroe, “Think like your grandfather!”

  “Still not funny.”

  * * *

  Classical music continued to play softly throughout the feast house. A Rachmaninov Piano Concerto segued into Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 as Chef wheeled out another serving cart, this one loaded with uncovered cuts of meat on silver serving trays, each labeled with a card to indicate ethnicity and age.

  “As promised, ladies and gentlemen,” Chef said, “I present to you the finest rib and rump roasts, along with sirloin, T-bone and porterhouse steaks, all seasoned to perfection. And, in a little while, I will have additional organ dishes for your dining pleasure.”

  Polite applause met his pronouncement and—from the nonmember section—a few raucous cheers and indelicate whistles. None of the members seemed to mind. The last days always had more of a carnival atmosphere, restraint abandoned as Host instructed Chef to empty the larder. However, the nonmembers, unbeknownst to them, were observed during the Leeren Stuhl days by both members and Host, evaluated for potential membership. The most uncouth were forgotten, but those who participated with a measure of decorum and respect would find themselves taken aside before the festivities ended and offered membership in the society.

  Once Chef had transferred the serving trays from his cart to the buffet-style tables and backed toward the kitchen, Host stood up and held his palms up for attention, temporarily placing the collection of savory meats off-limits.

  A tall, tanned, distinguished looking man in his mid-sixties, he had a full head of cotton-white hair, matching moustache and beard, and wore a black tuxedo with a powder-blue bow tie to match the color of his twinkling, amused eyes. As a tenth-generation member of the society, he had embraced with gusto his first invitation to host. Members knew him as Graham Widmark, though none would refer to him by name during his time as Host.

  “Your attention, ladies and gentlemen of the Silver Plate Society, and invited Leeren Stuhl guests,” Widmark said in a booming voice. “We have a late arrival this evening, the son of a member—recently departed—who wishes to begin his membership, officially, with us here tonight. His family has been part of our select group for seven generations.” He raised his right arm toward the crowd, hand extended to direct their attention, and said, “Please welcome our newest attending member of the Silver Plate Society!”

  From out of the gathering, the youth emerged and stood by Widmark.

  Applause greeted his introduction.

  A nervous smile on his face, he gave them an awkward little wave of acknowledgment, embarrassed by the attention. Then he looked down, hooking his
thumbs in the hip pockets of his jeans.

  “Welcome, my boy,” Widmark said, one arm wrapped around the boy’s shoulders. “Good to have you!”

  “Thanks,” Kurt Crawford replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Somebody’s cleaning up loose ends,” Hank had said on the way back from the dark alley where Ray Swartley had been silenced for good.

  “We’re running out of time,” Nick had replied. “And leads.”

  Nick had called ahead to have Ron Swartley pulled out of lockup for questioning again. Now the detectives stood outside the interview room. Hank paused on his crutches as Nick glanced down at the glossy eight-by-ten photo, a copy of the crime scene photo of Ray’s head and shoulders, the bullet hole in his neck garishly visible. They wanted the photo for its shock value.

  “Whoever did this didn’t care if we identified Ray,” Nick said. He indicated the closed door with a slight nod. “Is this a mistake?”

  “The killer wants Ron to know about the hit on his brother?”

  Nick nodded. “Clear message to Ron: Keep your mouth shut.”

  “Or else,” Hank finished. “You said it yourself. We’re running out of leads. Ron’s not talking anyway. He sees this, maybe he decides he needs protection. And we offer it, if he cooperates with the investigation.”

  With no other viable options, they walked into the interview room.

  Ron sat on the opposite side of a metal table, handcuff chain through the bar welded to the tabletop. Though he lacked the imposing physical dimensions of the Mordstier and seemed sullen and resigned rather than aggressive, they had no idea how he’d react to the news of his brother’s death. In addition to restraining the Reinigen, Nick hoped the handcuffs reminded Ron that he was helpless and that that feeling, even if it worked only on a subconscious level, raised the level of his anxiety. If he thought he had no way out, Ron was more likely to tell them what he knew.

  Hank elected to stand, supported by his crutches, rather than sit down next to Nick facing the prisoner. Nick stared at Ron, who nervously ducked his head down to rub his stubble-covered chin against his knuckles.