Grimm: The Chopping Block (6 page)

“Here’s where it gets weird,” Wu continued. “Harper examined the original set of human bones and, based on discoloration, softening, brittleness and smell, she believes they were boiled.”

“Boiled?” Hank asked, incredulous. He sat on the edge of his desk, propped his crutches against it and reached for the telephone receiver with his free hand. “Like—in a pot?”

Wu nodded. “Or a witch’s cauldron.”

Hank answered the phone, his voice hushed.

“Cooked,” Nick wondered. A disturbed human might be responsible, but in Nick’s mind, the scales had started to tip toward a Wesen perpetrator.

Hank’s posture stiffened, his hand gripping the telephone receiver a little tighter. “Yes. Thanks. We’ll be right there.” He hung up, looked from Wu to Nick and said, “Claremont Park canvass turned up a second shallow grave,” he told them. “With another complete set of chopped up human bones.”

The second crime scene, in the opposite direction from Guerra’s shack, resembled the first in most details: a chopped-up skeleton buried in a single mound. Except this time, Yolanda Candelas, the forensic anthropologist who’d consulted on the first scene, determined that the victim was male, middle-aged, Caucasian or possibly Hispanic.

Peralta, a junior patrol officer assigned to the canvass detail, had spotted a partially exposed rib cage—at least according to his original statement. After Nick had noticed dirt stains on the knees of the officer’s uniform, the man admitted that his left foot had made the discovery. He first
saw
the bones after tripping over them.

Also, as with the first site, the detectives had little to go on.

By mutual agreement, Hank and Nick left the crime scene to the techs who specialized in collecting what little evidence they could find there. Hank headed home. But Nick had another stop to make.

* * *

When Nick arrived at Monroe’s house—its distinctive front door featured a stained-glass coat of arms with an upright red wolf—he found the Blutbad peering at his work table as if to examine his handiwork. On a square of green felt, he’d disassembled an antique gold pocket watch, its tiny wheels and springs and screws laid out like an art project. A careful arrangement of watchmaker’s tools bracketed the antique watch parts, including a head-worn magnifier, a series of precision screwdrivers, tweezers and a few tools Nick couldn’t identify.

“Oh, hey, Nick,” Monroe said, distracted.

“One of yours?” Nick asked.

“What? No. Bud dropped this off for me to repair. 1887 Elgin hunter case pocket watch, fourteen-karat gold. Family heirloom. Finally decided to have it fixed.” He looked up, eyes widening. “You’re having dinner with Juliette tonight, right? Because Rosalee and I are—unless something happened with your—?”

“No change of plans,” Nick said. “Shower. Fresh set of clothes.”

“Good,” Monroe said. “So things are still on the upswing? No complications?”

“We’re taking it one step at a time,” Nick said. “No new complications.” Changing the topic, he said, “I wanted to get your opinion on something.”

“By ‘something,’ I’m guessing not related to watch repair?”

“Not remotely.”

With the death of Nick’s Aunt Marie, he’d been thrown into the deep end of the Grimm pool. She’d left behind her trailer filled with an arsenal of medieval weapons, potions and remedies, and books of Grimm lore—a lot of material to review, but not all the answers Nick needed could be found in the trailer. Monroe had proven a valuable resource on various Grimm-related subjects and often helped Nick solve cases involving Wesen.

Monroe had once referred to himself grudgingly as Nick’s “personal Grimmopedia.” While Nick couldn’t find fault with that assessment, he couldn’t justify bypassing a valuable resource when lives were at stake. At the same time, he was confident his friendship with Monroe had progressed to the point where the Blutbad no longer felt as if Nick took him for granted. For evidence of that change, Nick needed to look no further than Monroe’s invitation to Nick to stay at his house after Juliette’s Nick-specific memory loss made living together awkward and uncomfortable.

Nick wanted to give her time and, more importantly, space to remember him, and he couldn’t do that living under the same roof. They were through the worst of it now. Yet even though Juliette had her memories back and had started to understand the Grimm and Wesen side of Nick’s life, he was still crashing at Monroe’s. But not, he hoped, for too much longer.

“Didn’t think so.”

Nick described the two sets of bones the police had recovered along with Guerra, the Mordstier, who denied any involvement in the murder and whose viability as a suspect had diminished since his arrest.

“Lone bull, huh?” Monroe mused. “Odd behavior for a Mordstier. Those guys usually travel in packs.”

“He could be our guy,” Nick said. “Rage issues. Root cellar stocked with nasty gear. But, so far, no match for the murder weapon.”

“Maybe he tossed it off a bridge.”

“Maybe.”

“Sorry I can’t help, man.”

“I left out one thing about the bones,” Nick said. “ME believes they were boiled.”

Monroe’s eyebrows rose. He exhaled and sat down at his work table chair.

“Chopped and cooked. That’s what you think?” he asked.

“Why else boil the bones?”

“Right,” Monroe said, nodding. “I’m sure you know—of course you know, you’re a Grimm—that some Wesen have been known to partake in, let’s say, non-FDA approved meats. There’s the Schakal, of course.”

“The baby eaters.”

Monroe nodded. “You got your Wendigos, Mauvais Dentes, Coyotl—they strip their victims down to the bone. Geiers harvest human blood and organs. A Rissfleich tends to go for the abdomen. Then there’s the Lowen and Lausenchlangen and—”

Nick interrupted Monroe’s disturbing litany with a question.

“Any with this particular MO?”

“Dude, they don’t follow rule books,” Monroe said. “Let me just say, it’s usually an impulse. A nasty impulse. But what you’ve got here is way beyond nasty, man. That’s some seriously sick premeditation.”

* * *

After a shower and change of clothes, Nick drove to Juliette’s house for a home-cooked meal. Just as well, since the topics of their conversations lately might raise more than a few eyebrows at the local restaurants. Nick tried to leave his work at the precinct, but some cases proved harder to shake off than others. That, coupled with Juliette’s newfound curiosity about all things Grimm and Wesen, dictated that they should keep private conversations as isolated as possible.

Juliette kissed him the moment he walked through the door, which somehow still came as a pleasant surprise after dealing with the alienation caused by her memory loss. Adalind Schade’s spell—delivered via Majique’s claws after she’d fed the cat a potion—had literally wiped Nick from Juliette’s memories. Nothing else gone. Just Nick. Even memories where Nick had been part of a group were altered so that Nick was no longer there. Overnight, he’d become a stranger to her. The road back had been long and difficult and fraught with complications, but they were better than ever now, because Nick no longer had to keep Grimm and Wesen secrets from her. She had recovered and was adapting to his bizarre world. Even so, they remained cautious as they resumed the intimate part of their relationship.

For dinner, they enjoyed a chicken risotto Juliette had whipped up. She talked a bit about a difficult case she was treating, a labrador suffering kidney failure with a grim prognosis. But he sensed her unwillingness to darken the mood and wasn’t surprised when she batted the conversational ball over to his side of the net. Unfortunately, a homicide detective’s topics of conversation also veered into doom and gloom or frustrations with bureaucracy and paperwork. When you investigated murders for a living, you had to look elsewhere for source material for light-hearted banter.

Juliette, naturally, wanted details about the Wesen aspects of the case. There remained a chance the killer was not Wesen, as unlikely as that seemed to Nick at the moment. And he had his doubts about the Mordstier’s involvement, although the Wesen’s rage, combined with hunger and opportunity, provided sufficient motives to make the case against him. And yet, without a murder weapon or an approximate time of death, the case might prove difficult to prosecute.

That’s when Juliette suggested they visit Aunt Marie’s trailer.

“The trailer?” Nick asked. “Really?

“Yes. Why not?”

“Not exactly my idea of a romantic evening.”

“This stuff is fascinating,” she said, smiling across the table.

“Fascinating?” he said. “That’s all?”

“Okay. A little scary,” she admitted. “But we fear what we don’t understand, right? So, I want to… understand.”

* * *

A short while later they sat in the trailer, Juliette leafing through some of Aunt Marie’s journals, tracing her index finger over some of the sketches, while Nick’s gaze mostly lingered on Juliette’s face. She had asked him to show her some of the Wesen he’d encountered in person. She’d paused to read the notes on those—at least the ones that weren’t in German. And she’d spent several minutes scanning entries for the Wesen she’d seen woge: Blutbad, Fuchsbau and Eisbiber.

“It’s strange,” she said.

“Other than the obvious?”

“Other than that, yes,” she said with a wry smile. “These Wesen were here all along, walking among us, and nobody knew.” Off Nick’s look, she added, “Well, almost nobody.”

Nick leaned forward. “And you’re all right with”—he spread his arms to encompass everything in the trailer and everything it represented—“with all of this?”

She closed the book and stood, and Nick stood with her, facing her.

“It’s definitely a lot to absorb.”

“It is,” he agreed.

“But…” She took his face in her hands. “This is a part of your life now, Nick. Part of who you are. It’s a package deal. And I want to be in your life too.”

More hopeful than he’d been in a while, Nick slipped his arms around her waist and said, “You do?”

His life seemed almost… normal again. Well, the new normal, considering he was a Grimm. He’d had to make a lot of adjustments to cope with his own nature and his role as a balancing force between Wesen and humans. His only option was to face challenges head on, to forge ahead and hope his mistakes, byproducts of trial and error and learning on the fly, were recoverable. And Juliette had had to overcome a lot of collateral damage because of her relationship with him, but she was back to normal and adjusting admirably herself. It felt as if they’d torn down a flawed structure and were now in the process of building something stronger on a solid foundation.

“Yes,” she said, flashing an inviting smile. “I do.”

This time, he kissed her.

Padlocked around his neck, a crude iron collar chained Gino Parisi to the basement wall. The short length of chain from collar to wall plate allowed him to kneel, sit or lie down on the hard cement floor, but not stand. He hadn’t stood in at least two days.

Two pairs of equally crude shackles bound his wrists and ankles together, and they had rubbed his flesh raw. He squirmed atop the clumps of matted straw scattered across the floor, his focus entirely on dislodging the saliva-damp gag that muffled his voice. So far, he’d managed to bite into his tongue and bottom lip until they bled. Over the past two days—
had it really been that long since his abduction; so easy to lose track of time in the dark
—his eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to distinguish at least ten other huddled and frightened abductees. A few remained blindfolded. He’d shed his by rubbing the side of his face against the rough stone wall. Since Gino’s arrival, two of his fellow prisoners had been taken away by their jailer. None of those remaining knew how much time they had left.

A woman at the far end of the basement, her features unreadable in darkness, occasionally whimpered in pain and, apparently, she’d been a prisoner longer than any of them. But she had no fight left in her. When she was coherent enough to speak, she told each new arrival—almost by rote, in a voice raspy from discomfort—what had transpired in the days since her capture. Her name was Alice. She said she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. And that statement triggered a recurring dry chuckle tinged with madness.

Though she’d been there the longest of the survivors, she had trouble keeping track of the days. She thought weeks might have passed since they’d slipped the collar around her neck. But she couldn’t say much about those taken in the days that followed.

“We all look the same in the dark,” she said, again with that dry chuckle.

Many days before Gino arrived, she’d rid herself of her gag and screamed her voice raw. But no help came. Wherever they were, the location was isolated, beyond hope of rescue. Unless they found a way to escape, they were doomed. Gino didn’t want to believe the woman, but feared the truth in her words.

Eventually, her screams had an unintended consequence. Annoyed by her insubordination, their jailer returned to the communal cell to mete out punishment. He’d kicked her into quiet submission, leaving her with several broken ribs. By the time Gino arrived, her spirit was as broken as her bones.

Though she no longer screamed, she could not remain silent. She told them the man would kill them all. No ransom demands. No bargaining. No reasoning with the madman. When their time came, he would drag them away, one by one. Sometimes he took two in one night. Each time, she’d heard bloodcurdling screams—and then silence.

Hours after he took one of the prisoners away, sounds of a party would drift down from the upper reaches of the house. A party every night. And Alice wondered: How could these partygoers celebrate in such close proximity to the monster tormenting and killing them and yet remain unaware of what was happening right under their noses?

For two nights, Gino had heard those sounds of merriment. But rather than presuming ignorance, he assigned them guilt, not by association, but by participation. Whatever was happening to the prisoners in the basement, the party people upstairs were part of it. If he’d been able to speak in more than a mumble, he might have revealed his suspicions to Alice and the others. Then again, he might have kept silent on that count. For some of them, terrified in the dark, their last shred of hope might cling to the idea that the partygoers would somehow find out about them and call the police or rush to their aid.