The Butcher and the Wren

The girl who was buried alive went into respiratory distress and died. Her stab wound was in the C6 region of her spine, rendering her paralyzed. When Wren receives this information, she shakes her own leg, horrified. The killer tended to the wound, and what killed her was hemlock poison. Wren finds this upsetting and cannot help but think of the dead girl’s grieving parents finding out the horrifying details of her fate. She sorts through the victim’s belongings, her ruined clothing covered in blood and vomit, before looking at The Bracelet. She can hardly believe it, but it’s real. It’s her bracelet from another life, years ago. Wren is Emily, by a different name now.

Jeremy is upset about his self-proclaimed failure. He’s unsatisfied that his victim was uncovered alive, even though he took precautions and poisoned her with hemlock, the same poison that Socrates ingested when he was sentenced to death in ancient Athens. He wants Emily to remember who he is and to remember the time that she spent running from him in the bayou. Even years later, he’s still upset about his other failure: Emily’s escape. He obsesses about it, and though he wants to remain calm and measured, he cannot.

Wren is the name that Emily chose for herself when she put the pieces of her life back together after her brutal attack by Cal/Jeremy, because wrens “signify rebirth and protection, immortality, and strength” (161). When Jeremy stabbed her, he missed her spinal cord, allowing Wren to use Katie’s body to escape despite her blurry vision. She blamed herself in the past for being an “easy” mark, but now she knows that the horrors she endured were not her fault. Wren finds the memories haunting, and the image of Cal’s smile haunts her most of all. Now, because of The Bracelet, she knows that Cal was the Bayou Butcher and killed people before he took her, and now he’s doing it again. She calls John and asks if he’s on his way to her and tells him that she has something big to tell him.

She starts the incision on the latest victim, Emma, and fights tears as she thinks about what Emma went through and what Wren went through herself. Emma was a runner, and her legs are still strong, though she has scrapes on her feet. Wren wonders if Emma was taken to the same swamp that she was. When John gets there, Wren tells him that the victims are taken to a controlled environment: the killer’s house that he inherited it from his parents. John tells her that that’s a leap of logic, but then Wren admits that she knows who is doing it. She tells him that she was Emily Maloney, that Muller is her married name, and that she changed her first name to Wren. John says that his father worked on her case, and Wren remembers him as a kind man who believed her, while other officers thought that she made it up due to the drugs in her system. They also didn’t believe her because she described Cal as brunette, while other witnesses identified the Butcher as blonde. Though Wren insisted that he dyed his hair, her testimony was still dismissed because she could not identify where she had been taken after she escaped. She begins to cry, and John holds her. 

Wren composes herself and shows John the bracelet. She discusses the details of what Cal told her. He inherited a home from his ailing mother, which is likely where she and the other victims were taken. She also finally places the name Philip Trudeau: He was Cal’s childhood best friend. John agrees to call Philip and ask if he knows Cal/Jeremy. Wren also removes herself from the case, given her personal connection to the killer.

Jeremy feels out of control, full of rage that his moment was taken from him because Emma was not dead when she was dug up. He goes on the hunt at a bar called O’Grady’s. Towards last call, he scans the bar, settling on a woman in her mid-twenties whom he finds repulsive due to her repositioning her dress in a way that Jeremy finds vulgar. He projects desperation and delusion onto her. He asks the bartender to send her a Cosmo, then approaches her. After a brief conversation, he invites the woman, named Tara, back to his house under the pretense of doing cocaine, after he spots blood in her nose that indicates that she is a regular cocaine user. She agrees and willingly gets in Jeremy’s car. They ride in silence until Jeremy makes small talk with Tara. She is a lawyer but lost her first job after she graduated law school. Jeremy takes the car down a backroad, not quite near his house. He stops the car and says that it’s a nice evening for a walk, and though Tara senses danger, she follows him as he turns on a flashlight and walks into the woods.

Tara continues to flirt with Jeremy, teasing him for assuming that she is not smart because she’s wearing a low-cut dress. She leans in to kiss him, and right before their lips touch, Jeremy tells her to run. Tara thinks that it’s a joke until he pulls his knife out of his boot. She runs into the dark, and Jeremy puts on night vision goggles and pursues her. He taunts her like he taunts all his victims, telling her that fear makes the meat of an animal taste worse. She hides, and Jeremy pelts her with rocks. She begs him to stop, but he catches her and cuts her palm. As Tara screams, the voices of two men call out, offering help. Jeremy panics and grabs her and gags her with his hand. After a moment of consideration, he slits her throat and runs away, leaving her dying body there for the men to find. He knows that they will not be able to save her.

He gets back to his car and screams and cries, upset that he was nearly caught and went into an unknown territory instead of sticking to his careful routine. He drives home listening to loud music, his anger threatening to swallow him whole.

John gets a call from his partner, Will, saying that they have another victim, but this one is alive. Though she is alive, she cannot speak. John and Wren rush to the hospital to see what is going on. Though Wren removed herself from the case, she still wants to be involved, too.

When John and Wren get to the hospital, Will fills them in on the details of Tara’s attack. Two night hunters found her where she had been attacked, and though her throat was slashed, her carotid artery was only nicked, so they were able to save her life. Her vocal cords were damaged in the attack, so she cannot speak while she recovers. The police gave her a paper to write on, and she scribbled the name Jeremy. At the scene, the police found Tara’s receipt from O’Grady’s, pointing them to where Jeremy picked her up. John and Wren go to investigate and see who else saw Jeremy with Tara.