Free Grimm: The Chopping Block by John Passarella

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