Free The Butcher by Jennifer Hillier Page B

closed his eyes. Jessica, age fourteen. She’d been someone’s daughter, someone’s granddaughter, someone’s friend. She’d been innocent. And now she was long dead, brutalized in the most horrific ways possible, at the hands (no pun intended) of his grandfather. The scene was tattooed in his mind; the shrieks and cries were a soundtrack that looped endlessly no matter how many times he tried to mentally turn the volume down.
    He finished his Corona and reached for another.
    Had his lola known? On the one hand, Marisol Perez Shank had been married to the Chief for almost fifty years—how could she not have known? But on the other hand, the Chief had lied to everyone. Why wouldn’t he have lied to his wife, too?
    Matt’s first instinct had been to confront his grandfather. Maybe, just maybe, there was some kind of strange explanation for it all that Matt hadn’t thought of. Maybe none of it was real. Maybe he’d hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe the tape was a fake, one of those fetish videos for people with really depraved sexual tastes. Maybe the Chiefhad tried his hand at acting, and the tape was just a re-creation of a crime he’d worked—
    Shut up, stupid. Of course it was real. The screams had been relentless until they’d finally faded to whimpers. There had been blood. There had been begging. There had been a sick satisfaction in his grandfather’s eerily distant eyes. You couldn’t fake these things. Nobody could.
    And what would he say to the Chief, anyway? More important, what was it he needed the Chief to say to him? Would it make a difference if the old man explained it to him somehow, explained that he was a psychopath and had murdered God knew how many innocent young girls because he couldn’t help himself? And that he was now sorry for what he’d done? Was that what Matt needed to hear? Would an apology make him feel better?
    Fuck, no. Nothing would make this better, except for Matt to hit the rewind button on his life so that he never looked inside the goddamned crate in the first place.
    Matt had also considered going to the authorities. After all, he was a responsible citizen, and it was clearly the right thing to do. He could just drive over to the nearest police precinct and dump the crate on some lucky detective’s desk. Let them wade through the contents, watch the tapes, test the hands for DNA, and find out the identities of the dead victims. Families would be notified and an arrest would be made. The Chief would be outed as the Butcher, and the trial would make national headlines. Reporters from all over the country would flock to cover the story of the hero who was really a monster. Books would be written, movies would be made. Edward Shank would die in prison, and everything Matt had worked so hard for would be gone.
    Because yes, this was about him, too. In this case, the “all publicity is good publicity” adage would not apply. Nobody would want to eatat a restaurant owned by the grandson of man who tortured, raped, and murdered little girls. Adobo would go bankrupt. The food trucks would disappear. No more Fresh Network show.
    Matt would be ruined.
    He finished his beer and stood up. The room spun, but not too badly, which at this point was unacceptable. He reached for the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey. He couldn’t remember who bought it for him, but it was disgusting stuff, not his usual thing. Didn’t matter. He needed to shut his brain off and sleep, and a few shots of whiskey would be about the only thing that would make that happen.
    The floor in the hallway leading to the kitchen creaked, and Matt whirled around.
    â€œGot another shot glass?” Edward Shank said.
    Matt stiffened as his grandfather approached. He hadn’t heard the front door open, but clearly it had, and in the Chief’s left hand dangled his key to the house. Matt had never asked him for it. Why