Chapter Twenty-Six
Mistakes and Old Bones
Butch
Butch woke feeling exhilarated and ready to get started. He made a cup of coffee, and used it to wash down a handful of beef jerky. He wheeled Chris out of the freezer and positioned the hooks and chains. Unfortunately, the experimentation with Chris’s body didn’t go as planned.
He had set up the prep area like his father’s butcher shop, but added an overhead moving rail system that resembled the slaughterhouse.
He hadn’t taken into account that Chris’s body was frozen.
The gambrel hooks wouldn’t penetrate the frozen muscle, and he was unable to watch the body move along the chain system.
The trial and error frustrated him, and a cloud of red filled his head. He tossed his tools against the side wall, and stomped on several. When his focus returned, the surrounding area looked like a tornado came through.
This was wrong. He should have more control. He steadied his breathing with deep inhales and exhales. To stay under the radar, he had to be smart. Part of that was governing his dark side.
He placed Chris’s body in a vat of water so it could thaw. When he was able to, he gutted the body in order to save the meat. He would plan better in the future. Preparing Chris was a slow and meticulous process. In the end, he had little in the way of edible portions.
He started his first report. He cataloged his mistakes and overall findings by meticulously writing everything down in a notebook. It kept his mind clear, and this failure in perspective.
It took Butch three more kills to perfect disemboweling, skinning, and processing the human body.
Due to the foods humans ate, their meat generally had a rank taste.
Through trial and error, he was able to refine the procedure, and produce bacon and sausage that had a much better flavor than roasts and other cuts.
Human meat had to be disguised with herbs or smoked to make it edible.
Without the benefit of extreme hunger, he didn’t think he could survive on human meat unless it was prepared correctly. His first batch of salami was as good as pork. After much trial and error, the bacon could pass.
Besides herbs and smoking, he tried drying and canning techniques to preserve what he needed for his own survival. It took a year before he stopped purchasing meat from the grocery stores.
As time passed, choosing his victims became harder. Forensic science was advancing. He dwelled on Cindy. He’d left his DNA behind, especially beneath her fingernails. Her body held secrets that needed to stay buried.
He studied everything available about evidence collection and solving cold cases. The only chance he had was to stay out of police hands. If they never took his DNA, they had nothing to compare with the evidence left on Cindy.
The ancestry test kits worried him. His parents weren’t close to their families, but it didn’t mean a distant relative wouldn’t crop up somewhere and use one of those things.
It worried him until he thought he was going insane.
When the bad thoughts took over, he’d go on the hunt.
Killing was the only thing that kept him stable.
Within two years of him moving in, more people moved onto the ranch.
Most had no clue how hard it was to live without electricity and running water.
To be comfortable off grid, you needed money.
His place had the comforts, though keeping them in good running order took time.
His garage could pass for a hardware store.
An older woman moved into a huge monstrosity of a garage he’d had his eye on.
The only thing that held him back was that the federal government owned it after a seizure.
The east side of the property was a little too close for comfort.
Butch found her name in the ranch newsletter.
A year after she moved in, he stopped worrying about her.
Joan had her own secrets, and she stayed to herself.
The ranch remained stable until the Hogg family bought their homestead.
Butch never liked them, and kept a close watch on everything they did.
He didn’t like how they treated their dogs.
When Butch made a kill, it was clean and quick, or so he liked to tell himself.
His victim’s terror was short-lived, and he didn’t torture them more than absolutely necessary.
He needed to see the defeat in their eyes: the exact moment they realized their end was inevitable.
That’s when he put them out of their misery.
The Hoggs were trouble that ended up resolving itself with Joan’s help. The fact that she died in the process was the shine on the cleaver. Then the old deputy came into the picture, and he worried again. Eighteen months later, Joan’s granddaughter joined him.
Butch stayed out of their way, and they stayed out of his. Then they spotted him as he returned from burying a new set of bones.
Since that meeting, Butch couldn’t get his mind off Willow.
She fascinated him for some reason he didn’t understand.
She popped into his thoughts at the oddest times.
He wanted to touch her hair, and run his fingers through it.
Sniffing her neck where it met her jaw became a fantasy he couldn’t let go of.
Maybe it was her eyes that intrigued him the most. She had sad eyes that held a history he wanted to understand.
Butch went into town for a few supplies, and heard the buzz about the bones found on Willow’s property.
They had discovered Christopher Lanston.
Butch should have dug him up and relocated him to the burial ground he’d established when it became evident he needed someplace to hide the bodies, and where he could visit when he was lonely.
He’d forgotten about Chris, and now his bones were in law enforcement hands. If he killed the deputy, the girl might be available. He’d gone all these years without interference, and now one of his secrets had come to light.
The disposal of bodies had been something else he learned through trial and error.
Even after stripping the meat, there was too much carcass left.
His father had a service that picked up the remains, but that wasn’t possible for Butch.
He’d buried his early kills on BLM land, or so he thought.
Chris’s bones were on Willow’s land. Heavy rain must have softened the hard ground to the point the bones shifted down the gulch.
His process for carrying the remains was solid. He dismembered, wrapped them in plastic, then froze the bones until he was ready to move them. He could easily carry them in his backpack this way.
He did not keep trophies. He wasn’t a serial killer; he was a connoisseur of fine cuisine.
The world was becoming a dangerous place, and his meticulous records would someday save lives.
Butch never consumed the brains or any part of the central nervous system.
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, better known as Mad Cow Disease, was discovered in his formative years.
His father paid close attention, and when he was gone, Butch continued to monitor the scientific data.
The disease could show itself up to fifty years after consuming infected meat.
Then there was the Kuru epidemic that killed people in Papua New Guinea in the mid-twentieth century.
Kuru meant "to tremble" or "to shiver," and like Spongiform Encephalopathy, it was fatal.
Kuru was caused by prions, which are misfolded proteins that cause a progressive, fatal brain disease, and replicated Mad Cow Disease.
The Fore people of Papua New Guinea were cannibals, which Butch found fascinating. They practiced endocannibalism or funerary cannibalism by consuming the entire body of their dead family members. It was a mistake that cost lives.
The Fore people were among Butch’s favorite to study. He’d been disappointed to discover that many cases of cannibalism throughout the world were lies. If you convinced people that a group ate human meat, the area was far easier to colonize. The tactic worked, so why change it.
Cannibalism was as old as time. Butch took on the role as savior for a select group of people who would see what he did as their salvation.
The people who lived on the ranch might think like him if it came to life and death.
For now, he was his own test subject. His findings would eventually be hailed as visionary.
He woke from a dream one night with an image of Willow. That’s when his thoughts shifted. He wasn’t sure why she attracted his attention, or why he didn’t want to kill her. The deputy, yes, but something about Willow pulled at him.
He decided to wait and watch.