The Butcher

Stifled by bingo nights and gourmet egg-white omelets at Sweetbay Village, Edward¹ feels an old craving stir, an itch sharper than lust that he suppressed after framing Wedge⁹ and fed only in occasional slips. Late one night he follows a frail resident, Greg Bonner, to the kitchen, seizes his throat, and slams his head into the granite counter, killing him with a single efficient blow.

Staff rule it an accidental fall, because old men die in old homes every day. Edward¹ returns to his room calmer but not satisfied. He also drives past his former house, noting the dug-up yard, half hoping and half dreading that Matt² has found the crate and will finally understand who his grandfather¹ truly is.

Sick with what he has seen, Matt² drinks alone until Edward¹ lets himself in with his old key. Confronted about the crate and the tape, Edward¹ answers without flinching, explaining that he kills because he wants to and because he can, comparing it to eating to live. He confirms he buried the souvenirs himself and meant for Matt² to find them, since truly knowing him requires knowing his secrets.

He tells Matt² they are alike, both driven and dark. Then he delivers the trap: Matt² will never report him, because Matt² has everything to lose, the restaurant, the fame, the looming television show. He orders the crate destroyed and walks back into the night, certain of his grandson's² cowardice.

At Pike Place Market, Sam³ meets KillerRed,⁶ a warm woman in her forties named Bonnie Tidwell who nearly faints at Sam's³ resemblance to Sarah. Bonnie⁶ reveals she was Sarah's roommate and best friend, helped raise baby Sam,³ and survived the Butcher's attack, saved only when a wandering bear spooked him off her in the woods.

Back at Sam's³ home she promises to name the killer, then goes white the instant Sam³ mentions that her boyfriend's² grandfather is former chief Edward Shank.¹ Terrified, Bonnie⁶ refuses to say more, begs Sam³ to abandon the book, and rushes out. Unseen, Edward¹ has trailed them; he recognizes Bonnie⁶ as the only victim who ever escaped him, and feels decades of dormant hunger surge back.

Frayed by sleepless guilt, Matt's² temper erupts at his old friend and assistant chef PJ Wu⁷ over tardiness and a gum-on-the-lawn grudge. In the restaurant's back alley Matt² shoves him, then punches him; PJ⁷ falls, cracks his skull on a rock, and dies. Facing certain prison given a prior assault deal, Matt² hides the body in a shared dumpster and calls the only man who would know what to do.

Edward¹ arrives, coaches him to topple the dumpster with his van, and drives the corpse to the soundproofed garage. There he hands Matt² a chainsaw and forces him to dismember his friend, telling him to pretend it is just a spider he is killing, the way Matt² once did as a curious child.

Corpses surface. Bonnie⁶ is found behind a restaurant, stabbed once through the chest with an ice pick, her hands intact. A teenage girl, Jamie Chavez, turns up near the Tulalip casino, raped, strangled, her left hand cleanly severed.

Detective Robert Sanchez,⁵ Sam's³ lifelong protector who first found Sarah's body decades earlier, catches Bonnie's⁶ case. The media seizes on the missing hand and screams Butcher 2.0.

In truth Edward¹ killed both: he silenced the escaped Bonnie⁶ while leaving her hands attached so police would not connect her, and chose the teenager to resurrect his signature with cleaver and severed hand. The Butcher, dormant for twenty years, has staged his own return, ravenous to be feared and remembered before death takes him quietly.

In an interrogation room, Sanchez⁵ shares a secret he was never meant to know. The Butcher took more than hands: he snipped a hidden swatch of hair from each victim's nape, a detail kept out of every report on Edward Shank's¹ explicit orders, and the medical examiner's files have since vanished.

Both Bonnie⁶ and Jamie were missing that same lock, as were Sarah and two other women murdered across the years. The conclusion guts Sam:³ the killings never stopped, Rufus Wedge⁹ was innocent, and Seattle's celebrated task force shot the wrong man. Her theory is vindicated at last, yet it brings only emptiness. Her mother is still dead, and the true Butcher has roamed free, uncaught, the entire time.

Desperate not to lose Sam³ as their relationship collapses, Matt² brings her to his kitchen and proposes with his late grandmother's vintage diamond ring,⁸ swearing he will finally change. Sam,³ who has drifted toward her oldest friend Jason⁴ and no longer loves Matt² the way she should, gently refuses. Grief and old heat pull them into one last embrace on the table.

But when she tells him to stop, he does not. He clamps a hand around her throat, ignoring her struggles and clawing nails, and chokes her until her vision goes black. The intimacy curdles into assault, exposing the same ungoverned rage that killed PJ,⁷ the inheritance Edward¹ keeps insisting his grandson² cannot escape.

Sanchez⁵ drops a bombshell on Sam:³ DNA proves Bonnie's⁶ killer and PJ Wu's⁷ killer are father and son. Sam³ carries the news to Matt's² house, where Edward¹ is cooking and has just confessed killing Marisol⁸ and revealed that Matt's² mother, Lucy, hanged herself after he raped her. When Sam³ announces the father-son match, the full atrocity detonates.

Edward¹ is not merely Matt's² grandfather but his father, the product of Lucy's abuse, and the man who murdered Sam's³ mother. As Matt² reels in horror, Edward¹ swings a kitchen cleaver into Sam's³ chest. She crumples with the blade lodged near her heart, while Matt² screams for a phone that Edward¹ has already, calmly, slipped into his own pocket.

Having disabled the landline by taking Matt's² cell, Edward¹ dares his son² to kill him to save Sam,³ savoring the test. Matt² wrestles the gun free but cannot fire cleanly, refusing to become the thing his father¹ is, and Edward¹ flees to his remote hunting cabin in Raymond. Sanchez,⁵ having matched the DNA to Matt² and finally grasped that Edward¹ is the Butcher, arrives to find Sam³ bleeding and Matt² confessing the whole nightmare.

Police track Edward¹ to the woods where decades earlier he framed Wedge⁹ and buried his victims. Dressed in his old chief's uniform, gold tassels and brass buttons gleaming, Edward¹ raises a rifle so the officers must shoot him down, claiming the spectacular death he always wanted.