The Butcher and the Wren

John and Wren arrive at the house of the owner of O’Grady’s Bar. He is horrified to hear that the Butcher was in his bar and promises to help with the investigation in any way he can. John gets a call from the station about another potential witness. He leaves Will to interview the bar owner and heads to the station, stopping to take Wren home on the way.

Jeremy watches Wren through the windows of her house. He’s watched her for a long time and now knows her nighttime routine. He’s only observed her and left clues from far away, but tonight he plans to get closer. He watches for hours until the middle of the night, then breaks into the basement. Though Wren has taken precautions with her home and always double checks her locks, her basement is unfinished, and one of the three windows is unlocked and simply painted shut. Jeremy thinks that Wren left the basement security to her husband and that he failed to notice the painted shut window or thought that a layer of paint was secure enough. Jeremy uses a knife to break through the old lead paint and then climbs into the basement. He carefully walks up the stairs and looks at the decor of the home and the items that Wren leaves scattered in her wake throughout her evening. He sneaks up the stairs and sits outside Wren’s bedroom door, thrilled by the idea that she and her husband are asleep with no idea that someone lurks inside their home. After an hour of sitting, he sneaks into the bedroom and steals the large diamond ring on Wren’s night table—her grandmother’s wedding ring that she once told Jeremy about when she was Emily, and he was Cal. The ring doesn’t fit Wren, but she keeps it on her nightstand as a comfort item. Jeremy takes it and puts it on his pinky. He stops and looks at Wren and fantasizes about killing her but wants her to know that it was him who killed her when he finally does it. He sneaks out the way he came in and retreats into the night.

Wren has a missed call from John. She sits at the kitchen table with Richard, and he tells her that she doesn't have to be part of the case anymore. Wren thinks back to the day before when John dropped her off. She couldn’t stop thinking about the hemlock that killed Emma. She’d only seen it once before in her career. She tells Richard that she has to see this case through and calls John back.

She tells him about the only other hemlock death she’d seen, which was a supposed suicide of an old woman. Hemlock causes seizures and horrible pain, so it is an unlikely suicide method. The woman was named Mona Rose, and her next of kin was her son, Jeremy Rose. John tells her that Philip Trudeau also said the name Jeremy Rose, which confirms that Jeremy is the Butcher. Another witness confirmed that a man matching Jeremy’s description was in the bar where Tara was last seen. Jeremy’s smile was memorable to the witness. Wren recalls Jeremy's crooked smile. It disarmed her, making Jeremy feel safe and unassuming. Wren wants to go with John to arrest Jeremy, but Richard begs her not to. She assures Richard that she’ll stay with John for protection but that she must see this through.

Jeremy plays with Wren’s grandmother’s ring on his finger as he walks through his house. He mentally prepares for what is to come. In a fit of anger, unable to center himself, he punches the doorframe. He sees the blood on the door and hopes that the police will stop and wonder whose blood it is. He also smashes a vase against the wall, hoping that the glass will slow down the police. He’s enraged that Wren will force him from his home and his hunting ground. After washing the blood from his knuckles, he places the ring on the coffee table in the center of the living room for Wren to see.

At the police station, John and his partner Will have solidified the identification of Jeremy Rose from the bartender who saw him with Tara. They prepare to raid his house, and John tells Wren that she should come and bring her kit in case of any bodies. John, Will, and Wren drive together to Jeremy’s house, nausea rising in Wren. When they arrive at the house, the police start the raid. They do not find Jeremy in the house, but Wren immediately spots her ring on the coffee table. She feels violated at the thought of Jeremy in her house. The Smell of Decay fills the house, so Wren follows the officers into the basement. They find the dead woman in the freezer. As Wren looks around the basement, it’s how she imagined it, even though Jeremy never brought her down there. As Wren begins to examine the body, they hear music start to play. Wren and the officers follow the music into the bayou. They find another decomposing body in the swamp. Wren pulls a bullet out of the corpse, but before she can examine the body further, John is shot in the leg with a crossbow arrow. Jeremy calls Wren “Emily,” which unnerves her. She stares, frozen, at Jeremy, who looks calm and satiated with the series of events. She takes John’s gun and aims at Jeremy but cannot bring herself to pull the trigger. Before anything else can happen, Will shoots Jeremy in the chest. Jeremy rolls away and out of sight. Officers chase him, and Wren stays with John until the officers return to ask her to confirm that Jeremy is dead. She follows them to a body, and it appears that Jeremy shot himself in the face. Wren examines the body, but the face is slightly wrong. Wren looks closer and finds no gunshot wound to the chest where Will shot Jeremy. The officers pan out to look for the real Jeremy while Wren returns to John to tell him that Jeremy got away.

Jeremy slinks out of the swamp and removes his bulletproof vest, pausing to examine the bruise left by the bullet that shot him. He knows that Wren will discover that the body is not him soon, but he delights in the fact that he bested her. He is also happy that Wren could not shoot him but wonders if she’d hesitate again if the situation happened again. He knows that she will not get the chance, as he’s heading hundreds of miles away from her. He continues through the swamp, looking at the other “monsters” lurking, the crocodiles that are as bloodthirsty as him. He walks down the road and away from the bayou.