Grimm: The Chopping Block (28 page)

Maybe the round shape was an analog for the circle on the flyers.

He recalled the one triangle that faced away from the circle, the
Leeren Stuhl
, or open chair, and wondered if the equivalent spot on the map circle marked the location of the feast. He grabbed a legal pad and wrote down the approximate address of that southwest point on the circle.

At that moment, he heard quick footsteps behind him. At first he thought Wu had come with news on Hank, but as he turned he saw that it was Monroe, with an anxious look in his eyes.

“Nick, we’re running out of time before—where’s Hank?”

“Taken,” Nick said gravely. “Killer grabbed him at his house last night.”

“The killer? The bare bones killer? As in, the Silver Plate Society killer?”

“Yes, I believe so,” Nick said. He approached Monroe and lowered his voice. “I believe Hank was taken, in part, because he’s African American. For the menu variety.”

Monroe looked up at the board, the photos of the victims.

“So they haven’t—they didn’t take a—?”

“Not a male. Not until Hank,” Nick said. “I have to hope he’s still alive.”

“The
Leeren Stuhl
days are almost over,” Monroe said. “The empty chair invitation is the last week. Judging by how long the flyers have been in circulation, there’s only a day left—two at the outside. Once it’s over, these guys vanish for twenty-five years. Scattered to the four corners.”

“I’m well aware that the clock is ticking.”

“Right. But I wanted to—this is even worse than I thought, because if Hank is the, if it’s the last day, then that means that he’s…”

“Spit it out, Monroe.”

“Once I knew the Silver Plate Society was responsible for the—for everything, I went back and checked for references about them and, it turns out, the last day of the feasting month is reserved for the
Straffe Kette Abendessen
, the ‘Tight Chain Supper.’”

“Do you know what that means? Exactly?”

Captain Renard walked into the conference room.

“I do,” he said. “It’s the live meal.”

“How do you—?”

“Finally heard back from some of my own sources,” Renard said. “Various rumors and myths about the Silver Plate Society, embellished over the years by urban legend and blatant exaggeration, but some things kept turning up, and the Tight Chain Supper was among them.”

“But a live meal means…”

“He’s chained to a table, alive and awake,” Monroe said. “And they cut into him with knives and claws and, well, cannibalism doesn’t get much more hardcore than that.”

“If that’s happening tonight,” Nick said, “We’ve only got a few hours to find him…”
Before it’s too late
, he finished silently.

Sergeant Wu approached, rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb.

“Got something.”

Nick, Renard and Monroe gave him their undivided attention.

“Just got off the phone with Gary down in Computer Forensics,” Wu said. “The same phony residential addresses and names that they turned up on Crawford’s half-nuked hard drive, he’s also found on Sheila Jenkins’ computer.”

“Fake addresses and IDs get us nowhere,” Renard said.

“True,” Wu said. “But Sheila Jenkins was not as security conscious as Crawford. No encryption. No self-destruct program. Apparently, Crawford—who dealt only with business leasing—knew Sheila. He contacted her to arrange some premium, short-term, and secret residential leases, luxury homes, high-end condos and apartments.”

“Short term,” Nick said. “As in one month?”

“Give or take a week,” Wu said, nodding. “Crawford convinced her the clients were celebrities who demanded anonymity and were willing to pay a premium for it.”

“Celebrities?” Monroe asked. “Really?”

“Based on her notes, that’s what Crawford told her. Business had been slow and, with substantial security deposits in hand, she didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

“How does this help us?” Renard asked.

“In one of her personal folders, Gary found a file called ‘Celebrities’ which, it turns out, is a translation key to the phony addresses. Beside each phony address is the actual address of the property.”

“Warrants?” Nick said, glancing at Captain Renard.

“We’ve been waiting for a break on this case,” Renard said. “The DA has a judge on standby. We’ve got probable cause. They’d move fast. But with a kidnapped police officer at risk in a murder spree, we’ve got an emergency exception.” He turned to Wu. “How many addresses?”

“At least a dozen.”

“Teams of two, minimum,” Renard said. “Let’s hit as many addresses simultaneously as possible. Go!”

Wu rushed off to start making arrangements for coordinated raids, while Renard returned to his office to update his superiors. Monroe caught Nick’s arm on his way out of the conference room.

“Nick, the feast won’t be at any of those rental homes,” Monroe said. “You’re looking for a secluded location, with an official host. That’s where they’ll have Hank and any other kidnap victims who are still alive.”

“I realize that,” Nick said. “But if we catch any members of the society, we’ll have them take us to that location.”

“The Silver Plate Society has survived for hundreds of years,” Monroe said. “Maybe longer. Even if you catch them, they won’t talk.”

“Oh, they’ll talk,” Nick said as he hurried out. “Believe me, they’ll talk.”

* * *

They spent the next two hours raiding spacious rental homes, luxury condos and apartments. Nick partnered with Wu for backup. They personally checked three of the addresses, and faced one disappointment after another. Each location showed signs of recent habitation and more recent abandonment. Dishes in the sink, an occasional tipped over trashcan, closet doors open, hangers spilled across the floor, and, under one bed, a forgotten pair of red Manolo Blahnik sandals. The contents of a few trashcans had been burned in place.

Other teams recovered some articles of clothing, coffee, alcohol and bottled water, but few food items. Nick imagined they wouldn’t eat anything much more than what was being served on the cannibal menu and would always plan to arrive at the feasting location with a hearty appetite. They’d waited twenty-five years to indulge themselves on human flesh. No sense filling up on the bread basket.

Unfortunately, none of the teams recovered anything identifiable to any particular individual. The members of the Silver Plate Society had traveled to Portland under false identities. Maybe Crawford’s computer had a key to convert the false identities to real, prosecutable names, but if so, the techs hadn’t found it.

When Nick had a moment away from Wu, he called Monroe to tell him the raids had been a waste of time, too much time. The crime scene techs would dust the rental properties for prints and swab for DNA on any items left behind, but identification remained a longshot unless some of the cannibals were already in the system.

“Nick, if they’ve abandoned those rentals, today must be the last day,” Monroe said. “From what I’ve read, they’ll gather together at the feasting location, a farewell celebration, like closing ceremonies.”

“How could they know we were coming?”

“Could be the last day timing,” Monroe said. “Or…”

“Or what?”

“Or they’ve been told Hank’s a cop,” Monroe said. “And they’re covering their tracks as a precaution. In a way, this is good news.”

“Good news?” Nick asked, incredulous. “How?”

“I’m just saying, they won’t forfeit their last day,” Monroe replied. “This is it for them, Nick, the big finish—the
pièce de résistance
—after which they’ll go their separate ways for twenty-five years. So no, they won’t deprive themselves of their last glorious day of feasting. The
Straffe Kette Abendessen
is highly anticipated by these guys. It
will
go on as planned. And if they’re saving Hank for that last ‘tight chain’ meal—”

“Then he’s still alive.”

“Guaranteed.”

“For how long?” Nick asked, dreading the answer.

“That’s the bad news,” Monroe said. “Hank’s running out of time.”

* * *

Nick took the Portland map from the Claremont Park board to Monroe’s house. He set it on the table, hoping that between the two of them they might come up with the location for the cannibal feasts. Above the map, he laid out the four flyers. Monroe stood beside him, hands stuffed in the front pockets of his light cable-knit sweater, frowning in concentration.

“If these flyers are the invitation,” Nick reasoned, “the guests need to find the banquet. But each address leads to one of the other addresses. And none of them are the banquet location.”

“They’re a set,” Monroe said. “You need all four.”

“That’s why I marked the locations on the map.”

“And you made a red rectangle,” Monroe said, “and a blue—kinda—circle.”

“I thought maybe the circle matched the circle drawn on the flyers,” Nick said. “Converting it to the map and the open-chair triangle as the location.”

“What’s at that location?”

“Near as I can tell,” Nick said. “A soccer field.”

“So, unless it’s underground,” Monroe said. “Probably not a cannibal resort.”

“No,” Nick said. Moving the circle from the flyer to the map had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it led nowhere.

“I remember reading something about the invitation,” Monroe said, walking around to the far side of the table and picking up some of the old books and journals he’d been checking for details on the Silver Plate Society. He had a series of sticky notes attached to more than a dozen pages. He leafed through two books before opening one of a more recent vintage. “Here it is. ‘When Open Chair arrives, make your invitation and partake in our feast.’” He looked at Nick and shook his head. “I thought the open chair
was
the invitation.”

Nick looked at the map for a moment.

“I’ve been focusing too much on the information we lacked—or thought we lacked—rather than on what we know.”

Monroe returned to Nick’s side of the table. “You have an idea?”

Nick took the red marker out of his jacket pocket.

“This rectangle…” he said as he uncapped the marker. “If you connect the four points, top left to bottom right and top right to bottom left—” Nick drew an X inside the rectangle “—it sort of looks like the folds of paper on the back of an envelope. An invitation.”

Monroe tapped the intersection of the two lines. “And ‘X’ marks the spot.”

Examining the nearest cross streets on the map, Nick said, “I know that place. There’s an old shopping center there. And a used car lot on the other side of the street.”

Monroe was shaking his head as Nick talked.

“What’s wrong?”

“They’d want something more refined, Nick. Something secluded and maybe a bit scenic. That place is low-rent commercial. Probably an eyesore.”

They stood together in silence, Nick conscious of the ticking clock. Each minute that passed put Hank at greater risk. They had no idea what time the ‘tight chain’ feast would begin. Once they started cutting into Hank with knives and claws—Nick couldn’t let it get that far.

“What are we missing?” Nick wondered aloud.

The
Leeren Stuhl
was planned to bring nonmembers to the feast. Nonmembers were on the outside, looking in. They would need to figure out how to get to the damn feast.

The flyers held the answer—they
had
to.

Each flyer led to the location of another. The four addresses had to show the way. A complicated code would defeat the purpose of the open invitation. If it was too hard to figure out, nobody outside the inner circle would come. And they had gone to a lot of effort to spread the flyers around town, hiring a hooded and gloved man to run around and put them in place.

“It’s there,” Nick said, pointing at the X. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Monroe jumped on his computer and brought up a mapping site, zooming in on the location marked by the center of the X and then accessing photographic street views. Rotating the street view through the full 360 degrees, he confirmed Nick’s memory of a shopping center and a used car lot, along with a bowling alley and an audio equipment store. Nothing remotely upscale.

“No way, Nick. Not here.”

Nick looked over his shoulder. He noticed a bus stop shelter near the intersection.

“That’s it!”

“No, man, I’m telling you, these guys are into upscale—”

“Not the banquet,” Nick said. “A pickup point.”

Monroe thought about it for a moment. “Ah… a chauffeur! That makes sense.”

“But how?” Nick wondered. “How do they contact the chauffeur? No phone number on the flyers.”

“Not how,” Monroe said. “When.”

“Same problem,” Nick said. “Or does it run every thirty minutes, like a shuttle at Disney World?”

Monroe picked up one of the flyers. “The open chair location on the circle,” Monroe said. “It’s not southwest. The circle doesn’t represent a compass. It’s a clock face.”

“Which would make it… seven o’clock.”

“Picked up at seven,” Monroe said. “Dinner wouldn’t be until eight o’clock. Maybe later. But not before.”

“Hank has until eight o’clock.”

“Not that we’d want to cut it that close,” Monroe said. “Okay, ‘cut’ was a poor word choice, but yeah, eight o’clock is a safe bet.”

Nick checked the time and experienced a stab of anxiety, bordering on panic. Hours wasted with so little time left before Hank became the main course at a cannibal party.

“That gives us less than an hour to get in position for the pickup.”

“Us?”

“Well, you,” Nick said. “I assume the invitation is Wesen-only.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you’re accepting the
Leeren Stuhl
invitation.” Off Monroe’s panicked expression, Nick added, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to eat any flesh. And I’ll be following you all the way—at a discreet distance.”

“Okay, sure,” Monroe said nervously. “Absolutely nothing could go wrong with that plan.”

With a nervous Monroe in tow, Nick stopped at Juliette’s house to pick up Hank’s belongings, where he’d left them after the crime scene team finished with them. Juliette heard him pull up and greeted him at the door with a kiss, then trailed after him as he purposefully crossed the room. Her coat still on, pocketbook on the sofa, she must have arrived moments before him.