The Butcher and the Wren

Jeremy lurks at the St. Louis No. 1 cemetery the day after he buried his victim alive in one of the old inground graves. There are not many of these given that New Orleans’ placement atop a water table makes burial in the ground challenging, as the water pushes the buried caskets up. He remembers putting the woman in the casket he dug up alongside the desiccated bones of the original corpse. He relished in putting Emily’s bracelet on her wrist before he buried the woman. He remembers hiding the dead, rotting body beneath the stage at the jazz festival and watching with glee as people recognized the horrible smell. Jeremy can still see the woman’s face before he killed her, the fear and anguish fresh in his memory. He reminds himself that he can make no mistakes this time in his mission—his mission that began seven years ago.

The girl who was buried alive went into respiratory distress and died. Her stab wound was in the C6 region of her spine, rendering her paralyzed. When Wren receives this information, she shakes her own leg, horrified. The killer tended to the wound, and what killed her was hemlock poison. Wren finds this upsetting and cannot help but think of the dead girl’s grieving parents finding out the horrifying details of her fate.