50 pages • 1 hour read
The Butcher Game
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Chapters 22-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, graphic violence, child abuse, and mental illness.
Jeremy spent summers in the Berkshires with his family when Jeremy and Philip were teenagers. They drank beer at bars using poorly made fake IDs, took Philip’s parents’ boat out at night, and drove round in Philip’s Jeep. Philip was invincible because his father was a judge, so they never got in trouble for their behavior. One night, a drunken Philip tried to toss his car keys to Jeremy. The keys almost hit a girl who was also leaving the bar. She tried to flirt with Jeremy, who got overly defensive and gave the keys back to Philip. Philip began driving, but he nodded off behind the wheel. He then hit the woman from the bar, who was walking on the dark road.
Philip thought he hit a deer, but Jeremy knew immediately that it was a person. They got out of the car and saw the woman lying on the ground. Philip panicked and wanted to call 911, but Jeremy told him that this would ruin his life since he was drunk driving. Instead, Jeremy decided to take the woman, whom they identified as Morgan Davies from her driver’s license, into the woods. Philip followed, afraid, watching in horror as Jeremy murdered Morgan and buried her. To ensure Philip’s silence, Jeremy buried Philip’s school ID with her body. Philip and Jeremy stayed friends for some time afterward, despite feeling haunted by Morgan, but they eventually fell out of touch.
In Philip’s house now, Jeremy still feels her presence.
Chapter 23 Summary
Wren and Richard enjoy their coffee on the porch of their rental cottage.
Leroux calls Wren: The police stonewalling is still happening, as the small Massachusetts departments don’t want to involve Leroux and Wren in their investigation. Wren is frustrated that the police are so eager for the glory of catching Jeremy that they would cut out those with experience in pursuing him. Leroux is also annoyed because the police seem to have an informant that Leroux doesn’t know much about.
Leroux tells Wren that another woman is missing. Wren asks about following up on Philip Trudeau, but the police have declared that lead dead, especially given Philip’s family’s connections to law enforcement and his status as a pastor in the community. Leroux and Wren plan to visit the station later to gather more information. Leroux also warns Wren about Jeremy finding out about her presence, so Wren tells Richard that they should go inside.
Chapter 24 Summary
Jeremy hears a party on the lake. Angry, he follows the noise of the party and watches as the young adult revelers spill drinks on each other and dance along to Top 40 popular music. He spots a woman who looks about 25, immediately feeling contempt for how much food she’s eating and how animated she is when talking to other party attendees. Jeremy thinks her behavior is attention-seeking. When she leaves to urinate in the woods, Jeremy follows her. She notices him, so he pretends to also urinate. He casually flirts with her and introduces himself as Brett, the roommate of one of the party hosts. The girl is named Jenna. After some conversation, Jeremy lures her on a walk. He leads her to the dock, where he steals a boat under the guise of taking her on a romantic boat ride. She gets on the boat, and they speed off into the night.
Chapter 25 Summary
At the police station, younger cops mock Wren and Leroux until Sergeant Brixton invites them into his office. Wren and Leroux press Brixton for information, but he’s protective of his department. He also refuses to narrow the focus of their investigation to Jeremy, claiming that there could be other killers active in the area. Wren and Leroux are even more frustrated that Brixton refuses to question Philip Trudeau again.
Wren and Leroux leave and look up Philip’s church. They visit the church and interrupt his Bible study. Wren notices that the women of the group hang on every word Philip says, which disgusts her, especially in light of his ex-wife’s social media claims of infidelity.
In his office, Philip claims that he has not seen Jeremy since they were teenagers and that the worst thing they ever did together was drink cheap beer and mess around with Ouija boards. He asks them to leave. As they depart, Wren notices a receipt from a Salem gas station on his desk. She decides to check in with Corinne about the investigation into Andrea’s murder since Andrea’s sister mentioned her seeing a man named Phil.
Chapter 26 Summary
On the boat, Jeremy tells Jenna that his real name is not Brett. He also mocks her for trusting him so easily and for walking off into the night with a stranger. He then tells her to jump in the lake and swim. She refuses, so he threatens her with his knife. As he counts down from 10, she jumps and swims for shore. He follows her on the boat, and when she reaches shore, he begins chasing her on foot. He can hear her struggle to run in her wet clothes and shoes until she decides to hide behind a rock. He then catches her and strangles her against the rock while she pleads for her life. He stabs her in the stomach and drags her into the forest.
Chapter 27 Summary
The next morning, three teenage boys discover the boat that Jeremy stole. In the boat is a human heart. The police investigate, having already gotten an anonymous tip about a body at the lake. However, they are still resistant to Wren and Leroux joining the investigation, even as Wren and Leroux are more certain than ever that this is Jeremy. Corinne followed up with Wren the previous day: Andrea from Salem appeared to be tortured to death; one of her ex-boyfriends, not the mysterious Phil, had prior convictions for abuse, so he’s now the prime suspect.
The police discover Jenna’s body. Since the medical examiner is far away, they ask Wren to take a preliminary look. Jenna is tied to a rock with a rope that wraps around her head like a gag, and there are signs that she was tied up while she was still alive. Her heart is missing. The police treat Wren disrespectfully, making jokes as she does the examination. When she finishes, she makes a joke back.
Chapter 28 Summary
Philip is upset with Jeremy for forcing him to help stash Jenna’s body and make anonymous calls to the police. He’s angry that Jeremy got him involved in another murder, but Jeremy reminds him that the first one was Philip’s own doing: Philip was the one driving that night. Jeremy again threatens Philip’s family, and Philip tells him to stop bringing them up. He agrees to make another anonymous call, but it’ll be the last.
Jeremy thinks back to when they were young. He, Philip, and a guy named Mike drove to a supposedly haunted waterfall with their Ouija board. Philip was afraid, but Jeremy and Mike egged him on. They also intentionally scared Philip, who ran away and fell, lacerating his leg badly enough to need 46 stitches. Jeremy was drawn to the sight of his wound. Jeremy recognizes the same fear in Philip now and knows that he’ll make the tip call.
Chapters 22-28 Analysis
While the novel does not support Jeremy’s idea that he and Wren are somehow metaphysically linked, it does often compare their mental states in ways that highlight similarities, possibly playing into the harmful true crime trope of victims being “fated.” Like Wren, Jeremy experiences The Psychological Effects of Trauma—in his case, from his mother’s abuse, a detail that critics argue promotes a sexist and oversimplified narrative trope. Moreover, as Jeremy’s emotional volatility escalates, his state of overwhelm mirrors that of Wren. Jeremy has planned an intricate chain of events to lure Wren close to him for his depraved cat-and-mouse chase, and the intensity of his focus leads to cognitive overload that reminds readers of Wren’s response to her episodes of panic: “His nerves have felt disruptive lately. […] [I]t’s a feeling of being overwhelmed. He has too many plates spinning and it’d be too easy for one of them to shatter. […] He can’t let even one slip” (269). Jeremy’s resulting tunnel vision becomes a plot point: His emotions and attention are so scattered that he overestimates the risk of being apprehended by the police and overlooks Philip’s motives, leading to his eventual capture.
Philips’s increasingly important role in the novel offers a different perspective on Power and Obsession, one involving the social hierarchies of small towns. When Philip was a teenage delinquent, his actions were above sanction because his father was the town’s judge; as a member of a prominent family, Philip evaded consequences. Now, his standing is even higher, as he is backed by the authority of the Church in his role as pastor. Wren’s investigation makes her question Philip’s portrayal of himself as an upstanding man, given his infidelity to his ex-wife, Kathryn, and the way the women in his Bible study class are clearly sexually interested in him. Wren detects sexism and religious power at work: “Wren wonders if Kathryn’s side of the story is getting erased, hidden behind a man whose congregation will always find credence in his word above all. One day she’s the beloved pastor’s wife, the next she’s silenced into posting thinly veiled adultery allegations on social media” (242). Philip has power over his community as a representative of Christianity and over his wife because of the town’s casual misogyny (also reflected in the way the local police treat Wren). Women congregants hang on Philip’s every word, and men look to him as a pillar of moral society. While Jeremy believes that Great Barrington belongs to him and is his to corrupt, Wren astutely observes that it belongs to Philip. Given the eventual revelation of Philip’s capacity for violence and depravity, he is the apex predator. Wren’s realization hints at the future of the series when Wren must begin her pursuit of Philip.
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