Small Town

They took as long as they did because they were being thorough, not wanting to miss the mysterious blue rabbit if it was there to be found, and also because they were less cavalier in their search, probably because he was there watching them. Whatever the cause, the difference was palpable; first time around they’d made a mess, and now they were as neat as cadets preparing for inspection.

A blue rabbit. Had he ever in his life even seen a blue rabbit?

The critters came in all shapes and sizes, he thought, and in a wide variety of colors, but blue? Maybe some Luther Burbank of the rabbit world was working on it now, but so far he figured blue rabbits were pretty thin on the ground. Of course it wasn’t a living breathing hopping rabbit they were looking for, it was a figurine, and they could be any color. You didn’t have to manipulate the DNA of some little stone carving, did you?

Wait a minute...

Three little animals on the table alongside the couch. In her apartment, Marilyn Fairchild’s apartment. He’d picked them up and set them down again, and was one of them a rabbit? And was it blue?

Maybe.

He seemed to remember it now, but he didn’t know to what extent he could trust his memory. His imagination got in the way. That was a blessing for a writer, an imagination like his, but it could be a curse, because it was possible to imagine something vividly enough to convince yourself it was a memory.

And that was especially true when your memory was patchy anyway after a night of fairly serious drinking. He wasn’t sure just how drunk he’d been, but going home with Marilyn Fairchild had not been the act of a sober man. De mortuis and all that, but you’d need a few drinks in you before a flop in the feathers with that husky-voiced predator seemed like a good idea.

And he’d done some drinking at her apartment. Just one drink, he’d for some reason insisted to the cops, but was that true? If so, it was a technicality, because he seemed to recall a rocks glass, devoid of rocks but brimful of Wild Turkey. And then, of course, he’d come home from her place and drunk himself to sleep, desperate to wash the memory of the encounter from his system.

So who knew what happened and what didn’t? Maybe he’d had more than one drink at her place on Charles Street. Maybe she’d told him her name, her real name, and it hadn’t registered. And maybe he’d seen the blue rabbit, and picked it up, and played with it.

If they were looking for it...

If they were looking for it, duh, that meant it wasn’t on Charles Street anymore. Which meant what exactly?

That the killer had taken it away with him?

Maybe it was another Maltese falcon, the stuff that dreams were made of. And someone had traced the legendary Cypriot Rabbit to an apartment on Charles near Waverly, and killed its owner in order to gain possession of it.

Alternatively, maybe someone had killed the lady for reasons of his own — it probably wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a couple — and had been unable to resist taking the rabbit home with him, as a memento of the occasion.

Jesus, suppose they found it in his apartment?

But they couldn’t, not unless they planted it, because he hadn’t taken it with him.

Or had he?

He didn’t remember taking the rabbit with him, wasn’t even sure he remembered seeing it there in the first place. But he didn’t remember not taking it, either, because how could you recall a negative? And he could imagine taking it, out of resentment or petulance or just drunken absent-mindedness. Pick it up, look at it, and the next thing you know you’re out the door and the damn thing’s in your pocket.

If they found it...

All it would prove was he’d been there, and they already knew that, he’d blurted out an admission the first time around, before he knew better. Maury had said his admission might not be admissible in court, and the blue rabbit would be, but there was sure to be physical evidence putting him at the scene, no matter how good a cleanup job had been done by the fellow who discovered the body.

But it would prove he’d taken the rabbit and lied about it. And it was direct physical evidence, something she owned that was now in his apartment, and it was small and personal, and it would look like a murderer’s souvenir, it would look like that and nothing else.

Jesus Christ, a little blue rabbit could put a rope around his neck.

Not literally. Not a rope, because New York State used lethal injection, or would if they ever got around to slipping the needle to the guys on death row in Dannemora. (How are things in Dannemora? Is that lethal brook still babbling there?) And not a needle, either, because they wouldn’t make this a death penalty case, it didn’t meet the standards, and would you even call it premeditated? A man goes home with a woman, they argue, whatever, and she winds up dead. That wasn’t premeditated, you could certainly call it manslaughter without stretching a point, and—

Except he hadn’t done it!