Chapter 21
The room was narrow, more like a large closet.
The cages occupied one wall—stacked three high, five across, one empty. Fourteen rabbits in all. They trilled in chorus, excited by my entrance.
When I shut the door behind me, the darkness was total, no light spilling in. I knelt to check—a skirt of rubber sealed the edges of the doorframe. Almost airtight.
Why?
My phone light filled the space, the cages casting a spiderweb of shadows. The rabbits trilled again.
“Shhh,” I said, gently relocking the door.
No sound yet of cleaning out in the hallway. The rabbits sat in their cages, staring at me. For some reason, they were wearing little cloth jackets.
In the corner was a small desk, bags of rabbit food and litter piled below. Feedings were logged on a clipboard, marked with five rotating names. Peter M appeared a month back. Another of his group projects.
A textbook sat on the desk: Arachnid Ecology.
Spiders. The rubber seal beneath the door, to prevent escape.
My skin itched a little.
I set my phone on the desk, light pointed toward the ceiling, and faced the cages. That smell of childhood, one summer day in Aunt Beatrice’s hutch, choosing the rabbit I would feed, sleep beside, and take with me everywhere for a year, until I killed her with the flick of a straight razor.
I opened one of the cages, reaching in to stroke the soft, warm head. At eight years old, I’d desperately wanted a pair of gloves made from Rabbit. There were no glovers in my family, so I’d tried myself. They’d fallen apart the first winter.
Why were these rabbits wearing jackets?
I pulled at the Velcro seal at the neck. The fabric slipped open, revealing the rabbit’s shaved back. The rippled pink skin was luridly naked, vaguely alien, like a hairless cat. The ribs were obvious beneath the skin, the shape familiar to me from playing with Peter’s bone collection.
Attached to the bare flesh were squares of foam, little picture frames, each covered with a fine, translucent mesh. Beneath the mesh were bulbous, shiny black buttons, nestled in the pink skin. They twitched with life.
I pulled one of the covers aside.
Ticks. Drinking.
I’d never taken any biology, outside of Grandpa Dwight’s lessons on poisons and venom. Spiders were arachnids, as were scorpions. No doubt ticks, their eight tiny legs clutching a host’s flesh, were too.
Replacing the mesh cover, I pressed it tight. The rabbit squeaked.
I stroked its head. There were four meshed frames glued to the rabbit’s shaved back, a half dozen ticks in each. Fourteen rabbits.
This was a tick farm.
The forests upstate were full of Lyme disease. Young Mortons were taught to check each other’s skin after a day in the brush. Helshire was in the perfect spot to study ticks.
I pulled out the small key, looked around the room again.
Explore the world. Save the animals. Escape his family.
There it was, in the corner—an air vent in the wall. Nothing out of the ordinary, except someone had added a hasp and padlock to the cover. Almost in plain sight.
The key fit.
Inside was a bag of dried apple slices.
I sat there, reading the instructions. Fruits are high in natural sugars and should be fed sparingly to your rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, and other small friends.
This was Peter’s secret? His revenge? His Hefnd?
Treats?
I poured a few dried slices out into my hand. The apple smell filled the room, and the rabbits trilled an excited chorus.
Counting out fourteen pieces, I stood up again and slipped them through the bars of the cages, one by one. The cages were labeled with numbers. I wondered if Peter had named the rabbits. I wondered if one was called Mister Fluffernutter.
Still no noise from the hallway outside. If they were cleaning the upper floors first, I should leave now. But when I knelt to place the dried apples back in the air vent, I saw something deeper in the darkness—a tangle of wires.
I reached inside, pulled the object out slowly, carefully.
It was the size of a shoebox, all the parts visible. The detonator, a power source, a burner phone. A booster and a main charge, a few cardboard tubes strapped to the outside. A gentle scent of garlic and matches—the smell of white phosphorous.
Not just a bomb, an incendiary. Peter was an arsonist to the end.
But what was the plan—destroy the tick farm, along with its inhabitants? Wipe out the Arachnid Ecology class? Burn down the whole science wing?
In the peculiar logic of Mister Fluffernutter, the only true kill was overkill. Quick and painless for the victim, an indelible memory for everyone else. Peter had wanted a disaster for Helshire, for the legacies, for my family.
Slay the rabbits, spare no one.
I’d done right, following Grandmother’s orders.
Moving the device had to wait, until I was fresh and the sun was down again. I placed it back in the air vent, easing it deep into the darkness, the dried apples in front.
The cover closed smoothly, locked tight.
When I stood up, the rabbits looked at me.
What if I’d disturbed something in the room? What if the device was discovered before I came back?
My brain reeled a little. The FBI, Homeland, the whole counterterrorism apparatus would descend. Someone might reconsider the lack of chalk dust in Peter’s pockets.
I knelt again, took the incendiary out, and wiped it down for fingerprints, mine and Peter’s. Also the bag of dried apples, the cover for the air vent, the padlock.
I spent the next twenty minutes wiping the rest of the room—the cages, the desk and chair, the doorknobs, inside and out.
Then I thought about the rest of Dewitt. One set of matching fingerprints on at least a hundred door handles—mine. My heart began to accelerate.
We Mortons rarely flinch at the kill, but there is a condition that sometimes paralyzes us. It’s called cleanup panic, a danger of our perfectionism.
I sat in the chair and used Aunt Veronica’s calming method: measured breathing, closed eyes, softly chanting the major arterial groups.
“Coronary, carotid, vertebral, iliac, femoral, subclavian…”
Peter’s device had been hidden for weeks, maybe months. His secret would keep another day or two. And if it was found, the FBI wouldn’t be dusting door handles four floors away, or the window sash of the Physics Lounge.
I was in control.
It was half past seven by the time I walked out the main entrance. By then, the Hellions on their way into morning classes didn’t give me a second glance.
There was no time to nap before Forensic Accounting, but as Grandmother Elizabeth always said:
If you can’t do something on zero sleep, then you don’t know how to do it.