The window I’d climbed though that night was cracked open, letting in a wisp of cool April breeze.
I sat down.
“Where did you hide your little toy, Peter?” I asked the empty room.
He’d dangled below that window, stalwart, silent, until his fingers had given up. My own fingers were sore from trying the key, and my left hand throbbed, sticky with blood inside its glove.
I still had the ground floor to search, and probably a basement, but my eyes were starting to swim. In a few hours I had to face Forensic Accounting.
I stood up, closed the window, and headed for the stairs.
Last semester, Peter’s only class in Dewitt had been Intro to Biology. There could be volatiles in the bio labs—ether, maybe, for anesthetizing animals. Or something poisonous, if my cousin had been exploring a new aesthetic.
I went down to the ground-floor bio wing, and tried the key in every door: classrooms, offices, closets.
Nothing.
I heard a jingling of keys. The custodians were here.
I walked quickly away from the old tower, toward the bio wing exit. But those doors were chained shut. I had to sneak back to the tower, or hide somewhere until the building opened to students.
Something was rolling down the hallway, getting closer. It made a sloshing sound, a wringer bucket on wheels. I descended to the basement.
It was dark here. No dawn creeping through the windows, no glow from exit lights. Nothing but the red eyes of smoke detectors on the ceiling.
I moved carefully, in silence, back toward the central stairs. Once the custodians had dispersed, I could leave through the main entrance.
But then I heard something—and froze, the hairs on my neck prickling.
The sound came again. A gentle squeak from behind one of the doors, stirring memories from childhood.
A few steps closer, I closed my eyes. The rustle of paper, another squeak.
I took out Peter’s key.
It slipped into the lock—and turned.
As the door eased open, a familiar smell washed over me. Loose hay. Aspen shavings. A tinge of ammonia.
In the darkness, ears twitched.
“Rabbit,” I said.
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.