I regarded him silently.
“So you think somebody here – what? They – did something – to your little girl?”
I nodded, feeling like a fool. All this time it had been so plain to Gonzalez I was a fraud, it must have been obvious to the others. Fear crept into my nerves, setting the monster back on edge. I would have to be more careful.
“Why did you think it was me?”
It took a moment for me to realize what he was asking. “The song,” I told him. “The way you reacted to it, I just figured…” I didn’t need to mention the rabbit. It didn’t seem smart to reveal such evidence.
“Which song? That ‘80s one?”
I’d nearly blown it all because of that song. Again, I nodded.
“It wasn’t the song,” Gonzalez said. “It’s the tape player. It’s the exact same…” He shook his head, his eyes downcast, and with that look I understood. His own victim must have had the same CD player. He hadn’t been reacting to the song at all. “Anyway,” he said, “I wasn’t the one acting strange. Popcorn and Telly, those guys started a fight over it.”
“Telly? He the blond guy?”
Gonzalez was about to speak when the blip of a siren startled us both. We turned to look as a police cruiser crawled into the center of camp, parting the crowd. Miami P.D. swinging by for a routine check, although just as often they came through to harass the residents. Some of these men and women had parole terms stating no alcohol or illicit drugs. Others weren’t allowed to be within a certain distance of other offenders, which didn’t make much sense under the bridge, where everyone was here for the same basic reason. Most of the cops who came through here were just looking for a reason to use unacceptable force. For the most part, I wouldn’t say I could blame them.
Gonzalez shifted nervously in the dirt. The cop got out of the car and headed over to a huddled group of sex offenders. As he turned in the direction of the scuffle, fear struck me and I hid my face, muttering, “Shit!”
Officer Sam Higgins’ bald head gleamed as he patted a woman in boxer shorts and galoshes on the shoulder and passed a bottle of water to an elderly man I didn’t recognize. New people wandered in here every day, as more and more were forced to sign the registry, many for petty offences. Higgins checked on a guy’s ankle monitor. The guy – Dolph, I think – offered his hand, and Higgins shook it without hesitation.
It amazed me to see how humanely he treated these people, knowing his own children could easily have been victimized by some of them. It was clear he believed in basic human decency, though if he’d caught these same people in a crime I was certain he wouldn’t hesitate to tackle the prick and put him in the back of his cruiser, maybe put a little more elbow into the bust than was necessary. He was a cop after all, not Gandhi. But the fact that a man who dealt with the absolute worst of humanity every single day could still find a moment to be charitable gave me a glimmer of hope.
As I watched him smile and shake hands, I felt like I could forget about the Rabbit Man. I could leave here and never come back. I could return to my long-suffering wife, to my courageous little girl who had somehow managed to put her assault in the past while her father continued to grieve.
Sam laughed at something one of the men said and got back in his cruiser. I watched him drive back to the topside of the Tuttle, watched everyone return to whatever they’d been doing. I felt myself relax.
“You know, if it’s anyone here, I’d put money on Telly,” Gonzalez said, dragging me right back down.
“Why him?” I snapped.
“I just overheard him bragging once, about all the stuff he’d gotten away with. He said he – “
It was clear he couldn’t repeat the actual words Telly had used. “You don’t have to say it.”
Gonzalez gave a brief smile. “Thanks. He did it to a little girl, and all they got him on was trying to lure some cop posing as an eight-year-old.”
Down there among the others, the blond guy, Telly, chucked a stone in the direction the cop car had gone, having since recaptured his bravado. I watched him swagger back to his own car and climb in, slamming the squeaky door behind himself.
“You’re gonna kill him, aren’t you?”
I thought about the scratches, the rabbits. My mind ran through all the gruesome scenarios I’d dreamed up during our sessions with Dr. Ambrose. “What if I said yes?”
Gonzalez followed my gaze. Telly’s dirty work boots rested on the driver’s window. Behind the windshield, the orange ember of his cigarette burned.
“I won’t tell,” Gonzalez said. “He’ll just do it again, the second he gets a chance. You can tell just by looking at him. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what he does at night, driving off all by himself.”
I considered this in silence, knowing the decision had already been made for me.
***
Except for those times he left camp well after sundown, I didn’t let Telly leave my sight again for over a week. He’d recline the driver’s seat and nod off as the sun began to sink beyond the skyline, well before anyone else had even considered sleep. Later, when most of us had been out for a few hours, I’d watch him light up a smoke in the dark behind the windshield. Then he’d creep out with the running lights off. A few hours later, he’d pull back into his spot. I’d watch him fire up a butt with his Zippo, lighting a dark smile on his face. The little orange ember of his cigarette would wax and wane. After a few minutes, he’d flick it out the window in a shower of sparks, put his booted feet out the window, and go back to sleep. Once, he’d gone directly to the water and washed his hands. To wash off what, I don’t know.
But I can guess.
About a week into this routine, Telly left the car to go down to the water to fish. (We caught a fair bit down in that part of Biscayne Bay. Going hungry was never a worry, though I lost the taste for fish quickly.) I wandered over to the car, curiosity getting the best of me, and peeked in the dusty window. The passenger seat was covered in cassette tapes, mostly metal and hard rock bands: AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer. With a collection like that, it wasn’t likely he’d have ever listened to George Michael, but I considered it might be a part of his pathology, like maybe he’d been abused to it when he was younger. Or maybe it reminded him of a junior school crush. Parking tickets were scattered on the floor like the bottom of a birdcage.
I spotted what I’d been hoping to find hanging from the rearview mirror. Due to the fine layer of dust on the windshield, I hadn’t been able to see it before. A little white rabbit’s foot swayed gently on a bathtub chain, a few spots of something dark on its fur. I shaded my eyes against the glass for a closer look, thinking it might just be blood.
“Lookin’ for somethin’, asshole?”
I stepped away, caught. Telly sauntered back with the fishing pole over his shoulder and no fish. I stammered something about looking for cigarettes, and Telly narrowed his eyes.
“You want a smoke, you coulda just ast.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of Camels, shifting the pole to his other shoulder. He shook one out and flicked it at me. I caught it, fumbled it into the dirt. I picked it up and blew on it, then nestled it between my lips. The sweet smell of tobacco filled my nostrils. Marnie and I had quit when we found out she was pregnant. I’d sneaked a few puffs here and there after Nola was born, but after Marnie caught me lighting up the day of the argument, the day Nola ran away, I hadn’t smoked since.
“Got a light?”
He threw that, too, but I caught it deftly. Lit the smoke. Inhaled. The first drag felt like pins jabbing my lungs. After that, the drags were smoother. “Thanks,” I said, holding the cigarette between my teeth as I handed the Rabbit Man his lighter.
“No problem.” He squinted at me. “No hard feelings about that love tap last week. I woulda hit me, too, if they’da been my buddies you was messin’ with.”
“They’re not my buddies. Thanks again for the smoke,” I added, walking away.
I lied and said I would.
***
It was two nights later when I dared approach his car again. He was asleep inside, his boots on the dash. I crept up to the driver door and listened to his slow, deep breathing for a while, maybe too long. I needed to be sure he was sleeping. I wanted to catch him off guard. He looked at peace. Like he slept well. It enraged me to see that, when my own sleep was so fitful because of him.
I wondered how many other children he might have abused since the police sent him down here, how many childhoods he’d taken away. How many families he’d destroyed. How many fathers he’d poisoned, the way he poisoned me. I still knew nothing about him, but none of that mattered. I could have called in with Officer Higgins’ badge number, got them to run Telly’s plates. I could have found a previous address. I could have rented a car – unless Marnie had cancelled my credit cards, which was possible – and followed him the next time he left camp. I didn’t do any of these things. I didn’t want to know about his life. All I wanted was for it to be him, and for it to end tonight.
I rounded the dirty front of the car to the passenger side. Ever so gently, I pulled up the handle. The door came open an inch with a click that seemed to rebound off the cement pillars and the underside of the bridge. Telly snored and shifted in his sleep. I froze, blood hammering. We were mere feet from each other, but his car was far enough away from the rest of Bookville, a pariah among pariahs, that I thought I’d be safe from potential witnesses. Despite the distance, if he woke up and saw me looming over him, no doubt he’d shout, and my whole stupid reckless plan, the months of research and preparation and time away from the girls – all of it would have been for nothing.
I held my breath.
He didn’t wake.
Slowly, I pulled the door open. The amount of times I’d watched him open it to get one thing or another, I knew it wouldn’t creak, not like the driver door. I knew the dome light wouldn’t come on, either; it had burned out or didn’t work. I slipped in cautiously beside him and pulled the door closed.
Telly slept with his seat reclined, his knees curled up to his chest. He breathed deeply, a sure sign he was either asleep or faking it, ready to gut me like he gutted fish with the jagged hunting knife attached to his belt.
His eyes suddenly snapped open and he scrambled up against the door, sucking in a breath with childlike terror before squinting at me coolly.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Roll up your window.”
“Why the fuck should I?” He looked in the direction I indicated: the tip of my father’s old buck knife aimed at the faded crotch of his tight jeans. “Jesus, man,” he said on exhale and rolled up the window, not taking his eyes off me. “You mind tellin’ me what the fuck you’re doin’ in my car? And don’t say you’re lookin’ for a cigarette, amigo, ‘cause I know you ain’t a smoker.”
For a long while, I said nothing. All the time I’d spent dreaming about this moment, it felt like he should know why I was here before I took his life away. It felt like I should make him aware, for Nola’s sake if not mine. But everything I started to say seemed wrong. Like I’d be offering him an explanation he surely didn’t deserve. Like I’d be allowing him the opportunity for forgiveness when forgiveness had never been an option.
“Take out the tape,” I said finally.
“What?”
“The tape. Take out the fucking tape.”
“All right, man. Shit.” Eyeing me the whole time, Telly reached for the cassette player in the dash. His dirty fingers found the eject button and he pushed it. The tape popped out with a satisfying clunk. Telly fumbled it into his hand, then held it up for me to see. “All right?”
“All right,” I said, and thrust the knife at his crotch.
Telly’s eyes opened wider than I’d thought humanly possible, like something you’d see on a Saturday morning cartoon. He made to cry out, but I pressed a hand over his mouth, his mustache prickling against my palm, his tongue flicking out, probably involuntarily, as I mashed his head against the doorjamb.
Relishing the agonized terror in his eyes, I missed the sight of his hand scrabbling for the knife at his hip. He had it pulled out and pain tore up my chest before I could react. Smashing his head back against the door, I thrust my elbow against his wrist, pushing it back. I shoved my knee down hard against his legs, yanking on the knife in his groin. It came free with a jet of blood that splashed my wrist, his jeans already dark with it.
The wet blade gleamed in the arc lights as I pulled it back to strike again, and I shoved it straight into his throat, to the hilt. The monster’s tongue flicked against my palm as his life spurted out from the hole in his neck, soaking my shirt. His legs kicked weakly, like a dying insect’s. A gout of blood poured from the hole as he gagged. His fingers relaxed, dropping his knife. The life left his eyes.
I sat there a moment longer, watching his body leak blood, listening for his breath. I couldn’t believe he was dead, that it was finally over and I could leave this godforsaken place and return to my family. Telly slid another few inches toward the floor. In the dim light beyond the space he’d left, I spotted Gonzalez huddled against a pillar, watching us with wide eyes. I wondered how long he’d been standing there. Long enough, I guessed.
His eyes met mine, and he nodded. Somehow, I managed to nod back.
The rabbit’s foot jingled on its chain from the mirror as I pushed on the door. In all the commotion, I’d forgotten about it. I tore it down then to get a better look. The dark stains were no doubt blood. Whether it was fresh or not I couldn’t tell, not when I’d just smeared Telly’s blood onto its dirty off-white fur.
I tucked the totem into my pocket and tumbled out of the car. Gonzalez had turned away from me, heading back toward the others, though I knew he wouldn’t tell, and I doubted he would be able to sleep. I felt like I could sleep for days, weeks. I stumbled headlong for the embankment, falling to my knees in the dirt and gravel. Clawing my way up the steep concrete grade, my father’s knife left scrapes and drops of blood, black in the moonlight, I left the Rabbit Man behind me.
Or so I thought.
Because murder has a cost. That’s something I’ve come to learn in the time since. Life doesn’t just evaporate with the expiration of the body. The Rabbit Man is still alive, running through those dark, cold recesses in my heart. I carry his death with me like a haunting. It eats at me like cancer.
If I’d known then what I know now, I would have stuck with Dr. Ambrose and her words.
Lord knows it would have been cheaper.
***
I showered and shaved at my old 24-hour gym. It was late, and the attendant gave me a funny look. When I got to the showers, I understood why. I hadn’t been into the city for a week, hadn’t shaved, hadn’t slept. My shirt was gouged open at the chest, matted to my skin with blood. I looked like a man who’d gotten lost in the jungle, fought a wild animal, and narrowly escaped with his life. I left, clean and shaven, my wound – Telly’s blade had cut my left nipple in half – washed and dressed with paper towels, surprised that the kid wiping down the equipment hadn’t called the cops. Far enough away from the mess I’d left under the Tuttle, I had no worries they would finger me for the crime even if the kid called in my appearance and had them pull the security video. For all they knew, I’d taken time off work to deal with the aftermath of what had happened to Nola. If they’d ever come around to check on us, I doubted Marnie would cover for me, but I was certain she wouldn’t turn me in. Likely she would have told them we’d separated. That I’d gone back home to New Jersey to stay with my mother for a while.
I could picture her tenting her fingers deviously later on the way she sometimes did when she lied, and it broke my heart to know it would never be the same between us, no matter how hard I tried. Even if she’d have me back, our time apart would always be between us. And the Rabbit Man’s death would
seep into every seemingly pleasant conversation, every social engagement, every one of Nola’s milestones. In the back of my mind and hers, the Rabbit Man would still be running.
Back at the house in Coral Gables, I used my key in the door, pleased for a second time to find it still worked. I crept up to our bedroom, saw Marnie sleeping with legs stretched over my side of the bed. It had been four months since we’d slept in that bed together, and she still slept mostly on her side.
I slipped by into Nola’s room. The moon illuminated her head against the pillow. Nola had a thumb in her mouth, a habit she’d grown out of at age four but had taken up again in the wake of her experience with the Rabbit Man.
My sweet little girl’s eyes opened wide as she drew the covers up to her chin, and for a terrible moment I flashed back to the eerily similar look Telly had given me when I woke him with the knife. Nola relaxed, seeing it was me. “I thought you were a monster,” she said.
I wondered, Am I a monster?
Could I tell her there was nothing to be afraid of, that there was one less monster in the world because of me? I flashed on the tape in Telly’s hand, completely unreadable in the dark. It could have been a polka album for all I’d cared. That splotch on the rabbit’s foot could have been dirt or paint or just about anything.
I wanted it to be him. I needed it. I needed to be home with my wife. Our daughter.
Standing over her, it struck me with almost comical suddenness that Marnie had been right: Nola didn’t need a vigilante… but I’d needed to be one. I’d fooled myself into believing that killing the Rabbit Man was about seeking justice for my little girl, but it had never been for her. I’d needed to take him out of the world to feel strong again. I needed to erase him from our family history because of my own shame. So I wouldn’t feel like a coward anymore. So I would feel safe. It had never been about justice. And the fear, the shame… it would never end.
“No, honey,” I told her, faking a reassuring smile. “It’s me. Daddy’s home.”
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