A wodge of junk mail was half sticking out of the letter box and a couple of extra brochures had escaped onto the ground at the base of the post it perched on. Good to see the ‘No flyers’ sticker was being taken seriously. I parked Maggie’s Honda in the carport and wandered back up the drive to the box to empty it out. I couldn’t believe how much crap advertising found its way into it from such a small town. It wasn’t like we were flush with supermarkets and big-ticket retailers. I picked the bits off the ground and pulled the remainder out of the front. No wonder they were hanging out – when I peered through the slot I could see a parcel occupying most of the space. What had Maggie been buying online this time?
I swung open the flap at the back and extracted the brown-paper-wrapped package. The name Shephard was scrawled across it in what looked like permanent marker. Strange, I wasn’t expecting anything. I turned it over to see if there was a name on it and noted the dark stains on the underside about the same time as I noted the rather unpleasant smell. I stood staring at it a while, my curiosity about what it could be fighting with the sense of dread that was starting to build in my stomach. I crouched down and placed it on the ground, took a breath and pulled away the pieces of tape holding the parcel together. Then, with as much courage as I could muster, I pulled back the flaps.
The rabbit was curled up like a soft toy, except that this was no toy. Toys didn’t ooze blood. Toys weren’t stiff with rigor mortis. And toys sure as hell didn’t have a miniature noose around their necks.
A cold sweat broke out across my face and I leaped to my feet, staggering back away from the gruesome sight. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears, my heart racing. The irrational part of me wanted to kick it away, get it as far away as possible. But the stone-cold-sober part of me was transfixed. Who the hell would do this? If this was a joke, it had gone way too far. I looked up and down the road, imagined a set of eyes observing me, laughing. Get a grip, Shep. Whoever did this would be long gone. My eyes flicked towards the house. Thank Christ it was me who found it, and not Maggie. She couldn’t know about this; it would freak her out completely. But what to do? I couldn’t toss it in the wheelie bin. The stench would be enough to give it away. Besides, the cop in me was thinking evidence. This was an out-and-out threat. There could be fingerprints, trace. But where the hell could I hide it? I grimaced in distaste as I bent back down and folded the edges of the paper back over, then wrapped it in a few of the larger brochures that had been in the box. There was a ramshackle shed down the back of the section where we kept the lawnmower. It would have to go in there for now.
That was the easy part. The hard part was going to be pretending to Maggie that, apart from being a murder suspect, a pariah in my own town and now shit-scared, there was absolutely nothing wrong.