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She had posted a reward of $1,000

for information leading to the arrest of the sick, sordid, amoral loser who had killed her brother. No bites. Five years later, she raised it to $5000. Ten years after her little brother Joey was gutted with a knife over a few grams of marijuana, she posted a $10,000 reward.

Finally.

The smarmy low-life who ratted out his dealer had some good leads, but the forensics wasn’t there to get an arrest and a conviction. On the bright side, she no longer had any doubt that Pastor Rob, a former police officer, aided and abetted the perp who killed her brother.

The scum who knifed Joey and disemboweled him on the fourth floor of the Tadousac Apartments was dying of cancer now, final stages, so, really, the $10,000 cash reward had not been earned. She offered the creep some home-made brownies instead, laced with marijuana, she said. “If Nebraska would just legalize this shit,” she said, “people wouldn’t kill each other over drug deals gone wrong.”

The scumbag nodded eagerly. His toothless grin and wrinkled skin told her he had made marijuana his gateway to meth. "Have some brownies," she said with a Colgate-worthy smile.

When Eddie the informant died of an overdose the next day, nobody would be checking some brownie crumbs for the killer dose of cocaine she’d added to the flour. She had already pickpocketed the cash from his coat pocket before he walked away, high on the first two of a dozen brownies.

Now she faced the cop who’d let some low-life drug dealers walk free for ten years while Joey’s ashes fed a growing oak tree in her backyard.

This cop had questioned her about the demise of skinny, toothless Ed Gregor, aka “Fast Eddie," the most over-used nickname in the book. She showed him her copy of a paperback by Mark Hughes, ten felons who’d found Jesus and become good citizens and repented of their sins. She, too, wanted to make a show of forgiveness.

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“Search me,” she said

when the pig Rob Warren showed up at her door. “No wires. Nothing. I just want to forgive the poor, unfortunate soul who killed my brother, but now he’s dead. So, yeah, I never got to give him the money, because the killer is in a hospice, dying of cancer, surrounded by his children and grandchildren."

She'd had ten years to harden her heart and also to recapture the quaver of pity in her voice, at will.

"You really made a difference in a lot of lives when you turned from being a cop to being a pastor," she said, "and I just cannot tell you how deeply that moves me.” She held out the wad of hundreds. “Take this ten thousand, to support you in your work with felons and homeless men. I can think of no better use for the reward money.”

He praised God and thanked her profusely and thanked Jesus even more, then took interest in her Animal Rescue critters, a dozen at least in the living room alone. Cats on home-built platforms looked out the window, tails twitching. The New Zealand whites weren't really rescues, but he didn't need to know that.

“Rabbits in cages,” she said, “break my heart, but you understand. Those Maine Coons are great hunters.”

“They sure are cute little bunnies,” he said. She smiled, unlocked a cage, and handed one over to him. He stroked it and made way more comments about the cuteness of this bunny than any red-blooded male cop would ever make. Not that she was a slave to stereotypes, but Joey was gutted like a pig in a packing plant, and Officer Rob Warren had let the killer walk, so that didn't exactly make him the sort to suddenly act smitten with cute furry mammals.

His new schtick as a pastor may have fooled hundreds of parishioners who sang the praises of Pastor Rob, but she’d gotten the truth out of Fast Eddie. Rob was a “zebra” cop, skilled at destroying evidence, losing it, misleading witnesses, or failing to enter their statements into the case files. And the donations he raked in didn't all make it to the guys they were intended for.

The fluffy white bunny pooped on him, and Pastor Rob hastily shoved the fluff ball back into its cage.

“So sorry,” she lied.

A bit more of the nicety-nice, and she showed him to the door.

“God bless you,” he said, wiping a tear from his hazel eyes. Women said he was so handsome even in his fifties, but to each his own. She knew the homeless men under his watch would be lucky to benefit from even one tenth of the wad Pastor Rob was palming now, his eyes gleaming with a zealotry that didn’t make her think of Jesus.

He thanked her and blessed her again, and finally, he turned from her door and walked into the setting sun, the wad of cash cradled in his palms like a precious baby bird fallen from its nest.

She slipped out the back door and into a shed. Inside, in the shadows, a bobcat blinked at her.

Her hands were fresh with the smell of fluffy New Zealand white bunny. Crouchng, she held them under the feral cat’s nose, then stood at the door. “Look.” She pointed toward the figure of the man walking into the sun. The cat’s tail twitched. She held her hands out again, and its muzzle twitched at the smell of bunny.

So far, nobody had caught her with an injured bobcat on her property. She’d found him with a paw in a trap. Poor Bobrick. For five weeks she'd tended to him. He was ready to be released, and today was his day.

“Bobrick.” Her voice carried that command he associated with chasing down his nightly dinner, raw rabbit. “Bobrick, go get the bunny!”

This is my sick, sadistic entry to @mariannewest's freewrite challenge

Day 608: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: posted

Check Out The @FreeWriteHouse Prompt Of The Day By @MarianneWest