THE HIDEOUT

Curtis “Shell” Shelton had no idea he just sauntered past a crime scene ’til he pulled up his coffee table to scroll a bliggity and click on the six o’clock news. He was right there, in front of the Federal Theater. He swore he saw one of the rabbits that took down the Beasley Downs Racetrack, the biggest, boldest cash heist in the city’s recent history.

Trevor Rabbit, with a duffel bag holding two million dollars in banded stacks of hundreds, approached the theater box office where Diego Iguana sold him a ticket for the horror movie The Hideout. All Diego could recall was a tall rabbit with an athletic build carrying a heavy duffel bag. Trevor entered the movie theater, sat in the front row near the exit, and waited until his pick up arrived in the back alley.

Mother rabbit, Sabrina, and her daughter, Heather, were on their way from the nail salon when they noticed a rabbit leaning against the tequila advertisement on the corner of Federal and West Denver Place. “He was looking at his phone, breathin’ heavy like he’d been running.” Sabrina explained to authorities more than an hour later after the suspect had disappeared.

Officer Frost had been there, too. The first wolf at the scene, he knew that the Beasley Downs Heist had occurred only thirty minutes prior. Frost had the instinct to exit his cruiser and take a look around that area of Federal. But his hunch ran cold when he stepped back into his vehicle to patrol the surrounding neighborhoods, not knowing that the suspect had already entered the movie theater. “I knock myself for not inquiring with the box office attendant. We could’ve had him. I was right there.”

Trevor Rabbit is still at large. Likely reconvened with his partners in crime. Probably fled to the next state. And that is all we know, in a city teeming with wild animals.