Chapter 1

At 8:04pm, on Wednesday, June 14th, police were called to the scene of an assault in an alleyway on Brook Street. The victim was a rabbit.

Police cruisers formed a perimeter around both openings while paramedics stabilized the victim and removed her in an ambulance. Crime scene investigators combed the scene for trace evidence, including fur and a sweaty paw print left in the grit. Expert analysis of the fur would tell us the attacker's species, and examination of the paw print would tell us their sex and approximate height. Eventually, DNA analysis would serve as evidence in court, but that was a ways off.

The beaver who called in the incident was on the scene, and my partner and I were given the task of questioning him.

"Good evening," my partner said. "I'm Officer Judy Hopps, this is Officer Nick Wilde. We'd like to get the full picture of what you saw."

"It wasn't much," the beaver said. "I was walking down Brook Street when I saw this suspicious-looking fox dart into the alley ahead of me. I don't mean to imply,"—he glanced up at me—"that he looked suspicious because he was a fox or anything, I mean he looked really suspicious, you know, he was looking all around, he had his paws in his pockets and all that. So I peeked into the alley just to make sure he wasn't up to anything, and I saw him with his arm on the wall accosting this rabbit. I didn't hear what they were talking about, but pretty soon the fox lashed out and bit her on the face and scratched her with his claws. She fell down and he kept biting and scratching her, but when he looked up and saw me standing there, he snatched up her purse and ran off. He looked like what you'd see on one of those nature shows, you know, the prehistoric ones, with the blood on his mouth and all that."

"Do you know either the attacker or the victim?" Judy said.

"No," said the beaver.

Judy brought up the criminal record database on her phone and filtered by Species: Fox. She flashed him the screen and said, "Can you recognize the attacker among these pictures?"

He peered at the mugshots and swiped left a few times, but just said, "Sorry, um, I didn't get that good a look at him, and there are, um …"

"We understand."

We thanked him for his time and let him go. We stayed on the scene, and after a time the senior officer, who had been relaying information back to headquarters, came up to us.

"I've got orders," he said. "Hopps, Wilde, you're in charge of this case from now on. The victim is Kaitlyn Clemens, currently in stable condition at Sunlight Hospital. Preliminary analysis of the evidence indicates that the perpetrator is a red fox, probably male, roughly four feet in height. Happy hunting."

I spotted one of the crime scene investigators carrying a plastic bag with a few strands of red fur inside. I felt just the slightest pang of dread in the pit of my stomach.

We got in our car. Judy started the engine, but didn't put it in gear or put her seat belt on right away. She said, "So we've got a case. Pretty exciting, right? More exciting than traffic patrol, anyway."

"Did you hear that self-righteous beaver?" I said. "'I saw this suspicious-looking fox … Oh, I don't mean to imply anything, Officer Fox, but this fox looked really suspicious …'"

"Well, that fox did put a rabbit in the hospital. Maybe the beaver was right to think he looked suspicious."

"Petty robbery. You know, there are about thirteen-thousand incidents like this per year in this city. Why was this case dumped on us? Does the ZPD figure it takes a sly fox to catch a sly fox? Am I their new secret weapon?"

"We were assigned this case because someone had to be and we're qualified. That's all there is to it."

"Whatever you say. How are we going to go about this?"

"I already found her Muzzlebook profile. It has her home address and plenty of pictures."

"No kidding. Any foxes on her friends list?"

"Well, yes, a bunch, but she has some five-hundred friends, so that doesn't exactly narrow it down much. There aren't any foxes in any of the pictures on her timeline, so no clues as to who she might have associated with."

"You said her address was on there, right? Where is it?"

"It's on Down Street. Looks like an apartment."

"Her landlord or neighbors might know something, but I don't know if they'll want to talk to us."

"Why not?"

"Animals around here tend to be a little less trusting of law enforcement, especially since a few of the public's favorite attractions operate on the edge of legality. There's sort of an unspoken agreement for everyone to keep their mouths shut."

"Still, it couldn't hurt to ask."

"I suppose not."

We punched the address into the GPS and drove. The landlord was able to confirm that Kaitlyn Clemens was a tenant in room 206 on the second floor, but she denied any knowledge of Kaitlyn's associations. We walked up the stairs, and Judy, on a hunch, tried Kaitlyn's door handle. It was locked, naturally, but thinking on it a moment, she went one door to the left to room 207 and knocked.

Two raccoony-looking predators answered the door together. I didn't know their species exactly, but one was light-brown and had a rounder face and small ears, and the other was gray and had a pointy snout and long ears. We could hear the television set a little too loud on a news station.

Judy showed one of Kaitlyn's Muzzlebook pictures and said, "Is this your neighbor?"

The round-faced one said, "What? Oh, yeah. That's Kaitlyn. She lives right over there." He pointed to the door we were just at. "She's not in trouble, is she?"

"Why would she be in trouble?"

The pointy-snout one said, "Dude, don't be running your mouth to the police!"

"Sorry!" said the round-faced one, and he turned back to us. "Sorry, we can't say any more unless you have a warrant."

Judy put her paws up. "Look, whatever Kaitlyn was up to, it's not why we're here. She was attacked earlier this evening on Brook Street. All we know is that the perp is a red fox, so if you could tell us any names of foxes you know Kaitlyn to have associated with, you could really help us out."

Their eyes drifted over to me for a moment when Judy said "red fox." The pointy-snout one glanced at the floor and said, "I wonder if it does have something to do with those clients."

The round-faced one said, "Now who's running his mouth to the police?"

Judy, on the ball as ever, said, "Do you know Kaitlyn's clients?"

The pointy-snout one said, "All right, listen. We don't really talk much with Kaitlyn, but we live next door to her, you know? And the walls are pretty thin, so we hear her talking on her phone a lot. Some dude'll call and she'll say things like, 'Yeah, baby, where do you want to meet me?' and then later someone else will call and she'll say, 'I have an appointment at such-and-such hotel …'"

"So you think she was some kind of escort?" I said.

"I mean, we don't know anything for sure, but that's what we figured. Sometimes her phone would ring at like 2pm, and it would just ring and ring until she finally answered it. I think she took sleeping pills or something."

The round-faced one said, "You know they were just saying, something like eighty percent of escorts have been assaulted at some point. Usually by clients. A lot of them are psychos or have serious mental problems."

"You guys want to get to the point?" I said.

"All right," said the pointy-snout one. "We never heard her talking to anyone who sounded like a pimp or a manager, so we figured those calls that weren't with clients were with like a circle of other escorts she kept, you know, for cross-referencing and protection and whatnot."

"Did she ever do incalls?"

"I'm not gonna lie, sometimes we really don't pay attention to what's going on outside this door. But I don't remember seeing anyone besides Kaitlyn go into that apartment."

"Do you know the names of any of her clients?"

"Nah. I think she was smart enough not to say any details over the phone."

Judy said, "Thank you both. You've given us some good information."

"No problem. Hope you catch the guy."

We returned to the car. Judy Zoogled "zootopia escorts" and clicked the first result, a listing site where girls advertised, either independently or with an agency. She searched "Kaitlyn Clemens," but that only brought up a few Kaitlyns who weren't rabbits, and a few who were but looked nothing like our Kaitlyn.

"They're all gonna be using fake names," I said.

She sighed and searched "rabbit," then combed through the thumbnails. She brought up Kaitlyn's pictures on the cruiser computer and compared them. The site's blurbs advertised things like "companionship," "fun night in the city," "the girlfriend experience," and all that, just enough to preserve deniability, but their suggestive pictures in various states of undress hinted at their true purpose. Their prices were anywhere from five hundred to a thousand an hour. There was a pattern to their names: Hazel, Holly, Dandelion … "Rabbits really love plants," I said.

Judy ignored me and kept going through the pictures. She stopped on one and said, "I think this is her." She'd settled on a girl who had her name listed as Primrose.

I said, "Anyone in this profession with any brains screens their clients, in order to make sure they're not serial killers or, you know, police. They ask for things like names, phone numbers, and email addresses, and they keep it all written down so that other escorts can reference them."

"Do I want to know why you know so much about this?"

"A guy has his curiosities, living in this city."

"Yeah, I don't want to know. In any case, if we get a hold of Kaitlyn's list, we should be onto something, right?"

"Yep. Then begins the tedious process of questioning all those clients one-by-one."

"Only the foxes."

"Oh, right. I forgot."

"I'll get started on the paperwork tomorrow morning."

"They're all going to say the same thing, you know. 'No, I didn't bite that girl's face off, officers. I met with her at such-and-such hotel, but it was just for a dinner date, we didn't get up to anything illegal, you can't prove anything,' et cetera et cetera."

"That's why we'll have to look into their stories and make sure they check out."

"Sounds like this case could be a long one."

"That's the truth. Cases like this have gone unsolved for years. But we won't give up."

We got our warrant signed by the judge and returned to Kaitlyn's apartment. It was big for this part of town, and very clean. The walls and carpet were pure white with no pictures or decorations, the couch was clear with the cushions neatly aligned, and there were no dishes in the sink. The place showed an almost compulsive tendency toward tidiness, and judging by the sixty-inch TV, her means weren't modest, either.

I said, "Remind me to think about getting into the escort business if this whole police thing doesn't work out."

Judy started checking the rooms. In the kitchen, I noticed a cutting board with a small amount of white powder on it. I looked through the cupboards, and behind some pasta boxes I found orange prescription bottles. I pulled one out and read the label. Triazolam. Yep. Sleeping pills.

Her laptop was plugged in on a desk in her bedroom. We found the information in a text file and copied it onto a flash drive, then slipped the laptop into a bag for evidence. Primrose didn't slack when it came to vetting these guys; her document listed their species, phone numbers, email addresses, and sometimes even places of work, along with appointment dates and notes of anything interesting she came upon while searching. All of it went all the way back to her earliest clients.

After that, it was time to go knocking on doors. We questioned three foxes on the first day, then five on the second. They came in all kinds and from all walks of life; from the ones living alone in shacks to the ones in nice townhouses, a few of whom had to bring us into private rooms so their wives wouldn't hear. They all denied getting up to any funny business or having anything to do with the attack.

On the third day, Saturday morning, we got word that Kaitlyn had woken up and was speaking again. We went right away to Sunlight Hospital to see her.

The nurse gave us a run-down on her condition. Chunks of flesh had been torn off the left side of her face, and the initial skin grafts were just starting to heal; her left eye was damaged; and she had multiple lacerations that had been stitched up, on her face as well as her neck, shoulders, chest and belly. She would need a few more surgeries, and plenty of time to recover, but for now she was awake and seemed to be in good spirits.

We heard chatter from within the room. Kaitlyn was sitting upright and carrying on an amiable conversation with her doctor, but as we walked in, her good eye fell on me and she yelped in terror. She put her head in her paws and cried out, and the doctor laid a paw on her shoulder and said, "It's all right. They're police." Then, to us, he said, "Do you mind? She's been through a rather traumatic few days."

Judy turned to me and said, "Nick, um, why don't you let me handle this one? I think it'll be easier." She mouthed the words, "I'm sorry."

My ears drooped a bit, but I took the hint and sat in a chair in the corner of the room.

Judy went up to Kaitlyn's bedside and sat on a stool beside her. She said, "Kaitlyn, how are you feeling? Are you with me, Kaitlyn?"

Kaitlyn calmed herself and steadied her breathing. She shot another glance at me, then said, "Yeah. I'm sorry, just … Can I have some more painkillers? Please?"

"Later," the doctor said.

Judy said, "Kaitlyn, my partner and I want to catch the animal who did this to you. Can you help us with that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, um … I'll do my best."

"Do you know the name of your attacker?"

Kaitlyn averted her eyes. "Um, no. No, all I remember is that he was a red fox."

Judy flashed her phone and said, "Is his name on this list?" It was Kaitlyn's client document.

Kaitlyn furrowed her brows. "Did you search my apartment?"

"Yes, with a warrant. You're not in trouble—like I said, we only want to catch the animal who attacked you. If his name is on this list, and you point him out, you could save us a lot of time and effort."

Kaitlyn sighed and said, "All right." She reached out with a finger and scrolled down on Judy's phone screen. She stopped on a particular entry and said, "That's him. Renny Eunice."

Judy nodded to me, and I pulled up my own copy of the document and scrolled to the name Renny Eunice. His appointment with Primrose was about four weeks ago. Aside from his name, there was a phone number and email address, but no further information or notes.

Judy said, "What can you tell us about Renny Eunice?"

"He was a client," Kaitlyn said. "As clients go, nothing really stuck out about him at the time. A lot of them have their particular kinks, and they want some intricate set-up or a lot of foreplay, but this guy just wanted to get down to business, and he got down hard. It was over in about thirty minutes, then he paid me for the minimum two hours and sent me out. A lot of these guys have their personal issues they want to work out on you, but in his case, whatever it was, he kept it to himself. He barely said a word the whole time he was with me."

"Were you expecting to meet him on Brook Street?"

"No. I didn't know he was following me until he showed up in the alley. He walked in front of me and bent down and picked up this ring, then asked me if I dropped it. I said I didn't, but he tried to give it to me anyway, since he said it didn't fit him and it looked so good on me. Then he started talking about how I should give him some money for it. I read about a ring scam or something like that on the Internet, where someone tries to pawn a cheap ring on you, and he was really acting weird, so I told him to go away and tried to get out of there. That's when he got in close, pinned me to the wall and said the truth was he needed money bad. I told him that's his problem, and he asked if he could take me to a hotel again, only since he didn't have any money he asked if I could put it on his 'tab.' I told him again to get lost, and …"

"I understand," Judy said. "Thank you for talking with us, Kaitlyn."

The doctor said, "If you're finished your questioning, you should let the patient rest."

Judy hopped down from the stool. I stood up from my chair, and we left the room and shut the door behind us.

Outside, I said, "This Renny Eunice guy's got a record. Various small-time cons over the years. His address is on Den Street."

"Good work. Let's go."

"I checked his phone number, too. It's deactivated now, naturally. I couldn't find any contracts in his name, so he must have only used prepaid phones."

"Clever. In any case, we'll check out the apartment and see what we can find."

A vixen answered Renny's apartment door, greeting us through the chain. TV noise reached us from within, and from where we were standing, we could see an older fox sitting on what appeared to be the living room couch.

Judy said, "We'd like to speak with Renny Eunice."

"Why? What's going on?"

"Nothing. We just want to talk."

"I'm sorry, but he's not home right now."

I said, "What was your name?"

"Alice Eunice."

"Alice, so sorry to bother you. Someone called in saying they saw some fox acting suspicious around the park. By the time we got there, they had cleared out, obviously, but someone mentioned Renny's name and now the higher-ups want us to check on him. A complete waste of time if you ask me—someone saw someone who reminded them of someone and now we're chasing down the usual suspects. If you tell us where he is, we can have a short chat with him and be done with this little errand."

"I don't know exactly where he is. The last time I saw him was Wednesday morning at breakfast."

"Is it normal for him to be away so long?"

Alice didn't say anything.

"Do you think you could let us have a look around?"

"I'd really rather you didn't."

"I understand. But when we go back and report that no one seems to know where Renny is, they're gonna view that with a bit of suspicion. They'll probably issue a search warrant to finely comb this place for any sign of wrongdoing, but if you let us in now, we'll do a cursory look to make sure there are no black bills or fake watches lying around and let them know there's nothing to see. What do you say?"

She considered it for a moment and said, "All right." She shut the door, undid the chain, and opened it wide. Judy gave me a sidelong grin.

We stepped inside and shut the door behind us. The carpet was threadbare and stained, and there was a musky scent that they'd seemed to have given up on trying to get out. The wallpaper had a few rips in it, at least one of which looked like it was made with claws. The old fox didn't say anything, just looked at us with that perpetual old-mammal scowl, one I knew well from when we visited my mom's dad in the nursing home. Alice sat in a chair, while Judy and I remained standing.

"Renny is my younger brother," Alice said. "This is our father."

"Nice to meet you," Judy said. "Can I ask what you do for work?"

"Oh, you know. I keep us afloat by serving at a couple of diners. Dad used to be a carpenter, before he hurt his back."

"What about Renny?"

"You know, he does odd jobs here and there."

"I don't know, actually. What does he do?"

"Didn't you want to look around?"

"That's right. Could you show us to his bedroom?"

She stood up and lead us down a short hallway toward the back of the house. Past the door on the left was a bedroom with two beds, one at either side. On the left side, a poster for the Red Fox baseball team was hung on the wall. On the right, there wasn't much besides the dressers and a bedside table with a lamp.

"He shared the room with Dad," Alice said.

Judy started by checking the drawers. I looked under the right-side bed and found some cardboard boxes. I pulled one out and found it full of paw-carved wooden figures.

"I suppose you could say that was his hobby," Alice said. "Something he'd do a little of at night before he went to sleep. It helped calm his paws, you know?"

I took a few out and looked them over. The details on some of them were impressive, with fur, cloth, eyes and everything. Others were in various unfinished states. Digging down, I found a rabbit figure with some deep cuts in it and both ears cut off, like he'd gotten particularly frustrated with that one.

"Did Renny have a thing about rabbits?" I said.

"Rabbits? Nothing that I know about."

I put it all away and said, "All right. Thanks for your time."

"There's one other thing," Alice said. "Renny has a friend named Shawn Summers, a silver fox, you know, gray fur, black ears, black muzzle. They've known each other since grade school. I don't know if they've associated recently, but I do know that Shawn works at Reid's Corner Store, so maybe he could tell you something."

"We'll do that. Thanks."

Reid's Corner Store was a liquor-dispensing gas station with those old-fashioned clicky price-counters still on the pumps, and lucky for us, it was still inside normal business hours. We pushed through the swinging screen door, and I said to the boar behind the counter, "Hey, can we speak to Reid?"

"I'm Reid," the boar said.

"Is Shawn Summers here?"

He pointed to an "Employees Only" door toward the back of the room. Since it was the slow part of the day, and the shelves were all stocked, Shawn was in the back taking inventory, apron over his nice black shirt. When he saw us, he jumped slightly.

"Whoa, hey, Melany didn't really go to the police, did she? I don't know what she told you, but I never explicitly said I was Kevin Catsner …"

"We're not here about Melany," Judy said.

"Was it Jennifer then?"

"What sort of cons did you and Renny pull, Shawn?" I said. "I bet it was the shell game—Renny was the dextrous sort, right? He could put that ball anywhere and nowhere, while you listened for sirens and suckered in the marks, maybe win a few bets yourself to make it look easy, or lose a few to make them think they can win where you lost …" I watched the movement of his eyes as I went on.

"So you're taking me in, huh?" He never dropped his arrogant grin. "Did Renny rat on me or something? All that stuff was years ago, how's it catching up with me now?"

Judy said, "We have our ways. But perhaps we could cut a deal. If you can tell us where to find Renny, we'll let you go for now."

"What, he's not at his apartment?"

"No, he's not."

"Then I'm sorry, I'd love to help, but I really don't know anything about anything. Renny and I haven't spoken in a while."

I said, "You sound like a bit of a tail chaser. You know much about the escort world, particularly those of the lapine variety?"

"Escorts? Yeah, I've been known to have them on occasion. For dinner dates. But I'm not really into bunnies." He smirked at Judy even as he said it.

"I'm not sure I believe you," I said. "I want to hear something useful, because if I don't, we can finish this chat at the station."

"All right, jeez. I'm not into bunnies, but Renny was, totally. We went to clubs together, and there was a place he particularly liked, some neo-burlesque place or whatever called Garden Variety. Like you can probably tell from the name, it featured performances by small- to mid-size prey, and there was one bunny there that Renny was really into. I dunno her real name, but her stage name was Clover. So one day, Renny and I made a lot of money on a pigeon drop. You know what that is, right?" He raised one eyebrow at me.

Judy took the bait and said, "What's a pigeon drop?"

Shawn grinned. "It's when you show the mark a lot of money and convince them they can have it if they throw their money in as well—then, when they're not looking, you make off with the whole package, or switch it for a bunch of worthless paper or something. It's called a pigeon drop because the mark, the pigeon, gets dropped with nothing. Renny and I had all sorts of ways to do it. Usually he would approach the mark with the money, then I would come in acting like another bystander. We would act like we just found a wallet or envelope with a lot of cash on the ground, and get friendly with the mark like we wanted to share it, but we would come up with some reason why the mark should put some of their own money in—lawyer fees, bank fees, or just good old-fashioned 'good faith' money. It sounds silly, but with the right mark we could convince them to drive to the ATM and withdraw thousands of dollars. Some of them took out cash advances on their credit cards."

"'The right mark' usually being the elderly, right?" I said.

"They were the easiest, but not our only targets," he said. "On this day, though, it was in fact an old leopard lady that got us our big payday. She withdrew—I'm not kidding—fifteen grand from her bank account, and we took it and ditched her outside an office building. Renny used his share to get a new suit, a grooming, and a nice bottle of sparkling wine, then off he went to the Garden, where he puffed out his chest, put on a charming smile, and asked Clover for a date. I really don't know what he saw in that bunny, but he was bound and determined."

"What happened then?" Judy said.

"I don't know," Shawn said. "It must have gone well, because they kept seeing each other, but he and I didn't really plan many jobs after that, so we fell out of touch. If I were you, I would check out Garden Variety. Ask Clover where he is, and leave me alone."