Chapter 2
Chief Bogo carefully squared away the paperwork on his otherwise spotless desk. He then folded his hooves on top of the desk, and stared down over his spectacles at his two newest officers. He looked fresh as a daisy, and only the blackness of the windows and the clock on the wall betrayed the fact that it was nearly midnight.
"So," he said, then waited.
The following silence reminded Judy of an approaching thunderstorm in Bunny Burrow. During those times the wind became eerily still, even though ink-black clouds were piled up over the horizon. Despite the illusion of peace, you knew that it was not the time to have a picnic.
The bunny and fox had come to know this office quite well over the short time they had been together on the ZPD. Nick, in fact, often joked that he had a reserved cushion over by the filing cabinet. She risked a glance over at his direction now, where he was silently sitting, clearly uncomfortable on his tender tail. A faint acrid smell of singed fur wafted through the otherwise pristine air-conditioned atmosphere of the office. Other than the smell, Nick was the living embodiment of a respectful, well-dressed police officer. This was the first time she had seen him since their high-wire dance a few hours ago (she had driven back to headquarters while he had had a mandatory hospital checkup), and she now realized that somehow he had cleaned himself up considerably.
Uh-oh. While there were many things she liked about Nick, his dress code was usually not one of them. Truth be told, he was often a bit sloppy about his uniform, and she was constantly reminding him while on patrol to tuck in his shirt or remove a spot of mustard from his collar before approaching civilians. However, the fox had an uncanny knack of sensing when he was in trouble with his supervisors, and during those times his sartorial sense improved rapidly. As she took in her partner's meticulously-groomed fur, sharply-creased uniform, and –was his badge actually polished?—she couldn't help feeling that this time they must be in some serious s-
"So," continued Chief Bogo, "I have a report here from the chief of the Savannah Central fire district, explaining to me how one of my officers somehow hijacked a $400,000 piece of equipment and then proceeded to destroy it, along with the entire front façade of an apartment building, recklessly endangering both professionals and civilians, and also inciting a literal stampede down Dromendary Dr." He looked up from the report and stared over his spectacles again. "Did I miss anything?"
When first facing this situation, Judy used to nervously chatter away like some nervous Nellie, hoping to fill the void with words and excuses. But that was before Nick became her partner.
"Did everyone get out of the building OK, chief?" asked Nick.
"Don't try to answer my question with another question," rumbled the buffalo. "But yes, there were no fatalities."
"Sir, may I point out that had Officer Hopps not had the foresight to punch a hole in the wall, the downtown Zootopia fire district would be dealing with something much more tragic than a piece of equipment right now."
July idly raised her eyes to stare at the ceiling. "Foresight" was not the word she would have chosen to describe her actions. But if she said nothing, it wouldn't technically be lying, right? Although… somehow she suspected her mother wouldn't have approved.
The Chief shot a steely glare toward the fox, and then turned toward Judy. "Officer Hopps, believe it or not, you are the senior officer involved. Please tell me, without interruptions-" he shot another glare at Nick, for emphasis, "how this all started".
The bunny lowered her eyes to meet Bogo's stare with as much innocence that she could muster.
"Well, Chief, yesterday morning we were patrolling near Slot St. in Sahara Square—"
"Shara Square? According to my chart you were assigned to Downtown patrol!"
Nick politely raised a paw.
"Uh, sir, we were technically in the Downtown area, as the Sahara Square Borough officially begins at Olive St-"
"Unless a cottontail is sticking out of your pants, Officer Wilde, I want you to be silent."
Bogo stared back at Judy.
"Well, Chief, we were patrolling near Slot St., when Officer Wilde picked up a tip from one of his – sources."
Actually, Judy was surprised at how often Finnick and Nick kept in touch. Part of her had thought, when Nick became an officer, that the small fennec fox would give his former business partner a wide berth. But early today, like many previous days, she had found herself watching the two foxes slapping their knees together at some shared joke, as she sat inside a cruiser, parked down the street. Whenever they were assigned patrol duty in the Downtown/Sahara square area, and whenever they caught sight of Finnick's distinctive van, Nick would usually ask her to stop, so that he could get out and talk a bit with Finnick. Maybe their relationship did go deeper than just business convenience. More likely, the small fox found it useful to have a channel to the police, just as the tidbits of information Finnick gave to Nick seemed to come in handy. Not that she was getting cynical or anything.
While Judy wondered about the state of her soul, Bogo, with a resigned air, turned toward Nick, who straightened his posture in anticipation.
Whenever these two went at it, Judy had the strange feeling that she was watching a boxing match. No, actually, something more elegant and faster-paced—a fencing match. Stranger still, she got the impression that Bojo and her friend actually enjoyed the tussle.
"And who was this source, Officer Wilde?"
Thrust.
"Sir, I'd prefer not to divulge the name."
Parry.
"Given the trouble you're in, you might reconsider that stance."
Lunge.
"Sir, according to ZPD regulation 30.45-2, police informants can retain anonymity from an officer's superior unless they are receiving financial compensation from the department, or unless physical injury to an officer occurs."
Parley. Also a bluff. Nick was clearly not going to admit how tender his tail was.
"So your informant's advice was free? What did he or she say?"
Retreat.
"That if Officer Hopps and I kept an eye on Dromendary Dr., something interesting might happen there."
"'Something interesting was going to happen?' That's it? That's all you could get out of your source?"
Advance.
"Since the advice was free, sir, I felt I shouldn't quibble about it."
Dodge.
"So, Officer Hopps," said Bogo, abandoning the fencing session for the moment and turning toward her again, "having this detailed advice on hand, I presume you then proceeded to Dromedary Ave.?"
"Yes, sir. We patrolled around the area for about half an hour before we spotted a faint spiral of smoke emerging from the top story of one of the apartment buildings on the block."
"What then?"
"We called the incident into fire dispatch, but even during the time we made the call the fire burst into an open flame out the window. The dispatch gave us a ten-minute response time." She paused. "That seemed like a long response time, sir. Is that typical?"
For the first time, Bogo's annoyance seemed directed at something besides them.
"No, the response time should be five minutes or less. But the area in question has always seemed to be a –lesser—priority for the fire district. What then?"
"Well, we stood across the street from the building for a minute or so, and saw animals leaning out the windows, coughing and crying for help. My ears are pretty sensitive, and I thought I heard them calling out about a locked door or something—so, Officer Wilde and I ran across the street to quickly check, and yes, the stairwell doors on the third floor were somehow locked or blocked from the other side. And the fire seemed to be spreading quickly-"
"-it was breaking out in several locations, sir-" interjected the fox.
"-so we decided that we should try to work our way up the side of the building for one floor to see if we could fix the problem from the other side. The fire crew had still not arrived yet-"
"-not even a siren-" the fox counterpointed.
"-so Officer Wilde climbed up the side of the building and into a third story window."
"Why Wilde and not you?"
"I judged he was a better natural climber, sir." Actually, it had been hard for her to stay on the ground, but Nick had been emphatic about the superiority of foxes to rabbits when it came to climbing.
Bogo shifted back to the fox, who sat respectfully at attention.
"Then what?"
"Well, sir," said Nick, "I entered an apartment window, rushed into the corridor, and saw that the exit doors had been chained shut. I shoved past several animals pressed against the door and tried to break the MousterLock with my Maglite, but that was the moment that the fire on the third floor ignited."
"Ignited?"
"Yes, sir. Something flash ignited on that floor and within a few moments I could hardly see through the smoke, and animals were rushing back into their rooms and slamming the doors. So I started to exit a window when someone shoved a baby in my arms."
"Why didn't you climb down the wall after that?"
"I can answer that sir," Judy replied. "As Officer Wilde climbed out the window, two other firebombs went off on the second floor and the entrance lobby-"
"The cause of the fire has not yet been officially determined-" Bogo began.
"They were firebombs," Judy said pointedly, yet politely. "Luckily, the bottom two floors had already cleared out, so there was a small group of people standing with me who can corroborate my version of events."
Nick raised his eyebrows in mock admiration at the use of the word "corroborate". She ignored him and continued.
"The resulting fire and smoke blocked off Nick's downward route, and he and the baby were forced to climb to higher floors, just as the fire department finally arrived." She then related the following minutes to a mostly silent Bogo, before finishing with –"and when we got back down to the ground, I returned the toddler to his mother…actually, I'm kinda puzzled about what kind of animals they were."
Next to her, Nick murmured, "coyotes."
Judy stared blankly at her partner.
"Ki-oh- what?"
"Coyotes," Bogo said. "According to this fire responders' report a small family of coyotes were resident in the building." Noting Judy's puzzled expression, he added. "They're an endangered species—there's not many individuals left, and even fewer children." He heaved a large sigh, then reluctantly snorted. "And it seems like you two may have saved the lives of a few of them tonight."
Bogo took off his spectacles and massaged his eyes carefully with his hooves.
"I will admit that that rescue is a mitigating factor in what I otherwise find to be an appalling boondoggle. I shall be starting an official investigation with Internal Affairs. Meanwhile, both of you will be assigned to administrative leave until the results of that-"
At first Judy thought that the knocking she was hearing was her heart beating in her chest; it took her a moment to realize that the sound was coming from the closed entrance. The door opened slightly, and the chubby face of Clawhauser peered around the door.
"Meeting," Bogo growled. "I said we were not to be disturbed."
"Sorry, chief," the chubby cheetah said, "but I think you're going to want to take the Mayor's call on line one. He—or at least his office- has been holding for five minutes, and I thought maybe something's wrong with your phone."
Judy now noticed the small blinking light flashing urgently on Bogo's desk. The phone seemed to be working fine.
Bogo's frown deepened.
"Fine, I'll take it. You two," he said, pointing his hoof toward the door, "wait for me outside."
Feeling that the full storm had yet to strike, Judy slid off the too-tall chair and walked with Nick out onto the interior balcony overlooking the impressive interior of the ZPD. In the distance far below, she could see the receptionist's desk. Her ears twitched as she heard the receptionist in question clear his throat.
"Hey Nick, you never told me you were a flying fox," giggled Clawhauser. He lifted his smartphone to reveal a snapshot. The two partners crowded around the phone. Someone had managed to snap a photo of Nick at the exact moment he was grasping the screaming toddler. Judy's arm was also visible, clutching his tail, but the rest of Judy was cut off to the left of the frame.
She felt herself staring at Nick's focused expression, empty of fear. He seemed like a baseball player leaping for a pop fly ball, every limb on his body stretched to the utmost, instead of an animal that had just leaped to his death nearly five stories above the ground. She had never marked Nick as being one for physical courage, yet here was evidence to the contrary, and she felt her emotions churn as the photo reinvigorated her memory.
"Where'd you find that, Clawhauser?" Nick asked, grasping the phone in his hand. He seemed only mildly interested in the picture.
"Well, it was posted on Gazelle's website—the forums, but I think it was reposted from somewhere else." Nick hesitantly poked a few buttons on the phone, but Judy held out her paw. The fox smiled slightly as he handed off the phone-they both knew who the tech junkie was in the partnership.
She worked back link upon link, and—"Looks like it was originally posted on some sort of news microblog—'Fennel's findings'?"
Clawhauser's paws pulled the phone from her paws. "Sorry, Judy, gotta get back to the desk. Great job, you two. Nick, tell me when you're going to start wearing the superhero cape!" He chortled his way along the balcony towards the staircase.
Judy resumed her original stance against the balcony railing, surveying the massive hallway of the ZPD. She sensed Nick leaning against the railing beside her.
"Angry with me, Carrots?"
She glanced askance at her partner, who was looking at her, and not the view.
"What makes you think so?"
"You want to hide your feelings, you need to get a bigger hat. Those ears of yours reveal all. And they flopped down to your head the minute you saw your photo. Actually one went down, the other half-mast-"
Ah, her ears. As a teenager she had gone through a phase where she had tied them to her head to try to hide her mood from her mother. She paused a bit before responding, staring back over the hallway, self-consciously stroking her ears.
"I'm not sure if I'm angry, scared, or just plain freaked out. I'm trying each one out to test which is the best fit." She idly watched Clawhauser descending the stairs, pausing to catch his breath. "What were you thinking when you pulled that stunt?"
"I saw the kid teetering and about to fall, and there wasn't really time to talk-"
"You know that if your tail was four inches shorter I'd be standing here alone right now, looking at black drapes hanging from the balcony? I barely had time to react, and I guess the impact is just now starting to hit me." She shivered. "It just seems like you're taking all of this a little cavalierly."
She wasn't looking at him when he replied. "I trusted that you would have my back. You've got the fastest reactions of anyone I've ever met." Silence. "I admit it was a lot closer than I expected. Something must have distracted you just before I jumped."
Something had, but she wasn't going to admit it. "Nick, I've got your back, always. But if I had failed your regret would have lasted for only five floors. My regret would have lasted the rest of my life."
"Yeah, I think I understand. 'How dare you presume to trust me so much', something like that?"
He was now leaning forward over the railing, not looking at her, and his stance reminded her of another time, back when they had first met, when he had the same expression looking out of a gondola. And just like then, she reached out a paw to touch his arm, and tried to smile.
"We've saved each other a couple of times now, but let's try not to make it a regular habit. The number one cause of early death for bunnies is heart attack. I'd like to live a little longer, OK?"
And just like last time, he pulled his arm away.
"Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. It's just that… just …"
Nick Wilde at a loss for words. Judy's violet eyes widened and she turned to fully appreciate the historic moment.
"Wilde! Hopps! Back in the office!"
Bogo stood in the doorway, looking if possible even more disgruntled than usual. Nick shrugged resignedly, face neutral. He was one of the most expressive individuals she had ever met, but even now, over a year after first meeting him, she had a hard time gauging his mood. She sometimes wished he had bunny ears, just to help her read him better.
Back to the office. Back to the chair. Back to Bogo glaring at them from behind the desk, a small vein pulsing by his snout.
"That was the mayor. It seems that your little stunt has not gone… unnoticed."
The chief tapped his hoof on the desk as he considered what to say next.
"Our fair leader has heard about the coyote rescue, and has decided to hold a small press conference tomorrow morning, along with members of the coyote community, to highlight what he is calling 'the courage and quick-thinking of both our police and firefighting professionals.'"
He stood, arms pushed straight down on his desk.
"For now, I'm going to hold off putting you both on leave, since this is a rare opportunity to honor the ZPD as an organization, and suspending the officers involved would look strange," he huffed. "But in return I want you to go back to your source and find out what he or she really knows. Otherwise, I'm going to make you reveal his or her identity, and then I'm going to take them into custody as a suspect for arson and attempted murder. That might squeeze some more information out of them."
"We'll get right on it, sir," Nick said, ears perking up. At least she could tell when he was relieved.
"No you will not," Bogo replied. "The press conference is only a few hours from now, to make the morning news cycle. You might as well catch a few hours of sleep, so that you won't look too miserable on camera."
"Sir," Nick insisted, "there's no need for both of us to be there. Officer Hopps is the one who saved everyone—"
Bogo spun around his computer monitor, revealing a now-familiar photo to both of them.
"Like it or not, Wilde, for the time being both of you are the face of the ZPD. Go home, and try not to destroy anything else along the way."
