Chapter Three: Five Fingers
Judy gunned the engine reflexively even before she asked, "You sure?"
The car leapt forward, and Nick clutched at the edges of his seat. "Hey! I told you, I know his dad. And I saw his paw. Pretty sure it was the five-fingered one. Yeah, there he i-is!"
Judy had wheeled them hard around the corner, and halfway down the block, amid raccoons, skunks, and possums, a young fox in a green t-shirt and blue jeans whirled to look at the police car and then took off down the street at a run.
"We're never going to catch him in the car," Nick managed to say as Judy hit the siren.
"Why won't these people get out of the way?" She yelled out the window. "Move! Police business!"
Nick popped his door open. "Hey!" Judy yelled at him. "Not while we're driving!"
"Then slow down!"
She had to slam on the brakes because the car in front of them wasn't getting out of the way fast enough, and Nick took that opportunity to jump out. "Wait!" she yelled at him, but he was already three cars ahead, bounding over roofs and trunks—only one car larger than the police cruiser occupied the street, a car out of which a young elephant leaned to watch, and Nick dodged around that and vanished from Judy's sight.
She smacked the steering wheel with a paw. Technically she wasn't Nick's superior, but she was the senior officer and he should listen to her. Not that he ever did. Should she call for backup now? If she did, it would go to Four, and even though they were around the corner, they wouldn't send anyone for ages.
So she swerved the car into a space next to a hydrant—being ZPD had some parking privileges—and jumped out, locking it behind her. The crowd on the street didn't exactly hinder her run toward the corner where Nick had disappeared, but neither did they hurry to get out of her way. "ZPD business!" she yelled, dodging left and right through raccoons, foxes, and bobcats, at one point leaping onto a parked car and back to the sidewalk to avoid a knot of people.
At the corner, she jumped up on a parked car again, an old beat-up green one, and looked down the street. Plenty of foxes hurried back and forth, but none wore ZPD blue. "Nick!" she called into her radio. "Come in!"
No answer. She stared down the street and stamped her foot once, making a hollow thump on the car's roof. If she ran further without knowing where Nick had gone, she risked getting lost. But she couldn't just wait for him and not do anything. Darn that fox.
"Hey!" A raccoon waved at her, the door of the corner café closing behind her. "Hey! Stop stamping on my car!"
"Sorry, ma'am!" Judy jumped down, but from the sidewalk she couldn't see anything.
The raccoon stood on tiptoe to look at her roof. "You dented it."
Judy turned from the street back to the car. "I didn't stamp that hard! It's pretty dented anyway."
"I'm going to report this. What's your badge number?"
Judy's ears got hot. "My name is Officer Judy Hopps. Now, I'm in the middle of a pursuit—"
"You're not pursuing! You're standing there!" The raccoon got her phone out and took a picture of Judy.
"My partner is pursuing," Judy said desperately, moving away from the raccoon down the street. "Nick!" she called into her radio. "Where are—what's your status?"
"You damaged my car!" The raccoon was talking into her phone now, still aiming it at Judy. "You're all witnesses!"
None of the crowd seemed particularly interested in being witnesses as she swung the phone around, and a few ducked out of its way. She kept up her diatribe, following Judy down the street.
"Carrots." Her radio crackled to life.
"Nick!"
"I lost him. Sorry. Where are you?"
"I parked right where you jumped out. I'm at the corner now, just past the," she looked up, "Fashionable Tail store."
"On my way back."
"Hurry," she muttered.
The raccoon was narrating her video now. "This police officer claimed to be in pursuit of a suspect, but she just walked down the street to get away from me and is now standing around again. She's clearly avoiding me so as not to have to take responsibility for the damage to my car's roof. And she won't give me her badge number."
"Ma'am!" Judy faced the phone and spoke loudly and clearly. "I've given you my name. We don't have 'badge numbers.' That's a thing in the movies. I have a department serial number which I am not required to give you. You can file your complaint with the Zootopia Police Department by going to our website, , and clicking on Contact Us."
"A real police officer would have a badge number," the raccoon said, keeping the phone up. "I don't believe you even have a partner. You stamped on my car and then said you were in pursuit and you just stood there."
"Nick," Judy said into her radio, "meet me at the car."
"I'm coming, Carrots," he said, and her ears picked up his voice on the street as well as through her radio. He wasn't far.
"How long is she going to wait for her imaginary partner to show up?" the raccoon asked her phone. She looked at the crowd around her, but though two bobcats had stopped to watch, they kept their distance, and everyone else moved past quickly, eyes down.
Judy drew in a deep breath and tapped her foot. A moment later, Nick's smooth, familiar voice said, "Sorry for running off, partner. What's going on here?"
The raccoon whipped her camera around to Nick and drew in a breath. Judy cut her off. "I jumped on this lady's car to look for you and she says I've damaged it. She's been recording me ever since."
"Well," Nick said as though Judy had asked him something as normal as the time of day, "is she getting your good side?"
His easy confidence relaxed Judy. "She's been filming both sides," she said.
"Why is she still filming?" He looked up at the phone. "Hi. Officer Nick Wilde. Why are you still filming?"
The raccoon lowered the phone an inch, then all the way down. "She said her partner was coming," she said.
"Yup. That's me. I'm her partner. Now, do you need anything else from her?"
Slowly, the raccoon shook her head. Nick smiled that smile he had and turned to Judy. "Are you ready to go, Officer Hopps?"
The raccoon turned to Judy the same way Nick did, unconsciously acknowledging her authority. "I'm ready, Officer Wilde," she said.
Back in the car, Nick strapped in while Judy revved the car and spun them away from the hydrant. "Nice parking job," he said.
"Blueberries," Judy said. "If you run out on me one more time—"
"I'm sorry." Nick leaned back in the seat. "There was no way we were going to catch him in the car. I stayed in radio contact. Protocol allows an officer to pursue on foot if the suspect evades vehicular pursuit."
"Don't quote the rules at me," Judy snapped. "I was worried about you. What if he had a gang ready to jump you?"
Nick glanced at her. "You were worried about me?"
She stared straight ahead at the road, taking them out of Precinct Four. "Yeah."
"Thanks." He smiled and flicked his tail behind them, brushing it against the seat floor just enough to catch her ears. "I appreciate it. But no, he ran around a corner, I followed, he jumped through the back door of some store and by the time I got in, he was hiding or he'd gone out some other way."
"Couldn't you track his scent?"
"Tried to. Running fast like that he doesn't leave scent behind. That's why I took so long."
"You didn't take that long." It was a relief to get out onto the wide streets of central Zootopia. Judy accelerated along the street.
"Carrots. You don't have to speed to get back to the station."
She grinned to the side. "What, a brave fox like you nervous to go a little fast?"
"When you're driving, yes."
"I haven't had any accidents yet."
"That just proves that rabbit's feet really are lucky watch out for that truck!"
Judy tapped the brakes and swerved. "I saw him. Anyway, how do you live in Zootopia for thirty years and not learn how to drive?"
Nick clutched the armrest. "Trust me, when I pass the department's driving test I will take the wheel sometimes. What's your hurry?"
"We need to get back to really look through this case. I'm itching to get started on it. And now we have to file a report on our pursuit, and I'm going to have to file a report on that raccoon. Ugh, I can't believe her! I barely touched her car, and it was already pretty stamped on."
He picked up the new case file and looked at it. "Huh."
"What, huh?"
"I'm just making a noise."
"Yeah, and I want to know what that noise means, Blueberries."
He closed the case file and tossed it back. "So nice to have my opinion mean something. What do you think of it?"
Judy swung the wheel, spinning the car around a corner faster than she had to because she wanted to jolt Nick a bit. He didn't say anything but his fur did fluff up. She grinned in satisfaction and eased off. The ZPD garage was coming up anyway. "I think it could be really important. The Councilwoman could be implicated in a serious crime."
"True," Nick said, stroking the fur on the underside of his muzzle. "But why pass it off to you? It's Four's case. If it's so important, why would they just give up jurisdiction to a One team?"
"Whitehorn said…" Judy thought. "She said they respected my integrity to not back down before people in power. And they wanted your knowledge of Happytown."
Nick's ears folded back. "So she slathered us with compliments while giving us a case to track down."
"Nick. She's not a con artist."
He stared down at the closed case file in his paw. "She's doing an awfully good impression of one."
"So why would they pass it off to us?"
He tapped the file with one claw. "I don't know yet. If it's dangerous, maybe? Whitehorn could be telling at least some of the truth. It might go easier for them if they put the ZPD's biggest hero on the case."
"Sand represents Happytown, doesn't she?" Judy steered the car into the garage. "So what if Whitehorn is worried that some of the officers in Four would be more loyal to her than to the case?"
"Bribable, you mean." Nick rubbed his whiskers. "Could be. But let's be careful with this one."
"Of course." Judy parked the car in its space and smiled sweetly at him. "See? Brought you back safe and sound."
"All in one piece except my nerves," he said as he always did, and got out of the car.
They walked together through the hallways that led up to ZPD reception. Nick always wanted to take the back way, which he claimed was quicker, but Judy thought it was more that he liked the cool, dim hallways where he could smell people coming and hear anyone sneaking up on him. She liked walking out of the garage and through the little park to the ZPD's front door, but today it was drizzling so it wasn't worth fighting Nick over it.
When they got to the lobby, Clawhauser waved them down before they could get to the elevator. "Hopps!" he called. "Officer Hopps!"
"Hi, Clawhauser." Judy hurried over to the big cheetah's desk, Nick trailing behind her. "What's going on?"
Clawhauser took a slurp from his huge cup. "You've got a visitor! He's been here for two hours waiting."
Nick cleared his throat. "We haven't been gone two hours. We checked out at 9:42."
"Maybe it just feels like two hours, it's been a really slow morning you guys, anyway he's been waiting a while to talk to you." He took another long drink, and the odor of peanuts and chocolate wafted down to Judy. "I told him you were out on the Kinsler case and you might be up in Sahara Square and he went to look for you."
"We solved the Kinsler case two weeks ago," Nick said. "Remember the camel we arrested?"
"Oh right! Well, he didn't find you, so he came back about an hour ago and he's in the waiting room right now, you want me to get him?"
"No," Judy said. "He can wait a little longer. We have to report to Bogo."
"Ohhhh," Clawhauser smiled. "I don't think you'll want to wait."
That made Judy glance at Nick. He tilted his head, ears perking up. "I can handle the report to Bogo if you want."
She bit her lip. Filing the report was a source of pride to her, and it made a difference that she knew that what she'd written was exactly what had happened. It wasn't that she didn't trust Nick; it was that there'd never been an occasion when she had a reason not to be the one filing the report. He'd just done a good thing for her, helping her out of the predicament with the raccoon while acknowledging her authority in their partnership. Maybe it was time she returned the favor by showing him she trusted him enough to file a report.
"All right," she said. "But don't spend too much time talking about how you saved me."
"Perish the thought." He smiled that foxy smile that could mean anything.
Judy shook her head. She'd get a look at the report later. "Where's this guy waiting?" she asked Clawhauser.
