Chapter 4 – Pop Goes the Weasel:
Author's Note:
Here we go again. Last chapter had a bit less… depressing aspects, I guess you could say. It was more… uplifting? Perhaps? But it satisfied my… unfortunate desire to place Nick and Judy together. Their overall fate is still undecided… at the moment, I'm afraid. This chapter is a bit more… plot relevant. In that case… please, enjoy!
XXX
Once again, the duo made it into the walled city, Nick landing just as gracefully as before, and Judy slipping through the small hole with a running start. This time, Nick had remembered to take the case file with him. "Hey Carrots," Nick said as they made their way towards the apartment complex where the missing mammals had lived.
"Yes, Nick?" she sighed. She rolled her eyes when she noticed the extra bounce in his step. Despite the fact that they were heading to a possible crime scene, he was still excited about triumphing over her. She wasn't sure if she should be peeved or…
"Is it strange that all five of the new missing mammals all lived in the same complex as the first one?" he asked. Her eyes widened as she snatched the file from his paws. "You could've asked," he groaned as she flipped through the five missing cases. Sure enough, they were all from the same complex.
"This is definitely suspicious," she growled, handing the file back to Nick. The duo quickened their pace towards the same spot that they had been to the other day. The red-bricked building still stood tall next to the other three buildings that sat next to it, making up a four-building apartment complex. The buildings were grouped in a square and surrounded by a single road that led off in four different directions.
Outside of the buildings, a small crowd was gathering. "Those must be the families of the missing mammals," Nick observed. Unlike Mrs. Mus, the rodents gathered were all of varying gender and family size. One was just a wife, missing her husband like Mrs. Mus, but there was also a huge family, a father and his seven kids that had lost their mother.
"Well… why don't you go and interview them, try and connect as much as you can to Mr. Mus' case," Judy suggested, handing Nick her carrot pen. "I'm going to have a look around."
"Is there something to find?" he asked.
"I don't know," she admitted, "But… I think it's safe to say that if someone is taking these mammals… there's a reason why all the ones they've taken live in this complex." He nodded in response and walked over to the gathering of rodents to ask his questions.
She walked over to the buildings where each mammal had been taken and looked through each of the windows. Sure enough, the bathroom was on the opposite side of the room than the bedroom. Which means our missing mammals would have to pass the window in order to get to the bathroom, she noted to herself. Same as Mr. Mus.
Judy continued to check the buildings, and one fact was starting to stand out as she looked over each of the four buildings. There were no security cameras. If something was taking these mammals… this would be the perfect place to do it. But it didn't make any sense… Mr. Mus had walked out of his building of his own accord.
And she had a feeling the others were similar stories as Nick waltzed over to her, bored expression on his face. "Well," he sighed, "They just started repeating themselves. None of them could think of anyone, or any reason, to harm the missing mammals. All the missing animals had gotten up to use the bathroom before they disappeared."
"That's all you could gather from them?" Judy asked.
"Well… there's not much else to tell. There doesn't seem to be any real connection besides the bathroom thing and the fact that they all live in this same complex," he shrugged. "They all have different careers, different ages, different genders, and different family lives."
"What about times of disappearance?" Judy asked. Nick snapped his fingers, and nodded in agreement. She watched as he walked back over to the group of mammals and asked them Judy's question. How he had forgotten to ask that in the first place was beyond her.
He came back not even a minute later before he said, "Well… they all got up within ten minutes of each other."
"That's not exactly a wide margin of time," Judy noted. "What do you think?"
"Well it's definitely suspicious… but it seems more like a coincidence to me," Nick noted. "If we assume there is something taking these mammals, and we consider the lack of any real target preference, we can assume that whatever is taking these animals shows up in this time frame and grabs whoever happens to pass by the window at that time."
"That's what I was thinking," Judy agreed. "Do you notice anything about this particular area?" Nick looked around for a moment before turning back to her, shaking his head. "There aren't any security cameras."
"Well… if you believe the residence, this is a low crime area, there aren't any need for cameras," Nick countered.
"But don't you think it's suspicious?" Judy asked. "I mean, look at where we came in, that office building right there has a camera," she pointed towards the building they had passed to reach the complex.
"Okay… maybe a little suspicious," Nick admitted, "But there must be half a dozen complexes in this place that don't have any cameras."
"What about the surrounding buildings?" Judy asked, once again pointing at the office building. "This is a huge dark spot, I bet there isn't a single camera pointed in this direction. Other complexes might have one or two cameras from nearby buildings pointing in the right direction… this complex doesn't."
"What are you suggesting?" he asked.
"I think," Judy started, "That something is coming here in the middle of the night, sneaking past the cameras, and waiting here for a particular time period. Whoever passes by their window and sees whatever it is, goes to investigate… then it takes them."
"So… this is a case of kidnapping," he tried to clarify.
"One mammal I could see being a simple case of going for a walk and getting lost… but not five… in one night," Judy crossed her arms. "I think this is definitely a case of kidnapping… not just missing mammals."
"Right," Nick agreed, "I'll inform Bogo that our assessment has bumped this up from missing to kidnapping." He pulled his radio from his chest as she wandered off towards one of the entrances to the complex. He paused before pushing down the button on the radio, calling out to her instead, "What are you doing?"
"Our mysterious kidnapper clearly doesn't want to be seen… I say we should find the path with no cameras," she said, turning back to her work as he made his call to Clawhauser, who would inform Bogo.
Judy walked around the square created by the road, checking each of the entrances for cameras. The corners of each of the entrances was occupied by an office building… except for one of them. One of them was a run-down, completely abandoned building. No cameras.
And there was something else off about the building. In order to get a better look, she crouched, and sure enough, there was something else wrong about the building. It had been pushed off its foundation… just slightly. As if an animal had pressed its back to the side of the building to evade detection, she thought to herself.
Dropping to her hands and knees, cursing that she had once again forgotten a magnifying glass, she began frantically searching the area where the mysterious animal had pressed up against the building. She looked for fur, pawprints, claw marks, anything that would help them figure out what had been here.
It was just a hunch. Truthfully, although it was very likely an animal had indeed pressed up against the building to move it off the foundation, there was no telling when it had happened. Or if the particular animal that had done it was the kidnapper. The only thing she knew for certain was that something had moved the building, and that something was larger than any animal that should be living in Little Rodentia.
Her eyes widened, however, when she spotted that little bit of proof she needed. A tuft of fur, caught in a shrub near the building. She had lucked out… whatever that tuft of fur belonged to had taken great care to avoid detection, yet it had made a mistake. She grinned as she pulled a pair of tweezers out of one of the pouches on her belt. With the tuft of fur grasped firmly in the tweezers, she turned towards Nick, who was walking towards her.
An excited smile still on her face, she called out to him, slightly louder than she should have, "Hey Nick! How's your nose?"
Raising an eyebrow, he responded with, "Just fine, thank you."
"No, I mean, how are you at tracking?" she shook her head, chuckling as she did.
"Uh…" he thought for a moment. "I'm no wolf, but I can get the job done. Though I don't think I'd be able to track any of our kidnapped mammals… I'd just lose the scent in the hustle and bustle."
She held up the tuft of fur. "How about something that doesn't belong here?" she asked. Nick shrugged in response, taking the pair of tweezers from her paws and held the fur up to his nose, inhaling deeply as he did.
"Hmm…" he exhaled slowly, "Yeah… this is rather fresh. Less than twelve hours, actually. I'm not sure what it belongs to though."
"Do you think you can follow the trail? The animal was pressed up against this building," she explained, gesturing towards the building that had been shoved off its foundation. Once again, Nick could only shrug as he handed the tweezers back to Judy. She pulled a small baggie from another pouch and placed the tuft of fur inside. If Nick couldn't track the mammal in question, at least they could take it back to a lab and figure out what it belonged to.
Judy watched in fascination, and with a fair bit of amusement, as he dropped to all fours and sniffed at the ground. One of his ears flicked as he found the scent he was looking for rather quickly. "Yeah, it's strong here… whatever it was stood here for a good three to five minutes," he explained.
Still on all fours, he started tracking the scent, motioning with his tail for Judy to follow him. She rolled her eyes at his gesture, but walked behind him nonetheless. He led her through the city, as she kept a careful eye out for cameras. To her dismay, she spotted several that poked holes in her camera theory. Making a mental note to try and pull the tapes for later, she continued to follow Nick as he led her away from the heart of the city.
Eventually, he led her through an abandoned part of Little Rodentia and stopped. "The scent is strong here," he explained, standing up on two legs again.
"Like… how strong?" Judy questioned. She spotted a large, empty storage facility.
"Strong enough that whatever it is… might still be here," he explained, pointing at the empty storage building. She gulped and pulled her gun from her holster. He copied the motion as the duo approached the building. Breathing heavily and gripping her gun tighter, she bent down slightly so she could peer through the windows of the facility.
Empty. With a slight growl of frustration, she turned to Nick and motioned for him to walk around one side of the building, while she did the other. He nodded in confirmation and the duo began to creep around the sides of the building, guns at the ready.
At the same time, they leapt around the building, weapons trained at the ground, expecting their suspect to be cowering before them. Judy gulped and lowered her weapon, as did Nick as they spotted their "suspect." Judy breathed heavily as she and her partner slowly approached the prone mammal.
"Nick…" she trailed off as he carefully nudged the animal with his foot so that it turned over on its side. Judy's eyes widened and her jaw clenched tightly as a strange feeling passed over her. "Is it just me… or do I recognize this animal?"
"No… it's not just you," Nick growled as he holstered his weapon. Before them laid the corpse of a weasel, one that they had met before. "Duke Weaselton is dead."
XXX
"Are you okay?" Judy asked as she watched Nick rub his eyes tiredly. They had reported the body to the precinct and had it extracted so an autopsy could be performed. It was unclear to the two of them what had killed the weasel. But they were fairly certain that Duke Weaselton had not kidnapped those rodents.
"Duke wasn't exactly a friend of mine," Nick sighed. "But I knew him, yes. Honestly, I'm surprised that he had lived this long." Judy decided against commenting. "So, what now, Carrots? The autopsy won't be back for a few days…"
"Well we can't just put the investigation on hold," she responded with indignation.
"That's the only lead we have, Carrots," he countered.
She furrowed her eyebrows as she thought. "That's… that's not entirely true."
"Oh, come on!" he griped, "We've got nothing except a body. The only thing that's happened is that this has escalated from a kidnapping to a murder investigation."
"All the more reason to keep searching for answers!" she growled. "And we don't know for certain if this is connected to the kidnappings."
"Why wouldn't it be?" he asked. "Everyone we spoke to today was under the impression that this never happens here in Little Rodentia. All the kidnappings were connected, why wouldn't the murder be too?"
"Because we don't know why the weasel was here, for all we know, this was a random accident… not a murder," she sighed.
"No… I don't think so," he said. "He was there by the apartment complex. My guess is that he saw something that he wasn't supposed to, and the kidnapper killed him to silence him."
She let out a sigh, "Yeah… that's probably a fair deduction." He gave her a victorious grin, it looked as if he was going to get his break after all. But her eyes widened as a new thought entered her head. "What about the cameras?!"
Nick raised an eyebrow. "What about them?" he asked. "I thought you said there weren't any cameras."
"There were several on the way here that would've caught him… if he was murdered and then dragged here, the cameras would've caught the killer," she explained.
He blinked at her, he had neither noticed the cameras, nor thought of how Duke would've walked right past them. "Well…" he trailed off. He had nothing. He honestly didn't want to keep working. They had just encountered a murder. This wasn't their usual MO… they had never encountered a murder before.
"Exactly, there's no reason to stop our investigation. Because we have another lead," she said. Why is she so gung-ho about this? he wondered. It wasn't… excitement. She wasn't excited about continuing the investigation. She was just very… enthusiastic. And it was a bit weird to him. He would've thought that their first dead body would've shocked her more to her core than it did him.
"Hold on a moment, Carrots," Nick said, placing a paw on her shoulder before she could bolt towards the buildings with the cameras in question. "Where do you think you're going?"
She gave him a confused look. "I'm going to go ask for the tapes from last night. You know, the ones that caught Duke Weaselton's killer dragging his body over here," she said, tapping her foot impatiently against the ground.
"Don't you think something is off here?" he asked, crossing his arms.
"No," Judy said immediately, "All I see is a dead body and six missing mammals. We have to get moving."
"I think you're not thinking straight. I mean… we did just encounter a dead body," he said.
Her eyes narrowed as her tapping increased. "Are you saying that I'm compromised at the moment? There's a murderer out there… we need to work twice as hard, twice as quickly to catch him!" she said.
"No, I mean…" he sighed, "By all means, go ask for the tapes. I just don't think they're going to give them to you."
"And why not?" her tapping halted as she glared at him. "We have grounds to request for those tapes to be shown."
"Well…" he trailed off, scratching the back of his head. It was just a thought, and probably a stupid one at that. But he would have to tell her anyways. "I just think that it's a bit weird that there's cameras everywhere, but every single mammal that I spoke to today firmly believed that nothing bad ever happened here in Little Rodentia. If that was true… why the cameras?"
She thought for a moment, trying to think of a rational explanation. "Paranoia, I guess," she shrugged. "Just because nothing has happened before, doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. Case and point, the murder and the kidnappings."
Nick sighed, "No… that's not it. I just don't believe nothing has ever happened before. That's just unrealistic."
"What are you suggesting, Nick?" Judy asked, placing her hands on her hips. "That there's some cover-up conspiracy going on here?" she couldn't help but laugh.
"Who knows. Little Rodentia is right at the heart of Zootopia, it doesn't make sense that this place and this place alone is excused from crime," he said, expression completely serious.
"I think you're watching too many movies, Slick," Judy chuckled, "This place isn't excused from crime, obviously, I just think that…"
"What? That the citizens here are more law-abiding? I doubt that, Carrots," Nick said. "No one in this city is that perfect, and certainly not here either. I'm just saying, it's possible."
Judy shook her head. "Now you're being the paranoid one," she sighed, "We need to see those tapes."
"No, I agree with you," Nick said, holding up his paws. "But I think if we just waltz over there and ask for the tapes, they could refuse. And while we waste time getting a warrant, they do something funny with them that would impede our investigation."
"I can't believe this, you're just looking for an excuse to goof off!" Judy growled. "We have a dead body, we can't afford to just sit around wasting the day away!" She stormed away before he could refute her statement.
XXX
Like Nick predicted, all of the buildings that had owned the cameras that would have caught Duke Weaselton's murderer had flat out refused to give them the tapes they requested. "I told ya, Carrots," Nick sighed as the duo headed back towards the precinct.
"That doesn't prove anything," Judy grumbled, crossing her arms. Nick had managed to beat her to the punch and make it into the driver's seat. "Your conspiracy theory is just that, a theory. It can't be substantiated."
"I don't know, not a single one of those office buildings would give us their tapes, that's still suspicious in my book," Nick argued.
Judy shook her head in defeat. "You're just being paranoid. There's no cover-up operation going on in Little Rodentia. Where are you going?" she asked as she watched him drive passed the precinct.
"Home," he chuckled.
"Nick," she complained, "We're still on-duty. And we have a warrant to order."
"Already taken care of," Nick waved his cell phone in her face, not looking away from the road. "And we don't have anything else to go on, we just get to play the waiting game."
"We still have five hours left on our shift! We can't just sit back and relax, waiting for the results of the autopsy. We should keep investigating, or maybe get another case to work on!" she all but shouted.
"There's nothing else to investigate. There are no more leads, there are no more clues, there are no more witnesses to question. All we can do is wait," Nick growled. "And what do you mean get another case to work on? We can't do that, you know that Bogo won't let us take a new case until we finish this one. What's with you, Carrots?"
"There's nothing with me, Nick," Judy growled. "There was a murder… we should be doing everything we can to catch him! Sitting around, waiting for lab results doesn't accomplish that."
"Oh."
"Oh? Oh! That's your response? Oh? It should but duh!" Judy griped.
"No," Nick shook his head. "I understand what's going through your head right now. That's what the 'oh' was for. I was concerned that you weren't reacting at all to the dead body, but now I see…" but he was cut off by the sound of sirens.
His eyes widened as he pulled to the side along with all the other cars to allow the three police vehicles to pass them by. He and Judy shared a look and she said, "We're still technically on duty." He nodded in response, hit the sirens, and followed the other police cars.
He pressed harder on the accelerator to catch up to the leading cars, they were driving well over the speed limit. Nick swallowed when he realized that this must be a real emergency. "Nick… what were you saying before?" Judy asked, realizing that the police cars had cut him off.
"We're a bit busy at the moment, Carrots," Nick grumbled as he followed the other cars, taking a hard-right turn. "I'll tell you later." Judy nodded solemnly as the other police cars came to a grinding halt around a single building. They didn't even bother parking in a parking space as the duo came to a stop.
They stepped out of the car, but Nick hesitated in following Judy. They were at a crime scene, evident by the yellow tape preventing anyone else but the police from interfering. The other officers were rushing towards the building, but Judy paused in her step and turned around to see Nick staring blankly at the building with wide eyes.
She called out to him, but he didn't make any attempt to show that he had heard her. With a frustrated sigh, she walked back over to him and said, "Nick?"
"Judy…" he said softly, causing her ears to droop when she heard her real name. "Tell me that isn't my apartment building."
"Nick…" she trailed off. She hadn't recognized it at first, but it was clear now. Several police cars surrounded the scene, officers were scattered everywhere. Some were talking to residents, others were setting up tape, and quite a few were walking inside. They had no idea what was going on. "That's your apartment building," she finished with a heavy sigh. It was a good thing there weren't any firetrucks parked outside.
XXX
I decided upon a shorter chapter instead of a longer one… splitting this chapter into two. Like the chapter title? I couldn't resist… in any case, we get two little surprises this chapter. Although one should've already been obvious from the last chapter, but this last one should be surprising. I wonder what's happened at Nick's apartment building? And then there's whatever's happening to Judy at the moment… can anyone guess? Of course, there's also that conspiracy that Nick mentions… but I wonder how true that actually is. All that and more, stay tuned until next time!
