A/N: Short chapter for now. Wanted to keep the investigation going w/o it being overshadowed by the next event.

Disclaimer: I own nothing! Well actually I own quite a lot of things but nothing Zootopia related. Well, besides the dvd and a couple of stories revolving around the characters that I wrote about it. But Disney doesn't get to own the characters either cause last I heard owning sentient beings is called slavery and is frowned upon in most societies. Checkmate, Disney.

Chapter 4

"NOTHING!" A tiny gray fist slammed onto the table. "Two days and we still have nothing!" Sweeping her arms across the table, Judy sent papers and files flying onto the floor. Her partner watched with a raised brow behind his aviators, mildly amused but also a little frightened.

"Carrots, you need to chill." Immediately he regretted saying anything as she turned and glared at him so strongly he was surprised he didn't shatter into a thousand fox pieces.

"Chill?" Her voice had an edge to it, making Nick wince. "You want me to chill? There is a maniac out there torturing people and you want me to CHILL?!" She began advancing on Nick, her tiny paws clenched at her sides.

"Carrots wait a minute. Hold on, Carrots. No. No! Judy don-AHH!" Nick yelled as his chair tipped backwards while trying to avoid his partner's malevolent approach. Laying sprawled on the floor, his leg tangled in the armrest, his glasses askew over his nose, he looked so pathetically comical that the little bunny officer started laughing, her earlier anger at her partner dissipating. A few officers who had turned towards the commotion merely shook their heads at the usual Hopps/Wilde antics.

"Nick, you are so pathetic." Judy held out her hand to the clumsy fox, helping him untangle himself. "Get up off your tail and help me pick up these papers."

"Why? You knocked em down." Nick grabbed his coffee for a good long slurp, a noise he knew aggravated the poor rabbit.

She raised her brow at that. "You want to end up back on the floor?"

"With you or without you?" Nick smirked and waggled his eyebrows as the bunny choked on her next words and blushed fiercely, the insides of her ears turning bright pink. Got you that time, Fluff.

"Depends on how fast you can pick up these papers." This time it was the fox's turn to choke on his next sip of coffee as Judy grinned widely.

Dammit, what the hell did I teach this girl?

I don't know, but I like it.

Shut up, other me.

Oh c'mon, you know you like It too.

Wouldn't you like to know.

I'm you. I already know.

Well…damn.

Thinking up something quick, he blurted out "Eager, little bunny?"

Judy rolled her eyes. "Not one of your better comebacks there, Slick."

"Hey now," Nick attempted to defend himself. "Can't always think up perfect lines on the spot after something like that. Sometimes it's hard."

"Oh is it now?" She gave him a slow smile and a wink, as he turned beet red, luckily most of it couldn't be seen beneath his fur.

Nick hastily tried to deflect the conversation off it's current course. "Uh, you uh, you said something about the case?"

Judy jumped a little, broken from her current thoughts. "Right. Case." She picked up the files she had scattered. "We've been searching through every database we can to link this guy to anything but the only thing we have is that it's a he, he uses tranq darts, and he may or may not be a canine based off of the testimony of the only witness who was also delirious at the time. I've been over the transcripts of the video 3 times now and I can't find anything that we missed. Either we are building a puzzle and all the pieces are upside-down or this guy is so good at hiding himself we can't find anything to work with." Judy slumped in her chair, feeling defeated.

Nick wheeled over to her and grabbed her paws. "Alright Carrots, let's eliminate the information that doesn't help us for now." Judy raised her head to look at her partner. She nodded as he got up and went over to the white board in their office. "Okay, first thing's first." He put a slash through 'Potentially a canine'.

"What are you doing?!" Judy was beside herself. "That's the only real lead we might have!"

Nick shook his head. "Carrots, do you know many different types of canines there are here?" Judy started to nod before cocking her head. She didn't know actually. It was never something she thought to look up. Seeing her shake her head instead, Nick continued. "Wolves, Foxes, Coyotes, Jackals, those are just four of the main population." he ticked them off one by one. "Then you get into all the sub-breeds. Red foxes, artic foxes, fennec foxe-"

"Okay, okay, I get it. Where are you going with this?"

"My point Carrots, is that even if this guy did hear what he thought he did, we're left with a population of well over a hundred thousand suspects that range over 20 different sub-breeds. There are other animals that snap their jaws and sound canine even if they aren't directly in that category, for instance hyenas. We don't know height, we don't know weight, we don't even know if he's wearing clothes under that robe, ugh!" His face momentarily paled as Judy shot him a look. "Okay okay, bad timing. If we look at that clue, we're casting a net way too big for us to even focus on and it's gonna run us into the ground here. For now it will go on the back-burner. Same with the 'he'. Too many suspects."

Judy crossed her legs, her foot impatiently thumping. "Well what do you suggest we do then?"

"For right now, we should focus on the tranquilizer darts. We know from Owen that the darts are small, he indicated it was the length of his digit, so maybe an inch? And had blue fletchings. Now, tranqs aren't exactly uncommon, but something with those specs might be a smaller net we can wade with."

"Yes! Woo-hoo!" Judy jumped out of her seat. "Finally something we can try to work with! Nice thinking, Slick." She punched him in the arm before running out of the office and down the hall.

"You bunnies, always so cute," he mumbled.

"I heard that!"

Chuckling but in kind of a fearful way, he followed her out to the parking lot.

Chief Bogo sat in his office looking down at the nondescript piece of paper on his desk. He had been a little astonished when the doctor in Tundratown had handed him a sealed envelope, only being told the patient, Owen Dovers, had told the doctor to do nothing with the envelope except give it to the Chief of Police and that neither of the officers interviewing him could know about it. As adamant as the victim had been about the secrecy of the message, Bogo decided to run his own forensics evidence gathering. Unfortunately, after hours of testing and retesting, the two pieces of paper revealed nothing. Just two lines in flowing script and two pictures on either side that he had read over a hundred times the last two days.

One of your own will be next. You will have to choose which one.

A/N: There's some light-hearted banter in this one because it is still partly a romance story, I just couldn't add that as a third category.

What do you think Bogo is going to have to do? Who are the two choices? Would you like to see me make Clawhauser allergic to gluten? Damn. That's cold even for this story.