Foxlover91 : A fun task though. I'm trying to paint the dark side of Zootopia. Maybe I'm being a bit heavy on clichés, but I think it's what makes it fun.
Fluttershy99 : I guess at least one of those two questions will be answered in the next chapters. Which one though ?
Chapter 11 : To Think Like Nick
Tuesday the 29th of January 2019
The doctor Procyon was in Judy's room, looking at her charts and last x-rays. He had entered a minute ago and the only thing he had said to her patient was 'hello'. Now, the doe was waiting for her doctor to give his answer about letting her out or not.
"Everything seems in order. Meaning : as much as it could be, considering the loss of your knee."
The raccoon hadn't lifted his eyes from the file.
"Does that mean I can get out ?"
There was a slight pause, while the doctor took of his glasses.
"To be honest, I'd prefer you stay here, if only for your peace of mind. But your mate now being in a 'coma', I know your level of stress will only raise if you stay here without occupation. So I'm letting you out."
He planted his eyes into her, and she could feel all the seriousness in his next sentence. "The only moment you should be standing up is to take a shower. Meaning ten minutes a day. It's the only exercice this leg should get outside the reeducation."
"Understood."
"Do you really ? I've had the chief forward me some of your reports. You don't know how to stay in place. So I want you to really take this in : if you don't do exactly what I say, you will disturb the healing process. If you disturb the healing process you will lose your leg. It's not a matter of probability, it is what will happen. And if you lose your leg, you won't be able to be a cop anymore."
Judy stayed mute.
"I think now, my point went across. An ambulance is waiting for you to bring you home." The doctor gave her a piece of paper "This is the adress and time of your first reeducation seance. You don't want to miss any of them. I'll leave you now, a nurse should come and help you soon."
As he was about to pass the door, he stopped and looked at her over his shoulder.
"And Judy ? Thanks for all that you've done and hopefully will keep doing for this city."
It put a smile on the doe's face. The doctor Procyion was professionnal to the extreme, never hesitating to use what he deemed necessary in order for his patient to heal. But Judy was beginning to get used to mammals not showing that they cared, and she understood that it was his way of ensuring everyone's wellbeing.
After the nurse had come and helped her dress up, she insisted to roll herself to the ambulance in a wheelchair. It took her a bit of time to get the hang of it but she managed. It was a bit hard though, most of her physical strength came from her legs, having to use her arms would prove to be a challenge.
Soon enough, she was back at her appartment. Since the last floor didn't have elevator access, the boar paramedic had to carry her. A problem that Judy had forgotten to anticipate. As the door opened, she reached for the lightswitch, flicking it on.
"SURPRISE !"
Came multiple cheery voices. As a reflexe, Judy reached for her absent tranq-gun. The paramedic behind her chuckled at the sight of the three mammals present. Judy
recognized Clawhauser, Wolford and Blackfur. Chances were they had used the key double Judy had given Blackfur.
"I see you're in good paws, officer Hopps. Have a nice evening and be careful with your leg."
"Thanks, good bye."
The paramedic left and Clawhauser took control of the wheelchair, pushing Judy to the center of the room. There were snacks, food and alcohol on the table and they had quickly decorated the living room with garlands. There was also a long gift box with carrot themed wrapping.
"Guys, you shouldn't have !"
"But we wanted to !" answered Clawhauser, while opening a champaign bottle. He gave everyone a glass but Judy declined.
"Not a good idea, I still have meds to take, and I'm pretty sure it's not compatible." Instead she took a carrot juice.
She opened the present and discovered a pair of telescopic crutches. They had had the taste to pick them cop blue and not orange, but she noticed the discreet carrot stickers on the handles.
"Thanks a lot ! I don't know when I'll be able to use them, but they will come in handy !"
"All the precinct pitched in." Said Wolford.
Everyone chatted a bit, Judy drank her juice but didn't feel like digging in the snacks.
If anything, she wanted to talk a bit about the investigation on Bellwether's disappearance but with Clawhauser present it was risky, since it could lead them to mention Nick's undercover operation, which he wasn't supposed to know about. She let herself relax a bit and cheerfully chatted with her friends. She felt the little reunion drag on as a slight gloom came to her, she couldn't really get to a party mood. Her friends felt it too.
"Guys, I think I'm going to call it a night. I work tomorrow and to be honest I feel a bit tired." said the pudgy cat diplomatically, not wanting to impose on the drained bunny.
Wolford downed his champaign glass. "I think I'm going to do the same, no point letting him go home on his own".
The bunny felt a bit of guilt, they had organized all this for her comeback and she wasn't able to enjoy it. She didn't stop them however.
"Okay you two, have a nice trip home." Judy glanced at the table "you can leave with the donut box."
The cat felt embarassed, but he didn't decline, closing the box of glazed bakeries and putting it under his arm after having put on his coat.
"Bye guys, see you tomorrow." he waved, leaving the flat. Behind him, the wolf made a hand gesture.
The panda and bunny were now alone in Nick's flat. Judy slumped a bit on her chair with a sigh.
"Are you tired Judy ?"
"Not physically but Nick not being here and staying undercover... I feel a bit overwhelmed."
"You could stay here tomorrow if you want."
"No, I want to get back to work. If I stay here alone, I'm sure I'll turn mad." she stared at the table covered with snacks and unopened bottles. "It's not how I envisionned the return to my flat."
"How did you envision it ?"
Judy shrugged "I didn't. Until you, chief Bogo and this agent came in, it all seemed like a fading nightmare. I could slowly put it all behind. Now it's so... Real." She looked at her casted leg hidden by her pant's leg. "I don't know what to think. I don't even know what I feel beside exhaustion and emptyness."
The panda took a reflective look. "It's pretty normal to not feel anything in overwhelming situations. A lot is happenning at the same time and you'll need time to adapt, and even more to overcome. Trust me, when reality will hit, it will hit hard."
"You're not doing a good job at reassuring me." grimly chuckled Judy.
The panda pushed the wheelchair to Judy's room. "I'm not trying to reassure you. I'm trying to prepare you."
The bear helped the bunny undress and get into her bed. Before falling asleep she had taken her meds and called her family. They didn't talk much, Judy simply wishing to tell them she was back at her appartment and that she was okay. Her siblings didn't seem overly worried, since she had sent messages to reassure them during the past week. However they asked a lot of question about Nick, to which she answered she didn't want to talk about it. It wasn't an outright lie, but it still made her uneasy.
When she let herself relax on the pillow at last, she thought she wouldn't be able to sleep. But in a matter of minute, she had fallen into slumber.
Wednesday the 30th of January 2019
The alarm clock on her phone rang, waking her up. She had lost the habit of waking up early during the week and she felt she hadn't slept enough, even if it wasn't the case. A hardly awaken panda stumbled into her room.
"'morning Judy." She said, unfolding the wheelchair and helping her get sit.
"Good morning Wight."
The panda made them a quick breakfast and emptyed her coffee mug while looking through the window.
"Crap."
Judy raised her head from her toast and looked at the panda. "What ?"
"The press is in front of the building."
The bunny raised her eyes to the ceiling and rubbed her face with her paws. "I don't want to deal with this."
The panda took out her phone. "I'm texting Wolford to come pick us up."
Then, she helped Judy clean up. The bunny could stand, as long as she rested on her good leg, and didn't need much help once she was in the shower.
They had finished preparing themselves and Blackfur carried her down the only floor without elevator. As they entered it and pushed the button for the ground floor, Judy steeled herself. Since the incident a few month prior, she dreaded having to talk in public. She had been able to make another speech at Nick's graduation ceremony, but only because she had written it in advance and she wouldn't make an infortunate slip up.
As they left the building, the press rushed to them, barely leaving space to go through.
Questions came from everywhere, and even if the bunny had wanted to answer she wouldn't have been able to. She resolved to give they same answer over and over.
"Judy, what happened to your legs ?"
"No comment."
"Did you know your attacker ?"
"No comment."
"Is it true they were drugged ?"
"No comment."
"How come you got away only with an injury while your partner is in a coma ?"
"No comment."
"Will he pull through ?"
A loud siren came from behind the reporters, making everyone jump. The panda took advantage of the short confusion to force through the pack of mammals and get to Wolford's cruiser. She opened the door and picked up the bunny unceremoniously, sitting her on a backseat and installing herself at her side.
"Vultures" She mumbled as the car began moving.
"Hello ladies, how are you doing ?" came Wolford's cheerful voice.
"I'm good Wolford."
"I'm good too." said Judy. "I hope those guys won't be here tonight."
"They probably will be. I wouldn't be surprised if they followed your every move for the next week or so." answered the wolf. The panda glared at him through the rear-view mirror. "Or maybe not." He quickly added in an apologetic tone.
The remaining of the trip to the precinct was silent and uneventful. They weren't surprised to see some reporters in front of the precinct's doors, but weren't bothered by them since they used the underground parking lot to get in. As Judy got out of the elevator in the precinct hall, Clawhauser greeted her.
"Hi Judy ! How are you doing today."
The few other officers that hadn't noticed her yet turned toward her. Most of them looked tired, some of them wearing worried expression. It was logical since Nick was officially in a coma and knew how close they were.
Well maybe they don't know how close we are, but they know we're each other's best friends.
Clawfith approached her and patted her shoulder in an encouraging manner.
"Hey Judy. How are you hanging up ?"
"I'm good, how are you Clawfith ?"
"Fine, fine..."
The other officers came to greet her, most of them gave her an encouraging comment, but it was obvious they felt sorry both for her and her partner.
An awkward silence had fallen on the precinct's hall. The mammals didn't know if they should stay and comfort her or get back to their usual occupations as if everything was normal. Judy rose from her chair and used it to stay up, not putting any weight on her injured leg.
"Guys, I'm fine and Nick's not dead." she declared, loud enough so everyone could hear her. "Could you please drop the funeral faces, please ?" Her words seemed to wash over her colleagues like a cold wave, waking them up from their concerned state. "I know it's a hard blow, but it's not with this attitude that we will make the world a better place !"
A few smiles appeared on her colleagues faces, some of them scratching their neck in embarassement.
"Besides, Nick would never let you live it down if he knew how worried for him you were."
Her last sentence triggered a few chuckles.
"She's right guys !" Said Fangmeyer. "We have work to do, and it won't get done with that attitude."
"Yeah !" came a voice.
"Judy's right !" came another.
The mammals slowly scattered.
"By the way, chief Bogo wants to see you after roll call, he'll wait for you in his office." said the pudgy feline.
Judy looked at her partners "Shall we go then ?"
"Nope, we already have ou assignments, we're working on Bellwether's disappearance. We have a lot of files to compile and interrogations to compare." The panda pushed Judy's chair toward her office.
The bunny didn't like desk work, but this would be all that she would be able to do for the next few months. She would have to be patient, one of the things she always had trouble being. She sighed as she rolled the chair in front of the computer, turning it on a pulling a file from the pile on her left.
To her right, she could hear the wolf tapping rythmically on his leg. Usually this kind of noise would be irritating, but there was something soothing in the discreet melody he produced.
She turned her focus back on the file. It was on a jaguar named Matias Wilkinspots. He was the one on camera room duty the day of Bellwether's disappearance. During his interview, he had said that nothing unusual had happenned on screen and it had looked like the ex-mayor had spent all her time in her cell. There was a bunch of photographs attached to the file showing a perfectly normal cell, with the lamb lying on her bed, seeming bored to death.
That opened a few questions, and on the top of her head, Judy came with a few of her own. Did the kidnappers have access to the prison central computer ? If so, how could the jaguar not have noticed it ? Did they have someone working with them from the inside ?
As of now, the computer engineers hadn't found any trace of obvious tampering. Even though the prison's security system was up to date, it was recoded on analogic bands in real time, that were kept for a few months. And the footage was also copied on a hard drive. This double security had a purpose, it was easy to notice tampering on analogic bands, and the hard drive footage could be kept indefinitely.
Sadly, the analogic band didn't show any sort of tampering and the footage was completely similar to the one on the hard drive.
It added to the theory of someone working from the inside. Someone could have taken old footage and recorded it on the analogic band, and put the same video on the hard drive. Or he could even have modified how the system work, changing what was recorded on the bands in real time. She didn't know enough about how that worked, and her imagination was running wild. But to Judy, the jaguar wasn't the first suspect on this. Taking all of those precautions simply to be here at the time of the kidnapping and ending up being the prime suspect was nonsensical.
Judy's computer was now on and she opened the common file on the disappearance. She quickly looked at who could access it. Her, her two partners, the chief, MacHorn his second in command, and Clawhauser.
She read the temporary reports and pictures of the case. There had been corrections to the first draft, the first one that she noticed was the quantity of blood used to write the message in the cell. According to the forensic later exam, the lamb could still have been alive with that much blood loss, even if barely. And probably not without side effects. Even though the bunny didn't like the lamb, she felt somewhat relieved. In her book, no one deserved this kind of death. But it didn't mean the ex-mayor was still alive either.
She continued down the report and saw that her partners hadn't spent their week sitting on their thumbs. There was a complete schedule of what happenned at the prison that day, with the interesting elements highlighted. Even though she would have to take everything in, she knew she wouldn't have the time to do so before going to see the chief so she chose to focus on what seemed the more important.
In the early morning, a prison truck had come to deliver a new prisoner, but no security footage could show any of the passenger faces. And the new prisoner file was surprisingly empty. She found another strange thing. The database showed an order to move the lamb to another cell, more secluded place in the facility. It would explain why no one saw or heard what was happening. A few cameras caught their feets and partial pictures of their body, it seemed that the camera in front of the lamb's cell wasn't the only one from which the recording had been altered or lost. Now she was pretty certain there was a mole at the prison.
She studied the few pictures there was. They showed mostly paws, so considering their size : predators. She tried to not make any hasty deduction and continued studying the schedule. Beside that, nothing came to her as peculiar. The prison truck had left at a time that fitted with the lamb's disappearance. And she found a partial picture of them leaving with a bag. Or what looked to be a bag, the picture only showed a portion of it. Now this was a huge coincidence.
She had been so focused on her screen she hadn't seen her two collegues approach behind her, looking at her screen.
"Any theory officer Hopps ?" came Wolford's voice.
The voice barely made her jump, she was used to it, Nick loved to surprise her by coming quietly in her back. "This truck seems suspect to me. And see this picture, I'm sure this is a bag here." she said, pointing at it "If we compare it to the leg size of the one carrying it, which look like a tiger or a lion to me, I'm fairly certain it could contain a lamb."
"We came to the same conclusion." said the panda. "But we couldn't obtain a good description of them from anyone. Each prison guard and inmate see hundreds of faces every day."
"And even if they were unusual, none of them focused on those guys at the time since they had no reason to."
"Crud." she scratched her head reflectively. "And what about the mole ? Obviously someone tampered with the security footage, do we have a suspect list ?"
"Beside the half-dozen mammals that have access to the camera room ? No. We interviewed them, but none of them seemed really suspect. We checked their schedule and there is no obvious match. We've started some background checks though, I can send you the file if you want to take a look."
The bunny nodded "For now, we don't have any obvious lead, so yes, I'd like to take a look. Honestly, I think we should run background checks on every prison guard but I doubt we have hundreds of years to close the investigation." She looked at her phone. "I should go now, I'm sure chief Bogo is waiting for me."
"Do you want me to bring you there ?" asked the panda.
"Nope, the exercise will do me good." She answered will rolling away from her desk and out of the office.
The trip took longer that she had expected. Her short time in the hospital had taken a toll on her physical shape and her arms felt slightly sore from pushing on the wheels. No matter, it was an opportunity to work on her arm strength, something that she had neglected since her best assets had always been her legs. And what linked her leg to her back, according to her mate.
She knocked at the door and heard the chief's deep voice answer. "Come in"
As she entered she saw a grim looking cape buffalo, his chin resting on his hooves. Facing him was an elegant and well dressed female pig. She turned to Judy with a warm smile and Judy recognized her as mayor Swinton. They had only spoken a couple of time. One of them was to write Judy's speech for Nick's graduation ceremony.
From what she knew about the mayor, she was an honest mammal, working hard for her city. She was less about appearance and more about effeciency. She had taken a few stances that had triggered strong reaction from the public. One of them being a tolerance zero toward racist behaviour, being toward predators or prey. To Judy, fighting racism was a good thing, but it should be more about changing mammal's opinion than fighting it with a iron fist. In any case, she approved of most of the mayor politics, but was still surprised to see her here.
"Officer Hopps, it's so nice to see you again !" She said, approaching her and shaking her paw.
Judy quickly hid her surprised expression, smiling back at the mayor. She glanced at the chief who gave her nod and gestured her to take place in front of him.
"Before we tackle the matter at hand, I want you to know how sorry I am about what happenned to your partner." Said the mayor with genuine concern.
"Thanks miss mayor, it means a lot." smiled Judy, hiding her embarassement. The show of support was nice, but it made her incomfortable that people felt sorry about it.
The buffalo let the moment pass before saying his piece.
"Judy, I know what we will ask of you won't please you, so I won't beat around the bush. The mayor intends to hold a press conference with you as a guest."
Of that, the bunny wasn't surprised. She knew it was coming and had wondered when this hammer would fall. It didn't mean she liked it though, but there was no reason for her to refuse other than that she hated to be in the eye of the public.
"Are you sure this is a good idea ? I've been willingly on camera two times, and one of them didn't end so well."
At the memory, the buffalo repressed a wince. He remembered all too well how her first apperance on camera had ended. But he was surprised she hadn't outright refused this time.
"I think the people need to see and hear a face they like reassure them." Began the mayor. "Those are dark times, and according to our chief of police, we're only seeing the beginning of them. It will be an occasion to honor the officers who have fallen on the day of the shootings."
"I won't force you to do this officer Hopps, but can you at least consider it ?" asked the cape buffalo.
"There is nothing to consider, I accept. Honoring the dead, bringing comfort to the living, and reassuring the civilians. It's part of what I believe my duty is."
At that, the mayor shook the bunny's paw again. "That's fantastic. Preparations are already under way."
Obviously, the mayor had anticipated that she would accept. "Though I would appreciate if you could help me write the speech like last time." added the bunny.
The swine made a slight pause, the shadow of an embarassed expression on her face "Of course, but you should understand that since it's a press conference, you'll have to answer a few questions from the press." That wasn't what Judy would consider good news, her expression fell a bit. "I'll try to keep them a minimum though.
"And you won't face the press alone, I'll be behind you at all time."
To support me or keep me from screwing up ? Alrigh, I'm beginning to think like Nick.
"I suppose I can go through a few questions from the press. When will this press conferenece take place ?"
"Tomorrow, at noon."
It wouldn't leave her a lot of time to prepare. Part of her wished to delay the event as long as possible, but the sooner she would put it past her, the better. Beside, it couldn't be worse than being shot in the leg.
"Alright. I'll send you a first draft on the speech this afternoon miss mayor." smiled the bunny.
"Thanks Judy, I'm counting on you." said the pig as she got down from her seat. "See you tomorrow." She saluted both the chief and the officer and left the room.
Silence fell on the office. The chief ended up breaking it. "I'm sorry officer Hopps. I know you're not fond of talking on camera."
"It's okay chief. I can't do a lot in the state I'm in, so if me being a public face can help in any way, I'll gladly make the sacrifice. Was there anything else ?"
"No officer, you're dismissed."
