"Where you able to get a hold of the person in charge at Code Enforcement?" Nick asked Clawhauser as the fox reentered the Zootopia Police Department.

"They weren't there." Clawhauser replied as Nick approached him.

"What about their house?" Nick asked.

"Not there either…" Clawhauser said.

"So… we have two city officials…" Nick said out loud to the cheetah who watched him. "One who is dead… and one who is unaccounted for…"

"Chief already put out an A.P.B. on the Director of Code Enforcement." Clawhauser said. "He did that as soon as you reported that Ms. Grazer was dead."

"What do we know about her?" Nick asked as he watched Clawhauser pull out a file and open it.

"Let's see… Molly Grazer… 48… Ms. Grazer and her husband divorced about ten years ago. Apparently it was an ugly court battle, too." Clawhauser read off. "The judge would not grant her custody of their kids because of her untreated depression."

"Depression?" Nick asked.

"Her co-workers said she was involuntarily committed to the psychiatric hospital after the judge's ruling. They said she tried to hurt herself." Clawhauser said as he turned to look at Wilde, concern etched in his face.

"That was about the same time the Caribou Arcade was being built, right?" Nick asked, looking through the file with Clawhauser.

"Yeah… and between the divorce, custody battle, and the hospitalization, Ms. Grazer was heavily in debt…" Clawhauser continued.

"Can we get a copy of her bank records during that time?" Wilde asked.

"We put in a subpoena request with the District Attorney's Office; we're still waiting for them to respond." Clawhauser replied.

"…and we won't hear anything from the Coroner's office until sometime tomorrow?" Nick asked.

"…or the day after." Clawhauser said.

"What about Theodore Ringtail? Do we have anything on him?"

"Not yet, we're still trying to track him down. His home address on file is fake; it's just a vacant lot in the Rainforest District." Nick looked up as Clawhauser spoke and watched Officer Pennington push through the revolving door. The elephant was covered head to toe in dirt, with various cuts all over her arms that were visible to the fox. All of Nick's thoughts about the case at hand vanished from his mind as he rushed over to her.

"Pennington!" He called out as he caught up to her, causing her to look around before catching him approach her. Pennington's eyes were heavy with exhaustion; Nick could see where tears carved rivers down her dirt caked face.

"Wilde?" She croaked while trying to clean the dust and grime off of her face.

"Pennington… you were down at the Arcade, right?" Nick asked hopefully.

Mmhmm… Pennington said as she looked away quickly, scanning the lobby as her fellow cops walked by.

"Any word on Hopps?" Wilde stepped closer to the elephant, trying to look into her eyes for the answer. All she could do was give a quick head shake before trying to walk away.

"What's going on down there?" He asked as he followed her.

"I… I can't talk about it…" Pennington said quickly with her head turned away from Wilde.

"Please…" Wilde felt his voice beg as he looked at the massive elephant. "I need to know something…"

"The… the Fire Department has been trying to put out fires…" Officer Pennington started. "…cause some of the cars… the cars caught fire in the parking deck…" She struggled to say, trying to get out of the lobby toward the offices.

"Yeah… and?" Nick asked as he felt himself growing impatient listening to her talking.

"Well…" Pennington rubbed her eyes quickly. "well… the water from the hoses… and the pipes…" She took several deep breaths as she tried to shield her face from anyone who might see her.

"What's wrong?" Nick asked, furrowing his brow.

"They're drowning, Nick…" Pennington turned again to look at Nick, fresh tears flowing down her face. "The parking decks are flooding…" Her chest heaved as tears began falling like a summer thunderstorm. "the ones trapped in the parking decks are being drowned…" She said before trying to stifle intense sobbing. "I gotta go…" Pennington said quickly before disappearing into the offices.

Nick stood in the hallway, feeling like he had fallen into a bad dream. He felt like he couldn't exhale as he looked around, wanting to go back to first meeting the starry-eyed do-gooder Officer Hopps. He wanted things back the way they were. That couldn't be true. There was no way she could be trapped down there. Something like that couldn't be happening. His jaw slacked open as his eyes darted around as if he were following a fly around the room. It didn't make sense… none of this made sense. What he wouldn't give to have her touch his arm as she had that night in the Rainforest District. Wanting to feel like she had reached inside him and demolished the barriers he had built so long ago.

"What I said was: No… She will not be giving you that badge." As he watched Officer Judy Hopps getting ready to surrender the one thing she worked so hard for, he saw the young Nicolas Wilde being restrained by the kids from the Ranger Scouts. He felt the straps of the muzzle being forced on to him as Judy was about to remove her police badge. It was in impulse, if he had heard the day before that the first rabbit police officer resigned from her job at the Zootopia Police Department, he probably wouldn't care one bit. But here he was, soaking wet, tired, adrenaline still being forced through him after being chased by Mr. Manchas, defending Judy Hopps from the Chief of Police… of all the people to talk down to.

Never let them see that they get to you. No one ever caught on, but for the briefest of moments, watching the confrontation between Chief Bogo and Officer Hopps did get to him. After all the years of being treated as a shifty con-artist, he saw someone walking in his shoes. A rabbit, predestined to live her life as a carrot farmer, who just wanted to be a police officer, forced to solve a case using only a single piece of paper and a go-kart she couldn't take on the freeway. The deck was stacked against her, just as his whole life was stacked against him. And as the gondola soared above the canopy of the Rainforest District, and the radiant light was washing the Zootopia skyline in a blindingly beautiful sunrise, he felt a paw rest on his arm. He heard her voice say: "You are so much more than that…" He felt a warmth he hadn't felt before. A feeling he hadn't had since the day his mother surprised him with his Ranger Scouts uniform. He wasn't going to admit it, but on the gondola, watching the city coming to life underneath them, the sunlight reflecting off the windows of the distant skyscrapers, he knew he loved her.

Standing in the hallway of the police station, he felt her slipping away like she was a mirage in the desert. Reaching out to touch her, only for her to fade away like a cloud of mist. Judy was the first animal to see him as something other than what society had expected of him. Nick was losing her, every minute that passed by with her trapped in the mall he felt Judy slipping through his fingers. Any moment, Nick was going to wake up in a lawn chair under a bridge and start another day of selling Pawpsicles with Finnick. It was a really good dream, to think he really was a cop.

"Wilde? Wilde!" A voice said as he was snapped out of his trance, the memory of being with Judy on the gondola vanishing as he looked at Clawhauser. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah… yeah… everything's fine." Nick struggled to regain his calm, cool exterior. He felt naked in that moment, like Clawhauser was able to see right into his thoughts. "I'll see you tomorrow." He said before changing back into his police uniform.

They're drowning, Nick… Officer Pennington's voice rang in his head as he walked out of the police station. Nick's mind conjured a nonstop barrage of images; all of them of Judy, pinned under a concrete slab, clinging to life as cars in the parking garage burned, trying to keep her head above water as it flooded in. He tried to shake those images off, but was instead confronted with Judy, being burned alive as gasoline and oil spilled out of crushed vehicles.

He leaned against the door of the car as he drove, his paw raking his head while trying to focus on the road and not on Judy lying under tons of concrete and steel. The interior of the car was silent, Nick didn't even bother turning on the radio. Everyone around him were carrying on with their lives, not having to worry about their fiancée, knowing their loved ones were safe at work, or home enjoying a warm dinner. Guilt smothered him like a wet blanket. He should be down there, digging through the rubble. If he really loved her he wouldn't be driving back to the apartment where Judy's parents were holding their vigil.