Author's Note: With this regularly-scheduled chapter, it'll be back to the normal weekly update schedule for a while. I loved being able to post bonus chapters, but I'm also working on another Zootopia work of fiction; my goal is that the first chapter of the next work will be posted at the same time as the last chapter of this story. There's plenty of story left in Black and White, Red and Blue, so that's still a while off. I'd like to thank again everyone who's commented, followed, or favorited; your support really does mean a lot to me. I do read every comment and I've been trying to take the feedback that I get to heart to improve my writing. I hope you had a great 2016, and I look forward to continuing to write in 2017!
Having apparently made the point that he wanted to, the mayor stood up to leave. "Please sit down, Mr. Mayor," Judy said firmly, "We're not done."
She had spent a lifetime standing up for herself in the face of mammals who dismissed her and her dream of becoming a police officer and she wasn't about to let herself be intimidated into backing down by the mayor. Escurel made no motion to sit, but he didn't seem surprised. "If you want to make an observation of your own, perhaps that you and your partner have brought down two mayors and will make it three if you have to, don't bother. I think we understand each other."
"That's not what we have to talk about," she replied.
That, at least, seemed to pique enough curiosity in the squirrel for him to grudgingly sit back down. "Then what do we have to discuss, Officer Hopps?"
"We can't do what you're asking. Not commenting about an active investigation is one thing, but if we make an arrest that's public record."
Escurel smiled thinly. "We both know that an arrest is as good as a conviction in the court of public opinion. You'll have to figure something out."
Judy thought her way through the problem. "If your grandson comes in for questioning, that's not an arrest," she said carefully, "Do you know where Roberto is now?"
"No," Escurel replied, "But you have my word that when you do find him, if you take him in for questioning on this case without arresting him for it immediately, I'll make sure he doesn't go anywhere until you find the culprit."
Judy considered his proposal. It wasn't ideal, but it also wasn't flagrantly illegal. "Only if I still have your word that if the evidence does point to him you won't stand in the way of his arrest."
The mayor nodded. "You have my word."
"Then help me. What kind of trouble has your grandson had?"
Escurel considered her question before he responded. "When Bobby takes his medicine and sees his therapist, he's fine," the mayor said slowly, apparently choosing his words with care, "But eventually, one of two things happens. He starts feeling like he doesn't need them anymore or he starts feeling like the medicine is killing his creativity. Either way, he stops. Sometimes he's fine for a few weeks, or even a few months, but it never lasts."
Mental health was a delicate issue, and it was one that Judy guessed the mayor was somewhat sensitive about when it came to his grandson. She couldn't tell whether that was grandfatherly concern, fear that having someone in his family labeled as "crazy" by the press would ruin his career as a politician, or a mixture of the two, but she thought playing on his concern might help. "What kind of art does he do?" she asked.
The mayor seemed surprised by the question. "What's that?"
He had probably been expecting more prying into whatever condition that his grandson had rather than a question about his grandson as a mammal. "You said that he feels like the medicine hurts his creativity. He must be an artist of some kind, right? Does he paint or play an instrument or—"
"He writes," the mayor said, with a faint smile and what sounded like genuine pride in his voice, "Ever since he was little, Bobby's been writing movies."
The mayor sighed and his expression became melancholy. "When he's not taking his medicine, he can write dozens of pages a day. When he takes it, he struggles to do more than a page a week. I understand why he stops, but it makes everything else fall apart. He doesn't take care of himself, he stops going to school or work, but he's never been violent."
Escurel looked her dead in the eye, "He's never hurt anyone but himself, Officer Hopps. I promise you that."
Judy reconsidered her opinion of the mayor. He was still a hypocritical bully, but there was more to him than that. In a way, it was a little disappointing; it was easier to dislike him when he was just a ruthless politician. "That must be difficult to watch," she commiserated.
"I hope you're never in a position to understand it, Officer Hopps," the mayor replied, standing up to leave again.
This time, Judy made no move to stop him.
"So, what was that about?" Nick asked once Judy got back to their shared cube, "Or is this one of those 'If I told you I'd have to kill you' type scenarios?"
"The mayor doesn't want us to arrest his grandson unless we're confident that he's the one who did it."
"Ah," Nick said with a nod, but he didn't look surprised.
"So what did you tell him?" he asked.
"I agreed that we'd only bring Roberto in for questioning to start with and the mayor agreed that he'd keep an eye on Roberto so that he doesn't run," Judy replied.
"Do you think I did the right thing?" she added suddenly.
Nick scratched his muzzle, and Judy watched as his tail wagged back and forth thoughtfully. "You probably didn't have much of a choice, did you?"
"That's not a yes or a no," Judy replied.
"Neither was that," Nick said with a chuckle.
When she didn't respond in kind, his joking facade receded and he grew serious. "I don't think you had a good choice, but I think you made the best one."
"But was it the right one?" she pressed.
Judy hated the idea of choosing the lesser of two evils, particularly when it came to her work. In her mind, the police were supposed to make the world a better place for everyone whether or not that inconvenienced those in power.
"It might not matter anyway," Nick said with a shrug, "We can see what Roberto says once he's brought in. But right now it's not looking so great for him."
"Did you find something?" Judy asked hopefully.
"I did," Nick said, grinning broadly, "Look at this this."
He beckoned her over to his computer, where he had a video, currently paused, pulled up onscreen. "This is footage from one of the shops near Holly's apartment building," he explained, "A few of them have cameras with street views."
He started the playback. The footage was much better than the one from the apartment building; it was still in black and white, but the picture was crisp and the frame rate was much higher. At first, it wasn't obvious that it was a video, since it was a fixed view outside the building, capturing the outside of the door and the street, but then a car crossed the frame and a couple mammals walked past, all of them in rapid motion. Apparently Nick was fast-forwarding. Once he got back to the spot he wanted, he paused. "Look familiar?" he asked, tapping a claw on a figure onscreen.
The mammal he had pointed out was unquestionably Roberto Escurel. He was dressed in dark clothes and wearing a backpack, and the image was sharp enough that there was no mistaking that it was him. "Nick!" Judy said excitedly, "This is great!"
"Well, I wouldn't go that far," he cautioned, although he seemed to be basking in her praise. "This is from about fifteen minutes after the attack, if the time stamps on both cameras are right. He is heading away from Holly's building, though."
"Were you able to find footage of him going towards the building?" she asked.
"Not yet, but I really only just started looking while you were talking to the mayor," he said.
They spent the next few hours combing through the other available footage, but didn't come up with anything. Due to the fact that the camera coverage was limited, this wasn't necessarily a surprise; it would have been quite possible to approach or leave the apartment building without crossing the line of sight of one of the cameras. To illustrate this, Nick had printed out a map of the city block that Holly's apartment building was in and drawn in lines indicating where the cameras did see. The other issue, as Judy pointed out, was that there was no telling how long the assailant had waited by Holly's apartment building waiting for Jacques Lapin to show up and make their attack, or how long they had waited around afterwards. It could have been minutes or hours, but they had no way of telling.
Judy frowned as she considered the map again. "Maybe we just need to widen our scope," she said, "We could take a look at footage from some of the cameras that are further away."
Nick yawned widely, his long tongue flapping out theatrically. "Maybe," he agreed, "But if we make our net wider, the holes just get bigger."
He did have a point there. Every gap in camera coverage they tried to account for would just lead them further and further out into the city, and it would quickly become unmanageable to review all of the footage. Of course, it was also possible that Roberto wasn't the assailant and they had seen and disregarded the true perpetrator onscreen. Judy was still considering the best next course of action when her desk phone rang.
"Hello, this is Officer Hopps," she answered automatically.
"Judy! Ben again," came the response.
She was almost afraid that the mayor had come back, but the cheetah on the other side of the line continued. "Officer Grévy from Precinct 4 just called in. Something about having your guy? Do you know what that means?"
Judy's heart sped up its pace in her excitement. "Grévy and LaMerk have Roberto Escurel? Are they one their way here?"
"I don't know, she was pretty rude," Clawhauser replied, and Judy could practically hear the pout in the friendly cheetah's voice, "She just said they'd be here in ten."
Judy heard something she couldn't quite make out from the other side of the line—one of the other officers trying to get Clawhauser's attention, probably—and he hurriedly said goodbye and hung up.
Nick had his usual lazy expression on his face, but Judy could tell he was picking up on her excitement and had gotten the gist of the conversation. "Come on," she said, "Let's go to the lobby."
Grévy's muzzle and forearms were covered with thin scratches, apparently from sharp squirrel claws, but the zebra and her partner both looked rather cheerful. LaMerk was holding Roberto Escurel in a single massive paw; the bear was so much larger that the squirrel looked like a stuffed toy. Roberto looked much the same as he had in his employee photo, although he did look rather disheveled and his right eye was swelling shut. His fur was still poorly dyed black with the red roots showing, but it looked greasy, as though he hadn't washed himself in quite some time. This was supported by the appearance of his T-shirt and jeans, which were covered with food stains, and with the rank smell that he gave off. Upon seeing him in the fur, Judy also understood why Thomas Lupowitz hadn't been able to identify Escurel's species. She had assumed that, like many mammals, Thomas simply had difficulty identifying mammals by species outside his own genus. However, Roberto had completely shaved his tail, removing what most mammals would have used as the key identifier that he was a squirrel. Beneath the fuzzy red stubble on his tail she could see bold black geometric tattoos.
In a way, Judy was impressed by Roberto's spirit. He was muzzled, cuffed, and being held by a mammal who probably outweighed him and his entire family twice over, but he was still struggling furiously. "He tried to run," Grévy explained with a laugh.
"As though a squirrel could outrun a zebra," LaMerk added.
"He was certainly able to outrun a certain bear," Grévy replied, playfully poking LaMerk's gut on the side opposite the arm holding Roberto.
The bear didn't flinch at her prod and simply smiled. "Next time, you can catch and hold the perp. I'll take him to processing."
For the second time that day, Judy was struck with the feeling of seeing a different side of somebody. When she had met the zebra, she wouldn't have imagined her to be capable of cracking jokes or of bantering with her partner. As LaMerk ambled off, Judy turned to Grévy. "Are you OK?"
The zebra waved her concerns off. "They're just scratches. I'll be fine."
"Why's LaMerk taking Roberto to processing?" Nick asked.
Grévy looked at Nick as though just realizing that he was present. "Do you mean besides resisting arrest?" she asked scornfully, and Judy was reminded of the distaste that the zebra had shown for Nick the night they had met, "We caught him trying to sell pills. And don't forget our deal, Officer Wilde. LaMerk and I get all the credit for this one."
Judy caught Nick's eye and sighed internally. The mayor wasn't going to like this.