Sorry for the long holdup. The delay will be (somewhat) explained at the end, but for now I'll just say I hope you all had a Merry Christmas (and the rest of December too). I worked a little extra to get this chapter ready in time for New Year's.

Proofreading by Hawktooth.

Machete: "World's smallest camera."

Juni: "I don't see anything."

Machete: "Ah, but it sees you."

Spy Kids

Paperwork had, for Nick, always been a hazardous liability. It had also been a major annoyance.

Unfortunately, as Judy faxed off the new warrant application, that latter reason didn't look like it was going anywhere.

"So how long is it going to take to get that warrant re-processed?" asked the fox, spreading his paws and arching his back as though he had gone stiff from waiting.

"Welcome to bureaucracy," came Catano's weary voice as she entered the room with a small bag of equipment. "And the crisis is, I'm sure, not helping things."

Judy glanced at her watch. "Well, you got that gear quickly enough," she observed.

Catano shrugged. "It's a fairly standard batch of equipment, and I'm a cheetah. Fast is what I do best. Now, let's grill a ewe."

Judy watched her open the case and remove some small devices resembling earbuds without any wires, a little device that looked like a smartphone, and a pair of...

"What are these?" asked Judy, picking one up. They looked like shirt buttons, but the backs were more like lapel pins.

Catnap reached up to her own shirt collar, unsheathed a single claw, and snipped off a button. "Cameras," she replied, pocketing the real button and attaching the pin-on in its place. If Judy hadn't seen the switch, she never would have guessed one had taken place. "They transmit to this," and here she tapped the thing that looked like a smartphone, "which transmits to the earpieces."

"Wow, big-league," Nick uttered, leaning in to admire the item. Then he frowned. "But don't they have cameras in the interrogation rooms?"

"Yes," was the reply, "but I want to catch Bellwether's expressions and body language – especially dead-on. That's your job, Judy. You'll be sitting across from her and confront her face to face."

Judy drew in her lips. "I'd rather be in the other room watching on the screen," she demurred.

Catano fixed her with a firm gaze, and if Judy had known well enough to look for it she might have detected an 'I don't like this either but that's just too bad' kind of sympathy. "You're the only one of us who had any kind of connection with Bellwether," she pointed out, "and from what we can gather she would have wanted to have you on her team if she could have convinced you. So, I want you to play the sympathetic notes while I prod her and see if we can make her drop something."

Judy would have much preferred to do the prodding herself; maybe with a gator prod or a rapier. However, Catano did have more experience with these matters, and the safety of the city was more important than her own sense of betrayal. "Right. Good cop, bad cop."

Catano shrugged. "Something like that. I don't think she's got enough conscience to feel bad about trying to murder you, but if you play the part of a wounded friend you might get her to lower her guard."

Judy had to admit that wouldn't be so hard – though not kicking the sheep in the face might be another story. The ewe was basically everything she had ever hated about the world, all bundled up in one fluffy little animal. To make matters worse, she had played Judy like a harp. The friendship had felt real, and to someone new in the city, it was all the more brutal to be hit like that. Between that and how few real friends she had managed to make since leaving Bunnyburrow, even on the force, losing even one in so wretched a way was too painful to describe.

"So while you're playing mind games with her," Nick asked, "where do I fit in?"

Catano slid the screen his way. "You," she explained, "are the secret weapon. This is set for a split screen from Hopps' camera and mine. If you catch anything useful, make a note of it." As he picked up the device, she added, "And no scratches."

Though Nick had expected some role – at Judy's insistence if nothing else – he was still a little surprised at the feeling of actually being part of an interrogation, and an important part at that. "Thanks," he replied.

The cheetah said nothing, but picked up one of the wireless earbuds and passed the other to Judy. "Put it in far enough that she's not likely to hear," she instructed as she did the same. "The volume is low, but if you miss something just act like you hear nothing. Wilde, I need not remind you that this is Hopps' first interrogation. We'll both need to be free to concentrate, so keep comments strictly to anything we should ask about immediately."

Judy slipped in the earbud, which resembled her grandfather's hearing aid, and allowed Catano to remove one of her collar buttons; a rather ticklish maneuver, given their sizes, but one done without injury. Checking to see that the fake button was turned on, she pinned it in place and nodded to Callie. "Let's do this."

The sheep sat in a large, blank-walled questioning room at a table made of strongest steel and bolted to the floor. The size of the table – which had been constructed with the elephant size range in mind – struck a sharp contrast to the diminutive ex-mayor on her elevated chair. Judy felt similarly dwarfed, and even Catano looked rather small with the table coming up to her chest. Only Bellwether's lawyer, a giraffe, looked the right size for the place.

"Ex-mayor," greeted Officer Catano, casually pacing the room and continually regarding the sheep sideways, as though it were beneath her to so much as look at the prisoner directly. "So glad you could meet us on such short notice."

Dawn Bellwether rolled her eyes. "Oh, spare me the attitude, officer."

You're one to talk about attitudes, thought Judy bitterly.

The lawyer cleared her throat. "Miss Bellwether, need I remind you that cooperation can only help your case when you appear in court."

"I thought you were on my side," the ewe answered tersely, glaring up. Lockup clearly hadn't treated her well. She looked haggard, and her wool had a somewhat yellower tint to it, though that might have been the lights and not an disuse of wool bleach.

"With a case like yours, I'm on whatever side will get you the least time in prison," the giraffe answered. Then, under her breath, she added, "... not to mention the least time on my tax dollars."

The height difference probably prevented the sheep from actually making out the words, but she scowled anyway. "What do you want?" she asked coldly, focusing on the officers.

"The truth would be nice," Judy challenged, doing her best to keep in mind the friendly face Bellwether had put on for her and how much of a lie it had been.

"And just what truth would that be?" asked Bellwether, putting on a masquerade of innocence. It was obvious to Judy – and to Nick as he looked on – that this bald-faced hypocrisy was meant to anger Judy and trip her up.

Judy mustered all her self-control and forced herself to stay calm. She would not, under any circumstances, give Bellwether the pleasure of seeing her crack, let alone of besting her in this battle of wills and wits. On the other hand, she was supposed to be acting like a wounded and emotional easy target, which meant that pretending to be upset by the flippant remark would be to her advantage. She softened her expression. "Who told you to try to kill me?" she asked.

Catano, who had moved out of the sheep's immediate line of sight, flashed Judy an intrigued look – not flat-out approving, but definitely interested in her technique. Bellwether, meanwhile, leaned back a little and blinked in surprise, lowering her ears. Her face scrunched, and her mouth turned down at the corners. "What are you talking about?" she asked, and Nick strongly suspected that she really did mean it.

"Good job, Carrots," he mouthed, only holding his voice in check to preserve Judy's concentration.

Catano picked up the proverbial ball. "We have reason to believe you had a co-conspirator in your recent darting scheme," she said smoothly, gliding back into Judy's immediate vicinity. "A partner, or a second-in-command, perhaps? Or were you working on someone else's orders?"

It was amazing just how fearsome an angry sheep could look. In no more than a second, her eyelids scrunched towards one another and her teeth clamped shut. Her delicate hooves doubled up into fists which actually managed to look intimidating. "No one," she answered icily through her clenched jaws, "told me what to do, and I never had a second in command. Everyone had their jobs to do."

Judy guessed that Catano was playing on Bellwether's ego with the suggestion of a superior, and decided to run with it. "Well, someone seems to be stealing your thunder," she answered, "because we arrested Jesse last week, and he seemed to be taking his orders from some guy called 'Obearon.' Sound familiar?"

Bellwether paused, and for the briefest instant an odd look crossed her face, as if Judy had brought something up that was just at the edge of her memory. Then her frown returned. "Yeah, you can find him at the library," she said, folding her arms defiantly. "He's a character in a play."

"She's bluffing," Nick remarked.

Catano kept circling until she was in Judy's line of sight and out of Bellwether's, the latter refusing to turn her head in an effort to avoid giving over any modicum of control. Then the cheetah scowled, hoping Nick would catch the implied, 'Thank you, Captain Obvious.' "I remember. A play by William Shakesbear. Know any fans?"

This time Bellwether's face registered no reaction, but she seethed on the inside. "I was a little busy running the city under that phony, Lionfart. I didn't have much time to visit theaters."

Off in his own little room, Nick thought he caught something in Bellwether's voice during that last remark. It wasn't worth mentioning out loud, but he jotted down the sentence just in case it might be important.

Judy, meanwhile, folded her arms. "You know, I've been thinking about that," she ventured. "I was pretty mad at Lionheart over the cover-up, but I'll take him as a friend over you any day."

That remark wasn't lost on either of her fellow interrogators, and it stoked Bellwether's blood to a boil. "Are you crazy?" she demanded. "Wake up, Judy. He-"

"Officer Hopps to you," Judy fired back. She wanted to lean forward and bring her glaring face as close to the sheep's as possible, but she restrained herself and leaned back in her chair instead, folding her arms and glowering. "Now, you were saying?"

The ewe sat back in her chair, equally stony, but she had taken the bait.. "Judy, he used you for a political poster girl. Don't you get that? You were just a smiling face to put on his Mammal Inclusion Initiative."

Catano decided to step in at this point. "Hypocrisy does not become you, Bellwether. You would have used that same smiling face on your Predator Control Initiative, literally over her dead body." Then, as if in afterthought, she raised a paw to her chin and added, "Of course, now that the whole city knows about that plan, your replacement will have to come up with something more cunning – but then, he has already proven himself a quite capable opponent in that regard." There was a slight emphasis on the word 'capable,' evidently meant to imply that Bellwether's initial scheme had been incompetent.

Quite naturally, Bellwether was outraged. She raised herself up and smacked her hands with simultaneous clacks upon the table top. "There's no way-!"

She stopped. Both officers were sure if she had been just a fraction more careless, she would have blurted out the name they'd been waiting for and given them the key to the case. Alas, it was not to be that day. She stopped, took a few deep breaths to steady herself, and shook her head. "I'm done talking," she announced firmly, settling back down.

"But-" Judy protested.

"I'm done talking!" snapped the sheep. "I know my rights, and I have the right to remain silent."

Regrettably, she was right. The interview was over, and the officers retreated to speak with Nick.

Neither of the cops said anything until they were alone with Nick.

"Well," said Judy, "I'm just going to get this off my chest and say I wanted to slug her."

Catano raised an eyebrow, but made no comment. "You didn't do half bad playing your part," she allowed. She turned to Nick. "Any insights you kept to yourself?"

Nick looked at her guardedly, and a little glibly. "Ma'am, I would never presume to advise a detective like you on your case."

She frowned. "You've been reading Sherlock Bones," she remarked without enthusiasm. "Except he never applied for a job with the official police, so if you have something to say I suggest you start saying it."

Nick coughed, taking the point quite clearly. "Well, all of us know already that she was bluffing about having no clue who might be behind this. She didn't give us much else to go on, but the guy's probably a fan of classic theater if he picked a name like Obearon. So, since Smellwether mentioned 'not having much time to go to the theater,' I'm thinking our man could be an actor."

Catano raised an eyebrow at the word 'Smellwether,' but Nick's experienced eye caught a tug at the corner of her mouth as she hid a smile.

"That makes sense," came Judy's eager answer. As grim as things were at this point, the very fact that she could do something had lifted her spirits - and the wisecrack from Nick was helpful too. "So if we look into her history and find any ties to someone in that line of work, we might have a lead on Obearon."

"It's worth a try," Catano admitted. With more interest, she added, "though I thought you had your sights on Miss Poisson? That's what I read in the case reports, anyway."

"We can still pursue the warrant," Judy replied, "but more insight into her past can only help when we go to follow it up."

The cheetah looked approving at this. "Good thinking," she admitted. The question had been a kind of decoy, meant to test Judy's savvy. Impressive as the bunny's victory before had been, it never paid to work with one-hit wonders.

As the corrections officer led Bellwether back to her cell, the diminutive ex-mayor pondered the news that someone else had taken over her plot. On the one hoof, she was more than a little miffed about being supplanted as leader. The whole scheme had been her brainchild, and most of the organizing had been her work.

On the other hoof, if whoever was behind it was making things difficult for the duo who had blown her cover, she could certainly live with that. That was a big part of the reason why she had lied about having no idea who 'Obearon' was. If she was right, then assuming the script played out as planned she might never have to see the inside of an actual prison.

I just hope 'Obearon' doesn't expect a huge thank-you, she thought.

And on with the intrigue. So, now we're on a new track to Obearon – but is it the right track? To one side they have a sheep who knows more than she's telling, and to the other they have someone running interference for Olivia at the courthouse. And, of course, whichever track they take they're running behind the bad guys. Will they catch the perps, and will Nick and Judy convince Catano that Nick is worth keeping around?

I went out on a bit more of a limb than I usually prefer with the interrogation. Normally, police would not bother with any kind of body cams – let alone hidden ones – while questioning a perp, since security cameras and microphones pretty much come standard in those rooms. However, it suited the purposes of this scene since face-on shots would work best for what the officers wanted, and a department which does undercover work like the ZPD would probably have something like the cameras I described here (super-small cameras, while expensive, do exist and could probably be produced more easily in a world with sentient mice). I also decided to look into laws pertaining to recording, and unsurprisingly, since recording is a given where suspects in lockup are concerned, consent to be recorded is a non-issue there. On a more practical level, in New York state recordings taken of another person without their knowledge can only be used legally if the one recording also records themselves – say, a conversation. This does not apply if the recordings are to be used as evidence of abuse or something of that order; in that case, anything goes.

The reference to gator prods is, of course, a rough equivalent to cattle prods in this world. Again, bit of a stretch, but I dare say some weapon of the kind would exist for large reptiles in Zootopia. And no, not saying you should try it – unless you somehow end up holding a cattle prod while a gator is trying to kill you anyway. Rapiers, as some of you may know, are swords with long, thin, straight blades such as you would see in a Three Musketeers movie. They are made more for stabbing than slashing (as opposed to, say, a broadsword), so they would be pretty good for disgruntled prodding. If you get the chance, Man at Arms Reforged on YouTube has some great videos about them (I particularly like the "needle" from Game of Thrones; too bad I can't say the same for the series it came from).

The note about wool bleach is a nod to one of the Zootopia books (I forget the title) in which Smellwether was quoted as saying that the bleach fumes in her office kept her wool extra-white. I think the book took certain liberties with the movie, such as changing Nick and Judy's first assignment together as officers, but it occurred to me that I never saw a sheep that was actually pure white. So I think that Bellwether does use wool bleach (and contacts, unless some mutation explains why she is the only sheep in the movie with round pupils).

I do have some bad news. First off, my work site and schedule have changed for the winter, making it hard to say how much time I can put into writing on the go. That and the extension of my Christmas fic, 'Christmas in Bunnyburrow 2,' may slow me down a bit. Second, I recently learned that one of the top Zootopia groups on Facebook does not allow the sharing of information about real-world police practices because such info is somehow 'irrelevant' to fans of a police movie, and/or it differs from country to country (because somehow my explaining real police work as it's done in America is intolerant to people in Thailand or something). To anyone who found my posts on that group interesting, my apologies.

To end with good news, I recently finished "A Study in Gold" by WANMWAD. A can't-miss for fans of Sherlock Holmes and Zootopia alike, the story is complex, well-written and researched, and most of all absolutely gripping with a tangled web of clues and crime. I absolutely recommend it. Also, as some of you know, I let myself be talked into publishing a sequel to my 2017 Christmas fic. 'Christmas in Bunnyburrow 2: Santa Clawed' promises to be more complex than its predecessor, and since it's not under a deadline I cannot say when it will be finished. However, I thank those who have encouraged me to keep working on it, and will do my best to divide my time judiciously between it and this story.

Easter Egg

Which Sherlock Holmes mystery inspired Nick's wisecrack about presuming to advise Catano?

My thanks again. Keep those Follows, Faves, and Reviews coming!