"I'm guessing that didn't go well," Nick said, looking at Judy over the box he had in his lap.

She was sitting behind the wheel of the Buchatti, the manila envelope from the coroner's office clenched in her paws unopened. Neither one of them had spoken on the way out of the Bureau of Prohibition's office, which was something of a mercy as far as Judy was concerned. Her conversation with Bellwether had done nothing to ease her worries about what would happen after Carajou's murder was solved; if anything it had done the complete opposite. Nick, by contrast, seemed completely unruffled, and he leaned back in his seat even as Judy shook her head. "She still wants me to arrest you," Judy said, and to her surprise Nick laughed.

"Is that all?" he asked, his words positively light and airy.

"But—" Judy began, but Nick cut her off.

"We both know you're not going to do it," Nick said, "So I can't say that I'm too worried. Who cares what the ol' killjoy thinks? If you don't give her anything she doesn't have anything."

He shrugged, and a small smile spread across his face. "I wouldn't mind seeing her face when you tell her, you know."

Judy thought about it, trying to see things from Nick's perspective. He did have something of a point—to the best of her understanding, the deal he had made that had landed him in Podunk meant that he couldn't be prosecuted for any of the financial crimes he had committed on Mr. Big's behalf. If Judy didn't give Bellwether anything new, there simply wasn't anything that the ewe could use against him. Still, Nick hadn't been present to see the hardness in Bellwether's eyes when she spoke about him or the obvious pleasure she would take in his arrest. His words seemed careless, dangerously so to Judy, and she couldn't bear the thought of his confidence coming to nothing.

Nick patted Judy on the paw, apparently getting something of a sense of the thoughts running through her head. His touch was warm, the softness of his fur a contrast to the roughness of his pads. "I didn't say I wasn't worried," he said quietly, looking her in the eyes, "Just that I'm not too worried."

There was suddenly a warm lump in Judy's throat that prevented her from talking. In the moment that Nick had looked at her, she had seen his own anxiety for what the future would bring. There was the slightest strain at the corners of his muzzle that kept his smile from seeming entirely worry-free, but that wasn't what she had focused on. It was the trust she could feel all but radiating off of him, something simple and unspoken that she couldn't trace to any single part of his expression. It was suddenly obvious to her that the reason he wasn't overly concerned about Bellwether was because he absolutely believed that Judy wouldn't let the ewe do anything.

Judy wasn't sure how long the resulting silence lasted, him looking at her and her looking at him. But before Judy could find the right words—or any words—it was over, Nick clapping his paws together and rubbing them briskly. "So why don't we have a look at what Dr. Tolmie sent?" he said, nodding in the direction of the envelope Judy was still holding.

"Right," Judy croaked.

Her voice barely sounded like her own; her throat felt incredibly dry as she swallowed before repeating herself. "Right," she said in a much more normal tone.

If Nick noticed that her fingers were perhaps trembling a little as she undid the loop of string keeping the flap of the envelope shut, he didn't say anything, and Judy leaned towards him, holding the bundle of papers so that he could look at them too. It was a somewhat awkward position to hold in the narrow car, particularly since Nick had to lean over himself against the box on his lap, and their heads ended up nearly touching as they looked over the page.

In contrast with the way that Dr. Tolmie spoke, the sentences in the summary section of his report were clear and short, although the main body of the document was filled with medical jargon that Judy didn't understand. Still, while it meant nothing to her that Bauson and Scursly had both scored a ++ on Goatler's Scale, Dr. Tolmie's summary was blunt and understandable: he had found no evidence of any kind of drug in their systems besides alcohol, and they hadn't had enough alcohol to be incapacitated. The conclusion Tolmie had drawn was that prior to their deaths of carbon monoxide poisoning they would have been completely capable of fighting back and the lack of wounds inflicted in self-defense suggested that they hadn't known they were being poisoned.

It was, in other words, nothing that they hadn't either already known or couldn't have guessed at; if nothing else their inebriation likely explained why Scursly's hip flask had been empty. Judy hesitated before flipping to the next page, looking up at Nick. He nodded for her to continue through the papers, which she did, but the rest of the packet seemed to be composed of the raw data, numbers and notes written in what Judy recognized as Tolmie's script, that had been used to draw his conclusions, and Nick motioned her to keep flipping through the pages until they reached the last page.

The final page was a carbon copy of a police report, the text somewhat blurry and the page covered here and there with spots of ink. The report was brief, covering the discovery of the Camellac in the Zootopia River, and Judy was about to put the packet of papers back into the manila envelope they had come in when Nick tapped a claw against the page. "Look at that," he said, pointing out the part of the report noting the address where the car had been spotted.

The address—35th Street and Roecine Avenue—meant nothing to Judy, although she had the vague idea that it would be near the city's largest meat packing operations, which would certainly go a long way towards explaining why the Camellac had been so coated in filth and smelled so terrible. "What about it?" Judy asked, wondering what significance Nick saw in it.

Nick gave her a sidelong glance. "Lionheart owns a sausage factory on 34th Street. Well, he did in '25 anyway."

Judy certainly didn't need Nick to connect any more dots for her. If Lionheart owned a building only a block away from where the Camellac had been pulled out of the river, it seemed likely that it was where Scursly and Bauson had been murdered. In the dead of the night it would have been easy enough to push the car into the river without being noticed. "It's not a nice part of town," Nick continued, "Doesn't smell very good either, no matter how dull that little bunny nose of yours is."

He winked and made his own nose twitch in what Judy thought was supposed to be an imitation of a bunny, but as a fox Nick simply wasn't equipped to get it right. Judy smiled at his gentle teasing, but the more she thought about it the less she liked the idea of going. When she had forced Nick to take her to La Porte Verte, Lionheart had threatened him with only the barest possible attempt at subtlety. Deliberately going to a business that the lion owned, even if it was completely legitimate, seemed like a terrible idea. There was no telling what might happen to Nick if they tried, and while the scenarios that her mind spun out were outlandish—she didn't think a sausage factory would actually have an enormous grinder that a mammal could be pushed into—there was no denying that something very bad could happen to Nick.

"No," Judy said, and the vehemence in her voice surprised even her, "We need to get all of this to Bogo."

She stuffed the packet of paper from the coroner's office back into its envelope, using the little loop of string to close the flap, and then gave it to Nick to add to the box on his lap. He accepted it willingly enough, tucking the envelope away, and shrugged. "Let's get a wiggle on, then," he said, shimmying a little in his seat.

When Judy had asked Dr. Tolmie to send his test results to the Bureau of Prohibition, Nick had stepped in to explain that it would prevent them from having to drive across town during the lunchtime rush. Unfortunately enough, it seemed as though the wombat had bought the explanation because it was entirely believable; they were moving at a crawl to cover the distance from the Bureau's office to the Precinct One station, the streets absolutely packed with other cars and pedestrians.

Despite Nick's reassurances about how little he cared about the threat that Bellwether posed to his continued life as a free mammal, Judy found that the constant stopping and starting gave her plenty of time to think about what else could possibly go wrong. What if the sky, which was full of puffy white clouds, suddenly turned dark and rain ruined the contents of Carajou's binder? What if Lionheart had an assassin positioned at a street corner just waiting to gun Nick down? What if—"Hey lady!" a voice suddenly interrupted her thoughts a moment after the honking of a car horn, "Keep moving!"

With a start, Judy realized that the path to the turn she was trying to make had opened up without her noticing it and she maneuvered the Buchatti around the corner as quickly as she could. The driver of the car behind her, a pig in a Model T that was rusting away at the bottom, jeered, "Bunny drivers!" as he kept going straight.

Nick turned to Judy, an amused look across his face, but rather than saying anything he simply turned back to face forward without as much as a change in expression. Judy slumped across the steering wheel, her ears falling backwards, as she looked at the line of cars in front of them. "We'll get there eventually," Nick said cheerfully; since they weren't moving he didn't have to shout.

It took until almost half-past one for him to be proven right, and once she had parked the Buchatti Judy got out and looked up at the police station. The Precinct One station, in her opinion, looked exactly the way that a police station should. Compared to the crumbling Precinct Five station or the dreary Bureau of Prohibition office building, the Precinct One station was meticulously cared for. There wasn't much in the way of greenery around the building, but there were no dead spots in the grass or discarded trash in the gutters of the sidewalk. The building itself looked impressively solid, the brickwork free of cracks, but a number of large windows kept it from appearing oppressive. There was a large copper police shield covered in a delicate verdigris patina mounted on a brickwork sign near the door, around which were the words "ZOOTOPIA PRECINCT ONE POLICE STATION."

Nick was a moment behind Judy, taking somewhat longer to get out of the car while balancing the heavy and flimsy box he held, and he followed her gaze. "It's a lot nicer than the Bureau of Prohibition office," he observed.

Judy nodded as she started walking towards the door. "I used to think it was perfect," she said, and even as they got closer there were no apparent flaws in the building's façade.

"Used to?" Nick asked, "What changed that?"

She considered the question, but it didn't seem as though there was any single answer that she could give. Her arrest at the paws of Zweihorn and River was the obvious choice, but that wasn't the only thing she had seen that had shaken her faith in the police. "Maybe nothing's perfect," she said at last.

Nick nodded sagely, or at least as much as he could when he was using the underside of his muzzle to help manage the box he was carrying. "Need I remind you who you're standing next to?" he asked, and Judy laughed.

She almost elbowed him in the side before she caught herself; she didn't want to make him drop the box. Instead she shook her head, and in response Nick took on a mock wounded expression as he carefully made his way up the short flight of stairs to the main entrance, which Judy pulled open for him. She didn't fight the smile across the space as they crossed the bustling lobby to the reception desk. Judy didn't recognize the mammal behind the desk, a slim deer who looked meticulously put together. His uniform was sharply pressed and his badge caught and reflected rays of light; even his fur didn't seem to have so much as a single strand out of place. The tines of his antlers had been covered with blunt caps of plain and unadorned steel that had nevertheless been polished to just as much of a mirror shine as his badge, and Judy was forcibly reminded of Scursly although the two mammals couldn't have been more different. "Good afternoon," the deer said as they approached, his posture in his chair stiffly upright as he looked down at the two much shorter mammals.

"I'm Agent Hopps with the Bureau of Prohibition," Judy said by way of introduction, pulling her badge out of her purse to show the deer, "Could we get in to see Chief Bogo?"

The buck looked from her badge down to something in a book on the desk, and then back up from the book to first her and then Nick. Judy wasn't tall enough to see what it said, but he gave her a crisp nod. "He left instructions to send you in," he said, "Do you know how to get to his office?"

"Sure do," Nick said before Judy could respond, "Come on, Carrots, this is getting heavy."

He jerked his head in the right direction and made an exaggerated gesture of how heavy the box was. "Thank you," Judy said to the deer, but before she could start off towards Bogo's office, he asked a question.

"What's all this about, if you don't mind me asking?" the deer asked, and the stuffy formality had left his voice.

He was young, probably around the same age that Judy herself was, and she could plainly hear the interest in his words. She could understand it; it wasn't every day that a bunny prohibition agent accompanied by a fox had a free pass to speak with the chief of police. "Just bringing the chief a dinner set," Nick said, hefting the box and then starting to walk away.

Judy hadn't paid it much mind before, but scrawled on one side of the box were the words "CUTLERY AND PLATES," which was apparently what the fox had been storing in it before emptying the box from his attic for use carrying evidence. The deer blinked, apparently unable to tell whether or not Nick was joking. The deer was still wearing a puzzled expression as Judy caught up with Nick before hastily going for the intercom.

Bogo's desk had significantly more paperwork spread across it, but otherwise his office looked the same as it had the last time they had been inside it. "Agent Hopps, Mr. Wilde," he said by way of greeting, "I assume you're not here for a dinner party."

He had apparently caught sight of how the box Nick was carrying had been labeled, and Judy couldn't help but stare at the buffalo. It was the first sign that she had ever seen that Bogo had a sense of humor, albeit an apparently incredibly dry one. Judy brushed aside her surprise and closed the door behind Nick before answering. "We found Carajou's hotel room," she said.

Bogo's full attention was suddenly on her, the intense focus of his eyes seeming to burn into hers as he gestured towards the chairs in front of his desk. "What did you find?" he asked, looking at the box, which Nick had gently set on his desk before sitting down.

"Carajou kept a log of his jobs," Judy said, and Bogo instantly sprung to his feet and pulled the box open.

"Also, a couple of guns," Nick added helpfully, "Including one that might have been used to kill Koslov and his mammals."

If Bogo heard the fox, he gave absolutely no indication of it. He had pulled Carajou's binder out of the box and was flipping through it before he fell into his chair heavily and set the binder down open to the last page. He was silent for a long moment, and then he turned back to Judy. He looked tired but somehow still alert, and when he spoke he had her full attention. "Scursly's house and Bauson's apartment burned down sometime last night," he said.

Judy exchanged a glance with Nick. She didn't think it was possible that it was a coincidence that the two homes—or three, if her own apartment was counted—had caught fire, and she said as much. "Someone's trying to destroy evidence," she said, and Bogo pushed a folder across his desk towards Judy.

"I agree," Bogo said, "But they didn't get it all. That was found in the ashes of Scursly's home."

Judy wasn't sure what she had been expecting when she opened the folder, but what was in it didn't appear too remarkable. It was a scrap of bond paper, the edges somewhat charred where it had almost but not quite ignited. "It was in his safe, which he had left closed but unlocked along with a few thousand dollars in gold coins."

Judy looked down at the piece of paper, which had the cryptic words "Payment to be provided for loyal service" written on it. Nick leaned over to look at it himself and frowned, apparently no more able to make sense of it than she was. Despite the fact that the words meant nothing to her, her eyes widened and her ears stood straight up as she realized that the writing looked familiar. She jumped out of her chair to look at the binder, which confirmed her suspicion. The neat, even writing on the burned scrap of paper looked to her to be a perfect match for the writing on the piece of paper that Carajou had saved and noted as having been from Lionheart. It even looked like the same kind of paper, and Judy staggered backwards herself before falling into her own chair.

"Lionheart wrote both notes," she said, and Bogo nodded.

"This binder you found makes it enough for a warrant," he said, "I've been looking forward to tearing down Lionheart's gate and going through his mansion. I imagine that there will be quite a bit to find."

There was an almost predatory gleam in the buffalo's eyes, and Judy had no doubt that he meant every word he had said. "Excellent work, Agent Hopps," Bogo said, and then he stood up and offered her his hoof.

Judy hesitated a moment before taking it. "We did it together," she said, gesturing to Nick before shaking Bogo's hoof.

The chief of police's grasp was surprisingly gentle and delicate as he apparently took care not to injure her, and he turned to Nick. "Then thank you, Mr. Wilde," he said, but he didn't offer Nick his hoof.

Nick didn't seem particularly perturbed, and simply leaned back in his chair, offering the chief of police a smile that exposed all of his teeth. "I'm batting a thousand right now. You're welcome," he said with more than a hint of smugness, and Judy saw Bogo's massive hooves flex in irritation before the buffalo recovered from his minor loss of composure.

"Forensics can analyze the gun," Bogo said as he seemed to force the conversation back into the direction he wanted it to go, "But I have a problem."

Nick, Judy noticed, suddenly sat up straighter, his expression instantly becoming far more guarded. "What kind of problem?" Judy asked cautiously.

"I can get a warrant and I can get enough officers I trust to raid Lionheart's mansion," Bogo said, "But that takes time and he absolutely cannot be tipped off. Does anyone else know you found this?"

The buffalo gestured at the binder and the viola case with the guns in it. "No one," Judy said, shaking her head.

Bogo nodded in satisfaction. "I'll plan on leading the raid early in the morning tomorrow."

He smiled, and the expression didn't seem to fit his features. It was more of a grim smirk than a broad grin, but it still seemed oddly out of place to Judy. "You're welcome to come and watch Lionheart be walked into the station."

"Both of you," he added, "Plan on being here at three."

Nick looked somewhat less cheerful at the idea of returning to the police station at three in the morning, but he nodded. Judy couldn't help herself from beaming. They had successfully delivered the evidence to Bogo and he was taking it completely seriously. The case was just about over and Judy would actually get to see Lionheart's arrest herself, which brought her no small amount of satisfaction. "You'll have your recommendation for the police academy, of course," Bogo said, "But I do want you to know that I am quite sorry for what I need to do now."

"Sir?" Judy asked.

Nick had gotten out of his chair and was pulling at Judy's arm when Bogo suddenly laughed, which seemed even more out of place than his smile had. "I'm not going to kill you, Mr. Wilde," he said, and while Nick's posture relaxed slightly he didn't let go of Judy's arm and he seemed ready to make a break for the door at any second.

"I know which officers I can trust completely," Bogo continued, his expression serious again, "And I know which ones I can't trust at all. But there are some in the middle—too many, I'm afraid—and I can't risk word of this making its way back to Lionheart. No one out there can know what you brought me. I need you to act like you're still investigating, but not in any way that might make someone think you're close to solving it."

"Oh," Nick said, and he offered Bogo a winning smile that gave no sign of any sort of panic, "We can do that."

"Next time do not waste my time with half-baked theories!" Bogo roared as he swung the door to his office open and pointed down the hall.

There was a terrifying expression on his face only a hair underneath what Judy would have classified as murderous rage, and Bogo's voice was so loud it made her ears hurt. "This is a police station, not a kindergarten! My time is much too valuable to waste listening to every insipid thought that goes through your head!" Bogo continued, and if anything he was getting even louder, "Now get out before I call Bellwether myself to tell her to collect her agent out of a cell again!"

He slammed his door shut with such force that it seemed as though the entire building shook as Nick and Judy fled, and there was a stunned silence in the lobby as they ran past the officers and out the doors. Once they were back to the Buchatti, Judy turned to Nick at the same time he turned to look at her, and she couldn't help but laugh. "That was really something, wasn't it?" Nick said; he wasn't laughing but the corners of his muzzle were definitely turned up more so than usual.

"It was," Judy agreed as she got herself back under control, leaning against the side of the car for support.

She just couldn't help it; they really were so close to success and her stomach hurt from laughing as she got behind the wheel. "So what now?" Nick asked, and then he rubbed at his stomach, "After lunch, that is."

It was almost two in the afternoon, and Judy certainly couldn't blame him for being hungry; she suddenly felt starved herself. "I don't know," she admitted, "Do you have any ideas?"

She was having a hard time thinking of anything that they could do that would look like investigation but wouldn't look like they knew what they were doing. After a moment, Nick spoke, and his words were surprisingly solemn. "Do you think we could go see Mr. Big?" he asked, "It'd be, well..."

He trailed off, apparently unable to find the right word, but Judy thought she knew what he meant. Maybe it would be closure for Nick, seeing that his once terrifying boss had been reduced to a shell of himself. Maybe it would be a way for Nick to see how far he had come since leaving that part of his life behind. "Of course we can," Judy said, and she patted his paw.

Her own paw was tiny compared to his, but he seemed to appreciate the gesture all the same. "Thank you," he said softly, and he surprised her by turning his paw over and squeezing hers.

Nick pulled his paw away and looked over the hood of the Buchatti. "Now before we drive to Jerboliet, what do you feel like for lunch?"

Author's Notes:

The title of this chapter, "The Letter Edged in Black," comes from a song written in 1897 by Hattie Nevada, which has had a number of covers including by Vernon Dalhart in 1925 and much more recently by Johnny Cash in 2006. The lyrics of the song are about receiving bad news, so it's perhaps somewhat ironic that I'm using the title simply in reference to the note that the police found that has somewhat charred edges and actually represents good news for the investigation.

The use of the word "jargon" to refer to portions of Dr. Tolmie's report is historically appropriate, as the word has been used since at least the 19th century to refer to a type of language that is used in a particular context and isn't easily understandable outside of it. Since neither Judy nor Nick has a medical degree and likely would have had fairly little exposure to medical terminology, it made sense to me that there would be parts of the report neither would be able to make any sense of.

The example provided, Goatler's Scale, is a pun off of Gettler's Scale, which is a real numeric scale that quantified the level of alcohol intoxication in a person by making a measurement from their brain tissue. Gettler's Scale was a four point system; a rating of ++ indicated a 0.1 to 0.25 percent alcohol content, which is associated with mild inebriation. Gettler's paper, "Alcohol Content in Human Brains" was published in early 1927, which suggests that Dr. Tolmie is keeping up with the literature in his field.

One of the obvious disadvantages of Gettler's method was that it used brain tissue samples, meaning it was really only usable on people who were already dead. In 1931 a toxicologist named Rolla Harger invented what he called a "Drunk-o-Meter," which worked by having a person blow into a balloon and then analyzed the breath for the presence of alcohol vapors with a chemical solution that changed colors depending on alcohol content. Although it wasn't the first attempt at scientifically determining whether or not a person was drunk, it was the first practical method and it saw widespread use until the development of the more advanced and compact breathalyzer in 1954, which has undergone continuous improvements and refinements.

Carbon paper was invented in 1801 and was in widespread use by the 1920s. Carbon paper predates carbonless copy paper, which is still sometimes seen as paperwork with a white page that is directly written on with a purple sheet underneath it and a yellow sheet underneath that. The way that carbon paper works is that a sheet of it is inserted between two pages. When pressure is applied to the top page by using a typewriter or a ballpoint pen, it causes dry ink to come off the back of the sheet of carbon paper and adhere to the front of the bottom sheet, effectively making a copy.

The disadvantage of this method is that it doesn't work for making a copy of an existing document; you need to make the copy at the same time as the original. Additionally, the first practical ballpoint pens weren't available until the late 1930s, so in the 1920s a typewriter was the only practical way to use carbon paper. Still, creating a copy at the same time as a type-written original was quite useful, saving time compared to having to type up a copy.

Roecine is a pun on Racine and the roe deer; there really is an intersection of 35th Street and Racine Avenue in Chicago, which is in fact near what was the city's meat packing district in the 1920s. Just before it intersects with Racine, 35th Street is a bridge that crosses the Chicago River, which as previously described was pretty badly polluted at the time.

Getting a wiggle on was 1920s slang meaning to get going, although that was probably one of the more obvious ones from context.

Model T Fords did have car horns; they actually made the stereotypical "ahooga" sound.

The US was still minting gold coins in the 1920s before production stopped in 1933. Scursly's collection would likely include eagle and double eagle coins, which had face values of $10 and $20 respectively. Judging from his personal effects, he certainly seems to have had a taste for precious metals.

"Batting a thousand" is a common American idiom related to baseball, where batting averages are commonly expressed to three points past the decimal, although annoyingly without a leading zero. Thus, an average of .366 means that out of a thousand appearances at bat, the player averages a hit three hundred and sixty-six times. For context, anything over .300 is considered excellent in baseball's modern era, and batting a thousand, or 1.000, is impossibly good. Nick does kind of have a point, though, with his current track record for gang lords with Mr. Big and Lionheart.

In real life, Al Capone was imprisoned in Alcatraz, which is off the coast of San Francisco and is literally halfway across the US from Chicago. Of course, Mr. Big isn't Al Capone, and to make it practical for Nick and Judy to pay him a visit I decided to have him be imprisoned a bit closer. Jerboliet is a pun on the Jerboa, a tiny desert rodent that moves by hopping like a kangaroo (although it's unrelated to the similar looking Muad'Dib, or kangaroo mouse) and Joliet, a city in Illinois that was home to the Joliet Correctional Facility from 1858 to 2002. Joliet also has a minor league baseball team named the Joliet Slammers (their mascot is a jailbird) named after the prison. Joliet is about thirty miles away from Chicago, so it's certainly a round trip that could reasonably be made in a single day.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!