DISCLAIMER: I had my bid to own Zootopia, but the Northuldra fire spirt jumped on it and the little bugger burned it to ashes. So I still don't own Zootopia, and I'm trying to find a burn specialist in this weird enchanted land. Any ideas?
Special thanks to GusTheBear and TheoreticallyEva for reviewing this chapter! You guys rock!
"Brayer announced today that the first shipment of its widely anticipated antidote would be on its way to Zootopia within the week, welcome news for the thousands of families and individuals still waiting for treatment for their loved ones. With no increase in Furston's output and no one expressing interest in the various deals they have offered other pharmaceutical companies in exchange for producing their own antidote, Brayer has become one of the sole rays of hope for treatment." The ZPD conference room TV had been tuned to ZNN, and Fabienne Growley, looking more rested than she had in weeks, was giving a rundown of the events leading up to that point.
The camera shifted to the snow leopard's partner. "In other business news, Furston's stock was frozen yesterday after another drop in price. Sources say that the recent leak of a series of internal documents concerning the employees arrested in connection with the Rainforest attack two months ago was the cause of the latest drop. ZNN was able to obtain a copy of said documents, all detailing financial transfers from the company to charities that appear to be non-existent. The leak was traced back to an employee within the company who asked to remain anonymous." Peter Moosebridge made a show of shuffling his papers.
Nick snorted at that. "I can't believe it actually took them this long to let out that little detail. I was certain that the attorney suing my mother would put his own spin on it first, that she was using the charities to launder money."
Moosebridge continued. "Furston's ousting of CEO Steven Furshaw has done little to change the public perception and the landmark stock collapse, with several class action suits already filed in the Zootopia Superior Court, and near-constant public demonstrations outside the company's downtown headquarters. As many viewers will remember, those demonstrations turned unfortunately violent several days ago, with two officers and four civilians injured."
"I hope Grizzoli and Jackson will be OK." The protest at Furston had started out peaceful but quickly devolved into a shouting match with officers when the protestors tried to force their way into the Furston building. Things were looking better for a while, with Grizzoli doing his best at leading the police in deescalating the situation, when someone had set off a string of firecrackers. It had whipped everyone up again, and the ensuing brawl left both Grizzoli and Jackson in the hospital, along with four of the protestors themselves.
Growley took over the commentary again. "Furston replaced Mr. Furshaw with acting CEO and board member John Marschall, who stated in a press release that he would 'work to rebuild public trust in the company until such a time as a permanent replacement can be found'. The public has largely expressed skepticism."
Another snort from Nick and he retorted in his best 'snobby newscaster' voice. "Yeah, and I wonder why that might be, Fabienne. They put their company secrets and intellectual property over the lives of the mammals relying on their product. Tried to squeeze a profit out of the crisis, and let's not forget threatening to sue anyone who tried to emulate their antidote, rather than offering the formula publicly."
Judy rolled her eyes. "Not to mention firing the mammal that did the right thing and turned in evidence of her corrupt boss."
Nick gasped in mock shock. "Oh, my gosh, you're right! How could I forget?" He slapped his forehead.
Peter Moosebridge took up the commentary again. "In other news, the city has announced that preliminary soil and environmental analysis of the Rainforest and Canal Districts will begin this week, led by Caldon Reclamation, after a bidding process was opened by the city government last month."
The feed switched to an earlier recording of Mayor Clawheed. "Soil analysis is the first step in getting our mammals back into their homes and businesses. We also need to see how the toxins are affecting flora and fauna, and Caldon Reclamation has experience with that."
The feed switched back to the newsroom and Peter Moosebridge. "No word yet on the estimated cost of the analysis and cleanup, but the mayor cautioned that it 'could take a significant length of time'."
"Boy, that's not going to go over well for the mammals that live and work there," Shawn Dancing Rivers quipped as he switched off the TV. The three other mammals in the conference room all expressed their agreement before Nick spoke up.
"How much do you want to bet that someone's going to find a way to sue the city for suppressing their freedom to choose whether or not they go savage? I can just see it now. 'Your honour, I submit that I wanted to exercise my free will to live in my house even though it wasn't safe, and because there was a possibility that I could go so-called 'savage'! What's that? No, why would it matter if the hospitals are overwhelmed?'" Nick's goofy, nasally whiney voice pantomimes just added to the humor. Judy and Nolwazi Longtooth snickered, while Rivers broke into a grin.
"It's hard to say what's the best approach, but that's up to the politicians to figure out, not us," Rivers said. "They obviously have their reasons for doing it this way, and frankly, I agree with him. We're just now starting to see some improvement in the hospitals. First time in two months, but there's still a massive backlog of savage mammals that we just can't treat."
Judy shuddered at that. Keeping the mammals in the precinct lockups had felt a little like they'd turned the basement into some sort of aviary or herpetarium for mammals, just without the realistic enclosures. She was glad that they'd hired keepers from Zootopia's largest of those to help handle the savage mammals and clean the cages. Still, it wasn't a pleasant experience when they'd had to move the last of the savage mammals to the minimum-security prison a few days prior.
With their holding cells now empty and sanitation companies working around the clock down there, the mammals of Precinct One breathed a collective sigh of relief that things were starting to get back to normal.
Normal was, of course, a somewhat ambiguous word at this point. The lockdown was starting to feel normal for a few mammals, and the gradual reopening of the city was somewhat alien. For Judy, who had gone from a farm and small town to the big city, it sort of felt like she'd returned to Bunnyburrow, with the quieter streets.
It was still unsettling for the doe, though, since she'd gotten used to the noise and the chaos of the big city. Nick had mentioned to her during pillow talk two weeks ago that the lack of background noise felt 'wrong' and made him uneasy. The two had mentioned that to their psychologist, and the doctor commented that it was likely because it wasn't familiar to Nick, and he was experiencing anxiety as his brain worked to equate the "new normal" with the city he grew up in. The doctor had suggested that Nick install an app on his phone that generated ambient noise, like that in the city, and use it each night, gradually turning down the volume a little more each time.
So far, it seemed to be working. Nick had been sleeping better, and no longer felt unease at the city's comparative quietness. By mutual agreement, though, they figured it would be a good idea to continue using the app as long as they needed. Even if, at least once, they were almost late for their shift because Nick forgot to plug in his phone and it had died sometime during the night.
Of course, all of the officers were looking forward to getting back to regular eight-hour shifts and days off. Very few had been able to take off a weekend, or even two consecutive days, unless there was an injury involved.
However, one bright light that had developed was the scheduling of preliminary hearings for the charges brought against the terrorists. ZPD's lab had been able to fully deconstruct the latest attack formula. With the help of the cybercrime unit, it had drawn up a timeline of all of the known changes made to the formula, now known as the Night Savage formula, based on emails that had been recovered referring to it as such.
The somewhat censored results from the lab and cybercrime had also been forwarded to the pharmaceutical companies in an effort to speed their research into antidotes. Nick, Judy, and the two detectives had been using the rest to correlate the fudged shipping manifests and customs declarations, and the four were confident they'd accounted for ninety percent of the imports.
Cybercrime had also created a virtual web of all the mammals they could identify that were connected to the plot, using their real identities and online personas. They were confident that none of the members of the cult had been missed in the initial raids.
All this came as good news for the four mammals who had worked the case, and for Bogo, knowing he wouldn't have to risk his career or mammals in more raids if the raid—or one of the initial ones—turned out to be a false lead.
Calls about savage mammals had also all but disappeared, though there were still hundreds of mammals unaccounted for. Occasionally, they'd get a notification that a trap had been triggered. However, after the massive success with which they'd started out, the frequency had dropped dramatically until there were only a few triggers a day, then every few days. Even shifting the traps around didn't help much.
The medical examiner's office had been busy around the clock as well, identifying remains and performing autopsies to determine exact cause of death. Rocky Mamusson and his team had slowly been working through the fields of refrigerator trailers they had started with and had managed to tackle almost all of the waiting bodies.
In the course of his work, he'd discovered an inordinately high number of predators with heart conditions or older citizens had suffered a cardiac failure, so he'd forwarded that to the hospitals as a precautionary measure. That, in turn, had allowed emergency rooms and ICUs to respond that much quicker to a developing crisis.
The actions of the fire department had pretty much returned to normal, though they had noticed a decrease in their overall activity, with more mammals staying home. What hadn't decreased was the number of accidental structural fires. With more mammals at home, the risk of such fires rose.
Traffic on the roads was slowly returning, with the more affluent population being more likely to venture out than the less fortunate. Unfortunately, the number of accidents also seemed to be on the rise proportionally. Despite the ZPD's best efforts, no one could seem to explain that one.
The best possibility had been one Nick put forth the day before while working the scene of a multicar pileup just outside the city center—that the rich didn't care since they could just buy a new car and pay the other mammals involved to keep it off the insurance record. It didn't always work, though.
For the ZPD, the most worrying rise was the reported incidents of predator/prey road rage. The trend had gotten up to several dozen calls about it per day, anything from a prey egging a predator on to a predator getting out and physically confronting a prey mammal to full-on assault and property damage. Invariably, the police had to sort it out, and often, tempers would flare. With more prey officers than predators, there were occasionally instances where two prey officers showed up to a dispute and a predator involved would demand a "real" officer help out.
Shaking her head, Judy refocused herself on the paperwork in front of her. With the preliminary hearings coming up, the four needed to review all of the evidence compiled for the case, going all the way back to the missing mammals cases in her first week on the force. It was a lot of ground to cover.
The mentions of Bellwether in early emails between the cult members, how she 'lost sight of the objective', seemed to hint that she'd somehow been involved. However, no one had been able to make any connection to the former mayor beyond the mere mention of her and the fact that her cohorts—Doug, Woolter, and Jesse—were also part of the new case. Of the three, two of them were dead, and the other was in custody.
The city had decided to go ahead with a posthumous trial for Doug Ramses, though. The ZPD had more than enough evidence to be certain he'd been the one to commit the crime, but Ramses' family had threatened to sue for wrongful death without a trial. That was another thorn that Judy didn't need or want. She was having a hard enough time coming to grips with the fact that she'd taken a life, and she really didn't need the whole thing dragged through the mud again.
Realizing that she'd let her mind drift again, she looked down at the page in front of her. It was surprising to the doe how much she'd forgotten about the case over its course, but that was the point of the reviews. "I'd almost forgotten about Spencer Callahan."
"Really, Carrots? Forgot?" Nick said.
Judy shrugged. "Well, not really forgot, but with all the other stuff that's happened, he kind of got filed away in my subconscious."
Nolwazi nodded at that. "You never actually met the mammal, so in a way, he's just a name for you. You knew that he was connected to Eric, but other than that, the only contact you had with him was evidence and second-paw information. It helps to keep things objective." She frowned. "Sometimes it's hard to remain objective when dealing with a murder victim's loved ones. It's easy to get tunnel vision, too. You can become so certain that someone committed the crime that you ignore all other suspects."
"That's why we all get partners, though," Judy pointed out.
"Yes, but even then, I've seen officers lock their partner out or even convince their partner to go along with it. That never ends well. For any of the mammals involved, and the ZPD as a whole."
Judy and Nick looked at each other, an expression of worry on their faces. Neither of them wanted that to happen to themselves or the other, but both could see how easy it could be to fall into that particular hole. This would be something they would need to talk about later.
Judy turned back to the lioness detective. "How do you avoid that?"
Rivers answered. "Listen to your partner, for one. Keep your mind open to all possibilities, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, or even weird. Evidence can be interpreted in many different ways."
Judy and Nick looked at each other again. "Nick and I fell for that on our first case. We thought Night Howlers were wolves. I'd never heard that term for Midnicampum Holicithias before, so I never made the connection." Judy shrugged sheepishly. "Even though I lived on a farm."
Nick shook his head. "Neither of us even thought to Zoogle it."
Longtooth nodded. "That's understandable. Just take it as a learning experience, and remember it for next time."
Both of the junior mammals nodded and turned back to their stacks of papers.
In another part of Zootopia, another mammal was staring at her own piece of paper, pen in hoof, trying to figure out how best to formulate what she wanted to write.
Gazelle—or, as she was known to her friends, Isabella—had entertained the idea for a month now. She'd been shaping and reshaping it, turning it over in her head. But how to start?
Putting the pen down in exasperation for a moment, she sat back and rubbed her eyes. The last month had been crazy for her. Fan mail had tripled since the terrorist attack, and her agent mentioned that a lot of it was being screened as hate mail. A few samples were even sent to the ZPD, but the ones that she loved the most were from her fans who were thanking her for coming out with her Dmitri as an inter-order couple, how she had given them the courage to stand up for themselves and their right to love whoever they wanted.
She tried to reply to those personally, though there was no way she could get to all of them, especially since she'd been volunteering her time in the kitchen of a shelter that had been set up to house all of the displaced mammals from the Rainforest and Canal Districts. The few mammals who knew she was there had sworn themselves to secrecy, and she was thankful that the media hadn't yet gotten wind of it. However, she had made several public pleas for donations and was happy to see that they seemed to have been answered.
She'd also seen news articles and segments about prey families that had taken in predators and vice versa, setting them up in their own home and treating them like family. She'd asked her agent to help her track down those mammals so she could pay them a special visit in thanks.
"Still struggling, love?" The gazelle looked up to see her mate enter the room. She nodded. "You'll get it. Remember how long it took you to write 'Try Everything'?"
"I spent months on that one and then it all came to me in one evening."
"And it became your biggest hit." Dmitri sat down next to the famous singer.
Isabelle nodded. "That's true. I was actually a little surprised. I didn't think it was that good."
"It resonated with other mammals, love. It made them feel like they could try to be something more than what they were. And now look. There is a rabbit on the police force. And she is paired with a fox. Many, especially in the old country, say that a fox cannot be anything but shifty and untrustworthy. Another fox stood up to her rich, powerful employers and is now in trouble for doing the right thing. Many mammals are coming out that they love others beyond what, eh…species they are." Dmitri shifted to look Isabella squarely in the eye. "Do not underestimate what you have done for mammals in the city and all over."
The gazelle thought about that. "Well, what good is fame and money if you don't use it to help the less fortunate, or bring light to injustices?"
The tiger sitting next to her smiled. "And that is why you are admired as you are. A year ago, when no one knew why predators were going savage, you gave predators a voice where we did not have one."
"That's true." She looked down at the otherwise blank piece of paper in front of her. Perhaps she just needed to come at this from a different angle. "Maybe we should visit the police department next."
"I am sure they would appreciate it. You know you have friends there, and that they have been very overworked by the recent events."
The singer nodded. "You don't see much of them in the news. Only when they are breaking up a protest or something happens involving them."
"The people have already started to turn against the city government. Do you worry that they will turn against the emergency services, too?"
The gazelle shook her head. "I don't know. I would not doubt that they would if things extend much longer. Many have lost hope."
"What can we do to give them some?"
The gazelle thought for a moment, before her eyes lit up and she grabbed the piece of paper and started writing.
Marian Wilde sat uncomfortably in the witness stand of the courtroom. The justice system had opted for a bench trial, considering the pressure the system was about to be under, so it was just her, a judge, her attorney Linus Ford, a few dozen witnesses for both sides…and Terrence Ramsford. He was dressed in a way that screamed of the money he was being paid to have the judge rule against her, but she couldn't think about that now.
"What happened that first tipped you off that your employer at the time may have been engaged in some extracurricular activities?" Ford asked her.
Marian cleared her throat. "I was asked to destroy a stack of documents."
Ford nodded. "Destroy how?"
The vixen thought for a second. "Company policy for hardcopy documents. It dictates the process we are required to follow for destroying sensitive information. It also dictates how long we have to wait before the information can be destroyed."
"And that includes financial data?" her wolf attorney pressed.
Marian nodded. "Yes. Company policy states that financial data must be retained a minimum of seven years after the fiscal year the transaction took place. It applies to donation forms as well."
"Thank you. Please continue to tell the court how you found out about your employer."
"The stack of documents I was asked to destroy was mostly unimportant. Printed out emails, old records that had been digitized, that sort of thing, but in the middle of the stack was a donation authorization that I remembered delivering to accounting only a couple weeks before. A cash donation to the Organization for Welfare of Prey Mammals. I didn't recognize that from the list of charities the company had approved, but my boss had signed the authorization for the form's destruction."
Ford nodded. "You were able to verify that this wasn't an oversight on your boss' part?"
Marian nodded. "I put the form aside, safe, in case I needed to address it later. But more and more forms came through, all for donations just weeks prior, and all signed for destruction." She thought. "They were all for unapproved charities."
Her attorney nodded again. "The Organization for Welfare of Prey Mammals, Tech 4 Teens, and Medfind Zootopia. You will find, Your Honor, that all three of these charities are ones that the ZPD has found to have been laundering money for alleged criminal activity."
The elephant judge shuffled through his papers, pulling out the appropriate notes. "Yes, thank you."
The wolf attorney turned back to his client. "When you felt you had enough evidence, what exactly did you do with it?"
"I took it to my son and his partner in the police force."
"Were you aware of the potential conflict of interest involved in giving it to your son?"
Marian shook her head. "Not exactly. Officer Hopps explained it to me, that they couldn't handle it."
The wolf turned back to the judge. "I've included the sworn statement from both Officers Nicholas Wilde and Judith Hopps that upon reception of the evidence, it was turned over to their superiors, Detectives Nolwazi Longtooth and Shawn Dancing Rivers. Both have stated that the two officers had no further contact with the evidence, or that aspect of the case."
The elephant nodded. "Are they here today?"
"No, Your Honor. As you are aware, emergency services are in high demand and short supply at the moment. They couldn't make it."
The judge shuffled his papers again. "Understood. Any further questions?"
"Yes. Mrs. Wilde, besides this particular event you are describing, were there any other instances of your boss authorizing donations to these three charities, before or after you became aware of them?"
The vixen nodded. "Yes. I don't know the exact numbers, but I found records that seemed to suggest that he'd been donating to the same charities for more than a year."
"No further questions, Your Honor."
The judge turned to Terrence Ramsford. "Does the prosecution wish to cross-examine?"
Ramsford stood, a smirk on his face. "Yes, we do." He turned to the vixen in the witness stand. "Mrs. Wilde, when you originally delivered the donation authorizations, were you the one that signed the delivery line of the forms when they were given to accounting?"
Marian kept her face neutral. "Yes, I was."
"And did anyone see McStripeson give those authorizations to you?"
"They were given to me after a conference meeting between himself and several other executives. Most of the other assistants were in the room, though I don't know if any saw the exchange."
The ram's face remained neutral. "And what about when you delivered these forms to accounting?"
"It was pretty busy down in accounting that day. I was told to give it to a specific accountant, so I did."
"And why this accountant?"
Marian shook her head. "I wasn't sure. He just gave me the instruction and I followed it. It wasn't unusual."
"At any point during the trip to accounting, were you alone?"
Marian nodded. "Yes, during the elevator trip down to the accounting offices from the executive suite. No one else was in the car."
Ramsford smirked. "No further questions, Your Honor."
Judge Trunkson addressed Marian. "You may be seated." As the vixen rose and left the witness stand, the judge turned to the vixen's lawyer. "Does the defence have any witnesses to call?"
"Yes, sir. We call Mrs. Sofia Lopez to the stand." A spectacled bear, one of the few mammals in the courtroom at the time, rose and proceeded to the witness stand, swore herself in, and sat down.
"Mrs. Lopez, please state your occupation and relation to Mrs. Wilde for the court."
The spectacled bear cleared her throat. "I'm the personal assistant to Graham Ellismaw, current chief research officer at Furston Pharmaceuticals. I've been there for four years. I've known and considered Marian Wilde a friend for the last four or five months."
Ford nodded. "How would you describe Marian?"
Looking across at the vixen, Lopez answered. "Honest and hard-working. We're all overworked up in the C-suite, but Marian, it's like she had to be three mammals to do her job."
"During that time, did Mrs. Wilde ever come to you with her suspicions?"
The spectacled bear thought for a moment. "I didn't think much of it at the time, but yes. She asked about three charities I'd never heard of, and they weren't on our approved charities list. I assumed she was just checking them out for the COO at the time and didn't pay it much mind. She left my office looking troubled, though."
"Did she say anything else to you?"
"No, but she did mention visiting her son for lunch not long after that. She never left the building for lunch before that, so I thought that was unusual. Then she disappeared during that whole Rainforest attack."
Ford turned to the judge. "Your Honor, you will see in the written statements that Mrs. Wilde was taken into protective custody at that time and has been confined to a safehouse for most of the last two months."
The elephant judge nodded. "Yes, I see that from an Officer Bert Grizzoli's notes, along with the detective's statements. Please continue, Mrs. Lopez."
Sofia Lopez took a breath. "Right, so, I didn't see her again, at least not until her picture was shown on TV. I thought maybe she'd been hurt. I messaged her, and she said she couldn't tell me where she was, but that she was OK."
When offered a cross examination, the prosecution declined. Thus it was that several more mammals were called in as character witnesses or witnesses for the defence, all of whom spoke glowingly of Marian and her work at Furston.
The elephant in the room turned to Ramsford. "Does the prosecution have any witnesses to call?"
Indeed, they did. The prosecution called forth several family members and friends, all of whom seemed to emphasize that McStripeson was framed but provided, as her lawyer put it to her in a whispered voice, "little actual evidence to back that up". She wondered if Nick and Judy would agree on that point. Neither could be here, due to the nature of their jobs and the potential conflict of interest, but she knew they'd be rooting for her.
It was several hours later that Linus Ford had finished cross-examining the last witness called forth by Terrence Ramsford, an antelope who seemed more interested in praising McStripeson for his monetary donations than focusing on the matter at paw.
The judge looked over all of his notes one last time. "After hearing the case, I have made my decision. I have seen sufficient evidence that Marian Wilde's actions were both acceptable and reasonable and furthermore fall under the Good Samaritan law. I hereby declare that the prosecution's case against Marian Wilde is dismissed. Furthermore, in the case of Marian Wilde versus James McStripeson and his representative, I find the latter guilty of defamation of character, libel, and causing undue stress and emotional pain and suffering. I hereby award Marian Wilde a sum of $75,000 plus court expenses." The elephant judge banged his gavel with his trunk, and everyone rose as he exited the courtroom.
Linus Ford smiled as he turned to his client. "Well, it's not the $100,000 we asked for, but it's something. One battle down, one to go. This one's just the first shot, though. Furston's gonna be a battle to take the hill, and unfortunately, we'll have to convince a jury there. They aren't settling for a bench trial. And it may be a while before we actually get to the courtroom there. I think we can win it, though. Furston's not exactly in the public's good graces right now."
The sound of a mammal approaching drew the attention of the pair, and they looked up to see Terrence Ramsford with an outstretched hoof. "You surprised me, Ford. Well fought." Ford reached up and shook his opponent's hoof. Neither mammal missed the fact that he didn't even so much as spare Marian a glance. "Good luck with Furston. You'll need it." The ram walked away.
Marian turned to her attorney. "I'm surprised."
Ford cocked his head. "About what?"
"Well, most mammals, if they were told they just lost $75,000, they wouldn't be willing to shake the paw of their opponent."
The wolf attorney laughed as he gathered up his case files. "It's a common courtesy as much as it is being polite. It's not uncommon for lawyers who are friends off the job to be on opposing sides of a courtroom, so keeping things civil in the courtroom helps a lot. Not that Ramsford is a friend, but we have crossed paths before. And any animosity shown in the courtroom can skew the judge and jury. Besides, he's getting paid either way. Come on. I'm sure you are itching to give your son the good news."
A/N
Well, would you look at that? Some pressure off Marian! And just what is Gazelle up to?
I hope everyone's doing well, staying safe. Here in Canada, we're still on lockdown, but vaccines are slowly being distributed, so maybe we'll start being able to come out of our hidey holes soon.
A few people found the Bart Simpson reference in the last chapter! Can you find any in this one?
Coming up on March 19: Onward and Upward!
Questions? Critiques? Did you trip over Rapunzel's hair? Leave a comment!