Chapter 127: A Day in the Life of a Detective

Nick returns to the Burglary and Theft Unit of the Detective Bureau and is given a tricky case to solve.

The alarm clock gave an annoying beeping noise and Nick slowly peeked out from under his covers. The lanky red fox frowned when he saw the time and even while he gave a toothy yawn, he reached over and turned it off. He rubbed his eyes with his paws, while he gave a stretch and yet another yawn before sitting up on the edge of the bed. It seemed to the fox that he had just gone to bed since he had spent most of his weekend at the police station reviewing some of the cases that had been recently reassigned to him. The highpoint was that he had a breakthrough on one perplexing unsolved case which had been left on his desk.

Slowly, he walked into the bathroom and hiked his leg to pee, sighing in relief while he emptied his bladder. Then scratching under his chin, he turned on the shower and groaned when the warm water engulfed him. There were the sounds of someone else entering the room and even in the shower he could smell the scent of a very sweaty rabbit doe. "How was your run this morning?" Nick asked.

"Fine, but I need to wrap my left knee better," Judy answered even as she slipped into the shower behind him. Her arms wrapped themselves around his waist and she laid her now wet head against his stomach.

"I'm going to have to turn on the cold water if you keep that up!" Nick teased her while he poured some shampoo into his paws. "We don't have time to fool around this morning because this is my first official day back in the Burglary and Theft Unit."

"I know that Sargent Morando asked for you to come back to the unit after Detective Winsteed retired, but Fangmeyer wasn't happy about losing you in Homicide."

"That's okay Fluff, I really don't think I'll miss seeing any more dead bodies. It simply amazes me that animals can be so cruel to each other. Besides, like Commissioner Pennali once told Chief Bogo, it takes a fox to catch a thief."

"That old ibex is all horns and no brains! I can't believe he still gets away with making those speciesist comments about you?

"Seniority has its privileges in the police force and you know that the blue wall of silence still exists between officers, despite recent reforms."

After drying off and grooming his fur, the fox dressed in his new suit. It was a dark blue two-piece business suit with a special pocket for his taser baton, a gift from his best friend Jake. He strapped on his shoulder gun holster and checked his tranquilizer gun, then the fox grabbed his travel mug full of coffee. For a few moments, he paused to give Judy a kiss before he slipped on his overcoat and opened the house's front door. The air outside was not as chilly as it had been earlier in the week and Nick gave a thin smile when he saw the unmarked police car in the driveway. Even though it was better than his last vehicle, which literally fell apart on him, it was still a low-end import.

At the station, Nick once again sorted through the outstanding cases which been left by Winsteed and began to plan for the day. "Bentson lawyered up!" Sargent Morando said as the tall buck in the white dress shirt and blue tie stood there at the entry to his cubical. "But you were right this weekend about where he stashed the goods, we have him and he knows it. Let's see if your instincts are as helpful with the Parrello case?" The buck dumped yet another file onto the fox's desk and strutted back out without another word.

"You are never going to get 'a job well done or even welcome back' from that one," someone chuckled and Nick looked up to see that Detective "Hammy" Hamilton was now standing at the entry to his cubical. The pig was dressed in his rumpled dark gray sports jacket and was holding a chipped mug of coffee in his right hoof. "Hey, Wilde I heard a funny story yesterday! You'll like it…it has a fox in it."

The fox tried not to give an aggravated sigh, the boar's stories were usually long and dumb but he was a Senior Detective and so Nick knew that he should listen to the joke, no matter how lame it was.

Hamilton leaned against the fox's desk as he began his story, "A bigoted ram just won the lottery and he took the train up to a small village in the Meadowlands because he wanted to find someplace to live which was far away from any predators, you see he really hated all predators. After looking around the neighborhood all day, he stopped in the local pub for a glass or two and he also wanted to impress his possible neighbors with his newly won wealth. Well, the pub was filled with all kinds of sheep and goats, all except for an elderly-looking gray fox sitting alone in a corner booth. The bigot frowned when he saw that there was a predator in the place. Then with a grin, he called the bartender over and loudly called out, "Drinks are on me boys, for everyone but that no good flea-bitten furbag in the corner!"

The bartender hesitated at first while he looked over at the rest of the locals to see how they would react and then over at the wad of cash in the rams hoof, finally with a shrug he waved for the others to come and get their refills. The ram gloated as the other patrons thanked him while he began paying the tab. His grin turned into a frown when he noticed that the lone fox didn't seem to be the least bit perturbed about being left out but instead just gave him a smile.

Now, this pissed the ram off big time and so he called out, "you know bartender, I really want to celebrate my good fortune! Let's all have a glass of Champaign and not that cheap stuff, but the most expensive you got. Everyone gets a glass but that no good fox!"

The bartender looked at the wad of cash in the bigot's hoof and gave another shrug as he began to uncork bottle after bottle of the very expensive bubbly for everyone. Grinning the ram began to peel one big bill after another to pay and it was a considerable amount due. His grin quickly turned sour when he saw the lone gray fox was still looking back at him and then the vulpine smirked while he lifted his glass of wine in salute to the bigot.

"What the hell is his problem?" the ram snorted in disgust. "Why does he look so happy? Is that furbag crazy or just plain stupid?"

The bartender had finished shoving the cash into the till and he turned to look the bigoted ram in the eyes before he answered, "Neither, that so-called furbag owns the pub!"

Nick had to laugh at the joke, it was funny. He then watched while the pig left before he turned his attention to the file which the sergeant had dumped on his desk, it was one of several major break-ins that the department was dealing with. The MO was the same in this case as a few others to which he was already assigned. The thieves had disabled the alarms and then used a stolen large truck to batter through a warehouse wall. Once inside the building, the selected stolen goods were quickly tossed into another waiting stolen truck. No witnesses, no DNA, or anything usable was left behind, it was all very professional. At first, everyone assumed that it was an inside job because the thieves already knew what they wanted and where it was shelved. All they took was top-end electronics which were not easy to sell on the black market unless you had a connection that could set up your buyers. With a long sigh, the fox closed the file and tossed it back onto the pile.

He spent the morning following up on leads for a few of the cases, going from pawnshop to pawnshop in an effort to find out if they had been approached by someone trying to dump any of the stolen items. His street contacts were also of no use to the fox. After grabbing a tuna fish sandwich from a predator-friendly deli, he returned to the station to join Sargent Morando and an Assistant DA in questioning Bentson but the other fox just kept his mouth shut and let his lawyer do the talking. Finally, the Assistant DA and the lawyer worked out a plea deal, so the case was now out of his paws.

Tired, Nick finally finished his paperwork on the case and drove home, where he crashed on the living room sofa while munching some leftover veggie noodles which he and Judy had for dinner the previous night. She still wasn't home yet and so after he had texted her once again to see if everything was okay, he watched some more television and then went to bed. Sometime during the night, she slipped into bed with him and cuddled against his side. The fox rolled over and pulled her into his arms while he covered her with his long fluffy tail, but their sleep was soon interrupted by his cell phone ringing.

"What?" he sleepily mumbled to the caller. It was dispatch and there had been another robbery, reaching for a pen and pad he wrote the address down. The break-in was the same MO as the Parrello case and so that was why he was notified. Quickly he got up and dressed before he hurried to his car.

There were flashing blue and red lights in the warehouse's parking lot and Nick parked his car near a larger police cruiser. A large uniformed rhino greeted him with a grin. "You look awfully happy for this time of night, Hornsby?" Nick said as the bigger officer ushered him towards the crime scene.

"You're going to love this one!" the officer laughed as he pointed towards a large semi-truck that had its bumper reinforced with some steel railings, the truck was halfway smashed through the building's brick wall. It was just like the Parrello case, a stolen truck used as a battering ram.

"Was the security system shut down before the hit?" Nick began to ask but hesitated when he saw that a familiar-looking raccoon in a very expensive-looking dark gray business suit was standing there next to a tailless rat in a pair of black slacks and a white dress shirt. "Jake, is this one of your clients?"

Jake Runnel looked over at the fox with a smile. "Yep, you should know that these crooks are real pros. First, they reconnoitered the building inside and outside, disabled the security system and most of the cameras. Once inside, they hotwired a forklift and went right for the big-ticket items. As I said, they were very professional."

"Well, you seem a little too chipper about this whole thing?" Nick said with a shake of his head. He knew that the raccoon was up to something. "Especially since your client was robbed."

"Tails and I picked up on what these guys were doing when they did their reconnaissance work. A couple of days ago, they showed up here all dressed up and acting like fire department inspectors, which was a brilliant way of getting inside and snooping around. Thinking they might pull a stunt like this, we had the owner move the good stuff to another part of the warehouse and we replaced them with some cheap crap in the same boxes. Then we added a few hidden cameras inside of the building."

"So what exactly did they end up stealing?"

"Boxes which were rigged to blow red dye 1-methylamino-anthraquinone all over their fur when opened," the rat laughed. "Also, every one of the boxes has a tracking device inside for you cops to follow."

"Jake, that is brilliant!" the fox laughed. "But why didn't you tell me about your hunch earlier?"

"Why, aren't you working Homicide?"

"No, I told you last Thursday that I was being reassigned to the Burglary and Theft Unit."

"We were watching the game and you were being a bit too chatty, so I kind of tuned you out."

"Tuned me out? You just tuned me out? That wasn't a very nice thing to do!"

"You were talking too much and I was trying to watch the game. Your constant yammering was getting on my nerves, so I just kind of stopped listening to you."

"I was unburdening my concerns about my job to you and I thought you were listening!"

"What made you think that?"

"I'd say something and you would go 'uh...huh' or say 'sure'!"

"Are those two married or something?" one of the new CSI techs, a very young bear fresh out of college, whispered to Hornsby. "They sound like my parents when they argue."

"Nope, they're best friends," the rhino chuckled.

"Oh, you couldn't tell by the way they are carrying on," the tech laughed.

By the time the sun rose over the modern metropolis of Zootopia, the police had all the suspects in custody and they had raided the warehouse where many of the previously stolen goods were still stashed.

Hammy's "A Bigot and his Money" joke has been around in various forms for a long, long time and I just "Zootopiafied" it for this chapter.

Red dye packs are sometimes used by banks during robberies, they stain the cash and the thieves with an indelible dye when they are detonated.