Judy didn't even get the chance to get to the bullpen the next morning. Chief Bogo called her on her cell phone before she'd even made it out the door for her commute into the precinct. He instructed her to wait for Wolford to shuttle her directly to this morning's crime scene. No sooner did she step outside than she was greeted by Wolford's patrol cruiser and her only nominally conscious partner sitting in the back. She settled in without a word as her wolf colleague shuttled them off to whatever fresh hell was in store for them.

They were ferried to a Downtown community just South of the Rainforest district. Between the boarded-up shops and several buildings in various states of demolition or construction, Judy felt like she was driving through a warzone.

"Ah, 'urban renewal' and 'gentrification'." Judy had long since learned to detect the bite of cynicism in Nick's voice. "Add a little 'Gerbil-Mandering' and you have a perfect trifecta of displaced low-income mammals."

Judy allowed her partner to vent. "Do we have the address of the crime-scene?" It was a largely rhetorical question, but getting Wolford to start talking would keep Nick distracted from his growing diatribe on the failures of modern urban planning.

The wolf glanced back at Judy, a glint of chagrin in his eye. "It's Hill Street Blues."

Judy glanced over at Nick, suspecting a story was involved. "It's everything I just said. The Blue-Water Condominiums on Hill Street West were built back in the Twenties as housing for dock managers. Time moved on, but management of the building kept the place solvent through long-term tenants and their policy of maintaining rent controlled pricing."

Wolford turned up the street and picked up the story. "Right up until a new batch of housing regulations were passed by the District Aldermam. Stupid, unnecessary regulations specifically meant to break the bank for rent-controlled housing in the District. The Blues had to shut down and everyone was left homeless."

"Then, swoosh!" Nick pantomimed a bird with his paws. "In came the developers to knock it down and put in some swanky new club or somesuch."

Judy sighed in frustration. "That can't be legal."

"Oh it's perfectly legal." Wolford pulled up into a spot near a line of city emergency responder vehicles. "Amoral, unethical and cruel, but legal. The tenant's association has been fighting in the courts with a battery of Class-Action suits. They managed to get the regs repealed, and the Aldermam who passed them is under investigation for taking kickbacks from the developers; but by then, The Blues had already been partly demo-ed."

Nick and Judy thanked their colleague for the ride and bid him goodbye as they steeled themselves for whatever they were about to walk into. This time they had to shoulder their way through a veritable swarm of reporters of varying species as they made their way from the street to the cordoned area where their newest puzzle piece was on display for them.

Or rather, puzzle pieces. Unlike the prior mock-ups that they'd borne witness to thus far in this case, this particular mammal's remains were not unified in a singular sculpture. Rather, they'd been scattered in what could only very loosely be called a pattern around the construction area. Hunks of whoever this mammal once was had been snipped and pulled and rounded and tucked into very specific shapes made of bone and flesh and fur, then stuck atop steel stakes that had been driven into the ground. Eventually, they found one that might give some indication of the victim's species: the head of a bear was set just off center from a shining metal cylinder perched on its end. The jaw had been wrenched until it was almost dislocated from the rest of the skull, and unlike the other sculptures, its eyes were completely missing. It stared sightless while the rest of its body hovered around it. As with the other scenes, there was a notable lack of blood; each piece of the meat puzzle shined with the same lacquered substance that kept the processes of decay at bay.

"How many days since the last one?" Nick wondered aloud as they donned gloves and began following the careful path around the spikes. "Six?"

"Five," Judy corrected him, and paused at a particularly misshapen piece of what she could only assume was once a part of a limb. "The killer is escalating."

Nick gave a grim nod and broke away from her. Judy held her place amongst the suspended gore around her and let her eyes do the walking instead. It felt like her stomach had dropped out of her, and she immediately regretted her decision not to grab that granola bar on her way out the door. Then again, it was questionable if she could have kept it down, given what she was witnessing.

"I've never seen anything like this."

Judy turned her head to find Sergeant Asstor standing nearby, marveling in a disgusted kind of bewilderment at the bits and pieces of mammal situated all about. He gave a hard snort as his ears lay back. If he had any additional thoughts to add to his statement, he didn't seem willing to share them unprompted.

"Good," Nick gave a diffident huff as he stood next to his partner. "I'd hate to think what it would say about us or the city if any of us were used to this."

The Sergeant snorted again and focused his attention on one of the many mammals putting out evidence markers rather than at any of the pieces of evidence that they were marking. "The gangs have gotten out of sorts before, in the past. Sent their own brand of grisly messages… I remember someone waking up with the head of their prized racing basilisk in their bed. But never… never anything like this."

Nick's ears flicked slightly. "Was that when Tawney's Crew tried muscling in around Hyenahurst?"

Asstor snorted and cast a slightly distrustful side eye at the todd, then continued. "Naw; Tawney talked up shit like that, but she never had the ruthlessness for that kind of message. This was the 'El-Gatto' feud."

Nick shivered slightly. "I'd heard about that through the grape-vine. 'Course, I'd just made one of the stupidest decisions of my nearly very short life and was avoiding the shady side of the city."

Judy wanted to get Nick refocused when she felt his tail thump against hers. The meaning was suddenly clear: Nick would field Asstor so Judy could work in peace. She chirred her teeth and flicked her ears at her partner before heading into the scene proper.

Judy stepped carefully around the outskirts of the scene. There were assorted footprints in the dirt, but those all belonged to the officers and the forensics teams. One of the initial pieces of data that they had provided to her and Nick on their way over was how the dusty ground had been meticulously swept-almost like it was a Buddhist sand garden. There were no prints when the foremam arrived and then left to call the authorities. The only prints that were present when the initial wave of officers arrived were his.

But there was a different type of track at the entrance to the site that had been marked: tire tracks. Given that there were no vehicles present in the site at the moment aside from those with belt treads, these very probably belonged to the killer's vehicle. She gauged the width of the tracks-significant time spent on parking duty shifts allowed her a pretty good eye for at least vehicle sizes. She could ascertain that the vehicle wouldn't belong to a mammal classified as megafauna-elephant, rhino, giraffe. The treads would have been much deeper and much wider if it had been. And there was an imperfection in the tread that didn't seem to come from the terrain… a jagged patch that repeated in the right track over and over...

"Nick, can you come over here?" Judy glanced at her partner, who had broken away from his handling of Asstor and now seemed particularly distracted by the reflective post. "Something up?"

He licked his fangs in thought. "Maybe." He began weaving back out of the macabre scene. "Or maybe down. You got something over there?"

She pointed at a spot on the ground as she dug out a marker flag from her back pocket. "Weird tire pattern, like maybe the at-home patch jobs you see on farm equipment sometimes."

Nick nodded thoughtfully. "We'll have a cast made. At least we'll be able to narrow down the vehicle by wheel-base and tire size."

"That's what I was thinking. Bet Flash could hook us up with a breakdown of vehicle types that would match." She glanced around to find Sergeant Asstor not far away and bearing down on one of the CSIs. "How did that all turn out, then?"

"Sergeant Hardhead seems willing to entertain the possibility that this is not, in fact, related to the Big Cartel or gang activity now." Judy gave a faux gasp and Nick held up his paw. "I know, it's an honest-to-God miracle. If he hasn't already called it in to Bogo, then he's going to very soon. We'll see more of him, but at least our resources won't be split chasing down half-baked theories."

Judy shrugged and looked at the Sergeant. "It's not that far-fetched, and he did make some compelling arguments about the first case. Dead wrong, of course, but still..."

"Yeah, still." Nick sighed. "Is it wrong that I hate that we were right?"

Judy looked absently at the macabre scene. "Is it wrong to wish we were dealing with a cool, calculating mob boss who can be reasoned with instead of a serial murderer who is now actively taunting the mammals they've hurt with their artistic obsession? No, no it isn't."

The duo traded sad grins, then Nick stepped away from the spot he had been standing on. "C'mon over here and get low. Tell me what you see."

Judy headed over to Nick and squatted down. She shifted around several times with a look of concentration on her muzzle. Her ears suddenly shot up in alarm. "I need a CSI with a camera right here, right now!"

There was a mad scramble from the gathered officers and onlookers.

Sergeant Asstor's braying voice cut through the dull roar of dozens of whispering mammals. "Make a hole, make a hole; get outta here you freaking magpies before I drag you in for Obstruction!"

He all but headbutted a nearby coyote to the side to illustrate his resolve. The other mammals took the hint and pulled aside and away from the spikes.

The criminalistics team came up to the peculiar sight of Detective Judith Hopps, decorated veteran police officer, chin on the ground and butt in the air like a kit ready to pounce.

As absurd as the scene was, Detective Nicholas Wilde's dead serious mien quashed any humor. His ear flicked to a meerkat with a small Mega-Pixel digital camera. "Audrey, get down where Judy is and start recording."

She nodded and complied immediately, zipping forward between the spikes straight to Judy's position. Hopps moved aside as soon as the tech was next to her. "Lay down where I am. Get your head about level with where a field mouse's would be."

Audrey did as asked, looked at the central pillar and gasped in shock. She rallied and began taking pictures even as she started barking orders to her team. "Frank, I need panoramics of the whole scene. Mark this spot, then have Derek get the Borescope rig and start taking low angles from," she pulled a small collapsible ruler from her pocket and measured her own eye-line, "between two and a half to three and a half inches."

On the screen of her camera was a disturbing image: each of the individual 'pieces' gave the impression of an indistinct supplicant, while the complete image of a bear glared hatefully at the throng through eyeless sockets.

...

When Nick and Judy returned back to the station they wasted no time even dropping their things down at their workstation, but instead blazed a trail straight to The Pit with a periwinkle blue sugary mega gulp cup still frosty on the outside.

But Abby didn't greet them or the nectar they offered her with any sort of enthusiasm. When they came in, she was languishing at her workstation, the background music actually in the background at the dullest of roars.

"No, I can't in good conscience accept that," she moaned, not even picking her head up from the desk as she flopped her head to one side to look at them. "I have nothing. Zip, nada, zilch. I searched every site, every blog and catalogue on modern art, and this one isn't there."

She rolled her head so she was looking at the complete composite image. "It's got all John's hallmarks, but I can't find any record of a Thimbul piece like this one." She scrunched her muzzle in concentration. "Maybe it's an earlier piece? Or a copycat; we're due one of those about now."

Nick shivered slightly. "Let's not borrow any more trouble than we need to, okay?"

Judy looked at Abby and said simply, "Couldn't you just call John and ask him?"

The doe's eyes widened to cartoonish proportions and she all but leapt up from her seat.

"Oh my gosh how dumb am I, of course I can duh, but wait can I do that even, what if he's working on his next painting and I interrupt it, I would actually die…"

Judy thrust the straw of the syrup slurry into Abby's mouth and waited. The frantic doe soon calmed and began nursing the sugary concoction. "Better?"

Abby nodded and took the frosted cup into her own paws. "Better. I just got so-" She gesticulated with her free paw.

"Fixated?" Nick offered with a smirk.

Abby gave a derisive slurp. "Flustered, at not knowing this piece." She set the cup aside and turned down the music as she dialed out on the office phone.

It rang twice and then picked up to a sharp, definitely not male voice. "This is John Thimbul's phone, Dolly Grainger speaking."

Abby's face fell. Nick stepped up to the speaker phone. "Ms. Grainger, this is Detective Wilde, Detective Hopps and Criminalist Scutto. We have a, ah... piece... which matches your client's style, but we can't find a record of it. Would John be available to consult on this?"

"I'm afraid not," the tiny tinny voice came back. "He's in, well, a bit of a funk with everything that's happened. I suppose you could come by the studio; at the least I could take a look and see if I remember it. I am his current exclusive distributor." There was a mild tinge of smug self-importance in her tone.

Judy stepped up before her partner took the unconscious bait. "That would be great Ms. Grainger. We should be there in about an hour." They hung up the phone and she flipped her notepad up. "This is good timing. Even if she doesn't know the piece either, we can pick her brain about Daniel Fields and maybe get a list of recent visitors to the gallery to see if there are any trends that stand out between the dates of the killings."

She flipped her notebook closed again and turned on her heels to head out of The Pit. Nick patted Abby on the shoulder. "Don't despair, Abbs. There will be other opportunities."

Abby watched them leave and turned back to the piece of art that had eluded her, the glare of the void in the subject's eyes reflecting a small bit of her inner turmoil. She swept the slurpee cup from the desk into the trashcan at the end of the desk with expert precision, and returned to her chair to get back to work.

Nice as it would be, this case wasn't going to solve itself, after all.

…

Nick and Judy arrived at the Maus Haus Gallery an hour later to the minute. When they walked in, the gallery was quiet, nowhere near the level of activity that there had been when they had visited the day before.

"No no no, viewings by appointment only today!" They turned automatically in the direction of the admonition that came at them from a room over as Dolly barreled through the doorway with a hurried gait to the front of the gallery. She slowed, an expression of surprise on her face as she glanced down at her wrist watch. "Oh, detectives, excuse me. I thought you were a walk-in. I didn't realize what time it was."

"That's quite all right, Ms. Grainger," Judy said. She and Nick followed after Dolly as she waved them deeper into the gallery and away from the door. "I would think that you'd welcome any patrons, wouldn't you?"

"Normally, yes, I would," she agreed with a tinge of irritation edging her words, "but after the incident yesterday, I decided to limit visitors today only to serious prospective buyers I'd scheduled an appointment with."

Nick glanced down at Judy for a moment. "Have there been any additional developments to prompt this sudden bout of circumspection?"

"The caliber of most patrons of late has been… lacking, to say the least." She sighed. "And it's been adversely affecting my client's production, as well. It's a delicate balancing act, separating the connoisseurs from those simply feeding on suffering." Dolly looked over the gallery. "John's art has always attracted a, ah... particular following. It's my job to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. This has become increasingly difficult." She gave a grim chuckle. "The only upside is the increased foot traffic means more impulse buyers."

"We can appreciate the frustrating position you're in," Judy said graciously, and exchanged an even look with Nick. "We certainly don't want to take up too much of your time this afternoon. We were hoping you might be able to offer some additional insight into the very clientele you're describing: outliers, someone who may have taken their interest in Mr. Thimbul to… an extreme."

They watched as Dolly shifted in thought before huffing. "None more than usual. As I said, John's work attracts a particular kind of connoisseur. The only new outliers are simply the Storm Crows." She glanced at the two officers to see their slightly puzzled expressions. "People who flock to calamity to be close to something momentous, rather than doing or being momentous."

Judy sighed while Nick nodded. Both were more than familiar with the sorts of ghouls that liked to lurk at the edges of crime scenes.

"Well, if no one stands out in demeanor, what about frequency?" Nick asked. "Anyone that's been hanging around more often or for longer that you've noticed?"

"Or do you maybe keep a record we might be able to review?" Judy added hopefully.

Dolly perked up a little. "Well, I do have a guest log that I recommend people sign with contact details so I can forward information on special events: like the Meet-&-Greet you came into last time." She walked them towards a stepped series of touch-pad tablets near the door. "If you are looking for someone who's more interested in John's work than might be healthy, they might be on that list."

Judy pulled a flash drive from her pocket and waited for Dolly to indicate the appropriate port, then retrieved the 'Guest List' for the last two months.

While Judy was wrangling the files, Nick was sweeping his eyes over the gallery space. "I hope I'm not out of line here, but everything seems just the tiniest bit dirtier than earlier."

Judy tensed slightly. Nick was being openly baiting and more than a little harsh, but she knew that was calculated. They'd both used the tactic in the past to get mammals in a different headspace; Nick had a knack for infuriating mammals into flubbing a rehearsed alibi or story, while she could get them to remember things they had forgotten or overlooked.

Rather than take offense, Dolly huffed and looked around. "The company I usually hire to clean recently had one of their workers leave, or so I'm told. Their quality has certainly suffered of late. I'll give them another month, but if this is what I can expect from now on I'll need to find another cleaning contract."

Nick's ears flicked. "What was it about that particular crew that got you to hire them initially?"

Dolly planted her fists on her hips and frowned. "They had a mouse on their payroll who could get into all the really tight spaces. Well, when he wasn't slacking off and wasting John's time. Fancied himself an amateur artist because he took some 'Art Appreciation' courses while in prison." She gave a disdainful snort, then frowned. "When he left, that was when their quality dropped off."

Judy pocketed the drive and came up to the other two. "How long ago was that?"

Dolly put a finger to her chin and mused to herself a moment. "When was the last deep cleaning… not this week's, not last week's…" She shrugged. "Maybe three weeks ago? I can check my records if you need."

Nick nodded in thanks. "We'd appreciate it."

She gestured for them to follow, and headed toward one of the wings where a stepped desk was set up for sales and interviews. Her desk was pristine, organized, with even the Post-it note pads lined up in little lines next to her keyboard. She opened a file cabinet and began looking through her records while mumbling to herself.

"Ah-ha! Here we are." Dolly pulled a receipt with a QR code on the bottom and placed it under a magnifying glass built into the table. "Twenty-two days ago. You can tell the mouse was here because of the additional hours." She frowned ever so slightly. "I guess it was time well spent, considering the recent drop in quality."

Nick looked around while Judy read the receipt. "Have there been any other issues with the crew? Have they ever damaged anything, or is it just the drop in cleanliness?"

"They were professional enough," Dolly allowed. "Careful around the pieces, never forgot the restrooms. While the mouse was diligent when he did his work, I wonder if him flaking on his job was a foregone conclusion after all."

Nick could see Judy's tail flash in mild agitation, though she hid it from her ears and face as she looked up at Dolly. "How so?"

She gave a put-upon sigh. "One of the selling points for using that company is they are a genuine 'work-rehabilitation' program." She clicked on the tablet at her paws and a cell-phone sized screen displayed the company logo. "They have a deal with the Department of Corrections to hire mammals right out of prison; help build a resume so they can rejoin society as productive members. It's good PR for my studio. I'd overheard him talking with John about his stint in jail for possession charges a couple of times." Her tiny shoulders sagged. "I guess he never kicked the habit."

Nick smiled beneficently. "Well, while a relapse would be a tragedy as well as a crime, it didn't seem to affect his abilities. I mean, it wasn't like he trashed one of the paintings."

"Indeed, no. Whatever his, ah… extracurricular activities may have been, he was always very respectful of John and his work. I appreciated that about him. There have been plenty of others who have foregone such courtesy… right up to the point of destruction."

Judy sat up in her seat. "Are you referencing the belligerent peccary from the other day? Or did one of your patrons vandalize a painting?"

Dolly waved the question off, though she looked downright angry. "No on both accounts. However much it may annoy me, once a patron buys a piece it's theirs to do with as they see fit," her teeth ground hard enough Nick thought they might crack, "including feeding it to a shredder and claiming that as art. The nerve!"

Judy put a perfectly-timed paw to her mouth. "You're kidding! How awful."

"Devastating. John was a wreck for days; it was like he watched his own child die. He wouldn't even allow me to sell prints of the piece afterwards. And imagine how I felt! I sold it to that, that… degenerate attention seeking honey-sucker! Were I to do it all over again, I'd have told him exactly where to stick his money rather than entertain his bid on Corpus. Any of the other offers would have given it a proper home, I'm sure. I regret that sale to this day."

"Do you remember the buyer's name?" Nick asked. "Or how long ago this was?"

"It was three years ago, right after we opened the doors of our first studio on Hill Street. Nathanial Bainbearidge was a so-called performance artist." Dolly spat the words out. "He bought the work through a brokerage, which should have been the first hawk-shadow for me; but I was desperate for a sale and for the exposure. He was the only offer that came close to what I thought the piece was worth… monetarily, anyway." She seemed to deflate, all the hot anger petering out as she spoke, and she added softly at the end, "No amount of money can pay back its loss now."

Judy waited a moment before pressing on. "You said John wouldn't let you sell prints. Does that mean there are surviving prints?"

"Of course!" Dolly perked right up and headed to a series of vertical doors built into the studio wall. "I always ensure there is at least one print of each piece; more for insurance purposes than anything else. Accidents do happen, but occasionally you get some loathsome miscreant who tries to swindle the companies by forging a work, then damaging that for the payout."

Nick's lip turned up in a faint grin while Dolly opened one of the doors. "That sounds like a hell of a racket."

"Oh, it is," Dolly exclaimed as she pulled a tall shelf out. "Art is quite the investment, if you get in on an up-&-comer before they really hit their stride. Insurance is common, as is forgery and fraud since you can get the pieces assessed value for replacement. That could be a few thousand dollars, to tens of millions. Aha!" She grasped the corner of one print and pulled it out. "Here we are: Corpus!"

The small glossy reproduction of the painting was startling, though it didn't quite capture the detailed brushwork or the hidden Old Volish that would have been present in the original. Reflective shards surrounded the imposing figure of a bear in the middle. Bloodied pieces of himself were showcased within the intricate mirror images, almost trapped within the reflections. The eyes were no more than empty sockets, streams of red flowing from either side of his anguished face.

"Very, ah… striking piece," Judy said evenly, and turned the print over. "I don't suppose you might remember where he painted the Volish words into the painting?"

"Oh, it was ever so clever. The title was painted criss-crossed over the subject in the middle, and the reflections held bits of the letters in reverse as they would show in a mirror. Very difficult to achieve in oil paint, accurate reflections. It was his way of giving a nod to the fracturing of the language itself." She gave a sigh. "Simply brilliant."

Nick glanced at Judy over Dolly with a raised eyebrow, though his voice remained even when he asked, "Since you mentioned you have this for records and insurance purposes, I'm assuming that we need to sign something if we wanted to take it back to the precinct with us?"

As accommodating as Dolly had been up until this point, that cooperation seemed to have reached its limit with that request. She reached out and slipped the print back from Judy's paws. "I'm afraid not. This is the only copy remaining after that hack destroyed the original and broke John's heart. If you give me a day, I can make a high-resolution digital copy and send that to you, but not this print."

Judy forced a gracious smile. "We'd certainly appreciate it. It would also be a help if we could schedule a follow up interview with Mr. Thimbul. Maybe for tomorrow afternoon?"

"I'll see what I can do about that, though at this time I'm reluctant to commit to anything. He's still trying to recover from the shock of the last one, after all." At this she turned and gave the clock on the wall a glance. "It's been a pleasure speaking with you both, but I'm afraid I do have an appointment to prepare for. Was there anything else I can help you with at the moment?"

Nick gave his signature side smirk to Dolly. "Thanks, but no. We've got everything we could expect, and as you said you have your own work cut out for you."

She returned a professional smile and nodded toward the front. "Please let me know if anything else comes to mind."

"We'll do that," Judy said. "Many thanks again."

She and Nick offered their paws to Dolly to shake in turn and headed back to the door to leave. Returning back through the gallery of still-life horrors, Judy couldn't help but feel a sense of relief once they had left the dark subjects behind and were back outside in the bright afternoon sunlight.

Nick clicked his tongue as they got to the cruiser. "Not as productive as I would have liked, but not as bad as it could have been."

Judy gave a full body shiver as she sat down. "Speak for yourself. I'm going to be seeing some of those out of the corner of my eyes for a week." She looked at Nick with a pleading expression. "Could you swing by Hobby-World on our way back to the station?"

He cocked his head. "What for?"

"So I can purge all that nightmare fuel out of my skull: folksy paintings on tin, needlework and crochet, quilts."

Nick smirked. "Glitter?"

"No!" She stuck her tongue out in disgust. "No, that's something I think everyone agrees on. Glitter adds nothing to art except to make sure pieces of it stay everywhere, all the time, forever."

He laughed. "Okay, Carrots. A little brain bleach for you, and then let's see what Abby can dig up now that we know which painting this latest murder scene resembles."

Judy buckled her seatbelt and chewed her lip in thought. "The painting was a bear, and the victim was a bear." She flipped her notebook pages back and forth a few times. "How much do you want to bet 'Bainbearidge' is an Ursine name?"

"No bet… 'honey-sucker' is most certainly an Ursine slur."

Judy nodded the reluctant nod of someone who was right and didn't like it.

…

Abby blinked owlishly at the two detectives after their explanation, then wordlessly spun her chair fast enough to set her earrings jangling. Her claws on the keyboard sounded like an over-caffeinated woodpecker as she started searching news articles until...

"EEEEEeeeeeee!"

Judy pressed her ears to her head in a feeble attempt to mitigate the shrill squee that her coworker was making, to little avail. Even Nick's ears flagged and he rubbed one gingerly.

"Inside voice, Abbs, inside voice."

"Are you kidding me?!" Abby's grin nearly reached ear to ear. "This is the Holy Grail of art pieces! I mean, Bainbearidge is notorious for being super picky about which pieces he works with, and his choosing a John Thimbul original put him on the map!"

Judy looked slightly askance at the jubilant doe in front of her. "You seem awfully 'okay' with the wanton destruction of a piece by your art hero."

Abby's glee dampened. "I would rather the painting still exist, sure, but that's the point Bainbearidge makes in his performances: beautiful things are beautiful because they don't last forever."

"So he hastens the process along?"

"Oh, forget it." Abby threw up her paws and turned back to her computer. "His choice of expression is doused in shock value, sure, but it's just as valid as any other art or craft or skill a mammal would use to express themselves."

Nick cleared his throat to try and shake the does out of their argument. "Well rather than guessing about it, how about we contact him? Abby, could you bring up any press photos or contact pages?"

Abby tossed her ear over her shoulder and tapped away at her keyboard again. "He should have multiple social media profiles online. Yeah, here… Tweeter, Muzzlebook, Zoo-tube…"

She clicked on one of the accounts at random and up popped a well-designed profile page filled with thumbnails of past videos. She scrolled past them to a Profile link, and a new page opened up to a short blurb about Nathaniel Bainbearage as well as a stoic portrait. Judy felt her heart plummet to her feet, her mind involuntarily gouging out the bright hazel eyes into the gaping red voids she'd seen in the mirrored reflection at the crime scene.

"Really glad I didn't take that bet," Nick murmured, and pinched the bridge of his muzzle between his fingers.

Judy drew a tired sigh. "Abby, could you see if Nathaniel had any family we'd need to contact? Nick and I need to head down to see if Ducky can confirm this."

Abby gave a single nod. "I'll send whatever I find to your phone as soon as I have it."

"Great." Judy turned crisply, though her gait dragged as she headed for the door.

Nick gave Abby a pat on her shoulder and an abbreviated, "Thanks, Abbs," before he followed in her wake. His steps were equally heavy, weighed down with the fact that they still seemed no closer to finding the monster responsible for these murders dressed up in the trappings of "art" and the knowledge that unless they had an honest to God break in this case, they'd probably see another before the week was out.

…

The sable leaned heavily on his cane as he looked at the two detectives. "There's been a tremendous amount of damage done to this poor fellow, and not merely in transforming him into this mammalian jigsaw puzzle." He absently waved a paw at the gruesome collection behind him. "The preservatives and chemicals that allowed him to be mutilated in this manner have denatured a great deal of the tissue."

Judy looked at her cellphone notes. "His records show he's a registered bone marrow donor. Could we use that?"

"Yes, but not quickly. Institutions like the Hayo Clinic won't want to release that kind of information without a very good reason." He held up a paw to forestall Judy's building 'Diatribe of Justice'. "I have the contacts and the licensure to secure a confirmation. Just let our Chief know I'll need to send a Same-Day-Priority package. The Hayo will let us know if we have a match."

"We're due to give him an in-person update anyway," Nick said with a nod. "May as well add that to the list of things to notify him of concerning this debacle. At least it's some kind of potential progress."

There was a sharp rap on the table and the two detectives noted the stern, but rapidly softening mien on the Coroner's muzzle. "I want to let you two in on something about this case you may not have realized yet."

Nick and Judy looked at one another then stood at Parade Rest. Ducky snorted. "I have worked in this field my entire adult life, and longer if you count my years working with my father at the Mortuary. Do you know how many other serial murder cases I have heard of in this city in that time?" He waited just long enough for the two to open their maws to speak, then rapped his cane on the table again. "One. In thirty-two years, this is the second serial murderer in our city. We don't have the experience, expertise or dedicated mammal power for this sort of crime. You two are literally doing the impossible with a shoestring and sheer bloody-minded obstinance."

He then tapped each of them on the snout. "So don't get trapped in your own heads about a 'lack of progress'. Crimes like this are always hideously difficult to solve, and some manage to go decades without being solved despite the best and brightest being piled on them." He leaned back and smiled at them. "You are doing all that can be asked of you, and everyone at this precinct knows that."

Judy's wilted ears popped up. She straightened herself up even more. "We're not letting this take a decade to solve. Whoever this monster is, we're going to bring them to justice now. They don't get to do this to our city and get away with it for years." She turned and stormed off, adding under her breath, "Not if I have anything to say about it."

She was out the door before either Nick or Ducky could call her back. Her partner sighed and shot the doctor a rueful smile.

"It was a valiant try, Ducky."

Ducky frowned and tapped his cane sharply against the floor. "I'll take getting through to one of you. I leave the rest in your capable paws, Detective Wilde."

Nick gave the sable an abbreviated salute and turned to head out after his partner. Ducky watched him go and shook his head, regarding with grim determination the task before him. Before all of them. Whatever other tiny details he might glean from the body he would unearth before the day's end. Let the bones give up whatever secrets they might still be hiding. When monsters like this were involved, there was no such thing as an insignificant detail. Every bit of information was valuable. Might mean the difference between a break in the case, or seeing it turn cold.

Judy wasn't the only one itching to see this mammal find himself behind bars.