02: Smog, Ash, and Other Rotten Things (June 21st, 1896 A.D.)

1.

Standing on the front steps of his apartment on Carding Street, Jay Lightfoot watched as the vibrant plume of titian smoke unfurled in the sky above the Central Headquarters of the Zootopian Police Force. It was difficult to get a clear view of the fire through the masses of hastily cobbled-together buildings that stood all along Downtown Zootopia's ever-expanding spider-web of roads, alleyways, and backstreets, but the Headquarters had been burning for hours now, and the local fire departments were doubtlessly struggling to contain the inferno as it reached its peak. Only two days ago, the Police Force held a district-wide picnic in celebration of their fiftieth anniversary serving the fledgling metropolis. This morning, Jay had awoken to the sounds of clattering fire carts, frantic alarm bells, and the telltale shuffle of dozens of curious hoofs and paw pads scraping eagerly against the cobblestone, as animals of all shapes and sizes fought for the best vantage point at which to observe the blaze. Some smaller creatures were perched on their larger neighbors' backs and necks, while others had taken to climbing the roofs and building stairwells, and the air buzzed with anxious chatter. Many were concerned, others were angry, and some of the neighborhood's especially crusty creatures even saw fit to whoop and cheer, for the Police Force were no friends of theirs.

Though Jay stood somewhat taller than most rabbits at a little over three-and-a-half feet, he was content to observe the ascending pillar of ash and smoke from his own stoop. Despite sharing what could charitably be called a "complicated" history with the Police Force, Jay wasn't the fire-chasing sort. Public blazes, cart-crashes, local brawls, and other spectacles of misfortune were a common source of entertainment for the bored and aimless masses, though Jay had never found much thrill in schadenfreude. Still, this was Zootopia, so crowds were bound to build whenever anything interesting of note occurred in public, and what was more interesting than one of the city's newest and most controversial additions going up in smoke? Where the crowds went, so went the local chatter, and keeping up with the talk of the town was a matter of both personal and professional interest for Jay – it just so happened that this morning's big to-do brought the crowds, and their chatter, to him for once. So Jay stood patiently at the top of his somewhat crooked stoop, his ear's subtly swiveling this way and that to pick up the voices in the fray.

"My God, you can see so much smoke from here, do you think the whole building is gone? What if–"

"Even if the fire wagons get there on time, who knows if the fire's gonna spread southward…"

"Daddy, who would want to set the nice police on fire?"

"I don't know, sweetie, I'm sure it was some kind of accident, or maybe–"

"Arrogant pricks got what they deserved, if you ask me. Never see any of them 'round these parts, 'cept for when they want to puff out their chests and show off their fangs."

"The dummies think that just because they're bigger than so many of us, they can just impose their will – oh, Officer, excuse me. Lightfoot? You mean the rabbit? Yeah, he lives right over there, at 37A."

This last part caught Jay's attention. He turned his head to align with his ears to see the imposing outline of a figure that was shuffling their way through the rest of the gathered animals, straight towards Jay's apartment. It only took a moment for a pair of huge, gruff paws to poke their way through the crowd, followed by the rest of the brown bear that they were attached to. He wore the soot-stained but still unmistakable attire of the Zootopian Police Force: A navy blue set of jacket and trousers, fashioned with brass buttons and clasps that might have been polished to a shine under better circumstances. The insignia on his custodian helmet, along with the array of ribbons and medals splayed across his breast, identified him as the Detective Chief Superintendent, which meant the bear had gotten a promotion since the last time he and Jay had spoken. The officer approached Jay without speaking, taking one laborious step after another until he stood hunched underneath the signpost that hung above the front door. He swiveled his head upward to read it.

"Jay Lightfoot, Professional Historian and Investigator for All Matters Private and Public. Discretion Guaranteed! Rates…Negotiable?" The bear turned his gaze down to raise an eyebrow at Jay. "Come on now, Mr. Lightfoot. I respect that you've finally added 'Investigator' to your plaque, but you could have at least sprung for a catchy slogan. 'Rates Negotiable' makes you sound like a schoolboy bargaining for lunch trades."

Jay did not smile at this rather limp attempt at a joke. "Hello, Lieutenant Arborlin. Or should I say Chief Arborlin? I assume you didn't trudge all the way up here from your smoldering office just to offer your opinion on my choice of signage?"

"Oh, of course not," the bear responded, deadpan. "It's just that, what with the fire and all, the men all got the idea to roast some chestnuts while we waited for the blokes at the fire station to do their thing, and I told them I knew a ripe old nut that lived on Carding Street that would do us just fine." Jay did smile just a little at that stupid pun, begrudgingly. The bear still had a knack for them, after all this time, and Jay was an easy mark as always. The chief removed his helmet and took another step past the sign, hunching even further as he approached Jay. He wore a look of genuine apology and humility on his face, which disarmed Jay even further. "It is Chief Arborlin now," he continued, "though I'd prefer it if you stuck with George, for today. I'm sorry to come to you uninvited, but I figured you'd turn me down outright if I posted you ahead of time. You can imagine how things are right now, so please believe me when I say that I'm here not just as an officer of the force, but as an old friend. Will you lend me a moment of your time?"

Jay tried to retain his veneer of hostility, but after a moment he rolled his eyes, heaved a sigh, and opened the door to 37A, beckoning the bear inside. "Alright, George. I'll give you ten minutes."

"Trust me," George said, "It'll only take five."

2.

"Apologies ahead of time for all of the rubbish," Jay said, as they entered. "I'm in the middle of a few cases, and, well, you know how it is. Take a seat wherever you like, I'll fetch something to drink. I don't have anything hard, since I haven't been to restock the icebox in awhile, but I can put on tea if you like. I know you're not much for coffee."

"No thank you," George said, still stooping by the front doorway. "Like I said, this shouldn't take but a few minutes. This is a nice place you've got set up here though. Much better than that old closet." Jay chuckled, beckoning to the unkempt piles of papers and half-finished mugs of coffee that were strewn about the cramped first floor of 37A. His parlor, which was little more than a sofa, a small table, and a pair of tattered old sitting chairs, hardly made for a picturesque reunion between two old colleagues.

"I suppose it is something of an upgrade compared to my office in the library," Jay laughed, "Though it is a pain to have to haul all of my research materials across town on the trolleys, these days." He sat down in one of his chairs and picked up one of the mugs from a set of three that accompanied one of his piles of hand-scribbled notes and torn newspaper articles. He examined the cup's greasy contents, swirling them around for good measure, and replaced it in favor of the middle mug. He sipped its lukewarm brew with exaggerated relish before meeting George's eyes once again.

"So. You say you've come both as a friend and as a face of the old' Police Force, is that it? If you're asking me to help you track down whoever lit your building ablaze, I know that you know that arson cases are the most futile of the bunch, unless you have eyewitnesses that can pin the fellow who lit the match, and I'm guessing you wouldn't be here if you did. I'm sorry to say that the odds of catching them, even with my help, are terribly –"

"It's not about the fire, Jay." George said. "We're taking care of what we can, there. It's something else altogether." George paused. "I'm here about a body."

"A body?" Jay said. "You surely wouldn't have come to me over some accidental death…so you must mean a murder?"

George's eyes scanned the room as he searched for how to respond. "Given the…nature of her remains, it's undoubtedly a murder case, yes."

"So it's a woman, then? A terrible shame..." Jay leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. "Sad as it is, though, this is Zootopia, George. Animals die every day here; men, women, and children alike. I was under the impression that the Zootopian Police Force had all of that business under control all on their own? Is it possible that a little bit fire is all it takes to toss all of your big, ferocious detectives off their balance?" Jay took a final, dramatic swig of his pungent black coffee. "It's been a long time since I've assisted with a murder case. Not since the Brixton incident, as a matter of fact. I don't know if you recall-"

"I recall." George interjected. "That was the last one you helped me with before you kicked off for good. Ugly stuff. Though it doesn't seem like so much, these days." Though his features were as stony as ever, Jay knew the bear well enough to catch the tell-tale twitch of the ears, and the way his breathing shifted ever so slightly. George's patience was running thin. Whatever it was that had brought him to 37A after all this time, it was weighing on him.

"Perhaps for you," Jay continued, "but the nastiness remains as vivid in my mind as ever. I'm not much for the macabre, George, at least not when it sneaks past the leaves of a book and into the realm of the real. It's why I distanced myself from police casework in the first place."

"Was that it?" George said, smiling humorlessly. "Not quite how I remember it, but I understand you all the same. It's not an easy line of work, after all. Some aren't just cut out for it, as you know." That barb hung in the air between the two of them. It was sharp, and Jay was tempted to retort, but he resisted. The conversation would never get anywhere if the two of them danced around their old grudges the whole time.

"Tell me, then, Chief Inspector," Jay said. "If you've got all of the best lions, tigers, and bears that Zootopia has to offer working on whatever grim crimes have come your way, what consultation could I possibly provide in their stead? Surely you know that these days my work mostly consists of financial and domestic disputes? Fraudulent insurance claims, appraisals of inheritances and recovered family heirlooms, cuckolded husbands with a chip on their shoulder. That sort of thing. When it comes to catching killers, I'm a bit rusty."

"Some advice, Jay. That's all I'm asking. Take a look at what we've got, offer a little of that Lightfoot perspective." Jay stood from his chair and began pacing about, gnawing on his lip in frustration before acquiescing.

"How did she die? Where?" George hesitated.

"She was found in an alley. Stab wounds, and…other wounds. We suspect blood loss was what did it. Maybe head trauma."

"You've already gone after the husband?" he asked. "Nine times out of ten, it's always someone close like that. Husband, lover, jilted suitor. A lot of men have the capacity for savagery. Predator, prey, it doesn't matter, and the women are usually the first to suffer for it."

"It's nothing to do with a husband," George said.

"So she's unmarried?" Jay's nose rustled as he puzzled things over. "Either young, or a spinster. If it was in an alley, then you're probably looking at a botched mugging. The only way to track that would be to keep an eye out for fenced jewels, or-"

"I never said she wasn't married," George interjected. "I said 'nothing to do with a husband.' To tell you the truth, Jay, we don't know if she's married or not, yet. The body's still too fresh."

This took Jay aback. His ears perked, and his gaze narrowed. "What do you mean? You mean you've come to me before the report has been made, or the autopsy has been completed?"

George coughed nervously, fussing with his coat the way he always used to when he wasn't sure how to approach a problem. Finally, he said, "It's my fourth week as Chief Inspector, and my department is on fire." He finally shuffled over from the doorway and sat awkwardly the edge of Jay's too-small sofa. His helmet hung limp in his hands. "It's not so serious as you might think – the smoke makes it look worse than it is – but everything's a damned mess from the moment I'm out of bed to when I'm trying to coordinate dozens of officers from out of the sodding library, and you of all people should be intimately familiar of how difficult it is to find a book in that godforsaken building. Imagine trying to use it as an impromptu base of operations." Jay could imagine, though this only served to highlight one of the many differences between the two men standing in the cramped quarters of apartment 37A, that afternoon. Chief Inspector George Arborlin was predictably concerned for his men, who currently had to do their work from within the labyrinthine stacks of an ancient public library. Jay, on the other hand, was much more worried about the books.

"Now," George continued, "It isn't like the whole city is going to see that big plume of smoke billowing out of my headquarters and think, 'I guess that means there's no more crime to be done, today!' Of course not. So, while I'm literally fighting fires, I'm also fielding calls and directing officers left and right. A trolley smashed into one of those newfangled motor cars on the corner of 16th and Acre Street just thirty minutes after we evacuated to the other building, can you believe that? And some idiot kids decided to knock over a vegetable stand out by the new tenement buildings on 43rd. Then, in the middle of all this mess, I get word of a body. A woman, a young deer. She was found in an alleyway just a half-dozen blocks from where all of us were running around with our tails tied to the ground. One of the market boys, taking a shortcut to deliver his vegetables, stumbled over her in the dark of the early morning. The poor kid said he didn't even think she was dead at first. Plenty of animals pass out drunk in places like that. When his hands got all soaked, he thought maybe she was covered in booze, or rainwater. Until he got his paws into the light, and saw all that red." George paused here, and his eyes took on a stony quality that Jay hadn't ever remembered seeing back in the days the two of them worked together. He looked old, in that moment, and tired, despite only having a few years on Jay himself.

"In that moment, when this scared little aardvark kid is telling me this as he cries his guts out in the lobby of the public library, I have a feeling, Jay. In the pit of my stomach. I know that we saw some bloody scenes back in the day, but believe me, things are getting worse out there. Stranger. Chief Tusken saw it when he retired, I think. He never said anything, but I could tell. We all could. I think I might take a sip of that coffee, now." Jay obliged his old friend, and returned from his kitchen in only a moment with a slightly fresher cup than the ones he had been picking at earlier..

"It's cold," Jay said, apologetically. "I brewed it last night, to tell you the truth." George said nothing but gave a curt grunt in thanks. The cup was meant for smaller animals, and looked comically tiny in George's great big paw, but he handled it delicately, knocked the drink back in a single gulp. His wrinkled snout made it clear that Jay's coffee tasted as perilous as ever, but the bear also looked grateful for the distraction.

"Thank you." George said. Jay waited a moment for him to continue. "I've only been Chief Inspector for a month, and some of the things I've learned about this city…" Another pregnant pause. "In any case, I had this feeling. Sure enough, the minute I walk into that alley and saw what there was to see, I knew. I knew it wasn't any jealous husband, or random pearl snatcher. I knew, because of what the bastard did to her. I knew, because I'd seen it done before, not two weeks ago." George locked eyes with Jay, and what Jay saw in his friend's gaze made him feel incredibly uneasy. The bear had a great many faults, which Jay had made a habit of frequently pointing out back when the two of them had considered each other partners of a sort, but even after the bad blood got built up between them, never in his bitterest of moments would Jay have accused George of being a fearful man. Yet fright was exactly what Jay saw in those eyes. Plain, shapeless fear, the kind that might grip a child when he is too young to know that the monsters underneath his bed are merely a figment of the mind. He had only ever seen George this way once before, on a night when the moonlight had spilled into the dark corners of an empty house, and the two of them had found…

"George…" Jay repeated his question, but more gently this time. "What do you need from me?" George rose as much as he could and placed his helmet firmly back on his head.

"I came here, Jay Lightfoot, because there's a dead doe in an alleyway, and what was done to her is something I cannot describe without feeling ill. What makes me even more sick is that her case is not unique. We had another woman who was killed in almost exactly the same way, with the same…signs left behind. The papers barely covered the first girl's death, given her line of work, and we've done our best to keep the newshounds away from this second one for now, but with two dead in just as many weeks, I'm afraid…"

"You're afraid that there will be a third," Jay said. His mind returned to those cold nights he spent in his library office, all those years ago, piecing together the parts to a bloody puzzle that only made less sense when brought into the light of day.

"And a fourth," George said, nodding grimly. "Maybe even a fifth. If that happens, no animal alive could stop the word from spreading. Jay, we need to find whoever did this, and we need to stop him, before more folks are killed, and before the entire city gets swept up in whatever craziness has been bubbling up over these last few years. Don't get me wrong, I know my men can handle it, but there's just so little time…"

George trailed off, but Jay was already grabbing his coat from the rack by the parlor entrance. The rabbit stooped to quickly grab his leather case of equipment as well, and then he slid past George and pushed through the apartment door. The sunlight spilled in, and the outside air bristled with the smell of smog, ash, and other rotten things. Jay couldn't help but feel a quiver of morbid excitement stirring within him, along with more than a hint of dread. There were criminals and killers aplenty in Zootopia, but Jay and George had once encountered something that went beyond the pale of everyday violence. To have encountered that manner of hateful violence even one time had shaken Jay to his core, and he saw now that it George had been left with his own scars over the matter. To think that such evil could be afoot in his city again…

"Alright then," Jay said. "Take me to her."


A/N: So this definitely took longer to get together than I planned, but life and work had a head on collision in the last weeks of the year that put me behind schedule. It's a new year and a new decade, though, and {Of Clocks and Calendars} has only just begun! I'm very excited to dig in to the good Mr. Lightfoot's story, as it will have a very different flavor from Nora and Nick's respective journeys (though the ties that bind them will be well apparent by the end of things).

Happy New Year, everyone, and I hope you enjoy this latest addition to the story.