Content Warning: This chapter gets fairly grim. I didn't think the content was graphic enough to warrant an M rating, but it should be noted this chapter specifically contains some descriptions of murder wounds, as well as paragraph or two that describes the suicide of a character from Jay's past. The Jay/Nathaniel chapters will generally be a bit darker than the other two narratives in the story, though this particular chapter is about as graphic as it will get for a good while. I will be sure to include content warnings for any future chapters that delve into such territory.


3.

It was the smell of blood that struck Jay first. This was of no surprise; as a rabbit, his mind was inherently biased towards the "flight" half of the fight-or-flight response, and nothing triggered that instinctual rush of adrenaline and fear like the scent of freshly spilt blood. Ever since the push towards industrialization had begun only a few decades before, the air of Downtown Zootopia had become fetid with the stink of progress, a potent mix of sweat, smoke, sewage, and metal, among other things. Animals of all shapes and sizes had learned to tolerate the odors that wafted about the city from dawn to dusk, but the odor of death rises above all others for predator and prey alike, especially in the sticky summer heat. As George led Jay through the back door of an abandoned storefront and into the back alley beyond it, the rabbit had to dig his nails into his paws to keep from getting woozy, even before they could see the doe's remains. He had been around bodies before, and though the sight of the freshly deceased was no longer as unsettling as it used to be, the smell was always enough to make him sick to his stomach.

Jay would have been mortified at the thought of fainting in the middle of a throng of morbidly curious passersby, not to mention all of George's Officers. The alley was, mercifully, silent, though it could not possibly remain that way for long. George had not elaborated on the other killing that he mentioned earlier, but Jay was familiar with the chaos an event like this murder could cause. The minute word spread to the locals, animals would arrive from all over town to catch a glimpse of the victim, gossip about who was guilty and who wasn't would begin to buzz about, and the scavengers from the papers would no doubt be thrilled to contribute to the speculation, until panic spread like a wildfire. Jay and George had barely prevented such pandemonium once before, years ago. To think that it could all be happening again, he thought. Could I not have pursued a more noble line of work? Mother once said I would have made a fine baker…

The bear trod a few steps ahead of Jay, gesturing orders to the small handful of trusted officers that were there to secure the crime scene without stirring up too much of a fuss. At the far end of the alley, a pair of timber wolves patiently stood alongside a single reporter from The Zootopia Gazette, an otter that Jay vaguely recognized. That the Gazette was able to get within even a hundred feet of an active investigation spoke to the publication's reputation for possessing at least a modicum of moral decency compared to the usual rags. This wasn't to say it didn't contribute its fair share to the press' usual mélange of gossip, hearsay, and politicking; the Gazette was simply more willing to play by the rules, hence the impatient otter with a pack full of equipment who had the good sense to at least wait until the police had finished their work to begin capturing the grisly details with his Kodiak camera.

Just beyond, a rather imposing lion stood guard where the alley opened up to the main street. Given the number of larger animals that occupied these tenements, the buildings loomed large over Jay's head. The crooked pathways between them were still narrow, and the lion's broad figure barely squeezed into the frame made by the brick walls on either side of him. Most of the local animals were probably still preoccupied with the spectacle at the ZPF Headquarters, but Jay spied the dawdling forms of a few curious locals that wanted to sneak a peek at the carnage in the alley (some of them were likely rivals of the otter from the Gazette). The lion officer was growling something about keeping a minimum distance away until the police had cleared the scene, and the onlookers had plenty to say in return, but Jay drowned them out as best he could. He needed to focus.

There was one more officer present, an elephant, whose obtuse silhouette seemed even more at odds with the alley's jilted architecture than the lion's. He was bending down at an awkward angle so as to get his trunk low enough to lift the ragged sheet that was covering the misshapen lump on the ground beneath him. The smell of death was overpowering now, and Jay did not envy the poor fellow that had to use his nose to poke and prod at the victim's remains. To his credit, when the elephant looked up from his investigation to greet George and Jay, he only looked mildly perturbed.

"Thank you for holding things together while I was away, Bailey," said George, extending his paw. "You're the only one I'd trust with as delicate a scene as this, especially with the rest of the mess we've had to deal with." The inspector let the fabric float back down to cover the doe, wiping his trunk on his coat before shaking George's paw with it.

"I can't say I relished the opportunity, Chief," Inspector Bailey said. "This here is…well, it's every bit as nasty as you said." The elephant cast a glance down at Jay. "Is this the rabbit you were telling me about? Who helped you out with the Brixton case?"

"He's the one. Jay Lightfoot. A friend of mine from a long ways back, and one of the smartest fools I've ever met." Despite the grim atmosphere, George allowed himself a chuckle at his own oxymoron. "Jay, this is Inspector Frederick Bailey. He doesn't normally cover these kinds of murders, but he's one of the best inspectors we have and, given how shorthanded we are today, we're damned lucky he was willing to get his trunk dirty with us." George turned his attention to the other officers in the alley. "As of this moment, I'm deputizing Jay as a liaison to the ZPF for the duration of the investigation. He'll be assisting us with his…expertise, and I fully expect for you all to work with him as you would any other officer. Have I made myself clear?" The lion and the wolves' confirmation came in the form of low grunts and begrudging nods. Jay nodded back in their directions. He had not expected any warmer a welcome than that.

"Good afternoon, officers. Inspector Bailey." Jay took a chance and extended his own arm out to Bailey, and he was pleasantly surprised when the elephant returned the gesture.

"I never thought I'd see the day a rabbit was working a crime scene," he said. "Though these are trying times, and I'd be lying to the both of you if I said I knew where to begin with this one. I reckon the Chief explained things on your way here?"

"Somewhat," Jay said, beginning to make his way toward the body. "Though he mostly impressed upon me that I would need to see what happened to the poor girl to understand." George and Frederick followed close behind him.

"It's good to know that he hasn't lost his knack for understatement, then," Frederick grumbled. George, for his part, said nothing. He merely strode past Jay and took hold of the sheet once more, lifting it fully up and off the doe's body. The stench had been one thing all on its own, but sight of the thing magnified the sharp, metallic undercurrent of blood and other fluids tenfold. Jay could barely contain the lurching gasp that threatened to squeeze itself free from his throat and he reflexively grabbed his handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose. A dark memory jutted forward to the front of his mind (the sanitarium, the flies, the smell of fear and shame, the blades all rusted over, except it wasn't rust, they were red with) but he quashed it at once. Despite Inspector Bailey's bemusement, this was not Jay's first murder scene. Jay had been preparing himself for this exact moment since departing the apartment at Carding Street. He just had to breathe, and step forward.

"Is your rabbit going to be alright?" Fredrick asked. Jay resisted shooting back a sarcastic retort – even if the elephant thought a rabbit wasn't up for the job of a more "composed" animal, it wouldn't do any good to start petty squabbles here. Jay would simply have to show Frederick why George had been so insistent on recruiting him in the first place.

"He'll be fine, Fred," George said. "Other rabbits might have turned their little cotton tails and run by now. Jay's never been like most rabbits, though. That's why I brought him."

If the elephant had something to say in response, Jay didn't hear it - he was drowning out the noise again. The thunder of blood in his temples was too loud already, and he might get nauseous if he didn't keep his concentration. The rabbit's ears swiveled slightly forward, and his vision began to focus in. His nose was twitching. The fur on his back and neck bristled with nervous energy. The doe. She was what mattered right now. She was the only thing that could matter. To consider anything beyond the dead girl that lay crumpled in a mangled heap a few feet ahead of him would be too much.

There was this misconception that tended to float amongst predatory circles, that prey animals reacted to the smell of blood and the sight of death with a blind fight-or-flight response; that, even in this age of evolved and ostensibly civilized animals, a rabbit like Jay couldn't be trusted to handle the pressure of something like a murder scene without succumbing to some atavistic fainting spell, or turning tail to run in the other direction altogether. This was not true at all, of course. There were certain factors – the nausea, the adrenaline, the blasted involuntary twitching of his nose and ears – that Jay couldn't control; that much couldn't be denied. In much the same way even the sharpest-fanged soldier must be trained and acclimatized to the art of war, though, so too could any prey animal find their calling in, say, the city morgue. That most prey animals had little interest in inoculating their senses to the macabre had less to do with evolutionary merit, and more to do with common decency, or so Jay had come to believe.

Jay had encountered seven corpses before in his life, and his memories of them were etched with horrifying clarity in his mind to this day. The first two had been the bodies of his father and brother, both of them dead by consumption before he'd turned twelve. Jay was sent away to live with his Uncle Pallance before either of them had fully wasted away, but he was called upon to collect their remains from the sanatorium when the time came. He could still remember the buzzing of the flies that flickered in and about his brother's wilted ears, and the ruddy blades left behind by the surgeons who'd had to remove his father's gangrenous leg in his final days. He'd initially thought the bone-saws were that color because of rust. What a foolish boy he'd been.

His third meeting with death had been when his mother took her own life. Her illness had been one of the mind; her hysterical melancholia had grown so acute that the doctors eventually concluded that it could only be treated with isolation, bedrest, and a total lack of "unnecessary stimulation". The Zootopian asylums had saved her body from consumption, but her spirit had all but rotted away by the time she had come to live with Jay and Uncle Pallance. It was Jay who found her curled up in her bed with an empty turpentine bottle nestled tightly in her bony arms, as if she were cradling a child. She might have been asleep, were it not for sickly stream of foamy spittle that spilled out of her open mouth, or the way her glassy eyes had stared vacant and still right into Jay's own.

Later, during his tenure at the library, Jay had been the one to lead the ZPF to the remains of a dead pig whose hoof Jay had spotted poking out of a crate down in the building's storage rooms. The poor bastard had been twisted in a dozen different ways that were about as far from "natural" as could be imagined, though Jay managed to impress a bear from the ZPF enough with the levelheaded perspective he offered the investigation; it was enough to serve a completely unexpected side-career for the rabbit. The other three dead men Jay met in his time assisting George and the ZPF as a sort of consultant, each of them with their dark tales to tell. Jay often looked back on those days with an ambivalent nostalgia, and though his independent investigative work had brought about its own brand of seedy misadventure, Jay never expected to find himself working with the Zootopian Police again. Yet here he was, in another dark corner of the city, staring down at another broken corpse.

"Broken" was perhaps too light a word for it. The poor girl had not simply been beaten, or choked, or stabbed, as Jay had initially assumed. To be sure, there was evidence of a violent struggle: the doe's right arm was twisted and bent nearly backwards at a jagged angle, for one, which was the kind of damage only a particularly strong animal could manage. She smelled of fear, and mud, and blood, along with a faint but overwhelmingly familiar hint of perfume. What was that smell? Blueberry, Jay thought. Of course. His mother had liked to wear a scent very similar to this, back before things got bad.

The deer was wearing a cotton dress that may once have been a very vibrant green, though blood, mud, and time had worn the color down to a fouler shade (like mold, or the scum from a pond, or maybe even a bottle of turpentine). The garment was torn to shreds from the neck down to the waist, and the deer's chest and stomach were marked with ugly, plum-dark bruises that showed even through her matted fur. There were gashes, too, nearer up to the deer's ribs and already beginning to crust over with dried blood. Some of them were neat and very clearly deep, which Jay figured must have been made by a blade of some sort. Others, further down the doe's torso, were more gnarled and jagged streaks of tattered flesh– whoever killed this girl had used their claws too. Had they done so out of necessity? The stabs to the lungs would have been enough to do the deed, and the claw marks didn't look fatal to the naked eye. Did the murderer simply want to feel the kill?

For as awful as those lesions were, though, they were nothing compared to the worst wound of all, the element of the crime that had shaken George up so badly, and what had the other men the alley standing with their ears perked to attention and their fur at edge. Jay had missed it at first, from a distance, but the horror of it was impossible to ignore up close, as his eyes traced the path of violence down the deer's body, from her throttled throat to the blackening stain that spread from where her navel used to be. Jay had thought Frederick had earlier asked if he would "be alright" as a matter of condescension, but he now realized that the elephant's concern might very well have been genuine. If Jay was right about this body's most vicious wound, then the elephant had every right to wonder whether someone would feel okay after considering what was done to this creature.

"My God…" Jay murmured, drawing back from her. "Is…did the killer take her…"

"Her organs?" George said. "Yes. Though the exact extent of it will be difficult to determine without the coroner's assistance. Still…" George was visibly struggling to verbalize the full scope of his thoughts. Jay looked up at Frederick.

"I didn't go poking around in there myself, obviously," the elephant said, "But studied anatomy at university, all sorts of species, males and females alike. Given where the cut was made, the way the wound has been stretched out like it is…"

"The killer clawed their way in…" Jay finished. "And the damage runs deep." The elephant nodded grimly.

"That isn't all," said George at last, and as he stepped closer to the back wall of the alley's alcove, he bent to pick up the oil lantern that Frederick had previously placed near the doe's body, raising it to the corner of the brick wall. What the flame's glow revealed was a message writ upon the stone, one that had not only been obscured by shadow, Jay noticed, but also the manner in which the words blended all too well into the worn red color of the stone. "It's her blood, alright," George said, answering the question before Jay could even ask it. He bent to the ground and rose with a sopping patch of hideously red cloth pinched between his claws. "You can't see it now, obviously, but this scrap is the same color and fabric as the dress she's wearing. The bastard tore it off her and used her like an inkwell before he left. As for what he wrote, well,.."

"That's why you came to me," Jay finished. He stood and approached the wall, and as his eyes adjusted to the half-light of the alley, the message became much clearer. Three lines were scrawled along the wall in half-legible smears, though Jay could only read one of them. "The first bit here is Latin…" Jay muttered, "Though it's a bit mangled: 'IMORTUI AD ANIMUM'. I think it's supposed to read 'INMORTUI AD ANIMAM', with an "N" before the "M", and an "A" instead of the "U" there."

"What on Earth does that mean, then?" George asked.

"It's been a good long while since I took my Latin courses," said Frederick, "But I'm fairly certain 'anima' is to do with 'life', while the root 'mortem' is, well…"

"Yes, I get it, it means 'death'," George cut in, his patience obviously wearing thin. "I want to know what it means, damn it!"

"There are a few different ways this could be translated," Jay said, "And my grasp of Latin far from complete, but my instinct would be to read it as something like 'The undead to life', but I won't pretend to know what it means…" The three animals let the words cling to their silent bewilderment. If whoever had done this was set on creating life, they certainly had the wrong idea of it.

"What about the rest of it?" George asked.

The second line read: Λεγιὼν ὄνομά μοι. What was the most peculiar about this was the relative neatness and clarity of the lettering – it was written in a similarly haphazard smear of blood, certainly, but Jay might have guessed that two different people had been responsible for the two different lines. The third line was indecipherable, consisting not of any recognizable language, but rather three separate symbols, and nothing that struck Jay as immediately identifiable as the glyphs of any culture he was learned in. The first image was that of a circle, with a series of interior lines crisscrossing each other and dividing the circle at odd curves and angles. The second was some unfamiliar species of flower, Jay thought, looking like a cross between a rose and an orchid. The third was a crude, two-dimensional approximation of a large animal's claw, which held what looked to be an eye in its palm.

"To be honest," Jay said, his brow furrowed in puzzlement, "I haven't the foggiest. I think the second line is in Greek, but I can read that about as well as I can read Sanskrit, which is to say, not at all. I don't even know where to begin with the symbols at the bottom…" He could feel his ears flitting about with agitation. After taking a moment to collect his thoughts, he turned to George and said, "I'll need photographs of everything, for research. And you'll obviously want to check the materials that otter from the Gazette has with him before he makes off with it, and doubly so for any of those other vultures out there. In fact…" Jay gave the wall one final look, committing the words on it to memory as best he could, in case the photographic evidence fell through. "Scrub this whole thing away as best you can before any of the reporters get to it. I don't know if you can keep her out of their sights, but we have to keep something out of the public record. A secret held just between us, and whoever the hell did this."

Frederick looked to George for approval, and the bear nodded his affirmation without hesitation. Frederick motioned for the timber wolves who were guarding the otter and muttered orders to them, and the pair obediently ran out to the exterior street and quickly returned with brushes, buckets, and other cleaning supplies bundled in their arms. George and Jay had used similar tactics before, and Chief Inspector had come prepared. While Frederick and the timber wolves worked, the otter moaned in dismay and scrambled to set up his camera before all of the most mystifying and macabre material disappeared in a foam of bloody suds. George and Jay, meanwhile, made their way to the exit guarded by the burly tiger.

"What will the next steps be then, Jay?" George asked. His gruff tone had softened into nearly a whisper. "Keep in mind that I won't be able to help you on the ground like I might've before. I'm completely tied up in keeping the Force held together. The library's like to be a lot more crowded than you remember, too, given the circumstances."

"I appreciate your position in all this George, and I'm sure I can manage on my own. I have my own resources outside of that dusty old library now, too, so until the coroner is ready to share his findings with us, I suspect I'll have to—"

Jay was cut off when he and George both caught some commotion just ahead of them. A civilian crowd had begun to gather at the alley's entrance after all, which Jay supposed was inevitable, but amid the throng of impatient newshounds and curious onlookers, the tiger keeping watch at the entrance was engaging with one animal in particular, a fox by the look of it, and their voices were growing louder and more agitated by the second.

"I'm telling you for the last time," the tiger growled, "I don't care what kind of cockamamie excuse you've got, no civilian is getting through, and if you don't step back…

"And I'm telling you, you stupid cat, that I deserve to know what's going on here! It's my damned family that could—" The tiger barked a derisive laugh at that.

"Trust me, fox, you don't have to worry about any family of yours being involved, unless you've got some particularly bloodthirsty kin slinking about. I suppose of these filthy old hovels would make for fine den!" The fox at the other end of this argument didn't bother to reply before lashing out towards the tiger, though Jay could only make out a single swipe of the claw that almost got halfway to the tiger's face before the officer gripped the fox's thin wrist in his hand and began to twist.

"Burns! What the hell is going on?" George's voice was somehow both low and loud, in a way that Jay had only ever heard bears manage with such quiet ferocity. Officer Burns snapped a look back to his Chief, shoving the fox forward towards George and Jay without loosening his grip.

"This pest here is making demands of us," Burns said, "Saying that he needs to see the body for some godforsaken reason. I suspect he's some sort of deviant sir, and not to mention he damn near clawed my eyes-"

"Yes, yes, I saw," George said with calculated disinterest, "And I'm sure you were terribly frightened. You can let the fox go now, though. I promise I won't let him hurt you." Burns was clearly swallowing any number of the caustic replies that were swimming behind his fierce gaze. He turned his gaze down to the fox, whose own moss-green eyes were likewise shimmering with anger and pride, though the bear's tone was just a little more even with him.

"You've got a name, fox?" George asked.

"Nathaniel," the fox said, wrestling his arm away from Burns. "Nathaniel Barker."

"And why, might I ask, are you so insistent on impeding the investigation of this crime scene today, Mr. Barker? I have to think you're aware of how such behavior looks for…someone like you?"

Nathaniel Barker's eyes shifted from George, to Jay, to the space in the alley just beyond them, and then back to George again. He was taking deep breaths, and considering his words carefully.

"Like I tried to tell this…Officer here," he said, "I heard about a murder up this way, and I came to make sure that…I was worried about my family, you see, and I had to know if…" George and Jay exchanged looks, the bear's brow raised in skeptical curiosity.

"Well, Mr. Barker, I don't know what you expected to find here today, and while I can't speak to the whereabouts of your…your what? Your spouse? Your child? Whatever it is, what I can assure you is that there haven't been any foxes brought to the attention of the ZPF today, dead or alive." George placed a huge paw on Nathaniel's tiny shoulders, ushering him back out toward the street. "Except for you, of course. Now, given how much we've got to deal with today, I'm willing to overlook your tussle with Officer Burns here, if you'd kindly-"

The fox didn't turn. He didn't move. His eyed had fixed on the space between George and Jay, where the dirt and shadows of the alley stretched back and through to the corner alcove, behind which lay the body of the doe. His eyes were no longer shimmering with anger – tears were streaming down his eyes and across his snout, forming dark streaks in his dusty grey fur.

"I can smell her perfume," he said. "It's the blueberry kind. Her favorite." George exchanged another glace at Jay, much more serious this time, and he took a step back from the grieving animal. Nathaniel locked eyes not with George this time, but Jay.

"A doe, right? Not too much taller than me, with blonde fur, and a dark green dress?"

"Yes…" Jay said, "Are you saying you can identify the victim? I thought you said you were concerned about your family?"

"I am her family," the fox spat, and Jay did not begrudge him his rage. "Her name is...it was Miriam. She was my sister."


A/N: I'm not dead, and neither is {Of Clocks and Calendars}! My deepest apologies for the delay, but as I mentioned last time, life has been one big ol' ball of Stuff™, and it took me much longer than I thought to get a new chapter out. I hope you enjoy it, and don't hesitate to leave any feedback you have - it is always appreciated! Thank you all for reading.