Allusion to child abuse at the end. Proceed with due caution.
A red small mammal car with tinted windows drew to a halt in a small area of open, packed dirt, and Nick and Judy got out. Behind them the coarse road they'd followed trailed away, a grey-brown thread through dense, lush undergrowth, above them immense trees towered so high they almost seemed to touch the clouds, and in front of them the Pass waited, a half-hidden portal that dwindled rapidly to darkness.
"Like we're in another world," Judy noted, quietly. "A lost world." She tried her radio, and got only static. "Cut off from everywhere else."
"We pretty much are," Nick agreed. "Ghostly traces of the beginnings of the city. Few better places for murky dealings then the ones mostly forgotten." He gestured to the Pass. "Or feared."
They started toward it side by side, torches held ready, eyes sweeping for anything of interest. It was Judy who spotted faint disturbances in the greenery, a subtle, almost invisible trail of bent leaves and buckled twigs. It led to a tiny hollow secreted amongst heavily-scented bushes, the ground of it a little compacted.
"Observation post," she reasoned. Stepping carefully inside, she spun round. "Clear view of the Pass and approach road. Aromatic shrubs to cover your scent. Can you see me?"
"Barely," Nick, still on the path, responded. "If you were wearing dark clothes, and kept still...practically invisible."
Judy emerged, and rejoined him. "Seems Duke was telling the truth."
"It's been known to happen." Nick cast around. "Possible other hiding spot about twenty feet up that tree." He pointed. "And there'll almost certainly be more. Always give yourself options."
Judy bent to study the broken fronds, again. "Some of these are quite recent. Inside a week, I'd say. Slapston's exchange?"
Nick nodded. "Strong possibility. Small mammal gun, small mammal hiding spot. But, if we treat Duke's as the prior one here, that means a stakeout would be pretty redundant."
Judy nodded. "We'd better make the most of the recent one, then."
Together they moved to the mouth of the tunnel, and turned on their torches, two beams of light crossing over in a straggling X that reached a fair way into the blackness. Pale flagstones, slick with moisture, lined every surface. The walls and ceiling dripped with dank moss and limp, straggling vines. The air was heavy, humid, and laced with faintly fetid aromas. Every little sound, from the soft, wet tread of their feet to the heightened beating of their hearts, echoed strongly around them.
Some fifty feet into the tunnel, the glow of the outside world starting to dwindle, they found the first painting. The head and shoulders of a raccoon, it was defined in vigorous, impressionistic strokes, the matted growth starting to creep onto it and the rivulets of water trickling over it doing little to dull its vivid hues. It stared blankly from empty pits of eyes, a broad, ragged red smear running down between them.
There were a total of nine, on alternating sides, all small mammals, all with the same unsettling traits. Judy paused to study a red panda who appeared little more than a child, one ear missing.
"If Bogo says no serial killer was ever tied to this place, then no serial killer was ever tied to this place, but..." She shivered, faintly. "Hard not to wonder just a little, looking at these..."
Nick laid a paw on her shoulder. "Gotta admit, I didn't expect there to be actual paintings down here. Curious to know the real story behind them. Bored cubs with morbid imaginations? The artistic outpourings of a lonely, troubled soul hiding from an unkind world?"
"Maybe you ought to try finding out." Judy took a breath, turned, and something glinted in the light of her torch a short distance beyond the last of the images.
"Maybe I will," Nick mused, following the rabbit towards the gleam.
It proved to be the burnished corner of a rust-pitted, battered, faded lockbox tucked against the tunnel's side, the moss crawling over it and the ground in front of it quite heavily disturbed.
Nick sank to a crouch, nose flexing. "I can pick up Slapston's scent; it's faint, but definitely him. Nothing else."
Judy joined him, her eyes narrowed in thought. "It looks like it's been mouldering here for decades. Did they just stumble across it and think 'perfect place for an exchange'? Or did they already know about it?"
"We'll have to ask them when we catch them." Nick took some plastic gloves from a pocket and pulled them on. "Let's look inside."
It opened a lot more smoothly then they'd anticipated, with hardly a sound. The inside was markedly cleaner than the outside, and all that lay within was a bookmark, pale blue with a silvery outline of a feather curling over it, and two words scrawled across one side: HELP US.
Judy's ears snapped vertical. "Car. Pulling in by ours. Kill the lights."
In pitch, almost suffocating darkness they watched the distant splash of colour and brightness that was the entrance. A large figure came up to it, stared into the tunnel for a long time, then called out.
"Hopps? Wilde?"
Judy drew a breath, and stood. "Coming, Wolford."
Nick slipped the bookmark into an evidence bag, then they jogged up the tunnel to join the lupine, torches bobbing before them.
"Sorry for that," Wolford apologised, "but Nick's needed. Urgently. A child was found wandering Savannah Central bleeding and naked. He's been taken to hospital, but he won't talk. He wants you, Nick. Says his name is Cody."
Nick's blood froze. He took a long, slow breath. "Right. I'll go straight there. If you can spare a minute or two, see what the best nose in the ZPD can sniff out round here. Judy..."
She gripped his wrist. "I'll come if you want me to."
He smiled thinly. "We need you to."