Summary:

Bogo and Judy arrive on location to take a grand vista overlooking an unsettling situation. They go down in the ravine to assess the crime scene, and get briefed by the mammal in charge. To answer their questions, the local Ranger that discovered the grisly scene is called over, and Judy has to do a double take as she is brought face to face with the very last mammal she had ever expected to see there.

Notes:

Oh, look, another chapter! I wrote this while procrastinating on my other work, so please don't expect daily updates (my aching fingers beg of you), but I needed to put this up so I could at least add the second most important character in all of Zootopia to the tags.

What does the Fox Say?

Judy's head lulled about as Bogo sped down the highway in his oversize cruiser. She hadn't been able to snag any coffee to wake herself up with before they left, and the smooth motion of the performance tires combined with the dappled morning light coming in through her overhead window drew her quickly into a restless slumber.

She was working through her way through a confusing dream about the dead rising from the ground and demanding that she fill out forms in triplicate when a large paw gently shook her awake.

"Hopps. We're here." Bogo gently said, trying not to startle her to badly.

She blinked back to wakefulness, yawning as she tried to sit up straight. "Here where?" She asked as she unbuckled her set belt, and pushed open her passenger door.

He rumbled, "The Northern Cascades Wildlife Refuge, about an hour north of downtown." His hooves crunched on the gravel of the dirt road they were parked on as he too got out of the cruiser. Gently shutting the door behind himself, he walked around the hood of his transport and over to a low wall of rocks that he stepped up onto.

Judy scrambled out of the door and climbed up beside him. She looked around, taking in her bearings. They were high up in the hills behind Zootopia, well north of the city. Looking to her right, she watched the wall of black basaltic rock that they stood on continue around in a sloping semicircular arrangement, gently receding down northwards to the forest floor some one hundred feet below her toes. To her right, she saw an old trail, overgrown with weeds, gently sloping down around the bowl of the ravine that they were standing over.

Bogo pointed down to the floor of the ravine, "I guess that is what we're here for." She turned her eyes down to the bottom of the ravine and took in the activities down below. She squinted against the gloom, as the rim of the ravine shielded the valley from the morning sun. She could see some 10 or so rangers milling about, clad in their wide brimmed hats and khaki uniforms. A couple appeared to be wolves, their noses the ground, searching about and every few feet they would stop to pull out a flag from a bundle in their paws and stick it in the ground. The rest of the rangers seemed to be clustered in the middle of the ravine, or over by a blue wadded up tarp laying on the ground.

"Hopps, come'on." Bogo jerked his head toward the trail, and stepped lightly from the wall of rock they were standing on. She turned to join him, watching as members of the CSU team rushed passed, their cases balanced carefully on their shoulders as they picked their way down the trail. She hopped down to the ground and turned to follow Chief Bogo down the weed entangled path, letting his bulk forge a path for her slight frame.

They walked down the hill, but before they reached the bottom, Judy's nose was waylaid by a raising stench, a malaise of putrid flesh and lizard shit assaulting her sinuses. She squinted and wiggled her nose as she struggled to get used to the acrid taste of the place. There wasn't really anything one could do in a situation like this but resign oneself to the smell of languishing carrion.

As they reached the bottom, one of the rangers, an older chamois goat, spotted Bogo's bulk and trotted over to greet them. She held out out her delicate hoof to him, which he took and folded into his great mitt, "Chief Bogo? I'm Warden Ziege; I'm the director here. I'm so glad you make it. We're grateful for your help. This really isn't our thing, you know."

"Warden Ziege, The ZPD is always happy to help. May I introduce you to Detective Hopps?" He shook her paw and released it, and in the process guided her down to shake Judy's diminutive paw.

The goat looked down at the scowling rabbit in confusion, "Um… Hello, Detective? Um…" Warden Ziege limply shook Judy's paw before standing up straight and looking back at Bogo, "I'm sorry, but we were expecting someone with her reputation to be… Be somewhat..."

"Larger?" Bogo finished for her, irony dancing upon his brow. He smiled at her apparent confusion, "I assure you, Detective Hopps is very experienced in these matters, and there isn't any other mammal on my force that I could trust to do this kind of investigation with the same skill and aplomb that she brings to the process."

Judy snorted as she listened to Bogo lay down the bullshit. You asshat! It took you years to admit I was anything other than a gloried meter-maid. She stepped around his bulk, taking in the busy scene from ground level. From here, she could see that the little flags had been planted on shallow hillocks of various sizes scattered about the ravine floor, some old and covered with weeds, others just mounds of dirt freshly churned up. One even had what looked like the skeletal remains of a paw, reaching out of the ground, grasping at the air like it was clawing upward for freedom. She realized that the mounds were graves, at least a dozen or so.

The CSU team was splitting up, fanning out to meet the other rangers at the various mounds. As they passed by the three mammals, Judy turned back to the warden and pointed at the tarp, "What's under there?" She asked.

The warden grimaced, but she steeled herself and waved for them to follow her. They walked over to the large, lumpy tarp and waited while Ziege pulled it back to expose the crumpled form underneath the folds. The goat averted her eyes from the contents as Bogo winced in distaste, but Judy was fascinated by what she saw.

She stepped forward to the very edge of the tarp, but not directly on it for fear of contaminating the scene. She reported back to Bogo, "Looks like a large male bear, kodiak or maybe grizzly, based on what fur color I can see. As for establishing the victim's identity, we're probably gonna have to wait for dental records, since the rest of him has been..."

"Skinned," Bogo interrupted her train of thought, his face set in a scowl. He turned to the visibly shaken goat, "I hate to ask, but how did your ranger...?"

She shook her head as she starred of into the forest. "Find this? He was out on foot patrol early this morning when he saw the local buzzards circling. Hoping to document whatever the local lizards might have killed, he walked into the clearing and found everything you see before you. He drove off the lizards, and once he figured out what was under the tarp, he called me."

"Did he document the scene?" Bogo secretly hoped that they had preserved some evidence for his CSU mammals.

Ziege nodded vigorously, "Yes, he had his body-cam up and running before he even walked in, and he made sure take photos of everything before we arrived. He said that Detective Hopps had emphasized that step in class, and he didn't want to destroy anything that hadn't already been destroyed by the local scavengers." She waved at a figure advancing out of the woods towards them, "There he is! You can ask him your questions directly, Chief Bogo."

Judy turned back to examine the bear's bloody body, hiding a small secret smile. Yeah, it had have been one of her summer students who had found this and knowing that this was all above their experience, they had had the good grace to call in the experts. She ignored the approaching mammal, trusting Bogo to do the initial questions while she hunted for clues on the body before her.

She frowned at the gaping ruptures in the lower torso where the scavengers had ripped out the entrails, but that wasn't anything she or the ranger would have been able to prevent. She returned her gaze to the out stretched paws of the bear, the only parts of the body that still had fur on them, frowning as she noticed something amiss at their tips.

That's odd. His claws are missing? No, broken? Some were missing, some were broken, like they had been ripped out? She looked over at the teeth, but they were still intact in the jaws. The other thing she noticed was that the bear was terribly skinny, like he was malnourished or underweight. Hum… They would know better, once they could established the bear's identity, what physical condition he had been in at the time of his death.

A voice drawled behind her, "Ma'am?"

Judy's ears shot up to their fullest extension as disbelief echoed across her features. She spun around on her heel, and stared in shock at the scarlet mammal as he ambled up to her chief and his warden, a mocking grin playing across his narrow canine muzzle as he looked directly at her.

Ziege turned to Bogo and introduced Bogo to the short ranger before them. "Chief Bogo, may I introduce Ranger..."

Judy stood trembling in shock and barely repressed rage, her teeth grinding, her mind started doing somersaults as she inwardly seethed, WHY o' WHY, in the name of every unholy bloody bunny buttfuck was HE here?! Oh, No! It just had to be her luck today, to be saddled with his swarmy, smirking, smart ass…

"Ranger Nickolas P. Wilde. Ranger Wilde, this is Chief Bogo." The goat finished.

The little red fox smiled easily up at the towering bull, "Sir."

Ziege turned to the smaller, shaking bunny, and with a look of concern on her brow, she started, "And… Um… This… is…."

Ranger Wilde held up his paw, forestalling his boss's awkward introductions, "We've met." He stepped forward, and crossing his arms in front of himself, he addressed the shaking rabbit.

"Detective Hopps, as I live and breathe! How ya doing today, Carrots?"