Summary:
Judy and Nick follow the tracks up the hill, and along the way Nick encourages her to tell him a story.
"Shit."
Judy frowned for a moment. She need to bag the evidence, if it indeed was evidence, but she was out of paws. She slid the lengths of cattail stalk into her coat pockets, freeing up a paw which she slip inside her coat. Pulling out an evidence bag, she shook it open and held it out to Nick expectantly. He dropped the sliver of wood into it, and she folded it back up and tucked it back into her coat.
"Is it important?" Nick asked her.
"It might be. It might not." She responded around a chunk of cassini that she was busy chewing, "It's a long shot, but I do know a weasel who's fond of toothpicks, and while he's class act in his own right, burying bodies in the wood is a little outside of his normal behavior range." She pointed to the tire tracks in the dirt, "They're not very clear here, unlike down there." She pointed back to the path leading toward the mass grave site.
Nick bent over and drew his claws through the dirt, "The road was built up by a lumber company some ten years ago or so. They didn't want their lumber trucks bogging down in the mud, so they elevated the road and made it well draining. It tends to stay dry."
"Does the water not drain down here?" Judy asked him as she started chewing on a cattail stalk.
Nick shook his head as he stood, "No. We're standing in a collapsed lava tube leading out of the Zootopia super caldera to the south of us. The top of the tube was pretty thin, and it collapsed eons ago, but the bottom is made up of layers of pretty impermeable basalt. It forms a sealed trough, trapping the water in the dirt and making the whole forest pretty swampy. What water that does leak out of the rock just gets heated by the underground volcanic action and returns to the surface as hot springs."
"Lots of bacterial action in that water?" She asked?
He nodded, "Yeah, with all the heat and sulfur, the water is pretty active."
"Alright," she considered, "this makes more sense. Dump the bodies in the swamp, and the local microorganisms will make more short work of the soft tissues, especially if the skin and fur had been removed first." She scowled for a moment, "Did you see any mammal tracks here?"
He shook his head, "Nope." He pointed down at the tire tracks, "I don't see any evidence of a ramp either."
She looked at where he pointed, "Hum… The tire tracks just terminate here, and then there's this gap between them to the next set of tracks." She pointed, "It might be a donk." He looked at her with confused look. She smiled wryly at him, "Sorry, it's a farming term. You ever seen the forklift trucks that get attached to the end of a semi trailer? You see them a lot on turf trucks, for instance."
"Yeah, yeah, okay, I get you." He nodded.
"Except that I've never seen them with an excavator bucket attachment."
"It could be a custom job, maybe fabricated for this purpose." Nick offered.
"Maybe," She agreed. "I've got a guy over at the DMV that I can ask. He's kinda of an expert on this stuff. If the tech guys can't tell me what the vehicle is, I can ask him." She pointed down at the tracks, "How far do these go?"
Nick shrugged, "I don't know. Let's follow them and find out." He started up the gradually sloped roadbed at a gentle pace, his eyes on the tracks. Judy followed behind him. A few feet along he asked her, "So what's the deal with the weasel?"
"Huh?" She looked up at him, "Oh. Duke. His name's Duke Weaselton. He's a career petty criminal, mostly dealing in counterfeiting and petty theft. Classic psychopathic behavior, bad childhood, lack of educational or employment opportunities, the general stuff. That being said, unless he's really escalated his criminal endeavors since the last time I encountered him, I don't see him doing something like this. There's no profit margin in it. He's got plenty of rage, but he's primarily motivated by greed."
"Last time?" Nick asked, "When was the first?"
"Oh, God, years and years ago. When I first joined the force."
"Do tell?" He encouraged her.
"What, you really want to know?" Why does he want to know?
He nodded.
Well... "Okay, It was like fifteen years ago, just after graduation from the police academy. I was assigned to Precinct One by Ex-Mayor Lionheart, and that pissed Chief Bogo right off. He did not like that self-preening politician butting into his turf, but since he couldn't tell the mayor off, he took it out on me. Assigned me to parking duty. Top of the class valedictorian, assigned to parking duty on my first day. It was humiliating. And boring." She grimaced
"So when an opportunity popped up for me to prove my worth, I jumped at the chance. Duke had just robbed a flower shop, and with the shop owner screaming in my ear, I excitedly took off after the weasel. I thought I could catch him easily, with his little short legs, and me being a fleet rabbit and all. He had made it all the way to the park in front of city hall when it all went wrong for me. I had been so intent on my target that I wasn't watching where I was going, and I tripped over this little mammal in a wheel chair; some little homeless fox out begging for spare change. I fell down in a heap, ended up landing on my wrist wrong. Sprained it." She shook her paw.
"The weasel got away, I take it?" Nick asked.
Judy sighed, "Yeah. He got away clean. Another officer showed, McHorn by the way, but he couldn't keep up. The weasel ducked into Tiny Town, caused a panic, and he got away in the confusion."
"Ouch," Nick observed.
"Yeah. A great first pursuit, I must add. Anyway, I lost him, so I turned back to help up the crippled little fox back into his chair. His little legs didn't work so well, so I had to lift him up into the seat. I asked if he want to file a complaint, but he just waved me off and rolled off into the crowds. It wasn't until I made it back to my traffic enforcement cart that I realized that he had taken off with my wallet."
"Oh Ho! Little fox boosted you, did he?" Nick gawfed.
Judy smiled in spite of her self, "Yeah. Like I was a newbie tourist, fresh off the trains. I didn't even feel it. I've trained to spot that sort of thing at the academy, but to actually experience is a different story." She shook her head. "Anyway, I didn't want to tell anybody back at the precinct, so I kept it to myself. He didn't take my phone, so all he really made off with was my lunch money. I canceled my bank card via the banking app, and drove back to the ZPD treatment clinic with one paw."
"Ow. Your other one was already swollen?" Nick asked her.
"Like one of those twist up balloons. Anyway, I went into work the next day anyway, cause I didn't want them think I wasn't tough enough. The chief came in, took one look at me, and he just snorted and shook his head. Later on, after he had given out the assignment to all the over officers, he was just left with me. He looked down at me as I sat trying to look chipper and ignore the pain in my wrist, and he drawled 'Hopps, I thought I told you to write 100 tickets.' And I told him that I wrote 200, to which replied 'So you did.'" Judy tried to mimic her bosses deep rumble.
"Um Hum..." Nick allowed.
Judy continue, "He stood at his podium, leafing through his clip board, and helpfully observed, 'Gonna be kinda hard to write tickets with a sprained wrist.' I figured he was about assign me back out to parking duty again just to be mean, but he had other ideas. Either he took pity on me, or he want to be really sadistic, but he ended assigning me to the Cold Case department instead. The irony of course being is that department was where I really got my start as a detective." She looked up at the patiently listening fox, "Why am I telling you all this?"
Nick shrugged, "It helped to pass the time, while I focus on finding the tracks. They've been getting fainter the higher we go up, and I think we might loose them up at the cross roads." He pointed towards an intersection in the logging road just a few yards in front of them.
"Besides, I find your stories interesting, and I want to know more." He smiled earnestly down at her, his eyes deep pools of emerald fire.
Judy felt a shiver race down her spine straight to her tail as she stared back into their liquid depths.