Summary:

Office Judy Hopps is busy sorting files down in the Cold Case archives when she has a surprise visit from her fellow officer and friend Micah Fangmeyer, who needs some help with a certain case involving burglarized flower shops.

Notes:

Yes! I am still alive! I have not abandoned my stories or my work here! I just got really busy, and ran out of free time. But here I am, still hale and healthy, and brimming with new energy. So for all my morose fans - the next installment of Blood Red Skies.

Zootopia ZPD: 15 years ago

There was an inherent stillness to the place that just sang to her lapin soul. A vast cavern buried deep in the bowels of the mother city, an archive of the lives and deaths of the citizenry that walked the pavement above her head. A library, hidden in shadow, full of sordid stories of tall tales and shallow lies, epic adventures and tragic comedies.

She had dreaded being exiled here, 6 months earlier, down here among the long lonely shelves and the dusty forgotten files. A sudden and swift end to the bright future she had envisioned as an ZPD officer valiantly serving her adopted city. On the other paw, her parents had been thrilled, even happier than the day before when she had been assigned to parking duty, even as she bemoaned her apparent demotion to file clerk. But as the days had stretched into weeks and the weeks into months, the new perspective she had been given matured into a better understanding of this proud city and her citizens, the criminals who threatened it, and the police officers who protected it.

Officer Judy Hopps sat at an old steel desk, scaled not for her slight frame but a slight larger and woollier herbivore, tucked back in a corner behind the ranks of drawers that held old city patrol maps. She liked sitting back here among the shelves far better out than being tucked back in that over sized office she had been shown when she first came down here, a space she had long since converted over to photographic storage.

Out here though, she could drink in the silence, her ears perked upright as they listening for those who might come down to the cold case archives seeking her assistance. She type away on her paw-book, entering in updates to some files that had just been digitized, when her attentive ears heard the sound of a far door opening.

With a far distant clang, a door slammed shut, but there were not further sounds to her ears. Certainly not the clopping of cloven hooves from the auxiliary officer bringing down a load of files for her to find homes for. Except for…

There it is… The sound of fur sliding along cardboard. She must be so lost in thought that she's not minding her tail. Judy smiled to her self, before glancing at the clock on her paw-book. 10:30 am. She's early. What's she up to? She waited for her fellow officer to find her.

Officer Micah Fangmeyer, padding silently from the racks, greeting her with a quiet "Hey ya, Buns."

Judy looked up from her paperwork, "Hey, Micah. How are things above ground?" She looked up at the towering muscular form, clad in her implacable blues. The tigress gently laid a stack of six or seven files in Judy's inbox, but held one back in her paws.

"Eh… You know..." She trailed off.

Judy pointed a claw at the stack she had just laid down, "The aux ram could have brought those down, you know?"

Micah looked down at the stack before explaining why she was doing something so mundane as a file run, "Oh, I had to get out of the bullpen. The Chief and the Mayor Lionheart are having their weekly screaming match, and I couldn't take the noise again." She gestured upstairs with her file.

Judy frowned as she sat back in her creaking chair, "The missing mammal thing again?"

"Yeah," Micah nodded, "The whole thing has dragged on for months, and the Mayor is getting more demanding. He wants to know if Chief Bogo has any leads, and the Chief just tells him no. Which we don't, you know."

Judy nodded. She had filed enough of those missing mammal cases in her cold files to know there wasn't much to go on.

Micah continued, "It's like they just up and left without telling anybody, but left all their stuff behind. If it was kidnapping, why hasn't there been any ransom demands? It can't be serial murderer – there's no pattern to the victims. Plus it's not like we've found any bodies left lying about. And if somebody was targeting predators just to eat them, well, that's a messy process, ya know? It tends to leave evidence." She looked down at the smaller doe.

Judy shivered at that mental image that chased through her mind. Not at the thought of Micah eating her, though. The tigress was a strict piscatarian – she had no taste for warm blooded prey. Not that her father believed that for a hot minute. The thought of his daughter hanging out with a predator four times her size had driven him to frenzied tears when she had first described her friendship with the cat to her parents.

So Judy just stopped telling them both about it – it just wasn't worth the drama. But she hadn't stopped her friendship with the feline. She found the larger cat a fine listener, especially at the end of the day when they would go down to the docks so that Micah could fish for her dinner. They would sit on the pier, Micah casting her line out into the bay, and they would watch the sunset. And talk. About their day, about cases, about life.

She liked to think she could read the tigress now, and Judy could see she was distracted by something more than just the noise that Lionheart and Bogo had generated having their weekly masculine dominance display. She hadn't put down the last file, holding it in her paw as she slid a claw along the card-stock face. Judy tipped an ear to point at the file and asked her, "Are you going to put that down?"

"Huh?" The tigress looked down a her paws, "Oh… This isn't a cold case." She trailed off.

"Uh-huh!" Judy waggled a claw at the larger predator, "Officer Fangmeyer, cough it up! You obviously some thing stuck in your throat, so lets hear it." she admonished.

"This?" Micah waved the file. Judy nodded. "Ah… this is one of those look good cases that Bogo figures could be solved quickly… Um… have you ever heard of a thief by the name of Weaselton? Duke Weaselton?" She peer down over her nose at Judy.

Judy tilted her head back and let out a peal of laughter. Chuckling, Judy shook her head and wiped the back of her paw across her muzzle, "Yeah, I know Duke. Chasing him is what got me banished down here." Judy waved her paws around at the shelves.

"Oh? Oh!" Micah stood up straighter for a moment, before dropping the file to the desk and opening it. Her claw on the cover sheet, she looked back up at Judy and asked, "How do you know his name?"

Judy gestured at the files laying on her desk, "His name pops up here and there, among the cold files, either as a witness or a perp. Just the name and a basic description. I've never seen any interview notes or even a basic background on him, and certainly no arrests. These are cold files, after all."

Micah nodded as she leafed through the pages, "Oh, he's been arrested plenty of times – when the ZPD can catch him."

Judy chuckled ruefully, "Yeah… He's a slippery one, I bet." She looked back up at Micah, "So how did he cross your desk?"

"Oh, you know… Politics. Seems the over active weasel has been hitting up some of the mayor's constituents, stealing stuff from their shops, and they're getting kind vocal about the ZPD not doing anything, which just gives Lionheart more reason to yell at the Chief. So he figured why not throw the cat a bone and tossed me the case. Except..." She trailed off again.

"Except you can't find him?" Judy prompted her.

Micah held up her paws in frustration, "No! It's been two weeks. I figured it would be a quick in and out. Talk to the vics, get their side of the story, maybe I could establish a pattern, figure out where to catch him in the act." She shook her head, "Except they don't want to want to talk to me. Half of the shop owners start screaming about police intimidation, and the other half just run and hide. Hell, a couple of them up and went catatonic on me. I had to call in the medicos."

Suspicion started to boil up behind Judy's eyes. She frowned and asked, "Um, what was he stealing again?"

Micah scratched her head, "Flower bulbs?"

The light dawned for Judy, "Ohhh! Flowers? Flower shops?" Micah nodded. "Staffed by herbivores, by chance?"

"Every one of them." Micah affirmed. "Most of them on the portly side."

Judy nodded, "Yeah, easy for him to filch and run without worrying about being chased. When I saw him, he had just ripped off this middle aged boar." She looked up at her tall friend and observed, "All prey mammals? And the Boss sent you? What was he thinking?"

Micah shrugged, "I think he was more interested in sucking up to the mayor. I'm tall, feline, and female, I guess? Except the couple of time I talked with Mayor Lionheart about this, I got the impression he kinda just looked through me. Had he done anything untoward, I would have called it sexual harassment, except that he was always very civil."

Judy chuckled, "No, if the Boss wanted to suck up to Lionheart that way, he would have sent Delgado."

Micah cocked her head and looked down at the smaller bunny, "What?! How do you know?" She immediately got what the lapin was driving at. "Really?"

Judy nodded, "Earl, the auxiliary officer who brings me the daily files, is a terrible gossip who just loves a juicy story, and all the civil service secretaries totally adore him and just have to tell him all their secrets, which he then precedes to tell me. Anyway, the scuttlebutt in City Hall is that Lionheart has been spending a rather large amount of time down lately in a certain naturalist club. Apparently there is a masseuse there he really, really, likes. He says the panther is really good with his paws, if you catch my drift." She winked and grinned.

Micah reached over to the far wall and snagged a large chair. Swinging it around, she set it against the desk and sat astride it, placing her arms across the back, and resting her head on her forearms. Her head now at Judy's level she continued with, "Huh. I had kinda thought I was being offered up as a peace offering or something."

Judy shrugged, "Maybe you were. Just not a sexual one. I actually don't understand their dynamic. I really don't. I mean, if Lionheart really hated Bogo, he could have fired him a long time ago. And if Bogo really wanted to play politics, yeah, I could see him sending in somebody like Delgado." She turned an looked back at the quiet cat. "But he didn't. He sent you instead. By yourself? No partner still?" Judy asked her.

Micah let out a sigh, "Nope. Still no partner…"

Judy turned in her chair and reached out to pat the tigress on the elbow, "You're wasted on all this political pellet droppings. You should be off in ESWAT, swing a mean shotgun!" She grinned up at the morose cat, "First in the door, spewing lead, all go get em tiger! That sort of thing!"

Micah looked askance at the impudent rabbit. She snorted and sat up in denial, "Except that I don't want to be in ESWAT! I want to be a detective, not a street cop stuck on patrol duty, and certainly not some faceless armored monstrosity. I want to solve crimes and bring peace to the victims and their families! I want to be a real detective!" She pause when she realized that Judy was squinting at her, her muzzle screwed up in a scowl. "Sorry." Micah apologized.

"Don't we all..." Judy replied drolly. She dropper her paw to her side and swung back. "Soooo…. Back to the subject at paw. What was Mister Weaselton doing ransacking these noisy shop owners? What was he boosting? Rare heritage roses? Poppy seeds? Dandelion weed spray?" Judy just threw out some ideas.

Micah just shook her head. Reaching over, she read the notes out loud, "Nope. He always just stole one thing, the bulbs of one particular plant in fact." She turned to look at the rabbit, "Have you ever heard of something called Midnicampum Holicithias?"

Judy's ears fell down as her jaw dropped down in shock.