Commander Franklin Cunninghorn of Precinct One's T.U.S.K. Squad felt good. He felt very, very good.
It wasn't just that his favorite spot in Blue's Bar, a navy blue bar stool situated right in front of the massive poster of Gazelle in her skimpiest red skirt and top, was empty when he barged through the doors. It wasn't that his favorite brand of music was playing either. No, it was something much more satisfying.
As he crossed the doormat he spotted Lieutenant McHorn with a drink on a round table. He almost didn't see the cutesy rookie Officer Hopps sitting beside him, her silly long ears the first part of her that caught his eye. Cunninghorn planted his coat on the barstool to mark his spot and made his way over to them; the sooner he made his presence known to them, the better.
"Talk about a small world after all!" He said loudly, turning all three heads on the table. McHorn glared at the approaching rhino. Hopps wasn't so hostile, but she still didn't look happy to see him. Cunninghorn was in too good a mood to let that bother him, and besides, he had already decided that once he became chief, they would be the first to go. He reached the table and looked down on them all. "Look, I can see that some of you are running near empty, so how about I head to the bar and get another round for you."
He began to turn toward the bar, but then McHorn's harsh response cut through the musical atmosphere. "We're not drinking anything that you order!"
Cunnghorn kept a smile plastered on his face, thinking of the bloodied murder weapon lying in a dumpster two blocks from here. "Suit yourself. Bogo likes Grasshoppers, doesn't he? I'll get one ready for him."
"Well, Bogo's not here!" Hopps fired back. "He's with the key witness that you've been forbidden from approaching with a fifty foot celery stick!"
Cunninghorn kept smiling. These two fuckers had no idea…
"Hey, take it easy with the country-bun puns, Hopps. At least tell me what I did to piss you off."
"Piss us off?" McHorn leaned over the table, eyes blazing. "You ordered your men to fire on our position!"
Oh, that. "I actually ordered them to fire at the bear, and no-one got hit, right?" McHorn and Hopps's glares deepened. Cunninghorn backed off a step. "Look, I take full responsibility for that fuck-up, I really do. I made a mistake. But in case you've forgotten we took far more losses than you did."
The reminder of that horror show the bear in the plague doctor mask had unleashed with that grenade launcher cast a shadow over the glares of the two officers at the table. The sight made Cunninghorn reconsider their future-firing just so he could see those looks more often. He turned his full attention to Hopps, the token rabbit who had gained Mayor Swinton's favor. Cunninghorn couldn't understand how she had managed to impress Swinton, given that she had failed the capture the elusive fox just as much as T.U.S.K. had. All the same, if Hopps was going to join the ranks of Swinton's secret police, then Cunninghorn had better build bridges with her while he still could.
"Officer Judith Hopps, right?"
"Yes?" Hopps asked warily.
"I have a real good feeling that you're going places, Hopps. Remember Little Rodentia? You were the only one who could get in there without causing massive collateral damage. Six minutes later you brought back a sniveling weasel and forty thousand dollars in stolen jewelry. And then Bogo dragged you to his office and chewed your ass for twelve minutes straight." Hopps' mouth became a thin line as she stared up at the rhino who wouldn't stop smiling. "See you tomorrow, Hopps."
He returned to his favorite bar stool, sat down and ordered a Bloody Mary. It wasn't a drink he ordered often, but considering his tremendous accomplishment less than an hour ago a Bloody Mary couldn't have been more appropriate.
Some time later the door opened again. Reflected in the mirror behind the bar was Dr. Kathryn 'Kathy' Bogo, uppity older sister to the later Mansa, crossing the floor behind Cunninghorn.
"Kathy!" McHorn called, sounded much more happy to see her compared to his hostile reception to Cunninghorn's presence. "Come sit down!"
Kathryn reached the table but remained standing. Cunninghorn tried to refrain from obviously watching them through the mirror. "I haven't been able to make some time to see Higgins. How is he?"
"He'll be discharged soon, but he won't be able to go back on duty until he's given the all clear on his concussion." McHorn nodded. "At least he wasn't shot. Anyway, I'm just here to catch up with Mansa."
Hopps lifted herself higher above the tabletop. "He's not here."
Kathryn looked puzzled. "Well, he said he had to take care of some business with Cunninghorn, but he hasn't called back."
McHorn scowled. "But Cunninghorn's over there. He's been here for about ten minutes."
Kathryn paused. "Then where's Mansa?"
Cunninghorn grinned into his bloody crimson drink as McHorn pulled out his phone.
He supposed it all started the day he and Bogo had come to verbal blows over what to do with the pudgy cheetah after he became a witness to Woolton's gruesome murder. Bogo, who would have personally cuffed and muzzled Clawhauser five years ago, had demanded that the cheetah be kept out of a cell, and Chief Trunchbull, inexplicably, had sided with him. Some nonsense about protecting the reputation of the ZPD. Typical politician posing as a cop, and Commissioner Elba was worse. They always spouted bullshit about putting the city above themselves, but Cunninghorn could see right through them. Anyway, Cunninghorn had let his raging resentment get the better of him. He'd accused Trunchbull of playing favorites. The exchange following Bogo's dismissal from the office had left a smoldering hole where his pride had been.
He could still remember it as though it had happened only this morning. Trunchbull had carefully closed his office door and turned to the rhino still in his seat.
"Tell me, Cunninghorn? What exactly have you done for this city?"
Cunninghorn had straightened himself in his chair. "I joined the ZPD long before Bogo. I outrank him. You personally promoted me to Commander of T.U.S.K. I have arrested more predators than any other officer in this city."
"And put most of them in the hospital or the ground." Trunchbull had said coldly.
"Deadly force is more necessary when it comes to predators, you know this." Cunninghorn had said. "The riot at Wild Times and the civil war in Tundratown proves it. Bogo's gotten soft for that cheetah. You know that bleeding heart of his is going to hold us back from capturing the fox and the bastards who killed Woolton and Dr. Lemming. And you know that bleeding heart will do the ZPD no favors if you make him Chief of Police in your place."
"Being Chief of Police means more than just cracking down harder on predators, Commander." Trunchbull had slowly returned to his desk as he spoke. "Unlike you, Captain Bogo came to understand that. The TAME Collars are on the verge of being abolished. Do you think the use of deadly force on every predator will help Swinton's case?"
Cunninghorn had clenched his fists around the arms of the chair. "Bogo would give anything to see the collars abolished. You speak of putting the city first, at all times. Predators only make up ten percent of that population, but Bogo would sooner put them above the other ninety. Don't tell me you don't see the way he looks at that cheetah. Don't tell me he's not just protecting him out of a sense of duty. Don't tell me you want someone like that running Precinct One."
Trunchbull had stiffened in his chair. His trunk froze mid-curl. "You want to become Chief of Police based on that?"
Cunninghorn had nodded. "Mayor Swinton would find that preferable."
Trunchbull had tilted his large head up while keeping his eyes on the rhino. His ears and trunk had extended. "I will reward you with a raise once you recapture Nicholas Wilde, alive and undamaged. And if you capture the mammal or mammals responsible for the recent murders you will earn another promotion on top of that. And if Mayor Swinton approves it, we will transfer you to a position of authority in Precinct Three where you can better serve this city by overseeing the effort to end the gang war between Big and Koslov… but I would sooner burn Precinct One to the ground than let some trigger-happy Caligula do it for me."
Cunninghorn had felt both cold with shock and hot with rage. It had taken every fiber of his being to keep from exploding.
Trunchbull had stood up and pointed his trunk to the door. "Get out of my office! And the next time you accuse Captain Bogo of predophilia will be the last time I call you Commander!"
Cunninghorn had left the office as quickly as he could without running, having decided then and there that Captain Bogo had to die.
He'd planned it carefully, counting the days until Woolton's replacement Doug Ramses was scheduled to infiltrate the safe house and silence Benjamin Clawhauser. To Swinton and Ramses it would appear that Bogo had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and forced Cunninghorn to take action to keep him silent. Bogo had taken to checking on the cheetah on a regular basis, so the story wouldn't be implausible, though why the depraved prick had taken such an interest in that corpulent cheetah was beyond him. Ramses, however had not been happy. Nobody else should have been there, especially the masked chomper that had trapped him in the bathroom before he could complete his mission. Cunninghorn was just happy that they had someone to blame for the deaths of Bogo and his pet pred.
Cunninghorn played dumb when Kathryn approached him, demanding the whereabouts of her baby brother, doing his best not to grin as he remembered the moment he'd slid that knife across Bogo's jugular. The look of blank shock on his face had been positively exquisite, and Cunninghorn's only regret was that he'd had to help Ramses disappear unseen before he could watch the buffalo die. He wished he could have stayed and watched, watched the light fade from Bogo's eyes as he squirmed on the floor while trying in vain to stop the blood pumping out and pooling across the boards beneath his thick skull. It would have been beautiful.
Quit griping about it, he thought. Bogo was dead, probably being feasted on by that bear right now. Besides, there was always the next asshole who crossed him. He would get another chance.
He downed the rest of his Bloody Mary and ordered another, while Kathryn and McHorn started getting worried and making calls.
"Trunchbull says he's not at the station." McHorn grunted.
Kathryn lowered her phone and started pacing in distress. "I just called the hospital where Higgins is staying. He's not there, either! This isn't like him, Mac!"
The ox running the bar placed the second Bloody Mary before Cunninghorn, and he immediately lowered his head to take a long, satisfying sip through the straw. A tiny grey paw shot out and shoved the straw to the other side of the grass, alerting the rhino to the bunny's presence.
"You don't seem that bothered that he's gone missing!" Hopps' foot thumped on the shiny surface of the bar as she glared up at Cunninghorn.
Cunninghorn shrugged. "You know how he is. He's probably chasing another lead. Tomorrow morning he'll be back at the station with a list of suspects as long as the Hopps Family Photo."
McHorn strode up, eyeing the shorter-horned rhino. "I just hope Big's or Koslov's boys didn't decide to go after him."
McHorn and Kathryn's phones jingled simultaneously and they stared at the screens. "Higgins." McHorn muttered. He and Kathryn read the texts in silence. Kathryn was the first to react, her eyes going fully round before she sprinted out the bar with the phone in hoof. Cunninghorn hid his smile in his glass.
"Oh God…" McHorn dropped the phone on the counter to Cunninghorn's left and leaned heavily on it, his composure broken.
"What is it, McHorn?" Judy asked anxiously from where she was standing on the right.
McHorn raised his head. "Valentino. He attacked the safe house where we were keeping Clawhauser. Bogo was there, he…"
"What? What?!" Judy was beginning to panic.
Yeah, Mac, what?! Cunninghorn thought.
McHorn swallowed. "They found him and Clawhauser in the living room. Someone had cut his jugular. He's in surgery now."
Hopps gasped and ran along the bar past Cunninghorn, not noticing him deflate and raise his hand to hide the shock that had frozen his features. "Is he going to make it?! Is Ben okay?! How did Valentino find him?!"
"I don't know, but we're gonna find out! Come on, Hopps!" McHorn growled. Hopps jumped down from the bar and followed McHorn to the exit.
Cunninghorn remained rooted on the bar stool, sucking liquid red courage from his Bloody Mary until the straw was sucking on air. When he was sure McHorn and Hopps were long gone, he stood up and walked out.
Following them to the hospital was out of the question. There was no doubt that Trunchbull would order twenty-four police protection until Bogo was discharged, and by then he would have talked. No, Cunninghorn had to go straight home, gather as much as he could and then skip town before Precinct One learned the truth.
That wasn't the worst of it. Swinton would know as well. Cunninghorn had lured Bogo to the safe house. He'd rigged the assassination so he would have an excuse to murder his rival. He'd loused it up, and now Swinton's operation could be blown in a matter of hours.
And Swinton would know exactly who to blame.
