Chapter Six

Fire Forensics

It can be surprising just how long a large fire can take to put out. While an average house fire takes around half an hour to extinguish, putting out a factory inferno when it's full of half-complete wooden ladders surely takes considerably longer.

The hours dwindled on for Hopps and Wilde as they stood and watched the multistory complex as it was doused hour after hour by the dozen hoses of the fire trucks. While the other officers had been given the tedious task of forming a perimeter around the rest of the factory to make sure no idiots tried to get too close, Hopps and Wilde at least had been given the task of keeping the press at bay. This job not only gave them something slightly more interesting to do than stand around all day but — as Nick pointed out before turning to a camera, winking, and then sliding his aviator sunglasses over his nose — they were going to be on the front page of all the news' reports tomorrow.

But as the fire started to dwindle, so too did the day and by the time the fire was out and the fire crew entered the building to put out any remaining rogue flames, the early morning had turned to late afternoon.

"You think anyone was in there?" Judy asked as the last of the firememmle entered the ruined building.

Nick gazed at the warehouse for some lonely seconds, the last of the putrid smoke rising high into the freedom above. "I doubt it, the place has been abandoned for years."

They waited for some minutes longer and, due to the action having had dulled down, the reporters started to clear away their things and then drove off with all the necessary material inside their SD cards.

"Finally," Nick thanked, slipping off his aviators as the last of the vans pulled away, "it's not easy looking this good all the time.

"Well, you seem to manage it well enough," she approved with a coy smile.

"Aww, thanks, Hopps," he chirped with a cheeky grin, "so you admit you did enjoy the view you got this morning?"

Her bright face instantly dropped to a hesitant scowl. "Nick! You filthy-minded fox!" The rabbit raised a fist with which to smite the fox but Nick, for once, was able to put his combat training to use and blocked the small fist before it hit home. Drawing back her other paw, it shot forwards towards his chest but was, again, caught in flight by the fox's superior natural reflexes. Nick kept firm hold of Judy's both paws in his as he spoke.

"Hopps, just be grateful I didn't have a morning ere— argk!" With her paws unavailable for use, Judy had no choice but to kick him in the shin. Bending over and releasing Judy's paws, Nick rubbed his shin furiously to subdue the throbbing pain. With his head this close, Judy could not resist latching her finger around the knot of his tie and pulling his head down so he was now looking straight at her.

"If you ever mention that incident again, Slick, then I'm going to cut 'it' off. With a dull-bread-knife." Someone made a loud gulping sound... after a moment Nick realized it was him. Then Judy — just to really confuse him — kissed him on the nose. With a gentle shove the rabbit pushed the stunned fox, who suddenly took on the characteristics of a tailor's dummy, back into an upright position. Judy knew full well Nick liked those kinds of affection from her and she was going to tease him for it until his last breath — or until he eventually got up the courage to ask her out like she had been waiting for him to do for months — whichever was the soonest. Now upright, the fox blinked a couple of times before his gaze shifted down upon the smaller form of Judy. His mouth just opened when...

"Atten-Hut!" From somewhere among the grouped cluster of police cars, Bogo approached and joined the two officers. At seeing the Chief approach, Wilde and Hopps instantly stopped acting unprofessional and stood to attention with respectful salutes.

"At ease," Bogo commanded with a glance around to which the rest of the officers returned to their natural of stances. He visibly checked to make sure none of the them were within earshot before leaning down to be more at Nick and Judy's diminutive height, and then continued, "officer, Hopps, Wilde. You're interested in detective work, right?" Their only reply was the pricking up of their ears and the widening of their eyes, fortunately, it was the only reply Bogo needed.

"Good. Then I'm giving the two of you the duty of investigating the fire that broke out just over there," he pointed a large finger towards Ladders and Ladders, "I want you two to find out if this fire was arson or accidental, where it started, how quickly it spread and what was used to get it going. Think you can handle that?"

"Yes, Sir!" Judy nearly shouted in ardor, her ears quivering with the excitement of the prospect.

"Okay. But look," he continued, his voice becoming even more so serious, "this is not a promotion, got that? Nor is this a promise that you'll make detective any time soon. This is just a little preliminary taster for you to see what it's like, and for me to see how you handle it. Neither am I expecting some amazing revelation. Just a normal fire, possibly arson, not connected to any major plot to take over Zootopia or anything like that... we clear?"

"Yes, Chief Bogo Sir!" Judy reckoned, her voice high and tremulous with the excitement despite the slight disappointment of not having the real opportunity of building up towards that rank of allure, yet just having a small tasteful of the real thing apparently was enough for now.

"The fire crew and demolitions team have both looked around and have declared the building both extinguished and structurally sound. The entrance is open. On your way, Officers." Walking away, Bogo called out one last thing as they trekked towards the smoldering shell of Ladders and Ladders and Co, "this is just between the three of us. There are plenty of officers on the force who have been waiting for this kind of opportunity for far longer than you have even existed!"

...

Pseudo Detectives Hopps and Wilde entered the large door frame of the burnt out husk of the factory Ladders and Ladders and Co. Tooled up with plastic gloves, feet protector bags, goggles, flashlights and a camera to photograph evidence, they stepped in. The factory was oversized for their class of species, like much of the city was, everything towering over them in the darkness. They found no fire damage on the first floor, just a multitudinous supply of half-finished ladders, and so they climbed the concrete steps to the first floor of the seven-storied establishment.

"So, what do we know already, Fluff?" Nick asked as they entered the main workroom of the first floor, knowing that Judy thought better when speaking out loud.

"Well... where— where should I start?"

"Tell me about the nature of the fire, Hopps."

Her eyes moved about and recalled the memories that were of freshness or dullness while her mind put it all together in a pile of consistency and deductions, "It was, judging by the amount of fire coming out of the windows, centered around the middle of the third floor as the amount of visible fire decreased further away from that point as we watched. There was no fire visible on the first three floors.

"And the building?"

"All the buildings around here being big industrial buildings, they probably all have pretty thick walls, which would explain why the fire was not able to spread beyond the confines of this building and into the others."

"The flames?" Nick asked as they left the first floor, also devoid of fire damage, and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

"Massive golden flames which came right out of the windows and several feet into the air. So the fuel burning put out a vast quantity of flame without much intensity when compared to a fuel-like coal which puts off smaller but much hotter flames."

"There's my clever little Bunbun!" Nick boasted, tussling the top of Judy's head between her ears in a way that instantly brought a grin to her face.

"Okay, Nick," she encouraged as they entered the main workroom of the second floor, pushing his paw away, "you do the clean-up of the facts." With a pretentiously uppish expression Nick then took upon himself the role of a famous fictitious detective: pacing slowly around Judy with his paws clasped behind his back; walking in slow, steady strides; his back as straight as a broom handle and his speech overpronounced in the 'Proper English' of the Queen herself.

"I hereby detect," he began, "that the nature of the fire: as you said, a vast quantity, but without much intensity, fits the presumption that the fuel burnt was wood. So no apparent foul play is at paw although it is somewhat suspicious as, after all these years of abandonment, I cannot fathom any reason as to why it would suddenly burst into flames."

"So is it arson, Mister Sheerluck Wilde?" Judy asked as they left the second floor which was also mostly devoid of fire damage, apart from the ceiling which was blackened from the heat.

"Inconclusive at this time, Doctor Judy Hoppson," he replied as he began miming smoking a pipe, "for we have not yet seen the point of origin and as you well know, it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has conclusive data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Nick dropped his act as they reached the door which led to the main workroom of the third floor. He sucked in a lungful of air as Judy passed by him, not noticing his outré behavior until he reached out and stopped Judy by taking her by the arm. She looked around to him, his nose high, his nostrils flaring. "Hopps, you— you smell that?"

"No, what?" She remained motionless as Nick moved away from her, opened a rugged door and took a step into the room behind it, walking slowly with his eyes mostly closed and with an expression of concentration on his deadly serious face.

"Alcohol," he concluded as he turned to her after one particularly long sniff.

"You mean like gin, whisky, or vodka?"

"No, I mean propanol, butanol, pentanol. I can't tell which, obliviously... but whichever it is it could definitely be an accelerator."

"So it is arson?"

"Well I think so, there's' no reason for any alcohol to be about here, but a scent isn't going to stand up in court, Hopps." He turned back to the room, looking properly at it for the first time. "This, however, is a little more incriminating." In the center of the room — which was coated wall to wall with soot and missing its ceiling — was a large pile of charcoal. All the wood on this floor had been pushed into the center of the room into a heap but was now all burnt out and cold and crumbled under the touch of incineration and combustion.

"Surely this is enough to prove it," Judy contemplated aloud as she walked once around the heap of ash and soot.

"Again, I would say so. But it could just be circumstantial since we have no way of proving the wood wasn't piled up like this to start with."

With an accompanying sigh, the rabbit stopped as she walked away to investigate the rest of that floor. "Boy, this is harder than I thought it was gonna be. I mean I knew it would be hard, but I just thought once we had enough evidence to be convinced that would be it. I didn't think we'd have to keep on looking for more once we believed it was arson."

"Yep, still, it's good fun ain't it?" Something upon the floor attained Judy's notice, a small blackened object, a couple of inches long, as burned out and blackened as the wood that surrounded it. She knelt down for a closer look after which she called out.

"What do you make of this, Nick?" He turned to her, seeing her knelt down low on the floor while looking at a small black object on that same surface. He crossed the short distance between them and took a closer scrutiny. "Looks like a cigarette," she contained, "wrapped in a... piece of paper?"

"Clever, very clever. This is how the fire was started, Hopps! If you look closely you'll see a couple of matches attached to the cigarette. My guess is it's like a delay switch. You light the cigarette, the cigarette slowly burns away. It then lights the sepulcher on the heads of the matches, thus making a flame which then sets the paper alight."

"And then the flame from that lights the flammable solution on the wood which, in turn, ignites the rest of the building. So, we can prove it is arson now?"

"Oh I should think so, there're too many coincidences to overrule them all. And this thing… it leaves no doubt on the matter. Snap a photo of it, Hopps, I'm gonna search the rest of this floor."

After making appropriate photographic documentation of the rest of that floor, they then searched the remaining three levels which was difficult as all of the forth and most of the fifth floors had lost almost all their flooring to the scorching inferno that had been. But irregardless, they already had enough evidence to prove this was arson and so left the building after searching briskly through the remains of the sixth and final floor, which had a view of burnt beams and healthy sky that no more was sickened by the blackness prior that had tried to instill it's reign but ultimately… failed.

...

Emerging from the ladder factory, they approached the police car where the profile of Chief Bogo was standing, backlit by the headlights of the police car which was being used to keep the building visible. "Officer Hopps, Officer Wilde," Bogo grated nonchalantly as they approached before asking, "what do you have to report?"

"It's arson, Sir," Judy reported and took a breath that lacked the bitterness of ash and coal, "firstly, Officer Wilde smelled some kind of alcohol-based flammable solution in the air, then we found that all the wooden equipment on the third floor had been piled into a heap and then," she stopped as her paws reached for the camera in her pocket with the finding of the image of the cigarette, "we found this. It's a... what did you say it was?"

"It's a delay switch," Wilde clarified without hesitance, "a cigarette attached to matches which are attached to some paper. Light the cigarette, that'll light the matches, then the paper and set the rest of the pile on fire."

Nodding slowly, Bogo finalized, "Good work, both of you. Get back to base and fill out the paperwork. And I expect I'll be seeing both of you at the annual ZPD Christmas party this evening?"

Judy's ears dropped down. "Erm..."

"Weren't we given the duty of staying clocked in this year?" Nick asked because, even at Christmas, the city could not be left without law enforcement, thus some officers had to work during the holiday as well. This was worked out each year by the difficult and technical process which involved all the officers writing their names on a piece of paper, putting them into a hat, and then having several names taken out at random by Bogo.

"You were, yes," Bogo answered but then a small tug on his lips showed more to come, "but since you missed out last time, I pulled a couple of strings for you and managed to give that duty to Grizzoli and Higgins."

"Oh, err... thanks."

"Don't worry about it, Hopps." Turning, Bogo started walking away, "I'll see you two there."

"Okay... bye..." Out of earshot, Judy's head fell into her paw and a low groan escaped her at the prospect of having to spend an evening with a dozen rowdy and drunk officers of the ZPD.
Nick looked down at the disheartened rabbit desponding by his side, but because he couldn't hold himself at seeing her like this, his arm instinctively moved around her shoulders, and healed her close.

It was the only small comfort he could provide but as she moved into him so slightly, he knew that it had been enough despite not carrying that much of weight.

It was the small things that mattered after all, they were the foundations to those that'd become big in time given forward.

…

Author's notes:

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Grooms decision thus chosen blind.

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