Chapter One Hundred and Five
Clandestine
Hot fingers lashed upon the keyboard, entering demands into the digital database, the endless novelled network, the realm of reports. The data presented itself upon the panel of glowing pixels. Bonnie's pounding pawtips halted in their assault, her lilacs tracing over the dark characters the page displayed.
Her lower lip disappeared behind her small daggers of white, her brow arching low. A small claw clicked down upon a button of codified execution, and a few feet behind her, a large off-white box whirred and clicked continuously.
She took a breath, her eyes stinging, and not from strain. "My little Judy. What're you thinking, my snowflake?" She looked to the mammal in the computer isle beside her, his neck craning to her in dissatisfaction. She didn't recognize the species, but it looked like a prey mammal.
"My daughter's dating a fox," Bonnie said.
"Really."
"That same fox attacked my son!"
"Hmm."
"Isn't that awful?" she pushed.
"Don't care."
Flinching at first, Bonnie stuck her tongue out at the mara, an underrated insult among adults she'd picked up from years of motherhood, and turned back to her documents. "Don't care, don't care," she grunted, "the court gonna care, I'll make 'em."
"Would the young rabbit mind keeping her tone down?" said a muskrat behind her.
Turning upon the library employee, the rabbit fixed him with a hard stare. The muskrat changed a funny shade of pink immediately. "I'm busy right now, sweetie. Okay?" The employee stuttered something, then paced away. Bonnie was to just continue upon her work before from behind her came more disliked interruption.
"Excuse me?" spoke a feminine voice.
"I said—" she stopped herself, shifting upon the figure of a lynx smiling timidly at her. Bonnie's shoulders dropped. "Oh, it's… Wait, did you— you followed me?
"I just… wanted to speak to you more. About Nick?"
Fixing a glare upon the lynx, Bonnie's back straightened upon the support behind. "About… Nick."
"Well, you said to me, you told me I didn't know him at all. I've been following, reading about Nick for so long now. It's like, meeting you… you're a reality check." Bonnie's mind now viewed this encounter as an opportunity for her to open this young child's eyes to what the real world looked like.
"You realized he's a creep."
"He's not— I mean, I don't think—"
"Girl, what do you want me to say? What're you here to ask?"
"I want to know the truth; what really happened."
"To Judy? That fox's dating her."
"No, with your son, what happened to your son?"
"That fox hit him, punched him out cold."
"Why?"
"You realize the size difference? That bully!"
"I don't unde—"
"At least Gideon grew out of that phase; Nick's just a predator-bully," Bonnie clarified, her mind trying not to create contradictions in the hesitance of her example, yet somehow she didn't entirely believe her own words. But it didn't stop her from denying it to herself.
"But why?"
"The police force, dear… You want to be a cop someday, right?"
"Oh, for sure!"
"Get to make at calling yourself Officer… Officer—"
"Fields."
Bonnie's expression warmed with a light smile. "Fields? Young fields. Green fields," she uttered to herself. "Sewn with wheat and turned into an ocean of swaying gold; planted with carrots, row upon row of beautiful green…"
Grace chuckled. "It must be a nice life as a farmer."
"Judy used to say she wanted to help the world. When you're a farmer, you already are. One carrot at a time. Police work, on the other paw…"
Lowering her head back against the seat, Bonnie clasped her paws, softly pressing her fingers around her palm. "It doesn't always attract the best class of people. Most of them, some of them, want to do a good job and help the city. Like my Judy. Others… They just like the power, being pushers. They're worse than bullies. A bully'd be scolded by the teacher. A cop…" Bonnie shook her head sadly, regarding the youth before her with a twitch of pity upon her expression.
"You're saying Nick is, that he's just a bully? But he's so charming, so smooth-talking!"
"Sit down, girl," Bonnie answered, pulling the chair over from the empty isle beside her. "I know he is, I know. And I'm surprised your mother never taught you not to trust a fox. They're all 'smoothers'."
"So he hit Billy?" Grace asked, seating herself. "Why?"
"Billy, my Billy, is a very caring boy. He isn't the ripest carrot of the bunch, I'll admit that, but all he wants is to protect his patch. It's simple what happened. When Nick started getting, well, he… it made… Billy was just trying to help. And Nick assaulted him!"
"How was Billy helping, Miss?"
"Judy was in pain," Bonnie answered, her voice still calm, but her paws tight upon themselves. "We'd been… well, arguing. A little. Arguing a lot, actually. Arguing Nick what-for. Judy hurt herself shouting, and Nick, I'm— I'm not sure what Nick was trying to do. But Billy took seeing it like he was trying to hurt her."
"Billy stopped him? Pushed him off?"
"It was just the natural reaction. He saw Judy in trouble, and tried to help out. It's what anyone would do. I get that, maybe, he overreacted a little. And I get that Judy did try to throw one at Billy, bu—"
"Wait, what?"
Bonnie paused. She unclasped and lowered her paws, settling them calmly upon her knees. "When my Billy stepped in to protect my Judy, little Judy got a little overexcited and tried and, eh… she, kinda, punched out a little."
"Judy… punched Nick?"
"Not, not exactly."
"Punched… Billy?"
"Well, when Billy stepped in thinking he'd protect her from Nick, she got the wrong idea of things… she assumed Nick was in trouble, just like Billy assumed she was in trouble. She still doesn't see how this fox's harming her."
"So, em…" Bonnie raised a brow towards the lynx's attempted change of subject. "Why're you researching procedure?" Grace asked. "You can just report it to the PD, they'd handle the process."
"Report it to Bogo? I met him," Bonnie scoffed at the ludicrous proposition, "getting told what-for by a Surveyor Director. Whatever he's done, he's been a bad boy to get that kind of attention. I'm not trusting him to see this through." The people around the vicinity had slowly disintegrated out of earshot, as Bonnie's prior behavior and her current accidental irritations had just created a field of dis-magnetic repulsion. At the pause of words, the aura around them hooked an eerie gust of change. Bonnie would label it as fascinating if it had not been her moodiness.
"So, Nick… I mean, did Nick actually 'do something' first?"
"Of course. He twisted his arm!"
"Something to Judy," Grace gave correction to what her question was actually for, and the confusion it caused in Bonnie had twisted her tongue for a small bit, so she had limited paths to take.
"Were you there, girl?"
"Well, n—"
"Then don't talk silly gossip. If Nick hadn't looked so aggressive, we'd never even worry about him."
"Hadn't 'looked'?"
For a second, the rabbit glared at the lynx, her jaw tightening. "Hadn't 'acted', I said 'hadn't acted'. If he hadn't acted aggressively, my little Billy wouldn't have thought Judy was in trouble from him. And dating her, too! If that fox hadn't duped her in for—"
"I see," Fields uttered in an unsatisfactory manner to the bubbling of Bonnie's patience.
"What do you see?" Bonnie snapped.
"I seee how Billy felt he needed to step in and protect Judy." Bonnie distracted herself with a crease on her shirt. "I think I… understand everything now."
"Good. You can't believe what you hear about people, not always. There's some creatures in this world, some mammals, who really… they're just there to hurt others."
"Where were you when this was going on? You saw it happen?"
"No, but, Billy told me about it. And the Nurse said he'd been knocked out."
"Mind if I talk with him a little? Bonnie pondered on why Fields would want to do so, but then she shrugged her questions and saw no issue.
"Sure, but, eh… use simple words. He's a good farmer, just hasn't sprouted at talking so much."
"You think Bogo would try to brush it under the rug?" As if this even needed thinking.
"If he's given the duty of looking into it, then for sure he'd look for ways of keeping it quiet. His actions have shown that much." Fields shuffled her feet in visible contemplations, and Bonnie nearly had enough time to get the doubt festering onto what exactly was out of place, but then Fields filled in the voidly air again.
"What if you'd been there? If you'd seen Billy get punched, would he be able to brush that aside?"
"When Nick smacked on Billy? Yeah! If I'd witnessed it, no way the PD ignoring that."
"So, why couldn't you just say you had witnessed it?" Bonnie's mind crashed at this unexpected interjection of questions. Why hadn't she… why would she? Was this a misunderstanding upon her aging ears?
"What," she paused, her speech slow, "do you mean?"
"I'm just curious, Miss," Fields bubbled. "I enjoy mystery stories. Just trying to think like a detective!"
"Well the nurse and that wolf weren't there. Judy was, but… I doubt she knew what was going on."
"It happened, and it's like, the same thing. Yeah?"
"I told the Nurse, but I didn't mention it…" Bonnie contemplated in the trail of thoughts, long enough to lose track of herself into the library desk's brown rings of this tree's life.
"Maybe I'm missing something. I usually do."
"Hm?" said Bonnie, pulling her awareness. "Oh, well, yes, you've probably missed something." Bonnie felt off with this conversation, as it didn't feel normal at all, but then why wasn't she getting any red flags?
"I should get going really," Fields said, stepping back from the doe. "I'm still on the clock, better not let the Chief get cross at me. I'm only here probationary."
"Yes. I'm surprised they let you in as an Auxiliary at all. The minimum age was proposed at twenty when I left Administration."
"Oh, my schoolmaster's a friend of Bogo's. He put in a good word for me."
The rabbit snorted, shaking her head. "So much favoritism in this department. No different to thirty, forty years ago. What're you seeing Billy for anyway?"
"Just to understand how he feels about this, see what he thinks of Nick."
"I'm surprised you've taken it so well. Weren't you in awe or 'smitten' by him or something?"
"Truth's more important. I'm just trying to find out what's really going on. I'd, um… I'd better be going."
Bonnie watched the short-tailed feline as she made away from the row of small computer isles. The printer had finished its job some minutes ago, so the doe collected the printed pages from the pile.
"Procedure of… court registry fees, process servers, dear, dear," she muttered. "If only I was still with the Surveyors, I'd have a whole department I could paw this over to." She sat back at the computer and typed once more, moving to the next topic of information she sought, though her fingers moved slower now than before, her mind more than half brought upon the matter of the lynx, and the conversation the two had shared.
"Not like Billy would understand. No harm in… I mean, we both know…" She sighed, her paws finally falling still upon the keyboard. "What was that all about? What did she really want?"
Bonnie didn't know the lynx, but she still didn't see it as 'normal' for someone to act with such admiration towards a fox, and to then accept this 'bunny-stranger' telling her this fox was a self-interested bully, without an argument or even a raised voice.
She didn't think too much into it – didn't see it as an issue on its own – but, having had time to settle, she remembered asking Grace if she'd followed her here. "Following someone isn't the issue." She bit her lip in thought. "Avoiding the answer, that's something worth remembering."
With a sigh, her focus was resumed in the new presence of taint's hesitance of disposition.
…
The deaf monotony ticked away in the silence of the Chief's office. Bogo stared down at the scraps of paper all over the desk and the floor, each of them scrunched and torn, crossed out and scribbled by traditional pen. Seeking options had proven harder than he'd imagined. Perhaps this was simply a dead end… perhaps his mind wasn't in the right place.
Certainly, he didn't feel as though his mind was where it was supposed to be. As the buffalo leaned upon the desk, slowly lifting and then dropping his pen down onto the hardwood surface, his eyes found way to the no mal's land of a crystal glass; the remnants of a sharp-scented liquid in a small, dry stain at the bottom of the crystal object.
The bottle of brandy beneath his desk was a secret only a few of the officers working in the department didn't know about. What wasn't a common-knowledge secret was that he never really drank from it. It was more a status symbol, something to create mystique and unspoken authority.
But today, it was opened. The fluid used to be able to excavate the mental pathways of creative thinking. Used to. His collar didn't have so many stars then. Clicking the power on his phone, he gazed at the time, the hours which had passed without progress. Then came the date…
"If you want my individual opinion," Surveyor Wright had said, "I'd say you have around a week before you're summoned to a Convocation. After that, they'll give you a few days grace to put whatever remaining affairs you have here into order. Then... well..."
"A matter too delicate to hoof to anyone else," Bogo muttered, "and no time to even begin a proper investigation into things."
It sucked all the energy from Bogo's spirit to know the only lead, the only suggestion, that Governor Zafearov of Zistopia was involved in, was a few words some old harbormaster had spoken. There was no reason for him to lie about it, but… from what Shuck had mentioned, he only knew that because of what the goat Nyilas had told him.
A few days ago, the antagonism, the impossibility of the situation had driven him. But that resolve had crumbled away like dry sand, leaving behind only dissonance and hesitation, a sense of futility about his goals.
"And the cleaning staff have just finished cleaning his brains up from the reception floor," he grunted. "No authority in Zistopia, no probable cause to peruse an investigation… would be laughed out of Admin Tower if I even suggested… huh, even if I wasn't about to be thrown out of the PD for… for doing my damn job."
The air was stagnant, the minutes ticking in the drip of time's deathly hours.
No progress was made upon the pages of bleached-white. No ink was laid upon the noter of plans.
The room was stagnant.
The silence paced on…
"Under fire, we are under fire! Request backup, come in!" The hammer of urgency demolished the dreamy stillness. The table lurched as Bogo rose. His lungs sucked upon the daft air. Something to focus upon. Something to drive him away from this dead end, forwards!
"Snarlov, come in," he ordered. "There's trouble at the harbor." The static giveaway gurgled at his new irritation, despite him knowing it was unreasonable to want instant responses.
"Here, Chief. I heard. I'm headed up now." Good, excitement from the new events fused his exhaustion with the vigor of youth.
"The Equipment department. I need special munitions dispensed. And get an EMT," he demanded impatiently, his fingers drumming madly on his thigh.
"Yes, Chief."
"I'll be in Transport, prime to leave A-SAP. Fangmeyer, come in."
"Here, Chief!" The response came without any delay, and the Chief adored the discipline and responsibility his department had.
"EMT's en route," he roared, marching from his office, "munitions and backup inbound. What's the situation?"
"Started sweeping the ship, as ordered. Control room was clear, opened the door to the pump room, started getting shot at." Gloom quickly found replacement to the unknown… If they were shot at with live ammunition, then…
"Casualties?"
"No, Sir. They took blind shots. Wanted to scare us out, not kill us." The weight around his heart crumbled as he followed the railing down the stairs.
"How many?"
"Unknown. Must be the engine crew. We've been sweeping the deck and the cabins until now."
"Have you fallen back?" the Chief shot, an echo ringing down the corridor with every heavy trod of relentless pursuit.
"Yes, Sir, we backed out onto the deck. They bolted the door closed behind us. Gonna take some hammering to get that thing open."
"Any other exits?"
"They're covered, Sir."
"Good. Keep them in there until backup arrives. I'll be with you shortly with Snarlov."
"Sir," Fangmeyer confirmed.
Bogo replaced his radio upon his belt, his brow lowering with expectation of the confrontation to come. It gave him energy, lifted his depression, let him breathe the air with fire in his spirit.
What better way than to sober up with the excitement of doing his job, to forget about the larger and finer issues at play. It was a temporary plaster upon the cracking wall, yet it was better than drinking himself to sleep in his office.
After all, he was still the Police Chief of Precinct One. He had the chance for one last bang.
Author's notes:
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