They decided to wait for lunchtime to talk to Jenny Scar, and since it was barely after eleven when they got to City Hall where the Councilor's office was, Judy and Simon waited on a bench across the street from the main entrance. For a few minutes, Judy checked her phone and Simon sat silently admiring the City Hall's golden sandstone stairs and entrance. Then Simon cleared his throat. "About last night and all…"

Judy put her phone away. "We don't have to do this right now," she said, not particularly wanting to be reminded either of Simon's lying or of her yelling.

"No, it won't take long. I just wanted to say again that I'm sorry. I know your parents and they know me. I didn't really know you before I came here. I thought I did, though. I remembered you from school and I thought that's the bunny you'd always be. But you're not. And I'm not the bunny from school either. I don't know if you remember me from then, even."

"You're not that different," Judy said so she wouldn't have to tell him that she didn't remember him.

His ears perked a little bit. "It's easy not to change in Bunnyburrow."

"My parents are proof of that." They had called again, and left another voicemail that Judy would have to listen to sometime soon.

"Right." He coughed. "It's also easy to think that change is bad, you know? Life in Bunnyburrow is pretty good. And I hadn't realized it until I came here—really, until you yelled at me last night."

Judy opened her mouth, then closed it again. Simon hurried his next words. "Which you were absolutely right to do. I was…I was wrong. But I was kinda mad and I didn't understand it until I went home and I called a friend of mine, another reporter at the Beacon, and I kinda told her what happened but without details. And she told me you were right and she asked me how I'd feel if, like, my editor had sent me on this assignment and had told you and Nick to make me like Zootopia so I'd stay here, without asking me if it was the best thing for me."

"It sounds like you kinda told her a lot of details," Judy said.

Simon's ears drooped. "Maybe. But she's discreet. She's one of our best reporters."

"So how did that make you feel?"

"I would've been mad. I probably would've yelled too." He stared down at his paws. "So I understand more what it felt like, I guess, and I…I just want to make it up to you. But I didn't call your parents and I won't until we talk about if you want me to and what you want me to say and all that."

Judy sighed. "Thanks. But you know, you're their friend too, and I shouldn't get in the middle of that. More than I already have."

"They put you in the middle," Simon said. "I thought I was helping, but—anyway, never mind. The point is I'm not going to talk to them about your life anymore until we talk about what I should say to them. Okay? And I won't ask you on any more dates. I don't think it'd work out between us anyway."

That got Judy to smile. "You don't, huh?"

"Nah. I think Zootopia is neat and I love visiting it, but I couldn't live here. And I don't think you could live in Bunnyburrow."

"Probably not now." Judy looked across at City Hall and then down the street to either side, the restaurants and high-rises, the shopping centers and crowds of people of all different species going to work, walking their cubs around, hurrying or dawdling. "The city isn't what I thought it would be, but that's…better, in a way?"

Simon cocked his head. "Better how?"

"Because…because it's real. It's complicated. Everyone has their own stories and I get to see all of them. I get to investigate crimes and bring justice for people and that isn't going to fix everything, but it fixes little things here and there."

He nodded. "That makes sense. It's pretty noble."

"Thanks."

Simon perked his ears. "Is that her?" He pointed to a coyote in a green dress walking away from City Hall.

"Uh huh." Judy got up. "I saw her when she came out, but I wanted to make that little speech first. Shall we accidentally run into her somewhere?"

"Let's go." Simon hopped up to follow her. "Wait, is that legal?"

"I don't have to make an appointment to talk to her." Judy set off, keeping the green dress in sight. "I don't want to talk to her with her boss around and I don't want to wait until the end of the day."

They trailed the coyote to a small casual pasta place called "Camelroni Grill," where she sat down at a two-top table. Judy and Simon came up to the hostess stand, where the tall camel whose name tag read "Mal" peered down at Judy's uniform with alarm. "Is there a problem here, officer?"

"No, no, I'm just meeting a friend here," Judy said.

"So you're off duty?" The camel's stare turned faintly hostile.

"A friend who's helping me with an investigation," Judy amended.

Mal frowned. "You can't interrogate a suspect in here."

"It's not an interrogation," Simon put in. "It's just a friendly conversation."

"With an on-duty officer." Mal folded his arms.

"That's right." Judy beamed up at him.

The camel gave her another long, searching stare, and then a bear couple ambled in behind them, and his gaze flicked up and back. "If there are any complaints…"

Judy made a quick motion with her arm, swinging from the restaurant to the doorway. "We'll leave with no fuss, promise."

The camel waved them through and turned his attention to the bears. "She's just meeting a friend," Judy heard him explain as she headed into the restaurant. "She's off duty."

Jenny looked up as they approached and her ears went back. "Officer Hopps?" she said.

Judy pulled out the other chair at the table. "Mind if I join you for a moment?"

"I, uh…" The coyote looked around.

"Thanks." Judy sat down and Simon took up a position behind her.

Jenny looked around the restaurant again, then settled her eyes on Judy. When Judy didn't talk, the coyote fidgeted and dropped her napkin on the floor. Finally, after picking it up, she said, "What, ah, what can I do for you?"

"Oh, we just wanted to follow up on something my partner was looking into." She wanted to find out if Nick had talked to Jenny at all—was she the "informant" he'd been detained for interfering with? But she couldn't just come out and ask, because she should know what her partner'd been up to.

Jenny didn't give any sign of recognition. "What's that?"

"Well, he's been asking around and we have a suspect in the robbery."

"Oh!" Jenny's ears perked up, but her smile looked forced to Judy. "That's…that's great."

"He's a fox named Frederick Foxson. Goes by Freddy."

The coyote's face remained a mask. "That doesn't sound familiar."

"Do you know any foxes?" Simon put in.

"Of course I do. I meet a lot of foxes in the course of my job. I suppose one of them might be named Freddy, but that doesn't mean I know him."

"That's interesting," Judy said. "Because we have an eyewitness who says they've seen you with Freddy enough times that they thought you were his girlfriend."

"Ew." The annoyance on the coyote's face wasn't feigned, at least. "Nobody who knows me would think that."

"So you're not denying you met him." Simon leaned forward.

"I am denying that."

Judy held Simon back with an arm. "Don't be rude," she said. "I'm sure Jenny is telling us the truth."

"I am!" Jenny brought a paw to her heart, bumping her water glass in the process.

Judy saved the glass from tipping over. "Still, it's strange that someone identified you as the coyote with him. What do you think about that?"

"It's not that strange," Jenny insisted. "I'm sure I don't know anything about this Freddy or which coyotes he might hang out with."

"How many other coyotes you think go to places like that?" Simon asked. "I mean, this place, what was it called? Bitter Days?"

"Better Days," Jenny said, and then her face froze again.

Judy smiled and rested her elbows on the table. "Why don't we start again?"

Jenny looked from Simon to Judy and back. "Just because I know the name of a dive bar…"

"Dive bar? Who said it was a dive bar?" Judy looked up at Simon. "Did you say that?"

"I don't believe I did," Simon said. "Did you?"

"I'm pretty sure I didn't." Judy returned her pleasant smile to Jenny. "Now, why don't you tell me how you know Freddy?"

The coyote's ears folded back and she placed her paws in her lap. "We went to school together."

"And when you meet him in the bar, what do you talk about?"

"Just—old times, you know? Nothing…illegal."

"Did you mention the fifty thousand dollars to him?" Jenny didn't say anything. Judy leaned forward. "If you tell the truth, if you cooperate with the investigation, we can maybe go easier on you when this is all done."

"I might have mentioned it," Jenny said in a whisper. "But I didn't tell him to steal it."

She probably didn't have to. They knew each other well enough that some things would go unsaid. And Judy was sure that if they met often, Freddy would know the coyote's family schedule, would know when they would be home and when the briefcase would be unguarded. But that wasn't the main information she was after right now. "Do you know where we can find him?"

Jenny shook her head.

Simon came forward again, but Judy stopped him. "I haven't been recording any of this," she told the coyote. "As far as I'm concerned, any hints you give me about Freddy will be an anonymous tip. If you're really not involved in the robbery, then you don't have anything to worry about. And if you are…it'll look a lot better if you cooperate."

Jenny sighed, and then opened her purse and took out a pen and a crumpled napkin. She smoothed out the napkin and wrote quickly on it for a moment, then left it on the table in front of her. "I told you, I don't know where he is," she said. "Now, I'd like to go to the restroom, if we're done? And I hope when I come back, I'll be able to enjoy my lunch in peace."

Judy sat back in her chair. "Of course," she said. "Thank you for allowing us to interrupt you."

When Jenny had disappeared into the restroom, Judy took the napkin and stood. On the napkin, she showed Simon an address written in a shaky script: 457 Green Street. "Good work," Simon said.

"I appreciated your help. That's a good trick with the name."

"Yeah." He grinned. "If you say a name wrong, a lot of people will just instinctively correct it without thinking. I learned that from Paper Tricks. You ever see that?"

"No, but I'll put it on my list." Judy pocketed the napkin. She knew where the address was. "Now let's go find a fox."

#

Chasing down a suspect with Simon in the passenger seat rather than Nick felt strange and wrong, and it wasn't just that Simon didn't make any comments about her driving as she dodged slow and parked cars on her way to the address Jenny had given them. In fact, he didn't even seem to be disturbed, which made her feel like speeding up even more. She restrained herself—this was serious business, after all, not a game to make her passenger upset (even though she did sometimes play that game with Nick). Simon didn't keep up a constant stream of chatter the way Nick did, and as they turned onto a run-down street with faded signs and many more loiterers along the sidewalk, possums and raccoons and foxes with nowhere to go in the middle of the day, Judy missed the fox. He talked too much, and often said the wrong thing, but more often said the thing she needed to hear.

Two blocks later, Simon said something about two bunnies in a neighborhood of preds, and Judy blurted out, "I wish Nick were here."

Simon turned to her, and she thought he might be offended. "You're not trained to handle these situations," she explained, "and Nick knows everyone. He'd be much more confident in Happytown no matter where we went. He even knows Freddy, I think."

"Then why don't you call him?"

"I can't. He's on leave, and if I call him then I'm breaking at least two rules that I can think of."

Simon leaned back. "I don't know what your usual cases are like, but this feels like a time when maybe you break some rules."

Judy swerved around a slow-moving two-seater and took the corner at speed. "I know you don't know me that well, but I don't break rules. They're there for a reason."

"Except on the road." Simon didn't appear upset even as he grabbed the door handle for stability.

"I'm not breaking rules." Judy straightened the car out and slowed behind a bunch of cars waiting at a light. "I'm testing them to their limit."

"Well, okay." Simon let go and took out his notepad. "I like that, actually. I'm gonna use it in the story."

There wasn't much Judy could say to that, so she took her phone out to check the address again. "Let's park over here," she said, "and we can walk to the house."

"How do you know it's a house?" Simon asked as she maneuvered the police car into a street parking space. "And is this neighborhood safe?"

"It's safe," she said, "at least in the daytime. They don't like police, but if we don't do anything they won't do anything to us. Maybe they'll harass us a little—harass me, I mean—but it'll be fine."

Despite that assurance, they had barely made it half a block before a badger called out, "Officer! Officer!" Judy braced herself, but the old badger with grey in her muzzle fur and on her ears stopped once Judy'd turned around.

"Hi," she said. "What can I do for you?"

"My store's back there." The badger pointed to a faded sign that read, "Loha Pawn."

Judy sized up the sign and the storefront below it, clean windows showing off dusty merchandise. "Okay," she said. "I see it."

"Well, you're here because of my call, right?" The badger turned back to the store and wrung her paws together. "I've called five times and they never sent anyone over."

She wanted to get to Freddy, and time might be of the essence. If Jenny had called to warn him—

All right, Hopps, she told herself. If Jenny had called to warn him, she'd already done that. Freddy would be long gone by now. This person here is someone asking for help, someone you can do something for right now. "Yes," she said. "I have another stop to make but I can look at your store first. Why don't you tell me what's been going on?"

"I'll wait out here," Simon said unexpectedly.

"You sure?"

He nodded, looking around. "I don't want to get in the way."

"All right, then. Call or text if you need me."

He gave her a thumbs up and took out his phone. Judy hesitated another second, but Simon was a grownup and could make his own decisions.

So she followed the badger—Mrs. Marsha Denning, she introduced herself as—back to the pawn shop and listened to her complaint, which consisted of repeated petty theft from the back of her store. Judy examined the locations, listened to the descriptions of the incidents, and took notes of the items stolen and their value. "I'm surprised you don't have a security camera," she said once Mrs. Denning had finished listing the stolen items.

The badger, who had been friendly up to that point, lowered her brow. "Who can afford a security camera? I can barely keep up with the rent and feed myself and my boy. We live upstairs and we haven't had heat for two years. We have a space heater and we just heat one room in winter. Where am I going to buy a security camera?"

"All right," Judy said. "I'm sorry."

"You're saying it's my fault the things got stolen? Because I don't have a security camera?"

"No, not at all." Judy sighed. "Listen, I know someone who sells cameras." Nick did, actually, but Judy had talked to her as well. "She might be willing to do a trade for some merchandise, give you a deal on it. Why don't I give her your address and have her come in over the next day or two?"

"What do you think I can trade?" But the badger seemed mollified, and shifted quickly from skepticism to genuine curiosity. "You think I have anything here she would want?"

"I'm sure of it," Judy said, looking around at the eclectic mix of previously owned possessions. She would make sure of it by tossing a little money into the deal before she set it up, but there was no need to mention that.

She half-expected to find Simon in some sort of trouble outside, but he was leaning against a wall checking his phone when she emerged from the pawn shop into the cloudy early afternoon light. "Ready?" Judy asked as she approached him.

He put the phone away, looking very pleased about something, and nodded. "Ready for Freddy," he said with a grin.

It was interesting how Simon felt more pleasant to be around now that he'd come clean about the reason for his visit, almost like he'd felt guilty about it before and now he'd been yelled at and the air was clear. "What's your strategy with Freddy?" he asked.

Judy shook her head. "Honestly? I don't know. I'm just going to try to talk to him and see what he can tell us. If he did steal the money, I'm pretty sure he doesn't still have it, but you never know. Maybe he does."

"That'd be a great way to wrap up the case," Simon said. "Money recovered, villain caught, everything solved."

Not everything, Judy thought. They still didn't know why Jenny had talked to Freddy, what their relationship was about, or why Freddy had been arrested so many times. Maybe it was as simple as Nick had said, that this theft had been opportunistic because the money was in cash. Maybe Freddy had relationships with a lot of people and this was just a one-off.

They turned a corner onto a mostly residential street and arrived at the house without being stopped again. The small row house had boarded-up windows and a door from which sizable chunks of paint had been stripped. No house numbers were visible, but it was between 455 and 459 so Judy figured it had to be 457.

She walked up the stairs, Simon trailing behind her, and reached the door. Before knocking, she listened, but even with her ear almost pressed to the door the house was silent.

Across the street, a ground-floor window opened and a possum leaned out, watching Judy without saying anything. Judy met his eyes and then turned to the door and gave it a sharp knock. "Freddy?" she called. "We're here to help you."

There was a scrape from upstairs, and Judy hurried back a few steps in time to see a second-floor window slam down. She returned to the door and knocked again. "Freddy? Can you talk to me?"

The house remained silent. Judy waited and then knocked again, but before she could say anything, a frightened voice said, "Go away."

"I promise, we're here to help," Judy said.

"Go away!"

She stepped back from the door and looked at Simon. "Any ideas?" she asked. "We don't have a warrant, so I can't break in. I can probably talk to him a little."

"Sure," he said, and grinned at her. "Or you could just wait for about…" He checked his phone. "Ten minutes."

Judy narrowed her eyes. "What's going to happen in ten minutes?"

"You never know."

She sighed. "Simon, I thought we were done with surprises."

His smug expression turned contrite, ears going down quickly. "Oh yeah. I'm sorry! I called Nick."

"You what?"

He spread his paws. "You said you couldn't do it, but you wished he was here. I didn't hear that there was any rule against me calling him. If he's suspended or whatever, then it's fine. I didn't tell him that it was about a case, I just said I wanted to ask him about some stuff for my story and could he meet me at this address in Happytown as soon as possible."

"Simon," Judy said, "that was out of line, and you shouldn't have done it. And…it might actually be useful. Thank you."

He beamed and his ears came back up.

It was actually around fifteen minutes later that Nick showed up, out of uniform, paws in his pockets, strolling up the street. "Sorry," he said when he came in earshot of the house, "the busses were late. What's going on?"

"I didn't call you officially," Judy said. "But since you just happened to walk by the house…" She waited until he'd made his way up the stairs so she didn't have to shout down the street; that possum across the street might still be listening even if they weren't still at their window. "Freddy's in the house and he won't open for us. Maybe he'll open for you?"

"There's a chance, sure." Nick looked a lot more relaxed out of his uniform, though maybe it was that he wasn't wearing the heavy vest and equipment belt. He looked the house up and down. "You're sure he's in there?"

Judy filled him in quickly on their morning, and he turned to Simon. "Got to say, newsie, I didn't think you had it in you. Good job backing up my partner here."

"If you'd been more discreet, he wouldn't have to," Judy said.

Nick's ears fell. "Aw, Carrots, it wasn't my fault. I didn't know Roarey had guys in that bar."

"Maybe not, but I'm still mad at you for lying to Simon. Now go get Freddy to let us in."

Nick's downcast look lasted only until he got to the door, and then he perked up again. "Hey, Freddy buddy," he said with two sharp raps on the door. "It's Nick. Listen, I think we can help you if you'll just let us in, okay?"

Silence from the other side of the door. Nick rapped again. "We're not here to arrest you."

Judy hissed at him, "Hey! Don't promise that?"

Nick spread his arms, ears flat, and gestured down at his flower-print shirt. "We just want to hear your story. If you help us solve the case, maybe we can help you out."

Nothing. Until Nick lifted his paw to rap on the door again, and then the lock thunked back and the door creaked open. "Get in here," Freddy said. "Whatever you do to me, it's better than having police on my porch."

Nick slipped in the door, and Judy and Simon hurried to follow him. It took Judy's eyes a moment to adjust to the dark room they'd entered, and then she made out the drawn blinds, the tattered rug in the middle of the floor, the big patched and torn couch, and the small wooden table with two chairs. Standing in front of the table, his tail tucked between his legs, a short fox—still taller than Judy and Simon, but whose ears barely came up to Nick's nose—looked around at the three of them. "What are you doing here?" he asked. Then, to Nick. "I thought you were a cop too. What gives?"

"Most of the time, I am," Nick said. "I got the day off today so I'm just here as a friend."

"I don't know if you wanna be my friend." Freddy reached back to hold the edge of the table and Judy saw his extra finger. "I don't think anybody is."

"What about Jenny Scar?" Judy asked.

Freddy jerked his head around. "Oh, did she tell you where to find me? Then I don't think she's my friend either."

"She wants to help you, the same as we do," Judy said. "Do you still have the briefcase?"

"Nah. I got rid of that right away just like I was supposed to." He squinted at Judy. "You don't need that to arrest me, though."

"We're not going to arrest you," she said. "Not right away, anyway. If you tell me what happened, I can convince Chief Bogo to go easy on you."

"Bogo? Never heard of him. He new?"

"He's not at Precinct Four," Nick said. "He's at One, where Judy and I work."

"So what are you doing here, then?" The fox looked from Nick to Judy, and then to Simon. "And who's that?"

"I'm—"

"He's doing a story on the police. It's not important," Judy said. Simon looked a little put out and went to lean against the wall near the window, arms folded. "Can you tell us what happened?"

Freddy's gaze settled on Nick. "Can you make sure I go to Precinct One this time?"

"Sure," Judy said. "No problem. My car's just down the way. You want to make a statement there?"

Nick glanced at the door. "Why don't we have him tell us unofficially now and then we'll take a formal statement when we get there?"

Judy looked at him, then at the door, and took his meaning: he'd been interrupted last night, so they might be interrupted again. "Sounds great." She took out her pad to take notes.

Freddy let out a long sigh and slid over to one of the chairs to plop himself down in it. "Right," he said. "So I guess you know that Jenny told me about the briefcase." When Judy nodded, he went on. "We did that sometimes. She'd tell me where something was going to be, I'd take it—" He stopped. "I don't wanna get her in trouble."

"You don't have to tell this part at the station," Nick said. "What kind of things did she have you steal?"

"It wasn't a lot," Freddy insisted. "Once there was a necklace I was supposed to take and put somewhere else, once there was a—well, I shouldn't mention that one. But sometimes it wasn't even stealing. Sometimes it was just, like, making a complaint about someone."

Judy's ears perked. "Like a noise complaint? Disturbance?"

"Yeah."

"And this was Jenny that told you to do those things?" Nick asked.

"Uh." Freddy lowered his eyes. "Yeah."

That wasn't true; Judy could see that as clearly as if he had a big flashing sign that said, "LIE." But she let it go. "Did she tell you what was inside the briefcase?"

"Money. A lot of money."

"And what were you supposed to do with it?" Nick asked. "I mean, what did you do with it?"

"Took it to another place." Freddy shrugged.

"You didn't keep any of it?"

He shook his head. "That's not the deal. I get paid…somewhere else."

"Where?" Judy pressed.

Nick put a paw on her shoulder. "Let's let him say what he's comfortable saying here, and when we get to the precinct we can ask for more."

"Then what's the point of hearing anything here?" she asked. "Let's just go to the car right now."

"You really don't know?" Freddy asked.

Judy turned her attention back to him as Nick stepped back. "Know what?"

"Why do you think he wants to go to Precinct One?" Nick asked softly behind her.

"Because he's afraid of the guys at Precinct Four. Because—" Judy stared not at Freddy but through him. "Because they're the ones behind this?"

"I don't know if they're behind it," Freddy said. The fox looked even more miserable. "They're just the ones that pay me."

"That can't be right." Judy turned to look at Nick, then to Simon, who was still at the window peering through the blinds. "The police?"

"Sure," Nick said. "When I was growing up, we knew the police were terrible. They'd arrest you for anything, sometimes to get people to pay them off. They came down to certain streets more than others, picked on foxes and weasels and possums and raccoons, all of that."

"We don't do that," Judy protested.

"No. We don't. And Precinct One is pretty good overall, from what I've seen. But Four has its problems."

"Why didn't you ever mention this before?"

Nick spread his arms. "Why would I? They were letting us handle some cases and I knew we were fairer than they were. I didn't want to drag you into the past with me."

"If I'd known…"

"Then what? You would've worked even harder to be fair? Come on, Carrots, you don't need that incentive. That's why I don't talk about Happytown a lot. It wasn't always a good experience, but you don't need to know that to be the best cop you can be."

"But I still should've known!" Judy took a breath. "I'm sorry. It means a lot that you believe in me, Blueberries. It really does. But I want to know all this stuff. If I don't know, then I can't be the best cop I can be because I don't know what I'm looking for. I might have suspected Whitehorn like you did at the beginning if I'd known about all of this."

"Blueberries?" Freddy said.

Nick ignored him. "Maybe you would have. But maybe it wasn't her. Maybe my old prejudices don't matter and shouldn't be part of it."

Judy reached out for the fox's arm. "But you're still making that decision for me. If we're going to be partners then we should be honest with each other and trust each other to make the right choices."

"I thought you two weren't dating," Simon called from the window.

"Hey, Scoop, mind your own biz," Nick said.

"Yeah," Judy said.

Nick took her paw. "All right," he said. "When we get out of this I'll tell you about Happytown."

Freddy cleared his throat. "So, uh…you guys going to take me to the station?"

Judy jumped. "Oh, right! Yes, we should. One more thing, though—where did you leave the briefcase?"

The fox pulled out his phone. "I have the address…here." He scrolled through the history on his Zoogle Maps and showed Judy a screen.

She took a snapshot of it, and Nick did too. "It's some office," Freddy said. "The back door was unlocked and I was supposed to leave it there. It was all set up just like that and I didn't hear anything else about it. I've been expecting them to come get me for days."

"Them?" Nick asked. "Who?"

Before Freddy could answer, Simon said, "A bear and lion cop?"

"Yeah," Freddy said. "How did you know that?"

"Because they're coming right now."

For a second, nobody moved, and then Judy and Nick both scrambled to the window, the fox looking over the shorter bunnies at the blinds. Sure enough, a bear and a lion in ZPD uniforms were three houses away and moving quickly.

"That's Roarey," Nick hissed.

"We gotta get out of here." Judy jumped back. "Freddy, is there a back door?"

The fox nodded and led them down a hallway, but Judy stopped him before they'd gotten very far. "You have to stay here," she said, "or they'll know something's wrong."

His eyes were wide. "I don't want to."

"Carrots," Nick said, "they're gonna smell us anyway, even if they haven't already seen your car."

Judy bit her lip. Freddy could at least stall the cops, she wanted to say, but his miserable look ate at her. Before, she could plead ignorance, but now she knew that the cops in Precinct Four were corrupt and she was asking this fox (this criminal, she reminded herself) to go back to them. If she really wanted to do good, to be on the right side, then where did her allegiance belong here?

"All right," she said, and just then a large fist pounded on the front door.

"Freddy!" a loud voice called. "You awake? We're comin' in."

"Go!" Judy whispered, and Freddy didn't need another push.

They followed him at a run through the hallway and down a rickety stair into the basement, through piles of broken furniture and torn cloth and old newspapers.

Behind them, the front door had opened, and heavy footsteps tromped around upstairs. "Freddy!" the same voice called. Loud creaks came and the footsteps faded: they'd gone to the second floor.

Freddy ran to a rotting door with peeling paint, unbolted it, and then pulled at it, but it wasn't until Nick also grabbed it that they were able to scrape it open enough for everyone to squeeze through. Freddy darted out first, followed by Simon, then Judy, and then Nick, who pulled it shut after him.

They'd emerged into a stone stair leading up to a tiny overgrown backyard. Judy made to go up the stairs, but Freddy stopped her, pointing up, and whispered, "They'll see us out the window."

"We can't stay crammed in here forever." She hopped up two stairs and carefully leaned out to look up at the windows, but the reflections off the glass made it impossible to see inside. "We're going to have to take a chance. Can we get out of the back yard?"

Freddy nodded. "There's an alley."

"Okay." Judy looked around at everyone. "Let's go out to the alley, turn right, try to get to the car." The rabbit and two foxes nodded back to her. "On my signal, as quietly as we can…"

She crept up to the top step and looked back at the house again. No movement that she could see, and while she could hear the big cops lumbering around inside, she couldn't tell where they were. The longer they waited, the more chance one of the cops would come back here and they'd be caught. "Now," she said, and ran up the stairs.

The others followed behind her, trampling thick grass and weeds. Burrs caught in her fur as she brushed a bush on her way to the rusty gate. Then she was through and out into the alley, and Simon was there too, and Freddy, and Nick. And they had made it, they were clear—

"Hey!" came from the house, a loud shout. Judy turned and saw at the upstairs window a lion, staring right back at her, his mouth open and fangs bared.

"Come on!" Judy didn't care about whispering anymore, just speed. The four of them were small and fast; they could get to the car before the officers could. She ran down the alley, Simon and Freddy close behind her and Nick bringing up the rear, mostly because he kept looking over his shoulder to see if they were being chased.

Judy trusted him enough to leave that to him while she worried about getting to the car. The alley let out onto a street that was, she thought, behind where they'd parked, so when she came to it, she took a hard right turn, surprising a raccoon with arms full of shopping bags. "Sorry!" she called, and ran up to the corner, listening to make sure the others were behind her. At Green Street, she turned right again, scanning for her car, and then skidded to a stop so fast that Simon plowed into her.

"Back back back," she said, pushing him back into Freddy and Nick and hustling everyone around the corner.

"What?" Freddy looked nervously back at the alley.

"There's an officer watching the car," Judy said. "They didn't see me, but—we can't get to the car."

"Then what now?" Simon asked.

Judy and Nick exchanged looks. "We should get you two somewhere safe," Judy said, "but Nick and I need to go to that office."

"I'm not hiding. I haven't done anything wrong." Simon folded his arms stubbornly. "I want to see how this turns out."

"I'll hide," Freddy said. "I don't have a problem with that."

"All right, but where?" Judy looked at Nick. "It's got to be a place walking distance from here."

He thought for a moment, looking around at the street signs, and then snapped his fingers. "Got it. Come on, this way."

They followed him back toward the alley and past it, to another street, down a block and across, then down two more blocks until Judy wasn't sure she could find her way back to the car. Doesn't matter anyway, she told herself. We can't use it now. Though…they couldn't keep someone there indefinitely. Could they? She thought about cases she'd worked. Not indefinitely, but for sure they could post someone for a day or two, long enough to matter in her current situation.

Nick brought them to an apartment building and said to Freddy, "You know Mrs. Bandit, right?"

Judy recognized the building then, although Mrs. Bandit's case seemed like it had been years ago. "Yeah," Freddy said cautiously.

"Okay." Nick rang the buzzer. "Carrots, keep an eye out just in case?"

She stationed herself out along the sidewalk. Residents walking by eyed her suspiciously, but she didn't see anyone else in a ZPD uniform, and she'd never thought she would be happy about that.

Nick talked to Mrs. Bandit for a few seconds and then the door buzzer opened and the four of them hurried inside. They stationed Simon in the lobby in case they'd been followed, and then Nick and Judy escorted Freddy upstairs.

The apartment was much the same as Judy remembered it, and so was Mrs. Bandit, even wearing the same blue dress, though without the shawl this time. "Oh my," she said. "Officer Wilde?"

"Yes, ma'am," Nick said, and pulled Freddy in. "We found the fox who broke into your apartment."

Both Freddy and Mrs. Bandit froze. Judy closed the door softly behind them. Nick, smiling, went on. "Don't worry, you can drop the charges if you want. I don't think he took anything. He was just coming here to leave something for you, isn't that right?"

"That's…right." Freddy recovered his composure.

"I don't know if it was him," Mrs. Bandit said, but she wasn't even looking at Freddy, and Judy could tell she was lying.

"It's fine," Judy said. "We don't have to pursue this any further. We just wanted to put your mind at ease."

"Well, if you say so." The old raccoon looked at Freddy and clucked her tongue. "I thought you'd amount to more, Frederick."

"Oh, he's starting to," Nick said. "We're giving him a chance to go down the right path, but we need you to just keep an eye on him here for a day or two, if that would be all right?"

"Of course." Mrs. Bandit brightened. "I'll be happy to have a young fellow around the house again."

Freddy's ears perked up too. "I can do some chores for you, Mrs. Bandit."

"Right," Nick said, "So, are we all good here?"

Both Freddy and Mrs. Bandit nodded, so Judy said, "Then I'm afraid we have to go. We have another case to solve."

On the way down the stairs, Judy said to Nick, "What was that about? She was the only person you could think of?"

"No," Nick said, "but I wanted a blueberry pie."

"What?"

"You bet that we'd get an arrest for the burglary. You just told Mrs. Bandit that we're not going to pursue the burglary any further, which means we're not going to get an arrest, which means I win the bet, which means blueberry pie." He licked his lips.

Judy stopped on the stairs, and it took Nick a few more stairs to realize it, stop, and turn. "What?"

She stared back at his grin and shook her head. "My dad told me not to trust foxes," she said.

He laughed. "And that was even before he met me. Cheer up, Carrots, you'll win another bet soon enough."

"Humph." She marched after him. "I can't believe you'd compromise the security of an important informant just to win a bet."

At the bottom of the stairs, Nick put a paw to his chest. "How dare you suggest such a thing? I would never. I simply saw an opportunity to keep Freddy safe and win a bet, and I took it. That's all."

"What bet?" Simon looked curiously from one to the other.

"Nothing," Judy said. "It's not important. How are we going to get to this address?"

"Simon and I look inconspicuous enough," Nick said. "If only you weren't wearing that uniform."

"I didn't pack a change of clothes," Judy said, folding her arms.

"We passed a secondhand clothes shop back there," Nick said. "Simon, you want to run over and get like a big overcoat or something for Officer Hopps here?"

"Sure," Simon said, and disappeared out the front door.

Judy called in a request for a provisional warrant to search the theater offices Freddy had mentioned, a process that took a few minutes and hopefully did not require anyone at Precinct Four to know about it. When she had it confirmed, she hung up and leaned back against the wall. "What are we doing, Nick?"

"We're solving a case." He sat on the bottommost stair and curled his tail around his feet. "Catching the bad guy. That's what we do."

"But we're running away from the ZPD now. Our fellow officers."

He spread his paws. "Some of them aren't good guys. I'm pretty sure Roarey is doing shady stuff even if the others are just following his orders."

"That's not what police are supposed to do," Judy said. "We're supposed to be helping people."

"Uh huh. Like Bellwether's ram cops?"

Judy sighed and slumped back. "They thought they were helping, though. How is what Roarey's doing—maybe doing—"

"What, you don't trust my instincts?"

"No, I do. It's just…it's hard to imagine. Why would you become a cop if you didn't want to help people? For all the paperwork and the reporting?"

"For the power." Nick picked up the end of his tail and smoothed it out. "I know it's tough coming from Bunnyburrow, but trust me, if you grew up in Happytown you wouldn't have any trouble imagining it."

"You said that before." Judy looked at him. "You want to tell me about it? We've got time."

Nick eyed the door. "The cops were never good news in Happytown. If a cop showed up, you went the other way because chances were they'd take any excuse to stop you and look for some reason to arrest you. Why do you think it doesn't raise any eyebrows that Freddy was arrested dozens of times?"

"I—I didn't think of that," Judy said.

"Pick up any file from Happytown, it's going to have multiple arrests." Nick's ears splayed out and he bent his head tiredly. "It's still happening."

"If they were arrested, there has to be a reason," Judy insisted. "They can't just arrest people for nothing."

"Sure," Nick said. "You know the law against jaywalking?"

Judy nodded. "That's just a ticket, though."

"Unless you've got another arrest on your record. Then they can bring you in for it. Then it's another arrest on your record. You see how it goes?" When she nodded, he said, "And if there's not an arrest on your record, you still have to pay a fine. And if you can't pay it, then you can be arrested for non-payment and you have to pay penalties, which of course you can't pay because you couldn't pay the original fine. And that's just one example."

"But why would they do that?" Judy asked.

"Because they think it prevents crime. Because they say people who commit minor offenses are more likely to commit major ones. But jaywalking is something people do when they have to walk to work and maybe they're late because it's their second job. The fine isn't a big deal for people up in Sahara Square, but the same fine can be a week's pay in Happytown."

"I—" Judy's answer was cut off by Simon knocking at the door.

She went to let him in and he held out a big paper bag. "Sorry, it was the only one they had in a rabbit's size and I know it's not what you'd want, but—"

"It's okay," she said, reaching in. "I know we don't have much—oh my."

She pulled out a bright pink coat, decorated with a white and yellow daisy pattern and made of some kind of thick cotton pile.

"Well," Nick said. "It'll hide your uniform, but I don't know about being inconspicuous."

"It was the only one," Simon repeated, his ears down.

"It's fine," Judy said, pulling the coat on and doing up the clasps to close it around the front. One was missing, and it was going to be very warm, but it would keep her from being identified as a ZPD officer. She put her hat in the bag and slipped her arm through the handles. "Let's get going."

They walked part of the way, turned casually down one block when they saw officers at the other end of the block, and caught a bus to Sahara Square. The address was in the business district, which meant that a fox and two bunnies (one in a loud pink flower coat) would stand out, but at least Roarey and his friends might not be looking for them in that area.

"But," Nick said as they disembarked, "the officers here won't hesitate to stop us because we look like we don't belong. And if the people at this address, wherever it is, get suspicious, they'll call the ZPD too. You can bet Roarey is monitoring any calls."

"And," Judy said, "they might know what Freddy told us, or have gotten wind of the warrant, and already be on their way here."

"Right." They turned onto the street where their destination was located, a gleaming row of modern office buildings, three to ten stories tall, with glass and sandstone facades and bright fancy corporate logos. No trash littered the street and the cars that drove by were clean and modern, with well-dressed giraffes and leopards hanging one arm out of the window.

As they'd suspected, the three of them got a lot of stares down from the pedestrians striding quickly past them, but they made it to the address without hearing the sirens of a police car.

This address, unlike the others on the street, was a small two-story building, but what it lacked in size it made up for in flash. The facade read, "Sahara Square Arts Foundation," and bore a one-story-tall stylized gazelle dancing in front of a crescent moon, rendered in shimmering silver over the black marble of the building.

"Fancy," Nick whistled.

Judy tried the door, which didn't budge. Simon pointed to a sign next to the door: "Office Hours 12-9 pm, 12-6 pm on show dates."

"Half an hour," Nick said.

"But," Judy said, "didn't Freddy say the back door had been unlocked for him?"

They walked around the block and found the back alley that led behind all the buildings. Simon and Judy came up to the back door while Nick trailed behind. Like many doors in Sahara Square, it was made for larger mammals, so they had to drag a crate over to stand on. Simon turned the knob and tugged. "Locked," he said.

Judy put her paws on her hips and turned to see Nick picking something up from the ground. He hid it behind his back as he walked up. "You said it's locked?"

Simon nodded. Nick stepped forward. "Let me try. Sometimes you bunnies just don't have the paw strength." He climbed up onto the crate and jiggled the handle. His body shielded the knob and lock from Judy's view, but she distinctly heard a loud click and then Nick pulled the door open. "See?" he said. "It was unlocked the whole time."

Judy gave him a suspicious look but he returned a wide-eyed innocent stare and she shook her head, following Simon into the quiet, empty office. "Fifteen minutes," Judy whispered, and set a timer on her phone.

This back room held a number of large boxes marked with enigmatic titles like "The River Deep" and "Jungle of Our Hearts." The three of them had to climb up the shelves to look inside the boxes, some of which were large enough for them to get all the way inside. It wasn't until Judy searched through a box marked "Bamboo Midnight" and found several half-masks of pandas and bamboo knives that she realized what these were. "They're props for plays," she said.

"Freddy wouldn't have left the briefcase in one of them," Nick said, poking his head out of "Tales From the Tundra." He hopped out to the shelf and climbed down. "He's our height, so he would have left it on the floor or near the floor."

"I doubt it's here anymore anyway," Judy said, shedding the pink coat, which was too warm and bulky to search easily in.

"Maybe someone moved it into the office." Simon poked his nose out into the corridor. "How much time is left?"

"Eleven minutes."

"Right." He disappeared.

"I don't smell Freddy here," Nick said. "Not on anything. I get ibex and camel, lots of camel."

"Me too," Judy said, "but let's keep checking anyway. They must put on some plays for smaller mammals; look, there's some boxes in that corner that are our size."

They checked through the pile of boxes but found nothing except for a fox-sized blazer that Nick held up. "This would look good on me, wouldn't it?"

"Nick. You can buy one if you want it."

"Sure." He grinned and dropped it back into the box. "All right, let's see if we can catch Freddy's scent anywhere else in the office."

They made their way out into a cool hallway with plush carpeting under their feet. Offices on either side of them contained multiple desks, and the hallway opened into a big collaborative work area with cubicles and posters all around the walls, some with titles that matched the boxes in the storage room.

Nick hurried around the offices sniffing while Judy scanned for anything that might help them. It was hard to do that without a clear idea of what exactly she was looking for, though, and after a few minutes she decided her best role would be watching the front door and calling out the time as it elapsed.

She only had a chance to call out, "Six minutes," before there were noises at the door. Judy called out, "Let's get out of here!"

"Wait," Simon said. "I found something. Let me just—"

The people at the door were big and they were wearing dark blue uniforms, familiar ones. Judy ran into the office where he was holding a small appointment book. "No time," she said. "We gotta go! Out the back."

She wished she hadn't thrown away the pink coat in the back room. "But," Simon said, and then let Judy drag him away from the desk.

They only got as far as the office doorway before the front door opened and a rhino and a tiger in ZPD uniforms burst through. Judy pulled Simon back into the office and clapped her paw over his mouth, scanning for a place to hide. "Who's here?" the rhino bellowed. "Show yourselves!"

The owner of the office must be a large mammal to judge from the chair and the big desk. Next to the desk was a file cabinet, and that gave Judy an idea. "Come on," she hissed to Simon, and crept along the wall toward it.

Heavy footsteps clomped through the office outside, coming closer. Judy hurried, but she could tell already that they weren't going to make it before one of the officers reached the doorway and saw them. Simon was keeping up, the appointment book still clutched in one paw, and then there was a ripping sound and he broke away from Judy. She grabbed at him, but he hopped up to the chair and put the book back on the desk and then crouched on the chair, partially hidden by the desk.

It wasn't a bad hiding place. Judy scooted around the back of the desk, away from the doorway, where she could look at the closed window and the outdoors only a few feet away, but as inaccessible as if it had been behind a brick wall.

And then—Nick's voice. "What seems to be the problem, officers?" he said. He wasn't using his regular voice; he'd put on some kind of posh accent. Judy peeked around the desk and saw him pass by the doorway. He was wearing the blazer he'd found in the props closet and walking straight and stiff.

"Ah." This was the tiger, a growly voice not as deep as the rhino's, but still enough to make the floor tremble lightly. He must be right outside. "We're responding to a possible break-in here. We were told to look for some bunnies and," here he paused. "A fox."

"Well," Nick said without missing a beat, "there are a lot of foxes around here, you know, and a lot of them must in fact be up to no good, but you can trust me, earnest protector of the downtrodden. I work here. In fact," he pointed to the office where Simon and Judy were hiding, "this is my office. I'd just come in a little bit early because, you know, the show must go on."

"Oh. You, ah, don't mind if we look around the rest of the place, do you?"

"By all means, intrepid public servant, but I must caution you that our offices are about to open, so I will have to ask you to conclude your investigation with all due haste."

"Of course," the tiger said, and moved on.

Nick leaned casually in the doorway of the office and hissed back, "Any way out from there?"

"No," Judy whispered back.

"Okay," he said. "It'll be tight, but—"

He stopped talking as footsteps approached and looked up at the rhino. "Have you discovered any miscreants there in the front of the office, my good fellow?"

The rhino just looked at Nick, and then looked over his head and into the office. Judy ducked back behind the desk, heart pounding. If Judy showed them her warrant, which had come in on her phone, that would explain her presence, but technically she wasn't supposed to have brought a civilian and a suspended cop along on her search. She'd get in trouble and Nick and Simon could be arrested.

"You're Horatio Sand?" the rhino rumbled.

"That's me," Nick said. "I know the office looks a little big for me, but truth be told, I've only been in charge for a few months. I keep meaning to order smaller furniture, but I like to surprise people when they show up expecting a larger mammal. It's all about showmanship, you know!"

"Uh huh." The rhino took a step into the office. "So that's you, is it?"

For the first time, Judy looked at the other wall of the office, the one the person sitting at the desk would face. Hanging on that wall was an immense portrait the size of the door of her apartment, and the subject of the portrait was a tall, stately camel in a tuxedo with a bright red bowtie.

"That," Nick said, "is the former owner. It's such a lovely portrait that I asked him if I could keep it here, and he agreed. I'm having one made of me but it takes a while, you know, you can't just take a portrait like a photograph, ha ha."

"Uh huh." The rhino's voice got slightly fainter as he called down the hall. "Briggs," he yelled. "Get back here, this is them."

"Now just a moment," Nick said. "My name is Horatio Sand, and—"

"And I s'pose you got ID that says that?"

"I'm in my office! I don't need to—"

"And is that bunny on the chair also named Horatio Sand?"

Nick fell quiet. Judy stood up and came around the desk in time to see the tiger arrive. She held up her badge. "I'm a ZPD officer on an investigation," she said, without much hope. "I have a warrant."

"Then you won't mind comin' down to the station to talk to the Lieutenant about your investigation," the rhino said. He turned to the tiger. "Honestly, Briggs, sometimes I wonder how you passed the damn exam. I don't think you could fill out your name right."

"Sorry," the tiger said again. "He was really convincing, though."

Nick bowed. "Thank you, good sir," he said, still keeping the posh accent.

"Shut up," the rhino said as Simon hopped down to join Judy. "Let's go."