I do not own Zootopia, that belongs to Disney. This a fan work made solely for the sake of amusement.

"Let It Go, It's Happytown"

Chapter Nine: Red Dahlia

By: Gabriel LaVedier

"Who would we question now?" Hermione asked, sitting behind her desk and looking thoughtful. "So few might know anything. But those who know may fear their own necks are on the line for this. Our mysterious villain has succeeded in some way."

"Shutting their mouths is in no way victory. It is quite simply, weakness," Sherlock answered. "Holding a muzzle closed will take time, effort, even if only using menace and threats. They must add more fear, widening the circle of those that could stand against them, those that might not fear them. The more they wait, the more they hold their greatness over them the weaker and weaker they grow. They are in quite a dangerous position, and will need to do something perhaps extreme to restore their stable power."

"More? How could there be more, M. Gyag? They have killed and burned. What more is there?" Hermione queried.

"I do not have that answer. I have limits to the candle of my mind. But somewhere beyond, in the darkness, other minds wait, and they have the ability to think of such things we may not," Sherlock replied, his office awash in his favorite incense. "I, too, tremble to contemplate what foulness they may inflict on our neighbors."

The two went silent again, Sherlock occasionally looking to his computer, Hermione filing her claws and blowing them clear. After a few claws worth of polishing she stood up suddenly and shouted. "I cannot abide this! We need action. I know you are seeking answers on your machine but surely there are questions to ask and those who may answer them!"

"Your passion, in the estimation of some in my own experience, shows an attachment to a world of pain, an excess. But in this world there is a place for this kind of passionate response. You may have more fortune in one area in which I failed," Sherlock said. "I attempted to make inquiries with the working ladies of the town, but had little fortune. I have no evidence they lied, but they may have been reluctant. They opened conversation regarding me as a broke PI in their words. Perhaps a persuasive jill would make them more talkative."

"Mm, perhaps. They have little enough reason to speak with me, but it is better than to file my claws and await the horrors to come," Hermione mused.

"You are my understudy, as you say. You need the experience and the drive. I wish you well in this endeavor. At least some small scrap of information would be more than we have now," Sherlock said with a nod, standing in the frame of the door to his office.

"Are they still in the spot I know them to be?" Hermione asked.

"As regular as clockwork. They know where to gather their paramours, and those in turn know where to find them," Sherlock said. "Do not get discouraged if they fail to respond."

"They will know one of theirs. We do not have the same occupation but we are equally wretched and they will share with me, I am sure," Hermione stated. She stood up from her chair and picked up a pocket recorder, placing it in her simple clutch, which she tucked under an arm.

"Even with limited means as we have you still prefer some second-hoof technology to a simple black notebook and pencil," Sherlock noted with some amusement.

"Mais oui, Monsieur. Accuracy is important. I know it is a silly extravagance but it is my preference. I wish to have it, and it will only augment my little gray cells, where the real work comes," Hermione said with a sniff. "The technology is only an assistant."

"A mature position," Sherlock said with a nod. "So long as you recognize the limits of mere machines and understand the true power lies in your capabilities."

Hermione craned her neck to look into the office and see the old computer humming away. "Oui, how little machines may do for us, Monsieur."

"In their sphere, in their time," Sherlock said with a grin playing on his lips.

Hermione left the office, clicking her way rapidly along the streets, clutch held tight to her and her snout held high. She hardly looked like she belonged there, with her deeply held pride and self-assurance. She was not a native, yet she was. But even so, the place hardly seemed to touch her. For all her talk about being a suffering wretch, she only saw and spoke the darkness, she did not let it rule her. Her hope was wan but, as she had said to Sherlock, it lived privately within.

On her smallish weasel legs, even with her quick clip, it still took Hermione some time to reach the distant place where all the cheaply dressed, provocatively posed women stood. She was met with a sea of scowls, all of the paid companions disdainfully regarding her tasteful second-paw attire and strappy heels. "Oh no! No! You get your overpriced haunches out of here you! We don't need you high-priced fancy-junk escorts comin' 'round here to mess up what we got! It's all we can do and you jills from outside can't take what we made here!" A reddish bobcat hissed, pupils narrowed, fingers reflexively flexing and exposing her claws.

Hermione smartly clicked open her clutch, activating the recorder and whipping out her wallet, showing off her provisional license. "Hold your ire, madames, I have no need for this space. I am Hermione LaBelle, understudy to the investigator Sherlock Gyag. I have come to ask questions of you. You, princesses de la rue, know all that comes and see all that happen on your streets."

"Take a hike, we didn't talk to the haystack and we're not talking to you," the cinnamon bobcat spat, glaring hotly at Hermione.

"Non! I will remain! This matters! This is important and I will not be chased away by the likes of you," Hermione yelled back, standing determined before the slightly larger predator.

"Oh likes of me? Think you're better than me because you got a job that don't need you on your back all the time? Maybe you are. Gotta keep that boss happy on your- Oof!" The laughing cat was suddenly silenced by Hermione throwing a punch into her gut, her self-defense training serving to make the tiny punch into something of notice.

"Let us be calm, proper, respectful," Hermione said, looking cool and proper, but putting heavy emphasis on the last word. "Hate me. Berate me. Me. Moi. I am here to ask of you." The other women approached slowly, all of them looking upset. "We are not the same in work. But we are all the same. All of us. We are all wretches here, all equal in the misery of this place. There is much. Misery. And death. We are seeking answers for the murders, the fires. We need answers. Please give us something. Anything."

The cinnamon bobcat coughed softly, standing up straight and smiling a bit. "Went for the hit, hit first, hit fast, didn't go for the face to keep the makeup good and the face sellable. You know your stuff, jill."

"I have need and needed calm. And my boss need not be involved if he is not here," Hermione said, casually brushing off her dress. "I know there is no reason to speak, but if you have heard and seen then please say so."

"There's not much to say..." the bobcat started.

"Spare us, Red. You know there's always something to say," a long, leggy wolf in a halter and miniskirt said. "I didn't think much of him either but I've had time to think about it. He's like Charlie, he wanted to help. We ought to help too."

"Roxy, there's literally nothing to say. You lay out on your back, demand they use rubbers and get that money. A few bucks is better than nothing," Red hissed.

"There's a lot to say. The Johns aren't always just losers from the city trying to get something they can't get back there," a zebra said.

"They don't get violent, not usually. We make sure it's a mistake they only start making once," a coyote smoking a clove cigarette said with a phlegmy laugh. "But, that's for regular folks. Charlie was more about giving bucks for food or cigs, and Red used a little for... medicinal purposes. But Charlie just gave, he never took anything, and that's why we should say everything we know. A smart jill like this could actually do something with our stories."

"If only that's how the whole thing worked. Money for nothing. Not even a little dance in a bathing suit or naked jump rope," Roxy laughed. "Had that a few times. I guess I don't mind that, it's easy work."

"I have one guy that wants to rub olive oil over my rear then have me twerk and flex for an hour. That's it. Just oil, my hind end and flexing. It's a workout but beats minimum wage," the zebra noted with a fleeting smile.

"There's a lot of variation. Not everyone is Charlie, but they're not all Mr. Limo..." the coyote said, immediately cutting herself off as she said it.

"Qu'est-ce que c'est? M. Limo? Who is that?" Hermione asked, reaching into her clutch to bring out her recorder for heightened clarity while getting out her little black notebook and pencil. "This seems notable..."

"Way to go, Clover. Why not just tell everyone?" Red huffed. "That's our business. We deal with it, we keep it to ourselves."

"We don't deal with it, that's the problem," Clover yapped. "We take care of Johns who get a little too hard. We take care of our own, without pimps or managers. But we don't take care of Mr. Limo, and it needs to get taken care of."

"Yes... tell me of this M. Limo. How has he this power over you that he may not be touched?" Hermione asked.

"We took care of the pimps and the ones that thought they controlled us. We don't answer to some punk in a flashy suit anymore. We used Mayor Wulfberg's clean-up squad to get them out. That was the legacy the old gals gave us," Roxy said with an almost reverential tone. "We could keep our money, and the gangs knew that if they wanted peace, we'd pay our tribute but they never messed with us. We could find them at their most vulnerable, and we didn't have any mercy. But the gangs had a problem, and that became our problem."

"We just call him Mr. Limo," Red said. "He never says how, no one really knows anything, but keeping him happy makes cops and problems go away. You ask the vicemongers and some of the dumber gangsters, they don't know how they do what they do. Ask the wrong dealer and you might end up on the wrong end of some claws. Not all the dealers work inside Happytown, for Happytown. They all pay something to someone. Mr. Limo picks up everything. We don't have pimps, but we have... requirements. He picks up a lady, and they go... somewhere. Nobody has ever seen. It's all blindfolds and Fifty Grades of Prey, for real."

"Exigences..." Hermione muttered, dutifully jotting down everything she could. "This system, you must have some notion of how it works. You are not stupid. You have to be very wise to survive in so precarious a position. Please, you must have some kind of idea about this."

"Well there's something..." Clover started.

"No! That's more than enough!" Red hissed, looking down on Hermione. "Look, weasel, we know you're trying to do good, you and the haystack. Yes, you're like Charlie. Charlie's dead. Those fools that tried to do something for themselves are dead. Know who's not dead? Mr. Limo. That's how it works. You wanna be dead, weasel?"

"I want to live in a world without fear!" Hermione snapped.

"Where do you think you are? This is Happytown. You think you can live without fear?" Red countered.

"It must be possible. Other places do. It must be possible. And all of you know it," Hermione replied, sweeping a digit across the assembly of women.

Though her snout skin curled a bit Red responded with a quiet voice. "Folks that do good stuff, they shouldn't die. If we're gonna live in a trash can it's better if someone throws away a bouquet of flowers now and then."

"Oui. Or perhaps, something could change. We all must think as we do," Hermione said, putting away her notebook and pulling out a small cloth case. She wasn't prominent enough to have her own cards, but she had surreptitiously taken some of Sherlock's and he hardly seemed to notice. She passed off a few cards to the women, including to Red. "If anything comes into your mind... anything. Our little gray cells will stand ready to turn all things into new knowledge, tease out meaning. We will find the answer, and we will do better."

Red looked down at the card and absently stuffed it into her outfit with a huff. "If. If..."

Hermione slowly nodded, walking away with many backward glances, to see the women close ranks and softly chatter amongst themselves, a few actually giving her a look. A code of silence was upon them. Secrets lasted longer the fewer there were to hold them. Their group kept some detail, some small bit of information. It was not for pride or ego, no game of holding a secret from authorities to appear clever. They clearly thought of it as a matter of survival. Keeping the secret might mean safety from the source. If they told no one they were assured protection.

No one offering protection for silence in such a way was ever any good. It was a transaction with an interest rate paid in paranoia. The keeper would wonder every day if any action had been misinterpreted, and the guardian would misinterpret every action. The more deadly the secret, the more needful silence was. Still lips were silent forever. In a grim and horrifying way, logic would lead to only one certainty. The keeper would need to be removed forever the longer it remained dangerous.

Hermione felt terrible for not pressing. But a solid defense grew stronger when hit by an outsider, not weaker. She couldn't erode such a confidence. Sherlock could, perhaps. His strange and mysterious ways had powers. She knew he had powers. His own denial was irrelevant. He had broken some down. She would try to move him to make the effort, to try and wear down their stony silence like time wore down the buildings into sagging gray skeletons.

Rounding a corner she went out of sight of them, and was gone.

o o o

"I still think you're an idiot." Much later in the day, when the working streetlights popped on and bathed the slum in harsh downward glares, the time had come for the women of the night to prowl. Diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular. It didn't matter what their DNA said of them. They were all night beasts, in their gaudy attire and heavy makeup. Roxy was the one that had spoken, the wolf not looking at the bobcat to which she was speaking.

"Spare me, Roxy," Red rumbled, eyes on the road. "We really couldn't have said anything. We really don't know anything. I don't care what that white weasel says, no amount of brainpower could turn our spoor into clues."

"You're too dumb to know how dumb you are," Clover quickly stated. "I worked the university once. One of the dudes liked to talk while I danced in a skirt. The dumber you are the more you can't tell how dumb you are. Told me I at least had the brains to know there was stuff I couldn't get. I can believe the haystack can think of junk to do with what we tell him."

Red waved a hand in the general direction of the two canids before squinting and letting out a sharp whistle. "Headlights. Display the goods, ladies. Someone's getting rent money tonight."

The pack of women rushed up and showed off what they thought might appeal to the potential customer. Most showed off a lot of leg, with a few openly displaying their paws. The zebra practically turned away to show off the swelling enormity of her striped flanks. Clover took a drag off of her everpresent clove cigarette, letting her plump lips shining with red lipstick moosh suggestively around the end of it and be illuminated by the temporarily brightened ember of the tip.

It wasn't an ordinary car that cut through the inconsistent light. The circles of light caressed along the long and sleek contours of a dark, well-polished limousine. A little shudder ran through the women, each one looking between their fellows. They held a lone, fleeting hope that maybe, maybe, it was some lost tourist, or some overly generous rich person coming to whisk one of them away to a life of pleasure and luxury. It had happened before.

The limo slowly pulled to a stop by the women clustered in a circle of light, those at the fringes slowly stepping out into the relative dark, to leave themselves out of the potential selection. One tinted window very slowly rolled down with a soft electric whine. A hoof in gloves emerged, pointing directly at Red, who mimed at herself in shock. The hoof pointed again, almost violently, the door locks disengaging and the door opening a crack.

"It's how it is, it's Happytown," Red said in what she hoped was a casual way. She sauntered her way to the door and pulled it open, staring into the inky blackness of the interior before the gloved hoof callously grabbed one arm and yanked her in with a vehement energy.

The door slammed shut and the limo took off, tires almost squealing and echoing down the rows of buildings. The other girls were shaken by the encounter, shuddering and panting, released from the spell of dread. Clover took a shaky drag from her cigarette and let out a trembling puff. "I want that white weasel's world. I need it so bad right now..."

Hours passed in slow ticks, the ladies finding partners or drifting off to spend the dregs of a hungry night getting what sleep they could muster. No one saw the long limo return, an ominous mechanical shadow, an artificial beast of menace. The rear door opened again and Red was literally shoved out onto the street, rolling slightly as she gave pained and indignant coughs.

The time away had left her much worse for wear. Everything on her was torn in some fashion, ripped or seemingly bitten at. Slight swelling in places were either punches or especially hard grabs. Her face had not been spared like Hermione had done. One cheek puffed slightly more than the other and one eye was only partially open. She tottered on her paws, from being thrown out of the limo and from whatever she had had to endure.

The street wasn't hers but she knew them all anyhow and sullenly made her way back to the Night Beast Gallery. Her home was a somber trot from their place, as was most everyone else's. It had worked out that way. The apartment managers knew they'd get their money sometimes, and were sometimes too eager to negotiate if things weren't so good. She accepted it. Being real was more important than living in a fantasy world.

A hoped-for world, she suddenly thought. Hope. It was easy for that bleached weasel to think about hope. She had a real job, with a boss she liked enough to throw a punch over. As pathetic as the broke haystack was, he sure as moonshine cared about everything. Just like Charlie. Charlie... He had hope too. Too much. He tried to get her off the stuff, tried to get them out of the dumpster. He got important folks to glance down a little bit. But someone more important noticed and they didn't like it.

She didn't know anything. She had no big, important secrets. But she lived in the real world. She lived through things happening around and to her. The things built on top of each other like an ant mound. Her little crumb of knowledge might have been from the middle, but it was all a part of the big pile. She knew that there was anger about things getting too active. And she had been randomly selected to serve as punishment for everyone. Her bruises belonged to the whole of Happytown. That metal taste across her tongue was a lesson to the whole place, that she had to understand.

Charlie crossed her mind again. Him and his quest to get her off the stuff. The profitable stuff. No one messes with money. Money flows from place to place, and has very burly, very angry bodyguards making sure it can keep moving. At first she thought she had been the last flea, that her little crush of 'nip weighed down Charlie, made him do himself in. But knowing he hadn't was worse. Getting one junkie hooker clean in a market like Happytown wasn't allowed. Charlie paid for his care. What was worse was nothing could stop it. The ugliness of the act itself made her need an escape from it.

She needed to forget. She had been taught a lesson that wasn't hers alone and it was something else to get rid of. She had to make it all go away. She checked her torn clothes for something that wasn't there, finding only the card the PI's moll had given her.

"Charlie... I'm sorry but... maybe I will go to that eclipsed PI. I don't know scat but I don't know what I know. Maybe..." She held her head and shook it sharply. "Ugh, I need 'nip..." She muttered, just loud enough to be heard outside the sphere of her own hearing.

A shadow had kept her company since she had been dumped from the limo. A wisp of darkness had been with her, keeping tabs on her paws, keeping ears out for anything and everything she said. A shadow that slunk along dark edges and peeked out of alleys into which it had secreted itself. On hearing that need the dark figure moved to her, looming and mysterious. "Need 'nip, girly? Got some nip right here. Come into my office, let's make a deal..."

Author's Notes

Pocket Recorder- The tiniest nod to the proper universe Hermione's love of technological gewgaws.

Little Gray Cells- A reference to Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective creation of Agatha Christie. A French stoat like Hermione would love to drop a reference like that.

The Zebra Mare- Nick, my friend, I love you and your ways. My friend, you are a truly good man.

The Taken-Away- Not a Pretty Woman reference, actually. It's about Duke. Mostly.