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 Eighteen: Roses and Clover
By: Gabriel LaVedier
"Monsieur, you know I would never wish to inconvenience you, or disparage you, but I know it will be of use," Hermione pleaded. The two were in the office, early, the haze of incense smoke still hanging over the place from Sherlock's morning meditations. She was holding up her small tape recorder, and blocking the door. "Scratching in a notebook draws more attention than your attire. But in this world no one thinks twice about a mammal speaking muttered words into a boxy device held near the ear."
"Mlle. LaBelle..." Sherlock started. He looked down at her for a moment, reaching out to take the little rectangle of plastic. "I suppose for a brand new world of detective work, new methods must be employed. The old ways will not go away but to be so invisible there must be some kinds of subterfuge."
"Merci, M. Gyag. It is... a load off my mind, as they say. You know you must instruct me to fullness as a detective, and that cannot be done if you are dead," Hermione said with a kind of sallow half-smile.
"Yes, I am aware..." Sherlock said.
"Monsieur, this beast, this savage... he will kill with impunity. He wanted us all to starve. He sleeps on a bed of blood and spends our lives like currency. Please, M. Gyag... come back," Hermione said, without overmuch pleading.
"Fatalism keeps death close to your mind. In this place, it serves well. For this bull, it is correct. I will return, Mlle. LaBelle. In all the uncertainty of this world, this I know. I will come with more news, with information. I do not know exactly how, but I will follow him, and see something that he does not wish to be known."
"His type will not cede their secrets willingly. Can you have any assistance at all?" Hermione queried.
"This is all very unofficial. But I asked several persons and once I have arrived at the CloverCorp building, I will be given some kind of help, but no detail was otherwise given. I approve of such inscrutable stances," Sherlock said.
"Bon. Well, return here for more, that we may see this Gregory in irons," Hermione said, stepping away from the door.
"A focus will only help," Sherlock said, tipping his boat-shaped hat on his way out.
It was the matter of a few long minutes to walk out of Happytown and begin the process of riding mass transit to the destination. The building itself was bland. Insufficiently distinct from the other banal steel and glass constructions near it. Evil, as he had thought before, was fairly banal in look. Very seldom did a murdering beast look like a murdering beast. It was how they were successful. A building lined with spines and chains dripping with the blood of sacrificed predators whose heads and bodies were arrayed on pikes would not be sufficient camouflage to allow for a long, painful history of doing approximately that, in quieter and more subtle ways.
As he looked around the sound of a horn caught his attention. An unassuming light silver-gray Manatsu Megitsune sedan. A slouched, rather bland figure sat behind the wheel, but Sherlock knew who it was immediately as he walked up. "Nicholas, this is the assistance you could offer me?"
"Call me your tod Asterdas," Nick chuckled. He was in plain clothes, his loud tropical shirt exchanged for a plainer white shirt and a gray waistcoat. "It's all we could manage. Rent a car, have Bogo sign off on a day of unspecified special assignments, and know that the commish won't care. I don't know where he's going to take you, but at least you won't have to use mystic teleporation powers to keep up."
"The illusion of my powers is the greatest power of them all, even Mlle. LaBelle seems convinced," Sherlock said, sliding into the passenger seat of the car and buckling in. He noted, as he sat, it was somewhere around large medium or lower large car, with the diver's area kitted out for someone of Nick's size, with the expected extra mirrors, extenders, and seat lift. "Are you comfortable in this?"
"Are you kidding? Carrots and I share duty riding around a Big Mama on long shifts. Quick kit change from the bunny to fox hardware and we're on the road. Basic training at the academy, before the fancy trick driving," Nick said with a casual ease. "This is also something they make you used to. Stakeout training. Getting used to the idea that you'll sit there and drink coffee, piddle in bottles or cover for your partner, and learn how to live on donuts and caffeine until the job is done."
"I understand this may be an exercise in futility," Sherlock said with a nod. "I should have chosen a more propitious time to undertake this endeavor. A day of rest. He will be in there for a long, long while. And go home. I do apologize for wasting your time."
"It's no trouble, home is home, and I may not live there anymore, but still..." Nick casually leaned back and clicked his tongue. "Carrots comes from a place that's not exactly super advanced, but it's home. And she loves it a lot. I got her to see Happytown like she sees Bunnyburrow. She understands, and she understands how I feel like I owe it all I can give."
"Your devotion surpasses the religious devotion I see in others. It speaks so well of you, Nicholas, and shows how much you have changed," Sherlock said.
"Nah, nah... I was always a hardheaded Happytowner. I just have a reason now. I used to just talk about Happytown without a thought," Nick sighed. "But I really thought about it. Better or worse, the place shaped me. It shaped Duke. It shaped the stripers. There's something to it, and it really means something. Anything I can do to help you really means something, really matters."
"I have always known, for all your stumbling, for all the faults we all have, you had in you something more noble. Perhaps not eightfold noble, but even I struggle to reach the eight points of rightness," Sherlock said. "You conned so easily and so often, but always away from home, and brought the money inside, to help your fellow mammal, even if you thought of yourself as a solitary predator, a rock alone. Never seeing the vast floor on which it sat, supported."
"Gotta see everything now. It's not just me anymore," Nick sighed. "Carrots, the fam, all of them. Duke included, weird as it is to say that. Finnick still crashing on my couch when he isn't in cuz's building working his underpants off. Benji and the bunch down at the precinct. I feel like I should get to know Wulfberg a little better. He's been plugging hard at the old stomping grounds, trying to make my home a better place."
"He feels a certain attachment, a familial idea of protection. His grandfather freed the Old Girls from vice cops and they freed themselves from pimps. The freedom the elder Wulfberg helped them get is threatened by this Gregory Gnuston, and his family may again come and help the helpless in any way they can," Sherlock explained.
"It's not always the big names that need to be there, but taking responsibility for that name is a good show of your being worthy of it. I wear Hopps good and proud, just as proud as Wilde. Big or small, we're all working for something," Nick said, leaning back in the driver's seat.
"Working for something. The most neutral statement of all. I work for resolutions to cases. The client makes that good or bad. The cleaner worked to make things smooth, orderly, exact. With corpses in his wake. We work against each other constantly. And may my venerable Master Bajja forgive me, but I do not wish all forces to be locked in stagnant stasis. I hope the side that heals the hurts wins more than it loses," Sherlock said, more firmly than prior statements.
"Philosophy's great, but if you're not flexible enough to make a few exceptions when they're needed, you just ram into a wall over and more. Carrots figured that out," Nick said, with a falling grin. "I figured out even snarky philosophy is philosophy, and it needs exceptions."
"For the time we live in this world of suffering and desire, we must live. We can hardly live out the noble eight if we are oppressed by outside forces or by our own inclinations. It does good, this helping of others, as even in the most base form, it will come around to help us," Sherlock said. "We need to help one another so those closest to us... those we care... so everyone around us may thrive as much as we do."
"I've gotten to know a lot about weasels, having a whole tree of them in my family now. That one of yours, she's pretty skilled at all the athletic parts of private investigating, yeah?" Nick asked with a wink.
"You have such strange notions, Nicholas," Sherlock calmly said. "Mlle. LaBelle is no cinema heroine or radio star. She does not crawl through pipes or scale buildings in a single-piece suit. She follows leads and interviews those who may have seen something. Her only indulgence is a blue two-piece suit she hinted at as a birthday gift that is used for lounging while reading on her apartment roof."
"Two whole pieces, eh?" Nick gave a very sly-half-lidded look across at Sherlock, a smile hovering on his lips. "I would have been surprised except she's pretty sharp, just like my cousin Princess. Just a little more pointed. She's the kind of lady that's good for someone smart."
"I question your motives for saying this, but I take it in a generous spirit," Sherlock said. "I still have no comment on the matter."
"Mm, still. Someone else asked. It's all in the details. I didn't need the police academy to tell me that, but I'm a little more polished now, a little more dangerous," Nick said with a concluding wink and laugh.
"That, indeed, I can see with full clarity. A little learning is dangerous to the learner. A master's learning is dangerous to everyone else should the master put their mind to it," Sherlock admitted, finally cracking a small grin.
Time passed slowly in the car, Sherlock and Nick dealing with the silence and idleness in different ways. Nick was on his phone, scrolling through photos from Bunnyburrow, his ears occasionally flicking and drawing his eyes slightly to the side to catch mammals walking by. Sherlock, for his part, had adjusted his posture to pull his legs up and let his arms stretch, allowing him to close his eyes and meditate. His breathing was low and slow, yet somehow he seemed entirely alert and his ears occasionally twitched, in response to the things Nick also noticed.
The two shared a lunch of farm-fresh produce from Judy's family farm, along with some quickly picked up fritters from a nearby food cart, corn and vegetable fritters for Sherlock and some fish bit fritters for Nick. As they lounged about in the aftermath of the meal, some slight movement from the front of the building got their attention.
"There's that lice-ridden meadow-plop," Nick said, staring through a pair of ZPD-marked binoculars. "I've brushed up on him, that's the one. Nice car my home paid for. Bet it would look great twisted around a lamppost."
"Your ire is in some way understandable but does nothing to help us. A clear head will carry us through following him on this errand," Sherlock noted, taking the binoculars from Nick and looking through them. "In the flesh. So mild, so bland in appearance. The photographs show him well enough. And those around him... I wonder how many of them have experience equivalent to the cleaner. I should study these faces. I may need to pull them from a limo and deliver them to the authorities for being a pimp and tyrant."
"No surprise, we can't get a lock on him. We're not completely sure, but his file is probably fake as possible. I'm almost sure his ID number will come back from a dead guy and that his criminal record and history were written by some Hollyvine hack," Nick said, putting the car in gear and slowly pulling out behind the car. "Maybe he came from here, but I'll put money on him being from out there somewhere, someone else's soldier making his own money."
"He had some formidable skill. It was only extensive training and a maintained body that overcame him. No wonder so many victims were so easily eliminated," Sherlock said, still looking through the binoculars at the car several lengths ahead. "I have to wonder about the nature of this excursion during a working day."
"We ate a little early, and this guy seems the type to work through the lunch of normal mammals," Nick noted, smoothly turning the car along to follow the one ahead. "Executive type like him, probably take a three martini lunch at some kind of extra-fancy salad restaurant then go bang out a quick one with a mistress or three. Bet you'd love the chance to get them to spill."
"Perhaps a job for Mlle. LaBelle. Being a jill, she has an easier time with other ladies. After her encounter with the Madra Rua she has what they call 'cred' on the street. I would imagine the ladies there would be more forthcoming. Speaking to someone of substance would be culturally complicated but commonality could be found," Sherlock said. He pulled out Hermione's recorder and placed it by his ear as though it were a cell phone. "Gregory Gnuston left the CloverCorp building just past midday, and entered a new-seeming Eisenpferd SilberSchatten, if the badge and plate are being read correctly. They are driving down Wattle street and heading toward the commercial area."
"Good eye and good idea, nothing more natural than a guy on a phone."
"Mlle. LaBelle's suggestion."
Nick grinned and chuckled. "Smart, smart cookie. Just right for someone."
Sherlock kept making quick looks through the binoculars, trying to be inconspicuous about it. "Subject stopped at and has entered the restaurant Tender Shoots with all mammals that were in the SilberSchatten. No other figures are present in the car at the moment. Lunch is presumed."
"Grazers and browsers. I shouldn't sound so snarky, plenty of them are adjacent to the family. Carrots' best friend is one. The nice sheriff down at the home Burrow is one. The little doe that kicked the scat out of her evil brother is one. You're one. Still, it's not the usual that I see. Can't get all the roughage down," Nick said.
"Diets are delicate things and not for everyone. It's entirely understandable you might have issues. But deal with the diet, not the mammal," Sherlock said, sweeping the street for issues. "Mm, Nicholas. At the end of the block. I saw them go by on the drive, and noticed they were near the building."
Nick took the binoculars back and gave a quick look. "Two, can't get a good look. I hope this is something else..." He pulled out his phone and dialed a number quickly. "Chief, you're the trusted contact point here. Do you have two on Gnuston from another precinct?"
"No, Officer Wilde-Hopps, I do not. No one does. That bastard hasn't got anyone... official there. Not on our side. Do not, under any circumstances, congratulate the PI for noticing the additional follow and possibility of discovery. Out."
"They're not ours," Nick said. "And the Chief says good eye spotting those two. Of course he has extra security. This would be so much easier if he was stupid."
"Stupid criminals do not succeed," Sherlock noted.
"At crimes," Nick countered. "Cousin Duke was a stupid criminal. But he succeeded at not-criminal-ing. Stupid criminals can do a lot of harm, though. He's arrogant and that should make it easy but he's just smug enough. I know how it works. Just enough to make it clear, not enough to get tripped up. Until the taxes thing. I didn't have an army of lawyers. He does. He can be smug and arrogant. He gets do-overs. I had to rely on skill to go as long as I did."
"How should it be handled? They would know both of our faces, for different reasons," Sherlock said, giving the other car another look.
"Nothing to be done. Even if we kayo the two, they have to wake up sometime. It's a little harder working with the law. They'll be checking for follows, they might be glued there to watch Gregory leave and then make sure everything else is still," Nick said, stroking his chin.
"I do not know how effective it could be... drive around and let me out of the car. I need to sneak up beside them," Sherlock said.
"I just told you, they have to wake up. Still counts if you do the deed with mind powers," Nick said, half-joking.
"The ZPD will take notice if something on a car is dangerously broken or otherwise a potential hazard, yes?"
"Sure, but..." Nick started.
"Drive, please. All will be revealed. When I get out, make the call, say it is a dangerous condition that could harm others," Sherlock insisted.
"I'm up for a little mystery..." Nick said, pulling the car out and driving them around the block to a more inconspicuous location away from the restaurant. He pulled out his phone again and called into the precinct as Sherlock left the car.
The yak strolled casually down the sidewalk, looking for all the world like an ordinary, if tacky, citizen. Before turning the corner he pulled a small, irregularly shaped porcelain chip that looked to be part of a shattered sparkplug. His breathing slowed and his eyes closed almost completely. He mentally measured out the scene, thinking about where the car was in relation to the corner he had yet to turn. He gripped the chip in his hooves and got comfortable, his arm going taut as his wrist flicked several times in practice.
The motion was swift, easy, unhesitating. He stepped past the corner and flicked his wrist with every bit of strength and control he could muster. As before, the chip did as it was meant to. It plinked loudly off the windshield glass through the open side window, transforming it into a held-together network of cracks, raising calls of alarm and surprise. In the midst of it, Sherlock casually turned and strolled back to the car. "The deed will be done when the officer arrives."
"Well now, I didn't catch much, let's see what that little blip of motion got up to..." Nick said.
It wasn't long before a marked ZPD cruiser went around the corner to the area with the other car. Loud voices lacking in detail emerged, along with the eventual crackling of a taser. Some time not long after that a city wrecker lumbered along to the same location. It drove off, towing the vehicle, followed by the two horned figures in the back of the cruiser.
"To cut anything short would be to admit how many and of what constitution his protective elements are," Sherlock said. "They will be quietly bailed out and all fines paid by the faceless dummy groups that are likely trying to bail and defend the cleaner."
"Even his lawyer is quiet. He said right from the start, expensive as his services are, he has no idea who hired him and he's not looking forward to it. No bail, that's a certainly. It's social and political suicide. I don't care how much prey may hate Happytown, letting a mass murderer go means you don't get on the ticket and your friends suddenly have a lot of things to do and really, really forgot to sent you an invite to something," Nick said. "Nice trick. Wish I could confirm you did it, what happened and that anything happened at all. Outside my range of vision. Guess I can't run you in."
"Nicholas... you and your ways..." Sherlock said with a smile tugging at his lips.
They set themselves up back where they had been, watching the original car and the entrance to the restaurant. It was quite the extended lunch, but the group eventually did come out, with Gnuston looking visibly miffed through the binoculars. They set off again, Nick and Sherlock once more trailing a safe distance behind them. They were once more winding their way through the city, seemingly going nowhere, perhaps trying to shake potential tails after the loss of their security vehicle.
They eventually made it to one of the older parts of the district, though one that was held up as a quaint historical area, not a trash bin like Happytown. In there could be found old burying grounds, from back when the city-state still allowed for mass private burial in certain areas. Some old cemeteries still had the ability to be used by very old and wealthy families, and municipal burial grounds were the location of indigent burials and the interment of cremains in memorial wall niches. Mostly, the old cemeteries were used by photographers as backdrops when they needed a visual metaphor that was only slightly cliché, for dark-toned singers like Candide to have small pop-up concerts and source album covers, and for grave hunters to find the resting places of very old and important artists, writers, ancestors and other such things.
Nick had to give a wider and wider berth to the car ahead of them. Casually going along thoroughfares was one thing, but the old areas weren't inconspicuous. "We're gonna be lucky if we even see what's going on."
"My venerable master Bajja helped me in special techniques that allowed me to control my focus," Sherlock said, peering hard through the binoculars. "We are far enough that they cannot see me looking through this." He clicked on the recorder again and leaned forward a little. "The subject has come to the Orchard of Bone burying ground and entered the location. From this vantage point I can see him carrying a bouquet of flowers and placing it by one of the mausoleum entrances. He has... made no osculation to the tomb. He set the flowers down and has left."
"Let's keep the party rolling," Nick said, starting the engine as the other car drove off.
"No... this means something. In all the research I never heard about any death other than common deaths that would warrant a visitation," Sherlock said, opening the door and forcing Nick to stop as they passed the cemetery entrance.
"Hey! We'll lose him! Hey!" Nick called out.
Sherlock was already dashing to the small structure of dark granite. It was weathered but at least mostly clean. Likely a private firm was tasked with the minimum level of maintenance. The bouquet sat at the entrance to the tomb, a mix of popular eating flowers and salad greens. What interested him was the name on the tomb. It said GNUSTON in huge letters on a brass plaque, but also had a list of others that were within. Names he had seen. And one that, to that point, he had not. Rose. Rose Gnuston. Beloved Wife and Mother.
After taking copious notes and looking over the scene Sherlock walked back to the car slowly, contemplatively. He took a seat, lost in thought, staring at the dash. "If your mother were to die, in any circumstance, and you loved her as I know you do, would you make much of it?"
"Whew, coming hard and pointed there," Nick said with a shake of his head. "You know it. I'd actually be down to the Convoking chamber yapping high and loud to the moon and everything else. I'd take time off. I'd probably do the same for mama Bonnie. She accepted me and I can't thank her enough."
"There were many names engraved on their own metal plates. But one name was oddly absent from my research. I cannot confirm anything, and cannot know he was there for her. But it becomes quite significant from its absence. Rose Gnuston. Beloved wife and mother. Beloved, is it? I scraped my hooves raw digging into this monster's life. I am certain I saw mention of this mother. But never anything big. And her death... I never even saw a glance at it. That is most mysterious of all."
"Like, the obits?" Nick asked.
"I was in that newspaper archive for a long while. I saw his father's death. Now I must wonder..." Sherlock mused.
Nick was already on his phone. "Benji? Look, you're by the book and all but just do this one thing. Talk to the chief, ask him to off-the-books something. He'd never tell his favorite brother-in-law no. This is super important. Say it's for our friend from Happytown." With a concluding nod at the response he turned to Sherlock. "Best I can do. Now, I can't get you that much. You'll have someone over your shoulder but he's a good guy. You will be able to look into exactly one thing. You need to see about Rose Gnuston's death as part of... you make up something. He'll buy it. But just one thing. You're out once you find it, so get ready for that. He'll be super nice about it, but he's really good at his job and keeps his position for a reason. Just be aware."
"Understood, Nicholas. I grasp your meaning well," Sherlock said, nodding slowly.
Only a while later on, Sherlock had been led down to the archives by Benjamin Clawhauser, all smiles and cheerful small talk that was genuinely interested in everything Sherlock was working on. "Now these are just official ZPD archives. There's more in the big archives but that's a little more tricky to get at. I'm so sorry, I know you're just trying to help out everybody but a lot of the rules are really strict."
"I understand this very well. I only need to know how she died, as his devotion to her seemed... odd. He brought a bouquet, with no ceremony, and did so after a lunch out, nothing special, perhaps. Was it the anniversary? Normal newspapers are silent," Sherlock said.
"Mysterious mysteries..." Benjamin said with a little excited tremble in his voice. "I'm not exactly cut out for that kind of thing, I get a little winded doing all the legwork. But I like where I am right now. Folks tell me I'm good at it."
"Nicholas thinks much of you, he trusts you implicitly," Sherlock said, scanning over the various filing cabinets and boxes on shelves that surrounded him.
"Aw, that Nick! And Judy too. They're really so sweet, and a really cute couple. Oh! Don't tell them I said that. I don't think I can call bunnies cute yet," Benjamin said, eyes darting around.
"I will be silent on the matter," Sherlock said, finally locating what he wanted. A yellowed cardboard box with Rose's name on it. He pulled it down and dug through the various folders within. Mugshots, timetables, drawings of relative positions of items and figures. And the autopsy report summary, though not the full report. Multiple instances of blunt force trauma resulting in numerous broken bones along with stab wounds, some consistent with claws. Died of exsanguination due to the stabs, with an aggravating factor of the serious beating rendering her unconscious and unable to seek aid. The conclusions drawn were that it was a robbery. The victim, Rose Gnustion, had been in the vicinity of Happytown when she was, according to reports, accosted by, and robbed by, several large, predatory figures. Note: No details were given of the culprits nor the witnesses. When pressed, the ones reporting demanded their names be left off and that no further questions be asked regarding the source of details. As the report is consistent with activity in and around Happytown, the matter is to be considered closed. "Fascinating..."
"Get what you need? We gotta wrap it up then," Benjamin said, chirping happily and strolling up to Sherlock cheerily and with determination.
Sherlock stared hard at all the materials she could see, before he slipped the lid back on and pushed the box into place. As he walked out with Benjamin he started furiously scribbling in his notebook, casting his honed memory back to all the pieces of evidence. "Thank you, Officer Clawhauser. Convey my thanks as well to the chief. From here, I will begin to break down why this was hidden. It explains his animus, but not his silence. He should be saying more, not less. The silence screams. And I must listen..."