Hey Everyone!
I just want to quickly take the time to say that I'm sorry for the lack of updates the past few days... I just got busy with other things, but it matters not! I'm back!
Anyhow, this new chapter is a bit shorter than most others, but it does reveal some answers to those burning questions you guys have had... Along with opening up a few new questions, too! You're in for an insightful chapter, folks!
I hope you enjoy chapter 35 of When Instinct Falls!
Enjoy...
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." - Adolf Hitler
The end product of anything, that is success, does not come out of nowhere.
It's a result of something... Whether it be hours, days, or months of hard work and dedication.
Nick wasn't hoping for a miracle: Just enough to throw that bastard Jack Savage behind bars. The past few weeks hadn't been very fulfilling when it came to evidence against the titular rabbit businessman, but Nick was certain that this time around, he'd be able to get enough to convince Chief Bogo that Jack was guilty of his accusations after all.
The fox stared blankly at the computer monitor below him, his brain blocking out the sound of Dyvim's fingers as they typed away at the keyboard: The only thing that mattered was what was about to show up on that screen.
For the past few hours, he and Dyvim, along with nearly the rest of Sector-A, had been searching hard for anything suspicious in the company's database. Upon the discovery of the mysterious phantom-profit earlier that day, there still had yet to be any revelations that could link the stolen money to where it went. It was an aggravating process, but one that Nick took patiently and with ease: As he always said, he didn't want anyone to see that this situation was getting to him.
Now, Nick stood watching Dyvim as he put the finishing touches on the latest account check: Which consisted of scanning over an account's financial history and seeing if any of the numbers didn't add up. The fox figured that if the stolen money was transferred using their system, then they should be able to retrace exactly where the money went be seeing if any other accounts had any suspicious add-ons. It was a time-consuming and irritating process, but Nick tried not to let his discomfort show.
Clearing his throat before-hand, he took to questioning Dyvim on the state of this new account, which was labeled as Kendrick Lebough.
"So, anything look out of place on this guy's account?" The fox asked, patting the rabbit's shoulder in a sign of reassurance.
Dyvim shook his head and exited out of the account page before selecting another. The rabbit raised his paws and wiped at his eyes, turning around to face Nick as he did.
"Nothing... Natalia says that we've been through thousands of accounts, and yet not a single one has anything out of the ordinary..."
Nick looked down at his watch, which currently read as 7:35. He wondered what Judy was up to at the moment... She had previously claimed that she was going to do some over-time up at Jack's level, but why so late? He admitted that it bugged him, but decided not to linger on the thought any longer than he had to.
"Alright..." The fox sighed. "Next account, then... Let's sort through a few more, and if we don't find anything, we'll call it quits for now, okay buddy?"
The rabbit nodded at the notion of being able to head home for the night, and then went back to typing away at the computer's keyboard, soon selecting another account.
Interestingly enough, this one wasn't a single person, but appeared to be some sort of company, or small-business... It wasn't one that Nick had heard of before, though...
"Sahara-Square Sundries?" Nick said aloud, breaking the silence of the cubicle. "And may I ask who they are?"
Dyvim's long ears twitched at the previous statement: He took a moment to reply.
"Eh, not too sure... I would guess that they work with sundries... and are situated in the Sahara-Square."
"Gee, ya don't say?"
"Hey, I just read the numbers okay? Mr. Savage doesn't expect me to know squat about who the numbers correspond to!" Dyvim replied back, almost angrily.
The fox took that thought into consideration: Despite the fact that most of these office-worker grunts are the ones who work the bank's numbers, it seemed that few of them really knew who they were transacting to, apparently... A situation like that could have made it very easy for anyone to shift around a few million dollars, like what they were dealing with now.
Dyvim's voice derailed Nick's train of thought.
"Felix, Felix! Look at this!" He cried out excitedly. "Down here!" The rabbit pointed to a set of numbers at the bottom of the screen.
At first glance, they didn't appear any different than everything else that they'd come across for the past five hours, but after closer examination, it became apparent to the fox that something wasn't right with these ones: The total sum of the account's financial history didn't add up correctly to the rows of numbers that followed it. But perhaps most noticeable was the number-set in the corner of the screen that read: UNMARKED DEPOSIT.
The number that followed read as 37,875,421 dollars, with a transaction from the previous month that stood as eighteen million.
"Tell me Dyvim..." Nick began as he leaned down to Dyvim's height, eyes still trained on the screen.
"Would you expect a small-time seed warehouse to be making eighteen million big-ones practically overnight?"
The rabbit's mouth was hanging agape as he stared down the screen. Nick reached over and with a flick of his paw, closed the rabbit's jaws. Dyvim swallowed before responding with the bitter truth.
"I think we found where the money went, sir..."
One Hour Later...
Judy had just arrived back at her hotel room. The walk back had been one of silent solitude, with the only exception being her own tired thoughts and the whirls of the evening winds.
Her phone was dead, and she hadn't a clue of what the time was. The bunny also was unsure whether her husband was already at the hotel or not. He'd claimed that he was going to work until around seven, and now, it was almost nine, yet she was still in the dark about her dumb fox's whereabouts. It didn't worry her, but being the ever-so curious mammal that she was, it was just a fact that wouldn't stop pestering her.
Eventually, she managed to make it back to her hotel room, where she promptly plugged in her phone in an effort to get it recharged: She had a feeling that Nick had figured something out... Something important...
While she waited for her phone to reboot she took to changing out of her purple under-cover issued dress, choosing instead to equip her favorite outfit, which consisted of a blue-ish gray T-shirt and a pair of spandex leggings, of which clung tight around her waist. She collapsed onto the bed and decided to watch some television while waiting for her phone to charge. Turning on the small flat-screen TV monitor, she was at first met with nothing more than another black screen, as the TV too, needed to power on for a few seconds.
She lept of bed and skipped over to the tiny dining-room table, where she poured herself a small glass of water, which she quickly gulped down. As soon as she set the empty glass back onto the table-top, her ears shot up in detection as the television spewed it's first few words.
"-And It's no small matter, Peter... The ZPD has yet to release an official statement regarding the grisly murder of ex-assistant Mayor Dawn Bellwether, who was imprisoned roughly 4 years ago on accounts of attempted murder and political corruption-"
Judy slowly turned around eyed the TV, which now shined bright with the faces of news anchor Peter MooseBridge and his partner, the snow leopard Fabienne Growley.
"-And was recently, just under an hour ago, found dead; Her body floating 3 miles down the nearby river that borders the Zootopian Country Maximum Security Prison. Officials are still speculating on how the ex-assistant Mayor managed to escape the prison in the first place, only to be subject to the likes of this gruesome homicide..."
The bunny's mouth dropped.
"Bellwether was... Murdered?" She stifled.
Judy wasn't sure whether or not that was good news or bad news...
"The sheep's body was found dead at the scene, and recent reports from officials claim that she was approximately 4 hours postmortem. With that exception, the current state of the body has yet to be revealed by the ZPD. This case currently stands as the latest officially-documented murder, the last being the infamous Sleet-Street murder of nearly two-months ago, where the body of a ZPD-Investigator was discovered, the corpse covered in slash marks and drained of its blood. That case has since been officially concluded by the ZPD's own, officer Judy Hopps, who led the raid against the murderer's home in the Nocturnal-District.
Judy knew that the news was just using the information of her previous case as filler for the moment, since there wasn't anything to talk about as of yet involving Bellwether's death: But the bunny still listened with intent, also hoping that new information would come in soon regarding Bellwether.
The perpetrator behind the murder, identified as Vladzotz Fangpyre, was reported killed, his home burned to the ground in the resulting firefight. His body was never found. We'll be going on break here in just a few minutes, and when we return, join us as Chief Bogo of the ZPD gives an official report regarding the homicide of Dawn Bellwether.
Soon enough, the bunny detected a slight buzzing sound from a few feet away. Turning around, she saw her phone's screen light up as it's power was restored. She walked over to the mobile-device and tenderly picked it up, staring down at the screen in her paws. On it, there was a claim that she had received over two dozen unanswered texts and four missed calls.
Opening up the texting app, she noticed that most of the messages she had received were from various other ZPD officers, many of which were informing her about the Bellwether case, and a few even asking where she was. The remainder of the messages were from her husband, Nick, who claimed that he had managed to retrace where the stolen money had ended up, and the most recent text said that he was currently heading back to their apartment.
Nodding her head, she took a closer look at Nick's most recent text, and saw that it was sent almost twenty five minutes ago... He should be nearly here by now...
Walking over to the door, she opened it before sticking her head outside and looking down both sides of the hotel hall-way. On her left, she saw Nick trudging down the hall-way with his phone in hand, not exactly paying attention to where he was headed.
"Nick!" She called out, causing the fox to look up from his phone and eye her with his favorite grin. "You need to come in here and see this!"
He picked up his pace and soon entered their hotel room. Closing the door after him, Judy then ran over to the TV and pressed the rewind button, effectively causing the channel to wind back in time. Meanwhile, Nick had taken off the top layer of his suit and had taken to unbuttoning his under-shirt. After a few seconds of rewinding, Judy settled the TV on the same spot that she had listened to earlier, starting from where Peter Moosebridge announced Bellwether's death.
Judy took to watching Nick's face throughout the ordeal. He didn't say a single word the entire time, as he was thoroughly invested into the news program. When he'd finally gotten up to speed on everything, he turned to Judy with a blank look on his face.
"Smellwether... Murdered?" He asked in a bewildered tone, to which Judy simply nodded her head.
The fox suddenly burst into a fit of laughter, doubling over and placing his paws on his knees as he wheezed out his next few words.
"T-that's amazing!" He stifled. "About time that psychopath got what she deserved!"
After a few more seconds of wheezing, Nick glanced up and locked eyes with his wife, who was staring him down harshly.
"Uh, I mean... Oh, the mammality!" He cried out, placing one paw above his chest and another above his forehead.
Despite the apparent seriousness of the situation, Judy couldn't help but crack even the slightest of smiles at her husband's goofiness.
"Is that really necessary, dummy?" She asked with her paws placed on her hips.
"Oh, the horror!" Nick fanned his face and pretended to faint, falling over onto the nearby mattress.
Rolling her eyes and smiling, Judy paced over to Nick and tugged twice on his tail.
"You done yet?"
"I'll be done when the funeral is over." He muttered, earning himself a slightly harder yank against his tail, causing him to cringe and sit up quickly.
"Alright, alright, I'm done!" He claimed, stroking the fur on his tail.
"Good, because I need you to tell me all about what you've found out back at Sector-A, right?" Judy said.
"Oh, right! Yes, totally forgot about that! You'd think all this jazz about Smellwether gettin' diced would make a change of topic, eh? Glad you have your priorities, fluff-butt."
"Just tell me what you found out, you dumb fox."
"Gotcha, I gotcha. Okay... So we managed to find out where the stolen money was transferred to. Apparently, all eighteen million bucks got deposited into the account of some small-time business: A place called Sahara-Square Sundries."
Nick emphasized those last three words with finger quotations. He then stood up from the bed and walked over to his mate.
"Now, we sent a few emails to them, saying that some money had been unofficially deposited into their account, but they have yet to respond. So then we all called it a night, and I started walkin' home, and as I was walking back, I got to thinking... This account probably isn't even a company at all!"
"Then what does that make it?" The bunny interrupted.
"Well, I was doing some research on my phone, and there are these things called shell-corporations, which is basically a fake bank account set up by someone, where said someone deposits withdrawn money from other accounts, and then over-time, can then deposit the money from the fake account, to their own personal account, completely under the bank's noses! They're really hard to trace, but we managed to track this one down!"
"So you're saying that this, uh..." Judy gestured toward Nick's phone. "-Sahara-Square Sundries is a shell-corporation?"
"Bingo!" Nick said with a triumphant smirk as he shot the bunny with a finger gun.
"Yes, Nick, yes! You did it!" She shouted out loud and leaned over, grasping him in a hug. The fox wrapped his arms around the bunny and rubbed reassuringly at her back and shoulders, enticing a small groan of pleasure from her as he did.
"Now don't get too off-the-hook excited now, carrots. We still gotta track this shell-corporation down and find out just exactly who's behind all this; Both the person who deposited the money, and the person who received it... Well, assuming that they're not the same person..."
Judy gave him a quick peck of a kiss on the nose before responding.
"This is perfect, Nick! We need to tell Bogo as soon as possible!"
"And we will, Carrots... But not right now. I'm tired, and I'm sure that chief's got a lot of paper-work on his hoofs right now involving Smellwether's murder and whatnot."
The bunny nodded her head in agreement.
"Right... Perhaps in the morning..."
"Nah, I say afternoon... We've both got work with Jack in the morning, but we both get off at three-ish, so we can tell Bogo around then! Sound good?" Nick retorted.
"Oh, right." Judy muttered. "Yeah, it's fine by me..."
"Whaddya say we catch up on some shut-eye, eh Whiskers?" Nick inquired with a yawn.
"But it's only nine o' clock! Let's do something!" Judy said excitedly.
"Ah, I'm tired, fluff." The fox claimed. "Long day at work, and I've been lookin' forward to a long night of rest!"
He then promptly fell over and face-planted into the mattress. Judy giggled at his action before rolling her eyes and pulling off his button-up shirt, tossing it onto a nearby chair. Nick squirmed and scooted up to the pillows at the crown of the bed. Judy soon joined him, but not after stripping herself of all her own clothes and turning off the lights, darkening the room to near pitch-blackness.
The bunny couldn't see the fox very well, but she snuggled up close to him and wrapped her arms around his torso. She draped her right leg over his lower body and clutched him tighter before closing her eyes, listening to Nick's snores as he dozed off into well-earned sleep. Eventually, she too found refuge within her own dreams, and was soon fast-asleep against the form of her husband, whose gentle breaths soothed her into tranquil dormancy.
"Guh..."
The rabbit rolled off the couch and fell onto the floor, the contact of which instantly woke him from his daze.
Jack looked around his office, sitting up drearily and wiping the gunk from his eye-lids.
It was dark, and his prey-based eyes could only see so far, but he did manage to see the empty bottle of scotch across the table-top, standing upright and shining in the dim light of the moon, which beamed softly through the nearby windows. He leaned back and reclined against the legs of the coffee-table, sighing loudly as he stared at the empty bottle. He turned his head slightly to the right, catching sight of the stamped papers from his previously failed deal with Bugga-Burger.
The bold red letters of the word DENIED were about as impossible to miss as anything.
"Bloody buggers.. Denying my offer. They don't even know what they're missin' out on." He mumbled, wiping at his mouth with the fur on his wrist.
He sighed deeply, his ears lowering and his eye-lids closing. He almost drifted off into sleep once again, but soon rose to his feet, albeit unsteadily, and walked over to his desk. He traced his finger-tips along the wooden surface before letting his arm droop loose at his side. He trudged over to the nearby window, placing his paw upon it's glassy surface as he did. He eyed the tiny scratch marks that dotted the bottom of the frame.
Jack had failed the deal with Bugga-Burger. Miserably.
He knew that his most private associates weren't going to be happy with that... They were coming tomorrow evening, like they did every month...
If he didn't have what they demanded, he would be punished once again...
At that thought, Jack placed one of his paws against his back, rubbing tenderly at the gnashes that traced their way down his spine.
He continued to stare out at the night-time horizon of the Zootopian skyline; The many lights almost blinding to his hung-over and sensitive eyes. He continued to stare until his eyes began watering from the pain. Eventually, he growled and wiped away at his eyes, turning around and making his way back to the couches in the center of the room. When his eyes had readjusted to the dark, he noticed for the first time that his scotch-bottle wasn't where he had left it last night: He vaguely remembered collapsing onto the couch, bottle in hand, where he dropped it to the floor before passing out.
But now, it was sitting atop the table in the very center of his office. His clothes were placed nearby too; Neatly folded and smoothed out as if he'd never gotten drunk in the first place.
"Alaina... Did you do this?" He mumbled aloud as he flopped back onto the same couch that he had woken atop. He rubbed at the back of his neck before laying down and closing his eyes.
"Thank you."
Sleep soon came back to claim him, but with it, came horrid nightmares... Terrors of knives and claws, all finding their mark upon his own back.
Soon enough, the terror subsided, and his dreams enveloped him in a different reality: One where his wounds were tended by the gentle hands of his secretary, Alaina Ryder.
Jack smiled in his sleep, his nose twitching at the prospect of such a pleasant dream.
Before his conscious drifted into the deepest of depths, it gave him one last image to behold: A glistening black scorpion, rising from the desert sands of the Sahara-Square...
He shuddered once before at last drifting off into dreamless sleep, where his mind could plague him no more.
Hey Everyone!
I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter as much as I did! Feel free to leave a review telling me your thoughts on all the latest revelations, and maybe even the new questions, too! I'd adore knowing your thoughts about my work!
Alongside this, do please follow and favorite this story of mine: All are greatly appreciated! :D
Anyways, next chapter is coming your own soon (Hopefully sooner than what it took to get this chapter)! Stay tuned for chapter 36, everyone!
'Till next time...
Peace!