Summary:

Lance collapses, and his roommate calls 911 in a panic. Judy and Carlos race to the hospital, but when they get there they have to contend with bad news. Later, Carlos drops Judy at her place, and she is forced to make some decisions. The cop arrive to investigate the going's on, and they come to their own conclusions. Eventually, Judy is left with no choice at all but to face the call of destiny.

Notes:

This is it, the last chapter for Judy on the West Coast.

Flashback: Lance's Apartment in Angels City

Rudy woke with a start. He rubbed his bleary eyes with his paws as he swung his legs out of the bed and sat on the edge. Damn it , he groused, I just got to sleep. I gotta sleep before I go back on shift! I'm so gonna yell at that stupid rhino! The fuck he think he's doing, banging around and practicing take downs in the apartment ?

He sighed and reached to the back pack on the floor by his bed, pulling it up into his lap. Unzipping it, he dug around the various bottles and packages lying in it's bottom. He pulled out a large plastic can with a few pills rattling around it, and looked at the label. Damn fucking Tramadol. This shit just ain't fucking worth it! He had thought that maybe if he took a couple of pills at once that they might work like the oxycodone he normally liked to fly on, but instead of making him feel floaty they just gave him really horrible hallucinations that kept him up all night.

He stood up and walked in through the door to the bathroom that he shared with Lance. He opened the cabinet and put the bottle back on the shelf. Lance will never miss the few pills I took last night , he thought to himself. He turned and walked back out the hall door, and almost tripped over Lance's dark form.

SHIT! He exclaimed to himself. He looked down in momentary terror. Had Lance heard him in the bathroom cabinet? He looked down at the still from, and realized that Lance was too quiet. He reached down and shook Lance's shoulder. "Lance, buddy? You Ok?"

There was no response.

"Oh Crap!" Rudolf bolted into his room to grab his phone. He quickly called the emergency services, and reported that his roommate had collapsed in the hall, and he couldn't wake him. After passing on Lance's physical description and their address, he waited on the phone while the dispatcher called for large mammal fire rescue.

He knelt by Lance as he waited, and checked to see if his roommate was still breathing. As he felt down around Lance's large horn for his nose, his questing hoof found a long cylinder which he picked up. What's this? he asked himself. He tried to read the words on the label, but couldn't see in the dark hallway, so he took it into his bedroom doorway to read.

Etorphine? He read, That sounds interesting… There was a pounding on the door, and he quickly looked up. Dropping the rod into his backpack on his bed, he trotted out to the front door to let the newly arrived paramedics in.

Judy burst through the sliding automatic doors leading to the Emergency room, and stood with her chest heaving as her wild eyes darted about, looking for what she did not know. Carlos jogged in after her, and with just a touch to her shoulder in comfort as he passed her, he headed over to the admissions desk. He inquired about Lance, and was told to wait while they paged the resident. He walked back to Judy, who was standing in the middle of the tile floor, rooted in the same spot where she had screeched to a halt after she had arrived. He gently tried to steer her toward the waiting couches, but she refused to budge, her eyes casting about and her ears swiveling as she tried to make sense of the confusing environment. Smell was useless, as the myriad of mammal scents and the stench of disinfectants combined to confuse her nose.

Carlos was standing at her side attempting to comfort her, when he heard large male hippo walk out of the ER. He looked up in time to see the doctor, dressed in green scrubs, pause at the reception desk for a moment before turning and walking their way. He stopped for a moment, and with that strange expression on his face only doctors could manage, he slowly knelt next to them. It was that mix of half a smile and half a frown that warned Carlos what was coming, and he turned his head up to see.

The Doctor gently asked them, "I'm Doctor Kiboko. Are you here for the male rhino who just came in?"

"Yes!" Carlos exclaimed, as Judy simultaneously asked, "Where's Lance? Is he okay?"

Momentary confused, the doctor pointed to the two of them, "I'm sorry, you are?"

"Carlos Diego, I'm a co-worker with Lance at the gym where he coaches." He explained to Dr Kiboko, "And this here is J.J..."

Judy burst into his introduction, half shouting and half sobbing, "Lance is my boyfriend! What happened to him?!" She demanded to know.

The doctor wasn't sure he believed that, but he wasn't one to judge. He let out a breath and hung his head as he reveled, "I'm sorry, but he passed away, en route to the ER. We were unable to revive him when he arrived."

"No… Nonononono…" Judy started to sob. Carlos turned her head into his torso and held her tight as she started to shake and bawl. He turned his muzzle down to her ears, and murmured quietly as he tried to comfort her. After a few moments, his own eyes stinging with withheld tears, he looked back at the larger mammal's concerned face. "Can we see him, please?" He asked.

The hippo nodded, and lead them back to the private room where they had moved Lance's gurney. The bison nurse stood quietly in the background, having cleaned up Lance, making notes on a large clipboard. She looked up as they arrived, and with a nod from the doctor, she slipped out.

Judy, with just a slight shudder though her slender frame, pulled away from the wolf, and walked to the gurney. Placing a paw on the frame, she started to climb until she reached the pad and pulled herself up next to Lance's body. Tears dripping down her cheeks, she slowly walked up to his head, her paw sliding along his arm until she reached his head. Standing on her tip-toes, she reached up to his muzzle and kissed his cheek tenderly, before cuddling down to next to his face as her tears poured out without restraint.

Carlos had seen death many times in his life, visited upon loved ones and friends, but he was at a loss as to how he was going to comfort her now. But he could ask the doc what had happened. He placed a paw on the leg of the waiting physician, and jerked his head out the door when the hippo looked down at him. They quietly made their way out to the hallway. The hippo quietly sat at the nurses station, and gestured for Carlos to take a seat across from him.

Carlos jerked his head back at the room, "How'd he die, Doc?"

Dr Kiboko shook his head, "We don't precisely know yet, but we do believe drugs may have been a factor."

Carlos sat up straight and waved his paws in denial as he exclaimed, "No Fucking Way! Lance wasn't no doper! He never did drugs! He was clean!"

The doctor sat back with a sigh, his ears twitching, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a large clear bag. Inside of it was a crushed white cardboard box. He held it up for Carlos to examine, "Lance had this in his paw when he arrived."

Carlos leaned in, trying to read the mangled text on the label, "What the hell is Etorphine? That some kinda steroid or something?"

In Lance's room, Judy's ears had perked up when they heard Carlos loudly object to the idea that Lance had used drugs. So when Carlos had asked what Etorphine was, she stopped mid sob and strained to make out the rest of the conversation they were having in the hallway.

At the nursing station Doctor Kiboko explained, "No, it's not a steroid. It's a very powerful sedative that's only used by medical professionals, as it's a Schedule One drug. It's not available by prescription under any circumstances. Can you think of any reason he might have it or been using it?"

Carlos blinked as he sat back, shocked as he tried to think, "No… He gets migraines, and he takes some Tramadol for that sometimes, but nothing stronger."

Judy's breath froze in her throat, her grief momentarily forgotten, as she listened in growing horror. What had she given Lance?!

Doctor Kiboko nodded and continued, "This particular box is for an emergency auto-injector that's expired recently, and clearly wasn't disposed of properly. Being that this drug isn't available to resale, I have to suspect it had been stolen." Carlos's face fell as the hippo continued, "Because of it's potency and legal status, I have to notify law enforcement of what we found, and they will want to conduct an investigation." Carlos only nodded mutely, before he slipped from the chair and padded slowly back Lance's room.

Judy's ears latched on to key phrases that whirled through her mind, Schedule One… Stolen… Investigation… Paralysis gripped her, as terror vied with her grief for control of her shattered emotions. Drugs were a factor… Does this mean they think he overdosed? Oh dammit, Lance? What did I give you?

Carlos reached up over the three foot high gurney and slid his paws under the still quiet bunny, "Come'on, J.J. This ain't no place for us to be now. The fuzz is coming, and I gotta warn the other gym rats that shit's coming down the pipe." He gathered her into his arms, and slid her head to his shoulder. She gripped her paws around his neck and buried her nose in his fur, the only sound she made was a small hiccuping noise. He carried her out off the room, and out of the ER.

Carlos stood on the side of the ring as he addressed the assemble trainees and coaches, telling them about Lance's death. Judy stood below him, numb to the world and deaf to his words. Her mind was tumbling, stuck in a loop of grief and guilt, convinced that in her attempt to help the large male, she had actually harmed him. Now he was dead, and she didn't know how to respond to the sudden loss.

It wasn't like when Sky had left. She had ample warning then, and they had talked about it before hand, so she had some time to prepare emotionally. But now she had nothing. Nothing but blood on her paws and a rhino shaped hole in her life. She kept staring at her paws, looking for answers to a problem that had no solution.

Carlos had finished speaking, and the other mammals had stepped forward to quietly express their condolences to the little rabbit before breaking away into smaller groups to talk among themselves. Judy's ears tracked the conversations, almost of their own volition, as her mind was to turbulent to concentrate on the streams of whispered voices. They tracked each voice, and her subconscious categorized each voice to a face and name before moving on to the next. But instead of drawing to stillness after identifying every mammal there, they started to twitch violently left and right, searching, seeking, for a missing voice.

Eventually the twitching of her own ears sidetrack Judy's conscious mind from her grief, and embarrassed at the expression of fitful nervousness she was projecting, she reached up and grabbed them. She pulled them down and held them to her chest, and with a deep breath and sigh, she looked back up to see if any other mammal had noticed. But as she looked around at the assembled fighters and coaches, she noticed very particular one missing. "Where's Benny?" She asked to no mammal in particular.

One of the junior trainees, a bison female, turned to her and responded, "He left about a half an hour ago, before you two got here, after he got a call. He said he had some place to go or something, and he just took off. He didn't shower or anything; just grabbed his bag and flew out the door."

Judy frowned. That was weird , she thought, Benny always trains till the early afternoon before he goes on shift at the hospital. Why did he take off early? What was so important that he had to leave?

A horrible thought intruded into her consciousness, giving voice to a growing suspicion. Wait! Wait a minute! Thirty minutes ago we were talking to the doc about Lance possibly overdosing! Did Benny get a heads up from some inside mammal at the hospital that Lance had died?

Her thoughts grew darker, Did he know that the injector he gave me was hot? Did he do that on purpose? Why? Why would he do that? Realization dawned on her. Lance was tying to stage a comeback, and the other gym coaches knew this. He was an experience fighter with a good record, but Benny was an unknown with the rings. He wouldn't have the audience draw that Lance could bring, and that meant lower prize monies. The gym would have moved their sponsorship from Benny over to Lance, and the hippo would have wait yet another season before he could fight.

Filled with dread, she realized that maybe the young hippo hadn't been willing to wait after all.

Doctor Ukumari, a medical examiner from the Angel City Coroner's office, pushed through the ER entrance door where she was met by the resident, who guided her to the room where Lance lay. "What do we have here?" She asked the hippo.

"Possible OD." Doctor Kiboko told her. " Etorphine, perhaps. We haven't done any blood work, since the patient arrived at the hospital already deceased, and we were unable to resuscitate him." He pulled the bag out of his pocket and handed it across the bed to her. She held the bag and read the label.

"Huh…" She grunted, "2 milligrams isn't much, not for a mammal his size."

"You think so too?" Kiboko asked. "ACFR issues it to their paramedics, but it's rarely used. I don't have any personal experience with it, but I did do a brief literature search and while that dosage can be lethal for a smaller mammal, I don't believe it should have killed him. But I was wondering if you knew if there were any drug combinations with Etorphine that could have had adverse reactions. He was apparently taking Tramadol for migraines."

"No, it just have made him woozy. Even adding in the normal dosage of Tramadol for migraines shouldn't have been enough to lethally depress his breathing or heart-rate. He could have had an allergic reaction to the injection propellant, though. Hum… Did you find any injection bruising?" She asked him.

Kiboko shook his head, "No, but I wasn't through about it, I must admit. How bad does the bruising get?"

She pulled the sheet back and examined his legs, "You really have to ram the injector down to get it to fire – it's a safety feature to prevent accidental discharge. Tends to leave a big bruise, even on rhino hide." She moved to the other side of the table, "Huh, I don't see any bruising in the normal spots. Did the paramedics bring in the injector?"

He shook his head, "No, they didn't have it. They said they couldn't see it anywhere around his body when I asked them about it. The victim's roommate that called 911 in might have picked it up if he didn't know what it was."

She moved back up to his head, and opened the right eye, and then the left eye. "The left pupil is blown out, but the right pupil is normal." She stood back and looked at the hippo, "Migraines, you said?" He nodded. "Huh… I don't see any bruising, and they didn't recover the used injector." She pointed at Lance's still form, "Can we get a CAT scan on the head?"

The hippo raised an eyebrow, having figured out what she was getting at, "You thinking some kind of head trauma, maybe?"

"Yeah, could you please check?" She nodded as she pulled out her phone and dialed a number, "Hey, this Doctor Ukumari with the ME department. Could you put me through to Dispatch, please?"

Judy stood quietly on the sidewalk in front of her warren, lost in thought, right where Carlos had left her when he dropped her off at the curb. She hadn't even watched him drive off in his classic Cobra. She just stood there, in the same pink dress she had worn to the clinic, and then to her photo shoot. She stared at the dirty concrete exterior of the small mammal apartment complex called Sunny Burrows, noticing the new graffiti sprayed on the side. Frowning, she watched as the local supervisor walked back and forth, taking photos of it with his cellphone.

Damn it… He'll probably increase the fees this month to clean up that fucking paint, and then pocket the increases, the dirty rat. And he was dirty, a filthy degenerate Northern Rat, always leering at her when she came in to her apartment to pick up a change of clothes. She never even slept here anymore, being that she'd rather hang out with Lance at his place where it was safer.

Not anymore, though. Lance was dead, and she had nothing but guilt upon her paws to remember him with. She needed to get dressed, and figure out what she was going to do now. Arms crossed, her face adorned with a scowl, she slowly stumbled toward the warren entrance. Walking into the dim four foot high tunnel, really just a cheap culvert drain pipe plastered over with whitewash, she walked up the stairs at the back to the third floor. She walked to her apartment door and punched in the electronic code into the pad on the side to open it.

She let the round door slid shut behind her as she made her way to her shower. Shucking her dress like a used broken condom, she stepped into the steaming shower to wash the smell of death off of her fur.

After an indeterminate time, the hot water finally ran out, and she was left with cold water coursing through her fur. It was the shivering that finally set her off, and she started to sob in the stall. Stabbing at the controls, she finally got the water to shut off, before she collapsed in the corner, her chest heaving as she poured out her grief.

Once more, she had been left behind. Left behind to pick up the pieces of her broken existence. She slowly beat her head back against the tile on the stall wall in time with her ragged breathing.

Eventually, that pain broke through her downward depressive spiral. Damn it, Judy. Pull it together. He's dead, and you can't do anything about it. Get it together, you dumb bunny.

She took a deep breath, and considered her options. The doctor had said that there was going to be an investigation, and while that might suck for Lance if he was alive, he's not. I am . Could it boomerang around on her? Could they come after her? I could try to explain to them that Benny had given me the injector. Except… There was no other mammal there that saw that exchange. Just me and the fucking hippo. And weren't any security cameras in the lockers for privacy reasons, so I couldn't rely on that footage.

It was going to be his word against hers on how she obtained that injector. An EMT with no criminal record versus the porn star with the fake identity. And once they dug past that layer, what will they find? A ex-mental patient, a thief and a murder, with a known taste for violent behavior? Yeah… Who are they going to believe, Ms. Hopps?

So what do we, hum? Lawyer up and try to fight it, or do we run?

She didn't want to run. She had it good here, her recent bout with STDs none withstanding. She wanted to be there when they buried Lance, be there with all of his friends, because they were her friends too.

She stood up shakily and exited the shower, taking a towel from the rack. She dried her fur as she walked to her dresser, sorting through her pants. She pullout a pair of black yoga pants, and slide them on over her damp fur.

Be honest, Judy. Just how far are they gonna look, once they find you? You know just how lazy and prejudiced the local cops can be. They're gonna lock you down and throw the book at you, just to save themselves the paperwork of doing a real investigation.

She stood with her paws on her dresser. She needed to think, and time to think. She rooted through the drawer, looking for a matching top, when movement outside the window caught her eye. She reached out with a paw, and slide the curtains aside to peek out.

SHIT! She saw two ACPD officers getting out of a police cruiser that was pulled up in front of the warren. Two cheetahs. Fast, sleek, and more then capable of catching her. They ambled up to the damn rat and started talking to him. He lifted his paw and pointed up at her window, and they lifted their yellow piercing gaze to follow. She jumped back from the curtains.

SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! She knew they would be coming, eventually. She just didn't think that they would come so soon! She needed more time! She hurriedly pulled the black running top on over her torso, and grabbed her wallet, phone and keys from the desk next to the door. She bolted out the door and ran for the back stairs. She had to get away!

The two officers stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the drab exterior of the warren, splashed across it's gray surface with obscene graffiti. The rat was carrying on like the taggers had defaced the Moaning Lisa or something. The officers weren't really interested in that line of reasoning, as they were more concerned that it might indicate new gang activity moving into the area.

Officer Duma noted movement in the corner of his eye, and moved his head fractionally to the side. He spotted a black clad rabbit turn the corner of the building and disappear down the street. Sargeant Mafdet noticed his change in stance and asked, "You see something?"

He shook his head and replied, "Just a black rabbit out for a run."

Sargeant Mafdet nodded, "Yeah, they do that. A bit hot today for that though." She turned back to the rat at his feet, "So, you said you had security video of the mammals who did this last night?"

The rat nodded earnestly, "Yah, Yah. I show you!" He waved them toward the entrance way, and they ambled after him while Judy ran down the side street like the very demons of hell chased her.

Officer Duma slipped the rat's video data USB stick into his pocket as he slid back into the cruiser's passenger seat. Sargent Mafdet was listening to the radio, her head cocked and ears perked. He asked here, "What's up?" She held up her paw.

Crackle… "Any available units in North-Hollyvale, please respond."

She held the radio mike to her lips and barked, "15A48, Dispatch. Go ahead."

"15A48, ME's office is requesting assistance in the mysterious death of a large male rhino. They want the victim's apartment secured and his roommate held for questioning concerning a missing Class 1 auto-injector. Narcotics and CSU are being dispatched to assist, they're 15 minutes out. Address and case info dispatched via ACPDnet, attention your unit."

Duma opened the dash computer, and pulled up the email. He pointed to the address on the screen, "That's like 4 minutes away."

Mafdet spoke into the mike, "Dispatch, 15A48, Code 1. We'll be there in four."

"Copy, 15A48."

She deftly spun the wheel, and without even a puff of smoke from the tires, she had the cruiser spun around and headed back down the street. She quick maneuvered the lithe beast to their destination, and parked it at the curbside in front of Lance's apartment. The two officers hurried into the building, and stopped at his door. Officer Duma reached up to knock on the door to announce their presence, but as soon as his knuckles struck the wood, the oversized door swung in a few inches.

They both stepped back, alert for a possibly dangerous situation. Duma smelled it first, "What's that? Urine?"

Mefdet sniffed the air, "And blood..."

Both officers quickly drew their Seburo sidearms, and performed a tactical entry into the apartment. They rapidly swept through the hallway, clearing the living room and kitchen first, before moving down to the bedrooms. That's where they discovered Rudy, laying in a pool of blood in the middle of the bathroom floor. Mefdet turned to Duma, "Call it in." He nodded and stepped back while she quickly scanned the remaining rooms to make sure that they were alone.

He leaned his head over and spoke into his mike, "Dispatch, this is 15A48. We've secured the scene. Roommate is deceased, looks like he collapsed and hit his head on the bathroom sink. His eyes are open and glassy and there is blood emanating from his nose and mouth. There is also a large cylinder gripped in his paw, and it appear to be stuck to his leg. That may be the missing injector that the ME is looking for."

The radio crackled and the ME quickly broke in to the call, "That's it, officer. Be warned: Do not touch the body or the injector, as any residual residue could be lethal to you. Let CSU handle that."

He acknowledged that order, "Yes ma'am." Yeah, there was no way in hell he was going to touch anything that could knock a moose to the floor. He stepped back down the hall to join his Sargeant waiting at the door to the apartment.

Judy walked along the Sir-Stores-Alot fence as the brilliant evening sun began to set over the blue Pacifica expanse. She passed the storage containers and moved down the line of parked campers stored in the back. She finally paused before a little truck with a camper shell on it's bed. She raised a paw and affectionately stroke the hood of Skye's Beast. Her beast, now, actually, since Skye had given it to her. One of two she owned. She had another Beast too, a bright red classic MG sports coupe, but it was in the shop with a busted transmission. She was sad that she had to leave it behind, but it was undoubtedly the car of an Angel City starlet and it was too easily recognized.

No, she had to leave Jessica Lapine the pornstar, and everything she owned, behind. She had abandoned her apartment, her sports car, ditched her iCarrot phone in the river, and emptied all of her safe deposit boxes that had been scattered in banks across the city. The money she had squirreled away in those boxes would have to last her until she would be able to assume a new identity someplace far away from here.

In the meantime, it was time to dust off her old Jessica Jumps personality, outdoor bunny and surfer extraordinaire. The surfboards she had stashed back in the camper shell would settle any questions, should she be discovered, as to what a bunny like her was doing camped out all alone on the coastal wilderness of the Big Sur. She knew also that a good long soak in the pounding salt water waves of the Big Sur should wash most of the black dye out of her fur, leaving her unrecognizable to any cop looking for the sexpot Jessica Lapine.

She pulled out her keys and unlocked the door. She threw the backpack full of cash onto the passenger floorboard, and slid her little bunny butt into the molded bucket seat behind the steering wheel. She reached forward and pressed the start button, and without even a cough the tuned machine roared to life. She grinned to herself as she listened to that roar dwindle into a soft purr as the turbo spun up. So many, many, pleasant memories were associated with that sound.

She sat back, and with a determined set to her muzzle she put the truck in gear and pulled out of the lot.

"Knock, Knock? Any police mammals here?" Doctor Ukumari stood at the thresh hold of Lance's apartment.

Officer Duma stuck his head out the door and tilted his face up, "You're the ME? I thought I recognized the voice."

"Yeah," She held out her ACME badge for him to examine. He swung the door back and gestured her in.

She stepped in, and glanced around, concern on her face, "Where's CSU?"

Officer Duma looked up at her, "Weren't they supposed to be coming with you?"

She shook her head, "No, they where supposed to beat me here."

Sargeant Mefdet stepped out of the kitchen, "They haven't arrived yet." She frowned before gesturing to Duma, "Show her the body, and I'll call in and see where CSU is. Hopefully not at the donut shop."

Duma nodded, and waggled a claw at the ME, "This way." As they walked down the hall, she pulled out a pair of blue gloves and slid them over her bear paws. He pointed to the moose laying on the floor.

She stopped, and careful not to step in the blood, she bent over Rudy's body, feeling for a pulse. There was none. She reached down and tapped the cylinder, but it was stuck in place. "Yeah, he's dead. Looks like he lost voluntary muscle control just after he fired the injector into his leg, and hit his head on the way down. His heart didn't stop right way, probably pumped for a minute or so more on automatic before it failed too. That's where all the blood came from. Damn it." She stood back up, and stepped back into the hall.

While she was looking at the body, Duma had stepped into the adjoining bedroom, and was examining the room. Sargeant Mefdet walked up to report, "Apparently there was a fuck up in communications with Dispatch or something. Both Narcotics and CSU are at the hospital right now."

"WHAT?" Ukumari exclaimed.

"Yeah, they just arrived there. Gonna be a few minutes before they pack back up and get over here."

"Oh, for the love of Pete!" The speckled bear groaned.

"Uh… Doc?" Duma turned to look at them, "There's a bunch of pills here in this bag, but I don't recognize the names on the labels."

"Really?" She stepped over to the bed and nudged him to the side, "You got gloves on?" She asked him.

He held up his own blue clad paws and wiggled the fingers.

She nodded, "Good. Who knows what this guy was doing." She started to rummage through the bag, leaving the bottles and cans in place and only turning them enough to read the labels. "Telazol, Acepromazine, Dormosedan… All powerful mammal sedatives. Ooo he's been a busy boy. These are all from different hospitals… How did he get them all?" She closed the main flap and opened up a side pocket. Reaching in, she pulled out a lanyard with assorted id tags hanging from them. "Ooh Ho! What do we have here? Fake hospital Ids? All with the moose's face on them? All different names?"

Sargeant Mefdet walked up to examine them, "They look good, probably good enough to get him in past security."

Ukumari's phone began to buzz, so she handed to the IDs to Duma to examine while she answered the phone. "Hello? Huh? ... Ohh, good, yes. ... That was fast. What did you see? ... Well, yeah, I can see that being fatal... Of course I won't know until I get in there, but yeah I would have to agree. … Yes, Yes, thank you, Doctor." She hung up the phone and turned to the two officers.

"That was the resident at the hospital who first examined the victim with me. He just took a CAT scan of the skull, and confirmed what I suspected. He found a massive amount of blood on the brain, and believed that the rhino may have suffered a fatal aneurysm, either because a prior condition exacerbated by stress, or brought about by blunt force trauma."

Mefdet scowled, "The rhino had the injector box in his paw. Maybe he found out about the drugs and the fake ids, and confronted his roommate? They had an altercation, and in the process the rhino got struck and collapsed? And the moose committed suicide after he found out that he killed his roommate?"

Duma shrugged and agreed, "Sounds plausible…"

Ukumari held up her paw with a snort, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. CSU will be here soon as will Narcotics; we'll let them establish a timeline and motives. In the mean time, I have two bodies that have to be examined, and I need you two's to help with that." She turned to the Sargeant, "Could you please run out to my van and bring in my satchel? It's on the passenger seat, and the keys are in my left coat pocket here. I don't want to chance passing anything to you from my gloves." She held up her paws and bent her knees to allow the shorter cheetah to reach in and pull out the keys.

"Yes, ma'am." She trotted out.

Duma looked up at her, "Now what?"

The larger bear smiled down at him, "Now comes the fun part! Come with me!"

Later that week, almost 400 miles away from Angels City, Judy sat at the bar at the Misty Visions nightclub, nursing her beer. She stared bleakly at the mirror across from her, at the bedraggled gray and white rabbit that stared back at her, hoping for answers to what the hell she was going to do now.

The old aardvark that had done her previous papers was no longer in town, and she had no idea where he had gone. He was probably dead, she thought morosely. She needed a brand new identity, since Jessica Lapine was probably wanted by the police, and Jessica Jumps couldn't get a real job anymore except at shady strip clubs, and never mind her real identity as Judy Hopps, mental patient and ex-felon. She needed a better one than what she had right then if she was going to stay in the Golden state.

A dusty canine down at the end of the bar pointed to the TV and asked, "Hey, turn that up!" The lynx bartender picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV. A deep bass voice carried out across the bar.

"...ZPD Chief Bogo has assured me that his department is doing everything it can to find these missing mammals. I have absolute faith in his leadership during this crisis..."

The picture to the news desk where a snow leopard continued, "That was Mayor Lionheart just moments ago as he responded to questions about this evolving crisis on the steps of city hall. Our ZNN correspondent was able to meet with the Assistant Mayor earlier and she had this to say..."

The picture changed to a darkened office, the faint dark brown outlines banker box lining the background, and in the foreground the image of a prim little bespectacled ewe, dressed in a dark blue coat over a paisley blouse with a simple string of pearls adorning her neck.

"The safety of our citizens, whether they are predator or prey, is our primary concern here at City Hall. Now I know that there are those mammals that feel that we aren't doing enough to bring their missing loved ones home, but let me assure you that Mayor Lionheart is on top of the situation!"

Judy's gaze rose from her beer to the screen, and as she watched the interview, her muzzle began to twitch. Her lips moved silently for a moment, before finally a single name escaped her lips.

"Bellwether..."

Judy, caught up in sudden determination, whipped out a fiver to cover her beer and tip and jumped down from her stool, all but running out the club doors.

At the bar, the bartender muted the TV as it switched to commercials, and turned to the dusky brown canine, sitting at the far end of the bar counter, dressed in dusty jeans and an old plaid shirt.

"Another Fireball, old timer?" He asked holding up the whiskey bottle.

The coyote "Old timer? Now there's an ironic statement." He laughed, as he slid down out of his stool, "Ha ha… No, I've got things to do, cub. Places to go, mammals to see, destinies to fill. You know the drill." He put an old straw hat upon his brow, and with a wink he grinned in parting to the lynx and waltzed out of the club.

He stood on the curb outside the club for a moment, wrapped in the cool embrace of the evening fog, before reaching into his shirt and pulling out an old corn-cob pipe. He pulled a small bag of tobacco from his shirt pocket, and tamped a wad in the bowl, before returning the pouch to it's pocket. He scowled in concentration for a moment as he snapped his fingers, and a bright jet of flame danced from his thumb up into the bowl. He puffed contently for a minute before he turned to watch Judy get into her camper truck.

He took the pipe from his mouth, and raised it salute as she started the truck, and pulled it out of the parking lot. "Wiohinhpayata etunwan yo, Judy." He whispered softly as his form slowly began to fade into the mists, "Look to the east, Judy, look to the east..."