After quietly switching off its recording equipment, Nick entered Interview Room 3, the handles of two mugs clutched in his left paw. "Coffee?" he asked.

"Please," the older fox replied. Deemed cooperative, he sat uncuffed.

Nick set his mug in front of John and kept Judy's mug for himself. He took a sip and then set it down as he sat down. "Another officer will come by shortly to inform you of release details before your court appearance. My partner and I can no longer work on this case. Department policy." Nick gripped the edges of his badge with his right paw and undid the pin with his left. He dropped the gold shield into his left shirt pocket. "But I'm not here about the case, Dad."

John said nothing as twenty-seven years of pain and regret turned to tears and shame. He shut his eyes and rested his head in his paws, elbows on the table.

"Dad?" Nick stood up and walked over to the other side of the table. He stood to John's left and placed his right paw on his estranged father's back.

John lowered his head in his paws a little more. "When I realized that my son had arrested me," he said with a breaking voice, "I was hoping for your sake you wouldn't find out who I am. I guess it was being arrested for shooting off fireworks in the park on your fifth birthday, for which I was ultimately given a small fine, that revealed my true identity." After a few moments, he uncovered his face and wiped his eyes on a sleeve of his blue-checkered shirt before turning to his son. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice a bit more stable. "I was a weak mammal. Your mother deserved so much better, and so did you."

"What happened?"

"She never told you?"

"She always told me it was too painful to talk about."

"Well, she's right. It's still painful to think about." He took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. "I loved your mother, Nick. And I still do, no matter what she thinks of me. But I made the biggest mistake you can make when you love someone. I—" He again used a sleeve to dry his eyes. "She was nothing special. She came into the shop maybe three or four times, and we had some pleasant conversations. But then those conversations turned more intimate. The devil took the form of a vixen nine years younger than your mother, and I gave in to the temptation."

"You what!" Nick ripped his paw off his father's back. "How could you!"

"I've asked myself that every day since our first liaison. I'm no closer to an answer than I was then."

Nick shook his head in disgust. "How long did this go on?"

"We met twice a month for four months until she called it off the day before I was caught. She informed me of the breakup by slipping a note into my suit pocket, a note your mother found before I did. 'Dear John,' it read. 'Today was our final time together. I am leaving Zootopia for a quieter place to raise our son. Please don't search for me. Love, Cinza.' I never saw or heard from her again."

Nick's eyes widened a little. "A son?"

"I never knew she was pregnant. She was too early." John paused for a moment. "I think about him often too, Nick. God, I hope he turned out all right. Cinza and I did wrong, but he's still my son." He paused again. "And you're my son. Nick, from the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry that my stupidity caused you to grow up without a father. I'm sorry for all the pain and confusion you felt and may still feel. I'm sorry for everything. It's a lie that time heals all wounds; I can never be forgiven for hurting you or your mother. Just know that I never stopped loving either of you."

Silently, Nick looked at his father for a moment. His decades of reading other mammals told him that every word of regret was true. He hesitated for a second, but with a sigh, returned his right paw to John's back. "You did a horrible thing, Dad. You broke Mom's heart, and you just broke mine." With his left paw, he dried his own eyes with his tie. "But my heart breaks for you too. I forgive you."

John shook his head. "Nick, you can't forgive something like—"

Nick moved his paw to his father's shoulder. "Many mammals have hurt me in my life. Only two ever cared enough to apologize. It means more than you know."

"Thank you." John dried his eyes again and then stood up. "Officer Wilde, first fox in the Zootopia Police Department," he said as he touched Nick's nametag. "I am so proud of you. Seeing you make the world a better place, knowing you turned out all right, I could never be happier in being arrested." He reached out and hugged his son for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime. "No matter what happens to me now, it was worth it."

"Arrested," Nick said quietly as he returned his father's embrace. "Why did you do this, Dad? Why are you Frank Cunningham?"

"Because it saved my life." The foxes let go of each other after a moment and sat down again. "You see," John continued, "in a very short span of time, I lost everything. My wife. My son. My career since your mother was awarded the shop. Most of my savings went to her and to lawyers, so there was no trying to start up another tailoring business somewhere else. My home. Any sense of purpose or meaning in my life. Soon, I didn't even want to live anymore. My heart was broken, but it was still beating; one night, I tried to fix that problem."

"Oh, Dad."

John held up his right thumb. "I missed and hit a rib, which caused me to lose my grip on the knife handle and my thumb to slide halfway down the blade. The cut was deep, all the way to the bone; I never knew a thumb could bleed so much. And painful. It shocked me into realizing that what I had attempted was not the answer. I wrapped my thumb in a washcloth, tied a towel around my chest, and thought for a moment about whether I was going to call 911 or drive myself to the hospital. Then a third option came to me. I was a tailor. Why go to a hospital and have to explain my story when I have my own needles and thread? It wasn't the easiest thing using my left paw and my teeth to do what I would normally do mostly with my right, but I managed to sew my thumb closed using a version of the whip stitch. After sewing up my chest wound next, which was surprisingly less severe, I had unofficially become my first patient. Fast-forward about a year. I had been able to borrow some money to try to get back on my feet from an unsavory character known to me only as Formaldehyde Clyde. He was the boss of an acquaintance of an aardvark whose suit I had altered a few times. I had hoped that I'd be able to start paying back the money after finding a new job, but my job search was not successful. When I kept choosing to pay the rent rather than making payments to Formaldehyde Clyde, he didn't take it well. One night, a brick was thrown through my window. A week later, I was beaten by two of his henchmen. It doesn't take more than a few punches from a tiger and a few blows from the horn of a rhino to do a lot of damage. My body was largely spared, but my face was like a one-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle with two dozen pieces missing."

"And so you again stitched yourself back together," Nick said.

John nodded. "That's right. Only this time I did a lot more. There was so much damage that I was going to look different anyway, so I decided to change everything I could. I was no expert back then, of course, but with some crude cuts, cruder skin grafts and fat transfers, fabric dye, a fur brush, and an extremely high tolerance for pain, John Wilde disappeared forever. With a few possessions and all the cash I had left, I walked out of my apartment two nights later and traveled by taxi to Happytown, where I stayed in a flophouse and assumed my new identity as Ronald Loki, a welder out of work following an industrial accident. It explained my less than perfect appearance. He was one of six identities I assumed as I moved throughout Zootopia, continually adjusting my appearance as I studied books and medical journals to learn anatomy and surgical techniques. It was medical school without the professionalism but also without the cost or the time commitment. In just nine months, I had the appearance that I have today."

"That's ... impressive, Dad," Nick said. "But also scary. Very scary. There's a reason doctors spend years in school before being allowed to practice."

"I know. Truthfully, I never intended to have any patients other than myself. But I was still out of work, so when I learned that Meadowlands Hospital was looking for more reconstructive plastic surgeons, I took a shot by falsifying my credentials and references. Somehow, someway, everything checked out, I passed three rounds of interviews, and they gave me a white coat with the hospital's logo embroidered over the right chest and my name embroidered over the left—Dr. Frank Cunningham. My starting pay was two hundred dollars an hour."

"One hundred pawpsicles," Nick whispered quietly to himself.

"I'm sorry?"

Nick shook his head. "It's not important."

"My first patient was a six-year-old possum girl. She had burns on 30 percent of her body because her younger brother played with matches. He didn't make it out. She needed debridement and skin grafting. I was nervous, but I treated her tissues like the most delicate fabric I had ever altered. The surgery was a success, and I saw her eight more times over the next year to make improvements as she healed. She made me think that if I could do some good while being a fraud, was I entirely bad? After five years exclusively at the hospital, I started my own surgery center, focusing mainly on cosmetic surgery, though I still went to the hospital usually once a week. Tomorrow was going to be one of those days, but I'm sure right now my keycard is being deactivated by security."

"You were a hustler, but you were still a good mammal deep down."

"Yeah. I guess that's one way you could put it."

"It sounds a bit like me. I never intended to be a cop. I never thought about being anything after trying to join the Junior Ranger Scouts when I was eight, only for the other scouts to reject me the night of my initiation because, as a fox, I was considered untrustworthy. I decided then that I wouldn't try to be anything more than the shifty fox the world saw me as, and from when I was twelve until just two years ago, I was a small-time con-mammal. I never robbed banks and I never snatched purses from old ladies, but I straddled the line between unethically legal and technically illegal. In my last year before going straight, I resold deceptively acquired popsicles for a large profit, sold knockoff and misidentified goods, sold personalized Bibles that were supposedly ordered by late husbands to their recent widows, returned empty soda bottles to districts with higher bottle deposits, faked a fall at the supermarket to get free blueberry pies, and other such things. It wasn't until I was hustled by a rookie rabbit cop and had to help her on a case that I began to believe again that I could be something more. She saw the good in me, we learned from each other, and together we took down the mayor."

"'Crooked Dawn,'" John said with a chuckle. "The biggest political scandal in Zootopia since Waterbuckgate." He paused for a moment. "I don't know if I can pick my job, but if I end up making clothing, I might have to stitch her uniforms so they're a little too tight."

Nick laughed. And then quickly frowned as the reality of what his father had said set in. "I'm sorry."

John shook his head. "Don't be. If you didn't put the cuffs on me, someone else would have eventually. I brought this on myself."

"You didn't hear it from me, but maybe before your trial a new welding shop will open in Zootopia?"

John shook his head again. "I'm not going under my own knife again just to run from my problems."

Nick nodded. "Well, with the length of time you claimed to be a doctor and the amount of money involved, you could spend the rest of your life in prison. More likely, though, you'll get closer to a fifteen-year sentence. The good news is that with parole, you might be out in as little as half that."

"Seven and a half years," John said. "Looks like I'll miss the wedding."

"What wedding?"

"When Officer Hopps becomes the ZPD's second Officer Wilde."

Nick blushed. "Are we really that obvious?"

"Yup." The older fox smiled and pointed across the table. "Also, you're using her coffee mug."

Nick picked up the beverage that had cooled forty degrees since he had brought it into the room and took a sip. On the mug was the word Judy spelled out in carrots.