The wood speaks.
(Judy POV)
The rain is coming down hard as we pull up to a heavily overgrown warehouse with three massive redwood trees surrounding it.
I remember seeing the picture of this warehouse back in Waterwood's office, it hasn't changed much since the picture was taken.
I spot a black SUV underneath some smaller trees, and point to it. "It looks like he's already inside." I say.
"Well lets go meet him." Nick replies as he begins to drive up to, and park next to the SUV.
I get out of the car first, and quickly dart around stopping Nick just as he crawls out.
"I'm not comfortable with this." I say quickly.
"Carrots." Nick says crossing his arms. "I may not trust him, but I don't think he'll try to hurt us."
I look behind me through the rain to the door of the warehouse, being lit by a single light above it.
"No I don't think he will either." I reply. "It's that he told us to meet him here, with no reason given."
Nick then starts walking towards the door. "Well let's go in and see." He says. "And get out of this rain." I then dart to his side.
Nick opens the door, and I step through onto a concrete floor. I look up to the ceiling that's so far away, I can barely hear the rain pounding against it.
I then look to the wall on the far side of the warehouse, where some of the overgrowth has begun to creep in through the windows.
"Good afternoon." I hear Waterwood say happily, pulling my attention to him, standing next to a table with his paws behind his back a few meters from the door.
We start walking up towards him, and can see 4 guns on the table. 2 of them are Nick's size, and the other 2 are my size. Next to the guns are 3 clips for each gun.
The guns themselves are laid out so the 2 in Nick's size are on the left, and the 2 in my size are on the right.
On the other side of the table I can see square targets at 20, 30, 50 and 90 meters.
"I wanted to issue your weapons myself." Waterwood says as he follows us with his eyes.
We stop in front of him before Nick asks. "So you brought us here for target practice?" He then starts to examine the guns behind Waterwood.
"It's more like a test." Waterwood says bringing Nick's attention back to him. "To see how good you really are."
"Could you not have just issued us our weapons at the FBI building?" I ask, as I start to think back to my days at the Academy.
I must've tried 100 times before I got a passing grade, and even then just barely.
I know Nick won't think any less of me, but I still don't want him to see how bad of a shot I really am.
"This is also the last warehouse the weapons were at." Waterwood says bringing me out of my thoughts.
"They were here about a month ago, and after you pick out your firearm, you can look around."
Waterwood then steps back from the table, gesturing for us to begin.
"We went through this building from top to bottom." He continues. "But you may find something we missed."
Waterwood then turns and looks off into space. "That always sounded backwards to me." He says under his breath putting his right index finger horizontally under his bottom lip.
I think he's trying to put us at ease, but it's not working.
He then quickly puts his focus back on us. "Sorry." He says putting his paw back by his side. I look at the targets and ask. "So what do you want us to do?"
"Just pick up the gun that seems to fit you best." I look to the table, and we step towards it.
I stand in front of the smaller ones, and pick up the one on the left.
Nick picks up the same kind in his size. We load the corresponding clips into the guns, and pull back the slide.
"That's a G2." Waterwood says pulling our attention to him once more. "Take your time, and get a feel for the-"
"Yea yea we know how to use a gun." I hear Nick say in a annoyed tone cutting Waterwood off.
Waterwood raises his open paws towards us before replying. "Alright." He then puts them down, and I put my focus on Nick.
Who is already aiming downrange at the 50 meter target.
He then puts his finger on the trigger, and fires twice; the shots echo throughout the warehouse.
I then focus on the target, to see that the bullets had hit to the bottom left of the bullseye, but not on it.
"Good grouping." Waterwood says in a congratulatory tone.
I know Nick is a good shot, but I've never seen him fire a gun before. He looks comfortable holding it, even though he doesn't like them.
I aim at the same target as Nick did, and hold the gun steady as I line up the sites.
I fire twice, and the shots renew the ringing in my ears.
I immediately feel embarrassed hearing the ping on the back wall, one of the bullets missed, and other landed on the far upper right corner of the target.
I lower my weapon, and look to Nick.
"Well, you hit the target." Waterwood says reassuringly.
My eyes meet Nick's, before Waterwood suggests some kind of motivation.
"Try picturing one of your fellow officers about to be shot, and you're the only one that can stop the assailant. Why not officer Wild here?" He suggests.
"You two are rather close." Is the last thing I hear from Waterwood, before his voice fades to the point where it sounds as if he's on the other side of the warehouse.
I stare deeper into Nick's eyes, and my mind begins to run the thought of him in danger, about to be shot.
I exhale aiming at the 90 meter target, imagining it as a threat to my fox. I put my finger on the trigger, take a deep breath, exhale then fire twice.
Once more the shots echo around the massive room, and I can see the bullets land in the middle of the bullseye.
"Way to go Carrots!" Nick says to me, I quickly turn to him, to find a exciting expression. Which is an expression I rarely get to see from him.
I smile back before hearing Waterwood say. "Yes well done." In a half congratulatory tone, followed by."Carrots?" In a more perplexed sounding tone.
Nick's smile dissipates, as he looks up behind me, towards Waterwood.
I then spin around to face the wolf as well.
"Nick called me that." I start to say. "As a insult when we first met, but as we became friends it turned into a nickname."
"So you two didn't get along at first?" Waterwood asks tilting his head?
"No." Nick replies, trying to disguise the shamans voice.
"Sorry, touchy subject, I shan't pry." Waterwood says as he turns to the table.
"Shan't?" We both ask, as we watch him pick up the gun case at his feet, and places it on the table.
"It's a word." He starts to say. "Or rather, a contraction of the words shall and not."|
Nick and I look at each other, then back at Waterwood. He pauses looking back at us to see that we're staring at him.
"Are you comfortable with your choice of firearm?" He asks.
We look down at the guns in our paws then back at the wolf before replying. "Yes."
"Good, I'll put the other two guns back in my SUV. You two can look around." He says packing the other guns into the case.
Waterwood takes the weapon's case back to his SUV. We hear the door close as we look at the table, and see two holsters next to the spare clips that he left for us.
We look at each other, then pick them up, and put them on our belts. I put the spare clips in the spare clips slots on my holster, and slide the gun into it's slot.
We then start to look around the warehouse. Nick walks towards the targets, and I feel something other than dirt and concrete under my paws, so I look down.
I pull out my phone and press the power button to make the screen turn on to get a better look. It appears to be wood splinters.
"Nick!" I call out still examining the splinters.
"Yea Carrots?" I hear Nick reply from across the massive room. I look up towards him to say. "I found some wood splinters."
Nick then starts walking to me.
"It's from a old oakwood crate." I unexpectedly hear Waterwood say. "The splinters were found at every warehouse the weapons were at."
I turn to the door to see Waterwood leaning on the wall with his arms crossed.
"I didn't hear you come back in." I say as I turn to Nick, who is still on his way back.
I look back at Waterwood to see him walking towards me as well. "You were focused." The wolf says. "I didn't want to disturb you."
"So what are we going to do run a DNA test on it?" Nick asks sarcastically, as he stops by my side.
Nick looks up at Waterwood with his old smirk. Waterwood might not be able to, but I can still read him.
I then remember a case that officer Wolford was talking about last week.
He was joking about wood splinters not being helpful.
"You okay Carrots?" Nick says pulling my attention to him.
"There was a leopard that turned up dead a week ago, he had some oakwood splinters in the fur on his paws."
"What was his name?" Waterwood asks. I then turn my attention back to him before applying. "It wasn't our case-"
"Michael Flik." Nick says suddenly. "His name was Michael Coal Flik." I look back at him to see his ears laying back.
"Nick are you okay?" I ask putting my paw on his shoulder.
"Yea, I'm fine." Nick says as his smirk returns. "He was a nice guy, but he didn't know how to stop talking.
If I remember correctly the case went cold."
I pull my paw away, and turn my head back to Waterwood to find him deep in thought.
My attention is returned to Nick when he says. "So we are going to test the splinters and see if they match the ones from Flik's paws?"
"Well done." Waterwood says pulling our attention to him. "This is precisely why I asked the two of you to assist me."
"We'll need some of these splinters" He says kneeling down and pulling a plastic evidence bag from his jacket.
He picks up some of the splinters with tweezers, and puts them in the bag.
He stands back up, and holds it out to me, as he says. "Here." I take the bag from his paws before he continues.
"That case is ZPD jurisdiction, if the splinters are from the crate, then we can link the cases."
We all walk out together, Waterwood gets into his SUV, but doesn't drive off this time. Me and Nick get in to our squad car and drive to our ZPD precinct.
Nick and I park the squad car, and head to the ZPD's forensics lab.
We find Doctor Keys, and ask her to compare the oakwood splinters from the warehouse, to the ones found on Flik's paws, to see if they match.
She says it will take till noon tomorrow to get the results.
"Well nothing to do till tomorrow" Nick says as we walk out of the forensics lab. We then walk out to Nick's car.
I let out a yawn as I close the door on my side and say. "Well we have the rest of the day to ourselves."
Nick starts the car and looks to me. "So let's go change out of our uniforms and-"
"Actually." I start to say "I'm kind of tired, so I would like to get some sleep." Nick smiles before replying. "Sure thing Carrots."
End part #4