His flashlight shone white, piercing the darkness. The scorched wood walls contrasted with the white paint were the fires or the smoke hadn't changed it's color.

Peter paused for a moment, he blinked trying to adjust his eyesight and extended the flashlight to Howell. "You are the one that needs it." He spoke.

The wolf nodded and got close to the door, laying her backpack on the ground. She sniffed around and started to fiddle with the lock. A bit of pushing, turning, picking and the lock clicked, the half scorched door now open. Inside they saw an empty hallway: no pictures, no furniture, not even a welcome mat to be seem. They stepped inside and closed the door behind them.

Peter listened, attentively, for any sort of noise, but all he could hear was the far away sounds of traffic near the cross section. He carefully stepped on the wooden floor, not even making a single squeak from his foot pads pressing on it. Howell, however, wasn't that lucky, each step her paws made a tap from her nails hitting the floor, even if done carefully. Canines weren't made for sneaking. He thought.

She led and he followed, walking from the hallway to a living room. Again, it was mostly empty, this one had a chair at least. It stood close the an window, now with it's glass shattered. Two stones laid close to it, on the floor, shards of glass spread close to it. He first heard and then saw her black long skirt brushing the ground and dragging bits of glass, followed by her usual tap, tap, tap. Gods be darned, she actually has women's clothing. He thought, feeling as if in a "reptile documentary", seeing for the first time behavior of weird foreign creatures.

They exited the living room and entered the kitchen. It was clean, not to say bare, with a fridge standing in a corner, a microwave over the counter. The cupboards seemed to have been emptied, its doors hanging open, but the fridge still made a sound, a low hum.

They both glanced at the window over the sink, towards the small backyard. It seemed well cared, it's grass cut low, but no flowers, tools, toys or any sign that it was ever used. Peter got to the fridge and opened it, revealing a carton of eggs and only that. He smiled, it would reek in a few days. Bad move to leave the eggs.

He opened the carton with his gloved hand, only three of twelve eggs left. We might have some pawprints in here. Hell, we might have pawprints in everything here. But what use would it be? How could they explain the evidence? They shouldn't be there. And yet…

Peter glanced back and saw as Howell brushed the edge of a dirty cup with a cotton swab. She then proceeded to store it into a small flask and pick a new, unused, swab, collection another sample from a different glass. Peter got close to her and whispered. "What the hell are you doing?"

She glanced at him and kept collecting her sample. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Yeah, but we can't present it as evidence. We could already get royally screwed if anyone ever finds out that we were here, now imagine if someone found out that we were collecting samples. That's not even a discharge, that's straight to jail." Peter pulled her arm away from another cup.

Howell turned and looked at him. "We cannot present it as evidence, but we can use it to find out whoever the hell was in here and…"

Peter leaned his back against the sink. "Oh sure, and how are you getting it analysed?" He saw as Howell attached some scotch tape to a dirty glass.

"We can simply say that we forgot to present it for analysis. And it's not like if Bogo or Noggum do a lot of micromanaging on this kind of stuff anyway…" She removed the piece of tape from the glass and attached it to a glass plaque, then storing it in her bag.

Peter shrugged. "Oh, what the hell. We are here anyway." He knelt and pulled her bag close to him. "What else you got in here?"

"Not much else… our camera, a few more collectors for DNA samples, these glass plaques for fingerprint collection… it's not usual procedure, but it's the best we can do, given the circumstances." She extended to him a new plaque with a single strip of scotch tape glued to it. Peter stored it in a small wooden box inside the bag.

Howell picked up her backpack and signaled for them to go. They walked out of the kitchen and into the main hallway of the house, there they found the door to the basement completely opened. Howell turned Peter's flashlight on and started to walk down the small set of stairs, Peter right behind her.

The basement was completely empty, or so it seemed at first sight. Peter noticed that the walls had marks of humidity: one shaped as what seemed to be a wardrobe, another that maybe was the edge of a table. He squatted and took a close look at the floor, fresh scratching marks could be seem on the floor, something was dragged there recently.

Her familiar sniffing sound caught his attention, Howell stood on her fours close to one of the walls, something seemed to have caught her attention. Peter stood up and walked up to her. He opened her backpack and picked one of her DNA sample collectors.

He wiggled it in front of her face. "You might want to take a sample."

Howell picked the collector with her right paw and opened it with her mouth. She picked the swabble and rubbed it against the corner of the room, a bit of gray power was amassed there. "Nutmeg." She whispered, closing the sample collector.

"They didn't seem to have done this move in much of a hurry." Peter pointed to a four small square marks on the floor, close to the wall. "This table was something like two meters across, it wasn't very easy to move. And by the thickness of this stain…" He pointed to the long dark line that ran across the wall, about two centimeters thick. "It was a very heavy table. Maybe a lab?"

"Hm... " Howell looked around the room and got up. She walked to the opposite corner and rubbed one of her gloved paw pads against the floor. She smelled it and cleaned it against the wall. "A press. This powder is layered in the whole room and those seem like brush marks, don't they?"

Peter paid closer attention to the floor overall and, along with the dragging tracks, in some places the ground seemed to have stripes of dust and cleanliness, like if it was carelessly swept. Howell pointed her flashlight to the stairs and started to climb them. Peter took another look at the small room and followed her beam of light upstairs. They exited into the hallway and turned left. The hallway forked into another, shorter, corridor, which led to two closed rooms.

Howell signaled for Peter and he leaned his ear against the first door, but it was completely quiet inside. He turned the doorknob and silently opened the door. The room was empty of any furniture, but the ceiling was stained with nicotine. Howell entered it right behind him and knelt to the floor sniffing. She would stay in one place, stand up and walk one meter or so, kneel again and sniff a bit more. Peter closed the door behind him and waited for her to be done. How do their noses work? He wondered, he always felt impressed by the way Howell worked. Most canids had a very keen sense of smell, but she made it her craft.

"Three mammals… one was a deer… female… The other two I can't pin… I'm not familiar to these scents." She stood up and started to pace around the room. "They slept here…" She pointed to a general area close to opposite wall to the door.

"And they smoked here." Peter pointed to the yellow stained ceiling.

Howell looked puzzled up and pointed her flashlight, pausing for a moment. "Oh." She quietly exclaimed. "That explains the smell. How long does it take to form one of those?"

"Don't know. Five, maybe seven months. Too much time for this place to have remained hidden." Peter opened the door and slipped back into the corridor. He placed his right ear against the other door and listened attentively when, suddenly, loud music blasted from behind him. Peter threw himself against the door, slamming it open, and hid from sight, gun in hand.

"Sorry!" He heard Howell exclaim. "My bad, sorry." She shoved her head through the door frame and looked around, then to Peter and his startled expression, the music still going. "Well, everything seems fine, I'll pick it up, ok?"

"By the Gods Howell… Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" Peter put his pistol into its holster and took a deep breath, leaning his back against the wall.

"Rosa, I'm working. What happened?" He heard Howell whisper on her phone.

He looked around the room, this one was much neater, but still empty. An empty bed frame stood in the middle of the room and not much else. A closet door was semi-open in the left corner of the room, so there he went.

"What? Are you…" He heard, as her whisper vanished behind the wall.

The closet was small, clearly not made for a mammal his size. It was clean: clean of dust, clean of dirty, clean of anything left behind. He knelt down and patted the back of the closet and tried the wooden planks that supported it. Bingo! He thought, as he felt that one of the boards was loose. He slipped his paw inside, patting through the nails for anything that might've fell behind the plank.

"... yeah... Ten pm, I know… I'll try to get there…" He could only grab fragments of her conversation, Danielle was being discreeter than usual.

After some blind patting his gloved paw pad found something. He shoved his paw a bit deeper and picked up a small object, before bringing it to his sight he knew by the sticky end that it was a USB drive. He brought it to his sight and saw that although it was dusty, other than that, it was in very good condition. He cleaned it and pocketed the small stick, standing up and going out of the bedroom.

He knocked on the other door for no one exactly and opened it. He saw Howell sat on the floor, only one of her legs extended out , her back against the wall. She stared blankly to the wall, seemingly not paying attention to him.

"We… I… have to go home." She spoke, without looking at him.

Peter got close to her and offered his hand. "No problem, you might want to give a sniff to the other room first, though." He smiled a reassuring smile.

Howell looked up at him and sighed. "Ok…" She reached for his hand and stood up, patting her skirt from the dust on the ground.

As she moved to the other room Peter could see how dirty her black skirt was getting. Ain't you a delicate sunflower? He followed her inside the other bedroom and saw as she went straight to the bed frame.

Howell knelt next to it and sniffed. At first she pouted away from it. "Cheap cologne." She said, getting her snout back to work. A bit of walking around the bed and she lifted her snout, an expression of accomplishment to her face. "Warthog." Her expression shifted to stern suddenly. "I've got to go. Now."

"No problem, I think we've got as much as we could get." Peter signaled with his head and they went back to the corridor, Howell swiftly entered the other room and picked up her backpack. Soon enough they were out the front door and back on the streets. They didn't care to lock the door, as they knew the owners would never be back there.

They climbed into the black sedan and Howell stepped on the gas pedal as soon as Peter closed his door. He saw as she glanced to the car's panel every now and then, always keeping an eye on the time. Only ten minutes later she stopped the car with a screech, without exchanging a single word she got out and walked up a set of stairs.

Peter was dumbfounded by her behavior, but he followed her without hesitating. So this is her den. The stairs led to a small apartment over a fancy exotic flower shop, up the stairs Howell fumbled with her keys. Peter stood there quietly while she unlocked the door. She glanced back when she managed to finally unlock it and mumbled. "Make yourself at home…."

As soon as the door opened Peter started to hear a faint beeping sound. Like an annoying clock it was constantly there, every three seconds or so. Howell got to her kitchen sink and washed her hands not once, but three times, before finally drying them with a paper towel. She grabbed an extra one and reached for the single door in the small apartment. She paused for a moment, looking to the ground and taking a deep breath. Finally, she opened the door, the beeping sound frequency and height increasing.

Peter caught only a glimpse from its insides, a white room with a single bed. On it seemed to be a dark dray wolf under a white blanket. The door closed again, keeping any more images hidden from Peter's eyes, leaving only the constant beeping.

He then looked around, trying to find a distraction. He saw a blanket and a pillow on her sofa, her faint smell coming from it. He looked around, trying to find anything actually interesting, when he paid attention to what was on the walls. On one was a family picture, a single adult male wolf stood in the middle of the picture, a very serious expression going along with his dark gray fur. In front of him his, Peter assumed, cubs made three layers: the first with the four bigger ones, their fur ranging from black to white; the second layer consisted of five cubs, their fur of a consistent medium gray; the third layer consisted of a single cub, she wore a pink dress and sad eyes that didn't went along with her smile, but combined greatly with her bright gray fur.

Beside it was a diploma, it read:

ZOOTOPIA GENERAL HOSPITAL

School of Nursing

Awards this

DIPLOMA

To

Danielle Howell

...

Peter felt stunned for a moment, the date of the diploma read from fifteen years ago. Heck, she was twenty two at the time, how the hell did she become a cop? Beside it was Danielle's diploma of the police academy, this one from thirteen years ago, she was already five years in the force before Peter got in.

He then heard talking. From habit, he leaned against the wall and couldn't help but to catch a few words.

".. know what I'm…" He heard Howell, the beeping now louder than ever.

"... get out…" A raspy and tired male voice sounded.

"...trying to help you…" Danielle's tone changed, she sounded more snarky and a bit high pitched.

"... of a murderer…" The male voice sounded again, the beeps sounded quicker.

Peter stomach dropped, he shouldn't be listening to this. He backed away from the wall and looked at the sofa and the mess it was. He picked the blanket and started to fold it.

"I AM ALL YOU HAVE, YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARD!" Danielle shouted.

The door opened once again and Danielle got out, pulling out a pair of surgical gloves. She slammed the door shut behind her and looked at Peter. She opened her mouth, but choke with her own words. She touched her face and felt the tears that rolled down her eyes and with a look of horror she mumbled "No… no..." Howell fell to her knees, crying, broken.

Peter ran up to her and hugged her head against his chest. He had no words, for he knew none would solve anything. He felt as his fur was soaked in her tears.