Nick was woken up by the shrill buzzing of an unfamiliar alarm and had a moment of disorientation as his brain tried to start. In his hustling days, he had habitually woken up at a time he had considered early to get the jump on preparing, but becoming a cop had shown him that what he considered early really wasn't. He had never been a morning mammal in those days, and he still wasn't one, which explained his groggy confusion at trying to figure out where he was and how he got there.
Throughout his days at the academy, Nick had tried a variety of methods to wake up feeling alert. None of them—not coffee, not cold showers, not going to bed extra early—had ever really worked. Suddenly, however, he found a method that did. At the same time that the alarm shut off, something hard slammed into his chest and knocked the air out of him.
"Hurk!" he choked out, adrenaline flooding his veins as he desperately and futilely tried to suck in air, his heart racing like Flash in a car.
"Nick!" Judy yelped from somewhere near his torso, "I'm so sorry! I was just shutting off the alarm and—"
He sat up and waved off her concern, finally able to gulp down a breath. It was obvious what had happened; the alarm had also woken Judy up and she had incidentally hit him hard in the chest as she leveraged herself out of the bed far enough to reach the alarm with the other paw. Rather than saying the first thing that popped into his mind (Do you do that to every guy you share a bed with?), he took an approach that she'd probably find less embarrassing. "You hit pretty hard, Carrots," he said, going for his most casual tone.
From the way that the insides of her ears flushed pink (somewhat difficult to see as her ears also drooped), she clearly still found it plenty embarrassing. The way that they were positioned didn't help, either. Having been snapped into full consciousness by what the primitive part of his brain insisted was a near death experience, Nick was fully aware of what had happened and how they ended up. His memory of the previous night stopped at the ending of the second episode of Black and White; he must have fallen asleep sometime after that, still fully clothed. Judy's bed, like all of the furniture in her shoe box of an apartment, was bunny-sized, which meant that he had been somewhat curled to be able to fit on the small bed. He had been wrapped around Judy, and she had clearly been sleeping on his chest. His shirt had ridden up his chest almost all the way to his armpits and the fur of his stomach had a wet spot on it where she must have had her head. "Is this drool or tears?" he asked as he ran his fingers through the patch of wet fur, not realizing until after he said it that he had spoken out loud.
Perhaps he wasn't quite as fully awake as he had thought. Judy's ears flushed an even darker shade of pink; he wouldn't have guessed that she could have gotten even more embarrassed, but the evidence was clearly pointing in the other direction. "Never mind," he said, "There's no possible way I could make you cry, so you must have just drooled all over me in your sleep."
That got a chuckle out of her. He could—and had, in the not so distant past—make her cry, which he never wanted to see again if he could avoid it. "You're not seeing me at my best," she managed.
"You could have kicked me out last night," he said.
"I fell asleep with the show on too," she replied.
Nick nodded. They had both apparently underestimated how tired they had been from the first night of investigating their current case. "I don't think I can go into work like this," he said, looking down at himself.
His shirt was pretty crumpled from having slept in it, and from the current time he'd never manage to get back to his condo for fresh clothes and then to the station on time. Even if Judy's apartment did have an ironing board hidden somewhere—which he doubted—there also wouldn't be enough time to properly get the wrinkles out of a silk shirt. Nick took a lot of good-natured (and some not-so-good-natured) ribbing from his colleagues about his wardrobe, which as far as they could tell was composed entirely of garishly colored button up shirts. What they didn't get, and what he had never articulated out loud, was that they were a sort of armor, just as much as the disinterested expression he could slip on like a mask. Judy probably understood, or at least could have guessed, but it wasn't something that they had ever discussed.
Judy's ears perked up and her natural enthusiasm started to shine through, banishing her earlier embarrassment. "I think I've got something that'll fit you," she said, hopping to the floor and going to rummage through her battered dresser.
"Really?" Nick asked skeptically, "I don't know if you've noticed, Fluff, but I'm about twice your size."
He had a brief mental image of himself wearing one of her flannel shirts, which even if he could button would leave a lot of his midriff exposed. "Ha ha," she replied sarcastically, and while she had her back to him he could easily imagine the eye roll, "This'll work."
She spun around and brandished a T-shirt at him. It was a pale gray with a stylized ZPD logo in blue on the front. It actually looked large enough to fit him, which was a surprise. He wasn't actually twice Judy's size, but he was both taller and broader than she was. A shirt large enough to fit him would be like a particularly modest dress on her. "And why do you own this?" Nick asked, "Did you steal this from someone?"
"I didn't steal it. They sent me the wrong size, but I kept it because it's perfect for a nightgown."
"Then I guess I'll take it. Do you have a shower somewhere?"
"Down the hall and to the left," Judy replied, giving him the shirt and a towel.
Having to wear his clothes from the previous day, minus the shirt, wasn't ideal, but there was absolutely no reason for Judy to have pants or underwear that would fit him. Actually, even if she had the latter, he wouldn't have taken them. Using a communal shower was also less than ideal; while it was at least early enough in the morning that there was no competition for the shower (he had gone to the male shower on one side of the hall while Judy had gone to the female shower on the other), it couldn't hold a candle to the shower in his condo. If the female shower was equally lacking in water pressure, he felt sorry for Judy. In his opinion, a hot, stinging shower was one of the simple pleasures of life, and they made mornings a lot more bearable. He'd have to try to get her to move out of her dismal apartment.
The shirt ended up being a bit long and a bit form-fitting, but not unreasonably so. A lot of the younger and vainer male officers favored form-fitting T-shirts in their civilian clothes to emphasis their muscles. Nick wasn't, and never would be, as well-muscled as they were; he was in the best shape of his life, but he was still pretty slim. All in all, he was satisfied with his reflection in the mirror, although he hadn't had a brush to tackle his fur and had to make do with his fingers. The shampoo that he had "borrowed" from one of the other tenants wasn't his usual brand, but it smelled inoffensive and seemed to have worked OK. The end result wasn't up to his normal grooming standards, but he wasn't going to go into the office looking like he had spent the night in a ditch, which was going to have to count for a victory.
The advantage of heading to work from Judy's apartment was that he got the opportunity to tease her the entire way about the show they had spent the previous night watching. Truth be told, Nick didn't think that Black and White was quite as bad as Judy had implied. He suspected that her dislike for it came from seeing her own flaws exaggerated and emphasized for the viewing pleasure of millions rather than the quality of the show itself. If its lead wasn't a rabbit doe, perhaps she'd be more charitable. The acting was frequently stiff (he had asked, after several poorly delivered lines, if that had really been the best take), and the plots made him suspect that none of the writers was entirely familiar with technology more modern than the 1990s, but the two leads actually had decent chemistry together on screen and the effects were decent. And while the character of Athena White was a fairly stereotypical bunny in a number of ways, from her emotional nature to her naïvety, she had the same kind of out-sized courage that Judy herself did.
Of course, he wasn't going to tell Judy that. "All I'm saying is that we have to do more research," Nick said solemnly, "The clue that cracks this case open might be hidden in one of the episodes I haven't seen. Do you want that on your conscience, Officer Hopps?"
Judy laughed at that. "I think we have plenty of other leads to follow up on first."
She was definitely right about that. Both Hyperion and Heather had suspicious gaps in their alibis, and either of them had an understandable motive. Even better, if they had worked together, it would provide an easy explanation for how the assailant had been able to time their attack so perfectly. Having one mammal standing watch in front of Holly's building to see when Jacques entered and alert a second waiting on the fire escape would explain the speed at which the assailant went from knowing that Jacques had been buzzed in to breaking into Holly's apartment.
The logic of police procedurals, like the two episodes of Black and White he had watched the night before, would suggest that neither Hyperion nor Heather was the guilty party because it was too obvious, but in reality the obvious solution was usually correct. Nick grinned as he imagined telling Bogo that he was sure Hyperion and Heather were innocent using the logic that it'd make a better story on a cop drama. That might actually stun the chief into silence before sending him into a fury.
In any case, there were plenty of other angles to work. Holly's manager was somewhat suspicious in Nick's mind, Holly's co-workers still needed to be looked into, and there was always the chance that Holly's boyfriend had been the real target.
For the rest of the train ride, and their trip to the usual coffee shop, they went over their plan for the rest of the day. Nick and Judy were deep in conversation when they walked into the station, but Nick still caught the surprised look on Clawhauser's face when the cheetah caught sight of them. Nick still had some clean uniforms in his locker, so he wouldn't look out of place once he changed, but the difference in his civilian clothes had clearly not gone unnoticed. "Nick!" Clawhauser greeted him with a wave, "Trying a different look?"
"What, this?" Nick asked, sweeping a paw down his chest to take in the T-shirt, "I just had a bit of a laundry situation. Didn't have the chance to do it yesterday, what with everything going on."
It wasn't technically a lie, since he really hadn't had the chance to do his laundry the previous night. Of course, he had a cardboard box full of clean and neatly folded clothes back at his condo, but Clawhauser didn't need to know that. The cheetah was easily the biggest gossip in the station, and perhaps in the entire police force, and learning that Nick and Judy had slept together in the strictly literal sense of the word would send his tongue wagging with talk of how they must have slept together in the euphemistic sense of the word.
"Is that it? I would have guessed you got too close to the heat lamps in Sahara Square and melted the one shirt you own," Wolford said, butting into the conversation from across the lobby.
Nick applied his best put-upon face. "My shirts—plural, make a note of that, I have more than one—are silk, not nylon," he said in a deliberately haughty tone, "They'd burn, not melt."
"Really?" Judy asked, "Can we try? You know, just to be sure."
"Only if you're paying for the replacement."
The morning briefing was, as typical, brief, allowing Nick and Judy the opportunity to get to their work. They had decided that the best course of action was to first follow up with Hyperion and Heather before sifting through Holly's hatemail, and then heading over to the studio where Black and White was filmed. As long as Jacques Lapin was unconscious, it'd be impossible to interview him, but they would at least look into his business and associates in the meantime.
As far as Hyperion and Heather went, the prudent course of action was to stick together rather than splitting up, which was why their first stop was to take the cruiser to the brownstone that Heather shared with her mother. After Judy parked the car, she hesitated before opening her door. "Are you going to be OK?" she asked, the concern evident in her voice.
Nick considered the question. He hadn't done all that well when they had entered the house on their first visit. The smell had taken him back, triggering memories in the way that only a smell could and pulling at a wound he had thought long-since closed. Still, he didn't want to lie to her. "Probably," he said with a shrug.
It would have to do. When they knocked on the door, Heather got to it fairly quickly. Nick felt the bile rise in the back of his throat as the open door brought with it that stench of a dying mammal. "Heather? We have a few more questions about two nights ago," Judy opened pleasantly.
Heather looked resigned. She stepped out of the house and closed the door behind herself. "There's nothing wrong with my mother's ears," she said with a sigh.
That left the three of them standing on the porch. Nick found himself wondering what Heather had to say that she didn't want her mother to overhear. "We know you weren't at the dialysis clinic the entire night of the attack on your sister," Nick said, falling easily into his role in their questioning.
"I just didn't want my mother to know," she said, a pleading tone in her voice, "She'd absolutely freak out."
"Freak out about what?" Judy asked cautiously.
"Well," Heather mumbled, looking down as her ears flushed, "Just—don't laugh, OK?"
"Of course we won't," Judy nodded encouragingly, waiting for the other bunny to continue.
"When I quit my job to take care of my mother, I ended up with a lot of free time. I mean, she needs a lot of care, don't get me wrong, but it's not like when I was doing shifts at the hospital. So I, well, I started talking to strangers online."
The insides of Heather's ears were bright red now; she clearly found the story highly embarrassing, humiliating even. Nick wondered if that was something typical for a bunny, feeling like a failure for reaching out for support to strangers instead of family, or if it was just another one of the ways in which Hyacinth had messed up her non-golden kits. "And I met this guy. Bruce. He's charming and sweet and he actually cares about me, you know? He asks questions about my day, and how I'm feeling, and not even Holly does that. She worries about Mom, and she stops by when she can but it's like I'm not even really—"
Heather was starting to cry now, and she cut herself off to catch a breath. "Anyway," she continued shakily, "I started meeting Bruce in person a couple months ago, when our schedules line up."
Heather gave a weak chuckle, "That's actually why I scheduled my mother's dialysis visits for when I did. Isn't that awful?"
Judy took Heather's paw gently and offered her a tissue. "No, not at all," Judy said firmly, "She's still getting the treatment that she needs, and you're getting a break. What's wrong with that?"
Nick guessed that Hyacinth would probably have some objections, based on how ashamed Heather looked, but Heather didn't seem particularly well-endowed in the self-esteem department. "I guess you're right," Heather said, seeming to consider the logic.
"So you think your mother wouldn't approve of him?" Nick asked.
"I know she wouldn't! I haven't told her because I know she'd tell me to stop seeing him," Heather said with a surprising vehemence.
"She's always going on about how Jacques—that's Holly's boyfriend—isn't respectable enough, and that's just because she doesn't like his job!"
Nick suddenly knew exactly what Hyacinth's objection was to Heather's beau, but he waited to let Heather say it. "So you think she wouldn't approve of your boyfriend's job?" Judy asked.
Heather laughed bitterly, but she didn't object to Judy calling the mammal she met online her boyfriend. "She probably wouldn't, but no, that's not why."
Heather pulled her phone out of her pocket and swiped through it before turning it to face Nick and Judy. The image on the screen was of a handsome dingo who looked to be about Heather's age. "It's because he's a predator."