Judy did her best to control her reaction to Heather's revelation. Inter-species relationships weren't common in Bunny Burrow; the only such relationship she could remember was between a sheep and a goat, and they had been a constant topic of gossip. She had seen several similar relationships in Zootopia, including her next-door neighbors. For the most part, they seemed to pass more or less unremarked in the city, but she had noticed that they tended to be between fairly similar species.
Nick hadn't reacted at all, but that might have just been his poker face. "So you met up with Bruce the night your sister was attacked?" he asked, eyeing Heather carefully.
Heather nodded miserably, wiping at the tears on her face. "We went to my favorite restaurant for dinner," she said.
"I'm trying to get him to try more vegetarian meals," she added with a weak smile.
Judy hadn't been able to tell, from the picture that Heather had shown, what kind of canine Bruce was, so she couldn't even guess at how plausible an explanation that was. Some predators, she knew, subsisted almost entirely on fish and insects and weren't able to digest much in the way of vegetation.
"Could we have the name of that restaurant?" asked Nick, nodding, which was Judy's sign that he thought it was at least possible that Bruce could have found something edible at a vegetarian restaurant.
"The Brier Patch," Heather said, "It's up on Twelfth Street, just past the metro station."
"That's a nice place," Nick said approvingly, "Do they still have those pumpernickel rolls?"
Heather seemed surprised that Nick would be familiar with it, but Judy wasn't. She had never seen him eat meat of any kind, and while Nick had never directly said it, she assumed that he was at least mostly if not entirely a vegetarian. "Yeah, they do," Heather said, "Bruce must have had at least half a dozen while we were waiting for our food."
Nick chuckled. "I can believe it. I think I could eat that many, and he's got to be bigger than I am, right?"
Heather nodded. "He's maybe half a foot taller than you," she said, "But he's got more muscle than you do."
Heather's ears flushed red again and she clapped her paws over her mouth. "No offense."
Nick breezily waved her concern away. "None taken. It was pretty obvious from the photo you showed us. Does he do a lot of lifting at his job?"
"Some," Heather said, "He's a mechanic."
"Bruce owns his own shop," she said proudly.
"Could we have his contact information too? Just to corroborate your story."
"Of course," Heather said, digging through her purse.
Eventually she came up with a business card that had an oily smear on the front and gave it to Nick. The words on the card, however, were perfectly legible. The name of the shop, "EZ Collision and Glass, Ltd" was largest, below which was the text, "Bruce Newcastle, ASE Master Technician," followed by a printed phone number and an address. When Nick flipped the card over to look at the back, Judy caught a glimpse of another phone number written by paw. "That's his personal number," Heather explained, "But the address on the front is his personal address too. He lives above the shop."
Judy found herself impressed with how quickly Nick had been able to ingratiate himself to Heather and effortlessly pump her for information. If Bruce was half a foot taller than Nick that would put him on the high end of her estimate of the raincoat-wearing attacker's height, but the picture she had seen of him definitely made it look as though he'd easily have the physical strength necessary to knock Jacques out. There was, however, one more detail she found herself curious about.
"Just one more question," Judy said, raising a paw.
Nick quirked an eyebrow, but didn't interrupt. "Have you told your sister about your boyfriend?"
Heather looked down and kicked her foot. "Well... not exactly," she mumbled sheepishly.
"Not exactly?" Judy repeated.
"I told Holly I was dating someone, and I asked her not to tell Mom, but..." Heather trailed off.
Judy suspected that Heather was going to say that she hadn't told her sister that she was dating a predator, but she waited for Heather to say it out loud.
"I never told her Bruce was a dingo. I... kind of implied that he was a bunny, and that I didn't think Mom would like him because he's a mechanic."
"So what do you think?" Judy asked, once they had made their goodbyes to Heather and were back in the car and driving to the station.
She was interested in seeing what insights he might have had on the case. Nick shrugged, flicking his sunglasses open and putting them on. "Are you asking if I think she tried killing her sister with her boyfriend's help?"
Judy waited a moment, but by his lack of a follow up he apparently wasn't asking a rhetorical question. "Yes, that's what I mean."
"I don't know," Nick said, "It would have made more sense for them to go after the mother, don't you think?"
Judy had to agree that Nick had a point there. Then again, there were plenty of potential reasons why they had gone after Holly. "Maybe Holly found out about Heather's boyfriend being a dingo and threatened to tell their mother."
"Blackmail?" Nick asked, "I don't think Heather has anything Holly could want. Maybe if Heather was the favorite, but that's Holly."
Again, that made sense. Holly was a television actress and probably wasn't hurting for money. Heather, on the other paw, was a nurse, and technically unemployed at that. "It wouldn't have to be blackmail," Judy said, "Maybe Holly's a lot like her mother."
Nick nodded. "Could be. Did you get the sense from Holly that she was hiding something like that?"
"Not really, no," Judy admitted.
"I didn't get the sense Heather was hiding anything but her boyfriend," Nick said, "But I could be wrong."
They lapsed into silence, leaving Judy alone with her thoughts. It might just have been because the Leaves family were bunnies, but she found herself wondering how a revelation like Heather's would have gone down in her own family. Her parents had happily—and profitably—partnered their business with that of a predator, but how would they react if one of their kits started dating one? Would they react in the way that Heather feared her mother would? Not that any of her siblings would date outside their species, of course, but—hypothetically speaking—if she was the one—"Something on your mind, Carrots?" Nick interrupted.
Judy realized that she had parked the car back in the motor pool, operating entirely on autopilot. She couldn't actually remember the last few minutes of the drive, but from Nick's reaction she must have been sitting too long without making any motion towards getting out of the car. She shook her head. "Just thinking about the case," she said, "We've got some time before we need to head over to the studio, and we have to make the most of it."
Nick smiled, "Of course," he agreed, a slight teasing tone in his voice, "If we waste time, that's like stealing from the taxpayers."
Before she could even begin a retort, he continued, "Of which I am one. Do you realize we pay our own salaries?"
Judy laughed. "I'll remember that for the next time someone tells me that their taxes pay our salaries."
The volume of Holly's hate mail actually wasn't all that impressive, so Nick had volunteered to look through it himself, leaving Judy free to do more digging on Jacques Lapin, alias Jacked Rabbit. From the information that she had easy public access to, there didn't seem to be anything in his background that would give a mammal cause to hold a grudge against him. He hadn't received so much as a parking ticket, although that could just be because he couldn't afford a car. He had a degree in Sports Medicine from a mid-sized college that didn't seem like a scam, but Judy suspected that he probably had a fair amount of student loan debt. Judging from his tax returns, it'd take him a while to pay those loans back, as he didn't make all that much as a personal trainer. Judy found it funny how much living in the city had changed her perspective; the amount of income he'd claimed would have been enough to live comfortably in Bunny Burrow, but he was probably barely able to afford his studio apartment in the city's heart.
Jacques was also an author, but neither of his books—both on his fitness philosophy targeted at bunnies and other similarly-sized herbivorous prey mammals—looked to have sold all that well. His chosen pen name didn't seem to have helped all that much with sales. The author blurb she found online claimed that Jacques had his own ZooTube channel. When she navigated to it, she wasn't expecting much, given the other aspects of his life, which is why it came as a surprise when she looked at the numbers for his videos. Jacques had been consistently publishing videos at least twice a week for the past two years, and the most recent ones had hundreds of thousands of views. The most recent video, published the day before he had been knocked out, had almost half a million views and thousands of comments.
Judy put her earbuds in and clicked to view it, curious as to what mammals were saying. Jacques was, quite clearly, an at least moderately popular Internet celebrity. When the video started, it was impossible to tell where it had been filmed. The background was a white wall, and there was a blue mat on the floor of the sort that Judy vividly remembered from gym class in school. On the mat was a chin up bar, but there were no clues as to whether the video had been shot in a gym or just against a wall in Jacques's apartment. Jacques stepped into the frame, dressed only in a loose white T-shirt and a pair of black basketball shorts. "This is Jacked Rabbit," he said, while flexing his arms a little, "And today I'm going to show you the proper form for chin ups."
It was the first time that Judy had heard his voice, which was rich and surprisingly deep for a bunny. He seemed perfectly comfortable in front of the camera, his body language fluid and relaxed. "First, I want to show the muscles that chin ups work out," he said with a small smile, grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it off in a single motion.
Judy stared. Jacques's pen name might not be helping his book sales, but it was totally appropriate. She hadn't gotten a good look at him when she had seen him in the hospital, as he had been under the sheets of a hospital bed, but in the video he was easily the strongest-looking bunny she had ever seen. That was saying something considering that she had grown up on a farm with hundreds of bunnies, but Jacques had every other bunny she had ever seen completely beat. To further emphasize his musculature, Jacques had shaved his fur close to his skin, which made his rippling muscles stand out like snakes fighting inside a balloon as he went through the motions.
While Jacques was earnestly explaining the difference between the two major grip styles for chin ups, Judy scrolled down to look at the comments. The older comments that had been posted the day the video had gone up were pretty typical for ZooTube. There were lots of poorly spelled and grammatically incoherent comments about how much the poster loved Jacques, comments from self-styled fitness experts claiming that what Jacques had shown was wrong, and declarations of love and the desire to do things with (or to) Jacques that made Judy's ears flush. The newer comments, after Jacques had been attacked, were mostly messages of concerns, prayers, and fans sharing their favorite moments from his previous videos and how much he meant to them. There were, however, also a number fairly bitterly attacking and blaming Holly, with an apparently sizable number of fans theorizing that she had been behind it.
Judy sighed and scrolled back up to the video, where Jacques was now doing chin ups with one paw. Judging from the comments, she got the feeling that most of Jacques's fans were watching to ogle him, not to learn anything about fitness. It seemed at least possible that a crazed fan had tried targeting Holly to get her out of the picture, possibly attacking Jacques in their panic or out of the philosophy that if they couldn't have Jacques than no one should. Jacques himself would be the best mammal to answer questions about concerning or possibly unstable fans, but the last she had heard he was in a medically induced coma as the doctors worked to prevent his injury from killing or permanently disabling him. She'd have to either wait for him to come out of it—an option she doubted Bogo or the mayor would be happy with—or continue digging as best she could, which would probably mean more questioning of Holly Leaves. It was possible that, with some distance from the time of the attack, Holly might be thinking more clearly and remember some useful detail, but Judy felt it was more likely that she'd accomplish nothing more than picking at an open and painful wound for the actress.
Suddenly something tapped her on the shoulder, and Judy yelped in surprise and spun around. Nick was leaning over her chair, looking at her screen. "This your type, Carrots?" he asked casually, gesturing at the screen, where Jacques was still doing one-armed chin ups but smoothly alternating paws between each one, "I didn't have you pegged as the type to watch this kind of stuff at work."
Overcoming her shock at Nick's interruption, Judy pulled out the earbuds that had prevented her from hearing Nick's approach and glared at him. "This is Holly's boyfriend, Jacques Lapin," she said.
"I thought it was Jacked Rabbit," Nick said, "That's more appropriate, isn't it?"
"That's what he calls himself. You didn't think that was his real name, did you?" Judy asked.
"Your mother's name is Bunny, Carrots," Nick retorted, "It didn't seem impossible."
"It's Bonnie," she shot back, "And if I remember correctly, last night you were saying that Black and White would be more interesting if it was more like The X-Files."
"And?" Nick asked, either missing her point or deliberately choosing to ignore it.
"And you're going to tell me that Fox Mulder is a more likely name?"
"No, that's a pretty ridiculous name," Nick agreed, "But we can catch up in the car. We've got to leave now if we're going to make our appointment at the studio."