Before she had actually looked into it and set up an appointment, Judy had imagined that the studio that Black and White was filmed in would be in the magnificent Art Deco skyscraper downtown that the television station owned. The truth was a lot less glamorous. Black and White and a number of other shows were all filmed in a sprawling and squat building down by the waterfront far away from the city center. The mostly windowless walls were painted a dingy blue that did nothing to make the building look any more attractive, and security was limited to a bored-looking hippo who barely glanced at their badges before giving them instructions on how to get to the portion of the building that they wanted. "He probably should have been paying more attention, don't you think?" Nick remarked once they were out of earshot, "How was he supposed to know that we're real cops and not part of the show?"

"Either way, we'd be going to the same place."

"True," Nick replied, "But maybe he just recognized me."

Judy laughed at that. Nick was clearly being facetious, but she didn't mind. She found it uncomfortable, sometimes, being so easily recognized in public. Sometimes she envied his relative anonymity, but she had the feeling that the longer he spent as her partner the less of it he would have. Was that something that he'd mind? She dismissed the thought as they reached their destination, a lobby quite a bit nicer than the security booth they had passed through.

The lobby was clean and welcoming, with light-colored wooden furniture and bold geometric prints on the walls. At the moment, the only other mammal in it was a slim and professionally dressed wolf who couldn't have been any older than Judy behind the desk. "Excuse me?" Judy said as they approached, craning her neck as she attempted to look him in the eye.

The young wolf was significantly taller than her and the reception desk was just tall enough that she couldn't see over it, which meant that she had to stand back to actually keep him in sight. "I'm Officer Hopps and this is my partner Officer Wilde. We have an appointment for 10:15."

The wolf made a show of checking his computer. "I'm so sorry ma'am. I'm not seeing anything for you at that time," he said, in a chipper tone that all but oozed false sincerity.

"It was Officer Hopps, correct?" he asked.

Judy did her best to conceal her annoyance. "Yes, that's right. I made the appointment with a mammal named Bryce a few hours ago."

"That's me, ma'am," the wolf said, "Oh, that's right, I remember your appointment now. I think you must have gotten the time wrong. Here, look."

Bryce spun his monitor around, which didn't do much for Judy because it was too high off the ground for her to get a good look at. "See? We have you in at 15:10."

Then, as though he were speaking to a young and not particularly bright kit, he added, "That's 3:10 PM. I can see how you might have gotten confused."

Judy swallowed her growing anger. She couldn't make any claim at being perfect or not making mistakes, but she knew perfectly well that the time she had been told was 10:15. "Well, we're here now," she said, "Is there any chance that you could fit us in?"

The wolf flipped his monitor back around and again made a show of using it. "I'm afraid not, ma'am. But if you come back for when you're scheduled, we'll get you right in."

"Alright, then," she said, "We'll be back for 3:10."

"That's wonderful," Bryce said with a plastic smile, "I hope you enjoy the rest of your morning."

Judy waited until they were back to the car before she spoke to Nick again. "He deliberately told me the wrong time on the phone!" she said, fuming.

"I figured that was probably the case," Nick said, nodding.

"And I think I can guess why," Judy added darkly.

She didn't have to explain it to Nick, of course. He knew, better than any other mammal, just how much she regretted what she had said about predators at her first ever press conference. It wasn't the first time she had encountered a predator holding a grudge, and she was sure that it wouldn't be the last. The worst part was, she could hardly blame Bryce for how he felt. Whether or not anything had actually happened to him or anyone he knew, to see just how fragile the unspoken rules of society were, and how easily they could bend and potentially break down entirely, must have been terrifying. "But look on the bright side, Carrots," Nick said, "The worst he could do is mildly inconvenience you. Not much of a show of power, is it?"

"I guess not," she admitted, "But it's wasting our time."

"Then how about we go to lunch?" Nick suggested.

Before Judy could protest that going to lunch before it was even 10:30 didn't seem like a good use of time either, he added, "The Brier Patch should just be opening by the time we get there."

When she was growing up, Judy had never heard anything positive about foxes. They were natural-born tricksters who would abuse any kindness offered to them, liars and thieves who couldn't be trusted any further than they could be thrown. And that was leaving aside everything she had heard about vixens. Something that moving to Zootopia had taught her was that she wasn't as far beyond those old prejudices as she might have thought, which made acknowledging that they existed and colored how she reacted to situations especially important. That was, at least, what she was telling herself; that her interpretation of events might be based more on prejudice than on fact.

Nick had entered the restaurant a step ahead of her, and seemingly the instant that he did a vixen had pulled him into a hug and squealed, "Nick! It's so good to see you again!"

She was slim and tall, only a few inches shorter than Nick. Her eyes were a shining gold, and her fur was an orange red, set off by a blue polo shirt. Her skirt was black and almost inappropriately short. Nick had hugged her back, but it took him a moment to disentangle himself as she had also curled her tail around him in what struck Judy as a possessive gesture. "Jamie!" he said, "How's it going? I was hoping you'd be working today. I'm—"

"Did your little friend get a new outfit?" Jamie interrupted, looking down at Judy as she seemed to notice the bunny for the first time, "He's so cute!"

Nick laughed. "Don't let Finnick hear you say that," he said, "He doesn't like being called little."

"He's never complained to me," Jamie said coyly.

"Only because he's a complete softy for a pretty vixen," Nick said with a smirk, "But this isn't Finnick."

"Judy Hopps," Judy introduced herself, trying her best to be pleasant with Nick's irritating friend.

"The Judy Hopps?" asked Jamie, her eyes going wide.

She turned back to look at Nick. "So you really did become a cop?"

Nick nodded. "That's right."

"Oh, wow! It's so nice to meet you," she said, offering Judy a paw to shake.

Judy couldn't help but notice that Jamie's sharp claws had been painted the same shade of blue as her polo, which on closer inspection had "The Brier Patch" embroidered over the heart. Still, she accepted the proffered paw and mentally reminded herself that she needed to give Jamie a fair chance. Yes, the vixen had been pawing at Nick and hugging him closer and longer than was probably appropriate for a friend (certainly closer and longer than she had ever hugged Nick) and she had called Judy "cute" but that didn't necessarily make Jamie the sort of succubus that the stories she had heard about vixens would imply. Of course, it didn't necessarily mean that she wasn't, either.

While Judy had been having her internal conflict, she had been half-paying attention as Jamie had lead them to a small both tucked away in a back corner of the restaurant and procured menus for them. Just as Jamie had been about to join them to answer their questions about Heather and Bruce, the bell above the restaurant's door had jingled and she dashed off to see to a mole myopically blinking and looking around. "I'll be right back," she promised.

Judy took the chance to look around the restaurant. It was rustic in the way that chain restaurants often attempted but never truly got right. The floors and walls were rough-looking wood. The lighting, even at a quarter to eleven in the morning, was dim, and the decorations were what Judy guessed was jazz memorabilia. The sign on the door had said that the Brier Patch opened at 10:30, but for the moment it seemed as though the only customers were herself, Nick, and the mole that had wandered in.

"She seems to like you," Judy said, "Girlfriend of yours?"

She asked the question as lightly as possible, but Nick just snorted. "Don't try to play matchmaker, Carrots," Nick said, "I'm old enough to be her father."

"Well, old enough to have been rejected by her mother, at least," he added with a self-deprecating laugh.

Judy worked out the math on that in her head. Nick was older than she was, but not by all that much. It meant that Jamie wasn't as old as she had first guessed—she probably couldn't be more than eighteen—and that if her mother was around Nick's age that the mother had been a teenager herself when Jamie was born. "So how do you know her?"

"Her mother took out a non-traditional loan, if you understand what I mean," Nick said, "It was just the two of them, and Jamie was only about eleven or so at the time. So Anna—that's her mother—was having a hard time paying it off."

Judy nodded slowly. "I helped her renegotiate the terms," he finished simply.

Judy was sure that his story was leaving a lot out—in particular, the details of how Nick had had the sway to influence the conditions of what was presumably an illegal loan shark deal—but she could appreciate the picture that it painted. "That was really kind of you."

Perhaps it was just Judy's imagination, but she could swear that Nick's ears momentarily flicked down in embarrassment. "It wasn't entirely out of the kindness of my heart," he admitted, "And grand gestures tend to work better in movies than in real life anyway."

He pulled his menu off of the table and flipped it open, his face disappearing behind the sheet of paper. It was more in line with the Nick that she knew—and particularly the Nick that she had first met—that he'd help a single mother more out of an attempt to woo her than out of altruism, but he had done what was pretty unambiguously a good deed. "Do you still talk to her? Anna, I mean."

"Occasionally," Nick said, putting his menu down, "But you know me. I'm friends with everyone."

He smiled as he said it, but Judy wondered, not for the first time, if he was fundamentally lonely. She was pretty sure that she was the single closest friend he had, and all the others were more or less acquaintances or business partners he was simply friendly with. That was a heavy topic for lunch, and one that she wasn't sure he'd even be willing to talk about if she brought it up, so instead she had agreed and asked him what he recommended.

"Anything, as long as you can handle spice," Nick said, "The owner's a Dixieland bear at heart, trying to spread the joy of Creole food to mammals that can't or don't eat meat."

He had recited the description as though he were quoting something, and when Judy looked down at her menu she saw that on the back there was a small box with more or less those exact words as part of a short paragraph on the Brier Patch's history. "But what do you recommend?"

"The gumbo z'herbes," he replied without hesitation, "With the pumpernickel rolls. Not that those are exactly Creole, but there's plenty of mammals who would say it's not really gumbo without shrimp, so..."

Nick shrugged. "As long as your country bunny tastes can stand the heat," he teased, "Otherwise, go for the grits."

Judy narrowed her eyes, "Do you even know what we eat out in the country?"

"Carrots, corn, and fried vegetables?" he guessed.

That was, actually, fairly accurate for a number of the bunnies who Judy had grown up with, which also explained why so many of them were overweight, but she wasn't about to concede the point. "I can handle spice just fine," she said, hoping that it wouldn't turn out to be a lie.

Further conversation was forestalled by the reappearance of Jamie to take their orders, which she did without writing anything down. Then again, considering that the restaurant wasn't exactly full, it probably wasn't much of a challenge for the vixen to remember two orders that were the same except for the portion size. Not wanting to back down from Nick's teasing, Judy had ordered the gumbo z'herbes as spicy as they would make it, and Nick had followed suite. Jamie had raised an eyebrow at that, but hadn't commented on either order. "I'll just put this into the kitchen and then I'll be back, OK?" she asked.

Nick nodded agreeably, and in short order Jamie returned, snagging a chair from a nearby table on her way. "So what's this all about, Nick?" she asked, her golden eyes bright and curious.

"We're investigating an attempted murder," Judy cut in before Nick could speak, "There were a couple that was in here a couple nights ago on the fourteenth. Did you work that night?"

"Yes," Jamie said, turning her focus to Judy, "Why, were they the ones who did it?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Nick said smoothly, "A male dingo and a rabbit doe. Do you remember seeing them?"

Judy didn't have high expectations; a busy restaurant would have dozens of customers cycling through in a single night, but she hoped that the unusual nature of the couple in question would make them stand out in the waitress's memory. "Sure, Bruce and Heather," Jamie said, "Kind of an odd couple, right? They've come in about half a dozen time while I've been working. They always sit outside on the patio."

"Do you remember what time they were here on the fourteenth? Or does the restaurant have cameras?" Judy asked eagerly, leaning across the table.

Jamie shrank back a little from the eager bunny. "I don't really remember, no. And there aren't any cameras on the patio."

Judy slouched back in her chair, frowning. It didn't definitively clear Bruce or Heather of the crime, or strongly indicate that they were the ones who had done it. On the one paw, they could have just eaten their dinner and enjoyed each other's company, as Heather had said. On the other paw, one or both of them could have slipped away from the patio long enough to commit the crime, and it probably would have gone unnoticed. Either way, it would come down to either tracking down other patrons and getting more eye-witness testimonies—which probably wouldn't be all that reliable—or finding confirmation or refutation of the alibi somewhere else. "Do you really think that Heather and Bruce tried murdering someone?" Jamie asked, sounding somewhat anxious, "They've always been so nice."

"We're just considering every possibility," Nick said firmly.

"OK," Jamie said, but she sounded a little less upbeat, "Is there anything else?"

Judy shot Nick a glance. He shook his head slightly, and Judy nodded back. "Just our lunches, please," Judy said.

The gumbo looked like it was just short of boiling, and the taste was about the flavor equivalent. Judy's first spoonful of the gumbo was like filling her mouth with molten steel. Her taste buds cried out in agony, barely able to register the flavor of the stew underneath the intense spiciness of the dish. She did her best to conceal her discomfort, which was more than could be said for Nick. His muzzle contorted as though he had been stabbed and he seemed to have to force himself to swallow the gumbo instead of spitting it out. "Who can't handle spice now?" she crowed, even as she desperately tore apart one of the fresh pumpernickel rolls and shoved the pieces into her mouth in the hopes of killing some of the intensity of the flavor.

"I have a more sensitive nose than you do," Nick said thickly, as his nose starting to drip and his eyes teared up, "Which means I also have a better sense of taste than you do."

"Ha!" Judy laughed through lips that were completely numb, "There's no way you have a better sense of taste than I do. I've seen your shirts."