The table of the conference room was covered with files and papers. The whiteboard on one wall was full of notes in Nick's even and spindly writing, as he could reach higher on the board than Judy could, although the conclusions that they had been able to draw from the facts were pretty meager. They knew the assailant had been wearing a raincoat and was somewhere between two-and-a-half and four-and-a-half feet tall, and that the assailant was either athletic enough to quickly climb up six floors of fire escapes or had already been in position outside the window on the sixth floor and had an accomplice at street level watching for Jacques. The assailant knew enough about Holly and Jacques to bring flowers, and had been strong enough to swing a set of bolt cutters hard enough to give Jacques a severe concussion. They knew the timing of when the assailant had made their entrance and exit, but that was it. Everything else was simply supposition, although they had spent hours going over everything that was available with a fine-toothed comb trying to find something new. The file that Thanatopsis had provided on Roberto hadn't told them anything worth knowing, unless it was important that the opossum had made almost no effort to shop the squirrel's screenplays around.

Judy was woken with a start by the sound of someone knocking on the door. She had a brief moment of confusion before snapping back into full awareness. Her back was sore from the position she had fallen asleep in, sitting in a chair with her arms and head resting on the conference room table. Nick's ears twitched at the sound of the knocking, but he gave no sign of waking up from where he was, curled into a tight ball with his tail tucked under his nose, on one of the other chairs. Judy quickly checked her phone for the time—it was almost six in the morning—but hesitated before putting it back away. With a small smile, she snapped a picture of her sleeping partner before answering the door.

The mammal standing there was an impatient-looking platypus, taller and thinner than she was and drably dressed. Judy recognized the platypus at the door as being one of the forensic technicians, but had to look at the plastic ID badge (showing a stone-faced picture of the platypus next to the text "Caldwell, Willow H.") that the platypus wore on a lanyard around her neck to catch her name. "Your rush job is done," she said, her bill giving her something of a lisp.

"The results on your raincoat were inconclusive," Caldwell said as she gave Judy the report.

If the platypus found Judy's undoubtedly bedraggled appearance, or the presence of a sleeping fox in the conference room, unusual she kept it to herself.

"What do you mean inconclusive?" Judy asked, "Did it have blood on it or not?"

"It's in the report," the tech replied, a peevish note creeping into her voice, "It might have been cleaned with bleach, which would denature any blood on it, or it might have never come in contact with blood and it's just got residue from how it was manufactured. That apartment was practically a bio-hazard; you can't expect miracles."

Judy knew that Caldwell was right, but it was still disappointing. "I'm sorry," she said, "I was just hoping for better news."

The platypus shrugged. "I just run the tests," she said, and turned and left.

While Judy was flipping through the testing results, Nick stood up and stretched, his fur sticking out wildly. "What'd I miss?" he asked, standing behind her and peering over her shoulder at the results.

Judy sighed, and brought the results up so that he could get a better look at them. "The tests were inconclusive," she said, echoing Caldwell, "They can't be sure whether or not the raincoat ever had blood on it."

Judy could feel the warmth of Nick's breath against the back of her neck as he took it in. She didn't have to spell out the rest of it for him; without the confirmation that the raincoat had bunny blood on it, there was still no definite link that Roberto was the guilty party.

"It wasn't a complete waste, though," Judy said.

"Really?" Nick asked, "Did you figure something out?"

"No," she said, "But I got this."

Judy spun around and shoved her phone out to show him the picture she had taken of him while he slept. Nick tried to snatch her phone away, but she pulled it out of his reach. "Carrots, if you don't delete that I will," he said, but he sounded more bemused than annoyed.

"Why would I delete it?" she teased, "You just look so cute!"

"Oh, I see how it is," Nick said archly, "You can call me cute, but I can't call you cute because only bunnies can use that word?"

"That's about it," she replied in her best impression of his smuggest tone, "This is going to be your new contact picture."

Nick shook his head. "When you least expect it I'm going to even the score," he said.

"Are you threatening an officer?" Judy asked.

Nick chuckled. "Consider it a promise," he said, "But as much as I'd love to stay and chat, I better get going."

"Going where?" Judy asked.

"We've got some time before the morning briefing," Nick said, "I'm going back to my place for a shower."

"What's wrong with the showers here?" Judy asked, as she fully intended to just freshen up at the station.

"Nothing, but I'm out of clean uniforms here and I can't wear this one again," Nick said.

He did have a point. As a result of how he had slept, his usually crisp uniform was covered with wrinkles, and Judy knew how much pride he took in his appearance. "I'll see if I can get the hospital to give us an estimate on when we can talk to Jacques," Judy said.

The last she had spoken with the hospital, the doctors were intending to take Jacques Lapin out of his medically-induced coma that day, and he was the last lead that they hadn't been able to fully trace down.

Nick nodded. "You do that," he said, "I'll grab something on my way back here. Any preference? How about bagels?"

"That's fine," she said, and added the test results from the raincoat to the paperwork on the table.

It was only after Nick had left that she realized he had subtly returned her favor and called her cute. Somehow, it didn't bother her.

When they arrived in Jacques's hospital room, Judy was struck by how different it appeared from her first visit. The previously cold nature of the room had been brightened by colorful flowers and cards, but the biggest difference in the atmosphere was in its occupants. Holly was sitting at Jacques's bedside and holding his paw, as she had been the last time, but her worry had seemingly evaporated and she was looking at her boyfriend with a kind of whole-hearted adoration that was almost uncomfortable to see, as though she was interrupting something that should have remained private. Jacques, for his part, looked much improved considering that he was actually conscious, although it was clear that his head was bothering him. "Officer Hopps!" Holly called out when she saw that they had entered, sounding glad to see her again, "Please, come meet Jacques."

"Officer Hopps," Jacques said, smiling, "I've heard a lot of good things about you."

He turned and faced Nick. "You must be Officer Wilde," he said, "Holly told me you got sandwiches for her the night this happened."

He gestured at his head as he said it. Instead of the mass of bandages that had been wrapped around his forehead four days ago when they had first seen the bunny, he was down to a simple gauze pad taped to a roughly square section of skin that had been completely shaved of fur. "It was nothing," Nick said.

"But speaking of the night you were attacked, we'd like to ask you a few questions," Judy said.

"I don't know how much I'll be able to help you," Jacques said, "I don't remember anything after I picked up the flowers."

That was disappointing, but not unexpected. Judy had hoped that Jacques would be able to describe the face of the attacker, but considering that he had been badly concussed it wasn't surprising that he had some memory loss. She recalled that one of her younger brothers had gotten a concussion playing sports and had lost his memory of the entire day, and his injury had been comparatively much less severe than the attack Jacques had suffered. Jacques must have seen the disappointment on her face, because he quickly added, "But I'll try to answer anything I can."

"I'll leave you alone," Holly said with a shudder, "I don't want to hear any more about it."

When Holly left the room with one final lingering glance at her boyfriend, Jacques became somewhat more anxious looking. Before they could ask any questions of their own, he asked one the instant Holly closed the door. "This guy hit me in the head as soon as I went into Holly's place, right? Nothing else happened?"

"That's right," Judy responded, a little puzzled.

"Oh, thank God," Jacques said, looking visibly relieved, "When I didn't see the ring on her finger I was afraid she said no."

That added another dimension to the case; Holly had not mentioned a ring, and after spending the previous night poring over the case files, Judy was absolutely sure that a ring had not been found at the crime scene. To be absolutely sure, she asked Jacques, "You mean an engagement ring, right?"

"Well, yeah," Jacques said, "I was going to propose."

"And you thought she might say no?" Nick asked.

Considering the way that Holly had been looking at Jacques, Judy understood Nick's skepticism. Jacques scratched his forehead just under the bandage and winced. "A few weeks back, her producer told her not to even think about starting a family. He played it off as a joke, but... Well, I could tell that it got to Holly."

"Was the producer Rich Wolf?" Judy asked.

"I guess so," Jacques said, "I've never met the guy. Holly just told me about it after work one day."

He smiled crookedly, "Do you have the ring? I can try again once I'm out of this place."

Judy exchanged a look with Nick. "No one found a ring in Holly's apartment," she said cautiously.

"What? That's... I had it with me!" Jacques said, his voice escalating in volume as he started getting worked up, "I..."

He had sat upright, and clearly regretted it. The skin underneath the fur of his face visibly blanched and he winced in pain.

"Take it easy," Judy said, guiding him back down, "You'll get dizzy if you move too fast."

After taking a moment to recover, Jacques said, "Could you get my phone?" and gestured towards the stack of his personal effects on the bedside table.

Nick brought it over to him and the bunny held it an arm's length away from himself—farsighted, probably—and flipped through it before finding what he was looking for and showing them what was on the screen. The ring wasn't the sort of thing that she would ever wear herself—Judy wasn't much of a fan of jewelry—but she had to admit that it was beautiful. It was white gold, worked to look like strands of ivy, with minuscule emeralds forming the leaves around a large pink flower cut diamond. "It's my grandmother's ring," Jacques explained, "But I had a jeweler clean it and replace the stones."

He had shown them the picture of the ring as part of a chain of texts from a week past with what were presumably his sisters, judging by the names, all of them admiring the job the jeweler had done and demanding that Jacques tell them how the proposal went as soon afterwards as possible. "You have to find it," Jacques begged, "Please."

"We'll do our best," Judy promised, not wanting to get his hopes up.

She got the information from him about the jeweler who had done the ring—the pink diamond had a number microscopically etched into it and was theoretically traceable—and asked if he could think of anyone who would want to hurt Holly or himself. Like Holly, however, he couldn't think of anyone, not even when Nick pressed the point about the possibility of it being one of his online fans.

Their brief discussion had clearly worn the bunny out, and Judy didn't think that there was anything else they could learn from Jacques considering that he couldn't remember any of the attack itself. They were on their way out when Nick paused with his paw on the doorknob. "That's a nice ring," Nick said, "Did you pay for the new stones with your ZooTube money?"

"Yeah," Jacques said, seeming confused by the question.

Nick chuckled and shot him a grin. "Make sure you report that income," he said, "Take it from me; you do not want to deal with the IRS."

Upon their return from the hospital, Nick had added an additional line on the whiteboard in the conference room to the paltry list of facts that they knew about the assailant: stole an engagement ring. He stood back and frowned, the marker still in his paws. "Let's say you're Roberto," he said, "You've got a fixation on Holly and thousands of dollars of debt. What would you do with her engagement ring?"

Judy immediately saw the point he was getting at. There were a few options for what Roberto could do with the ring, but it seemed reasonable that he'd either keep it for his shrine to Holly or sell it for cash. The forensic team had torn his apartment apart without finding a ring, although it was possible that he had hidden it elsewhere. If he had sold the ring, however, it didn't make sense for him to be selling his medicine for cash. "It doesn't quite fit," she said, "How much would a ring like that be worth, anyway?"

Nick shrugged, "Jacques probably paid about five grand for that diamond. Give it another thousand for the emeralds and the ring itself. I doubt a pawn shop would pay more than about twelve hundred for it, though."

"I guess we'll have to see if any of your contacts spot it," Judy said.

On the return trip from the hospital, Nick had put out the word of the ring that they were looking for, although he hadn't seemed optimistic that it would be found. A moderately clever thief could have made the ring untraceable by separating the jewels from the ring, melting the ring down, and either removing or modifying the number etched into the diamond before selling it.

Nick nodded absent-mindedly in agreement and took three of his business cards out of his pocket and laid them face up on the table. With a felt-tipped pen, he made an "X" across one of them, and then took each of the cards, flipped them over, and gently creased them in half so that they rested on the table like little tents. "Three-card Monte?" Judy asked, somewhat incredulously.

Nick had shown her the con game before; he had been very clear on the point that it was a con and not a hustle. He had never exactly said what the difference was between the two, but Judy got the idea that a hustle was clever manipulation of the rules to stretch them as far as was possible without breaking and a con was simply an illegal scam. "I'm thinking," he said, smoothly shuffling the cards around on the table.

Judy tried to ignore him and went back to reviewing the files; if playing with cards helped him focus, she supposed it wasn't really any different from her doodling or playing with her pen. They had spent all of the previous night reviewing files and trying to figure the case out, but neither that nor their interview with Jacques Lapin had gotten them any closer to solving it. Judy put the video footage they had on the monitor on the wall of the conference room opposite the whiteboard and flipped through it, trying to force her brain to spot something. Across the table, Nick's manipulation of the cards slowed and then stopped, all of the cards flipped to show that the one in the middle had the "X" on it. "I've got an idea, Carrots," he said.

Her ears perked up. "What's that?"

"Follow the X."

He flipped the cards back over and his paws moved across the table, first slow and then faster and faster. Judy kept a close eye on the marked card and saw the trick—at one point during his shuffle, he picked up two cards with one paw and slid the one on the bottom up over the top one. Everything else was simply misdirection, and when the cards stopped she was confident she knew which one hid the "X." Nick leaned back from the table and put his paws up. "Which one?" he asked.

Judy reached to flip the leftmost card over, but before she had her paw more than halfway there, Nick spoke up. "Don't touch them yet!"

She rolled her eyes at his theatrics and pulled her paw back. "If I was good at this game—and I am—I'd be able to force you to pick the card I wanted you to," Nick said.

"You're bluffing," she said, eyeing him suspiciously, "You're trying to trick me into changing my card."

Nick ignored her interruption and gave no reaction to her accusation. "But no matter how good I was, maybe I'd misjudge you. Flip your card over."

Judy flipped the leftmost card over. "Ha!" she said, "Read it and—"

Her victory crowing was cut short when she saw that it was unmarked. "How did you do that?" she demanded, "I saw the trick. I saw it!"

Nick favored her with a lazy grin and laced his paws behind his head. "You saw what I wanted you to see. But what if I'd done the impossible and overestimated you? Maybe you wouldn't have seen the trick. Let's say that you lost track of the card completely, OK?"

"OK," Judy agreed reluctantly, although the result showed that it was closer to the truth than she would have liked.

"So here's one more question. Why should I give you a one in three chance of getting it right by guessing when I could make sure you'd have a zero in three chance?"

Before Nick could react, Judy reached out both paws and flipped the remaining two cards over simultaneously. Neither of them had the "X."

She had no idea how he had done it; she had seen him pull out three cards, mark one of them, and shuffle them, and he hadn't touched them since they stopped moving. "Looking for this?" he teased, and as he held out one arm with a flourish the card with the "X" on it appeared in his paw as if by magic.

Judy frowned. "That's a great trick," she said, "But what does it have to do... with the..."

She trailed off and her eyes widened as she realized the idea that Nick must have had. She had guessed the card wrong because she thought that she was following it, but she had only been following what Nick had wanted her to see. Once she started looking at it from that perspective, the pieces of the case started clicking into place, each detail meshing perfectly with the others. There was only one possibility for how the crime could have been committed, and when she said it out loud Nick agreed. "I was hoping you'd come to the same conclusion," he said.

They sat in silence for a moment, thinking through the implications, before Judy looked at Nick excitedly, "I know how we can prove it!"

"What are we waiting for then?" Nick asked as he got to his feet, "Let's get to the car."

Author's Note: This is it! The last chapter before the reveal. I've done my best to make this a "fair" mystery; you have all the information that Nick and Judy currently do with the exception of their conclusion. If anyone can figure it out before the next chapter goes up, I'll give you a shout out in my notes on that chapter. The next chapter will also be the last. I hope you enjoy this one and I'll see you next week!