The streets of the city had started to fill with the lunchtime traffic, pedestrians walking at a rapid pace with their heads down, jockeying and elbowing each other to keep moving forward and cars filling the air with the drone of their engines. It made even the wider streets seem cramped, and Judy had to keep an eye out to avoid hitting anyone darting for a gap between the cars. The Buchatti protested the low speed at which they crawled forward, too, and Judy found herself constantly on and off the clutch to keep it from stalling. It did mean, though, that it was actually possible to hold a conversation, as the normal roar of the Buchatti's engine wasn't more than a sullen grumble as she eased the car forward. Turning to Nick, Judy asked, "Do you think Mr. Big really is, you know..."
Nick had been silent ever since she had asked him if he knew how to get to the coroner's office, except for the few times he'd had to call out directions. Even as she asked him the question, his attention seemed to have been caught by a shouting match in the street between the driver of a brand new Model A and a pushcart merchant. The gleaming chrome of the Furd's front bumper was dented, and the pushcart was overturned, scattering cabbages across the dirty street where most had been run over by cars or stepped on by careless pedestrians. The pushcart merchant, a stocky little goat, was pointing a hoof and screaming at the driver of the Furd, a well-to-do looking beaver who appeared equally upset as he gesticulated at his car, while a horse in the uniform of a beat cop with a look of long suffering on his face kept them apart. "Hmm?" Nick said distractedly, before tearing himself away from watching the spectacle to turn and look at Judy, "She must think so, at least. It'd be easy enough to check."
Judy nodded, but didn't say anything more. She had the feeling that, having caught his attention, he'd keep talking if she let him, and after a brief pause he continued. "It's hard to picture him as an invalid, you know," Nick said thoughtfully, "It didn't matter that he was about three inches tall, he just had this sort of... presence."
Judy wondered what the diminutive crime boss had been like at his peak and Nick seemed to gather his thoughts a moment before he continued. "I don't think he ever read a book all the way through in his life, but he was smart in his own way. He told me, once, 'Why should I know what compound interest is? You know that, and you know it for me.'"
Consciously or not, Nick had gone into what must have been an imitation of Mr. Big's voice, which was deeper than his own but thicker somehow, almost nasal. "That was before he started jumping at shadows, though."
Judy had intended to let him keep speaking, but a question sprang to mind that suddenly seemed important in light of what Nick had just said. "And he never knew that you made Randall Steervens up?"
Nick smiled a little at that. "Not a chance, Agent Carrots. You're talking to a master of the craft, remember?"
The smile flew away as quickly as it had arrived. "Of course, had I tried a few years later, he probably would have. He was a lot more trusting, back when we first met. By '25, he was going a bit crazy with the tests of loyalty."
Judy remembered her own horror at learning that Mr. Big had asked Nick to turn a skunk into a rug for failing to pay protection money as proof that Nick was loyal to the Zootopia Outfit, and had to repress a shudder. There was no telling what other acts the shrew had demanded of those mammals at the heart of his organization, and Judy fumbled to change the topic when she saw the brooding look going across Nick's face. "And you're sure that Fru Fru never knew about what her father did?"
Nick shrugged at the question. "Why should she have? He did love her, you know, and he wanted to keep his little princess in her little fairy-tale fantasy. She had everything she could have ever wanted. She shopped at the best stores, ate at the best restaurants... If it ever occurred to her to wonder where it all really came from, I'm sure the thought didn't last long. It'd surprise you what mammals can avoid thinking about."
Judy got the feeling that Nick wasn't just talking about Fru Fru; what thoughts had he squashed while in service to Mr. Big? Before Mr. Big had asked Nick to cross a line that the fox refused to, what had Nick chosen to ignore? With a start, Judy realized she had been guilty of something not too much different. She had never hated predators, or feared them the way that her father did, but how many instances of prejudice or bigotry had simply escaped her notice because she was more concerned about her own struggle to become a cop despite being a bunny? Even putting it like that, though, was a lot nobler than the simple truth of it, though. She had been more concerned with herself, to the point of completely ignoring the danger she was pulling Nick into, and once again she felt a creeping sense of shame. "It might not, you know," she said quietly, and Nick nodded.
"I suppose not," he said, and that was the last that either of them spoke, aside from Nick calling out directions, until they reached the coroner's office.
The coroner's office was in an incongruously nice building, particularly in comparison to the Bureau's office. It was two stories tall, with simple decorations of granite surrounding the many large frosted windows that broke up its sides. A thick slab of marble set in the ground near the wide front doors had "Zootopia Medical Examiner" engraved on it, framed on one side by a brass plaque with the city's seal and on the other with a brass plaque showing a caduceus.
Inside, the building was entirely modern, and almost sterile in how clean it was. The linoleum floor, which bore a checkered white and green pattern, didn't have so much as a single smudge or scuff that Judy could see, and even the air had a slight antiseptic smell to it. There were a few wooden benches of various heights arranged along one wall, but there weren't any mammals waiting at the moment. Even the reception desk, which was set into the opposite wall with a glass partition between it and the main waiting area, was empty. A small type-written sign on the glass read, "Please ring bell," next to another larger sign that read "SMOKING IN SMOKING ROOM ONLY," with the word "ONLY" underlined twice and an arrow drawn to point down the hall. Judy was glad that Nick had come along; the desk was too tall for her to easily reach over, and she would have had to jump to hit the button. He gave it two quick presses, and Judy could hear an electric buzz coming from somewhere further in the building.
As they waited for someone to show up, Nick looked around as he stepped back from the desk. "I never liked this place," he said, distaste obvious in his voice.
"You've been here before?" Judy asked, the words out of her mouth before she realized how stupid a question it was in response to what he had said.
He gave her a sidelong look instead of pointing that out, though, and said, "Once. It might have been twice, if it wasn't for the war."
Judy was thankfully spared having to come up to a response by the arrival of the receptionist, whose appearance completely matched everything else she had seen so far in the office. There must have been a series of steps behind the reception desk, because Judy first saw only the top of her head before the rest of her head and part of her torso became visible as she slid open a piece of glass in the partition that ran along the top of the desk. The receptionist was a woodchuck somewhere in her late middle age, her brown fur gone mostly gray. However, her dress was so white that it almost seemed to glow with its own inner light, and the nurse's watch that was pinned to it reflected brilliant spots from the harsh glare of the overhead lights. A little paper hat sat primly atop her head, and she looked down at Judy with a bored expression. "How may I help you?" she asked, her voice utterly bland.
"I'd like to speak with the coroner about a mammal who should have come in the other day. His name was Thomas Carajou."
"One moment," the receptionist said, and reaching down pulled up a thickly bound book that she flipped through.
When she reached the page she was looking for, her expression at last changed. She frowned, making the little lines in her lips stand out against the dull red of her lipstick. "You're not related to him," she said, having apparently read in whatever file she had been looking at that Carajou was a wolverine and drawing the obvious conclusion, "You can't see him if you're not family."
"Actually," Judy said, drawing herself up as she reached into her purse and dug out her badge to show it to the receptionist, "I'm a prohibition agent. Could you—"
"No you're not," the woodchuck cut her off, then waved her paw dismissively, "Go make your little jokes somewhere else."
"Excuse me," Judy replied, not moving from where she stood, her badge still outstretched before her, "But this is an official investigation and—"
"Beat it before I call the police," the woodchuck said with a scowl, and moved to shut the sliding piece of glass dividing her desk from the rest of the room.
Judy crossed her arms. "Go ahead," she said, trying to keep her expression neutral, "But it won't be us that they arrest, will it Nick?"
The woodchuck apparently hadn't paid the fox any attention, as she gave a little start of surprise as he leaned over the desk, his muzzle less than an inch from the sliding partition. He seemed to effortlessly fall into the role that Judy had set him up for, nodding with a sympathetic expression on his face. "That's right, Agent Hopps. It's a crime to interfere with a Bureau of Prohibition investigation, you know. Obstruction of justice and all that."
The woodchuck snorted at that. "If she's a prohi, what's that make you, fox? The district attorney?"
Nick leaned backwards and idly examined the claws on one paw. "No, that's still good ol' Bobby Cowe, isn't it?"
"He is," Judy nodded, "He's looking for another win, too."
"Oh, maybe it doesn't matter that's someone's killing off gangsters. Good riddance, right?" Nick said, continuing before the woodchuck had the chance to answer, "But it does matter who's killing them, doesn't it?"
"Absolutely," Judy said, "So let's make sure that we've got it straight, Mrs...?"
Judy deliberately trailed off, and the woodchuck grudgingly answered, "Monax."
"Mrs. Monax," Judy said, "All we want is to talk to the coroner and get some more information about Carajou. That won't be a problem, will it?"
Mrs. Monax hesitated, her eyes flickering back and forth between Nick and Judy, before Nick spoke again. "You could also think about the kind of fox a prohi might take with her," he said, and while he said it blandly enough and with his expression perfectly neutral, the woodchuck swallowed heavily and shook her head.
"No problem, Agent," she said, and her tone was quite a bit more respectful, "Down the stairs at the end of the hall. I'll let Dr. Tolmie know you're on your way."
"Thank you," Judy said, and then started walking in the direction that the woodchuck had indicated, Nick just a moment behind her.
They found Dr. Tolmie's office easily enough; it was the first door they came across in the basement, and it had his name and the title of Chief Medical Examiner painted onto the glass of the door. His office was a sort of barely controlled chaos, with stacks of paperwork overflowing his sturdy desk to pile across the floor, and he had an odd assortment of items that he used as paperweights to keep a decrepit little fan from blowing everything around. A plaster cast of the lower jaw of some unidentifiable predator grinned atop one stack, while a rusty hammer and a brick topped others. The walls of the small office were covered with medical illustrations, some of which had notes or numbers scribbled on them in pencil, and half-visible behind an illustration of a ruminant's digestive system that hung crookedly from two tacks and blew back and forth in the stuttering breeze of the fan was a cross-stitch which read, "The squirrel that you kill in jest dies in earnest," above the initials HDT.
Dr. Tolmie himself was a wombat somewhere in his mid-fifties, although he seemed to have the energy of a much younger mammal. After Judy had introduced herself and Nick (referring to him as a consultant after a moment's hesitation as to how to describe him) and explained their reason for coming, Tolmie had rubbed his paws together briskly. "Thomas Carajou, you say?" he said.
Tolmie's beady brown eyes were magnified nearly to the size of saucers behind his thick glasses, and the fur atop his head stuck out in all directions. The reason for it became apparent as he ran one paw between his widely spaced ears, mussing it up even further. "Yes, I've done the autopsy. Peculiar, you know, very peculiar. Please, come along, you can see for yourself."
Without waiting for a response he was already waddling out of the room as fast as his little legs could take him, and they hurried after him further down the hall before he opened a door labeled "Autopsy Room #3." The basement, and Tolmie's office, had both been somewhat cool, but the autopsy room was positively cold; Judy thought that if the temperature had been even a degree lower, she would have been able to see her breath. It didn't seem to bother Tolmie, who was wearing a cable-knit sweater over a patched pair of slacks, and he quickly moved to a series of what looked like enormous metal cabinets set into one of the walls before pulling one open. There was a sudden blast of cold air as the drawer opened, revealing Thomas Carajou's body under a cloth on a metal slab. Judy noticed Nick becoming conspicuously interested in the rest of the room, turning around to take in the other furnishings, which were all centered on a massive table with a scale built into it and a massive arc lamp on a telescoping arm built into the ceiling, as Tolmie enthusiastically explained his findings to her.
"The cause of death was the broken neck; there's absolutely no doubt of that," Tolmie said, pointing out the neck as he pulled the cloth back down to Carajou's waist.
Judy had seen the scars on Carajou's head, particularly the missing part of his ear and the enormous scar that twisted one side of his mouth up. However, what hadn't been visible under his natty suit were the other scars that covered his body. It was clear that the wolverine had lived a hard life, as he must have had dozens of scars of all different types. There was a massive jagged scar that ran up his left arm, and his chest was covered with burn scars where the fur had never grown back. There were puckered scars that looked like he had been hit by buckshot, and countless others that looked like they had been inflicted by slashes with knives. Tolmie had cut Carajou's chest open with an enormous Y-shaped incision, but even that hardly looked out of place among the other older wounds. "What about where he was hit in the chest?" Judy asked.
"Stabbed," Tolmie replied, "He was stabbed twice before his neck was broken. These wounds would have killed him on their own, I'm sure, and they're what's the most peculiar. Look at this one."
Judy looked at the wound that the wombat was pointing out, which didn't look too unusual to her admittedly untrained eye, until Tolmie hustled off and returned with a slim dowel, which he inserted into the wound. It sank in quite a bit further than Judy would have guessed, and when Tolmie pulled it out he was beaming. "Nearly twenty inches deep, and quite slim, I should say, no more than an inch and a half around at the thickest. Somewhat tapered, I think."
"Like a bayonet?" Judy suggested.
"Possible, possible," Tolmie said agreeably, "But not one from the Great War, no. Those wouldn't be nearly the right shape, to say nothing of the length. This was something like a stiletto, or perhaps a very large ice pick. And did you notice the angle? Whoever did this to him stabbed up into his torso, with quite a bit of strength. Why, this other wound here goes all the way through his back."
"So what kind of mammal are we looking for?" Judy asked.
She had her own thoughts, but wondered what Tolmie would say. The doctor ran a paw across the top of his head again, humming to himself and bouncing a little on the pads of his feet as he considered the question. "I would guess they were no shorter than Carajou himself to be able to stab him like this and break his neck. They must have been terrifically strong, too, and whatever they stabbed him with was sharper than a needle, if you see how cleanly it punctured the skin."
Judy mulled it over thoughtfully. "Is there anything else you think is important?"
Tolmie shrugged. "Hmm, important, important... Nothing that I can think of in the body itself. His last meal was rotgut moonshine, if that matters. I suppose you'd be interested in his personal effects?"
"Yes, please," Judy said.
It was only after Tolmie had slid Carajou's body back into cold storage and retrieved his personal effects that Nick finally turned around and seemed to start paying attention again. Judy got the strong feeling that he hadn't particularly wanted to look at the corpse, although she couldn't guess if that was because it was a corpse in general or if it was specifically because it was Carajou.
Carajou's personal effects didn't even come close to filling the scratched and dented metal bin that they had been put into, which Tolmie left with them saying he'd be in his office if they needed him again. A little cardboard box of Den-Den gave off a licorice aroma that didn't even come close to overpowering the powerful antiseptic scent of the autopsy room, but instead just made the two smells mingle unpleasantly. Carajou had owned a cheap switchblade; the nickel plating was almost completely worn off and the blade was wobbly and spotted with rust. There was also a plain white matchbook, a cheap key on a ring with a tarnished brass disc that had the number 114 engraved on it, and an envelope stained rusty brown with Carajou's blood that had three thousand dollars in crisp hundred-dollar bills in it.
Judy picked up the key and examined it closely, but while it seemed pretty clear to her that it had come from a hotel, there was nothing that indicated what hotel. Other than what Judy assumed was the room number engraved on one side of the brass disc connected to the key ring, there was nothing on the disc; the other side of it was completely blank. If 114 was the room number, that didn't do much to limit the hotels that it could have come from. Judy supposed that it meant the hotel probably had at least two floors, assuming the first 1 was the floor number, but there had to be dozens of hotels either in the city or on its outskirts that fit that description. As she carefully set the key aside, she thought all that she could guess for sure was that it hadn't come from a ritzy hotel, given how cheap the key felt.
While she had been examining the key, Nick had been rifling through the envelope full of cash, which he did with a slight frown on his muzzle. "The serial numbers are sequential," he said, "These are fresh from a bank."
He gave the envelope to Judy, and she saw that he was right. Aside from the blood stains on some of the outer bills, they looked immaculate, as if they had been freshly printed, and the serial numbers were indeed sequential. Judy thought about what that implied. "So whoever gave it to Carajou just withdrew three thousand dollars and gave it to him?"
Nick nodded. "Or he took it out of the bank himself, but I'd guess someone paid him, don't you think?"
As Judy recalled, when she had seen Carajou in the Thief of the Night, her first thought was that he was probably there to either get an assignment or get paid for one, and it looked like she had been right. Judy tried to imagine what must have led up to the murder, and the club filled her imagination. She could hear the sounds of Purrshwin that the pale little raccoon on the piano had filled the room with, and smell the mixture of cigarettes and cheap perfume and cologne in the air. Carajou stood out in sharp relief in her imagination, the other mammals in the club receding into an indistinct haze, as she pictured him across the room from where she sat.
Judy pictured a mammal approaching him, a mammal whose size and species shifted and jumbled as she went through the possibilities in her mind. Carajou had been waiting for someone in the Thief of the Night, sipping at his drink. He had received an envelope full of money, and then what? Had the murderer been the same mammal who paid him, taking advantage of Carajou's brief vulnerability while he tucked the envelope into the inside of his suit jacket? She imagined it playing out, Carajou's guard briefly relaxed before the indistinct assailant pulled something long and sharp from their coat and thrust it upwards into Carajou's chest, pulling it out and stabbing him once more before grabbing his neck and snapping it.
Judy frowned. Had they dropped the weapon first? Had they put it away before breaking his neck? Why hadn't Carajou called out? The music in the club hadn't been too loud, and surely someone would have heard him if he screamed even if it had been too late to save his life. They'd have to go back to the crime scene to look at it again or perhaps to the police station to question the officers who had been on the scene.
While she had been thinking, Judy had idly picked up the matchbook and rolled it through her fingers before opening it. There was absolutely nothing printed on the outside of the matchbook, but when she opened it Judy noticed that only a single match was missing and there was something scrawled in pencil on the inside flap: "Blind Tiger 47 8th St." "What do you make of this?" she asked, showing Nick the matchbook, "Is that Carajou's writing?"
The writing still looked sharp, without any smudges, and whoever wrote it must have done so recently. "I think so," Nick replied, "Looks like an address, doesn't it?"
It did. It could have been where Carajou had been before his death, or it might have been for an appointment he had never been able to make. Judy nodded. "Have you ever heard of the Blind Tiger?"
Nick shrugged, and then grinned. "It'll be new for the both of us, Carrots."
Author's Notes:
The title of this chapter, "Matchbox Blues," comes from a 1927 song by Blind Lemon Jefferson, and was chosen in reference to the matchbook that appears in this chapter.
The Model A Ford was new to the market for 1927, and while it never sold as many cars as the Model T, it was still a definite success that helped define the look of Ford cars for years to come. Vendors selling produce off of pushcarts were relatively common in the early part of the twentieth century before the rise of supermarkets, and the choice of cabbages is a deliberate nod to Avatar.
A nurse's watch is a style of watch that typically hangs from a short chain and pins or clips to the front of a shirt, and is designed so that the face is right-side up if you look down at it. They were much more common in the past for nurses to use daily than they are now, but they are still sometimes given to new nurses as a graduation gift. The presence of the watch, and the way the receptionist is dressed, is intended to imply that she is a nurse; it was very common in the early 20th century for nurses to have to work extremely long hours and do just about any task requested of them. Mrs. Monax's name comes from a Native American word for the groundhog meaning "digger" which is also part of its scientific name, Marmota monax. Whether or not Judy could actually have Mrs. Monax arrested for obstruction of justice, I think it is worth remembering that, while Nick has it worse as a predator, Judy's really not getting taken seriously by some of the mammals in official positions that they run across. Besides, I think this scene shows that they really are starting to work together pretty well.
In real life, Chicago is located in Cook County, Illinois, and the Cook County State's Attorney functions as the District Attorney for the city. In the 1920s, Robert Crowe held this office, hence the mild pun I used in this chapter. Robert Crowe made a name for himself by successfully prosecuting Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy university students who committed increasingly serious crimes until they kidnapped and murdered a 14 year old because they thought that they were intellectually superior to most other people and were trying to commit the perfect crime to show that they couldn't be caught. Despite a defense by Clarence Darrow, the lawyer probably best known for his role in defending teacher John Scopes in the Scopes "Monkey" Trial, the pair received life sentences, although they did escape the death penalty.
Any kind of deal like the one that Nick arranged in the backstory of this story would have required the input of the state's attorney, so it is quite plausible that Nick could know him, although certainly not with the familiarity that he implies.
Dr. Tolmie's name is a reference to the Australian town of Tolmie, which was originally called Wombat before it was renamed in 1879. The quote "The squirrel that you kill in jest dies in earnest," is by Henry David Thoreau, the American author and philosopher, and seems like the sort of thing that's a good sign as far as a medical examiner goes. Certainly you'd hope that anyone who likes the quote enough to frame it also cares about doing their job thoroughly and to the best of their ability for every corpse that comes their way.
The office of the medical examiner is as true to actual early 20th century ones as I could make it; the tools available now are much more advanced, but autopsies haven't changed too much over the past hundred years. Fluorescent lamps, which are now more or less ubiquitous in offices, weren't commercially viable until the 1930s, so the use of carbon arc lamps is period appropriate for the 1920s. Arc lamps produce a high intensity white light, and were commonly used to light movie sets and as searchlights. It's been suggested that one of the reasons sunglasses started becoming popular in the 1920s is because actors wore them on set when not filming to protect their eyes against the harsh light of arc lamps and to hide the redness of their eyes that the light caused. People then followed the trend, and sunglasses exploded in popularity.
Den-Den is a weak pun on Sen-Sen, a licorice-scented breath freshener, and den as in an animal's den. Sen-Sen was quite popular during Prohibition as a way of covering up the scent of alcohol on a person's breath, as well as covering up the scent of cigarettes, but it's no longer made. Sen-Sen is also referenced in my favorite song from the musical The Music Man, "Ya Got Trouble," when the con artist Harold Hill claims, in musical verse, that the children of River City will brag to each other about using Sen-Sen to cover the scent of cigarettes if the terrible trouble posed to River City by a pool table isn't addressed. As an aside, Nick would make a great Harold Hill; I could see him traveling around and selling instruments and uniforms to unsuspecting parents. Or, maybe, monorails if you go with the episode of the Simpsons inspired by The Music Man. Someone had to sell Zootopia their monorail, right?
Switchblades have existed since the 19th century, and were relatively common in the 1920s. In the 1950s the knives started being seen as a symbol of gangs and the corruption of youths, which in the US led to the Switchblade Knife Act of 1958 that effectively banned them, although there's enough wiggle room that they remain legal in some states depending on state law.
Noting that a hotel wasn't ritzy is a period appropriate use of slang, and the term actually comes from a hotel; the Ritz Hotel was extremely high class, and ritzy is derived from that name.
Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought if you'd like to leave a comment.