Judy desperately wanted to immediately set off for the address on the matchbook, but she forced herself to return everything but the key to Dr. Tolmie. Although the wombat had been surprisingly nonchalant about leaving her with a small fortune in blood-stained cash, she wanted to be sure that everything went through the proper channels.
As Tolmie had promised, he was in his office, poring over a thick file full of glossy black and white photographs while he took notes on a small steno pad. Tolmie paused from his work to rifle through the contents of the battered metal bin. "Well, I suppose that key'll do more good out there," the doctor remarked as he laboriously cataloged the other items.
While trying to force herself not to tap her foot in impatience at how slowly he went about it, Judy looked around the office at the medical illustrations on the walls. There was an impressive variety to them, covering everything from the teeth of a mouse to the organs of a grizzly bear. There was one poster, though, that caught her eye, and she stared at it, frowning. It showed, in a number of separate illustrations, the growth of a male deer's antlers from when the buds began forming in spring through their development of tines throughout the summer, and it was as though something unlocked in her mind. The word was past her lips before she was even consciously aware of it. "Horns."
Dr. Tolmie and Nick both cocked their heads curiously at her, the gesture oddly mirrored across the wombat and the fox. "Horns!" Judy repeated, the thought suddenly clear, "What if Carajou wasn't stabbed? What if he was gored?"
A look of realization spread across Nick's face, and Judy saw that he had realized what she had. The wounds to Carajou's torso were bizarre, and an ice pick or a stiletto didn't make as much sense as a pair of horns, which could have inflicted the wounds simultaneously. "Well," Dr. Tolmie said, pulling off his glasses to polish the lenses fussily, "It's possible, I suppose, certainly possible, but in this situation I hardly think it likely."
He put his glasses back on and took on an almost lecturing tone. "You were at the club when Carajou was murdered, were you not, Agent Hopps?"
"I was," Judy said, trying to control her excitement.
"And did you see anyone whose head was covered with blood?"
"I... No," Judy admitted, realizing what he was getting at.
She had seen the bloodstain beneath Carajou's chair, which had been quite large even after what couldn't have been more than a few minutes. If some horned mammal really had gored Carajou, there was no way they could have avoided getting absolutely covered in blood, which would have made it a bit difficult for them to slip away unnoticed. "They could have toweled off, or covered their head," Nick offered.
"Again, possible, but look at the angle of the wound. Carajou was sitting when he was stabbed. Every mammal I know of—and I would say I know most—with horns long enough to inflict these wounds would be entirely too tall to catch him in the torso."
"They could have been on all fours," Judy said slowly, thinking it through.
She had to agree with Dr. Tolmie that every mammal she could think of with horns was much too tall to be able to gore Carajou if he was sitting and they were standing, but if they were on all fours it made perfect sense. The horns of an ibex, and every other mammal with long horns that Judy could think of, had horns that swept backwards from their head, which meant that to gore someone they would have had to have lowered their head to bring the horns forward. It would have been awkward standing, but on all fours it might have been possible.
Dr. Tolmie's smile was kindly. "I have been a medical examiner for, let me think, almost twenty years now, and in all that time I've never seen wounds like this from a mammal being gored. I have seen wounds inflicted by horns, certainly so, but I've never seen one deeper than perhaps six inches. I think it is far more likely that you are looking for a mammal with a weapon beyond what nature gave them."
The wombat shrugged. "Of course, should you find a mammal you suspect, I would happily measure the distance between their horns. If you are right, I think their guilt could be proven quite neatly."
Judy could tell that the medical examiner was still skeptical of her theory, but if she was right there would be a way to prove the guilt of the murderer. They might be able to wash their horns off and eliminate all traces of blood, but they couldn't change how far apart their horns were, which would match up perfectly with the wounds in Carajou's torso. "It'd certainly be one for the papers," he added, with a cheerfulness that was almost unseemly, "Anything else I can help you with, before you go?"
Judy thanked Dr. Tolmie and made her way back up the stairs, Nick a step behind her. "Even if Tolmie is right, all that changes is where the blood would be," Nick said thoughtfully, "If the murderer didn't get blood on their head, they must have gotten it on their paws. Or hooves, whatever they have."
Judy frowned, not that Nick could see it. "It'd be a lot easier to hide bloody paws—"
"Or hooves," Nick interjected, and she nodded to concede the point.
Whatever was at the end of the murderer's arms, they could have easily hidden the bloodstains by stuffing them into the pockets of their coat. The club had been cold enough that just about every male mammal there, except the ones adapted to low temperatures, had left their coats on, and for quite a few of the female mammals practicality had won out over the desire to show off their dresses. "But how did they stab Carajou twice and then break his neck before he could say anything?"
They had made their way out of the lobby, and were walking side by side when Nick offered a suggestion. "Maybe it was an elephant. They could have had an ice pick in each paw and then broken Carajou's neck with their trunk."
Judy shook her head. "I would have remembered an elephant in the room," she said.
Most of the mammals in the Thief of the Night had been around her size; the bar and ceiling would have both been awkwardly low for an elephant, and one would have certainly stuck out trying to fit in. The two officers who had shown up to the scene of the crime, a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus, hadn't been able to stand up straight, and as tall as they were they were still shorter than any elephant Judy had ever seen. "Then maybe there were two mammals," Nick said.
Judy thought about it. It did make a certain amount of sense, no matter whether her theory or Dr. Tolmie's was correct. One mammal could have either stabbed Carajou with something sharp or gored him with their horns, while an accomplice snapped the wolverine's neck. It would certainly explain how all three injuries could have been inflicted too quickly for Carajou to cry out, but it would mean that they were looking for two mammals, not one. "Maybe," she said, as they got into the Buchatti, "Do you know how to get to 8th Street from here?"
Instead of answering her immediately, Nick turned to look her in the eye. "You know I've been trying to help you, right?"
Judy had no idea where the question had come from, but she couldn't deny that, ever since her apartment building had been set on fire, the fox had certainly seemed to be doing his level best to help her investigation rather than hinder it. Nick's tone as he asked the question was entirely solemn, and there was none of his usual playfulness in either his voice or on his face. "Yes, of course I do," she said, and the words were completely honest.
Nick paused a moment, seeming to consider her response, and Judy plunged onward. "You know, we made a pretty good team back there, with that awful receptionist."
A half-smile made the corner of Nick's mouth twitch upwards. "She was the worst, wasn't she?" he said.
Judy could tell, though, that it wasn't the receptionist that had been on his mind. "But why did you ask? I know you're trying to help."
Hesitantly at first, Judy reached over and put one paw on top of his. Compared to hers, his paw was massive, and she could feel the warmth of his skin underneath the softness of the fur that covered it. Nick turned and looked down at the gesture, but he didn't move his paw out from underneath hers. "I want you to know..." he started, and then paused as he seemed to consider the words, "I want you to know I'm not trying to trick you."
Judy wasn't quite sure what he meant. "About what?"
Nick sighed, and looked out across the long hood of the Buchatti rather than at her. "That address isn't in a very nice neighborhood. Not for predators, and especially not for prey."
"Oh," Judy said quietly, "Are you saying it's too dangerous?"
At that, he turned and gave her a wry grin. "'Dangerous' is flashing a badge at Lionheart. The Yards are, well, a roll of the dice. You have a gun in that purse, don't you?"
Judy wasn't sure what had tipped him off; perhaps he had seen it on one of the occasions on which she had opened her purse. "I do," she said.
"Will you use it, if you have to?" he asked, and his focus was intense, his eyes locked directly on hers.
"Only if I have to," Judy replied firmly.
At that, Nick smiled, and pulled his paw out from underneath hers. "Good," he said, "If you act like no one should hassle you, everyone likes to mind their own beeswax."
When Nick broke the contact between them, it felt as though there was something in the air that had faded, and Judy cleared her throat awkwardly. "So how do we drive there?"
"We don't," Nick said, and his usual humor had crept back into his voice, "At least, not unless we want the car to be gone when we get back to it. There's a parking garage near enough, though. We can ankle the rest of it."
"Speaking of which," Judy said, looking down at Nick's injured leg; they had already done a fair amount of walking, and he was still noticeably limping.
He waved a paw airily. "I'll be fine," he said, "Just have to walk it off."
"If you're sure," Judy said doubtfully as she started the car.
Above the fury of the engine as it turned over, she could barely hear his response. "Sure hoping so."
The garage that they had parked the Buchatti in was on the outskirts of the financial district, and the space around it was dominated by the offices of a number of different banks and the turnarounds for the elevated train. It was, for the city at least, relatively clean, and the mammals who bustled about were all well-dressed. As they headed south from the garage, though, that began to change in short order. The buildings got shorter and looked less prestigious; rather than monuments of the city's architecture meant to impress the viewer with the power and wealth of the company that owned it, they were strictly practical and cheap looking. The number of mammals they saw started to drop off, and the normal vague but persistent smell of the city started to become more powerful. Judy's apartment was relatively near the slaughterhouses in the meatpacking district, and she had thought that the smell was bad enough in her neighborhood. As they kept walking into the area that Nick had called the Yards, though, Judy began to realize that what she had dealt with when the wind blew the wrong way was nothing.
The stench became overpowering, and Judy had to breathe through her mouth not to gag on it; it was visceral, and seemed almost as though it should have been visible hanging in the air. The tenements that they passed must have been built within the last twenty or so years, but they were already falling apart, the mortar crumbling and cracked bricks poking out here and there from sagging walls. Some of the buildings had more windows covered with boards than they did filled with glass, and Judy felt as though she was being watched by countless eyes.
There weren't very many mammals out and about, but every single one Judy saw was a predator. There was a thin, tired-looking coyote in a patched dress hanging laundry to dry from a clothesline that ran from the window of her apartment to the railing of a rusting fire escape tilted at a dangerous angle. There was a grimy panther working on a Model T that looked like it could have been one of the first to roll off the assembly line in Deertroit, his cub solemnly giving him the tools that he called for in a raspy voice. As they continued walking, Judy had to repress a gasp at a wolf walking the other way. She couldn't tell how old he was; although he was stooped, as if with age, his fur seemed to be mostly brown. His roughly made clothes were stained and splattered with what Judy assumed to be chicken blood, since he reeked of an awful combination of the harsh ammonia scent of chicken droppings and the iron tang of blood. He did, however, have a bandage wrapped around his right paw that was also bloodstained, and Judy couldn't tell whether or not it was his own blood.
The wolf looked only briefly in her direction, and his eyes seemed dead to her, without even the slightest hint of interest or involvement in the world. He dropped his gaze and continued on, and once he was past them Judy turned and looked at Nick. "Everyone minding their own beeswax includes us, Carrots," he said quietly, but he sighed and continued.
"There aren't too many prey willing to kill and butcher chickens, you know." he asked, "Every morning, there's a line of predators a block long trying to get work at the slaughterhouses. You've never been inside one, have you?"
Judy shook her head. "You wouldn't believe how fast they go," Nick said, "That wolf probably lost a finger—or a thumb, if he's really unlucky—and they fired him."
"Fired him?" Judy repeated, incredulously, "But— Isn't it their fault if he got hurt?"
Nick laughed at that. "You're too pure for this world, aren't you?" he asked.
Judy tried imagining what it would be like, living on the razor's edge of poverty. Back on the family farm, anyone who couldn't work would still have a roof over their head and three square meals a day, whether or not they ever recovered and could keep working. The city suddenly felt impossibly cruel, and it seemed strange that it wasn't the brutal murder she had seen the aftermath of or the attempt on her own life in an arson attempt that triggered the reaction. The idea that a hard-working mammal could be brought so low went against everything she had ever learned and against her own sense of justice.
When Nick saw her ears drooping, he added, "You didn't know."
Remembering what Nick had told her about needing to appear like a mammal that shouldn't be bothered, Judy straightened herself and tried to will her ears to do the same. "I do now, though."
Nick nodded, and they walked the rest of the way in silence, Judy consumed by her own thoughts and sure that Nick was similarly introspective.
The sign outside the club had the words "The Blind Tiger" over an illustration of a tiger's head. The eyes were represented simply as Xs, which to Judy made it look more like the tiger was dead rather than blind, but the stripes on the tiger's forehead came together to form what looked like another X. Judy was perfectly willing to bet that the "XXX" that consequently formed was entirely deliberate.
The building itself looked about as poorly made as the other buildings Judy had seen in the Yard, and the large plate glass window, set behind iron bars, had an ancient-looking crack running through it. The window itself had been soaped up to the extent that Judy couldn't see inside, but she could read the little sign that was tacked to the outside of the splintering door, which indicated that the hours of the club were from 5 PM to 3 AM. "Ah," Nick said dryly, as he looked over her head at the sign, "I guess it's a nightclub."
Judy knocked on the door anyway, but while the cheap door flexed a little under her fist, there was no response from inside the building. There were still several hours to go before the club opened, and she thought of how best to continue the investigation. "We can come back later," she said reluctantly.
She hated the idea of making a wasted trip, but loitering in front of the club for several hours didn't seem likely to pay off. "The Thief of the Night is open now, isn't it?"
Nick thoughtfully scratched at his muzzle. "I think so," he said, "Mr. Quill would have that place open for breakfast, if he thought it could make him money."
Judy nodded decisively. "We'll go to the police station first, then back to the Thief of the Night."
She thought that it would be the best way to spend the time until the Blind Tiger opened, and Nick didn't seem to have any objections. "You're the boss," he said cheerfully.
"No," Judy said suddenly, and she offered him her paw, "We're partners in this."
Nick eyed her outstretched paw, one eyebrow quirked questioningly, and Judy kept her paw out. "Partners?" he asked.
"Partners," she repeated, and then couldn't help but add, "I hear just about anyone can be a prohi."
Nick laughed, but he did take her paw and shake it firmly but with a surprising delicacy. "Well, I'm sure it's not official, but whoever you heard that from sounds very clever."
"He has his moments," Judy replied.
Nick smiled.
Author's Notes:
The title of this chapter, "Dirty Hands! Dirty Face!" comes from a 1928 Al Jolson song. The song is about a mischievous boy who is nonetheless the light of the father's life, but I'm using it in reference to the two possibilities discussed in this chapter about where the mammal who inflicted the wounds to Carajou's torso might get covered with blood. Granted, I've avoided the use of the word "hand" in the story itself, but I figured it was OK for a chapter title.
This chapter has a fair amount of speculation about how the murder was done, which I won't spoil in terms of whom (if anyone) is correct. As Tolmie's dialog indicates, though, my intent is that cases of mammals being gored are relatively rare, which I think makes logical sense for the setting. It seems like all mammals walk upright, and as Judy notes, pretty much all mammals with horns have them swept backwards rather directly pointing forwards. Under those limitations, either lowering the head and charging American football style while on two legs or lowering the head while on all fours strike me as the only two practical ways for a mammal to gore another.
The name of the slum that the nightclub is located in being the Yards is in reference to the Back of the Yards, the common name for the part of Chicago that is now part of the New City community district. In the 1920s, it was dominated by the meatpacking industry of the city, the buildings of which were surrounded by the closely packed slums of the workers. The fire codes of Chicago, put in place after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, didn't do much to get rid of the densely packed and crudely made wooden buildings in some of the poorer parts of the city, but the Back of the Yards had a high enough demand for housing that it was mostly shoddily made brick tenements, since the property owners could squeeze more money out of high-capacity dwellings.
The first parking garage in the United States was in fact built in Chicago in 1918, so the appearance of one here is historically appropriate. The parking garage's location on the outskirts of the city's financial district means that, mapped to Chicago, it would be just beyond the area of the Loop, which got its name in the 19th century from the ring of elevated railways that ran around it. I've kept the geography of Chicago kind of intact, although with a fair number of liberties, and the New City community district and the Loop are relatively close to each other. You definitely couldn't use this story to help guide you through the real city, both because of the changes that I've made and because Chicago has changed a lot in the past 90 years, but I did have a map out when I was plotting things.
Deertroit is a pun on Detroit, which was indeed where the very first Ford Model Ts were built in 1908. The Ford Motor Company is now based in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit. The original factory, the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant, is actually still standing, and is now a museum. I think it's worth a visit, if you ever find yourself in the area; it's really fascinating to see the material that they have, and the front façade of the building has been restored to how it looked when it was built in 1904. I know personally that I love seeing historical artifacts and knowing that someone who lived decades ago or hundreds of years ago saw the exact same thing that I'm seeing, and the museum definitely evoked that feeling for me. It's one of the reasons I'd love to be able to visit Europe someday, where there are much older buildings than we have in the US.
In the real world, a slaughterhouse wasn't a great place to work in the 1920s, and the vision of one that Nick describes is completely plausible for one of the workers, who had terrible working conditions and nothing in the way of job security.
The not-so-hidden triple X in the sign of the club is probably familiar from a lot of depictions of jugs of moonshine having "XXX" on the side. It's popularly believed to come from the marks that the moonshiners made to indicate how many times their product had gone through a still; three Xs would indicate that it had been distilled three times and was more than 80% alcohol by volume.
Nick was, of course, the mammal who commented to Judy that it seemed like just about anyone could become a prohi back when they first met in chapter 5, where he very clearly meant it as an insult. This chapter doesn't really have much in the way of new information for the case, just some additional details about what the characters are speculating, but I think the character moments are important too.
I also do love to see people trying to figure things out on their own; both TrekkerTim and DrummerMax64 made some very thoughtful deductions after reading the last chapter. I won't confirm or deny any theory, but it's interesting to me to see.
As always, thanks for reading! If you're inclined to comment, I'd love to know what you think!