"Was he trying to warn the meek little bunny to stay away from the big bad fox?" Nick asked as Judy stepped outside.

The little glass bottle that Jimmy had given her was cool to the touch, and Judy held it tightly as she looked up at Nick. He was leaning, with a casualness that was truly impressive, against the block of marble that stood in front of the coroner's office as a sign. Nick's eyes were half-lidded as usual, a sly half-smile across his face, and he lightly pushed himself fully upright. Nick had done a masterful job showing how little he cared about what the pig thought of him, and there might have even been some truth to it; certainly Nick had lived long enough that his mask of bemused indifference wasn't completely fake. "Something like that," Judy said, and when Nick caught her expression a frown crossed his face.

"What did he say?" he asked.

Judy could feel her grip on the little glass bottle tightening. "He told me Dr. Tolmie used to be married. To a squirrel."

Judy didn't say anything more, which was just as well because she wasn't sure she would have been able to. There was a lump in her throat and her eyes stung thinking of the story Jimmy had told. It was monstrously unfair, and all the worse because she never would have guessed it from talking to Dr. Tolmie. Jimmy had said that Dr. Tolmie likely wouldn't have been able to become the chief medical examiner for the city if his wife hadn't died, and she wondered how much of the doctor's enthusiasm came from his job being all that he had left. Would she be the same if something happened to Nick?

Judy realized she knew the answer when Nick brushed a paw against one of her ears, not even bothering to look first to see if anyone was watching. "Oh, Judy," he said, and the words were like a sigh.

"He gave me this," Judy managed at last, holding her palm out to expose the bottle of peppermint oil, "He told me to be careful."

Nick studied the little bottle, a grim expression on his face. "I don't want to be afraid," Judy said, "But Jimmy told me what happened and…"

Judy shrugged helplessly. She had gone her entire life tackling every obstacle that had come her way, but realizing that it might not just be her getting hurt made it seem as though she had been whistling past the graveyard. "You've still got the key to my house, right?" Nick asked.

Judy couldn't do much more than look at Nick. "What?" she said.

"You've got the key to my house," Nick said, "I know in the country everyone leaves their doors unlocked and no one ever steals anything, but do you know why we have locks in the city?"

Despite herself, Judy couldn't help but smile at the somewhat sarcastic tinge Nick had given his words when he spoke about the country, but she tried to give a serious answer. "Because you're afraid of being robbed?" she asked.

"No," Nick said, "Because we don't trust anyone else who lives in the city."

With that, he started walking towards the car, and Judy considered Nick's words as she followed, finding herself glad when Nick changed the subject. "We're pretty sure Zoya worked for the Black Paw," Nick said, and Judy nodded, waiting for him to continue.

"Maybe she'll tell us more about that, maybe she won't. But besides me, she's the only mammal we know that survived a frame job in all of this."

Judy nodded again, considering Nick's angle. "Maybe we missed something," Judy said, and Nick nodded.

"I think it wouldn't hurt to ask again. There's an address for her in that folder you're lugging around."

Judy fell to her own thoughts, and neither one spoke again until they got to the car, at which point Judy found she couldn't ignore the bottle anymore.

"I don't want to use this," Judy said, holding it up.

"I know. But it doesn't mean you're living in fear," Nick said, and Judy sighed.

She uncorked the bottle.

Zoya's apartment was in a building that seemed far too close to the climate wall, at a point that seemed about as far away as possible from any break in the wall. The side of the building closest to the climate wall didn't have any windows in it and was coated with a thick and irregular layer of ice. Just about anywhere else in Tundra Town, the wind that the climate produced would be a subtle chilly breeze, but so close to the wall it seemed to bite at Judy and threatened to blow their little car off course from the slick road. The drone of the fans in the wall drowned out not just the pathetic sound of the car's engine but everything else and Judy could feel the vibrations of whatever kept the wall working coming through the pavement. After parking it was a surprisingly difficult struggle to force herself forward to walk towards the building, the wind was so strong. Beside her, Nick seemed equally miserable, his ears flat against his head and his eyes squinted nearly shut, and he gripped his hat firmly under one armpit as he walked forward step after step. When he spoke, the wind nearly took his words, but over the din Judy could make out, "I wonder why rent's so low in this part of town?"

She laughed and instantly regretted it; the cold wind cut at her mouth like a knife. At last, though, they had made their way to the main entrance of the apartment building, where the building's bulk shielded them from the worst of the wind. It was a dismally practical-looking building, only four stories tall but with the floors spaced much more widely than they would have been for something built for bunnies. The bricks might have been red once, but they were stained nearly black with soot and exhaust where they weren't covered with hoarfrost, and every one of the narrow windows set into the thick walls was frosted over. The cement steps up to the main entrance were awkwardly tall for Judy and treacherously slick with ice where they hadn't chipped and crumbled away. The door was painted a forest green that was flaking off where it hadn't bubbled up with rust from the thick steel, and it was so heavy that Judy thought at first it was locked. It took Nick helping her, pulling at the handle with all of his strength as she did the same, in order for them to get it open. When it did, the high-pitched squeal of the hinges set Judy's teeth on edge, and from Nick's expression she thought he had been able to hear it over the wall's fans too.

Inside, the building was almost as cold as it was outside, but at the very least there wasn't any wind and the walls were thick enough to block the worst of the noise. It looked to have been built as cheaply as possible; the floors were scuffed green tiling that looked somewhat uneven, and the wallpapering was lumpy and crooked in places, making the thin gray stripes run crazily. The entrance simply led into a series of hallways for the apartments on the first floor, with a wall of mailboxes located across from the door and a staircase of graying and unpainted pine that traced its way up the building with somewhat less than geometric precision in the middle. Zoya, unfortunately, lived on the fourth floor, and it took a very literal climb for Judy to get there; much like the steps in front of the building, the staircase was simply built to a much larger scale. Despite his slight advantage in height Nick had to do the same, and he was panting with exertion by the time they reached the top. "I really hope she's here," he said in between gulps of air, and Judy nodded her agreement; although she thought she was in somewhat better shape than Nick, it had still been a long way to climb.

She resolved to improve her exercise regimen to include climbing up stairs in the parts of the city meant for larger mammals as they made their way down the hall looking for Zoya's apartment, but she could hear the bear even before she saw the door with the right number sloppily painted on it. Zoya was, to Judy's great surprise, singing, although not particularly well. She was stumbling over the words as she struggled to keep the song's time and key, and while Judy could hear every sound they meant nothing to her. The reason for it became obvious when another voice joined in, still perfectly audible despite being behind the door. It was, she realized, the bear who ran the Blue Glacier, Roger Monarch, and she could hear the laughter in his voice as he tried to correct Zoya's pronunciation and sang the line. He wasn't much better at staying on key than the polar bear was, but the words flowed with a kind of beautifully liquid grace that Judy enjoyed even though she didn't know what he was singing.

Judy exchanged a glance with Nick, who seemed more amused than anything else, and then knocked on the door firmly, which made the singing instantly stop. "Ms. Medvedeva? This is Judy Hopps—"

"And Nick Wilde," Nick interjected quickly.

"Do you have a minute? We'd like—"

Judy never got the chance to finish as the door suddenly flung open, revealing Roger Monarch standing there and looking down at them. Even in Zoya's apartment, which had a ceiling that had to be at least twelve feet high, he looked enormous, and his massive body filled the door frame. "You!" he said, as he tilted his head down to look at them.

An expression of surprise was plainly visible across his head. "Oh, it is you!" he said, and before Judy could react Monarch swept her and Nick into a crushing hug.

Monarch lifted them both off the ground as though they weighed nothing and squeezed them so tightly against his chest that Judy couldn't draw a breath and felt something in her own chest protesting. "It is your work, was it not?" he said, as he rocked back and forth, "It is the two of you who got Zoya her freedom, eh?"

Judy couldn't see anything but part of the massive expanse of Monarch's suit, which looked nearly the same as the one he had worn when they had met. Monarch's breath tickled at her neck and brought with it the sharp smell of alcohol, which probably explained why he and Zoya had been singing so poorly. "Let them go," Judy heard Zoya say, although she still couldn't see anything but Monarch's suit, "Or they will not be able to answer."

Monarch instantly set them down on the floor with a gentleness that was truly surprising considering how sudden and crushing his hug had been. "I am sorry, my friends," he said, scratching at the back of his neck with one massive paw, "Only I am so happy for Zoya. You did show her innocence, did you not?"

"Yes," Nick responded almost instantly, "We knew she couldn't have done it."

That was, in Judy's mind, stretching the truth a little; it had only been after Lionheart's arrest and Quill's confession that Zoya had been cleared, and it had taken a raid on a piece of property Lionheart owned to prove that the murder weapon hadn't been the lightning rod supposedly found by River and Zweihorn. Since neither she nor Nick had been involved in any of that it seemed a little unseemly to take credit, but it had certainly been their work that made it all possible. "Is this a visit on Bureau business?" Zoya asked suddenly, and Judy saw Monarch's face fall in a look of almost comical fear as his eyes shifted towards a table in the corner of the apartment that Judy could just barely see past his bulk.

There were four reasons for Monarch to be worried, because standing on a table that was comparatively small for the two bears were four very large bottles of wine, three of them empty and one of them nearly so. The look on Zoya's face, to Judy's eye, seemed like resignation, as though the polar bear expected her lucky break to end. "No," Judy said, "This isn't Bureau business. I'm not a prohibition agent anymore."

The look of surprise on Zoya's face was mirrored on Monarch's, and there was a moment's awkward silence before Zoya broke it. "Then come in and let us talk," she said, and she gestured for Monarch to let Nick and Judy past the doorway.

Although the apartment was significantly larger than Judy's had been, she supposed that proportionally it wasn't really all that much bigger. The furniture was all sized for a polar bear, and a neatly made bed took up a significant chunk of the floor space. Besides the sharp and somewhat sour smell of the wine bottles on the table, the apartment smelled like a library. Not counting the table in the corner and four matching chairs, the only other furniture was an assortment of bookshelves in a variety of styles, which were squeezed into almost every free inch. As Judy followed Zoya and Monarch to the table, she saw that the books on the shelves seemed to be mostly pulpy mysteries, but some of the books had titles written in strange characters that she couldn't read. All of them, though, seemed to vary quite a bit in size, from ones that had obviously been printed for a mammal the size of a bear to some that even Judy would have found a little small. Other than the books, there were a few photographs arranged on the shelves; the one closest to the bed showed what must have been Zoya on her wedding day, looking significantly younger, seated next to her groom with four polar bears (her parents and her husband's parents, Judy assumed) standing behind them. Judy couldn't help but notice that the faces of Zoya's husband and of two of the polar bears standing behind her in the picture had been carefully cut out, which she supposed said quite a lot about the wedding.

Once they had reached the table, Zoya gestured for them to sit before she did so herself, and Judy awkwardly climbed up the chair to take a seat before realizing that the chair simply wasn't high enough for her to both sit down and see over the table. Zoya quickly retrieved two thick books and wordlessly offered them to Judy as boosters, which she gratefully took. Once the polar bear had done the same for Nick, albeit with one book instead of two, she sat down herself. "Wine?" she offered, and while both Nick and Judy declined Monarch pushed the glass he had been drinking from forward.

Zoya filled his glass and topped hers off, and then took a long sip before speaking again. "So you are not here on a bust and you are not a prohi," she said, looking down at Judy over her wine glass, "Why then do you come?"

"It's for him," Judy said, gesturing towards Nick, "Someone's trying to frame him for murdering Officers River and Zweihorn."

Monarch's paws were suddenly on the table, and there was a hint of warning in his voice Judy could hear even under his accent, which seemed to be thickened quite a bit by his drinking. "Are you thinking Zoya killed police?"

"Of course not," Nick jumped in, his tone soothing, "We know she didn't do it, but Zoya did survive being framed. We thought—"

"You thought I maybe not tell you everything?" Zoya interrupted.

Her voice was calm and steady, and Judy couldn't read the bear's expression. "I—" Judy began, but Zoya cut her off with a wave of one paw.

"It's true. I did not. But I will," Zoya said, and Monarch shot her a glance.

"Zed," he began, but Zoya shook her head once and he fell silent.

Zoya took in a deep breath and took another sip of her wine before she continued. "When I die and my sins are counted I can say murdering my husband is the one and only I do not regret. But it is not my only sin."

Zoya paused again, seeming to collect her thoughts. The only sound in the apartment was the faint noise of the keening wind of the climate wall against the building, and Zoya had the complete attention of the other three mammals at her table. "I have never lied, never, about what I did to him, and for that I was sent to prison. And there I might remain, but…"

Zoya sighed. "I wanted to be free again. I wanted to walk the city as I please, not an exercise yard for an hour each day. One day, maybe one or two weeks before a parole hearing, I came back to my cell and there was a letter there like a miracle.

"It was... how do you call it?" Zoya said, a frown crossing her muzzle as she groped for the words, "Knife and cape."

"Cloak and dagger," Nick added, and Zoya nodded.

"Yes, it was all cloak and dagger. One day, there was a note on my bed, a black paw print on the front. Maybe it was a guard, maybe it was a prisoner who put it there. I think a guard, though. It said the Black Paw could get me out of prison if I promised to work for them. It said to write an answer on the note and leave it in my cell the next time I left."

Zoya shrugged her shoulders. "I was weak. How was it justice to take my life for what I did? I had done the world a favor. I told myself such until I believed it, and I wrote yes. The letter was gone when I got back to my cell the next day. And when my parole hearing came, they let me go."

Judy thought about the position that Zoya had been in. The bear was unquestionably guilty of murdering her husband, but just as unquestionably believed that she had to kill him. It wasn't hard to imagine her growing despair as the days turned into years and she faced the prospect of dying in prison. Monarch seemed to be thinking along similar lines, because he patted Zoya's paw with one of his own. "Anyone would have done the same," he said, but Zoya shook her head.

"A stronger mammal would not have," she said, "I was out of prison, but I wasn't free, not really. I did many terrible things when the Black Paw asked me to."

When Judy had spoken to Zoya before, the bear had pointedly not talked about what her involvement with a gang, and now that she was talking Judy found she couldn't interrupt. For her part, Zoya's eyes were liquid with tears but she plunged on. "Three weeks ago, I decided it was enough. I stopped doing jobs. I quit. I thought they would kill me in the streets, but I did not think of being framed for a crime I did not do."

Monarch looked across the table at Zoya and Judy had an uncomfortable sense of intruding on a moment she shouldn't have. "You have a good heart, Zed," he said, and the tears in Zoya's eyes began to stream down her cheeks.

While the larger bear offered Zoya his handkerchief, Judy turned what she had just learned around in her mind. There was the shape of something she couldn't quite grasp, and she wondered at the connections. Zoya had been recruited into the Black Paw with a letter, not too different from the ones that Lionheart had sent to the mammals who had both done his dirty work and then died for it. Knowing that Zoya had quit the Black Paw provided a motive for them to kill her, but did that make it a coincidence that Lionheart had chosen her as a patsy? As she thought it over, she glanced at Nick and saw that he seemed to be doing the same, but once Zoya's tears had stopped he asked her a question. "Who gave you the jobs?"

"I don't know. I never met them. Only letters, put on the seat of my truck," Zoya said, and then she laughed weakly.

"The bottling plant fired me anyway for missing shifts," she said, and Judy remembered Zoya's prediction that her legitimate job would fire her for missing work due to being arrested for Carajou's murder.

"I could use a bouncer," Monarch interjected awkwardly, rubbing at one ear, "If you are looking for work. I was going to offer. If you are interested."

Zoya's smile brightened her face. "I would be," she said, and she placed her paw briefly atop his.

While Judy once again felt as though they were intruding, Nick frowned, his tail flicking from side to side. "That does sound like the Black Paw," he said slowly, as though he was ignoring the latest exchange between Zoya and Monarch, and while Judy couldn't claim to have his direct knowledge she thought he was right.

Everything she had learned about the Black Paw when she had been a prohibition agent suggested that the organization was deeply paranoid; no one even knew who the head of the gang was, as that mammal preferred to be shrouded in mystery. Judy supposed it also gave everyone in the organization the fear that anyone they talked to might be higher up the organization than expected. It might even mean that there wasn't a head of the Black Paw; Judy had seen the theory that there was no central structure, just a loosely affiliated group of smaller gangs that might even operate out of prison. She wasn't quite sure where Nick was going with his line of thought, though, until he continued. "But what if it wasn't?" Nick asked, and suddenly Judy realized what he meant.

Anyone could have sent a letter with a black paw print on it, and anyone could have continued to send letters. Maybe Lionheart was actually a much more powerful gang lord than anyone thought; maybe he had set up his own fake branch of the Black Paw to help hide his own involvement. Or maybe he was the head of the Black Paw as well as his own gang, and kept them separate to keep from being too big of a target. They didn't have a way of proving it, but it might be the connection to Lionheart that Zoya was currently missing. "I don't understand," Zoya said, "But that's fine. I never did ask, what questions did you want me to answer?"

Zoya had actually guessed at most of what Judy would have wanted to ask, but not quite all of them. Judy dug through her bag and pulled out the folder Bogo had given her, flipping through it until she came to a picture of Bauson. "Have either of you ever seen this badger before? His name's Richard Bauson," she said, angling the image so that both bears could see it.

Monarch squinted at the photograph and then shook his head almost instantly. "I have a very good memory for faces and names," he said, "Never have I seen him."

After a moment, Zoya shook her head too. "I don't know this badger," she said at last.

"Are you sure?" Judy pressed, focusing on Zoya, "Someone said he was the one who put the blood on you."

Monarch pounded the table hard enough to make the bottles and wine glasses on it jump. "Then I will take him to the police myself if I ever see him!" he growled, his voice suddenly low and dangerous, "After I make sure he never does that again."

"He's dead," Nick said, leaning away from Monarch.

Judy couldn't blame him, considering the aura of danger the bear seemed to be radiating, but at Nick's words Monarch relaxed somewhat, nodding in satisfaction. "He deserved it, then."

"I've never seen this Bauson," Zoya said, "If he was at Roger's club, I don't remember it. Maybe he was, though. I've forgotten most of that night."

Considering that whoever had planted evidence on Zoya had also put something in her drink to incapacitate her and it had had the side-effect of making Zoya forget most of what had happened, Judy supposed it was the best answer they could get. Judy thought that Quill was likely to be so desperate to save himself that he would say anything, but she didn't think he had lied in the testimony Bogo had provided a copy of.

With that out of the way, there was really only one question left, but it might be the most important one, and Judy didn't ask it until she had put the folder away and could turn her full attention back to Zoya. "Were there ever any foxes you worked with in the Black Paw?" Judy asked.

Zoya considered the question for a moment. "Foxes?" she asked, "Like him?"

She pointed at Nick, who simply nodded. "Three, then," Zoya said without any additional hesitation, "Erwin Wustenfuchs was a safe cracker, but he died last year. Lisa Patrikeyevna. Not her real name, of course."

"Of course," Nick said agreeably, although Judy strongly suspected that he no more knew why that would be a fake name than she did.

"She's a forger," Zoya said, "And then Brian Redfurred. He does rackets."

"Numbers rackets?" Judy said, leaning forward and completely unable to hide her excitement.

"Is there another kind?" Zoya asked, sounding more puzzled than anything else, "I am not sure."

"Do you know what color the tip of his tail is?" Nick asked, and Judy could hear a note of excitement in his voice.

They knew that River and Zweihorn had been involved in a numbers racket, and if their point of contact had been this Brian Redfurred it would explain perfectly why Zweihorn had been willing to open her front door to the fox who had murdered her. A frown crossed Zoya's face as she considered the question.

"White, I think," Zoya said at last.

Author's Notes:

The title of this chapter, "I Can't Get Over a Girl Like You (Loving A Boy Like Me)" comes from a 1926 Ted Lewis song, and I think it works pretty well for both Nick and Monarch. And Judy and Zoya, if you flip the genders in the title.

"Whistling past the graveyard" is an old American idiom that means to proceed with an activity while being ignorant of the risks or consequences involved, which certainly seems to be an appropriate use here.

In the very first chapter of this story, the narration had mentioned that no one wanted to live or work right up against the climate wall in Tundra Town if they could avoid it. This chapter shows the reality of how miserable it would be to live right next to a powerful series of refrigeration coils and fans, leaving aside the dangers of the refrigerants available in the 1920s.

When Nick and Judy arrive, Zoya and Monarch are singing a French drinking song, which although it goes unidentified might be "C'est à boire," which means "It's a drink."

The Volstead Act, which put Prohibition into effect, did have some loopholes for wine. As wine is used in many religious ceremonies, there were exceptions allowing its manufacture for sacramental purposes (which naturally led to people forging credentials to appear as though they were legally allowed to buy it), and it was also permissible for farmers to produce wine bricks, which were semi-solid blocks of grape concentrate sold with the warning that the consumer shouldn't dissolve the brick in a gallon of water and place it in a cool dark area for twenty days because if they did so it would ferment and turn into wine. However they got their wine, though, Zoya and Monarch are obviously in violation of Prohibition with their little get together.

The expression "cloak and dagger" to mean a situation involving secrecy dates to at least the early 19th century, and likely comes from a translation of the French phrase "de cape et d'épée" or "of cloak and swords" for stories of swashbucklers such as The Three Musketeers. I think it's understandable that Zoya doesn't remember the phrase quite right—she and Monarch have been drinking, and English isn't her first language. Idiomatic expressions can be particularly difficult to pick up for non-native speakers since the words have a literal meaning that doesn't necessarily give much insight into the intended meaning. While you could likely guess from context what "cloak and dagger" means if you're familiar with the tropes of stories of adventures and assassins, it's kind of opaque if you don't.

The names of the foxes Zoya knows are all references to something; Brian Redfurred is a pun on Brian Bedford, the voice actor from Disney's 1973 animated Robin Hood film in which Robin Hood is a fox. Erwin Wustenfuchs is a reference to Erwin Rommel, the German general nicknamed "der Wüstenfuchs" or "the Desert Fox" in English. Lisa Patrikeyevna is named after a fox in Russian folklore, "Patrikeyevna" meaning "Fox Patrikas's-daughter" where Patrikas is a prince remembered as a sly politician. This is a reference that Zoya obviously gets, being Russian herself, hence why she suggests it's a pseudonym.

In chapter 19, Nick mentioned that River and Zweihorn were involved in a numbers game, also called a numbers racket, hence Judy's excitement about learning about the occupation of one of those three foxes.

As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.