Leonard listens as the kangaroo rat recalls her neighbor's ranting. She stands under Leonard's hat as he holds the brim a few inches off the ground, protecting her from the wind and misting rain. Her voice is drowsy, but still quivers with adrenaline, and she taps her foot against the ground in agitated intervals. She speaks into Leonard's ear as he lays on the wet cement. The coldness of the concrete seeps through his damp uniform, and he fights the urge to shudder while talking to the rodent.
"Yeah, so I come home to hear our neighbor screaming—God, I mean just screaming—like he's being murdered or something. I couldn't even hear myself think, he was that loud. And the banging, too. It sounded like he was throwing himself against the wall, and every few seconds something would crash or shatter. I knew the kids weren't going to be in their beds, not after something like this, so I just ran to my room where they always hide when one of them gets scared. I found them in the corner, and Kelly, my daughter, was just-she was just-, oh god, I'm sorry."
The woman's face dives into her paws as she takes a shaky breath. It takes her a few seconds to recompose herself, and she swipes away the wetness in her eyes before looking back up. Leonard gives her a sympathetic frown.
"Take all the time you need," he says, and the woman takes another deep breath, nodding thankfully. Shivering, she runs her paws over the sand-brown fur that covers her arms, gripping at the thin purple t-shirt.
"By the time I found the kids, he was out the door and down into the street. He was always a weird guy, you know? I usually saw him outside when it was dark, right before I would leave for work, and when he was he always looked kinda…lost."
Leonard raises an eyebrow. So far, the only reports he's received about the old sheep have been rumors or gossip prefaced with "I've never seen him, but…," or "I've only heard about him." It took him almost an hour to find the old sheep's neighbors, a family of kangaroo rats that applied for the newly installed between-wall housing for rodents looking for housing outside of Little Rodentia. She's the only person who's actually seen the old sheep for more than a few seconds.
"Can you give me an example, ma'am?" he asks, and she curls her tail into her paw, winding it around her like a snake while stroking the thin hairs.
"I mean, not lost as in 'I don't remember where my room is,' but more 'what planet am I on?' Like, if you got an Alzheimer's patient drunk or something. He stumbled around a lot, too. Sometimes he would just wander around his room all day—I would know. The kids and I couldn't sleep when he was banging around like that.
"But hey," she says, chuckling nervously, "that's what you get for between-wall housing. My name's Maggie, by the way."
Nodding, Leonard jots down the details on a notepad.
"Officer Slinser, ma'am, but my friends just call me Leonard. You said your kids were home when it started? Do you think I could talk to them?" he asks, tilting his head over to a set of steps leading to an apartment complex.
The kangaroo rat looks over at her children who sit petrified on the steps a few yards away. Two boys wearing matching gray sweatshirts flank their sister. A mouse and a porcupine—friends of Maggie's, Leonard presumes—try to keep them engaged with conversations about recent movies and action figures. They nod absently, keeping their gaze locked on their mother. The young girl clutches a tiny, stuffed cricket doll, rubbing the fuzzy antenna under her snout. Maggie sags with relief.
"Would you do that? Take them around with you while you're still here? I need to call my husband, and I don't want them to hear anything that might scare them any more than they already are. And I think it might help them to hear things are alright from someone...big, if that makes any sense." she says, her black eyes squinching in case the panther takes offense, but the big cat only nods knowingly.
"That'd be fine," he responds, then adds "and I get that."
"Thank you." she says, exhaling while holding a paw at her collarbone.
Maggie looks at the steps, and her children perk at the attention. She calls them over, and they bolt across the cement, pausing for only a second to acknowledge Leonard. She greets them as they huddle under her arms. Her voice pitches as she puts a smile on her face.
"What's up studs? How's my little princess?" she asks.
The little girl holding the cricket barely brings her voice above a whisper.
"Good," she lies, and Maggie hugs her tighter.
"Hey, how about you guys like ride with officer Slinser for a little bit while I call daddy, okay?" she says, and Maggie directs the kids towards Leonard. He grins at them, careful not to show his teeth. They look at their mother, unsure of the sudden exchange.
"But I wanna talk to dad," says one of the boys, and Maggie finds herself at a loss for words. The kids stand in shivering silence for a few, painful seconds before Leonard jumps in.
"You guys can help me solve this case if you come with me," he says, and the boys whirl around. Leonard smiles at their sudden fascination, winking at Maggie as she mouths a 'thank you.' The boys hop excitedly, but the little girl still clings to her mother and the doll. Maggie kneels down to her daughter.
"Nothing's gonna happen, Kelly, mommy promises. Mr. Slinser's a big, strong panther," she says, flexing her arms, "and a very nice man. I'm sure he'd love to spend some time getting to know you."
Kelly turns to Leonard, watching her brothers talk shyly to the feline. She chews on the doll's antenna before hugging her mom fiercely and hopping over to the big cat. She waves to her mother as Leonard lifts her up in his paw, placing her gently on his shoulder beside her brothers.
The big cat sits on a set of steps a few yards away from Maggie, conversing with the kids as their mother talks to their father.
"So," Leonard asks, "do you guys like Rocket Rodent?"
Both of the boys wheel around on his shoulder, and he can practically feel their wide-eyed gazes.
"You know Rocket Rodent?" the boy asks, and Leonard scoffs hugely, earning a few giggles from the trio.
"Uh, yeah I know Rocket Rodent. She's only the coolest and bravest mouse to explore the galaxy. Did you guys see last week's episode where she battled the cheddar cheese monsters? I thought that was pretty sweet."
Leonard hides his chuckle with a cough as the boys start to fire off questions, interrogating him about each episode. He elects to give simple answers until the boys fall into a discussion between themselves. At other points, he asks how old each of them are, their middle names, and favorite colors, just to keep the topic from growing stale. Smiling, Leonard takes the time to think about the other officers at the ZPD who struggle to talk to kids, instead relying on their badges to speak for them. "Hornsby and Furdon feel awkward because they don't know what to talk about. I spend, what?" he thinks, "thirty minutes a week on youtube watching a few episodes of cartoons, forty when I need to check the wiki if I forget what happened the week before that. As soon as I mention one of them, they practically do the talking for me.
The boys continue to talk while Kelly hops down from his shoulder and into his paw, where she sits against the wall of his cupped fingers, clutching the doll. Leonard adds to the conversation sporadically over the next ten minutes. He looks up to find that the clouds have almost completely disappeared, and he can even see some of the constellations twinkling overhead. He finds his favorite ones and imagines the lines needed to connect them into pictures, \only pausing when he feels an invasive paw run over the claw-slit of his finger. His head snaps down as the bundle of nerves fires off, and he has to resist the reflex to clench his paw. He finds Kelly standing on her tiptoes, trying to peer over the top of his finger. Her head whips around, staring at Leonard with a mix of guilt and shameless curiosity.
"Can I see your fangs?" she asks, and the panther furrows his brow at the question. He opens his mouth to respond but finds himself choking on his own voice. He's never run into a smaller species that were interested in being close to his claws. Before he can answer, the boys on his shoulder groan.
"God, Kelly, you're so weird. You can't just ask people that," one of them chides.
"Yeah, and they're called claws, dummy." says the other.
Kelly folds into the crevice between Leonard's fingers and palm.
"I know they're called claws, Barry. I just forgot, okay? You don't have to be a jerk about it."
Barry thumps his foot over Leonard's shoulder, flicking his tail against back and forth.
"Don't be an idiot, and I won't be a jerk." he retorts, and his brother laughs.
"Oooh, sick buuurn," he says, congratulating Barry with a mean high-five. Kelly's lower lip flexes and dips as she hugs the doll tighter. Her large black eyes glisten like wet marbles. Leonard interjects, refusing to let their bantering head in a direction he knows all too well. He puts an edge in his voice.
"Hey, guys, not cool. You don't need to be teaming up against your sister like that. We're all tired and a little cranky, but that's no excuse to be immature. And it's not, uh...weird...to ask if she can see my claws."
Kelly stands straighter, glaring at her brothers as they try to hide their embarrassment, only managing to respond with an awkward 'okay.' Satisfied with her sibling's shame, she runs her paw over Leonard's finger again.
"Can I see them?" she asks again, and Leonard nods.
"Be careful, okay? They're pretty sharp," he says, and Kelly nods vigorously.
Leonard takes a second to flex the muscles that hide inside his fingers. He swipes his tongue over his teeth in concentration as he drags them out slowly. The curved, white claws emerge from his black fur like timid crescent moons. Kelly cranes her neck up as the claws sprout from his fingers until they arc over her head into a sharp cage. Reaching up, she runs a paw over the top of one, tracing the curve with intense concentration, all the way down to the pointed tip that hangs over her head like a threatening stalactite.
"Cool," she says, sitting back down in the crook of his palm, content in her new discovery. Leonard lets her enjoy the sight for a few seconds before retracting his claws.
"Kelly," he says, and the little girl turns to look at him, "your mom said that you guys were all there when your neighbor started acting a little funny. Can you tell me about what you heard?"
The little girl nods, standing up in Leonard's paw, signaling for him to bring her to his ear.
"Uh-huh. He was singing a really weird song when I woke up. It was quiet, but he got louder." she says, and the boys on Leonard's shoulder chime in with "Yeah, it was, like, really weird."
"Do you remember what he said? Was there anything in particular that you thought was 'really weird'?" he asks.
Kelly nods again.
"It was short, but I remember it. He kept singing it over and over," she says, and Leonard politely sets her on his shoulder before getting out his notepad. He tells Kelly that he's ready, and the little girl gently sings the lines. After jotting down the lyrics, Leonard frowns at the strange verses.
Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed,
To see such a sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.