Neither Judy or I spoke at first as we made our way to Tundratown's precinct. Finally, she broke the silence.
"What could federal agents want with us?" Her paws gripped the steering wheel tightly as she made minute adjustments.
"Maybe we're being recruited," I snarked.
"Nick, I'm being serious," she said, shaking her head. I shrugged.
"I can't say, Fluff," I replied, turning to watch the monochromatic sights of the district pass us by. "I know everyone, not everything. But…" I thought hard. "Obviously Reynard had stuff he didn't want us getting a look at back there. Maybe it's got something to do with that." As Judy pulled into the parking lot of Precinct 10, I froze up in my seat. Bogo was waiting at the doors of the station in an enormous police coat, his arms crossed and his expression crosser.
"Carrots?" I squeaked out. "Chief's here." Her eyes went wide, her pupils shrinking.
"The chief?" Her voice was as strained as mine. "What are we getting into?" She put the cruiser into park, and we nervously exited.
"Hey, Chief Bogo," Judy said timorously, ears folded against her shoulders. He merely gave a gruff, exasperated sigh.
"It's never simple with you two, is it?" I clasped my paws behind my back to hide their fidgeting.
"Sir?" Judy asked, deferential and subdued. He gestured us over with a hoof.
"What were you two doing in Tundratown?"
"Investigating our victim's last place of work, a place called Wolf Cola," I responded, my tail bristling slightly. Bogo pulled a hoof across his face in defeat.
"The Bureau is claiming you two were interfering with an active investigation." He groaned as he leaned back against the cold, concrete exterior of Precinct 10. "You're lucky the commissioner heard about the stink they were making and called me first."
"What's the play here, chief?" I asked, realizing now that Bogo was here to back us up.
"Let's go in and see what they want. If it's just to yell, I want you two to sit there and take it. Let them get it out of their systems. If they want anything more punitive than that…" His voice trailed away.
"…That's what you're here for." Judy finished. He nodded. "Let's do this, then."
Precinct 10 was, much to my surprise, totally lacking in the signature chill of the district. It didn't take long before the three of us were shrugging our jackets off and draping them over arms and shoulders. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding in. It was just too damn cold in Tundratown.
I realized, however, as we passed booking in Bogo's tow, that this was not an attempt to make mammals comfortable in the station. On the contrary—all the mammals being processed were cold-weather mammals, and they looked distinctly uncomfortable in what must have been heat stroke-worthy temperatures in their eyes. This fact was not lost on Judy, either, who was barely masking her disgust for the low tactic.
"Through here," Bogo grunted, gesturing to a conference room. Through the glass I could see a pair of suits, feds for sure, and what had to be Precinct 10's chief, a hardened-looking snow leopard. Bogo greeted the old cat at the door with a firm shake of the paw as we entered.
The feds were a male/female, pred/prey pair like me and Judy. One was a…I wanted to say sun bear? She was certainly one of the smallest bears I'd ever seen, only a few inches taller than me at most. Her partner was a white-tailed deer, an eight-point buck. He had the air of someone who, until very recently, had been beyond pissed and was just now coming down off that high.
"Officers Wilde, Hopps," Bogo stated tersely as we fully entered the room. The bear gave us a cordial nod, her partner straightening his suit jacket as he did his best to avoid looking at us.
"I am Agent Morsen, this is Agent Antlerson," the bear said, adjusting her glasses slightly and smiling in an obvious attempt to seem affable. Antlerson flicked his head up briefly at mention of his name, his first real acknowledgement of our presence in the room.
"We hear they may be some…crossover between our cases?" Judy asked, to which Antlerson gave a tremendous snort. Undeterred by the cervine, Morsen pressed on.
"I'm afraid so," she said, opening a manila folder and spreading its contents across the table. Judy and I both leaned in to read.
"The Bureau has been investigating Wolf Cola for some time under suspicion of money laundering and other ties to organized crime," Morsen continued, gesturing to financial records of Wolf Cola's yearly profits compared to their output of product. "We have reason to believe that Frank Reynard—and whoever is bankrolling the operation—is in the midst of attempting a takeover of the Big territory in Tundratown." My heart started to sink. The last thing we needed was to get tangled up with Antonio Big again.
"What about our assault victim? How does he play into all of this?" Judy asked, rifling through a pouch on her belt before presenting a photo of Loxley she'd scanned off his driver's license. Morsen took the photo to examine it, before passing it to her partner. Antlerson gave it a very short once-over before practically tossing it back at Judy.
"Thomas Loxley, used to work in the warehouse. What about him?" Antlerson's tone was calm, but the way his shoulders were set betrayed his irritation.
"He was beaten to a pulp by a wolf thirty feet from his apartment door, that's what." It took me slightly too long to realize that those words had come from my own mouth. Antlerson huffed again; a sound that was beginning to grate on my nerves.
"A wolf, huh? He leaned forward, uncrossing his arms to leaf through the dossier on the table with a hoof. He finally produced a mugshot of a mangy, wide-eyed wolf in a wife-beater. "Ivan Lebedev, Reynard's off-the-books muscle. About a month ago, Loxley was supposed to make a delivery for Reynard, probably got a glimpse of something sketchy, Lebedev 'sets him straight'."
"Yes," Judy interjected, "but he was attacked much more recently and much more severely." The deer shrugged.
"Maybe he decided he could find a way to blackmail Reynard, needed another visit from Lebedev to change his mind." He began gathering up loose files and placing them back in the folder. "At any rate, Lebedev's almost certainly your mammal and even more certainly never going to see the inside of a Zootopian holding cell."
"What?" Judy exclaimed. Morsen, looking rather alarmed at her partner's bluntness, chimed in again.
"Lebedev has ties to a lot more than one assault, Officer Hopps. He's got connections to organized crime in three countries and, frankly, we can't afford him beating the rap on an assault charge and leaving the country before we can charge him for something serious."
"Serious?!" I sputtered. "Have you seen Loxley? Do you know what Lebedev did to him?" Morsen blanched.
"I'm sorry, Officer Wilde, it wasn't my intention to insinuate your victim's injuries weren't grievous in their own right, just that our suspect has a lot more to pay for beyond that."
"That being said," Antlerson broke in, tucking the folder under his arm now. "We will need you to close your case."
"That's absurd!" Judy cried, and I nodded in agreement. "We're just supposed to count on you to catch him and never give Thomas Loxley any peace of mind?" Antlerson shot her a sharp look.
"You ever hear of 'exceptional means', miss Hopps?"
"That's Officer Hopps," three voices rang out simultaneously. I looked incredulously to my right to see that both Judy and Bogo had rushed to say the same thing I had.
"Closing a case by 'exceptional means', Officer Hopps, is a part of Bureau policy on cases that can't be closed with arrests due to extenuating circumstances. It happens all the time; so many mammals go their whole lives never getting answers or justice. Loxley will just have to be one of those many, unfortunately, because his peace of mind can't come at the cost of the dissolution of a major network of organized crime."