Chapter Text
“Are we still on schedule?”
“Of course. Just wait for the press release to come out – I’ve seen the preliminary versions, they’re amazing”
“Brilliant – they’ll never know what hit them”
“Here’s to an eternity of guaranteed rule over Zootopia”
…
Colorful banners with old crests that nobody outside of history nuts knew what meant, medieval costumes with similar details, mammals stomping around in replica suits of plastic armor that were probably horribly anachronistic, those cool old-school round tents and enough knick-knack and handmade crafts stands to attract great crowds of curious onlookers and screaming children.
Nick and Judy arrived early that spring morning. There were very few mammals going about, mainly sleepy looking actors getting into costume and having their very much not authentic cup of ye olde java. The contact mammal that the duo had been sent to meet stood, in a colourful T-shirt with a very appropriate “Zootopia Ren Fest” graphic on it along with worn jeans at the main gate into the fair, the tired and somewhat annoyed-looking donkey waving at the two police officers as they approached.
“Hey, you’re those two – Hopps and Wilde – from that rocket helicopter case last fall?!” the donkey said, perking up at the sight of the duo.
Nick shrugged and adjusted his aviator sunglasses: “Guilty as charged – though it was a lot less about the rocket helicopter ride and more about stopping a crazy lion trying to hose the city down with nighthowler juice”
The donkey nodded eagerly: “Sweet – but ok, check it, this is our last weekend open, and we’ve gotten tons of complaints about stolen purses and wallets – I mean, a lot more than usual. Someone has been cleaning house all week, and the social media backlash we’re getting on Pecker is killing us!”
“That’s why we’re here. We were told that you’d have some disguises ready?” Judy said, shooting Nick a quick disapproving glance to communicate her dislike of the organizers apparent disinterest in the ren fair attendees who had been stolen from, in favour of the ren fair’s overall reputation.
Nick nodded, his expression remaining steely: “Suit me up – this fox is ready for his shiny armor”
“Ya… no – actors bring their own armor if that’s what they want to dress like. No, I’ve been able to borrow clothes for a squire and a noble lady that should fit you two” the donkey noted, sounding as if this wasn’t the first time he’d explained to VIPs or other visitors that he couldn’t just give them a suit of armor to wear.
It turned out that the squire costume was bunny sized and the noble lady costume… wasn’t. At least they were given a tent change in.
“I swear fluff, if I see pictures of me in this being passed around in the bullpen on Monday, I’ll show them pictures of you eating bacon” Nick grumped, feeling thoroughly humiliated in the white and pink medieval dress. Oh sure, it fit him quite well, but it was a bloody dress!
Judy couldn’t help but smirk at Nick: “Hey, I didn’t show them any of the pictures I took of you when you did that undercover thing as an escort last month – and that dress was a lot trashier”
Adjusting her overly studded belt and then helping Nick fix up all his silky ribbons, Judy couldn’t help but add: “And darling, you know I would never do anything to jeopardize my access to bacon or juicy fox meat” – punctuated by pinching Nick in the rear.
Nick reacted with a yip at the pinch – and retaliated with a playful swat at Judy’s ears: “Not when we’re on the job, come on – what if someone saw us?”
“I know… ugh – you need to stop being so sexy, even when in drag” Judy said jokingly.
Walking among the stands, mainly to get a good read on the layout of the fairgrounds and spot possible escape routes that purse-snatchers might want to use, the duo passed the time until the ren fair opened up to the public:
“At least I don’t have to seduce any horny old goats this time” Nick remarked as they passed a vender setting up her selection of herbal flavoured salts.
“True. How much time did Skvisen get again? The prosecutor wanted 20 to 30 for the conspiracy, and then there were the arson and bombing charges he got lumped in with for ordering” Judy noted, trying to remember.
“I don’t actually remember – but he did get a good enough psych eval that he couldn’t plead insanity. Honestly I’m a bit surprised about that” the fox noted as he adjusted his veils.
Judy nodded: “Right, I remember how pissed his lawyers were when that came out, looked hilarious”
The duo rounded a corner. The paths through the tent-city that made up the ren-fair were wide enough to allow for two lane foot traffic for elephants, so there was plenty of room, even more so since there were only the vendors and actors walking around at the moment.
“Ya that made my week. I just wish that the two lions would have been a little more cooperative during their trials” Judy noted, sounding just a tiny bit disappointed.
“Well Miss Crazy was sent off to the loony bin, no surprise there…” Nick replied, looking at a chicken jerky vendor setting up shop and balking at the price tags.
“Yes but I meant we still don’t even know her real name – Nick, somewhere in Zootopia there is a mother and father who probably feel absolutely terrible about how their daughter turned out, or they don’t know where she is at all”
Nick made an agreeing gesture: “Good point. Can’t say the same about Simbason though – his parents were very up front to the press about how disappointed and angry they were about what he had done”
“I know right? And even that wasn’t enough to get him to talk – never said a single word during his trial” Judy said, her tone more puzzled than anything else.
Drawing on his hustling skills, which included a suite of skills for getting a read on other mammals, Nick pointed out: “He struck me as a mammal who had made his choices and chose to live with the results – no regrets, like some kind of true believer”
“I don’t know… the prosecutor never used that thing he had said to us about serving a higher cause during his trial – whoever was pulling Djalo’s strings is still out there”
“Pretty sure that was because the prosecutor wanted Djalo and Skvisen’s trials to wrap up nice and tight. A loose end like that would not go over well in the media if everyone gets paranoid about the masterminds” Nick noted, having learned quite well during his time with the ZPD that the work of the city’s prosecutor office wasn’t just to put criminals away, but much like the ZPD then it was also to put the public at ease – nobody liked hearing about the criminals who got away.
Craning her neck to look at some of the colourful banners bobbing in the morning breeze, Judy agreed: “True, we might have ended up with a witch-hunt”
“Speaking of which…” Nick added, pointing towards the front gates that were swinging open.
As attendees began flooding in, the duo split up and began to mingle. Their plan was very simple, using gear issued to them for the operation: Nick, all veiled up and very difficult to identify as male, was walking around with a purse with a long and flimsy strap. It was made specifically to look appealing to purse snatchers, and it had a nice battery-powered GPS tracker and speaker in it that could be remotely activated to emit a delightfully noisy siren. The plan was thus not to run down and catch the thief or thieves – it was to have them lead the duo to their hideout.
This of course all rested on the assumption that the purse snatchers had a hideout at the fair – but considering that the thefts had been fairly consistent throughout the week that the fair had been open, then it stood to reason that the thief or thieves had somewhere close by, somewhere out of sight, to check out their stolen loot and then return for more thieving quickly. Countless years of combined experience in the ZPD held that this was the most likely MO for the thief or thieves to be using.
As Nick went around, trying not to act too unladylike while perusing the shops and stands, he found himself increasingly aggravated. Nobody was pointing and laughing, no, it was people calling him “Lady Marion” – especially all the children.
Now, it wasn’t because Nick didn’t like kids – it was because some of them wanted pictures taken with him, or their parents would… and that risked blowing his cover!
Quickly moving on, and trying to keep his distance from any kids, Nick enjoyed the smells that were starting waft through the air at the ren fair. Stands selling snacks roasted over an open flame, in delightfully faux-old timey fashion, were everywhere, and “Ye Olde Buggery” stalls selling flame-grilled spiced roach with wild herbs were just smelling so good. The “Ye Olde Candied Cabbage on a stick” stalls just paled in comparison, though they got costumers too.
Judy was similarly patrolling the fairground, enjoying the sights and smells. She hadn’t been to too many similar events before, so a lot of it was still quite new to her, though the public butchering of chickens or preparation of insects was a tad too much for her – even if such sights could only be seen if one purposely walked into the pred-food parts of the fair.
Of course, cordoned off parts of the fairground where nine of ten attendees weren’t likely to go was a prime spot for someone who wanted to hide, so Judy had to check it out… and that it let her secretly indulge in her meat-eating habit was just a happy coincidence – and there were plenty of things she would later need Nick to buy for her to try.
Back with Nick, the tod was finding himself stalked by an annoyingly persistent pursuer. Not a kid wanting a picture, but a vixen in a black and grey costume, which stood in stark contrast to her russet fur. How she had pinned him for male was beyond him; the hips on the dress were wide and the corset underneath tight. Maybe it was his shoulders? No, the puffy shoulder thingies actually made his shoulders look even bigger… the point was that the vixen wouldn’t go away.
“Come on – you don’t have to be ashamed – you look good in it. It’s one from Gilbert’s camp isn’t it? I can tell from the embroidery” she implored, bouncing along next to Nick.
Stopping, and turning to face the vixen, Nick gestured for her to calm herself: “I’m not – but since you can’t seem to take a hint, what do you want from me?”
Looking a bit surprised at the sudden outburst, the vixen shrugged: “Hey, sorry – I just wanted to know if you wanted to hang out later? My camp is down by the waterway, the black rogue camp. We’re planning on having a party once the fair closes down for the evening, and Jim is testing his latest mead brews”
The vixen smiled, her tail swishing around in an excited manner: “…I know most of the men come here as actors already, and they’re all spoken for or gay, so when I saw you…”
“Right, let me stop you there – already spoken for – so while your offer is flattering, I’m going to have to disappoint you” Nick said bluntly, walking off, leaving the vixen behind.
Nick would be lying if he had to say that rejecting the vixen’s offer didn’t feel weird. Sure, being on the job also meant that he couldn’t really have spent any time flirting with her either, but a spunky vixen who looked to be roughly his age, and with a cool hobby? If not for Judy he would have taken up the vixen’s offer instantly…
Over at Judy, the bunny had spotted a rather suspect stall selling ‘love potions’.
The potions were blue – and were being advertised as being completely natural and herbal.
“Hi there, care to tell me how exactly these potions of yours work?” the bunny inquired, finding herself just a tad too short for the stand, forcing her to circle around it in order to get into eye-contact with the badger vendor.
The badger, dressed as some kind of medieval merchant via his rich purple and red robes, smiled at Judy: “Oh, looking for a little something to spice things up with the buck of your dreams? Why, they have a littler herbal magic in it”
Jumping up and swiping one of the bulbous vials, Judy gave it a quick look, confirming her suspicion: “Looks to me like you’ve got some crushed up nighthowler petals in here, and it smells like nettlefrisk tea. I’m thinking N2 in liquid form?”
“Hey, not so loud… what are yo-“
Judy was holding her badge up to the badger: “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to pack up your stand, turn in your ‘potions’ to security for them to hold on to and turn yourself in at the nearest police station. If you don’t, I’ll have a warrant for your arrest issued on Monday, so unless you want to go on the run or have all your colleagues and friends see you get arrested, you’ll go quietly and do the right thing here”
Giving Judy a very incredulous look – though at the same time it was obvious that the badger knew that he had been busted doing something he really shouldn’t – the vendor at first huffed himself up, looking ready to give Judy a piece of his mind, but the bunny’s harsh and judging glare didn’t waver for even a second, crushing the badger’s resistance: “Alright, alright… but come on, I don’t have to go to jail for this? I haven’t even sold any of these yet?”
“Turning yourself in and telling the police where you got the modified nighthowler seeds or bulbs will get you off easier - but come on, don’t make me get your name and address from the organizers and pull a warrant via that. Pack it up” Judy said,
With hurried movements the badger began packing his stall up, to which Judy moved on, though she did make a note to check on the stall later on to see if he hadn’t just set up shop again, or moved it somewhere else.
…but the brief thrill of stopping a crime like the sale of N2 juice faded quickly, upon the realization that the badger would probably just give the same explanation as all the other small-time N2 dealers who had been popping up all over the city. Online sale of N2 and N1 bulbs had been a big problem for the ZPD during the last several months, though it had been declining: Not all growers knew how to grow them properly, so a lot of crops were being lost.
Still, nobody knew where the few remaining N2 bulbs were coming from, but the best clue the ZPD had was that the three rams who had originally made them had sold off a large amount of their bulbs to various gangs in the city as a means to cash in before they had tried to flee. It certainly explained the large amounts of cash that had been found in the flipped truck during the raid that saw the rams finally captured, but only some of those bulbs had been found so far… and only a very small amount of large growing operations had been found throughout the city. There had even recently been a case in Bunny Burrow of a buck who had been caught trying to make watered down N1 – apparently because he had been picked on a lot in school, and thought if he took the drug he could fight his bullies.
Looking around at the mammals walking from one vendor to the other, Judy couldn’t help but wonder how many of them had an N2 bulb growing in a pot on a windowsill. The internet was rife with illegal but impossible to trace adverts talking about the new love-drug, but nobody was talking about all the bulbs which would turn out to be plain nighthowler… pure N1. A lot of couples looking to spice up their relationship with a petal of love had ended in bloody horns, hooves, and fangs… but nobody seemed to talk about it – nobody wanted to. There was no villain to pin it on, no one to blame, and news about random mammals taking the wrong drugs just wasn’t interesting news… plus it often just looked like cases of domestic albeit drug-fueled violence.
Steeling herself, Judy took solace in Nick’s amazing ability to not be depressed by that kind of news.
It was then that Judy’s radio ear-bud buzzed to life with Nick’s voice: “Fluff, a bunny just took the bait and ran off – start the tracker. I’ll wander a bit, looking for the purse, need to make it look good in case there are someone watching”
“Copy that Nick. Was it a solo grab or a group effort?” Judy replied, pulling out her phone and opening the tracking app that a ZPD technician had installed. Logging in was rather annoying, but Judy understood the safety issue… but every second that the tracking device wasn’t broadcasting, was everything second the purse might get out of range.
“Solo grab, but there might be scouts keeping an eye on me”
Once the tracker finally came online, Judy quickly began to home in on the location.
Nick was sitting on a bench, eating a triple roach-on-a-stick snack, in the middle of one of the larger market squares of the fair, waiting for Judy to call in a location.
“Nick, the tracker stopped inside one of the tents behind a shop near the jousting arena, where are you?” Judy called over the radio.
A quick tap on her shoulder made the bunny spin around on the spot. A toothy grin behind a pink veil met her: “Shall we?”
“Oh you” Judy shot back, holding back the urge to give Nick a good shoulder punch. That would have to be saved for later.
The tent in question appeared to be for storing wares for the shops out in front. A hole in the tent had several paw prints underneath in the dirt, revealing it as a barely hidden entry point. Bingo.
The size of the hole indicated that the mammals going in and out weren’t very big – this was good, since it meant that the duo didn’t have to call in backup before going in.
Judy took the hole, Nick circled around for the proper entrance into the large tent.
“On my mark… go!” Judy said over the radio, bursting in through the hole in the tent.
Nick rushed in from his side, tranq gun drawn: “ZPD, freeze!”
It took a second to register for the four mammals in the tent: A mouse, a dick-dick deer, a hare and a pika, all sitting next to a large pile of emptied out wallets and purses, and a plastic box full of credit cards and cash.
The mouse and the pika were the first to react, but as they turned to the hole in the tent they found themselves picked up by Judy. The hare and the dick-dick were only a split second slower on the uptake, but before they could get up Nick was over by them: “Don’t”
One thing that Nick very quickly picked up on, was the hare. Shouldn’t hares be bigger than ordinary rabbits?
That’s when the shoe dropped: “Judy, they’re kids”
Judy gave the mouse and the pika a harsh but appraising look: It was difficult to tell, but indeed, both of them were juveniles: “Well what do you know”
That was when the dick-dick started crying, complete with his voice breaking, revealing that he was a teenager indeed: “Whaa…. I don’t want to go to juvie again!”
“Well, you could have not stolen all these things. Now, you’re all under arrest. Resisting will only make things worse” Nick said, his tone firm but polite.
While trying to cuff the hare, who seemed largely resigned to the fact that she had been busted, the dick-dick made a run for it, but Judy managed to shuffle the mouse and pika around so they were in one hand, freeing up her right hand to dart the tiny teen deer.
With that done the rest of the juvie thieves were cuffed without notable resistance while their rights were read. The ren fair organizer the duo had spoked to earlier came by, quickly confirming that the four had snuck in without paying the entry fee via their lack of paw stamp. This resulted in four quick photos being taken, along with the four’s names, all being added to the ren fair’s list of mammals permanently banned from future events.
Counting up the amount of stolen loot, with all the credit cards, cash, phones, Nick and Judy quickly realized that the amount of cash alone made the four’s crimes reach into grand larceny.
“Wow, there’s over ten thousand in cash here” Judy mused, looking rather incredulously.
Nick shrugged, giving the organizer a look from behind his shades: “Oh that just makes things worse, doesn’t it?”
Judy understood perfectly what Nick was talking about, having warned him earlier of what might happen if they actually did catch the thieves: A lot of mammals would want their things back – but since the wallets and purses had all been emptied, then there was no way of telling what went into which purse or wallet. Sure, credits cards and other bits might have names on them, but almost nobody had their name on their wallet – and with the cash it was the same problem: There was no way of telling how much cash had been in each wallet… but there was a one-hundred percent guarantee that someone would claim to have had more cash in their wallet, than there had actually been.
“Remind me again, what is the standard procedure for this?” Nick asked, rubbing his temples.
Judy drew a deep sigh, glancing at the four arrestees: “Right now it’s all evidence. Bag it, tag it, bring it in along with the fab four. The credit cards and IDs will be indexed and go into the evidence database. If the mammals who lost them file them stolen, they’ll get an email where they can pick them up”
“Ya ok, but what about all the cash?” Nick wondered, looking at all that money.
Shaking her head, Judy wanted to smile, but she knew well enough that she was looking at hundreds of mammals having their days ruined: “It goes to the city – it’s pretty much impossible to prove how much money you had on you before its stolen. They’ll have to talk to their insurance to cover their loss, but chances are that their deductible will eat it all”
Leaving all the stolen wallets and purses to be handled by the fair’s lost and found, the duo left the fair with the four juvenile delinquents.
The drive from the fair to precinct one was a solid concert of crying and screaming. The kids in the back definitely did not like what was in store for them – especially the dick-dick who apparently had a record – but all of that would be for central processing and social services to figure out.
After having handed the four over to central booking, Nick finally had enough quiet around him to ask: “You think any of them will do time for this?”
“They stole enough to hit grand larceny, and according to the organizers they have been doing it for over a week – that’s organized and systematic theft. If this was their first time in the system they probably won’t end up doing time. I’m thinking they’ll probably get probation until they’re twenty-one… and I’ll bet good carrots that they won’t be able to stay out of trouble for that” Judy mused, looking a bit drained.
The following Monday Nick and Judy got the delightful task of handing the three non-repeat offender teens over to their parents. This was a first for Nick, picking them up from the precinct one detention cells one by one, and driving them out to their parents.
“Ok fluff, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you’re not looking forward to this” Nick commented in a fairly neutral tone, ever so slightly unsure of whether joking about the situation, or being blunt and straight-forward, was the best way to communicate his question.
Judy, wearing a frown so grim that one might think she was delivering the news of someone having died, shot Nick a slow look of smouldering fury, followed by a very drawn out sigh: “I’ve done this enough time – some genius from city hall thinks that having small mammals do this kind of stuff makes things go smoother…”
“I take it that you don’t agree?” Nick followed up.
Her eyes back on the road, Judy slumped her shoulders: “Of I don’t – Bogo doesn’t either. That’s why you, why the two of us, haven’t been sent to do this for any other one”
As with several other firsts that Nick had been on, where Judy had tried it many times before, Nick opted to trust Judy’s judgement – and thus steeled himself for the worst. This turned out to have been a wise choice:
The hare lived in one of the low-income neighbourhoods in Savannah Central. It was a neighbourhood of very simple villa-sized single-family burrows, with chain-link fences and rusty cars and broken bikes lining the streets. This was not the kind of place that any mammal would want to walk through after dark… though it did look like the kind of place where social services would visit quite often.
At the door, Judy was ‘greeted’ by a smelly doe hare so fat that it was difficult to see where her chin flab ended and her dewlap began. Almost as wide as as she was tall, the hare teen’s mother was in no way happy to see her daughter again, and without even skipping a beat she simply deadpanned: “So what did she do this time?”
Judy tried to explain the severity of the situation, but from what Nick could tell, then the mother seemed a lot more annoyed that her daughter had been caught, not that she had been part of stealing from hundreds of mammals.
Leaving for the two other teens, Nick understood Judy’s foul mood: “I’ve seen some broken homes… but that… wow”
“Oh I’ve seen far worse. Though there is something we can do” Judy said, sounding eerily happy all of a sudden.
Nick shot Judy a curious look. He knew well enough not to worry, but he couldn’t quite figure what she was talking about.
“You can drop social services a line while we drive back for the others. Even at her age an orphanage with some proper discipline and rules to live by will be an improvement” Judy explained.
The trip to Little Rodentia for the mouse and pika went a lot smoother. The parents of the two rodents were a lot more horrified that their children had been involved in crime – something that the duo took as far more promising signs: Parents who cared, parents who would make an effort to keep their kids on the straight and narrow, was always a good sign.
With their work wrapped up, the duo headed back out on patrol. During lunch, Judy couldn’t help but notice that Nick seemed a little out of it – lost in thought.
“I though I’m the one who’s supposed to be moody and pensive here” she joked, poking Nick with her gulp-a-chino.
Gazing deeply into his locust crunch wrap, the fox mused: “It’s just all that cash from Saturday. First time I’ve ever seen that much cash at once. None of my hustles ever produced that much green at once”
Judy chuckled: “Oh that’s nothing. I remember last year, someone from precinct four ‘caught’ a mammal from out of town, a Saola doe, from somewhere out west. SHe had arrived with a backpack stuffed full of cash. Confiscated it, and they paraded it around precinct one – it looked like the biggest haul of drug money or stolen cash of the year - but ultimately we had to give it back…”
“Really, how so?” Nick said with a perked eyebrow reaching above his aviator shades.
A wide smirk spread across Judy’s face: “Well, turned out she was a stripper, a really good one… and had to go to one of the bigger banks in Zootopia to hand in that much cash, her monthly earnings. Her local bank had refused to handle it”
The duo had a shared laugh, with the understanding that it was by no means normal for anyone to walk around with tens of thousands in rolled up bills in their backpack.
This led their lunch-time chit-chat down the topic of whether Judy had ever really screwed up in a case like that: “…and your nighthowler press conference flub from back when doesn’t count”
“Hmmm… no, not really. I’ve had some of my parking tickets contested, but nothing big. Plenty of cases where things turned out to be just… messed up. It wasn’t really one single case, just stuff adding up that nearly made me quit before you joined up” Judy noted, her ears flipping down in tune to her mood dropping.
Shifting over on the bench, and putting a calming paw on Judy’s shoulder, Nick asked: “Want to talk about it?”
“There’s not much to talk about… I mean, I do remember two really ugly cases from just after you left for the academy. They really winded me – tore down my idea of being able to help all mammals pretty hard” Judy said, swishing her gulp-a-china around idly.
Remaining silent, Nick simply gave his partner a reassuring squeeze. Judy seemed to appreciate that, putting her own paw on Nicks as she continued her grim tale:
“Alright, you sneaky fox you… I’ll spill. The first case was at an apartment complex in tundra town. Someone had called in a domestic disturbance, but it was in an apartment registered to a lone senior citizen, so we figured it was a break-in” Judy began.
Judy and her then partner had been the first responders on the scene. The door to the apartment showed no signs of break-in, but inside there were clear signs of a struggle. In the living room Judy had found a very drunk caribou, sleeping. On the floor next to him was a dead alpaca, and a bloody bowling ball.
“You’ll have to forgive me for saying this fluff, but that sounds like a really open and shut case” Nick commented, finishing up his crunch-wrap.
Judy nodded at Nick, though her eyes told a very sad tale all on their own: “Oh it was – but we still had to figure out the why, not just the who and the where”
It turned out that the caribou simply lived on the floor above the old alpaca. That alone didn’t explain anything, but apparently the caribou worked as a dean at one of the largest public schools in Zootopia – and he had turned to drinking to cope with the stress… drinking that had resulted in him going in the wrong door and mistaking the old alpaca for a burglar.
“We darted him and put him in the drunk tank – but after he sobered up… he was the first mammal I’ve ever seen who just broke down completely when we confronted him about what he had done. He didn’t remember anything. He was the first time I ever saw a mammal that devastated. Any other time he’d have been the perfect example of the kind of normal upstanding mammal we were supposed to protect, but there… he was just a mammal who had done something really stupid unintentionally and lost control of himself” Judy said, this time it being her time to look lost in thought.
Giving the bunny another light and friendly shoulder-squeeze, Nick nodded: “Was that where you got that line you gave me on my first day, about police being all about cleaning up the messes of stupid mammals who’d done stupid things?”
“No, that was the second case. A depressed teen had committed suicide, put a hose from the exhaust of his dad’s car into the window. Turned out that during it he had texted his girlfriend, asking for help… you know, wanting to live, last minute change of heart” Judy mused, getting up and walking back to the cruiser.
Inside the cruiser, Nick inquired into why the text messages mattered.
Judy shot Nick a deadly glare: “Because she answered them… said he needed to nut up and commit, not be such a ‘whiny bitch’. Coroners put his time of death about five to ten minutes after she sent that”
Sitting straight up, Nick gulped. Nodding to the response, Judy elaborated: “When we arrested her… at first we weren’t even sure if what she had done was illegal – but the prosecutor was quite sure. Her and the victim had apparently been talking about him killing himself for months, and she had encouraged him every stop of the way. Ice cold, no remorse. She got five years for second degree murder”
“Ouch – ya I can see how a case like that might make you question a few things about yourself”
Finishing their day, the duo returned home and just cuddled with some good movies and some of the very last frozen pizzas from Nick’s oversized freezer.
The next day in the bullpen Bogo entered looking gleefully cruel – this was a bit out of the ordinary for a Tuesday, for it signalled that cape buffalo was about to drop something cruel and wicked on the day shift officers: “It’s time for the annual physical test – it’s tomorrow”
Everyone groaned, though Nick – still reasonably fresh from the academy PE training – didn’t think of it as that bad, and Judy seemed to take it quite well too. Clawhauser, who for a now obvious reason, had been requested to sit on the briefing looked… less pleased.
“And with the happy news out of the way, I can inform you all that Dawn Bellwether has had her sentence commuted to house arrest for the remainder of said sentence. She will be moving into a secure location in west-end Savannah Central on Friday” Bogo said with a stony gaze and his usual stern and non-plus’d tone.