Chapter Text
“So we got a call about a large animal causing a disturbance?” said Zhu.
Wilde stood a ways away, uniform rumpled and his collar undone, holding a coffee cup in both hands. It had been a long day.
About to be longer.
“Yeah. Some idiot’s got… I don’t know, like a cow or something in his apartment, I guess? That’s what his landlady said on the phone.” His shoulders sagged in an "I took an oath for this?" sort of way. “This… this is what we’re doing.”
The landlady was incoherent with anger on the phone, and what they got was limited; but the downstairs neighbour let them in, and talked as they traipsed upstairs. “Yeah, I heard noise on the stairs, didn’t think much of it till it kept on going in his place. I went and listened at the door and I heard something sort of mooing?”
Zhu knocked on the door, and they waited. The sound of frantic scrambling and clattering emerged, doors opened and closed, and when the front door cracked, a smell of alcohol wafted out.
“Sir-” Zhu started to say, only to stop in his tracks.
A college student, because of course he was. Blond hair. Broad shoulders. Covered in a pale brown fur.
Zhu cleared his throat. “Are you Kristoff Bjorgman?” The guy nodded. “We’re here about the cow.”
The man actually looked confused. A better actor than either officer would have pegged him for. “What cow?”
Zhu raised an eyebrow and gestured to the front of his shirt. “Sir,” he said, “please don’t play dumb with me.”
“No, really, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’ve had a report of a large animal in this apartment.”
“Oh, the-” Bjorgman’s eyes briefly lit up before he shut his mouth like a trap, and opened it again to say, “Sorry, no large animals here!” in a much less convincing tone.
“… We’re gonna need to search the property, sir.”
“You got a warrant?”
“Yes.”
“Damnit,” he hissed. “I was hoping you’d…” Sigh. “Whatever.” He stood aside.
The place was a mess. Not squalor, just clutter from wall to wall. There was more hair on the furniture, and on the floor were hoofprints, or what looked like them. Wilde looked over at Bjorgman.
“No large animals, huh?”
“Those are… orthopedic shoe prints.”
“I’m sure.” Wilde opened the coat closet door. Too small to fit a big animal in there. Same for the bathroom. Nothing in the living room. In the bedroom, however…
“That’s a coat rack!”
Zhu marched into the room and removed random articles of laundry from the thing in the corner, which snorted and started chewing his sleeve.
“Is that a… moose?!”
Wilde laughed outright at that. “What?!”
“I think it’s a reindeer,” Bjorgman offered sheepishly.
“Are you sure?” Zhu asked, flinching as the animal’s antlers tapped his cheek.
“Well, I’m sure it’s not a moose.”
“What’s the difference?! It’s got horns, it’s brown. Looks like a moose!”
“See, this is how I know you were born in the city. If you weren’t-”
“Oh, are we back on this again? Really? Can we not do this right now?!”
“… City boy.”
The homeowner in the meantime inched slowly towards the door.
“Hold it.” Wilde put out an arm, blocking his escape. “What’s with the caribou?”
“I thought you said it was a reindeer,” Zhu muttered.
“For God’s sake, Zhu, they’re the same thing!”
“Whatever! Where did this thing come from?”
“Um…” Bjorgman’s eyes darted back and forth. “I… found him?”
Wilde sighed. “And where did you find him?”
“Uh, you know, just… around. In a field.”
“In a field with a fence around it?”
“Well, now you mention it, there was a certain, slight, maybe, wire-like quality to the outside edge.”
“Decorated with candy canes and lights?”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“So you stole from the petting zoo?”
“ ‘Stole’ makes it sound like, I dunno…”
“Stealing?”
“I mean… yeah.”
Zhu took a breath and sighed for a long time, kneading his temples with his free hand. “… Why?”
“Uh…”
“Sir…”
“I was… very drunk. Word to the wise, don’t buy alcohol from the Amish.”
“The Amish don’t drink.”
“I think that’s Mormons, actually…”
“Not the issue. You do realize you’re under arrest, right?”
“For what?”
Wilde looked from the man and back to the reindeer as his partner attempted to dislodge the beast from his sleeve.
“… Point taken.”
“I’ll deal with him,” Zhu said. “Wilde, get this beast downstairs and back to-”
“Uh, we may have a slight problem with that.”
“What? Why?”
Wilde scratched his neck awkwardly. “Hoofed animals, well, they don’t like their centre of balance being thrown off…”
“Get to the point, Wilde.”
“They’ll walk upstairs, but not down. At least, not down stairs as steep as the ones in here.”
“What?!”
“Yeah…”
“So what are we supposed to do?”
“Is there an elevator?”
“Not one this thing would fit inside!”
“Well, we could try…”
“And what if it gets stuck?!”
“Okay, okay. We could call someone to pulley it out…”
“You think the city will go for that? It’s just a moose.”
“Reindeer.”
“Whatever.”
“Well, what else are we gonna do with it?”
“You ever had venison?” Zhu said, annoyed.
“Hey!”