Chapter Text
The wine-dark stain on the sidewalk was blood. Judy almost mistook it for refuse, at first—already mentally drafting up a citation for littering, sighing at the paperwork her life had become.
But then she saw the foot, black as tar and almost as discrete, poking out of the alley. Training took over. Pistol in hand, she moved forward, eyes scanning the sidewalk for anything else out of place. A vole, clad in one of those environmental exo-suits favored by some small species, nearly trod in the congealing pool. Judy quickly blocked her path, shooing her away with a firm sweep of her paw.
“Citadel Security. I’m going to need you to tap your credentials into the nearest transit station and leave the area.”
The vole audibly wobbled. “Th-This is a tremendous inconvenience!” she said, her outraged huff warped by the filter in the suit. Judy was already moving on to the alley.
In the dim lights of the ward she could make out a large furry body wearing an expensive cream-coloured suit—too rich for this part of the Citadel, certainly. She crouched and heaved against the bulk, shifting it enough to get a look into the face, to check the pulse on the neck—
But she already knew. The blood on the sidewalk had been dark, after all—rust-coloured, dull. The panther was long dead.
Judy’s omni-tool flashed to life as she held her wrist up to her mouth. Even as she patched into the C-Sec network, the orange glow revealed more details: the neatly manicured whiskers, the soft and well-groomed fur. In a seedier ward he would’ve been nothing but a walking target, but Mondega Ward was known for its complete middle-of-the-road unremarkability. At one point it was jokingly referred to as “the dental district”—because its only notable business was a single dentistry clinic.
“Judy! I was just talking about you!” Clawhauser’s voice chimed over her feed. "We were wondering if you could pick up some of those crullers on your way back to the—"
“Clawhauser, I—I’ve got a five-thirty-delta.”
The cheetah breathed in sharply. This was only Judy’s fourth month at C-Sec—and certainly her first corpse. She wasn’t sure how Clawhauser would react—or to be honest, even how she should react. The soft cheetah seemed like he’d be better equipped to handle civil disobedience and unlicensed preaching. But Judy heard the volley of beeps as he keyed in commands to the dispatch board, and she scolded herself for thinking that way—after all, wasn’t that how the rest of C-Sec saw her, too?
“I have your position. Sending units immediately. Should be there in—” he paused, triggering a few more beeps. “—thirty.”
Half an hour for the next C-Sec officer to arrive on scene. Judy withheld a sigh. She’d need to get back to the street, try and see how far that trail of blood went, see how far they’d need to lock it down. No doubt she could look forward to directing passersby towards detours for the last three hours of her shift while a detective took over the real work. She probably wouldn’t even get to canvas the neighbourhood.
She glanced at the body in its fine clothes. That shirt—was it natural fibers? Unbelievable. Her eyes trailed across the prone figure, taking in his luxurious outfit, until they snagged on the tell-tale shape of a wallet.
Judy snapped a couple of pictures with her omni-tool before removing a sterile stylus from her belt, carefully wedging it between the flaps of the wallet and flicking it open with one deft movement. She raised her arm so her omni-tool illuminated the ID card, tilting her head in the dim light. Then she cursed.
“Judy? You all right?” Clawhauser asked. It was unlike her to be so … expressive.
“Scratch that delta, Clawhauser. This is a five-thirty-alpha.”
Clawhauser wasn’t one for cursing, himself, but the beeps on his end became even more frantic.
“They’ll be there in fifteen, then,” he said, the tension tightening in his throat. “I’ll inform Executor Bogo. And … I’ll have to cancel the evening bridge tournament. This is gonna mean a lot of overtime.”
Judy took a step back, appraising the body with fresh eyes. Her heart began to race in apprehension.
On my shift, she thought. On my beat. She felt her face grow flush in a way her mother would find scandalous. This was a dead body, after all. Someone had died. Judy’s only interest should be in making sure it didn’t happen again.
And yet she quickly set to work photographing as much of the crime scene as she could, taking in every detail, every angle. Forensics would arrive and do the same, but it would take days for them to catalogue all the evidence—and even then, there was no guaranteeing she’d be given access to the case file. If she wanted in on this case at all, she’d have to do her own legwork.
An ambassador had died on her turf. And she was going to find the murderer.
Sure enough, forensics arrived within fifteen minutes. Ten minutes after that came Executor Bogo, who questioned her brusquely about her discovery of the body before re-affirming the perimeter she’d established around the scene. He nodded distractedly and turned away from her.
“Uh, sir?” she said. Bogo paused, shooting her a look over his shoulder.
“There’s going to be a task force assigned to this, I assume?” she said. “I mean, a five-thirty-alpha—”
Bogo gave a controlled sigh that made him creak like old wooden beams. When he spoke it was with pained patience—as if she had, once again, wasted his time. Judy struggled to keep her posture erect in the face of his withering disappointment.
“This has been assigned to Detective Lupinsky. He will choose his own task force,” Bogo replied. His dark gaze flicked dismissively from her feet—willed flat from years of practice—to the top of her twitching ears.
“No doubt he will be selecting for experience,” Bogo said, before turning and heading for the alley.
Judy’s ears sagged at that, and she felt a curdling disappointment take up residence in her abdomen. Lupinsky was a grey wolf—a greying wolf, really, as the flecks of silver around his snout and ears made him look wise beyond his years. He was effectively the star of Citadel Security—an accomplished detective specializing in subtle work: Presidium cases (like, say, the death of a diplomat) and wiretapping. Judy had idolized him during academy training, but any dreams she'd had of casting herself as his protégé had been dashed immediately upon meeting him, and repeatedly with every interaction since. Judy rarely had the opportunity to even stand in his shadow, and on the rare occasion he was forced to acknowledged her he had the habit of holding his head in this certain way—as if his baleful gaze were a boulder atop a hill, and if he angled his snout, he could be sure it would reach terminal velocity before landing at the bottom.
But then, not many people in C-Sec did. Clawhauser, certainly—but he liked everybody, and they shared a love of sweets. Lieutenant Ellis, a boisterous, cheerful elephant, had been very pleasant to Judy on her first day—but Judy had wished her a happy birthday, and what could anyone say to that without seeming a monster? No further camaraderie had developed, anyway, and Judy often found herself on the far side of ridicule and condescension whenever she entered the room.
Judy tried to remind herself that it didn’t matter—that her dream had been to join C-Sec, ever since rabbits were given access to Citadel Space and an embassy. It was one thing to be a police officer on her homeworld—but imagine being a police officer on the Citadel. What a joy! What an opportunity! It was a tremendous career move, and had nothing to do with any kind of fantasy about making lots of new and unique friends in this brave new world, the last unconquerable horizon, etcetera, etcetera. She'd wanted so desperately to combine her childhood longing for heroics with a passion for interplanetary cooperation. A frankly misguided passion, if reality had anything to say about it.
Judy sourly observed as two elk police officers walked past without even acknowledging her.
“Don’t mind me, officers. I’m just… doing my job. In the extremely limited capacity in which I’ve been tolerated,” she muttered.
The elk didn’t seem to notice—which was probably for the best. But she heard a disgruntled cough that made her ear twitch. She turned her head, suddenly feeling more sheepish than bunnyish.
“Detective Lupinsky!” she said, in her best attempt at a winning voice. The wolf had arrived on the scene, emerging from his black C-Sec-issue vehicle. He towered over her and—yes, there it was! His disapproving gaze came tumbling down upon her. Lupinksy's eyes were a sharp amber with a faint glow around the irises—a tell-tale sign of ocular implants. She'd overheard plenty of her seniors complain about the withering power of Lupinsky's eyes, and she was determined to distinguish herself if only by her refusal to buckle under his stare.
“Officer, uh—” he started, and for a moment Judy actually hoped he’d remember her name. Or even—and here she knew she was grasping desperately—get it wrong, so she could politely correct him, and he’d feel apologetic about getting it wrong, and she’d laugh it off and say Oh, that’s all right, sir. What’s a little mix-up between friends? And he’d smile at her fresh and easy approach and say Why, that’s just the kind of attitude that will help me crack this case, I think, and—
But Lupinsky was already stalking off towards the alley. He hadn’t even tried.
“Officer Hopps, sir!” she called after him. If he heard, he chose not to acknowledge her.
At the end of her shift, Judy returned to her small apartment. It was late—or early, depending—but there was work still to be done, and she quickly kicked off her uniform and swathed herself in an old t-shirt. With a mug of tea for company, she crawled into bed and booted up her tablet.
Lupinsky would be choosing his taskforce tomorrow, and she didn’t stand a chance in Citadel space of getting on it. Not unless she could really impress him.
Logging into her C-Sec account, she quickly accessed the files from her omni-tool, and got to work.