Just an FYI for this, btw; for those unschooled in French, Poisson is pronounced "PWASS-on." you can take the spelling similarity to "poison" however you like.

Couldn't think of a quote for this; I guess I'll just let the chapter speak for itself.

Judy was only too glad to get back above ground, and she took a deep breath when she was at last back in the daylight. Well, she had a promise of the farms' records – on her carrot pen as well, if it came to that – and a file in hand on one of the main suspects. That was a start, and... she checked the clock. Even better, she thought, I'll make it to pick up Nick with time to spare. That by itself was enough to put a smile on her face; today she and Nick were due to meet with Chief Bogo about getting him started on the road to being a cop. Who knows? she thought to herself as she merged onto one of the highways. He might even know something about Poisson.

Finding Nick proved to be a challenge; the area around the courthouse, which was situted on the edge of Meadowlands, was a mess of mammals in every size and species. Many of them waved to her, recognizing her as the town hero. Much as all that attention bugged her at times, she had to admit it made for a nice change from the last time she'd been there. There had been several long lines of those who had been in the receiving end of her stint as meter maid. Smiling at the change, Judy reflected that it really had been best that those days were short-lived – for everyone's sakes.

Then she spotted him sitting on a bench, alternating bites of a burger from Chez Cheese and a popsicle. He didn't seem to notice her as she pulled into the nearest parking space and honked. "Hey Junior!" she called, rolling down the window on his side.

"Hey Carrots," he replied calmly, finishing off the last of the popsicle.

Judy raised an eyebrow. "Really, Nick? On the way to meet Bogo?"

"What? I bought it – and yes, this one was legit," he added as he climbed in. At her insistence, he had abandoned his striped tie and Hawaiian shirt for a navy blue tie and a white shirt – generic enough to avoid being pretentious, but professional enough to subtly say, "Hire me."

Judy made for the highway, and Nick discreetly slipped the popsicle stick into his pocket after sucking off the last of the juice.

"You're not going to sell that off at a rodent construction site, are you?" asked Judy.

Nick tried not to let his reaction show. She is good, he thought. "For your information, I make pencil cups out of these in my free time," he told her.

She glanced briefly at him with one raised eyebrow. "Uh-huh."

He rolled his eyes and pulled out the stick, preparing to throw it out the window.

"Littering's a $500 fine," she reminded him quickly.

He put it away again. "Fine," he said grumpily. "I'll keep it as a memento of how annoying you are."

"Ah, you know you love every minute of it," she quipped right back. Then, getting serious, she added, "So, you feeling ready for a fresh start?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," he answered. Then, lest she ask how his time at the courthouse went, he asked, "So what was it you were doing again?"

"Investigating leads on the missing suspects from the Bellwether Conspiracy," she answered. "Got a promising lead on Doug Woolard – you remember, the one in the gas mask?"

"How could I forget?" asked Nick. That five minutes had been the most almost-literlly-heartstopping period of his pretty crazy life.

"That reminds me," Judy went on, "you said you know everyone, right?"

He rubbed his knuckles on his shirt. "Everyone," he replied cooly.

"Including, say, Olivia D. Poisson?"

"Olivia Poisson..." he muttered, almost as if he were trying the name in his mouth like a wine expert studying a flavor. Then he stopped, and his green eyes popped. "Wait, as in Pwasson's Passion? That Olivia Poisson?"

Judy nodded, and Nick let out a low whistle. "Wow, you aren't leaving any stone unturned, are you?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, mostly that she's one of the few people I don't know. They say she throws good parties, but even I couldn't charm my way into one."

Judy's expression fell.

"I mean," Nick went on, "I know a few rumors about her – like, say, that a reporter was involved in an 'accident' when he tried to do an exposé on her, or that she buys controlling interests in companies around the country to keep a lid on competition – you know, things like that."

"Anything substantial?"

He shrugged. "'Fraid not, Carrots."

"No, it's fine," she said half-heartedly. "Everyone's got limits."

Nick wished he could have helped more – but at least he'd kept the topic off of-

"So, how did things go at the courthouse?"

Darn it, she's good, he thought. "Well, I talked to a few friends, pulled a few strings, and..." he trailed off.

"And?" she pressed.

"And if, hypothetically, someone like me needed to get around a charge of tax evasion, it would be impossible unless a state judge ordered their records sealed or expunged."

Judy winced. "That's not easy, is it?"

"No – but it's not impossible. And since I happened to help save the city from going to you-know-where in a handbasket, there's hope."

"Then you're in?"

"All I need is an official to put in a good word for me."

Judy smiled. "Well, I just happen to know an official who'd be willing to do that."

Nick's smile dropped. "Uh, I kind of asked about that. Turns out you wouldn't cut it."

"Oh."

He shrugged. "Well, like you said, everyone's got limits."

Their conversation was halted by a call over the radio. "Dispatch to all cars: we have complaints of an erratic driver on Route 9 southbound, just past Tojunga. Over."

"It's To-hun-ga," Nick corrected mechanically.

Judy shook her head and picked up the radio. "Dispatch, this is Car 31; we're en route. Over."

"I thought we had an appointment with Chief Hornhead," Nick countered as Clawhauser's voice confirmed what Judy had just said.

Judy shrugged as she returned the radio to its hook. "It's on our way, and this shouldn't take long."

Nick shrugged right back and popped in some earbuds.

Judy was right; it was only a matter of minutes before the car came into sight, weaving crazily across the yellow lines. It was easy enough to spot; all the other cars were giving it plenty of space. Judy reached for a switch and flicked on the flashers, signaling the swerving driver to pull over. After at least two minutes of unchanged erratic zig-zagging, the driver noticed and quickly pulled to the side.

Parking behind the suspected car, Judy radioed in the situation as per protocol before she hopped out and walked up to the car. Once she got there, however, she discovered a problem: she couldn't reach the window.

I seriously need to look into stilts, she thought, debating between the equal and opposite indignities of jumping up and down while she questioned the driver or simply knocking on the car door.

The driver saved her the choice by opening a window and looking out, obviously wondering where the cop who had pulled her over went. It was a vixen with light orange fur and puzzled blue eyes.

"Down here," the rabbit called.

The vixen whipped her head downward so quickly that she almost whacked her chin on the door. "Huh?!"

Judy folded her arms and tapped her foot, trying to look commanding in spite of her stature. "Are you aware that you were all over the road, ma'am?"

"Oh; um..." the vixen looked as though she were still stuck on the part where a rabbit pulled her over. "Yeah. Sorry about that. I was singing along with a CD, and I kind of..."

"Mm-hm," Judy nodded, holding up a paw. "License, please?"

Nick pulled out his earbuds as Judy slipped back into the car to check the license. "What's going on?" he asked. He might have said more, but at that moment he got a look at the picture on the little plastic card.

Judy shrugged. "Distracted driving by the look of it. She was all over the road, but I didn't smell anything on her breath." Her eyes were fixed on the screen of a tablet mounted on the dashboard as she punched in the license number and studied the results. "Hm. Nothing major on her record..."

She turned to Nick, only to find him nowhere in sight. "Nick where did-?" Then she spotted him and smacked herself in the face. He was standing by the vixen's car, leaning one elbow on it in a very casual manner and chatting with the occupant.

Judy thought about reading him the riot act, then decided to try a more subtle approach. She walked up behind Nick, who was in the midst of asking if the vixen – Judy had noted her name was Taelia from the license – was having car trouble,

"Okay, Junior Detective," she chided loudly and clearly, "I'll take it from here."

Nick was plainly horrified as Taelia slowly asked, "Junior Detective?"

"Yes," Judy affirmed, stepping around Nick and nudging him with her hip. "Back to the car; I'll take it from here."

The look on his face was priceless. She knew she'd pay for it later, but for the moment she felt it was worth any revenge he might come up with. Besides, he had interrupted her traffic stop.

Nick was still annoyed with her when she got back to the cruiser. "Did you have to call me that in front... I mean, in public?" he complained.

She reached out and pinched his cheek playfully. "Oh, but you look so cute when you blush."

He pushed her paw away. "Ve-ry funny," he complained. "It's not fair to call me that if I'm not allowed to use that word about you."

Judy had to admit he had a point there. "Well, you'll be happy to know I let her off with a warning and the quickest test I could think of just for you, Junior Detective."

Nick was groaning inside, but didn't feel like giving her the added satisfaction of hearing him do it out loud. "You know on the off chance I bump into her later I am never going to be able to face her, right?"

She shrugged. "Well, then I guess getting you her phone number was a waste."

"That," Nick said pointedly, "is not very funny."

Judy just hummed cheerfully to herself.

"Uh, Carrots," Nick ventured, "you were joking, right?"

In response, the rabbit jerked her head as if she had been startled. "Oh, clumsy me!" she said in an exaggerated tone. "I left the tablet unlocked with all her information."

There was no time for Nick to think or do anything except feel a sense of "No!" as Judy reached out and pushed a button on the device, closing the screen.

"Okay," he complained, "that was just mean."

Nick and Judy were still arguing as they made their way into the station, past the chubby cheetah Clawhauser at his usual post - and with his usual array of snacks.

"What's going on?" asked Clawhauser, pausing in the middle of a box of doughnuts.

Judy smirked as Nick gave her a "Don't you say a word" look. "Oh, just having a little fun with Junior here about his new girlfriend."

Nick dragged a paw down the center of his face. "She is not my girlfriend, and would you stop calling me Junior?"

The cheetah's expression fell. "Nick and a girl?"

"A vixen I pulled over," Judy went on relentlessly. Then, out the side of her mouth in a fake-discreet tone, she added, "Not a bad find for a guy like him, either."

Before Nick could express his indignation at the "guy like him" part, Clawhauser's face dropped to one paw. "Aw, there goes the bet with Bogo," moaned the cheetah.

"What bet?" Judy and Nick chorused.

"Well, I bet Bogo that you two would end up dating. He didn't believe it. 'Officer Hopps is trying to get that fox instated as a cop,' he said. 'Wouldn't be so unprofessional' he said."

Judy and Nick both stared at one another. "Well," Nick remarked, speaking for both of them, "that's... just too bad."

"Is that what they think?" asked Judy, fuming as they continued toward Bogo's office. "Is that what everyone thinks?"

"Well don't sound so insulted," Nick countered, folding his arms and putting an edge in his voice.

Judy instantly repented of her tone. "Sorry. I just..." she paused. "I don't know. Does everyone think because we hang out, we're automatically a couple or something? We've hardly even known each other that long."

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Well, you just told Clawhauser that Taelia was my girlfriend, and I talked to her once. So how is it unfair for people to make assumptions because a handsome fox is hanging around with a c-"

Judy's paw shot out and wrapped around Nick's muzzle. "Don't say it; we're even."

"Yuh th moff," he mumbled before she let go. With his mouth free, he added, "And I was going to say 'cop.'"

Judy's frown diminished by a tiny fraction, so Nick continued. "Besides, Bogo doesn't think we're a couple – he even said you were too professional for that."

"That's true." This brightened Judy's mood considerably. A compliment from Chief Bogo was like a shooting star – rare, and likely to be missed if you took the time to blink. "Maybe he thinks making us partners would work out after all."

Bogo lowered a folder to the desk. "Sorry, but I don't think it would work out."

"What?" cried Judy. "But Chief, he helped me solve the biggest case this city's seen in at least ten years."

"Fifty, actually," acknowledged the water buffalo, "but I ran a background check on Mr. Wilde here..."

Nick's already bothered expression fell into one of sprouting despair.

"And I turned up a few... suspicious things in his financial history. It's nothing concrete, but this was only a preliminary check. If there is anything of interest, the full background check is sure to turn it up."

Oh, sweet cheese and crackers, Judy thought. It figured; if she had managed to dig that up before she was even in the system, of course Bogo would find the same thing. Fortunately, she had a loophole. "True," she admitted, "but if he works that out with a judge, he can still get in."

Bogo adjusted his glasses. "True, but to get that through he'll need someone high up to vouch for him. City Hall is in a muddle, and the only other official who can get recommend him for an override...is me."

Now, Nick looked positively ill.

"Right now I'm doing you a favor just not bringing out the handcuffs," Bogo went on, looking squarely at the fox. "If I'm going to recommend you for this department, though, it's going to take a little more than that."

"More than helping save the city?" asked Judy incredulously. "What's he supposed to do, stop an asteroid?"

Bogo regarded her with a stony gaze. "I'm sure you'll think of something. Now, Officer Hopps, I think you have a case to get back to."

Judy huffed. "Fine."

Bogo was only left alone for a minute before Judy poked her head back in.

"By the way," she added crossly, "you might as well know you won the bet with Ben."

This news pleased Bogo just a little. "Well, maybe after a few days without doughnuts he'll be able to catch someone."  Normally he wasn't the type to gamble, but he hadn't gotten where he was by turning down opportunities when they literally walked right up to him.

Since Nick wasn't a recognized member of the ZPD, regulations hindered Judy from using the office areas to go over notes with him. Instead, she chose one of the interviewing rooms; quiet little isolated rooms, loosely similar to the ones for grilling suspects in that they were soundproof and were monitored on closed-circuit television. The presence of potted plants and windows, and the lack of a two-way mirror, helped to make the feel of the Dale more pleasant – which was kind of the idea. The interview rooms were generally used for private talks with witnesses, and occasionally in efforts to coax more cooperative suspects into coming forward.

"Okay," said Judy, climbing into a chair at the desk in the middle of the room. She opened the folder, skimmed its contents briefly, and then divided the stack through the middle like a card player cutting the deck. "You look through those, and I'll check these out. Let me know if you find anything interesting."

It didn't take long for either of them to find something worth that label. Judy soon discovered that Doug Woolard had indeed been a brilliant chemist, and not too bad with machines either. He'd fine-tuned a good many of the machines and methods used to concentrate the extract; sometimes so much that there were notes on his designs like, "Rejected; danger level too high."

"Wait, they were concentrating the stuff?" asked Nick, pricking his ears when Judy mentioned this. "I thought you said it was carefully diluted."

"That was Olivia's story," Judy answered doubtfully. It wasn't a solid case for her either, though. Even if the stuff was diluted in the finished product, it would make sense for them to concentrate it for storage and perhaps other stages in the process; juice companies often did the same thing. Still, it was clear enough at least that Pwasson's Passion factories – and perhaps other facilities – did have places where they stored heavy concentrations of nighthowler serum. It also confirmed that working for them had taught Woolard much about how to handle the flowers and their derivatives; perhaps even how to grow them so successfully in a subway tunnel, of all places.

Judy was pulled from her study when Nick let out a low whistle. "Yikes. No wonder she hated the guy."

Judy looked up. Nick's eyes were wide as he stared at his own collection of info. "What is it?" she asked.

He glanced up at her. "You don't want to know."

"Tell me."

He paused for a minute. "Remember your reaction to the Mystic Spring Oasis?"

Judy cringed. "Mind bleach, please." Then, more skeptically, she added, "Is there really something like that in there?"

"Only reports," he admitted, "but suffice it to say Woolard used his opportunities working for the family to get some… compromising material."

Judy spoke slowly and reluctantly, missing for the first time her days as a meter maid. True, real life was messy; she knew that. Still, 'messy' was one thing. 'I need a shower in the worst possible way' was another story. "So, what kind of material are we talking about?"

"Nothing illegal – at least not for the Poiss…" he trailed off, studying something else. "Well, actually there is something here on the Poissons that would interest the ZPD," he added, handing the papers to her.

Judy surveyed the records, and it didn't take long for the story to unfold. During his time as a chemist for Arthur Poisson (Olivia's father), Doug had managed to gain a great deal of the skunk's respect and trust. Then Arthur found out that Doug was stealing company secrets and threatened to have him arrested. The sheep, however, had an ace up his wool; during his time in the company, he had used his position to obtain some… well, as Nick had said, some compromising photos of the Poisson family. No actual photos were in the file, but the written information gave Judy reason to be glad for that lapse in Olivia's otherwise thorough record-keeping. Worse, Woolard had had them long enough that there was no telling how many copies he might have, and thus no guarantee of tracking down and destroying them all. Faced with the threat of his family being disgraced and his company losing its edge, Arthur had no choice but to let Doug Woolard off the hook.

Just as Judy was starting to wonder what Nick had meant, she got to the next part. Olivia's brother, Guseppe, learning that the files were stored digitally, had broken into Woolard's apartment with one of the company's top tech support consultants hoping to hack his computer and figure out how serious the problem was. They were caught in the act, and Woolard threatened to have the young skunk arrested. With the two sides now in what amounted to a case of mutually assured destruction, Doug apparently decided he had all he needed and left the company soon after.

"Well," Judy remarked, "that explains why Olivia hated the guy so much."

"Yeah, but she just ratted out her own brother," Nick pointed out.

"Not really," Judy admitted, prodding the paper with a finger. "The statute of limitations on what Guseppe did is expired, so technically the police have nothing on him."

Nick exhaled. "Sly skunk," he conceded.

Unfortunately, the dossier contained no current information to help them track down Woolard as far as Judy could see; just more to add to his charges when they caught up to him. Fortunately – or at least Miss Poisson would no doubt think so – things like corporate espionage and blackmail carried longer shelf lives than attempted burglary.

"Well, you can still chase down the techie for attempted hacking," Nick pointed out when Judy mentioned this.

Judy shook her head. "We've got bigger fish to fry." She neglected to add that, after working with Nick despite his history, she'd feel a little divided chasing down someone who broke the law only to help someone the law wouldn't.

Nick shrugged. "I guess this explains what you said about Olivia Poisson's grudge against Doug," he noted.

"If it's all true," she answered. She didn't want to trust Olivia too far. The skunk gave off too strong a case of bad vibes to be discarded so quickly as a suspect. She'd willingly implicated her own brother, albeit of an expired charge. If she and Woolard had been in cahoots, it would be no surprise for her to throw him to the sharks to save herself.

"Aren't you supposed to treat everyone as innocent until proven guilty?" asked Nick when Judy voiced this thought.

"Technically that's how the courts are supposed to work," she answered, letting her gut do the talking. The truth was, her mind knew Nick had a point.

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