remote control.

"Hey!" said Garth. "Officer Hopps! And Nick! Long time no see, you guys!"

"Sorry to interrupt," said Judy.

"Naw, no worries! Just watching a re-run of when 'Stoat Cold' Steed Austin beat the snot out of Drake the Snake," said Garth. "It's my favourite match!"

"I had no idea you were into wrestling," said Judy.

"Oh, I've been a fan all my life!" said Garth, getting up from his armchair. "Stoat Cold is my all time favourite Wild Zootopian Wrestling champ."

Garth pulled up a couple of chairs for them, which were camouflaged among the junk piles.

"So, what can I do you for?" asked Garth.

"We have a little something we'd like you to look into," said Nick.

Judy gave him her carrot flash drive.

"Well, let's see what we got here, mine Thanes and Kinsmen henceforth be Earls," said Garth, walking to his main computer.

Judy and Nick followed their friend as he sat in front of his main computer and plugged the flash drive in.

He tapped some keys and brought up a screen.

"Hmm…" said Garth. "Some pretty heavy encryption you've got here. I take it this didn't come from a ninth grader's school project?"

"Um, not exactly," said Judy, looking sideways at Nick, who winked at her.

"Well, I could crack into this in a jiffy," said Garth. "But…"

He paused and turned around in his chair, looking directly at them.

"I'm afraid there is no way for me to do this without crossing into the…erm…legally questionable. And I do mean very, veeeery questionable."

Judy gave him a wink.

"Cop didn't see it, you didn't do it," she said.

"That's my gal!" said Garth, taking a compact disc from a drawer to his left.

He loaded the disc into the disc drive and tapped some keys. A progress bar appeared and the files started to decrypt.

"This will take a few minutes," said Garth. "In the meantime, do you want something to drink? I think there's some orange juice and pop somewhere to your left."

"Ah, that's okay, Garth. We're good," said Judy.

Suddenly, Nick's phone rang. He took it out and looked at the caller ID. It was an unknown number.

"Hello?" said Nick, answering.

"Oh! Officer Wilde!" said a breathless voice on the other end. "Um…I'm so glad it worked! I often get numbers mixed up. But anyway…I have the results! Of your carrot! If you can stop by the lab, I'll show you everything!"

Awkward pause.

"Um…everything I found out…about the carrot…and the results… and all that…"

"I'll be right over," said Nick, hanging up.

"Wooo! Where do you find them, Nick?" said Garth as he played a brick puzzle game on a portable game system.

"Actually…they kinda find me," said Nick, giving Judy a teasing smile.

Judy fake-punched him and giggled.

"I gotta go to the station for a bit," said Nick. "I'll be back as soon as possible!"

"I'll call you when we crack these files," said Judy.

"Be back before lunch, Nick!" said Garth. "It's Taco Thursday!"

"Um…isn't it supposed to be Taco Tuesday?" asked Nick.

"That's on Tuesdays. Taco Thursday is on Thursdays."

"Umm, oh yeah. Your logic is sound," said Nick, walking to the door and up the basement stairs. "See you in a bit!"

Nick knocked softly on the door of the Forensics Department. It was an hour before noon. They were making good progress.

Amber opened the door, blushed and flustered as usual.

"Officer Wilde!" said Amber. "So glad you're here! I managed to finish on your carrot!"

Awkward pause.

"Um…meaning…I finished working…on the sample…of the carrot…you left, for study, and the results are in…and I'd like you to have a look…at the results, that is."

"Awesome, Amber," said Nick kindly. "Let's see those results."

He walked in and Amber led him to her computer in the corner which was sitting on her neatly-arranged desk. Very different from Garth's place.

"Technically, there's nothing wrong with the carrot, Officer Wilde," said Amber, sitting daintily in her computer chair and softly tapping the keys with her soft fingers, her legs folded under the chair and her tail curled to her side. "No chemical poisoning, no virus. It should be healthy and edible. Except it isn't."

"So…it died of natural causes?"

"No," said Amber. "And that's the perplexing bit."

She pulled up an image with several chemical formulas in tiny print. It looked like an extreme zoom-in of a paper-thin wedge of the carrot.

"The carrot died of nitrogen depletion," said Amber. "Meaning it has almost no nitrogen in its tissue. The proteins in its cells fell apart and died from lack of the essential component of its amino acids."

Amber spun in her chair to face Nick.

"Imagine if you couldn't repair your body after a long day, Officer Wilde. You worked long hours and went home to rest, but instead of repairing your tissues during the night, as the body normally does, those tissues remained damaged and you eventually became so damaged that you collapsed, unable to repair yourself. Well, that's what happened to this poor carrot."

Nick listened carefully.

"This kind of thing would happen naturally if the carrot was planted in poor soil depleted of nutrients because of overcultivation. But that's definitely not the case. The farmers in Bunny Burrow would never allow that. It's as if someone somehow impoverished the land overnight, but it's very hard to believe anyone could do that."

"Hmm…" said Nick. "Impoverished the land overnight. That does raise more questions."

"I'm afraid so, Officer Wilde," said Amber.

"Questions to which the answers I shall find," said Nick determinedly. "Amber, thank you so much! I have to be going now, gotta meet up with an old friend of mine for lunch. I owe you one, big time!"

"Oh, you're more than welcome, Officer Wilde!" said Amber, getting up and walking with him to the door.

Amber opened the door for Nick. He paused at the doorway, looking back at her and smiling.

"You know, the Forensics Department used to be like a sort of limbo nobody went into, until you arrived," said Nick. "We used to walk past this door like it was just part of the wall, myself included. But not anymore. Now I have a good reason to stop by and go inside and say hello. It's always great to have a friend working with you, Amber. I really appreciate everything you do, and will make a point of stopping by every time I am down here."

Amber's face lit up with joy. Her cheeks flushed and she closed her eyes, completely enthralled.

"Oh, Officer Wilde! You can come inside whenever you like, as often as you like," said Amber delightedly.

Awkward pause.

"Um…come inside the lab…and pay me a visit…I'm always here, working on something," said Amber, fidgeting with her paws. "…and glad to have company…yes, always glad…"

"Thank you, Amber," said Nick. "You're a saint, and you know it."

He waved goodbye and hurried upstairs to the entrance hall.

"I wonder how many bed sheets she goes through in a week."

Judy was munching on a bean burrito when Nick walked into Garth's basement. She was sitting next to Garth, both of them looking at his computer screen unblinkingly.

"Hey guys!" said Nick.

"Nick! Grab a burrito, you'll wanna see this," said Garth.

Nick took a burrito out of Garth's refrigerator and put it in the microwave, which was right beside him.

"Okay, so all these are purchases, see?" said Garth, showing Judy the columns of numbers and names of different things. "The alphanumeric digits in the centre column are the internal code that the company uses. But for an agricultural company, they sure do buy a lot of weird stuff."

"What do you mean?" asked Judy through a mouthful of burrito.

"Ammonium acetate? Dichlorobenzene periodate? Acetylsalicylic acid in bulk? Not something I'd associate with an agricultural firm. More like a pharmaceutical company, if you ask me."

"Well, don't they produce fertilisers?" asked Judy. "They could be making fertiliser to sell and use on their farmland."

"That theory would be correct…if they had any line of fertilisers in their catalogue, which they do not," said Garth, showing her a list of their products. "Why would a company that claims to be an agricultural firm purchase large amounts of chemicals that are not traditionally associated with the fabrication of fertilisers, and do it in the utmost secrecy?"

Nick walked up behind Garth with his burrito in his paw.

"Garth, is there a shipping manifest? Is there a way to track down where they're storing the chemicals?"

"Where there's a whip, there's a way!" said Garth, tapping some keys.

"Um…I believe it's 'Where there's a will, there's a way'," said Nick.

Garth signed sadly.

"It's at times like this that I'd love to have a

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