but it's not happening. Nick and I are just friends, and besides, he's got a girlfriend."

Nick lifted his paws and let them drop in frustration. "Carrots, she is not my girlfriend! We've only been on the one date."

She could have fired off any one of a half-dozen teasing remarks to this, but Clawhauser posed a more immediate concern.

"You mean there's hope?!" asked the cheetah, who hadn't looked so ecstatic since he'd gotten his spot at the front desk back – and been greeted with box upon box of doughnuts. "Oh, yes! I've gotta tell Bogo!"

"Clawhauser!" Judy cried, catching hold of his tail in an effort to stop him. She might as well have tried to stop a runaway train with a fishing rod. Cops all around stared and then began to laugh as the cheetah raced off at a truly surprising speed, with Judy alternately dragging her feet and being whipped outward around corners like a kite unable to quite make liftoff. As they vanished in the direction of the chief's office, one sound rang through the station.

"CLAWHAUSERRRR!"

It was hard for Nick not to snicker as he rode along to Judy's destination. The bunny was uncharacteristically quiet, her uniform was a bit out of place, her fur was off-kilter (how that was possible at such a short length, he'd never know), and the tight-lipped mouth and furrowed brow couldn't have expressed her displeasure more loudly if they'd been in a close-up on an IMAX screen. Getting a lecture from Bogo, trying (and failing) to corral a crazed cheetah, and fighting to make herself heard over said cheetah had not been her favorite way to start the day.

Of course, Nick had to find some way to make it worse. "You know, you probably should have just waited to discuss it one-on-one with old buffalo butt after Benji had blown himself out."

She fumed in response; one could almost see smoke coming out of her nostrils. The fact that Nick was probably right didn't help much – and neither, for that matter, did a suspicion in the back of her mind.

"Did you tell Ben that Taelia wasn't your girlfriend just to set him off?" she demanded.

Nick's eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped, and a paw flew to his chest in a very dramatic wounded look. "Would I lie about that just to make you chase him down?" His hurt look turned back to a sly grin. "Well, I didn't. But if I had tried, I couldn't have done- OW!" Judy's fist had lashed out, dealing a solid blow to his arm.

Judy tried to console herself with some banter. "Well, I know it even if you won't admit it, Junior Detective," she quipped.

He rolled his eyes, massaging the bruised bicep. "Look, I'm sure that in Bunnyburrow, lunch together and a two-block drive means it's time to plan the wedding, but here in the big city we have this thing called casual dating."

"Oh, please," she muttered, letting out an exasperated breath. She was too annoyed – particularly with the species-ist quip – to even notice that Nick had just admitted to a lunch date. "Rabbits are not that fast-and-furious about relationships. The only time we plan the wedding that soon is when little girl bunnies want to annoy a big sister – something I haven't done since I was ten."

"So, all of two weeks ago?" he teased, hastily dodging another shot to the arm. "Hey, hey, distracted driving, Carrots."

She returned her attention to the road. He considered the possibility that it was time to change subjects.

"So, what's the plan?"

"Well, until something else comes up, I thought we should check out the three mutton-keteers' apartments. The police have them marked off for investigation, so with none of your contacts bringing anything in yet, it's probably our best bet."

"What, the forensics lab hasn't checked them out yet?"

She shrugged, feeling a little more at ease now that they were on a business topic. "They did. I want to see if we can find something they missed."

He grinned. "Ah, you're running low on ideas and want to draw on my talents to cover it up. I wonder what Benji would say about that?"

She winced – not because he had zeroed in on the biggest blabbermouth in the department, but because he had just tried to blackmail the very wrong bunny. "Well, I wonder what he – or some other mammals you know – would say about the songs you keep in your phone."

That fox hadn't looked so bleak since she introduced him to the carrot pen. "You wouldn't dare."

She just laughed and started humming, 'Can You Feel the Fluff Tonight.'

He groaned. I wonder if this is the real reason rabbits used to be on so many mammals' menus, he mused.

They headed to an apartment building in one of the less trafficked areas of Savannah Central, not far from Meadowlands; prime sheep territory. The building – which looked like it might have been designed by the same architect responsible for Judy's place of residence – sat in a cluster of ramshackle structures nestled away among a tangled knot of back streets. Within were two apartments which had once been home, respectively, to Jessie and Doug; Walter's place was only a block away. The sidewalks were considerably more litter-strewn than most areas of the city, and wrought-iron fences were to be found barring access to nearly every private home in sight. At one or two spots, dark stains adorned walls as if someone had tagged them not with paint, but with black dye shot out of a squirt gun.

"What are those?" asked Judy, wrinkling her nose as they walked past one such spot on their approach to the apartment complex. The smell was like cigarettes steeped in swamp water.

"Tobacco juice," Nick replied calmly. "Some of the... less classy mammals around like to do it – and since it's technically not graffiti to spit on a wall, they can do it all they want as a way to leave their mark."

While Judy scowled at the idea, Nick continued to survey the building in front of them. By his assessment, the place was beneath the notice of most upstanding citizens, yet no more than five minutes from some of the city's most metropolitan areas; maybe two minutes if one would chance the back alleys on foot. Not only that, but the tall buildings nearby would let someone survey a massive chunk of the city. He related these thoughts to Judy, asserting that it would be an ideal place to pick out a target and radio their location to someone like Doug.

She stared at him a little uneasily, ears dipping and nose twitching. "Do you think like that all the time?" she asked.

He coughed. "No... but I may have talked with some hit-"

"La la la," she cut him off, singing off-key. "Don't tell me. I might have to testify later."

The fox coughed. Judy's wariness – while sensible – reminded him again of his many friends on the wrong side of the law. He pushed the thought away. "Right," he replied. "Let's go."

The two of them paused at the door to Doug's apartment to put on rubber gloves, and Judy let them in with a key supplied for the investigation. She also handed Nick a folder full of photos which, she explained, showed the apartment before anything had been seized as evidence. Then she found a corner and leaned against the wall to watch him do his thing.

Nick searched, comparing what he saw against the photos. Doug's computer was gone, along with several pieces of chemistry equipment and most of the kitchen items as bookshelf was largely undisturbed, although the phonebook had been removed – no doubt in search of circled numbers.

He jerked a thumb at the bookshelf. "See if there's anything in those books, you know, like notes, a business card used as a bookmark - that kind of thing. It happens, trust me. Oh, and look for pinholes in the pages. Sometimes they mean something."

She made for the shelf. "I didn't know about the pinhole thing," she admitted. "Do a lot of crooks use that?"

"To my knowledge, mostly pirates," he admitted, devoting his eyes to his own search. "I read about it in a book on hidden treasure when I was a cub, but you never know..."

Judy set to it, glad to have something to do. She thumbed through several books on chemistry – all of them college or post-grad level. Most of the material was gobbledygook to her; the knowledge cops needed when it came to chemistry had more to do with figuring out when someone was running a meth lab or concocting home-made poisons, not distilling ornamentals. So far, the use of night howlers in the recent case was unique, and thankfully the plants were not in use for recreational drugs either – not unless one counted the 'romantic effects' of Poisson's products, anyway – so there wasn't much common ground. The books on botany and horticulture were, at least, more to her liking. She had a good working knowledge of both, and several of the books were thoroughly illustrated with impressive diagrams and blueprints. Some of them she had even seen in situ on her family's farm, and one or two of the designs struck her as worth remembering when she next spoke with her parents. Who knew my police work might benefit their farming? she mused, enjoying the irony.

Unfortunately, none of the books yielded any discernible clues to Doug's location. Nick also struck out after hours

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