Plant

Detective Vulpecula Noel brought the flask up to his lips as his eyes he perused the crime-scene. Instead of what was in-front of him, however, his muzzle was at his chest as he tried to calm his breathing. He focused on the sound his boots made as they dug into the cold dampness beneath his feet. The ground was a mixture of mud and sprinklings of the black-tar that had fallen out from the box that padded the playground. He didn’t drink from the flask, not that Psittacus would have minded. The Fox Detective turned the flask over, looking at where his boss’ initials were carved into the metal container. It was only something to comfort him, something he could control, a pseudo-assurance that if he wanted to cloud his mind, then, he could. He had no intention of taking a drink. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do. This required a focused mind.

It was very cold for this time of the year, but it was also very early, the sun only having barely risen to greet Urgway.

“If this is too much,” Psittacus started, then stopped, before rephrasing, “I know that the situation with Tony Rockwell wasn’t easy for you, and before that, I know that you had a murder over at The Slug, that’s a lot to take in for a rookie.”

Vulpecula reflected on that for a second.

Tony Rockwell had confessed to the brutal murder of Finn Saldana. That wouldn’t be enough for a conviction, not by itself. The case lacked the proper “corpus delicti” for the Finn Saldana kidnapping to even prove a murder had occurred. False confessions weren’t out-of-the-ordinary, neither were plea bargains or other ways prosecutors used to convince defendants of committing to crimes they didn’t commit. But Tony Rockwell wasn’t a simpleton by any stretch. A long-history in criminal law, Tony knew all the tricks in the book. The simple fact he directly informed police of Finn Saldana’s sudden “disappearance,” indicated he wanted to be caught. Yet, thus far, he has refused to cooperate in helping the Marybeth Police Department discover a body.

Vulpecula looked up from the mud and in the eyes of Psittacus, whose other-wise curmudgeon demeanor now carried a stoically empathetic look. Which was a strange look. Stoic being a lack of emotion, empathetic being the opposite, and yet, the parrot had contorted his way in that very contradictory way, nonetheless. At last, V offered a weak smile, then, took it back, handing the parrot his flask. V nodded his head understandingly, turning away before he could see his boss’ response. Feeling his eyes begin to water, he walked nearer to the scene of the crime.

Prior, he had felt like he was at a standstill, and now, out of stubbornness, he walked forward, walking past the swing-sets and the metal slide. Behind them was a school building, an empty school building. There would be no classes in session for the foreseeable future.

“Have we identified the victim?” Vulpecula Noel asked, as he neared the crudely constructed green-house structure, he was immediately met with a rancid smell, only thinly veiled over by the mere smell of burnt plastic.

The green house had seen better days, with the fire certainly having inflicted some distinctive damage. Before that though, it was likely an eyesore as well. Most things were in Marybeth Elementary School, which, according to Psittacus during the car-ride over, could be described as a cesspool for delinquents. But they were kids, is what Vulpecula left with, wondering how bad any of them could really be, all of them still naïve and learning who they would become for the rest of their lives.

It was peculiar, Vulpecula supposed, that a school even had a greenhouse. It certainly wasn’t something Vulpecula had ever heard of back in Acera. Once upon a time, before it became all concrete and parking lots, Urgway and Jalint shared a sisterhood in their extravagant agriculture. This greenhouse and an agriculture class even making it in an Urgway school’s curriculum was no doubt the aftershocks of a different era.

“The victim’s name is Nicholas Myers,” Detective Psittacus answered, following from behind.

Vulpecula took in another breath and let it escape him, then, at long last, brought to view the macabre of Marybeth Elementary School’s greenhouse. At the center of the room, a little boy, a small Doberman, Nicholas rested.

“Rested” wasn’t an accurate phrase, however, because Nicholas would not be waking up. A blunter, but more accurate description would be to say Nicholas laid dead at the center of the room.

The greenhouse was responsible for the smell of burnt plastic, but it was Nicholas Myers’ charred remains that gave off the rancid odor. The forensics team would be here soon, as was customary for incidents involving murder, but, before that, The Fox Detective and what was left of Myers would be alone together.

“What happened here, Nicholas?” Vulpecula mumbled to himself, finding a way to keep his emotions in-check partly because the sheer surrealism he felt. Part of him knew it was odd to ask questions to a corpse, the other part of him knew Myers would start responding sooner or later.

The Doberman’s discolored fur was only visible in small, faint patches. It wasn’t clear what would have killed him first, congregation of smoke filling, and subsequently, suffocating him or the flames that built a fortress around him. Vulpecula closed his eyes. Was it better to inhale your death or be engulfed by it? When his eyes opened, Psittacus was nowhere to be seen. What started out as a black-room became more descriptive, the remains from the head of a rake that survived the fire, stood up, being placed back to its former resting place. Before the fire had started, this seemed to be less a green room and more a storage space, a shed, than its intended purpose. It’s a place for what Urgway Elementary School didn’t know what to do with it.

“Surely, we could have found somewhere more appropriate for you,” Vulpecula muttered. Was it a suicide? Although the greenhouse itself wasn’t exactly secluded, its walls see through and transparent, at night, and behind a school no less, it wasn’t illogical. In the middle of the night, no one would likely report the smoke before it was far too late to stop it. But if discretion was the key, then, why such a theatrical method? Vulpecula felt a ringing in his ears, and, in truth, he wasn’t sure whether Detective Psittacus had said anything to him since they entered the building. The fire spread fast.

Vulpecula noted what appeared to be pieces of a lawn-mower blade and the remains of a scorched black-tarp over the roof, all details worth jotting down on the blank chalkboard. If the lawn-mower had a full-tank of gas, that could have exacerbated the whole situation. Vulpecula watched as the lawn-mower could take shape in his imagination. In time, the room started to fully come together. The fire’s point-of-origin seemed to be in Nicholas Myers’ proximity, although, it wasn’t exact. Vulpecula walked closer to him. The visual was harrowing, the way a burning flame could peel away the skin, expose the teeth, and make even the saddest smile.

“But, were you the saddest?” Vulpecula asked Nicholas, who did not reply. Dropping to one knee, his claws clanked against the rusty metal cylinder of what looked to have once been a candle-holder.

On the ground near his body, The Fox Detective noticed more remains of what else had been held in the greenhouse, it resembled pieces of what might have once been a baseball. Vulpecula winced, carrying flashbacks of Comet Fowley and Supreme Stadium. One thing was certain about all of this, no matter what had happened, Nicholas had suffered and did so far worse than anything Vulpecula could have imagined. Fire burned without prejudice, whether you were suicidal or not, and hurt indiscriminately as well. With nothing else apparent that was flammable, while it was an assumption, V believed the ground must have been coated with something caused the flames to spread like they did. Could have even been the gasoline from the lawn-mower. The crime-scene showed Nicholas tried to escape in his final minutes, but he didn’t get very far. It was a good-sized greenhouse, and although Vulpecula didn’t see any sign of charred plants or empty pots, it made quite the run for someone trying to escape or having second-thoughts. Especially when that person was on fire.

Even the suicidal have a sudden urge to be put out when they feel the blistering pain. Vulpecula Noel tried to imagine it, tried to piece it together the way the evidence showed how it unfolded, but couldn’t. He closed his eyes, took in his millionth breath, then, let it out, opening his eyes back again to the real world, where Detective Psittacus stared back with a somber but befuddled look in his eyes.

“I don’t think Nicholas killed himself,” Vulpecula said, neither conviction nor doubt in his voice, a melancholy tone was all he could muster. The borrowed forensic team started piling into the room, of them, V was able to recognize Mickey.

“And what evidence are you basing that on?” Detective Psittacus asked, not exactly in a condescending manner, but Vulpecula still heard the voice of a skeptic.

“You think he did then?” Vulpecula asked, eye-balling all the scenery, although remaining leery and hesitant any time his eyes went over to Nicholas. All in all, Vulpecula felt like they might as well have been standing inside a charred-black chain-link cage. 

“I contacted the school prior to calling you in. I told them about the situation, and I asked them if they could provide any information about Nicholas. I asked them about his behaviors, I asked them about who he hung out with. The teachers didn’t have a lot of answers to that last question, but they did describe him as standoffish and introverted.”

“I suppose that gives him perfect reason to set himself on fire? Of course, it does. I mean, introverted and standoffish, you say!? Even I am intending to be taking a bubble-bath with the toaster this evening.” Vulpecula smarted off, feel warmth in his chest as if the fire had started up again.

It was an out of line and disrespectful comment. Vulpecula knew he needed to control his emotions better than that. “I’m sorry, I …,” V started, then, stopped mid-sentence, pointing a finger to outside the greenhouse.

Detective Psittacus turned around, and soon, he saw it too, it was a young girl, a leopard, wearing a pink zip-up jacket with the hood up, its strings pulled tight like she was trying to hide her face.

“Hey, you can’t be over here,” Detective Psittacus started, walking toward the doorway leading out.

Vulpecula beat him to the exit. He was half-expecting the parrot to run over him, but, fortunately, he didn’t, and instead, he stopped. Vulpecula opened the door and walked out toward the little girl, who sat on a small bicycle beside a set of swings. She didn’t react to him walking toward her.

“No school today, I’m afraid,” Vulpecula said, not really knowing what else he could say in a situation like this.

“What happened to Nicholas?” Her voice trembled, a quiet voice that forced The Fox Detective to lean in and had to put in a real effort to listen.

“I don’t think I should be the one to tell you what happened to Nicholas,” V replied.

“Is he dead?” The young girl blurted out next, so fast and so straight to the point that Vulpecula felt a shiver up his spine in synchronization with the words leaving her lips.

For some reason, for a brief second, Vulpecula was so taken aback that he felt like the small one of the two. He felt weak and powerful, every now and again hearing the auditory sound of screaming, his own imagination beating the thought of Nicholas’ suffering into his head relentlessly. Curiously, he had no way of knowing what Nicholas sounded like. Was it his own screaming he heard?

 “Yes,” Vulpecula mumbled, fidgeting with the fur on his chin for a moment, before stopping the second he noticed himself doing it.

“Oh,” the young girl responded after some time, the only slight change in her facial-expression showing she’d already assumed the worst.

“Did you know him?” Vulpecula asked.

“Are you going to catch who did it?” The leopard asked, ignoring Vulpecula’s own question.

Vulpecula was taken aghast some by the question and its assertion, “What makes you think there’s somebody to catch?”

The little girl, who, by V’s estimate, was in her early-teens, seemed to understand what Vulpecula was alluding to, shrugging it off soon after. “Nicholas wouldn’t have offed himself, Officer.” The little girl said, “I had seen him only a day ago, and he smiled and laughed, and nothing was wrong with him.”

Vulpecula remained silent. It was his own naivete that made him shocked about what the little girl had said and the way she said it. Although it wasn’t a sheltered childhood, always bouncing from different parts of Maharris, both of his parents being stressed and eventually targeted for their involvement in Rescue, his life was very different than someone who grew up in Urgway. In a place with the highest crime-rate in all Maharris, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise that even an innocent little girl was firmly familiar with the ugly side of the world.

“Yeah,” Vulpecula said. Again, with nothing useful to say.

Perhaps he should have inquired more information from her, asked her more about the conversations Nicholas and she had shared, but, he didn’t. Instead, he simply escorted her off the premises, sending her riding off on her bike.

2.

“Teachers say he spent a lot of time in that beat-up building, sounds to me like he could have been thinking about it a long time,” Detective Psittacus said.

Sitting in his desk at the Marybeth Police Department, Psittacus typed away on his keyboard, it seemed obvious he had already made up his mind about Nicholas Myers’ demise.

“Just because he may have had a hard time in school doesn’t mean he was looking for a way out. Teachers said he was introverted and self-contained, but they also said he was very invested in his interests, in comic-books and films, he could very well have used it as a quiet place to read.” Vulpecula said. He didn’t sit at his desk, not that he really had an assigned desk yet anyways.

“And what are people who love reading and movies looking for if not a way out? I met with Nicholas’ mother and father both, I figured I would save you the trouble of having to deliver the news.”

“Thank you.”

“When I talked to them, I had to talk to each of them separately. As it turns out, they are smack-dab in the middle of a divorce,” the way the parrot applied emphasis on the word ‘divorce’ suggested it might as well have been a written suicide note, it was so substantial.

“The dash in-between birth and death is the only thing that matters, isn’t that what you said to me? What I see is a troubled kid, not one ready to throw his life away in the most definite way possible.”

“Then, it’s time you open your eyes to the real world, Detective Noel,” Psittacus fired back, and this time, it had a little more behind it than the somber voice he’d chosen to go with since the day started. “I don’t know how it is in Acera, but our youth aren’t coddled, because they can’t be. Nicholas was from a bad neighborhood. He had a bad home life and it’s not like he could run-off to a therapist. I’ve tried my best to be patient with you, but you have to understand that God has a world to run and he’s never been one to micromanage every sobbing heart. Our job right now is to pick up the pieces, and sometimes, like today, that means literally. If you can’t accept the fact people sometimes look to check out early, you’ll never survive the worse stuff.”

Although the words were callous, The Fox didn’t need to be a detective to know what they represented. They were a tired teacher’s tough love toward his unideal student.

“I wish we could have done more than pick up the pieces,” Vulpecula said, his voice cracked mid-sentence.

“Me too,” Detective Psittacus said with a grimaced head that shook in defeat.

3.

“My skin is burning,” the day after Nicholas’ death, Vulpecula woke up in a state of panic. The lack of sunlight bleeding out through the blinds told him it was still night-time, and the numbers on his alarm clock appeared to be at a standstill.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the small flash before ignition, then, as the fire spread and engulfed his sight, it all faded to black again. Vulpecula rolled out of bed. If he wasn’t going to sleep, then, he might as well indulge on his own new obsession. He brought the manila envelope to his desk, knocking over the junk mail he’d gotten, which included an edition of the Rescue Tribune and a letter from someone named Samuel, “Urgent!” was written on the front of Samuel’s letter, but Vulpecula had been contacted enough times by “Princes” from faraway lands wanting to share with him their inheritance.

Spread out on the table now were more and more photographs of the greenhouse and, as a gesture to inspire his own motivations, a photograph of a much livelier Nicholas Myers from this year’s Marybeth Elementary School online archives.

It was pitch-black, and behind the school, no streetlamps shed light, it was Nicholas Myers and whatever the moonlight showed him. Nicholas’ parents knew not of his whereabouts. Of his real whereabouts, that is. As far as they knew, he was studying with a friend. Preoccupied, his mother didn’t bother with the specifics of what friend that was. School was difficult. A smart boy, the teachers all concurred, Nicholas’ grades still struggled to keep at a passing standard. Most days during class, it seemed like he was always lost in his thoughts. The teachers only wished they had known what so many of those thoughts consisted of.

Vulpecula looked at Nicholas’ photograph. He felt bad for thinking it, but he wasn’t surprised Nicholas had such trouble in school. Thick-glasses held together with tape, a shirt buttoned so high up the neck it was surprising Nicholas’ head didn’t go ahead and pop-off, Nicholas looked like what came up if you found the word “outcast” in a dictionary. Vulpecula knew a thing or two about feeling blacklisted. Growing up as Hensley Noel’s son, no relationships he tried to cultivate ever stuck. It wasn’t until after high school he became friends with Lacerta, he and him not getting along the times when Vulpecula attended school at North Rites in Acera. Vulpecula fidgeted with the fur on his chin. With Apus and Lacerta back home in Acera, he spent a lot more time alone with his thoughts. Even seeing Red was a double-edged sword, because the urge to drink became immeasurable.

“What’s stomata with me,” Vulpecula said and chuckled some to himself. Then, for a second, wondered why he had said it. “Stomata?” Vulpecula said again, not particularly certain what the word even meant.

Upon visiting his browser’s search engine, it was uncovered that a “stomata” was a pore found in the epidermis of leaves, stems, and other organs, meant for gas exchange. Where he had gotten the phrase? The quote underneath Nicholas’ name, “I love Autumn’s changing leaves. What’s stomata with me?” It was a pun. It wasn’t written by Nicholas, but a caption written by one of his teacher’s as a joke in the year-book. More importantly than that, however, it was a pun about a plant. Vulpecula found it difficult to believe this as a coincidence. Instead, what it gathered to him, if anything, was that Nicholas had at least some interest in botany, and more specifically, at least some reason to be in the greenhouse. It didn’t mean very much, not by itself, but at least he was starting to understand why Nicholas might have chosen it as his final resting place.

Nicholas held the candle in his hands. The green house coated in gasoline, all he had to do was let go, and everything would be over. No dealing with custody battles between his mother and father. No having to deal with the world. Not anymore. He let go of the candle, igniting the room in an instant. It burned his skin fast. He knew it wouldn’t be instantaneous. He had to have known. Instinctively, he tried to remove himself from the heat, making a lunge forward. Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before it overcame him, and he lost his balance. His eyes stayed open for one flicker and one flicker alone, but, in that flicker, Nicholas saw it, nay, Vulpecula saw it, the gray fox walking away. His work was done.

4.

“I’m not as naive as Detective Psittacus thinks I am. I understand everything isn’t sunshine and rainbows, and that everyone doesn’t have a happy, smiley face on day in and day out. I’m aware that Nicholas’ home-life wasn’t ideal, that his school-life may have been problematic, but I’m still thinking that something else happened.” Vulpecula ranted into the radio of his police vehicle, which had the neat feature of being able to act as a speaker for his cellphone.

On the other-end, Tony Rockwell spoke: “And, unless somebody says something, unless somebody saw something, there’s a likelihood you may never know the answer behind the strange turn of events. It unfortunately comes with the territory, and you’ll notice that more and more the longer you are in Urgway. Granted, you do seem stronger than the young fox I knew back when, after all, you’re speaking to me, of all people.”

“That’s because I don’t think you did it either,” Vulpecula reassured. “I’ve had time to think about that. I went through a lot of phases. At first, I thought to myself, Tony Rockwell was an upright individual, a Church-attending,” Vulpucula began, then, amended, “Church obsessed, very by-the-books person. Not to say the church deal makes you morally upright, in-fact, the phrase also applies to a lot of eventual cult-leaders.”

“You’re rambling,” Rockwell said, clearly the fact he only had a finite amount of time given for phone privileges in prison wasn’t lost on him.

“First, I thought there was a legitimate chance you thought Finn Saldana disappeared into thin-air, that it was a trick on you. But, then, you went back on what you said and claimed you murdered Saldana. Honestly, I almost believed that. I really did. Then, I started thinking about Saldana’s last known residence. His home felt so inauthentic and ordinary. Your schedule lists visits from all of your patients but lists nothing about Finn Saldana.”

“You’re obsessive need to have everything under your control is worse than your father’s.” Tony Rockwell fired back, interrupting V’s loopy train of thought. The way Tony spoke told Vulpecula that whatever he had said, somewhere amidst the rambling, he had said something that struck a chord.

“The only difference is that my obsessive need to control everything is nobler and with less casualties.”

“That’s how Hensley Noel thought, but let’s look around ourselves when it’s all said and finished.”

Vulpecula sighed, these conversations would never lead to his benefit, at least, not in solving Finn Saldana’s case, “Do you think that Nicholas set himself on-fire in that green house?”

A blaring dial-tone was all Vulpecula received as an answer. Either Tony Rockwell’s fifteen-minute phone-call was finished, or he hung up on him. Regardless, Vulpecula wasn’t sure he even wanted to hear the answer.

5.

Vulpecula arrived at the coroner’s office around noon, regardless of The Fox’s persistent efforts to speed up the process. He walked toward the dark-green, wood-plank porch. although the small parking lot had plenty of space, there was only one vehicle parked in the driveway, not counting his own. Not a very lively place, The Fox Detective assumed. He thought about knocking on the door, which had a horse hoof shaped door-knocker, but decided against it. Instead, he merely entered unannounced. It was peculiar to find himself in a waiting room of some kind. Why exactly would a coroner’s office need a waiting room, he wondered.

The irony was in how much the whole place felt like a doctor’s office. It was such a contrast the way it resembled a place for people to get better, when it was a place for people who couldn’t get worse. He tried his best to avoid the immediate image he had in his head of corpses sitting patiently. The skeleton of a smelly old man you somehow knew was obese in his past life, maybe a little kid skeleton playing with one of those roller-coaster bead tables in the corner, watching some cartoon on the screen above him. A stupid-person skeleton mad about how his antacids weren’t getting rid of the bugs at his home like he’d hoped.

“Hello, Detective Noel, we’ve been expecting you.”

Vulpecula had no doubt any coroner with knowledge of his caffeine addiction or the anxiety he dealt with already fully expected him at a morgue sooner, rather than later. Vulpecula offered a polite look of acknowledgment and went toward the person talking. It was a lion whose name-tag read Morris. Something curious Vulpecula remembered reading about the “olden” days, back when humans were treated as house-pets, was that, over time, the owners started to resemble their humans. It was peculiar, and, from it, Vulpecula had only a couple of guesses as to why it might have been. Either it was that the pet-”owner” dressed the pet like them, or the pet brought a psychological change to its “owner’s” physical appearance. Morris looked like the morgue made him psychologically change to resemble a dead person.

Morris’ eyes were sunken in and his body looked greatly malnourished. He offered his hand for Vulpecula to shake, which V obliged to, feeling how frail and cold his hand felt.

“What information can you tell me about Nicholas’ death?” Vulpecula asked, opting against pleasantries in-favor of moving straight to the point.

Morris, whether it was Mr. Morris or if that was his first name, V wasn’t for certain, offered a weak smile, an act that felt as though it took a considerable amount of exertion on his part. Vulpecula couldn’t help but wonder how much of a toll his job must have taken on him emotionally, a lack of sleep and appetite serving as traits Vulpecula could easily empathize with. The lion led Vulpecula forward, the next room was a long, white hallway, formaldehyde, perhaps, tainted the air and distinguishably filled Vulpecula’s nostrils.

“I could tell you were very eager to have more information about Nicholas’ predicament.” Morris said, a statement, more-or-less, meant to fill the air with something other than silence and chemicals, and not meant to start-up legitimate conversation.

“I want to strike while the fire’s hot,” Vulpecula replied, an unfortunate choice of words in-retrospect. “I imagine you had little interest spending more time with this than you had to?”

Morris sighed, “One day, I’m brought this, tomorrow, I’m brought the victim of a car-crash. In Urgway, especially, it’s uncommon to find pleasant dead people. Not exactly conversationalists, but, then again, neither am I.”

At last, they arrived at the room Nicholas’ remains were being kept. It was a cool room with small metal doors on the side of the walls, some had tags with names on them, indicating a filled vacancy. Morris led the way to where one of the metal-doors was already opened, a table was slid out from it, and, on the table, was Nicholas. Fortunately, Nicholas was zipped up in a body-bag, relieving Vulpecula of having to spend more time with the gnarly sight.

“I wrote out everything in my report,” Morris said, walking over to a nearby metal desk with wheels and snatching up a folder. He, then, handed it to Vulpecula, who took it in his hands and quickly started to skim through it. “It isn’t exactly what I’d call a page-turner, a lot of it is about what you’d assume. Nicholas’ lungs were blackened, and his body was burnt, both played their part in bringing Nicholas’ demise.”

“What’s that?” Vulpecula asked, interrupting the coroner, turning the folder over to where it was now facing Morris, on an X-Ray of Nicholas’ remains, Vulpecula’s finger pointed to his head.

“That, my friend, is the needle in the haystack,” Morris said, a small glimmer of enthusiasm in his voice, “Somehow, Nicholas had a fractured eye-socket.”

“This couldn’t have happened from the fire, could it?” Vulpecula asked, it was, perhaps, a silly question, but he wanted to cover all his bases.

“For the most part, all of Nicholas’ bones remained intact. It takes a lot of heat to crush down bones, and the fact it was concealed inside the greenhouse likely helped keep that from happening. Nicholas’ eye was injured by something else before his death,” Morris replied, no judgment or callous toward the stupid question. Maybe he was too exhausted to care.

6.

Although it wasn’t enough to convince Detective Psittacus about the situation, Vulpecula felt convinced Nicholas Myers’ death wasn’t the product of suicide. After further contacting Nicholas’ parents and teachers, Vulpecula’s suspicion was found accurate about the victim having a devout dedication to agriculture and managing plant-life, with desires of one day being a botanist. It was something The Fox Detective made certain was etched on his blank chalkboard. It might not have proven anything, but it at least suggested that the greenhouse wasn’t somewhere random for Nicholas to be. Admittedly, perhaps not so late at night.

The coroner’s detail was an important part of the puzzle that even Detective Psittacus didn’t have an answer for. Nicholas’ injury was, thus far, an unaccounted-for part of the case. Unfortunately, Vulpecula didn’t have any more leads and had a backlog of paperwork piling up he had thus far neglected.

It was something in his backlog, a growing list of loose-threads, it seemed.

Vulpecula Noel shortly left the confines of the Marybeth Police Department, very much feeling the need for some fresh-air. Since stepping into the greenhouse, the air had felt thicker and harder to breathe. It was gloomy outside, which was par for the course in Urgway. He tapped his walking stick on the sidewalk. One of the only mementos he was left by his father. He had no need for it and, at times, it was an irritation, having to carry it around all the time. It was a memento from a father he no longer loved, but he still carried it. Was Detective Psittacus right about what he said? About the darkness being hidden from him? Vulpecula carried more than a fair-share of bad thoughts when it came to Hensley Noel’s decisions and those who suffered for them. He cringed at what more pain could have been endured through The Canes and Rescue’s fights. Was it for the greater good? Necessary evil? Vulpecula wasn’t sure he could ever justify bloodshed for any reason.

“Detective Vulpecula!” A voice yelled out from behind The Fox Detective. It was a voice he did not recognize.

Vulpecula turned his back and met eyes with the individual, a brown cat with an urgent look on his face. The best way The Fox Detective could think of describing his attire was nondescript, a fact that seemed intentional. He wore a black baseball cap over his head, bill pointed down slightly to block his face, a gray-hooded sweatshirt, and jogging pants. For whatever reason, it appeared the brown-cat was hiding from something or someone.

“To what do I owe the pleasure,” Vulpecula said, remembering the gun Detective Psittacus ordered him to carry, holstered at his side, just in case he was about to experience his first Urgway mugging. Though, perhaps his walking stick would be a more appropriate weapon.

“I’ve been trying to contact you for a couple of months now,” the brown cat replied.

“You’re Samuel,” Vulpecula deduced, thinking back to the mail he’d meant to eventually look at, but most definitely hadn’t.

The brown cat, evidently, Samuel, nodded his head, then, spoke: “I am here to talk about Priest Tiam.”

Priest Tiam brought on one of the hardest large-scale scandals to rock Urgway in recent memory, and surely since Vulpecula had arrived. A highly respected man of the cloth, everything went awry when Priest Tiam was arrested for stealing the Water Lily. If that wasn’t big enough, the famous Water Lily remained unaccounted for (maybe, like Finn Saldana, it realized a past trauma and disappeared without a trace too?). A noticeable loss, the Water Lily one of the most coveted items in all Maharris. His arrest was met with a vocal response, but it was the loss of the Water Lily that sent shock-waves throughout.

The other four major territories in Maharris all had voiced skepticism of having such a beloved item be in such a crime-ridden area like Urgway in the first place, with Italina lobbying that it be stowed away at their museum. With Vulpecula’s experience solving the missing “Sword of Charles Tertius,” he doubted Malane would have been any better a place for it.

Vulpecula could remember hyperbolic newspaper headlines that said losing the Water Lily would be the final nail in Urgway’s coffin. Although the truth in that remains to be seen, it can be said that the loss had been a significant blow to Urgway’s economic foundation.

“What about him?” Vulpecula asked, his interest more piqued than usual.

“Priest Tiam loved the church more than he loved anyone, ‘cept God himself. He always thought about and dedicated himself to what was best for the church. All of a sudden, he tries to steal it? It doesn’t add up right.” Samuel remarked, his face seeming hurt and afraid.

“Then, what do you think the truth is, Sam?” Vulpecula asked, walking on the sidewalk with Samuel, V on the side closest to the road, he watched on as some of the vehicles zoomed by. “Do you want to talk about this at the police station?” He then added, forgetting at first, he was in-fact a detective with a police station to go to.

“I am not entirely certain I trust law enforcement,” Samuel replied.

“You do realize that I am law-enforcement, correct?”

“I know a lot about you and I also know who your father is, not only did he fight for animal equality amongst the species, but he was a proud supporter of Little M.”

Little M, a pronunciation of the acronym LILM, short for Love is Love Maharris, was an advocacy group for better treatment of the gay community. Vulpecula’s next prepared question had been to ask what Priest Tiam meant to Samuel, assuming he to have been a churchgoer, but, now, with that answer, and the hurt in his voice, Vulpecula had another theory twirling around in his mind.

“What makes you think law-enforcement is somehow involved in Tiam’s predicament?”

“When the Water Lily went missing, Tiam was a wreck. It was only after he brought in the police, however, that he had a change of heart and confessed to stealing the Water Lily.”

“Not exactly the strongest of reasons. Something goes missing, law-enforcement steps in, the alleged culprit confesses.”

“If Priest Tiam had intended to steal the Water Lily, he would have been aware of the Marybeth Police Department’s suspicions. Tiam was intelligent. Firstly, if he would’ve stolen the Water Lily, why did he inform law enforcement, bright-and-early, I might add, when the church wasn’t even in-session. If he were a thief, why wouldn’t he have used that day to secure he covered his tracks? Because he was terrified that someone stole an item that meant the world to him!” Samuel continued, his voice carrying more intensity in it as he answered his own question. “Did you know there’s a counterfeit Water Lily that Priest Tiam would have had access to? It’s true, on holidays when the church is more-crowded and in the spotlight, they swap the original out with the counterfeit. He told me that before he left.”

Samuel stopped dead in his tracks and made eye-contact with The Fox Detective, whose baggy-eyes struggled to return his serious glare. “Detective Noel, if Priest Tiam wanted to steal the Water Lily, he could have swapped the counterfeit with the real one and bought himself some time, but that didn’t happen. Tiam was a smart man. Detective, Tiam was a good man. He wasn’t one of the regular monsters who attend church, asking forgiveness because they want to keep themselves from burning in hell,” Samuel rested his hand on Vulpecula’s shoulder.

“My skin is burning,” a voice called from the back of Vulpecula’s mind, and, for a brief instant, it wasn’t Samuel speaking to him, but a black shadow caught aflame, a silhouette engulfed by fire.

Vulpecula flinched, jutting Samuel’s hand off from his shoulder. Vulpecula closed his eyes and stepped away from Samuel. “I’m sorry,” Vulpecula mumbled to himself, except, not to himself, not really, he knew who he was talking to.

He could imagine so vividly the scene of Nicholas’ demise. Only a child, the canine had his whole life ahead of him. That was no longer true, however. Was it suicide? Vulpecula knew he truly didn’t believe it. Why else would the gray fox have stared back at him in his nightmares, taunting him, knowing he could do nothing to stop him.

“I’m sorry,” Vulpecula said again, regaining his composure enough to address Samuel. “The Marybeth Police Department is filled with detectives who’d be more than willing to accompany your situation. Ask Psittacus, he’s my boss, …,” Vulpecula said, now moving away from Samuel, not making eye-contact with Samuel as though he half-expected him to be set ablaze, “He’s also a parrot, so you can expect he’ll repeat what I’ve just said.”

“I’m not even allowed to speak to Tiam anymore!”

“If you could, and he didn’t do it, maybe ask why he’d lie and say he did,” Vulpecula mumbled, leaving Samuel behind.

7.

Detective Psittacus was well-aware of the toll Nicholas’ unfortunate and grotesque had taken on The Fox Detective. Instead of the usual, the parrot had assigned Vulpecula busy-work, easier crimes, like tax evasion or unpaid parking tickets. It didn’t matter, however. All Vulpecula could think about was the latest crime he couldn’t solve. Vulpecula could feel his eyes start to water as he looked at the greenhouse. Students were on break and the school wasn’t in-session. The Fox was thankful for that. It would have been very awkward for the children to be let out for recess and see him there groveling over where one of their classmates was murdered.

For a moment, if only because he could think of no way of piecing together any of the information, Vulpecula reflected on all of his crime-work. The early-years, solving school-yard debacles, or his attempts at what the North Rites Police Department referred to as ‘youth vigilantism’. He thought about the strands of hair in the Malane Museum that helped him discover Harriett Collins had stolen the Sword of Tertius, and he thought about The Shock, and how much seeing Comet Fowley’s severed hand traumatized him. How fast things could change, Vulpecula had to admit. Comet’s predicament seemed like child’s play in-comparison to his latest crime-scene. Was that an indication of his own growth? How far he had come?

Vulpecula wasn’t for certain. All he knew was that the longer he stared at the greenhouse, the more and more he was beginning to understand what everyone had been trying to hammer in his head. He was starting to understand why someone, even someone as seemingly innocent as Nicholas, might not want to walk further into the darkness that surely awaits. Why someone might want to skip straight to the white light. He closed his eyes, wondering what it might be like if he never opened them again.

“You’re that Detective,” a voice said. “I’ve stopped by here every day, hoping you’d show up again.”

Vulpecula vaguely recognized the voice, even at first, but that didn’t stop him from flinching in-response to it. It was the little-girl, the leopard who had been at the scene of the crime during Nicholas’ death. It was a person Vulpecula found himself thinking about often, thinking about how confident she seemed that Nicholas’ death wasn’t a suicide.

“I am that Detective,” Vulpecula concurred dryly.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you!” For some reason, the child’s voice seemed ecstatically enthused, more high-pitched and urgent than prior, the words running together like she had to blurt them out or risk never uttering them at all.

“Okay,” Vulpecula said, his tired eyes looked in the eyes of the little girl.

It felt as though time had come to a standstill at that moment. No word was said between them for several seconds, it might have even, perhaps, been a full minute. What came before the words, however, was important. The little girl’s eyes started to water, and her breathing quickened, escalating shortly into whimpering. Vulpecula wasn’t exactly certain what to do at first. At last, he dropped his walking stick, letting it drop into the mud with a thump, and embraced the young girl, hugging her as she sobbed into his arms.

“I know you miss him,” Vulpecula said, his own tears dampening his fur as well.

“I think my brothers killed Nicholas,” the voice squeaked out, sobbing more deeply thereafter.

Vulpecula felt the high warmth in his chest again, his heart beating fast as he fully comprehended the words that escaped the little girl’s lips.

“Why, … why do you think that?” Vulpecula could hear the nervousness eek out in his words.

“They were walking me home from school. Then, they saw him. They’d only beaten people up before, never nothing like this.” Her voice rattled with intensity, and as she spoke, it was like Vulpecula could hear claws descend down his blank chalkboard, the agonizing, looping sound of Nicholas’ cries for help. In his head, he now saw, not the gray fox, but two small boys looking back at him from outside the greenhouse, the flames engulfing him. Engulfing Nicholas.

“I saw them with another boy today,” the little girl confessed.

* * *

Once the words left the little girl, whose name, Vulpecula later found, was Patricia Wilgo, he too felt the same fear she must have felt. He asked her a few more questions, but knew he’d have more for her if he had the chance. What he asked, most of all, was where he could find her brothers: Silas and Ricky Wilgo.

First, she said something about a shopping mall, she said they liked to buy candies and sodas there. Once they finished their sodas, she said they liked to line them up on the hoods of cars at a nearby junkyard and shoot them with a pellet gun. The junkyard she referred to was called the Robertson Quarry, which had hundreds of cars on his property, all kept inside what looked like a large bowl.

Detective Vulpecula Noel and Detective Psittacus both surveyed the area. It was a shot in the dark they’d even be at the Quarry, but it was also a lot of land to cover as well. On one-hand, when and if Silas and Ricky left the Quarry, there were only two exits to account for, one at the back-end, and one at the front. Psittacus stationed several Marybeth Police Officers at both ends for that very reason.

Detective Psittacus hadn’t said much when Vulpecula informed him of what the little girl said, but it wasn’t because he didn’t believe it, rather, was because he did. V’s boots sank some into the mud while he walked, his hand was at his holster, filling at the handle of his gun. Thirty minutes expired without much headway being made. It’d be difficult to find them in the Quarry, both knew that ahead of time, and were banking on hearing the sound of a pellet gun to help them find the kids.

Things eventually changed when they discovered a set of foot-prints. Footprints and tire-tracks were abundant at the Quarry, but it was the eccentricities and freshness of these footprints that made them distinctive. It looked a lot like a person walking one way, then, retracing their steps. Only thing is, the shoe-sizes weren’t the same, nor were the impressions from the shoes, each with distinct designs on them.

They followed the tracks until they reached a particularly encumbered section of the junkyard, an area obscured with more vehicles than anywhere else. On the ground, they saw a large deal of trash, things like potato chip wrappers and strewn about pieces of paper.

Better than that, however, they also found dented soda cans and pellets. As they turned a corner, walking passed a broken-down station-wagon with the windows smashed out, they immediately made eye-contact with Silas and Ricky.

They did not make eye-contact with the missing child, Theodore Holsnek, however. Blindfolded, his whimpering body shook and convulsed, he stood on his knees, whelps and rips at his fur. Blood poured out from the top of his head.

Silas and Ricky’s expressions were calm. They might have been taken by surprise by their presence, but they certainly didn’t show it in a visible way. Instead, what Vulpecula saw when he looked at Silas and Ricky were two pairs of the blackest eyes he’d ever seen.

All the recent discussion about the Water Lily, the connotations it had with religion, The Fox Detective wasn’t for certain where he stood, about God, about Heaven, but, in a single second, he knew he believed in demons. And maybe it was a fault of his own, being too sensitive or emotional, but he felt confident they had scorched Nicholas and the greenhouse with the fires of Hell.

Vulpecula grabbed his gun out from his holster, trying his best to steady his shaking hands as he held it on both of them. His walking stick fell to the mud.

“Step away from him!” Detective Psittacus roared, anger radiating out from the inflection in his voice. Silas and Ricky both obliged, moving away from the barely responsive Theodore. “Now, put your hands behind your head and drop to your knees.” They continued to cooperate, complying to his instructions.

Detective Psittacus took his walkie-talkie off from his belt, clicking a button as the static came in, “We found them. Have an ambulance brought to my location. Victim has deep-lacerations and needs immediate medical attention.” Before he received a response, Detective Psittacus put away his hand-held and shot a flare off in the sky, leaving a long streak of red from where they stood.

One of the boys, Vulpecula couldn’t be sure which one it was, looked over to the blind-folded Theodore, and spoke, “Mutt.”

Before Vulpecula had the chance to let the slur sink in, he soon reacted as he saw the other boy charging at him.

Without hesitation, Vulpecula fired a blind shot in the boy’s direction. It missed him by an inch, hitting a vehicle and ricocheting off before landing in the dirt.

The boy didn’t react, hellbent to do what he set out to do. It ended up being Detective Psittacus that subdued him, who moved faster than Vulpecula had ever seen the veteran detective move, snatching V’s walking stick from the ground and smacking it over the side of the boy’s head. It wasn’t a solid-wood cane, especially at the front-end where it became narrower, which meant it wasn’t a surprise when it shattered.

The boy dropped down. It was a swift and firm attack, but not harsh enough to make him leave consciousness, like the child he was, he squirmed to escape. Detective Psittacus quickly turned him over on his back and applied handcuffs, reading him his rights as he did so.

Vulpecula followed his lead, thankful the other boy was much more compliant, applying the handcuffs as he read him his rights. Sirens could be heard soon as the ambulance neared.

8.

“Let’s see where this all lands, Detective Psittacus. I’ll be addressing you and not the grey fox sitting beside you, because clearly he’s something short of the brains in this whole operation.”

“White fox,” Vulpecula mumbled underneath his breath, although the lawyer opted to ignore his correction, which was likely for the best.

The lawyer, who earlier Detective Psittacus briefed him on, was named Lesley Kratz, known for her penchant desire for battling the “hard cases,” her bravado was perhaps undermined by her silky, soft-spoken voice. Her sounding her angriest, at best, was still a cross between a lullaby and a sassy teenage girl. She was a figurative wolf in sheep’s clothing, a small frame and youthful exuberance, suggesting that Urgway had yet to bring her skin down like it brought everyone else’s’. Maybe it was a front? That aside, every word she spoke stabbed with a sharp-edge. It wasn’t the insults behind her words, but her recounting the events that had since traumatized The Fox Detective.

“Both of you apprehend my clients. Both of my clients unarmed. Detective Vulpecula Noel fires a shot that only barely keeps from killing the fourteen-year-old Silas Wilgo and then, for some reason, you, Detective Psittacus, take it upon yourself to assault him with a wooden cane. Do I have that correct?”

“He charged at me.” Vulpecula said quietly.

“She knows this already,” Detective Psittacus said, waving Vulpecula off with his hand, suggesting that trying to find reason in what she said would be like trying to keep up dialogue with an auctioneer.

“They’re children, Detective Vulpecula. I’ve read all the articles at the Rescue Tribune about your ability to empathize. With all your daddy issues and bellyaching, I don’t think it’d be too much of a stretch for you to empathize with a child. Only difference is that my clients aren’t overgrown man-children, but actual children, children. Ones that any trained detective could’ve subdued without the use of a firearm or a deadly weapon.”

“Pardon me, I must have lost out on my principles when I saw another child,… children blindfolded and covered with blood because he was in the process of being tortured to death! I must have lost out on my principles when I found Nicholas Myers’ body was burned to a crisp.”

“My clients had no recollection of Nicholas or what transpired inside the greenhouse, but they offer their sincerest condolences, nevertheless.”

“He was a stain,” one of the boys, Silas, remarked.

Lesley Kratz’ face dropped by his remark. The word “Stain” was a derogatory play on the word “Cane”. As fierce as Lesley might have been, even she had to have known she was fighting a losing battle trying to make either of the boys appear sympathetic.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened to the mutt at the greenhouse then?” Detective Psittacus said, staring directly at Silas as he did so, never wavering or flinching as he spoke.

“Don’t answer that,” Lesley said aloud, not even hiding her desperate attempts at control.

“What happened to his face?” Vulpecula asked, his voice wasn’t as stern as Psittacus’, nor did he stare directly at either of the boys.

“Baseball,” one of the boys said plainly.

It was a simple statement, but it was one that spoke volumes to The Fox Detective, shedding light on what had happened.

“That’s when he dropped the candle,” Vulpecula concluded dryly.

One of the boys carried a sinister smirk when the words escaped Vulpecula.

* * *

Their victim, Theodore would survive the attack.

According to the lawyer’s prepared statement given days after, Nicholas’ death was an accidental occurrence. With the help of Patricia Wilgo’s testimony, surveillance footage from a local shopping mall placed Nicholas and her brothers together, leaving the mall a little before his death, which made Leslie Kratz’ denial strategy foggy at best.

 They targeted Nicholas because of his species, but their intent was closer to grade-school “bullying” than the grotesque murder that happened instead. How they recount the events of Nicholas’ demise is that he fled from them, leading them to the greenhouse where he tried to hide. Because of their inexperience and youth (a sentiment repeatedly echoed by the lawyer when questioned by the media), they miscalculated the amount of gasoline used, anticipating a small fire to accumulate and not what was instead a massive fire that encumbered the greenhouse and blocked Nicholas’ escape.

The final attempt at dodging by the lawyer was in-regards to the “game” the boys played. The objective of making Nicholas drop the burning candle to ignite the gasoline was never meant to be succeeded at. Their goal only was to scare him and never actually start the fire at all. It was all lying, every bit of it. Vulpecula didn’t have to be a detective to unravel that little mystery and wasn’t surprised when he found that public consensus carried the same reaction.

Something he was sorrier to find out was the sheer number of individuals who cheered on and even praised the children for ridding the world of one of the “Canes”. It was a post-Hensley Noel world in Maharris, and in it, oftentimes it wasn’t as much solutions to past mistakes, so much as role-reversal.

Although Vulpecula had been led to believe a lot of the bickering and confrontations between animals had ceased, it was understood soon after his arrival to Urgway that these complications persisted. Detective Psittacus tried to keep as tight a lid on the investigation as he could, instructing Vulpecula not to speak with anyone about the sensitive details of the case, knowing how often Rescue wrote about his cases in years past.

Unfortunately, some sensitive details about the case were leaked, and the media had a field-day with it. Even before that, The Rescue Tribune had already written its say about the situation, and while they outright condemned the perpetrators responsible, outliers and former employees with their own off-branch news website sounded off with their own extreme beliefs, finding round-about ways to suggest the “Canes” were most surely the aggressors. The world could be a backwards, scary place.

“Can I talk to you about something?” Vulpecula asked, stepping into Detective Psittacus’ office.

Detective Psittacus let out a sigh. It’d been a difficult day for him, for all the Marybeth Department, for that matter. It’d been only two days since the Marybeth Police Department arrested Silas and Ricky Wilgo and they’d already endured nonsensical shouting and protesting outside for most of the morning. It’d gotten so bad they had to have Officers stationed outside to keep things from becoming too out of hand. “What is it, V?”

“Everything’s been crazy, hasn’t it?” Vulpecula said weakly.

“That’s Urgway for you. Everyone is so full, … and it only takes a drop for ’em to go overcapacity. All of us try to play nice with each-other, but then, one way or another, that pent up aggression wakes up and we show what we really think.” Detective Psittacus responded.

“This has happened before?” Vulpecula asked, having a seat on the chair in-front of Psittacus’ desk.

“This happens every time something bad happens that gets prime-time coverage from the press, brings out the hate in us, but with no direction to our hate, no real North star, it all dies down in a few days.”

“I want to give you these,” Vulpecula finally said, at last, cutting to the chase, and handing him his badge and handgun.

“What,” was Detective Psittacus response, carrying a tone that signified his annoyance toward Vulpecula.

“I don’t know if you saw, but I almost shot a teenage-boy a few days ago.”

“Yeah, I did see that,” Psittacus began, “And I also saw him charge at you. I saw another dead teenager burnt to a crisp and another about to share a similar fate. You didn’t shoot a teenage-boy, you shot a monster.”

“I shot a teenage-boy,” Vulpecula firmly corrected. The statement was contradictory to The Fox Detective’s own thoughts when he first encountered the two boys, comparing them to what he imagined demons were like, but he felt both of the statements, simply at different times. “What they’ve done, they’ll have to live with that, and I’ll carry the vision of Nicholas’ demise with me for the rest of my life, but if I would’ve killed Silas, I wouldn’t have been slaying a monster, not to me.”

“That’s fair, that’s fair,” Detective Psittacus started up again, although, from the tone of his voice, it didn’t sound like he thought it was fair at all. “Let me ask you something, Vulpecula. When I first met you, I didn’t know a whole lot about the famous son of Hensley Noel. I knew who your father was, that didn’t really sell me on you. Your father’s successes don’t make you any more than his failures, the only thing that meant was that I could expect a publicity magnet. I knew what Vivian Herms thought about you, about what the halfwit journalists at the Rescue Tribune could spin for their own political agendas. Even after all the heartache you caused them, refusing to accept your place at the throne, they still regarded you as their hometown kid. Told me about how you cared so deeply about others, about how much heart you had. Said you could look in the eyes of anyone and see the truth in them. So, tell me now, what is the truth when you look into the eyes of that teenage-boy you almost shot?”

Vulpecula chewed on Detective Psittacus’ words for a moment. The parrot spoke with intensity and vigor, at this juncture, he wasn’t completely certain if he was being comforted or if Psittacus was about to read him his rights. At last, Vulpecula answered, “When I first looked into their eyes, I thought a saw nothing at all. And maybe my first instinct was right. But at a second glance, I paid witness to wrongly cultivated hatred. Hatred felt in leaps and bounds, and a search for somewhere to put it. Maybe I did see nothing, persuasive minds molded to feel strongly one way, the wrong way, and no one to teach them. But, for me to take into onto myself to play executioner to them, that’s a role I can’t live with.” It wasn’t the most eloquent of speeches, but it was an accurate representation of the thought war V found himself in. To feel so tortured by the thought of Nicholas’ death, but to still find a reason to feel empathetic toward those that did it to him, in any sense, was preposterous.

“We can cry foul about their parenting, their upbringing, their childhood, if you even wanted to, you can blame the program they watched on late-night programming, but we’re not guidance counselors, V.”

“I just know what it’s like when you don’t have someone to guide your moral compass,” Vulpecula confided, thinking back to his vision of the grey-fox dropping a match to ignite the greenhouse, little did he know the grey-fox was hurling a baseball.

“I understand,” Detective Psittacus admitted, “I wish every day we had a tracker for these types of things, but we can’t fault ourselves for reacting to it the way we see fit.”

“I can’t,” Vulpecula said again, nudging his badge and handgun closer on the desk to Psittacus.

Detective Psittacus shook his head. “When I met you myself, I realized how familiar you were. Like a cicada, your loud, blaring presence is apparent, but, as a boy, I could never find where that noise came from. I knew all about your little team-up, that lizard Lacerta and that fellow bird-brain Apus, you didn’t have to come to Urgway, you could’ve stayed in Acera, solved trash cases about dumb antique swords, but you decided to come to Urgway. One thing they didn’t write about in The Rescue Tribune is what a person sees when they look in your eyes. You play the role of a coward, but I don’t see as much anxiety as you let on. It doesn’t matter. You play the sad-sack but when I needed someone to join me at the greenhouse for Nicholas’ crime-scene, it was voluntary, your decision!”

“I don’t want to be drawn to it,” Vulpecula mumbled reflectively, “I wanted to help Nicholas, I wanted to help, …”

“Well, Nicholas is dead, but you know what? Saving Theodore meant something too, certainly to his family, it did. Maybe you should try empathizing with them!” Detective Psittacus yelled, throwing the badge at Vulpecula. “So, I’ll tell you what, I’ll take your handgun if that helps you sleep better, but I’m not taking your badge. Go get us another Theodore, but don’t come to me and wallow if we have to scrape up the occasional Nicholas’, man up!”

There it was, and whether it was tough-love or an attempt at rallying The Fox Detective, that was Detective Psittacus’ stance on the matter. Vulpecula thought through what he’d said.

It was his beast of burden. He was undoubtedly drawn to the constant crimes committed in Urgway. Detective Psittacus was right, nothing kept him from returning to the safe-side of Maharris, solving faux kidnappings in Acera or thefts in Italina. But those weren’t as tasking to him as what Urgway had in-store, were they? They weren’t as “fun,” Vulpecula felt the uneasiness in his stomach as the thought went through his head.

But, in the very least, for all his guilt, his actions did help a young-child escape what could’ve been a heinous murder. He regretted and felt guilty about taking pleasure in his work, but was that such a bad thing if what he did was saving lives? The Fox Detective met Detective Psittacus’ stare and held a firm look of his own, holding the badge in his hand, he turned his back and walked away.