It was about fifteen minutes to six when Detective Ronald Thompson burst into Chief Nicholson's office. The ferret was young, but had a smart head on his shoulders and a gravel in his voice that belied his youth. Nicholson, Paul, to his friends, although he didn't keep too many of them these days, could see the sweat matted fur clinging to his face. The detective looked like he'd just ran the local five K, although he knew smoking was more the kid's style than cardio. "Jesus Ron, you look like shit. What in God's name happened?"
"Chief, we just. We just nabbed a shipment down by the water front." Thompson's words were ragged and punctuated by the occasional cough. "B-big one. We think-"
"Kid sit down and take a breath for God's sake. You sound like a preteen working up the balls for his new date." Nicholson pulled two iced glasses from his fridge, along with a tall amber bottle. Canadian whisky. Good stuff they pulled from some (assumed) bootleggers coming down from up north. The weird angled lettering on it didn't bother him overly. Nor the odd choice of helix branding. Good whisky was still good whisky he mused.
"Gah, much better. As I was saying. Me and the boys were snooping around the docks, yeah? Watching the crates come off the boats. Everything was chill until we saw something interestin'" Thompson tapped the bottle. "This funny writing on the sides of 'em. Not a lot, but just noticeable."
"And? What was in 'em? Guns, drugs, people?" Thompson had the chief's full attention now. Last time they confiscated anything like this the boys from Washington were crawling all over it. Men with fancy trucks and cases of 'you didn't see nothing' money. And that was just a few crates too. A couple shipping containers had him drooling at the rewards.
"Uh, yeah Chief. That's the weird part. They're full of medical equipment."
Nicholson deflated instantly. "What."
"Yeah, it's all like. Medical implants. Insulin pumps and pacemakers."
"No drugs? Morphine? Fentanyl?"
"Nope."
"Well they gotta be cheap knockoffs. Second hand Chinese crap right?" Imitation devices were big business Nicholson thought. He'd heard something like that on the news at least.
"See, that's what I thought too but one of the boys pulled one. Used to be an EMT. Seen his fair share of kit." Thompson's brow crumpled. "Works of art, all of them. Would blow anything on the market outta the water. MedTech wouldn't stand a chance."
"... You're shitting me."
"According to the manifest they were supposed to ship out to those new free clinics. Ya know the ones downtown?"
The old badger buried his head in his paws. "Of course they were."
Several seconds passed before Thompson spoke up again.
"Should I have them loaded back up? Kinda seems like the right thing to do. "
"What do you think? Put 'em with the rest of that purple crap."