Rufus
Rufus is a bobcat, a former warehouse worker in his late twenties who takes Pawbert off the sidewalk at knifepoint on the walk from ZRS to the station, without knowing who he is or whose husband he has taken. He gives no surname. He makes his first appearance in We Can Fix Pawbert in the W-Series.
Background
Rufus loaded and sorted at a distribution company's dock in the Canal District, nineteen mammals on a dock that ran six days a week on Lynxley accounts. When the RICO freeze took the company's anchor client, the dock ran on credit and short shifts through two restructurings, and the second one closed it. He was laid off eight months before he meets Pawbert. Three months after that his landlord, who had deferred the rent twice, changed the locks with his belongings boxed on the sidewalk, and his ID went with the apartment. The shelters were full, the big one downtown with a six-week waitlist, and the housing form wanted the documents the eviction had taken. He has a sister in Chestnut Hills he last spoke to before the job, about money, and whose bell he stood outside once and could not ring. By the time he meets Pawbert he is sleeping in a forgotten ground-floor room behind a boarded storefront, with a sleeping bag, a backpack and a third of a jug of water, and both forearms carry cuts, some healed pale, some new.
Personality
He is frightened before he is dangerous. His grip runs on adrenaline, the knife shakes, and his voice cracks on the first order he gives. His anger at the Lynxley name is real and has a target, and his fear of what he has done arrives right behind it. When he cuts Pawbert he is horrified, and he presses the wound he made far harder than it needs. He hurts himself to stop feeling rather than to stop living, and says so when asked plainly. He looks for the angle in every offer, braces for pity he does not get, and answers in complete sentences once he has said his name. He does not forgive. He says twice that nothing Pawbert does changes what the Lynxleys did, and takes the help anyway.
Series History
W-Series
In "The Wrong Mammal" he pulls Pawbert into a service alley with a twenty-dollar knife from Den Depot, marches him to the room and bars the door with rebar, and empties his bag for twenty-three dollars. The ZRS badge and a photograph of the pack tell him who he has: the youngest Lynxley, whose family's collapse took his job, married to the ZSI liaison from the news. He paces through a life sentence and the wolf who will come through the door, shoves Pawbert into the wall, and when Pawbert asks about his arms he lunges, and the knife opens Pawbert's forearm. He presses his own sleeve to the cut until the bleeding slows, then cuts himself. His name comes out after he hears himself say the knife cost twenty dollars he should have spent on food. He tells the eight months in fragments, tells Pawbert that nobody showed up for him, and hears in return that he is the first mammal to sit across from Pawbert because of the name and know it. He answers the one question, lets Pawbert look at his arm, and refuses in so many words to say any of it is fine. When the block goes quiet he lets Pawbert take the knife, keeps the money he is told to eat with, folds a grocery list with Pawbert's desk number on the back into his shirt pocket, and walks out behind him into three drawn sidearms and a story about a fence. No paw lands on his arm. He nearly does not come to ZRS the next morning, and at two minutes to nine he is in the doorway in a clean shirt, saying before they start that he will take whatever Pawbert can get him and that it changes nothing about the Lynxleys.
Key Relationships
Pawbert Pawthorne
The mammal whose name he blames, and the one who hands him a bleeding arm to hold. Pawbert lies to the police for him, leaves him his dinner money, and makes him a client rather than a case. Rufus keeps the appointment and keeps his refusal to forgive, which Pawbert had already told him in the room he would think less of him for dropping.
Luther Pawthorne
They never speak. Luther holds a breach outside the window while Rufus is inside with a knife, reads the blade under his husband's sleeve on the street, and lets the fence story stand.
Nick Wilde
On the street Nick gives him one neutral nod and looks at him a moment longer than a stranger would.