by Stuart Gibbs
I noticed the carpet around the desk was covered with them, a field of flakes and curls.
“When do you get to go back home?” I asked.
“When I finish my work here, whenever that may be.” Athmani sighed. “I thought I would be here only a few weeks, but as this rhino business shows us, there is a lot more to be done here than I expected.”
“Like what?”
“Ideally, there ought to be a wall around this entire property, not a fence. The ease with which the poacher got onto the property last night was very disturbing. Plus, if anyone wanted to merely kill the animals for sport, they could easily shoot through the fence. You can’t shoot through a wall. Sadly, J.J. is digging his heels in on this.”
“Because walls are expensive?”
Athmani laughed. “I see you know how J.J. thinks. He’s balking at the price, even when his animals’ lives are on the line. Although he claims it isn’t only about the money. He says walls are ugly and make the animals look like they are in a prison. Fences blend in more. It looks like the animals are still in the wild. Or so he says.”
“Is there any way to protect the animals without a wall?”
“There are certainly other ways to improve security. Although there are security cameras all over this park, there are barely any along the outer fence. Only one every fifty meters or so. And the fence ought to be electrified. Then no one would be able to simply climb over it with only a towel. It’s as though it never occurred to anyone that somebody might want to harm the animals in this park.”
I nodded agreement, although the truth was, I couldn’t really blame J.J. It would never have occurred to me that someone would want to shoot the animals inside a zoo. The idea of it was so horrible, I still had trouble believing it was happening.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out to find yet another text from Summer. She was obviously getting annoyed that I hadn’t been responding. This one was filled with extra exclamation marks to convey her annoyance: Where R U?!!!!!!!!!!!
While Athmani worked on his sculpture, I stepped aside and wrote back: Investigating.
Summer responded: U free @4 2day?
I felt my heart rate spike, as it always did when Summer asked if I was free to see her. Yes. Why?
Got a lead.
What?
Tell U l8r.
Before I could press Summer for details, Chief Hoenekker walked into the office. He stopped in his tracks upon seeing me and frowned. “Shouldn’t you be in school right now?”
“Since I was up so late with the poacher last night, my parents said I didn’t have to go.”
“Can’t say I approve of that.”
“Well, you’re not my parents.”
Athmani interrupted, trying to be diplomatic. “I invited Teddy to join us, Chief. I thought J.J. would have wanted him here.”
Hoenekker’s face quivered, like he was trying to keep himself from blowing his stack. Eventually, he muttered, “Fine,” although he obviously didn’t think this was fine at all.
Athmani waved to his computer. “So let’s see what you have to show us.”
Hoenekker took a flash drive from his pocket, plugged it into the computer, and uploaded some video files. “This is footage from our security cameras in the Asian Plains last night. I’ve had men combing through the camera feeds all night, and this is what they found. I shouldn’t have to remind you, but this footage is extremely confidential and not to be discussed out of this room. Almost no one else has seen it. Now, this first bit is from the perimeter fence, right where the hunter came over last night.”
A window opened on the computer screen, displaying the footage. The camera appeared to be posted atop the fence itself and was filming down the length of it, so the long stretch of barbed wire eight feet above the ground was pretty much all we could see. The video was color, but since it was nighttime, everything was in night-vision green. A time stamp at the bottom of the screen indicated the footage had been shot at 6:16 p.m.
Suddenly, a towel was unfurled over the barbed wire a few feet from the camera. It was a thick, plush towel, which lay heavily on the wire, covering the barbs. Then the poacher scrambled up over the fence, using the towel to protect himself from the wire, and dropped into the Asian Plains.
The entire break-in took less than ten seconds. The poacher was barely more than a blur.
Athmani whistled, like he was impressed. “He did that even faster than I expected. Is there any way to get an image of him?”
“My men have already done that.” Hoenekker brought up another image, this one only a still frame from the footage we’d just seen. “Here we go.”
The image wasn’t much help. The poacher was merely a dark, fuzzy shape. It was hard to even make out the arms and legs.
“Unfortunately, our target’s rear end is facing the camera in this image,” Hoenekker explained. “So we’re basically looking at his butt. However, we can tell a few things. He’s wearing camouflage, boots, and gloves. . . .”
“So, he basically looks like every other hunter in the state of Texas,” Athmani said grumpily.
“Not exactly. We can also see the gun he’s using.” Hoenekker pointed to a long object strapped to the hunter’s back. “Admittedly, this isn’t a great image, but I can confirm this is most likely a .375 H&H Magnum rifle.”
“As we suspected.” Athmani sighed.
“Why’s it so long?” I asked, pointing to the end of the barrel. It stretched well past the hunter’s shoulder, going out of the frame.
“The H&H is a long rifle to begin with,” Hoenekker informed me, “although it appears this one has been fitted with a silencer.”
“Really?” I said. “ ’Cause he didn’t use a silencer the first time.”
Hoenekker and Athmani both turned to me.
“We heard the shot yesterday morning,” I reminded them. “That’s what spooked the elephants.”
“Ah!” Athmani’s eyes lit up. “Very good observation, Teddy! No wonder J.J. wanted you working on this.”
Hoenekker scowled. “It probably doesn’t mean anything.”
“Why would the hunter not use a silencer in the morning, then bring one at night?” I asked.
“Because he probably realized not using a silencer was a mistake,” Hoenekker said curtly. “After it made so much noise in the morning and alerted everyone, he chose to be quiet when he came back.”
“You’d think he’d have known the gun was going to make a lot of noise,” I pointed out.
Hoenekker ignored me, turning his attention back to the computer. “Now, if you’ll look at this next shot taken from along the fence . . .”
“Is there any footage of the hunter from inside FunJungle?” Athmani asked.
“No,” Hoenekker admitted. “Not that we’ve found so far. There aren’t any cameras inside the SafariLand enclosures. They tried it once, but the animals knocked them all over.”
“Are there cameras at the monorail station?” I asked.
“There are!” Athmani exclaimed. “Chief, have you looked through the footage from when the shot was fired yesterday morning?”
Hoenekker looked as though this conversation were giving him indigestion. “Of course. It was the first thing we looked at. Only . . . there’s no footage of the hunter at the monorail.”
“Why not?” Athmani asked. “Was something wrong with the cameras?”
“Not as far as I can tell. But the hunter simply doesn’t appear on them.”
“How is that possible?” Athmani demanded. “This man isn’t a ghost!”
“The most likely reason is that we misjudged where the shot was fired from,” Hoenekker said. “The hunter isn’t on the roof of the monorail station because he didn’t fire from the roof of the monorail station.”
“Then where did he fire from?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Hoenekker admitted. “We are reviewing all other footage from yesterday morning, but so far we haven’t found anything.”
“So this is all you have?” Athmani pointed to the blurry image of the hunter on the fence. “After all your hours of searching through the footage? This is it?”
“No. As I was trying to say before I was interrupted . . .” Hoenekker gave me a pointed stare, as though I were the only one who had been asking questions. “We have another shot from the perimeter fence. In fact, it’s from the same camera the last shot came from. The hunter went out the same way he came in.”
Hoenekker ran the second piece of footage. The angle was the exact same as in the first piece. The towel still hung over the barbed wire, weighing it down. According to the time stamp, it was now 6:41 p.m., which was a few minutes after my family had spotted him. The hunter suddenly leaped into the frame, grabbing the towel and scrambling over the wires. Even though it happened as quickly as the first scaling of the fence, there was something different about this one. The first time the hunter had gone over, the movements had been smooth and graceful, perfectly planned. Now he was much clumsier, struggling to get over the top.
“He’s hurrying this time,” Athmani observed.
“Well, he was on the run,” Hoenekker pointed out. “Teddy’s father was chasing him. And in his haste, he made a mistake.” He brought up another still frame from the footage.
This one was as blurry as the first had been, but there was a difference. Instead of aiming his rear end at the camera, the hunter was facing it. And yet there still wasn’t a clear shot of the face. His head was angled downward, as he was focused on clambering over the barbed wire. And he was wearing a mask. A black knit ski cap was pulled down over his face.
“This is no better.” Athmani sighed. “We can’t tell anything from this!”
“That’s not true,” Hoenekker argued. “I have my men enhancing this image right now. They’ve already determined the type of ski mask it is, and we’re canvassing all ski shops and sporting goods stores in the area to see if anyone purchased this kind anytime recently.”
Athmani asked, “And if your hunter purchased it a year ago? Or longer? Or if they simply stole it? There must be thousands of ski masks like this in the world!”
“It’s a start,” Hoenekker said.
I stared at the image on the computer more closely. To my disappointment, I couldn’t make out a single thing about the hunter. Between the mask, the clothing, and the gloves, there wasn’t even a glimpse of skin. In a weird way, there seemed to be nothing human about the figure in the photo, as though a scarecrow were climbing over the fence.
“Wait.” Athmani pointed at the screen. “What’s that?”
Behind the hunter’s head was a dark, twisted shape. It was black, or at least some dark color, so it blended into the night almost perfectly. If Athmani hadn’t pointed it out, I might never have noticed it. I leaned in, squinting at it. Beside me, Hoenekker did the same.
The more I stared at the object, the more I could make out. It snaked out from under the back of the hunter’s ski mask, corkscrewing in the air behind his neck. It was even blurrier than the rest of the hunter, but then I realized this was because it wasn’t one single object, but thousands, all bound together.
“It’s hair,” I said. “It’s a ponytail.”
“Whoa,” Hoenekker said. “That’s not a he after all.”
“No,” Athmani agreed. “It looks like our poacher is a woman.”
PANCAKE
“As you can see, all the orangutans are present and accounted for,” Kyle teased. “I’ve been keeping a careful eye on them today.”
I sighed, realizing Mom must have told him about my theory. I was back at Monkey Mountain, standing in front of the orang exhibit. I’d stopped there on the way to Mom’s office. Kyle had wandered up, a takeout bag from PastafaZoola in his hand. I hadn’t actually expected any of the apes to be missing—although, in truth, I’d secretly hoped one might be, so it would prove my theory right.
The exhibit, like every other one at Monkey Mountain, was spectacular. It had been modeled after an actual place in the rainforest on Borneo, the orangutans’ natural habitat. Although most of the trees were fake, they looked real enough, and they provided plenty of places for the orangs to climb and play. Unlike chimps and gorillas, orangutans spend most of their time above the ground, and this was certainly the case at FunJungle. The adults were nestled in crooks of trees, either eating or sleeping, while the younger ones were constantly on the move through the branches. At the moment, to the great delight of the tourists around me, they appeared to be playing a game of arboreal tag, chasing one another all around the forest.
“Where’s Pancake?” I asked. “I don’t see him.”
“My goodness!” Kyle gasped, overdramatically. “You’re right! He’s busted out again!”
“Where is he really? Still sick?”
“I guess so. You heading to see your mom?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on back.”
Kyle led me to the closest door that accessed the employee area of Monkey Mountain, then entered that day’s code on the security keypad. It clicked open and we slipped through quickly, trying not to draw much attention. A family still noticed us, though. I saw the kids staring after me jealously, wondering why I got to go behind the scenes and they didn’t.
If the kids had been able to see the backstage area, they might not have been so jealous. The corridors were dull, unpainted cement, and the housing areas for the animals were much less beautiful than the parts tourists could see. Except for a window that looked out onto the gorilla exhibit, my mother’s office looked pretty much like any other office in the world.
On the way through, Kyle paused by a window that went from the hall into the backstage area of the baboon exhibit. I joined him to see what he was looking at.
Bababoonie was curled up in the corner of his cage, which was unusual. As the dominant male, he was extremely proud and was usually parading in front of the tourists. “How’s his tooth?” I asked.
“He definitely busted it,” Kyle said. “I don’t know how. Chewing on the bars or something. One of his big canines. Doc’s going to replace it today.”
“How?”
“The same way you’d get a tooth replaced if you cracked one. Doc will make a mold of the old one, use that to sculpt a new one, and then screw it into Bababoonie’s jaw. Primate teeth are almost exactly the same as ours.”
He led the way onward to the office.
Dad was waiting there with Mom. Both of them were eating lunch. Homemade tuna-fish sandwiches and carrot sticks. Mom had the camera feed from the orangutan backstage area up on her computer monitor. Pancake was still lounging listlessly. Dad was sitting at Kyle’s desk.
“Hey,” I said, pleased to see him. “I didn’t know you were gonna be here.”
Dad tossed me a sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. “If my son’s going to play hooky from school, I figure I might as well eat lunch with him.”
“That’s my desk,” Kyle told him.
“Sorry.” Dad grabbed his sandwich, hopped out of the chair, and waved graciously to it. “It’s all yours,” he said, then perched on top of a large black case marked FRAGILE.
“What’s that?” I asked, taking a bite of my tuna salad.
“Camera equipment,” Dad told me. “To record the orangutans.”
“There’s already cameras to record the orangutans,” Kyle said. He sat at his desk and unloaded his takeout bag from PastafaZoola. He’d gotten the lasagna, which I considered a mistake. It was always frozen and then reheated, and sometimes they didn’t cook it all the way through. Kyle was still pretty new at FunJungle, though; he hadn’t learned which foods to avoid yet.
“Yes, there are cameras,” Mom agreed. “But I can’t get what I want off of them at the moment.” She turned to me. “I did what you suggested when I got back from Doc’s. I called security to see if they could dig up any footage of Pancake getting out of his exhibit. . . .”
Kyle laughed. “You really think that could have happe
ned?”
“I thought it’d be best to examine the evidence before completely dismissing the theory,” Mom told him. “Unfortunately, security can’t give me the evidence right now. Both techs are too busy scanning all the park footage for any trace of the rhino hunter.”
“Oh,” I said. While this was disappointing, it was also reassuring to know that security was working so diligently to find the shooter.
Dad patted the black camera case. “So I’m going to install our own camera. Then we’ll have access to the footage without needing to go through security. It’ll record all night, and we can check it in the morning to see if we really have an escapee or not.”
“Looks like not to me.” Kyle pointed to the camera feed from the orangutans. “Seeing as Pancake is still there.”
“But he’s still not feeling well,” I countered.
“Animals get sick,” Kyle said. “They don’t usually break out of their exhibits, rob ice cream stores, and then break back in again.”
“Most animals aren’t as clever as Pancake is,” Mom told him.
Kyle rolled his eyes, like he couldn’t believe any of us were taking this seriously, but he didn’t say anything else.
“Can we go see Pancake?” I asked.
“After you finish your lunch,” Mom said.
I crammed as much of my tuna-fish sandwich into my mouth as I could, then spoke with my cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk’s. “Okay. Now?”
Dad laughed while Mom shook her head and sighed. “For heaven’s sake, chew your food,” she warned. “Or you’ll choke to death.”
“I’m kind of interested to get in there myself,” Dad said, balling his used tinfoil and tossing it into the recycling bin.
Mom knew there was no point in trying to dissuade both of us any longer. “Oh, all right.” She grabbed her new crutches and got to her feet.
Dad hoisted the camera case onto his shoulder and started for the door.