Belly Up

by Stuart Gibbs

  The print was a neat half circle, as though from the heel of a dress shoe. That made it unusual, as our neighbors all dressed casually for work. Like Mom, they wore sneakers or work boots. I wondered if any of them even owned dress shoes. Mom didn’t.

  I measured my shoe against it. The heel was considerably larger than mine. An adult. A pretty big adult, which most likely meant it was a man—although that wasn’t 100 percent for sure. Large Marge wore shoes big enough for an orangutan.

  The rest of the sole had been resting on rock, so it hadn’t left a print. The ground around our trailer was extremely rocky, so I couldn’t find any other prints, save for a skid mark in a patch of mud near the corner of our trailer, as though someone had slipped while hurrying away.

  The heel print had definitely been made recently, though. There was a tiny ball of deer poop squashed beneath it.

  I know my poop. I learned how to track animals in the Congo, and one of the keys to tracking something is knowing what kind of poop it leaves behind.

  There was deer poop everywhere around our trailer. The ground was a minefield of little pellets. I think the smell of the larger carnivores wafting out of FunJungle scared off the coyotes, which were the only local predators big enough to take down a deer. So the deer were almost always around. They’d cropped the grass in the trailer park bare and turned it all into poop. It came out in scatterings of soft black balls, although after a day in the Texas sun, they’d bake into hard brown nuggets. The one squashed under the heel print was relatively fresh. And the heel was oriented to indicate that whoever had been standing there had been facing our trailer, not the woods.

  I couldn’t guarantee that the person had been listening to me, but the heel print made me nervous, just the same. First Sergeant Tustin, now this. Adults seemed more interested in keeping an eye on me than learning who’d killed Henry.

  But I was still determined to find the murderer. If anything, finding the heel print made me more determined.

  The obvious place to start was Hippo River.

  As Doc had pointed out, the objects that had killed Henry were no longer in his digestive tract. So there was only one other place they could be. That was one advantage of investigating a dead zoo animal; I knew exactly where Henry had been every day for the last few months. The moment the park opened in the morning, I set off for Hippo River.

  I’d expected to have the place to myself, but to my surprise, it was even more crowded than usual. Hundreds of Henry devotees had made a pilgrimage to see where he had died—and more were coming by the minute. The front gates were mobbed. Mourners streamed through the security metal detectors and sprinted for Hippo River.

  Adding to the mayhem was a large animal-rights rally, right outside the park. The activists were from the Animal Liberation Front, an organization that believed all animals should live freely—and thus, zoos were “prisons.” The ALF had targeted FunJungle since its opening day, though with poor results: Families who’d been eagerly anticipating a trip to FunJungle for months weren’t about to turn away because some demonstrator handed them a pamphlet. The protests had dwindled over the past two weeks—the day before, only two people had shown up—but now Henry’s death had galvanized the ALF. A huge group of protesters now rallied around an effigy of dead Henry—a stuffed hippo with its eyes X ed out—waving signs, blowing whistles, and trying to convince the tourists that Henry had died as a result of negligent care.

  That really bugged me. A hundred years ago, some zoos might not have treated their animals well, but these days they all try to provide the best treatment possible. I wish the world didn’t need zoos—and I’ll bet most zookeepers do too—but right now, they’re important. Zoos have prevented plenty of animals from going extinct—and Mom always says there wouldn’t even be a conservation movement without them. Most people don’t get to grow up in the Congo like I did. Instead, they come to care about gorillas or elephants or polar bears because they see them in zoos. When the ALF accused FunJungle of negligence, they were insulting every keeper there, my mom included.

  So I did my best to ignore them, finding a spot as far from the protest as possible to scope out Hippo River. As I did, two problems with continuing my investigation came to mind.

  The first was access. Henry’s enclosure was now barricaded. The hastily-erected fence Martin del Gato had ordered the night before had now been replaced by sturdy plywood walls like the kind that surrounded construction sites. Even the windows in the underwater viewing areas were blocked off. The walls wouldn’t have been hard to scale, but security guards were posted to prevent thrill-seekers from doing any such thing.

  The rest of Hippo River was still open, however. (“Our guests ought to be allowed to see at least one fat aquatic mammal,” J.J. McCracken had reportedly groused.) I wandered over to Umfundisi Scenic Viewpoint under the pretense of seeing Henrietta, thinking maybe I could dive into Henry’s pool from there, but quickly found that wouldn’t work. As annoying as the barricading of Henry’s enclosure was to me, it was devastating to the tourists who’d come to mourn him. Since Umfundisi was now the only place anyone could get a glimpse of Henry’s old home, it was a mob scene. Tourists were packed twenty deep, ignoring the live hippo nearby so they could stare at a tiny sliver of a dead hippo’s empty enclosure. There was no way to dive into Henry’s pool without a hundred people seeing me.

  Even so, the second problem was even more daunting:

  Hippo poop.

  Most likely, the objects that had killed Henry were in the water. That was where hippos generally did their business. (In Africa, hippo poop was the primary fertilizer for most aquatic plants.) Which meant I’d have to go swimming. Theoretically, the filtration system would have removed a lot of the poop from the water without Henry around to constantly generate more, but still, there had to be some left. Henry’s backwater had been so polluted, I guessed it would take far more than one night to fully sanitize it. The mere thought of going in there gave me the willies. At the very least, I’d need a mask and snorkel to see in that murky water, but since I lived two hundred miles from the ocean, I didn’t own one—and the closest sporting goods store was thirty miles away.

  So I wandered through Hippo River, observing the guards, trying to determine if there was any time in their rounds—perhaps during the shift change—when Henry’s enclosure was left unobserved. But no luck. The guards relieved one another with military precision. I was almost ready to concede that I’d have to sneak into Hippo River at night when a commotion by the front gates grabbed my attention.

  A crowd had gathered around someone. At first, I thought maybe a guest had collapsed from heatstroke, but no one in the crowd seemed worried. Instead, they were all giddy, clamoring for the attention of whoever was in their midst like hens trying to attract a rooster.

  I scrambled up a tree to get a better look.

  Two bodyguards loomed in the center of the crowd, the biggest men I’d ever seen, both wearing sunglasses and suits. They were so large, it was hard to see the person between them. I could only glimpse a lock of blond hair and flash of pink clothing—but that was all I needed to figure out who it was.

  Summer McCracken had arrived.

  Apparently, the rumors that she was home from boarding school were true. Summer always wore pink from head to toe; it was her trademark. And I knew she never went anywhere without bodyguards. Given his wealth, J.J. McCracken worried someone would kidnap his daughter, so he had her protected twenty-four hours a day. Despite the bodyguards’ intimidating presence, the tourists still mobbed Summer. Full-grown men and women screamed her name and begged for autographs. She had a longer line of people waiting to take pictures with her than the Henry Hippo actors ever did.

  I shook my head, not understanding this at all—until something occurred to me. There was one other option to investigating Henry’s death by myself: Tell J.J. McCracken about it.

  The police might consider investigating Henry’s murder a joke, but J.J. certainly woul
dn’t. After all, Henry was his hippo. And he probably didn’t even know about the murder theory. The only people who could have told him were Martin del Gato, Doc, and Pete Thwacker. But Martin had told Doc to bury the evidence—and Pete had barely even understood the murder theory in the first place.

  The chances of a kid like me getting to J.J. McCracken were slimmer than slim. Summer was my only chance—but I had to act fast.

  To look like another eager fan, I grabbed a piece of paper from a nearby trash bin. It was a discarded napkin with a smear of ketchup on it, but most of the autograph hounds were asking Summer to sign things that were equally unsanitary. As Summer passed, I plunged into the crowd around her.

  It was a free-for-all inside. Unlike with the Henry Hippo actors, there was no official line set up for people to calmly stand in to meet Summer. Instead, everyone pushed and shoved, gouging each other with shoulders and elbows, jostling for position. I was jounced left and right, smashed forward, and then bounced back. An eight-year-old girl was nearly trampled beside me. It was already a hot day; surrounded by the crush of people, it was stifling.

  I spotted a sliver of light between two incredibly fat women. I scrambled for it, but was only halfway through when the women slammed together, crushing me between them. For a moment, I thought I might suffocate in their flab. In desperation, I booted one in the ankle. She yelped and pulled away, allowing me to stumble free—and suddenly, I found myself in a small, open pocket of fresh air, face-to-face with Summer McCracken herself.

  She was taller than I’d expected, a few inches more than me. Her blond hair hung to her shoulders and she wore a pink blouse, shorts, and sandals. But what really grabbed my attention were her eyes. They were an amazingly bright blue, like the wings of a morpho butterfly. The pictures of her never did them justice.

  Summer looked at me, but didn’t really appear to see me; she just dutifully reached for my napkin to sign it.

  I started to say something—but then froze. For some reason, I was intimidated. Even at the time, I knew it was ridiculous; it wasn’t like she was anyone important, like her father or the president. She was only a girl, only a year older than me. And yet, I simply stared at her like a dork. For a moment, all the noise seemed to drain from the world, and all I could think about were her eyes.

  It took me a moment to realize she’d said something to me. “Wh-What?” I stammered.

  “Do you want me to sign that?” Summer repeated, nodding to my napkin. I looked down and realized that instead of letting her have it, I’d kept it clutched in my hand.

  The noise of the crowd suddenly came rushing back. Mostly, it seemed to be people shouting at me to hurry up with Summer so they could have a turn. So I quickly blurted out what I had to say: “I need to talk to your father.”

  Summer looked at me curiously. “You and everyone else,” she said.

  “This is really important.”

  “Let me guess. You want a loan.”

  The crowd burst into laughter. My face grew warm as the blood rushed to it. I felt like an idiot and wanted to slip back into the crowd and disappear, but a sudden surge from the rear shoved me forward into Summer herself.

  Instantly, the bodyguards were on me. They didn’t think I was a threat; they were only giving Summer her space. Hands the size of baseball gloves grabbed my shoulders, steadying me and moving me back.

  For a second, though, I was close enough to whisper to Summer. Before I even knew I was doing it, I told her, “Henry Hippo was murdered.”

  She stared at me a moment, surprised, her blue eyes boring into mine. And then, she shook her head in amusement. Suddenly, it occurred to me that Summer was probably approached by crazy people the time—and that I’d just been lumped in with the rest of the weirdos. Before I even had a chance to explain, the crowd swallowed me up again. Two seconds later, I was spit back out, left behind clutching my napkin while Summer and her groupies continued on.

  I’d never felt so stupid in my whole life.

  I’d behaved like a total freak in front of Summer McCracken. The only good thing about it was that she’d probably forgotten me the very next moment. At least, I hoped she would. It was preferable to her remembering me and avoiding me from then on.

  Annoyed at myself, I resumed my watch over the guards at Hippo River. Large Marge had come on shift, so I selected a bench out of her line of sight and spied on her through the vines of a bougainvillea plant. She took her patrol very seriously, giving the stink-eye to any guest who so much as loitered in front of the barricades for too long.

  It occurred to me that the need for so much security was suspicious. After all, what was the problem with letting guests see Henry’s empty enclosure? It wasn’t as if FunJungle was hiding the fact that the hippo had died. If anything, they were making it a huge deal. Numerous press issues had been released. Commemorative Henry T-shirts were already being sold. Pete Thwacker was even arranging for a public funeral.

  The memorial was to take place in a few days. Martin had wanted it sooner, as Henry’s corpse was still sitting on the Henry and Pals stage, slowly rotting. (There wasn’t a freezer big enough to hold the body anywhere on the property.) But J.J. McCracken had decreed that his hippo be sent off with honor and dignity—as well as an event that would get a huge amount of free media coverage for FunJungle. This all took time to plan properly; guests had to be invited, the grave had to be dug, an extra-large coffin had to be built. In the meantime, hundreds of bags of ice had been packed around Henry’s body to slow its decay, the theater’s air conditioning had been turned up as high as it would go, and the building was sealed shut. (Even if the giant corpse hadn’t been on their stage, the Henry and Pals Review would have been shuttered for a few days out of respect for the dead. I’d heard rumors that Henry was being excised from the show altogether, and that it would soon be rechristened the FunJungle Friends Musical Spectacular.)

  The point being, if it wasn’t a secret that Henry was dead, why was his enclosure so tightly protected? I found myself wondering who’d even posted the guards in the first place. Martin? Pete? J.J. himself? What if the whole reason for them wasn’t to discourage the random Henry fan from getting into the deceased hippo’s enclosure—but to prevent someone like me from investigating? What if there was something inside there they wanted to hide? What if—

  “Who killed him?” a voice asked, so close to my ear I jumped.

  I spun around and once again found myself staring into the blue eyes of Summer McCracken.

  She was tucked back in the landscaping, crouched behind the bench, almost as if she was hiding behind it. It had only been a few minutes since my embarrassing encounter with her, but somehow, she’d already changed clothes. She still had the trademark pink shorts on, but she now wore a FunJungle T-shirt over her blouse and had her hair tucked up into a baseball cap. The change was so startling, I would have assumed it wasn’t even her except for her eyes. I couldn’t collect my thoughts, spluttering, “I . . . uh . . . I don’t know.”

  Summer frowned. “Then how do you know he was murdered?”

  “I snuck into the autopsy.”

  Summer’s eyes lit up, getting even brighter than they had before. But before she could respond, she noticed something behind me. I turned around to see her bodyguards hurrying in our direction, trying to act like they weren’t worried, but obviously worried. Looking for her.

  Summer ducked farther into the landscaping. “Meet me behind the Gorilla Grill in fifteen minutes,” she said, then vanished with a rustle of leaves.

  The bodyguards thundered past, not seeing her, and then I was alone on the bench again, feeling strangely excited.

  It looked like I might have found someone willing to believe me after all.

  It turned out, Summer McCracken had thought I was a freak. But that turned out to be a good thing. Right after I’d been sucked back into the crowd, Summer had asked her bodyguards, “Who was that nutball?” And they’d told her.

  “They know who
I am?” I asked, surprised.

  Summer nodded. “It’s their job. Daddy insists they know everyone at the park for my protection.”

  “But there must be at least two thousand employees here.”

  “Well, they don’t know everyone , of course. But they try to. And you’re not too hard to remember, ’cause you’re the only kid. Plus, they say you’ve caused some trouble here.”

  I froze, worried. “Not really . . .”

  “You didn’t arm the chimpanzees with water balloons yesterday?”

  “How’d they know that?”

  “They get debriefed by park security,” Summer said. “Apparently, you also taught the sea lions to make rude noises during their show . . .”

  “The show needed some comedy. Even the trainers thought it was funny.”

  “. . . and started a rumor that the hot dogs here are made of whatever animals died recently.”

  “That was an accident. I was joking and someone believed me.”

  “Whatever. Point is, my shadows told me to steer clear of you. Which is why I’m here.”

  We were seated on a small patch of grass behind the Gorilla Grill, not far from the restaurant’s Dumpsters. It wasn’t very scenic, but I had to admit it was a good place to avoid being seen. In all the months I’d been roaming around FunJungle—including dozens of meals at the Gorilla Grill—I’d never known this little spot of grass existed.

  I’d arrived a couple minutes before Summer—long enough to start worrying that she’d played a joke on me, pegging me as an innocent rube and sending me to stand among a bunch of garbage Dumpsters just because she knew I’d do it. But then she’d wandered around the corner, smiling brightly, and asked if I was hungry.

  I was—as a twelve-year-old boy, I was almost always hungry—so Summer had slapped some cash in my hand and told me to go get us some burgers, fries, and Cokes. She couldn’t do it, she said, because people would recognize her. I tried to protest—it didn’t seem right to let a girl buy me lunch—but Summer had waved this off, laughing, and said, “Trust me, I can afford it.”