by Stuart Gibbs
Mothers and fathers tried to shield their children’s eyes from the carnage. Most of the children, however, were equally determined to see it. Other guests wept. Still others had dialed 911 and were currently being told that emergency services only responded for human emergencies, not marsupial ones. However, a majority of the tourists were using their phones to record everything that was happening. I noticed at least twenty filming the “corpse” of Kazoo.
A few more security guards burst in through the exit, preventing Dad and me from running. I’m not sure that we would have, though. The disaster unfolding before our eyes was too riveting to ignore. Even the newly arrived guards forgot about us as they saw what had happened. Apparently, none of them were aware that Kazoo was fake either. Upon seeing the flattened koala, a few broke down and cried on the spot.
Finally, with a mighty yank, one of the tourists managed to extricate the koala from beneath Marge. Or at least he extricated most of it. The head popped off, leaving the koala’s savior holding only the body of the doll. At the sight of this, more gasps and screams erupted from the crowd. The bride fainted.
The man holding the koala, however, grew enraged. He turned on Pete and Kristi, the most obvious representatives of FunJungle present. “This is a toy!” he yelled.
A new wave of gasps rippled through the room. Everyone stared at the headless, pancaked koala in shock, unsure whether or not to believe this.
For a moment Pete was at a rare loss for words, unsure whether to admit the koala was fake or claim that it was actually dead. In a panic he went with his standard gut response: lying. “It’s not a toy,” he argued weakly.
The man holding the fake koala pointed dramatically to where the head had torn free from the body. Instead of blood and guts spilling out, there was only cottony white stuffing. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t natural,” the man said.
Every head now swiveled toward Pete, who grew even paler. Kristi Sullivan, fearing the wrath of the crowd, stepped away from him and pretended to have been conned herself. “Where’s the real koala?” she demanded. “What have you done with Kazoo?”
Pete shot her a glare of betrayal, then tried to address the tourists. “Kazoo has temporarily been removed from public view . . . ,” he began.
“Without telling us?” a mother cried. “That’s reprehensible!”
“Was there ever even a real Kazoo?” the groom demanded, still trying to revive his unconscious bride. “Or was this all just a plot cooked up by FunJungle to take our money?”
Much of the crowd angrily seconded this thought.
“I assure you FunJungle has done no such thing!” Pete told them.
“Then tell us where Kazoo is!” one of the park’s own security guards demanded.
Pete started to say something, but then caught himself. I knew Pete well enough to guess that he’d been about to tell another lie—perhaps that Kazoo had been sent to a nice, relaxing koala spa for a few days to deal with the stress of being on display—but had realized that sooner or later this would be uncovered as well and that he and FunJungle would end up looking even worse than they did now.
“Where’s Kazoo?” more people demanded.
“If you have a real koala, then prove it!” the groom ordered.
“I, er, well, um . . . ,” Pete stammered. He didn’t have much practice telling people the truth. “The thing is, while Kazoo isn’t dead, he’s . . . uh . . . he’s not exactly here . . . on these premises . . . at this exact time.”
“Well, where is he?” asked the man clutching the remnants of the emergency backup koala.
“He’s been kidnapped,” said Large Marge.
The crowd gasped again and swung back to face her. She was now on her feet, pink from embarrassment and exertion, brushing glass shards off her uniform. “He was taken last night.”
The crowd now reacted with a wide range of emotions. Some people were even more horrified than they had been before. Others were still angry at the deception. I saw astonishment, shock, confusion, and everything in between. The bride, who had just regained consciousness, fainted again.
Marge focused her beady eyes on me, but continued to speak to the crowd. “However, we are in the process of apprehending the number one suspect at this very moment. We have evidence that this boy is responsible and expect him to reveal the koala’s whereabouts soon.”
The gaze of everyone in the room shifted once again. To me.
Two security guards seized me from behind. When Dad tried to intervene, four more grabbed him.
The crowd exploded. No one seemed to know what to believe anymore. People were shouting at me, at Marge, at Pete, at the security guards.
“He couldn’t have done it!” someone declared. “He’s just a boy!”
But other people were glaring at me hatefully. “Where’s Kazoo?” one demanded. “What have you done with him?”
“I never touched him,” I replied. “I’ve been framed.”
Marge and Bubba stormed toward Dad and me over the carpet of glass shards, which cracked and popped beneath their feet. At a nod from Marge, the guards quickly marched us out of the exhibit.
We reemerged into FunJungle to find the place completely desolate. While we’d been dealing with the chaos inside, everyone outside had evacuated, still fearing an escaped lion.
Pete Thwacker and Kristi Sullivan followed us. Pete was walking backward so he could talk to the angry crowd. “I don’t have the time to answer all your koala-related questions at this moment,” he said. “But I assure you, full details will soon be available on our website.”
The crowd roared in disapproval, wanting to know more.
Marge’s radio suddenly crackled to life. “Marge, this is Tracey. Pick up now.”
That was Tracey Boyd, FunJungle’s manager of operations, second in command only to J.J. McCracken. She sounded angrier than a tiger that had been poked with a stick. The security guards all looked to Marge, concerned.
“I’ll talk to her later,” Marge said. “We deal with Teddy now.” She made a move to turn the radio off.
“Don’t you dare turn that off,” Tracey said.
Marge froze, startled.
“I’m watching you on the security cameras,” Tracey explained.
Marge gulped. She picked up her radio and responded. “Security Chief O’Malley.”
“I want you to report to my office this instant,” Tracey told her.
“Right now? We’re in the process of apprehending a known felon.”
“I can see what you’re doing. It can wait. In fact, I want you to bring Teddy here as well. I want all of you here. The whole darn circus. Now. And tell that idiot Thwacker to come too.”
“Me?” Pete asked, worried, but there was no answer. Tracey was off the radio.
Kristi turned to Pete with a devilish told-you-so grin. “So,” she said. “Looks like that fake koala wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
THE THREAT
“Today was not just a disaster at FunJungle,” Tracey Boyd said. “It was a catastrophe.”
I was seated in her office, along with Dad, Large Marge, Bubba Stackhouse, Pete Thwacker, and half the security staff. It was a large office on the fourth floor of the administration building, with windows that looked out over the entire park.
Another wall of Tracey’s office was filled with TV monitors. Some of these were connected to park security cameras, which was how Tracey had known about the latest Kazoo catastrophe almost as soon as it had happened. Other monitors were tuned to a variety of television channels, ranging from the local news to CNN to Animal Planet. All three local TV stations had interrupted their usual daytime programming to broadcast the latest news from FunJungle. The local anchors didn’t know what to cover first: the escaped lion (which they had yet to determine wasn’t real) or the revelation that Kazoo had been kidnapped. Out the windows, I could see three news copters circling Carnivore Canyon, searching for the lion—and then, on the TVs, I could see the live aerial foot
age they were shooting.
Tracey was tall, with long thin legs like a giraffe and a mane of dark hair. When she was excited about something, she could be extremely effusive. (Unlike Martin del Gato, the previous director of operations at FunJungle, Tracey really liked animals and often could be found interacting with them with great joy.) But when she was angry—as she was now—she could be terrifying. Even a giant like Bubba Stackhouse seemed afraid of her.
“It was a fiasco,” Tracey went on. “A calamity. A complete and utter cataclysm. In the future, students learning about how to run a zoo will study this day as a shining example of incompetence, foolishness, and idiocy.”
Everyone looked at their shoes, ashamed.
Tracey shifted her attention to Pete Thwacker. “I assume it was your numskull idea to put a toy koala on display?”
Pete did his best to meet her eyes. “You told me to keep the theft a secret,” he said.
“No, I told you to keep a lid on the story,” Tracey snapped. “I thought you were going to say the exhibit was closed for maintenance—”
“The guests get upset when they come all the way to the zoo and find their favorite animals aren’t on display . . . ,” Pete explained.
“Ah, right,” Tracey said. “Thank goodness we didn’t upset any of the guests, then. Instead we completely horrified them. First they witnessed what they thought was the brutal death of Kazoo by blunt trauma—and then you went and revealed that Kazoo had been stolen anyhow.”
Pete winced. “I thought it was better than everyone thinking the koala was dead.”
“They knew the koala wasn’t dead!” Tracey roared. “They figured that out when they noticed it had stuffing coming out of its neck! What they were upset at—and rightfully so—was the idea that they’d been conned! Duped! Bamboozled! Hoodwinked!” When Tracey got angry, she had a weakness for synonyms. Behind her back, many park employees called her Thesaurus Rex.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said weakly. “It was a mistake.”
“You’re darn right it was!” Tracey cried. “It was a blunder. A beanball. A total boner. And because of it, every media outlet in this state is calling for our heads on a stick—and the rest of the country isn’t far behind. So you need to get out there, face the music, and own up to this. Admit this was your lamebrain idea, not the park’s—and that your actions in no way represented park policy.”
Pete nodded obediently. “And what do you want me to say about the kidnapping?”
“First of all, don’t call it a kidnapping. It’s not a kidnapping until we get a ransom note, and we don’t have one of those yet. This is a theft. But as for what to say about it . . . heck if I know. That’s your job. Whatever it is, just make sure the park sounds good.”
“Should I offer a reward for anyone who helps find the perpetrator?” Pete asked.
Tracey thought for a moment, then sighed. “I suppose we’d better. Let’s say twenty thousand dollars. Maybe that will remind people that we’re a business that cares about our animals, rather than a business that scams its customers. And while we’re at it, we’d better offer free park passes to everyone who came to see Kazoo today.”
“Consider it done.” Pete sprang to his feet, happy to have permission to leave, even if it meant eating crow in front of the press.
“There’s one more thing,” Tracey said, freezing Pete in his tracks. “The only reason you still have a job right now is because I don’t have anyone else to undo your mistakes. So you’d better take good care of this mess—or I’ll can you, understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pete said meekly, then scurried out with his tail between his legs.
Large Marge instantly raised her hand and waved it in the air like an eager student with a question for the teacher.
Tracey turned to her. “What is it, Marge?”
“I don’t understand the point of offering a reward to help catch the perpetrator,” Marge said. “We’ve already caught the perpetrator. Right there.” She pointed at me.
I started to defend myself, but before I could, Dad jumped in himself. “There is no proof that Teddy stole Kazoo.”
“Yes there is!” Marge argued. “We’ve got him leaving the exhibit on tape!”
“Without a koala,” Dad said.
“He has a backpack that was big enough to hide a koala in,” Marge countered.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Dad told her.
“It does when no one else entered the exhibit!” Marge shot back. “Teddy goes in, there’s a koala. He comes out, there’s no koala anymore. He took it. Case closed.”
“Then where is it?” Dad demanded. “You searched our house this morning and didn’t find so much as a hair.”
“Then Teddy hid it somewhere else,” Marge growled. “The woods, maybe. Wherever it is, I’ll find it.”
Before Dad could counter this, Tracey steeped into the fray. “Enough!” she shouted. “Silence! Clam it!”
Dad and Marge both fell silent.
“Face the facts,” Tracey told Dad. “The evidence against Teddy here is awfully conclusive.” Marge grinned at this, but then Tracey swung back to face her. “However, given the disastrous events of today—which you played no small part in—and the beating we’re about to take in the media as a result of them, there is no way I’m going to let you arrest a young boy for this crime without ironclad proof that he did it. The last thing we need right now is to claim a kid took Kazoo and then find out he didn’t.”
Marge sagged like a popped balloon. “But he’s our number one suspect,” she whined. “If we let him go, he might skip town.”
“No I won’t,” I said. “’Cause I didn’t do it.”
“You won’t,” Tracey told me, “because we’re going to ensure you can’t.” She looked to Bubba. “What would it take to outfit Teddy here with an ankle bracelet?”
Bubba shrugged. “Not too much.”
“What’s an ankle bracelet?” I asked.
“A radio transmitter that we lock on your leg,” Marge informed me. “So that we can tell where you are at all times.”
“I’ve got some in the car right now,” Bubba said. He started to get up.
“Hold on now,” Dad said. “No one’s fitting Teddy with one of those. They’re for criminals.”
“He is a criminal,” Marge replied, glaring at me. “We just haven’t proved it yet.”
“And until you do, Teddy will be able to go about his normal life,” Tracey ordered. She looked to Dad. “He can return to school, stay at home, or move about the park at will. The only difference will be that he has a tracking device on him. So if it turns out that he is indeed the thief, then we’ll know where to find him.”
Dad held her gaze for a moment. “I don’t like it,” he said. “Not at all.”
“Well, tough,” Tracey said. “Because that’s what we’re doing. And in the meantime, your family is going to fully cooperate with Marge’s investigation.”
Dad looked to me.
“I’m okay with it,” I told him. “I don’t have anything to hide.”
“All right,” Dad said with a sigh. “But I’d like to point out that every minute spent investigating Teddy is a minute no one’s looking for the real thief.”
“We’re not focusing on Teddy to inconvenience you,” Tracey told him. “We’re doing it because, at the moment, he’s our number one suspect. Either he’s a criminal, or he’s a foolish little boy who’s only in this mess because he did a lot of things he shouldn’t have in the first place.”
Now everyone was staring at me, though the only one I was ashamed to look back at was my father. Tracey Boyd was right. I’d gotten myself into this heap of trouble on my own.
Large Marge smirked at me, but Tracey then turned on her. “And as for you, let’s have a few less catastrophes and a lot more careful investigating here. Teddy’s father is right. If Teddy’s innocent, then you’ve given the thief a big head start. So you had better either bring me proof Teddy did this—or fin
d the real criminal, fast. The Australians are going ballistic about this. If we don’t get that koala back, we’re going to have an international incident on our hands. Every day that goes by, Kazoo’s situation gets more and more desperate. So if he isn’t recovered soon—or if we have any more disasters like today—heads will roll, do you understand?”
The smirk disappeared from Marge’s face. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.
“Good,” Tracey said. “Then everyone here is dismissed—except Teddy.” She met my father’s surprised stare. “I’d like to talk to him solo for a bit.”
“I’m not too comfortable with that . . . ,” Dad began.
“You can wait right outside the door if it will make you feel better,” Tracey told him. “I’ll leave it unlocked. We’ll only be ten minutes, if that. Any longer and you can feel free to come right back in here.”
Dad glanced at me. I nodded that I was all right.
“Ten minutes,” he told us. “And I’ll be right outside.”
He filed out behind all the security guards. Marge let him exit before her, then took one last long, hard look at me, wondering why I merited a one-on-one with Tracey and she didn’t. Then she stormed out and slammed the door behind her.
Tracey let the silence hang there for a few seconds, allowing me to grow uneasy. Finally she asked, “Did you take that koala, Teddy?”
“No,” I said. “But I have some ideas about who might have.”
Tracey wasn’t expecting that. She stiffened in surprise. “Really?”
“Well, they’re not my ideas,” I admitted. “They’re Kristi Sullivan’s. She says Freddie Malloy had a grudge against Kazoo.”
“Freddie.” Tracey rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. That idiot thinks the koala cost him his show somehow. Not the fact that he routinely traumatized the audience.”
“Yes. Kristi said he’d threatened to throw Kazoo into the gator pit.”
Tracey grimaced. “Who else?”
“Charlie Connor. He’s been looking for a way to get some money out of FunJungle.”
