Big Game

by Stuart Gibbs

  “Just thought we’d check out FunJungle’s newest amazing attraction,” Summer replied, with a lot of sarcasm. “How’s it going?”

  “I’m freezing.” Kristi clapped her gloved hands together to warm them up. “You’d think the elephants could’ve waited until April to stampede. But no. Pete’s got me stuck out here in the cold while he gets to stay inside dealing with the rhino hunter.” The moment she said this, Kristi grimaced, then looked around to see if any of the tourists had heard her. Luckily, none had. She lowered her voice to a whisper and asked, “Have you heard any news on that?”

  “No,” I said. “But we’re heading that way now.”

  “Daddy asked Teddy to help investigate,” Summer said.

  “Really?” Kristi’s big blue eyes lit up. “Well, if anyone can figure out who did it, it’s you,” she told me. “You caught that koala-napper when no one else could.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wishing I had the same confidence in myself that Kristi did.

  Another young man approached Kristi with a question, although it was pretty obvious he was only looking for an excuse to talk to her. “Excuse me, but I wanted to know something about elephants,” he said.

  “I’ll be right there,” Kristi told him, then sighed to us. “Back to the old grindstone. Good luck. And if you see Pete, ask him to get some heaters out here for me.”

  Summer and I continued on to SafariLand, using the same route to the rhino house that I had taken with Athmani and my father that morning. Normally, we wouldn’t have been able to get through the security gates with the keypad entries, but J.J. had texted the day’s codes to Hondo, who opened them for us. We entered the Asian Plains to find a large herd of sambar deer grazing close by. They watched us warily as we passed, ready to flee at the slightest provocation.

  As we walked among them, Hondo grew as skittish as the antelope.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said quickly. “Everything’s fine.”

  Summer leaned in close to me and whispered, “Hondo’s afraid of animals.”

  “All animals?” I asked.

  “Pretty much. A few days ago, my guinea pig got out and ran over his foot. He almost had a conniption.”

  I glanced back at Hondo. It was hard to imagine that a man who was so tough around humans would be frightened by a bunch of deer, but he was definitely on edge. Every time one of them so much as flicked its ears, he would tense in fear.

  “Why’s he so scared by them?” I asked.

  “City boy,” Summer told me. “No pets as a kid. The only animals he ever saw were rats.”

  “Hmm,” I said thoughtfully.

  Summer started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You’re already going into Sherlock Holmes mode, aren’t you? Hondo didn’t shoot at Rhonda.”

  I looked back toward Hondo again, worried he’d overheard this, because that was exactly what I’d been thinking. Thankfully, he hadn’t; he was too distracted by a few muntjacs. He was regarding them warily, like they were lions, rather than deer. “How can you be so sure?” I whispered. “He has a criminal background. And he doesn’t like animals.”

  “First of all, he’s a reformed criminal,” Summer said, a little louder than I would have liked. “Daddy wouldn’t have hired him otherwise. Second, not liking animals is a lame motive. And third, Hondo has the perfect alibi: me.”

  “Oh. You were with him this morning?”

  Summer nodded. “We were having breakfast when the shot was fired. So he couldn’t be our guy.”

  “Guess not,” I said. We continued on across the Asian Plains to the rhino house.

  Security had been greatly beefed up there. Hoenekker had stationed three new guards, one on each side of the building, while the third patrolled the roof. None of them was carrying a gun—that would have freaked out the tourists—and they were all dressed like keepers, rather than security, but they were definitely on the alert, scanning in all directions for any sign of trouble. Rhonda was in her yard, happily devouring a trough full of hay, seemingly unaware anything unusual was going on.

  The gate that would have allowed Rhonda back into her house was closed, keeping her in the yard. However, the door that led into the house from the Asian Plains was wide open. I could see Chief Hoenekker inside, on Rhonda’s side of the metal fence, taking measurements around the point where the bullet had impacted the wall.

  The guard posted at the door of the rhino house didn’t seem surprised to see Summer and me. He held up his hand, signaling us to wait, then called out, “Chief! They’re here!”

  Hoenekker looked up and sighed heavily. Then he pointedly went back to his measurements without saying anything to us.

  “Hey!” Summer yelled to him. “My dad sent us to see you.”

  “I know.” Hoenekker jotted something on a small notepad, then climbed out of the rhino pen and came to the doorway. “I understand you have a letter for me?”

  I handed him the envelope J.J. had given me. Hoenekker tore it open, read the message inside, then crumpled it angrily and threw it on the ground. “Apparently it’s official,” he growled. “In addition to conducting an investigation, I now have to babysit both of you.”

  He was so disdainful that, if I’d been there by myself, I might have given up the investigation. But Summer stood up to him. “Daddy wouldn’t have sent us here if he didn’t think we could help.”

  “Yeah, your daddy’s very proud of his little girl.” Hoenekker waved us into the rhino house, then pointed at a corner. “Stay over there and try not to mess anything up.”

  Summer reacted, offended. She wasn’t used to people treating her like this. “What could we possibly mess up? There’s nothing in here but cement and rhino poo.”

  “This is a crime scene,” Hoenekker told her. “Anything in here could be evidence.”

  I dutifully moved to the corner he had indicated, trying my best not to antagonize him. However, Summer had a point. Save for a few chalk marks that had been made around the spot where the bullet had hit the wall, the rhino house seemed exactly the same as it had that morning. It didn’t look very much like a crime scene. “Have you learned anything yet?” I asked.

  Even though I’d asked as nicely as I could, Hoenekker still seemed annoyed by the question. “What do you think we’ve been doing here all day? Playing tiddlywinks?”

  “Y’know,” Summer said, “this would work out much better if you’d answer our questions instead of being such a jerk.”

  Hoenekker glared at her. I got the sense that if anyone else had spoken to him that way, he would have tossed them out the door—or at least chewed them out—but since Summer was the boss’s daughter, she could get away with more than most people. So the chief swallowed his pride and reported what he’d found. “We dug the bullet out of the wall. It had flattened on impact, but we were still able to determine the caliber. It was from a .375 Holland & Holland Magnum, which is relatively rare in this country. It’s a big gun, for big animals with tough hides. Use something like that on a white-tailed deer and you won’t have anything left but the hooves. But it’s very popular with big-game hunters in Africa.”

  “Does that mean it’s hard to get here?” I asked.

  “In Texas?” Hoenekker laughed. “You can pretty much get any hunting rifle you want here. I checked around. There’s quite a few stores in the area that carry them.”

  “Even though they’re too powerful for deer?” I asked.

  “Oh, there’s plenty to kill here that’s not local,” Hoenekker told me. “There’s hunting ranches throughout Texas stocked with exotic animals. They’ve got all kinds of big game: kudu, eland, water buffalo.”

  I was completely startled by this. “You mean, people are raising all those animals around here just for people to hunt?”

  “Oh yeah,” Summer said sadly. “They’re all over the state. Go a hundred miles from here in almost any direction and you’ll find one. D
addy got a lot of our animals from them.” She pointed out the door toward all the antelope grazing on the Asian Plains.

  I leaned against the wall, trying to comprehend this. When I’d first moved to America from Africa, plenty of things had caught me by surprise, but by now, after two years, I felt pretty westernized. Every once in a while, though, something would still seem almost incomprehensible to me. “So . . . they’re places like this, only instead of raising all these animals to conserve them, they’re killing them?”

  “Not exactly.”

  The voice startled me, as it came from behind us. I spun around to find that Athmani had entered the rhino house. “Hunters are usually big supporters of wildlife conservation,” he explained. “After all, if all the animals are gone, there’s nothing left for them to hunt. There are many conservation areas in Africa that allow carefully managed hunting, as it brings in a great deal of money. And many game ranches in the United States have helped breed endangered species. . . .”

  “Which they then kill,” Summer said pointedly.

  “Sometimes it’s a necessary compromise,” Athmani said. “You might think it’s cruel, but then, there are people out there who think zoos are cruel. No matter how much great conservation work is done here, they still look at this place as a giant animal prison.”

  “It’s not!” Summer protested.

  “I’m only saying there are many sides to the conservation issue,” Athmani told her. “So, I understand that the two of you are now helping our investigation?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “First J.J. forces me to work with you,” Hoenekker muttered to Athmani, “and now he sticks us with the Bobbsey Twins here.”

  Athmani ignored him and smiled at Summer and me. “I’m glad to have your help. The more minds we have on this, the better.” He gave Hoenekker a pointed glance. “Have you learned anything new?”

  “I was just bringing the kids up to speed,” Hoenekker grumbled. He sounded even more annoyed to have to share his information with Athmani than with me, but he seemed aware it was pointless to defy J.J. McCracken’s orders. “You already know the bullet is from a .375 H&H. I’ve checked state sales records. Those rifles aren’t plentiful, but there’s still a couple thousand in Texas, so that doesn’t narrow our suspects down very much. Especially since the records probably aren’t very accurate.”

  Athmani sighed, seeming disappointed by this, then pointed to the chalk marks around the bullet hole. “And what’s all this?”

  “Ballistics,” Hoenekker replied. “By calculating the angle of the shot from the impact point in the wall and the hole in the window, we’ve determined the shooter fired from the roof of the monorail station. That’s more than a hundred yards away, which makes this a difficult shot, especially with a gun that size. Whoever did this wasn’t an amateur.”

  Now that Hoenekker was distracted by Athmani, I left the corner he’d assigned me, climbed into the rhino pen, and examined the spot where the bullet had hit the wall. Since the bullet had been dug out, the impact point was only a jagged spot of busted concrete. I turned and looked through the hole the shot had left in the window. Night was falling outside, but I could still see the monorail station clearly in the distance, silhouetted against the glowing glass dome of World of Reptiles. Sure enough, the roof of the station was in a direct line from where I stood.

  In the rhino yard, lights had come on automatically, so it still looked like it was broad daylight out there. Rhonda kept munching her food happily, ignoring everything else around her. I suddenly felt worried for her. “Should we maybe bring Rhonda inside?” I asked. “If the poacher comes back, she’s an easy target out there.”

  “Relax,” Hoenekker told me. “There’s no way that poacher got back into the park today. We greatly increased security at all the entry gates.”

  “But that wouldn’t stop someone who works here, would it?” I asked. “Maybe the poacher never even left FunJungle. If so, they wouldn’t have to come back through the gates.”

  “I have my men patrolling the park,” Hoenekker said. “No one’s going to take a shot at Rhonda with them around.”

  “Even so,” Athmani said, “Teddy has a point. We shouldn’t be taking any chances with Rhonda. Why not bring her in now?”

  Hoenekker glowered at me, annoyed I’d second-guessed him, but then gave in. “Fine. I’m almost done here anyhow.”

  Athmani turned to me. “You need to clear out of Rhonda’s space.”

  I nodded understanding. Humans weren’t ever supposed to be on the same side of the fence as a rhino. Even though Rhonda was gentle, an animal her size could still cause a lot of harm by accident. If I got caught between Rhonda and the wall, she could crush me flat.

  As I started to climb back over the metal fence, something on the floor caught my eye. It was a tiny hot pink globule, wedged into a crack in the cement where the metal fence post was bolted down. I knelt and tried to pry it out, but the crack was too thin for me to even get a finger in.

  “What’s that?” Summer asked. “Rhino poo?”

  “If it were rhino poo, do you think I’d be trying to pick it up with my bare hands?” I asked.

  Athmani and Hoenekker both came over to see what I was looking at. “Step aside,” Hoenekker ordered me. “That could be evidence you’re tampering with.”

  I did what he’d asked.

  Hoenekker pulled out a Swiss Army knife and pried the pink object out of the crack. It was a misshapen clod, not much bigger than an army ant. Hoenekker scrutinized it carefully, then frowned. “Looks like dried mud.”

  “It’s pink,” Summer pointed out.

  “Mud comes in plenty of colors,” Hoenekker shot back. “Pink, red, orange, you name it. Usually when it’s clay, rather than dirt.”

  I nodded at this, thinking back to my life in Africa. There were lots of mud wallows in the jungle that had different colors. The rhinos loved to roll in them. Occasionally, you’d come across one smeared red, orange, or yellow, like a preschooler’s art project. I’d never seen a pink one, though that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. However, there was another problem with Hoenekker’s suggestion. “There’s no pink mud in the Asian Plains, though, is there?” I asked.

  “This exhibit’s a couple hundred square acres,” Hoenekker growled. “I haven’t analyzed every bit of mud in it.”

  “Mind if I see that?” Athmani asked, holding out his hand.

  Hoenekker dropped the pink glob into his palm, and now Athmani took his time scrutinizing it. “Looks like mud to me, too,” he announced. “Rhonda probably wallowed in it somewhere out in the Asian Plains, then it dried on her and she rubbed it off in here.”

  “But Rhonda hasn’t been out in the plains for weeks,” Summer pointed out. “She’s been in here, being pregnant.”

  “There’s no way to tell how old a piece of mud is,” Athmani countered. “This could have been wedged down there for a year.”

  “Can I look at it?” I asked.

  “For Pete’s sake,” Hoenekker growled. “It’s a piece of mud. It doesn’t have anything to do with our shooter.” He turned to Athmani. “You bringing that rhino in or not?”

  “I am,” Athmani said. He dropped the pink glob in my hand, then motioned for me to get out of the rhino pen.

  I climbed over the rail, then took a look at the pink object myself. Summer leaned in as well. The pink thing certainly felt like clay. It was grainy enough that a little bit crumbled off in my hand. I even tried smelling it, but if it had a smell, it was overwhelmed by the odor of rhinoceros in the room.

  “Could be old gum,” Summer suggested.

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “Taste it,” she suggested.

  I recoiled in disgust. “You can taste something off the floor of the rhino house if you want. I’ll pass.”

  Meanwhile, Athmani opened the food-storage closet. There was a great deal of hay inside, as well as a large plastic trash can filled with rhino kibble and some smaller bin
s with fresh fruits and vegetables in them. Athmani selected a carrot, then flipped a switch on the wall.

  The gate between the rhino house and the rhino yard slid open.

  Rhonda’s ears swiveled toward the sound, and she perked up immediately.

  Athmani waved the carrot in the air. “Want a treat?” he asked.

  Rhonda quickly abandoned her trough—she appeared to have licked it clean—and trotted into the rhino house. She probably hadn’t been able to see the carrot at all; instead, she had most likely smelled it. Rhinos have lousy eyesight, but their nostrils are big enough to inhale cue balls. In addition, Rhonda’s upper lip was prehensile; it wasn’t quite as useful as an elephant’s trunk, but she could still grab things with it. Rhonda rested her enormous head atop the fence and extended her lip, reaching for the carrot, revealing her whole mouth. Her upper palate was almost as pink as the mysterious glob in my hand.

  “Good girl,” Athmani told her, handing over the carrot.

  The rhino happily gobbled it down, creating a staggering amount of slobber. Enough drool to drown a Chihuahua spilled out of her mouth and pooled on the floor.

  Hondo shuddered and took a few steps back from the rhino, toward the door.

  Athmani laughed at his reaction. “You’re not afraid of Rhonda here, are you?”

  “No,” Hondo said, way too defensively. It was an obvious lie.

  “Come here and meet her,” Athmani offered. “She’s gentle as a kitten.”

  “I got scratched by a kitten once,” Hondo replied. “Needed fifteen stitches.”

  “Rhonda doesn’t even have claws,” Summer pointed out.

  Hondo shrugged this off and edged closer to the door.

  I held up the pink blob to give it one more look. Rhonda immediately mistook my movement, thinking I was handing her food. She suddenly lurched my way, thrusting her head over the rail as far as it would go and grabbing my hand with her prehensile lip.