Lion Down

by Stuart Gibbs

  Xavier and I happily evacuated his office as quickly as we could.

  The entire school administration was gathered outside the door. They had obviously been listening to the chaos in the office, wondering what could possibly be going on in there. Mr. Dillnut, our principal, looked to us expectantly.

  “Mr. Putterman fell down and hurt his back,” Xavier said. “He needs a doctor.”

  Instead of calling a doctor, everyone rushed to the office to see what had happened. Xavier and I took advantage of the diversion to continue out of the administrative offices and race back to science class. Both of us were sure that once Putterman healed, we would be in serious trouble, but I was still thankful my friend had come to my rescue and that, for the time being, I had escaped the paddle.

  As we slipped into the hallway, Summer came running, her phone clamped to her ear. She stopped, surprised to see us. “I have my dad’s office on the line,” she said. “Daddy’s going to call the principal to get you off the hook.”

  “That’d be great,” I said. “Though Xavier took care of Putterman for now.”

  “Oh,” Summer said. She didn’t seem as happy about this as I would have expected.

  Xavier looked hurt by her reaction. “You don’t think that’s good?”

  “Of course I do,” Summer said distractedly. “It’s amazing. It’s just that, according to Daddy’s office, there’s been some bad news. The Department of Fish and Wildlife caved to Lincoln Stone.”

  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so relieved anymore. “You mean . . .”

  “Yes,” Summer said. “They issued the permit to kill Rocket.”

  18

  THE GUARD

  Putterman didn’t cause any more trouble for me. J.J. McCracken phoned Principal Dillnut himself and then looped one of his top lawyers onto the call. J.J. laid into the principal for allowing Putterman to even think about paddling me—for something that was really a personal issue, rather than a school one—and then went on to condemn the school’s whole corporal punishment system as outdated and barbaric. (Apparently, J.J. himself had suffered some paddlings back in his days at LBJ.) So not only was I off the hook—as well as Xavier—but paddling itself seemed like it was done for at our school.

  J.J. had wanted to give Putterman a piece of his mind as well, but the vice principal was in no position to talk. He had gone to the hospital in an ambulance, where he’d been diagnosed with a ruptured disc in his spine, which was going to keep him out of school for the rest of the year.

  Xavier didn’t even get in trouble with Mrs. Duckworth, our science teacher, despite having left her class without permission—along with a jar full of tarantulas. Mrs. Duckworth claimed to have not noticed Xavier or the spiders were missing, though she had smiled coyly as she said this. I also noticed her smiling as she watched Putterman get loaded into the ambulance, which led me to believe that she—and probably a lot of other teachers at the school—weren’t fans of Putterman or his tactics.

  As for the spiders, they were recovered by the janitorial staff and returned safely to the classroom.

  So I was able to go to FunJungle after school with my friends as planned—although Summer and I still weren’t able to go right out and enjoy the festivities. It turned out we had work to do. In addition to getting her father to speak on my behalf, Summer had also managed to track down the FunJungle security guard who had been in charge of patrolling the area near the giraffes on Sunday night: Kevin Wilks. Kevin was working the anniversary party—all members of FunJungle Security were—though he had a break right around the time we arrived at the park.

  Summer’s driver, Tran, brought Xavier, Dashiell, Ethan, Violet, Summer, and me in through the employee drive-on gate, the same way he drove J.J. McCracken to work. While our friends headed out to enjoy the party, Summer and I found Kevin. He met us in the employee cafeteria, which was located near the administration building and the veterinary hospital. He was sitting at a table by the window, scarfing down a burger and fries before going back to his shift. Summer got free sodas for us. She often got food comped, seeing as her father owned the entire park, and besides, the sodas only cost him about two cents each.

  “You worked a night shift after helping us with Operation Hammerhead in the morning?” I asked.

  “I did have a nap in the afternoon,” Kevin replied. “Remember? That’s why I couldn’t help after Marge went to the hospital.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d be working the whole night, though,” I said. “Weren’t you exhausted?”

  “Nah,” Kevin said, though I got the sense he was trying to sound tough for Summer. “I’ve done this plenty of times. And besides, finding out who poisoned those giraffes was really important. Or, it would have been . . . if we’d done it.”

  Outside the window, all the actors who portrayed the FunJungle mascots were heading out to join the anniversary party. Since the actors were still in the employee area and it was hard to see where they were going with the enormous heads on, most of them were carrying the heads, so it looked like a parade of enormous decapitated animals. As usual, the actors themselves were a rogues’ gallery. The guy who played Eleanor Elephant had so many piercings in his face he probably couldn’t have passed through a metal detector; the woman who played Katie Kangaroo was sneaking sips of alcohol from a flask she kept stashed in her marsupial pocket; and Charlie Connor, the little person who played Kazoo the Koala, was smoking a cigar and scratching himself inappropriately. If any small children had been there to see their favorite FunJungle characters in this way, they probably would have started crying.

  I told Kevin, “We’re thinking the reason that we didn’t catch the person who poisoned the giraffes was that we only watched the exhibit during the hours the park was open, and not after the park had closed.”

  Kevin blinked at me, confused. “So?”

  “Someone must have poisoned the giraffes after park hours,” Summer explained.

  Understanding slowly dawned on Kevin. “You mean . . . you think an employee poisoned the giraffes?”

  “Yes,” Summer and I said at once.

  “But why would an employee do that?” Kevin asked. “We all love the giraffes!”

  I said, “Whoever did this might not have been trying to poison them on purpose. It might have been a mistake. Maybe they didn’t even know they were doing anything wrong.”

  “You were on patrol in that area Sunday night,” Summer added. “Did you see anything suspicious?”

  “No.” Kevin wolfed down a handful of french fries. “I barely saw anyone over by the giraffes at all.”

  “So you did see someone?” I asked.

  “Yes, but only keepers. And none of them would poison the animals, right?”

  Summer and I exchanged a glance. The idea of a keeper poisoning one of their own animals seemed impossible. Even by accident. A keeper would certainly know what foods might be dangerous to their charges. But we were running out of options.

  “We should probably get their names, just to be sure,” I said.

  Outside the window, a team of keepers passed with a llama on a leash. As part of the festivities, many animals were being brought out to meet guests. Most were being presented on stages, like the one at the lawn by Carnivore Canyon, at a distance from the audience, but some of the more docile ones like the llama were going to be trotted out in public, where tourists could meet them, pet them—and hopefully learn a thing or two about them. The llama didn’t seem the slightest bit fazed by all the activity around it. Instead, it ambled along happily with its keepers like an exceptionally tall labradoodle.

  Marge O’Malley followed it in a wheelchair. It was the first time I had seen her since her accident at the giraffe paddock. Her entire leg was wrapped in a cast, so it jabbed out in front of her like the bowsprit of a sailing ship, but it didn’t appear to have slowed her down at all. Through the window, we could hear her yelling at the keepers to pick up a few pellets of poop the llama had left on the walkway.


  Marge then looked our way, noticed us sitting with Kevin, and pointed to her watch.

  Kevin glanced at his own watch and gulped. “Shoot! I’m supposed to be on duty in two minutes!” He quickly crammed the remaining half of his hamburger into his mouth and left the table.

  Summer and I grabbed our sodas and followed him.

  Summer asked, “You didn’t see anyone else around the giraffes except for keepers?”

  “No one,” Kevin replied, his mouth full of burger. “Not this Sunday or any of the others.”

  “Others?” I repeated, not sure if I had heard him right. Kevin was very hard to understand with his mouth full.

  “Yeah.” Kevin swallowed a wad of hamburger so big I was surprised he didn’t choke on it. “I’ve been working Sunday nights the past couple of weeks.”

  An idea came to me as we followed Kevin out into the sun. I didn’t like it, but I had to pursue it. “How many weeks exactly?”

  “Umm.” Kevin screwed up his face as he thought about this. “Five.”

  Which was the exact number of times the giraffes had been poisoned. I looked at Summer, who had obviously realized the same thing. “Kevin,” she said, “have you ever fed the giraffes when you’re on your shift?”

  “Sure,” he said happily. “That’s one of the best things about it!”

  Marge hadn’t waited for Kevin to emerge from the cafeteria. She had wheeled off to chastise Charlie Connor for smoking a cigar while in costume. The two of them were arguing in the distance. Charlie called Marge a cow, so in response, Marge ran over his toes with her wheelchair. Charlie then hopped around, howling in pain, and called Marge a whole lot of other things.

  Kevin led Summer and me through the employee area, passing the vet hospital.

  “What did you feed the giraffes?” I asked.

  “Plants,” Kevin replied, like maybe I was the dumb one. “That’s what giraffes eat. They’re harpsichords, you know.”

  “You mean herbivores?” I asked.

  “Right!” Kevin said. “That’s the word!”

  “Which plants?” Summer asked, sounding annoyed now.

  “I don’t know,” Kevin answered innocently. “Does it matter?”

  “It might,” I said. “Where did you find them?”

  Kevin glanced at his watch again. “Over by the giraffes. Could I show you later? I’m supposed to be out on duty already.”

  “It’d be good to see them now,” Summer replied. Before Kevin could protest, she added, “If Chief Hoenekker gets upset that you’re not at work, I can call him and straighten things out.”

  That made Kevin feel better. “Okay,” he said, and then led us on through the employee area. We skirted around the back of the Swamp, World of Reptiles, and where the Great Flight Cage was under construction. It still hadn’t dawned on Kevin that he might have done anything wrong. Instead, he seemed extremely pleased with himself. “I’d seen so many people feeding the giraffes here,” he explained as we walked, “and it always looked like so much fun, you know? So when I started working the late shift around them, I figured I’d give it a try. I found some nice, pretty plants and brought them out, and the giraffes came right up to me and ate them! It was awesome! And the giraffes loved it too. It was like I was giving them chocolate cake or something. This is the stuff right here!” He stopped and pointed dramatically.

  We were still in the employee area, near the gate that provided access to the park closest to SafariLand and the giraffes. While some effort was made to beautify the employee areas, not nearly as much attention was paid to them as the tourist areas of the park, where every piece of trash was snapped up within moments of hitting the ground and the landscaping was meticulously cleared of weeds every night. Along the construction fence that surrounded the Great Flight Cage, in a few inches of dirt, some plants were growing. They were weeds, but as weeds went, they were quite pretty, which was probably why no one had uprooted them. They had bright green leaves and large purple flowers, along with berries so blue they were almost black.

  “This is what you fed to the giraffes?” I asked.

  “Yeah!” Kevin answered proudly. “They love it!”

  “Do you know what it is?” Summer asked me.

  “Yes,” I replied. “It’s the solution to our case.”

  19

  THE CONFRONTATION

  “You can’t go in there!” J.J. McCracken’s secretary shouted.

  Summer didn’t pay any attention to her, though. She was too excited. Clutching a bouquet of the plants that Kevin had fed to the giraffes, she blew right past Lynda and barged into her father’s office.

  I was excited too. Otherwise, I might have been more aware of Lynda’s unusually alarmed behavior. I had shown up in the waiting area with Summer dozens of times. If J.J. was doing something important, Lynda would calmly ask Summer if she could wait a few minutes; she had never shouted at her before.

  J.J. was at his desk when we entered. Pete Thwacker, FunJungle’s smarmy-but-effective director of public relations, was seated on the couch across from him. Both reacted with suspiciously startled reactions to Summer’s arrival. Normally, J.J. would have greeted his daughter warmly, while Pete might have flashed his made-for-TV grin, but now both looked like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

  Summer didn’t catch this. Instead, she held the plants over her head like an Olympic athlete hoisting a gold medal. “Deadly nightshade!” she announced.

  “Summer,” J.J. said uneasily, scurrying out from behind his desk. “This isn’t the best time. I have a million things going on. . . .”

  “It’s what poisoned the giraffes,” Summer told him. “Teddy knew what it was.”

  My parents had always made it a priority to teach me about the flora and fauna of where I lived. This was partly because it fascinated them and they wanted to share their knowledge with me. But it was also a safety issue. In the same way that a parent raising a toddler in the city would teach their child not to stick a finger in electrical sockets, my parents taught me what plants I couldn’t eat around our wilderness camp.

  I was now old enough that my parents no longer had to worry about me putting random plants in my mouth, but their fascination with nature remained, and I had certainly inherited it from them. We didn’t live in a tent camp, but we were still on the edge of the wilderness, so there were plenty of flora and fauna to study, and it always made sense to know what might be poisonous.

  Deadly nightshade wasn’t indigenous to Central Texas, but it was a highly invasive species, so I had learned about it. Like many plants, it had been introduced by European settlers and spread rapidly across the country. (Some nonnative plant species, like dandelions, had been so successful that most people didn’t even realize they weren’t native.) I wasn’t an adept-enough naturalist that I had been one hundred percent sure the plant Kevin had found was deadly nightshade, but a quick stop at the veterinary hospital had confirmed it.

  Given that J.J. had asked us to find out what had happened to the giraffes in the first place, he didn’t seem very intrigued by Summer’s revelation. Instead, he appeared far more interested in getting rid of us. “That’s very fascinating,” he said absently, putting one arm around Summer and the other around me and herding us to the door. “We really ought to discuss it later.”

  By now, Summer was beginning to realize something was wrong with her father’s behavior. “Do you know who fed this to the giraffes?” she asked. “The zebras.”

  “Is that so?” J.J. asked distractedly, glancing toward his executive bathroom. “I had no idea.”

  “Yes,” Summer went on. “The zebras have been very jealous of all the attention the giraffes are getting and decided to kill them all. But since they don’t have opposable thumbs, they had to hire a chimpanzee as the hit man.”

  “That’s very nice,” J.J. said, trying to shepherd us out the door.

  Instead, Summer dug her heels into the carpet. “You’re not even listening to me!”
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br />   “Of course I am, sweetheart,” J.J. said.

  “Teddy and I figured out who’s been poisoning your giraffes and how they’ve been doing it, and you don’t even care!”

  This shook J.J. back to reality, forcing him to focus on his daughter. “I do care,” he insisted. “It’s just that now isn’t the best time. The festivities are about to begin and I have a million things that need to be handled. . . .”

  “Kevin Wilks did it,” Summer told him. “Your own security guard.”

  “Really?” Pete asked, jolted into paying attention himself. “Why?”

  “Because he’s an idiot,” Summer replied.

  “He didn’t realize he was doing anything wrong,” I clarified. “He thought that the giraffes could eat any old plant . . .”

  “Because he’s an idiot,” Summer said again. “There are a million signs around this park, telling you that the animals have specialized diets and that you shouldn’t feed them. The moron works here and he never read a single one of them.”

  “He feels really bad about it, though,” I said. As dumb as Kevin had been, I didn’t want to get him fired. Plus, Kevin felt awful about what he had done. Once he learned that he was the poisoner, he had cried so hard and loud that a passing paramedic had stopped to see if he’d been wounded by one of the animals. We had left the two of them together and run off to confirm what species the plant was.

  “I hope the press doesn’t hear about this,” Pete said, far more concerned about FunJungle’s reputation than the giraffes. “I’d hate to have the story of our wonderful anniversary celebration marred by the news that one of our own security guards tried to murder our giraffes.”

  “He wasn’t trying to murder them,” I corrected.

  “That’s how the media will frame it,” Pete informed me. “They love to make things as sordid as possible. They’ll claim we have a psychotic animal killer working on our own security staff.” He turned to J.J. “If I were you, I wouldn’t fire him just yet. Disgruntled employees often go right to the press.”