Panda-monium

by Stuart Gibbs

  It was only then that I noticed the costume wasn’t complete. Instead of wearing the oversize paws on his hands, the man was wearing black gloves.

  And one of those hands was pointing a gun at me.

  ANGRY PANDA

  I raised my hands and backed up against the glass of the dolphin tank. There was no place for me to run; I was right out in the open. I was terrified—and yet, at the same time, I was still having trouble believing that I was being threatened by a man in a panda costume. A lot of strange things had happened to me at FunJungle, but this was definitely near the top of the list.

  “What were you doing snooping around the exhibit?” he demanded.

  “I was just looking at the dolphins,” I replied, trying to remain calm. “That’s all!”

  “Not this exhibit!” the man snapped, like I was an idiot. “The Li Ping one! Panda Pagoda.”

  “Panda Palace?”

  “Who cares what it’s called? What were you looking for over there?”

  “I wasn’t looking for anything!”

  “Don’t lie to me! I saw you!”

  I flashed back to my time at the rally, recalling the panda I’d seen clapping along with the crowd over there. It must have been the same person who’d spotted me and then followed me to the dolphin tank.

  If someone wanted to keep tabs on what was happening at FunJungle, wearing a mascot costume was a great way to do it. You could go almost anywhere in the park without anyone questioning why you were there—or who you actually were inside the costume. I had even worn a costume myself before, while investigating Kazoo the Koala’s disappearance. It was amazing how quickly people stopped thinking of you as a fellow human and started regarding you as a piece of scenery.

  But there were disadvantages to the costumes as well. They were hot and bulky and hard to move in. Plus, the heads made them top-heavy and were difficult to see out of. In most, the only way to see was through the character’s mouth, which was often angled downward. This made it very hard to look people in the eye. Even children. This seemed to be the case with the Li Ping costume as well. At the moment, my attacker had his head tilted back at an awkward angle so he could look at me.

  I figured if I was going to get out of this, I had to use the costume to my advantage.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Twix was still at the glass behind me. She seemed fascinated by the giant panda. There was an extremely good chance she’d never seen a panda before—or a human dressed as one. I had no idea if she knew what the gun was.

  “I wasn’t snooping,” I repeated. “I swear. I was coming over here and I stopped to see what was going on with the rally.”

  “You were talking to a keeper.”

  “Only about the rally! That’s all! And she came over to me. I wasn’t looking for her.”

  “Do not lie to me, kid. I know all about you—and your habit of getting involved in things that shouldn’t concern you.”

  “I’m telling you the truth!” I pleaded.

  “That’s it.” The panda waddled toward me menacingly. “Now I’m gonna have to get mean.”

  I clenched my upraised hands into fists, giving Twix the signal Olivia had taught me that morning. In response, Twix rocketed to the surface and spit a mouthful of water over the top of the wall. Her aim was perfect. She nailed the approaching panda right in his face.

  If my attacker hadn’t been wearing a giant panda head, he might have been temporarily blinded by the sudden blast of salt water and dolphin spit, allowing me to escape. But the head now worked to my advantage a different way. My attacker didn’t see the water coming at all. All he knew was that something had struck him. He craned his head upward, startled, trying to see what it was, and in doing so, temporarily lost his balance. He tilted backward, wheeling his arms to steady himself, which meant that, for a few seconds, the gun was no longer pointed at me.

  I charged, driving my shoulder into his chest.

  The stomach was well padded to give “Li Ping” an adorable pot belly, but I still hit it hard enough to make my attacker grunt in pain. He toppled over backward, landing spread-eagled on the cement.

  He didn’t let go of the gun, though. I was hoping he would, so I could grab it and toss it into the dolphin tank, but he held on tight. I didn’t want to get into a fight over it with him still holding the trigger end, so I ran for my life instead, praying he wouldn’t be able to get back up anytime soon in that suit.

  As I took off, I gave Twix the signal for one more spit take.

  She happily complied, blasting the panda once again.

  This time, some salt water got into the gaping mouth of the suit. I heard my attacker splutter angrily. He was writhing around on his back like a turtle flipped on its shell, trying to figure out how to get on his feet again with the giant panda head weighing him down.

  I raced around the tank as fast as I could. Because it was circular, I didn’t have to go too far before the upended panda had disappeared from sight around the curve of the glass wall. That meant I was out of bullet range, in case he wanted to take a shot at me, but I didn’t relax for a second. I kept running, screaming for help at the top of my lungs.

  Twix zipped along the opposite side of the glass, keeping pace with me, like this was all a game.

  The walkway rose back to the same level as the surface of the water, and I came to the fake beach where the guests entered the tanks. I clambered over the picket fence and charged across the sand toward the offices. I’d never thought the beach was that big, but now that my life was at stake, it seemed endless. The sand was much harder to run on than the pavement had been, giving me the nightmarish feeling of spinning my legs but not going anywhere at all.

  Olivia burst out of the check-in building, alerted by my yelling. Nick and the angry woman followed her.

  “What’s happening?” Olivia called out. “Is something wrong with the dolphins?”

  “Someone’s trying to shoot me!” I told her.

  Nick, in an amazing display of cowardice, ran right back inside and slammed the door.

  The angry woman didn’t budge. She seemed to think I was a gibbering idiot.

  Olivia bravely ran toward me, coming to my aid. She leaped over the fence from the other side, dashed across the sand, grabbed my hand, and dragged me toward the safety of the check-in building.

  Twix skimmed through the shallows by the beach, chattering happily. A few more dolphins raced over, not wanting to miss out on the fun.

  I chanced a look back behind me, but didn’t see any sign of the giant panda.

  “Where’d this happen?” Olivia asked as we ran.

  “In the underwater viewing area,” I gasped.

  “What’d he look like?”

  I paused before answering, knowing what I was about to say was going to get me a strange look. “He was dressed as Li Ping.”

  Sure enough, Olivia gave me the look. She almost stopped running, thinking this was a joke.

  “I’m not kidding!” I told her, so she’d pick up the pace again. “He’s wearing the park’s panda mascot costume!”

  We reached the fence at the other end of the beach, vaulted over it, and dashed past the angry woman into the check-in building. Thankfully, Nick had failed to lock the door behind him. We scrambled behind the safety of the check-in counter, only to find Nick huddled there.

  He shrieked in fear. “Get away from me! Someone’s trying to kill you!”

  “Get a grip, you weenie,” Olivia snapped. She then pulled out her phone and dialed park security.

  They promptly put her on hold.

  The angry woman stormed back inside, even more annoyed now. “If you think you can weasel out of your obligations by pretending there’s a crisis, you’re all dumber than I thought,” she informed us.

  “This isn’t pretend,” I told her. “There’s really someone dangerous out there!”

  “In a giant panda costume,” the woman repeated disdainfully. “Sure there is.”

 
“If I was really going to make something up,” I told her, “do you think I’d make up something so ridiculous?”

  “If this panda’s so dangerous, how’d you get away from him?” the woman asked.

  “I got a dolphin to spit in his face,” I said.

  This did not help make my story any more believable. The woman glared at me sternly. “Are you on drugs, young man?”

  Meanwhile, Nick was scrambling around the small gift shop on his hands and knees. “We’re sitting ducks in here!” he wailed. “We need something to defend ourselves. . . . Aha!” He grabbed a large plastic toy dolphin and tried to wield it like a baseball bat, but when he cocked it back over his shoulder, it slipped out of his sweaty hands and sailed through a window.

  Park security must have picked up, because Olivia started speaking into her phone. “This is Olivia Putney at Dolphin Adventure. There’s a man with a gun over here dressed as a panda. We need all available security here right away. . . . Yes, that’s right. Dressed as a panda . . . Yes, I’m sure it’s not a real panda with a gun. How would a panda get a gun? . . . Can you just send everyone you can? Our lives are in danger!”

  Nick now approached a small aquarium full of sea anemones. “Wait a minute!” he exclaimed. “These are poisonous! If the panda comes in here, we could throw these at him!”

  The angry woman glared out the window, still refusing to believe there was any real danger. “I don’t see any panda out there.”

  “Get down!” I warned her. “I’m serious about all this!”

  “If there was really a crazy person dressed as a panda stalking you, then there ought to be a crazy person dressed as a panda out there,” the woman said. “But there’s not. I know what a panda looks like. Trust me, there isn’t one.”

  Olivia, Nick, and I crawled over to the wall, got on our knees, and peeked out the window. The woman stared at us like we were morons the entire time.

  She was right, though. There was no sign of the angry panda.

  We stayed in the check-in building, just to be safe. We waited there until park security showed up. The woman berated us for various things the entire time: We were fools for hiding from an imaginary panda assassin, we ought to get our dolphins checked for rabies, J.J. McCracken ought to cough up a few million dollars for her husband’s pain and suffering, and all the snacks in the park were overpriced.

  Chief Hoenekker led the security brigade. Either the FBI didn’t need his services anymore, or this was a big enough emergency to require his attention. Thankfully, he took me seriously when I explained what had happened. Then he told us to remain in the safety of the office while he and his team searched Dolphin Adventure. When they came up empty there, they swept the entire park for the man dressed as a panda.

  They didn’t find him, though. Or the costume.

  Any sign of my attacker had completely vanished.

  QUESTIONING

  I had come face-to-face with a lot of dangerous animals in my life, both at FunJungle and in Africa, but I’d never been as shaken as I was after confronting the man in the panda suit. Because the animals were never being malicious; they were simply animals. Their behavior, no matter how menacing, was purely instinct. Sometimes, if they were carnivores, they might have viewed me as a potential meal, but many times, the animals were probably feeling just as threatened by me as I was by them.

  However, the man in the Li Ping costume hadn’t been acting on instinct. He hadn’t come after me because I was food. He had done it because he was a bad person, pure and simple.

  After my run-in with him, I just wanted to go home. I wanted to be with my parents, where I’d feel safe.

  Unfortunately, Molly O’Malley wouldn’t let me. She wanted to interrogate me first. Now that I’d been targeted, I was part of her investigation and had to be questioned while the events were still fresh in my mind.

  So, at Molly’s behest, Chief Hoenekker brought me back to the top floor of the administration building. This time, I got to sit in the conference room and be grilled myself. Because I was a minor and obviously rattled, Molly allowed my parents to join me. We sat on one side of the big conference table while Molly and Agent Chen sat on the other. Agent Chen took notes on a legal pad and recorded everything with his phone as well. I still hadn’t heard him say a single word. I was beginning to wonder if he was mute.

  Hoenekker and all the other FunJungle security people were dismissed.

  Juan and Greg, the drivers of the panda truck, were no longer around. I figured they’d finally been allowed to leave, though when I asked Molly about it, she told me that wasn’t any of my business.

  Then she said, “My team has reviewed the footage from Dolphin Adventure and determined that you were telling the truth about being attacked by a man in a panda suit.”

  “Of course he was telling the truth!” Mom exclaimed. “Teddy wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

  “Mrs. Fitzroy, I’m questioning your son, not you,” Molly said sternly. “If you can’t allow me to do that without interruptions, then I’ll have to ask you to leave. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Mom agreed sullenly.

  “You must admit that Teddy’s story sounded bizarre?” Molly asked her.

  “Teddy isn’t a liar, Agent O’Malley,” Mom replied.

  Molly returned her attention to me. “After you knocked over the panda and ran away, he didn’t follow you. Instead, he fled via a separate exit from the dolphin area. We’re still trying to track his movements through the park after that, although it’s not easy.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It involves sifting through the feeds of thousands of separate cameras. And while it normally ought to be easy to track someone in a panda suit, on this particular day, there are a staggering number of other people dressed like pandas at the park.”

  “But the Li Ping costume is still different from what those people are wearing,” I pointed out.

  “True,” Molly conceded, “and yet, there are enough people wearing black and white and face paint and those ridiculous panda ears to make the job of tracking your assailant quite difficult. Therefore, any information you can give us would be greatly appreciated. First of all, what can you tell me about your attacker?”

  “Not much,” I answered. “I couldn’t see him at all in the costume. I only heard him.”

  “What was his voice like?” Molly pressed.

  “Very deep.”

  “Was there anything else notable about it? Was it raspy or gravelly? Did he have a lisp or some other speech impediment?”

  “No speech impediments. But it was kind of gravelly, I guess.”

  “And you’re one hundred percent sure it was a man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he tall or short?”

  There were quite a few FunJungle characters that were so short, only little people could play them: Larry the Lizard and Kazoo the Koala, for example. But the person dressed as Li Ping had loomed over me. “Tall.”

  “How tall?”

  “Six feet, maybe?”

  “And why did this person threaten you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Molly leaned forward across the table and said, “You don’t? Think about it.”

  I did. I tried to replay the events at the dolphin tank over in my mind, though to my surprise, they were already fading. It all had happened quickly, and I’d been very frightened.

  Mom put her hand on mine. Even though it was a small gesture, it calmed me down and helped me think. The events came into focus. “He thought I’d been snooping around the panda exhibit.”

  Molly arched an eyebrow. “You weren’t?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me the truth, Teddy.”

  “I am.”

  “This is a federal investigation,” Molly warned. “If you don’t stop playing games, I’ll ship you off to juvenile hall.”

  Now it was my father who couldn’t keep his silence anymore. “He told you he wasn’t sn
ooping! What point is there in badgering him about it?”

  Molly turned on him angrily. “The point, Mr. Fitzroy, is that despite repeated warnings to steer clear of this investigation, your son has continued to meddle in it. And, from what I understand, he has meddled in several previous mysteries at this zoo as well.”

  “Teddy didn’t meddle in those mysteries,” Dad corrected. “He solved them.”

  “Well, it’s my job to solve this one, not his,” Molly said curtly. “Every time Teddy interferes, it makes my job harder. Now he’s been threatened by a hostile element for snooping around, and I’m supposed to believe that person only thought he was snooping?”

  “That’s the truth,” I protested. “I haven’t been investigating at all. I was in Mom’s office right up until I was asked to go to the dolphin tanks. All I did was walk by Panda Palace on the way there, and there was a rally about Li Ping, so I stopped to watch it. Then Chloé Dolkart, one of the panda keepers, came over, and I talked to her about the rally. That’s when the guy in the panda costume saw me.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Molly asked, still sounding skeptical.

  “Pretty sure,” I replied, then remembered something. “I also saw someone dressed as Li Ping near the panda truck this morning! Right before you got here. Maybe it was the same person! I’ll bet no one was really supposed to be dressed as Li Ping today, since Li Ping wasn’t even here. . . .”

  “That makes sense,” Mom put in. “The park wouldn’t want mascots out representing an animal that had been stolen.”

  “The guy must have seen me this morning,” I said. “Then he recognized me at Panda Palace and followed me to Dolphin Adventure.”

  “So your idea is what, exactly?” Molly inquired. “That this guy was hanging out in a stolen Li Ping costume, just in case someone came snooping around?”

  “Yes. If you want to keep an eye on things here, a mascot costume is a great way to do it. People forget there’s a human inside and say things right in front of you. I know because I wore one once.”

  Molly looked to my parents, apparently unsure if she should believe this.