Poached Read online

  FunJungle had shut The World’s Most Deadly Animals down and sent Freddie back to being Baron Wasteland. Freddie was devastated by the demotion. Ever since, he’d been ambushing tourist groups in the hopes of being recognized.

  “Hey, kids!” he shouted to the school group. “How’s everyone doing today?”

  Not a single kid responded, although the teacher gasped in fright at the sight of Freddie. Close up, the patchwork of scars on his face could be a bit disconcerting.

  Freddie was obviously disappointed, but he soldiered on valiantly. “I can understand your reserve. It’s not every day you get to meet a real celebrity. But you don’t all have to be so shy around me. I don’t bite. Although some of the animals I work with do!” At this, Freddie held up the hand that was missing two fingers.

  The joke had never been that good when Freddie used it onstage. Here it was worse. The sudden reveal that his hand was maimed made several kids scream in terror.

  One boy now actually recognized Freddie, however. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “You’re that crazy guy who gets attacked by animals all the time!”

  “Er, yes,” Freddie said, then whipped out some glossy photographs of himself. “Would you like an autograph?”

  “No,” the boy said. “I want to see Kazoo.”

  The rest of the class eagerly echoed this, and the teacher quickly led us past Freddie, who sagged with disappointment. I almost felt bad for the guy. But then I remembered my father saying that FunJungle had done Freddie a favor by closing his show. If they hadn’t, he would probably have provoked an animal into biting his head off by now.

  The school group hurried into the koala line. From inside the exhibit I could hear the standard thrum of excited tourists, as well as Kristi Sullivan dispensing her standard koala facts over the loudspeaker. (“A newborn koala is only the size of a jelly bean!”) Though I was desperate to get in and see what on earth was going on with Kazoo, I stayed at the rear of the class. A dozen kids were arguing over who got to be first, drawing the attention of all the chaperones, and I figured it was safer to remain off their radar.

  An excited young couple in matching Kazoo T-shirts joined the line right behind me. They seemed to be in their midtwenties and were so excited they couldn’t stand still.

  “Are you here to see the koala?” the woman asked me. As if there might have been another reason I was standing in the koala line.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Us too!” the man exclaimed, as if this were the most incredible coincidence. “We’re so excited. We’ve never seen a koala before.”

  “Except on TV,” the woman added. “We just love them, though. They’re so adorable. We came all the way from Oklahoma City.”

  “Just to see Kazoo?” I asked.

  “And the rest of FunJungle, of course,” the man said. “But Kazoo was the kicker. It’s our honeymoon!”

  “Wow,” I said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks!” the bride chirped. “We really wanted to go to Australia to see wild koalas, but the plane tickets there are crazy expensive. And then FunJungle got Kazoo and started offering all these deals . . .”

  “We’re staying at the FunJungle Caribbean Resort for half price,” the husband told me. “It’s just like being in the real Caribbean, only closer!”

  That was actually the promotional line from the resort’s commercials.

  “It just seemed like fate,” the bride told me. “So we drove down right after our wedding. We only got here last night. The resort even gave us a free bottle of champagne on account of our just getting hitched. And now we’re about to see Kazoo. Our first real koala! I’m so excited!”

  I didn’t know what to say. These two amped-up newlyweds were going to be devastated to learn that Kazoo was gone. Their honeymoon would be ruined.

  There was a FunJungle employee stationed at the door of the exhibit. His job was to wave people in once there was room for them so that the viewing area didn’t get too crowded. He was only a teenager, probably just out of high school, but people still paid attention to him. He waved my class inside.

  All the students filed in ahead of me. I cringed reflexively, expecting to hear them scream.

  Instead I heard them all gasp with delight.

  I entered and gasped myself. Only I was doing it in surprise.

  There was a koala in the exhibit.

  It was difficult to see, since it was tucked into a crook of one of the eucalyptus trees in the back. And, as usual, it was asleep. I couldn’t even see its face, as its head was tucked down between its arms, like a student who’d fallen asleep at his desk in math class. Its big, fuzzy ears poked out, however, which was enough to trigger squeals of delight from the schoolgirls.

  The kids all crowded around the viewing windows, pressing their noses against the glass. “Aw nuts, he’s sleeping,” one boy groused, and many other kids echoed his disappointment.

  “Let’s wake him!” another boy suggested, and then, despite the PLEASE DO NOT BANG ON GLASS sign posted right over his head, he began to bang on the glass.

  Thankfully, a teacher swooped in and grabbed the kid’s wrist after only a few seconds. “Roscoe, if you can’t behave yourself, you’ll have to wait outside,” she hissed.

  “So what?” Roscoe asked. “The koala’s not doing anything anyhow.”

  Kazoo hadn’t so much as flinched at the sound of his glass being banged on, but that wasn’t unusual. A bomb could have gone off in the room and Kazoo probably would have slept through it.

  Kristi Sullivan was in her usual spot, perched at the small podium, rattling off facts as though nothing were unusual. “The baby koala begins its life by consuming only its mother’s milk,” she was saying, “But after a few months it begins to eat pap, which is actually a special form of the mother’s feces.”

  Several of the kids squealed with disgust.

  “I know it sounds terrible,” Kristi told them, “but it’s really a wonderful way for the mother to pass on the microorganisms that will allow her baby to digest eucalyptus leaves.”

  I kept my jacket hood up and my back to Kristi so that she wouldn’t recognize me. Then I pressed my own nose against the glass, staring at the koala, wondering how he could possibly still be there . . . and if he was, how I could be in trouble for stealing him. I stared at the white tufts of Kazoo’s ears, trying to make sense of everything.

  And then, suddenly, I realized exactly what was going on.

  Someone shrieked behind me. I spun around, startled, to find it was only the new bride. She and her husband had just been allowed into the viewing area, and she couldn’t control her excitement. “It’s him!” she screamed. “It’s Kazoo! Get a picture, honey!”

  “I’m already on it!” the groom replied. He had his digital camera out and was firing away.

  “He’s so cute!” the bride crooned. “Isn’t he the most adorable thing ever? I want one!”

  “Me too!” her husband agreed. “A pet koala! How awesome would that be?”

  I started to turn back to the glass, but I wasn’t fast enough. The bride spotted me and rushed over. “Could you take a picture of us and Kazoo?” she asked.

  I considered saying no, as I didn’t want to attract any attention—and the bride and groom were magnets for it. (Since the koala wasn’t doing anything, lots of people were now watching the newlyweds, amused by their over-the-top enthusiasm.) But the bride looked so excited; I couldn’t bring myself to turn her down. “All right,” I said.

  “Thanks so much!” the bride sang. “That is soooo nice of you.”

  The groom handed me his camera and quickly showed me how to work it while his bride kept expounding on how absolutely adorable Kazoo was. “Look at those ears! And that nose! He’s so cute I just want to eat him up!”

  This drew Kristi’s attention, and she swiveled our way. “You’re not alone in finding him lovable,” she said. “Humans have a natural tendency to consider certain physical traits appealing: things like large eyes,
large ears, and large noses. We find our own human babies cute because they have these features—and koalas have them too.”

  Kristi kept looking our way, so I kept the camera to my eye, hiding my face from her. “Let me get a couple pictures,” I said, so I’d have an excuse to keep the camera up. “To make sure I get a good one.”

  “Why, thank you!” the bride said. “What a chivalrous young gentleman!”

  “This attraction to cuteness is actually a very important human trait,” Kristi went on. “When we think something is cute, we have an innate desire to take care of it. And as we all know, babies need a great deal of care. So when you find a koala adorable, in a way, you’re actually feeling the genetic drive that makes humans such great parents.”

  I had now snapped more than a dozen pictures. The groom was beginning to get suspicious, as though he thought I might be plotting to make off with his camera. “Okay,” he said, reaching for it. “I think that’s enough.”

  I glanced over at Kristi. She had finally turned away and was now correcting some tourists who mistakenly believed that koalas were from Austria rather than Australia.

  I handed the camera back to the groom. “Have a great honeymoon,” I told him, and then hurried for the exit. I’d seen all I needed to. Now I needed to get out of KoalaVille while I could. I scurried past Kristi’s podium, where she was explaining, “Australia is a warm continent in the South Pacific, with plenty of eucalyptus for koalas to eat. Whereas Austria is a cold, mountainous country in central Europe.”

  Unfortunately, the exit was blocked. A tourist family was trying to drag their daughter out, but she was digging her heels in. “I don’t want to go!” she cried. “Kazoo hasn’t done anything yet.”

  “We’ve been watching him for an hour!” her frazzled father pleaded. “He’s sleeping. Please, let’s go see some animals that actually move.”

  “Like monkeys!” her desperate mother added. “You love monkeys! And they move all the time.”

  “No,” the little girl demanded. “I want to stay here. Kazoo’s going to wake up soon. I know it.”

  I wouldn’t bet on it, I thought.

  “We’ll come back later,” her father said. “I promise. But for Pete’s sake, let’s leave KoalaVille.”

  He tried to pull his daughter away, but she clamped on to the door frame with both hands and wouldn’t let go.

  I squeezed past them and finally got outside again. After the heat and the crush of humanity inside the exhibit, the chill air and empty walkways felt wonderful.

  Before I could take another step, however, someone grabbed my jacket from behind. The hood came off my head, revealing me to the world.

  “Not so fast, Teddy,” Kristi Sullivan said. “We need to talk.”

  THE EMERGENCY BACKUP KOALA

  Kristi dragged me into her tiny office. Since there was only one chair, she steered me into it. Then she shoved aside a stack of fashion magazines and perched on her desk.

  “I didn’t steal Kazoo,” I said quickly.

  Kristi laughed. “If I thought you had, Teddy, I would have called security.”

  It took me a moment to process that. “So . . . you already know it wasn’t me?”

  “No, I don’t know anything for sure,” Kristi admitted. “I just don’t think you did it. You might be a handful, but you’re not stupid. However, I would like to know what you were doing in the exhibit last night.”

  I explained everything. How Vance Jessup had forced me to play the prank at the shark tank, how Marge had caught us, and how I’d taken refuge in the exhibit. Kristi listened intently to it all. She even laughed a few times.

  When I finished, she stared at me thoughtfully, then said, “You picked the wrong night to hide out here, Teddy. You’re in some serious trouble.”

  “I know,” I said, then asked, “Why’s there a toy koala in the exhibit?”

  Kristi reacted with surprise, but quickly broke into a smile. “I knew you were smart,” she said. “It’s there because we don’t have a real koala anymore.”

  I was annoyed at myself for not realizing the Kazoo on display was a fake right away. After all, the toy koalas for sale in the gift shop looked almost exactly like the real thing; they would look even more real hidden behind a bunch of eucalyptus branches. What had kept me from putting it all together right away was denial: Even though FunJungle had done some sneaky things before, I still couldn’t believe that the park would try to pass off a fake koala as a real one.

  “I know why you’re using a toy,” I said. “What I meant was, why hasn’t the public been told Kazoo is gone?”

  Kristi raised her hands in a gesture of innocence. “I had nothing to do with this. In fact I think it’s terrible. But . . . well, you see, when the kidnapper took Kazoo last night, they put the fake one in the tree to cover their tracks.”

  I sat forward, intrigued. “Really? Did it work?”

  Kristi looked embarrassed. “For a few hours, I guess. No one’s quite sure when Kazoo was taken last night. But the fake was discovered around four thirty this morning.”

  “Who noticed?”

  “Someone in security. I forgot his name. Apparently, the toy koala fell out of the tree. At first, the guard thought it was really Kazoo and that he’d died. He called the vet on night duty, who determined it was a fake.”

  “And so the park decided to just put it right back on exhibit?”

  “Like I said, I don’t agree with this. The decision was made by the head of PR.”

  “Pete Thwacker.” I wasn’t surprised.

  Kristi’s eyebrows raised slightly. “You know him?”

  “Unfortunately.” I’d run into Pete a few times while investigating Henry the Hippo’s death. He was a vain, cheesy man who knew very little about animals and a great deal about how to manipulate the public. I’d even considered him a suspect in Henry’s murder for a while.

  “I’ve been trying to reach him all morning . . .” Kristi was interrupted by the ringing of her office phone. She glanced at the caller ID, then groaned. “Speak of the devil.” She signaled me to be quiet, then put on the speakerphone. “Kristi Sullivan.”

  “Hi, Kristi. This is Pete Thwacker. I understand you’ve called my office a few times. Is something wrong over there?” Pete’s phone voice was extremely dramatic; it was probably a habit from being interviewed on TV all the time.

  “Yes,” Kristi said. “I’d say that lying to the public is wrong.”

  Pete hesitated upon realizing what all this was about, but when he spoke again, he sounded as confident as ever. “Kristi, we’re not lying to the public. We’re merely delaying the reveal of the truth until a more opportune time.”

  “And when might that be?”

  “Hopefully never. I’ve been assured that FunJungle security knows the identity of the perpetrator and is currently engaged in a full-scale manhunt. If they can find him and return Kazoo quickly, then what’s the point of upsetting people with the fact that the koala was ever gone?”

  Kristi sighed, exasperated. “This isn’t right. You can’t pass a toy koala off as the real thing.”

  “First of all, Kristi, it’s not a toy. It’s an emergency backup koala—”

  “It’s a toy. From our very own gift shop.”

  “Second, have any of the guests noticed?”

  Kristi frowned. “No,” she admitted.

  “Well, there you go!” Pete cried. “No harm done! I’m not saying that we here at FunJungle aren’t concerned about the welfare of our animals. We are. In fact that’s our primary directive. But our secondary directive is to provide our guests with a day of wholesome family fun. Frankly, I don’t see how informing them of Kazoo’s disappearance fits into that scenario. Instead it will merely distress them. And to what end? Isn’t it better for all these people—many of whom have come from quite far away to see a koala—to think they’ve seen one? Would you rather they came all this way only to be disappointed?”

  “No,” Kristi said, sounding
less sure of herself now. I couldn’t really blame her. Pete was surprisingly convincing. Even though I was sure his plan was morally wrong, there was a certain bizarre sense to it. “But what if our security doesn’t find Kazoo right away?” Kristi asked. “Or what if they never find him?”

  “I think that’s unlikely,” Pete said. “I have every confidence in our security here.”

  “I don’t,” Kristi told him. “Marge is a lunatic. So let’s suppose she fails. Won’t FunJungle look worse for covering this up?”

  “Only if the public finds out we have covered it up, which they won’t,” Pete said. “As you’ve observed yourself, the emergency backup koala is working perfectly well. And I certainly hope you’re not thinking of spilling the beans.” As Pete said this, his voice gained an unsettling edge of menace.

  “Of course not,” Kristi said.

  “Good,” Pete replied. “Because doing so would be a violation of park policy, which is a fireable offense.”

  Kristi swallowed, looking a little frightened. “And what if one of the guests notices on their own that the emergency backup koala is just a toy?”

  “They won’t—as long as you take the proper steps to prevent such a scenario: Position the koala as far from the viewing windows and behind as much foliage as possible. And shift its location every evening so that it appears to have moved during the night. Frankly, I don’t see that you have anything to complain about. This seems considerably easier than taking care of a real koala.”

  “I like the real koala,” Kristi protested.

  Pete didn’t seem to hear her. “In fact,” he said, “it almost makes you wonder why we bother having real animals here at all.”

  “What?” Kristi asked, aghast.

  Pete either didn’t notice the horror in her voice, or he was too consumed with his own idea to hear it. “It’d be a significant financial savings for us,” he mused. “After all, fake animals don’t require expensive food or medical care—and they don’t poop, pee, or smell bad. Plus, it’s much easier to acquire a fake panda or rhinoceros than a live one.”