Page 60 of Tiger Queen

I let my hand rest on his chest. “Have you ever done that before?”

“Nope. But there’s a first time for everything.”

We grinned widely at the idea.

But it was another type of footage that would give us trouble that day.

“Hey, guys?” David called from across the clearing. “We’ve got a problem.”

27

David

Dad had always been a severely paranoid man. Throughout his life he believed there was a constant plot to take him down, to destroy his life and the zoo. He saw enemies wherever he looked, which was why he wanted the three of us to continue working at the zoo permanently. Because his three sons were the only people he could truly trust.

We had always laughed off his paranoia. But it turned out he was right.

All six of us gathered in the visitor’s center after the zoo was closed. I placed my laptop on the ticket counter so that everyone could see.

“What is this?” Rachel asked.

Brandon frowned. “It looks like a Facebook post…”

I hit the spacebar to play the video on the post. There was no sound. The video was shaky camera footage of the interior of our food preparation building. Blood and viscera were all over the tables and floor. The camera zoomed in on a chunk of half-cut meat in front of the band saw. Then it swung over to the industrial freezers along the wall. One door opened, revealing tubs of chicken parts. The camera zoomed in on a tub of chicken hearts, with a date written on the outside in sharpie.

“Someone broke into the food preparation building and took this video,” I announced. “They’re claiming the footage reveals unhealthy conditions in our zoo, and spoiled meat being fed to the animals.”

“What!” Rachel exclaimed. “We re-use those big plastic tubs. The date written on the outside is old, but the meat is fresh!”

“I know,” I told her.

“Don’t you guys, like, clean that building every day?” Mary Beth asked.

“We do,” I agreed. “This footage was taken while we were still preparing the food for the day. Of course the room is still messy.”

“When was this taken?” Anthony asked.

“This morning.”

“How do you know?” Jake said skeptically.

I rewound the video. “Because this morning, during the final batch of food trays, the band saw broke. See how it’s crooked? That’s why that final piece of meat was left out. The saw broke while I was in the middle of cutting it.”

Silence fell over the group.

“Maybe a visitor sneaked in?” Mary Beth suggested.

“Not if we had finished feeding the animals,” Rachel said. She reached into her pocket, checked her phone, and then put it away. “I took the last batch out before the zoo opened.”

“Not exactly,” I replied. “Even though we finished feeding the animals before nine, I went to the equipment shed to search for a backup band saw. I didn’t return and clean up the food prep building until after the zoo was open.”

“It was like, nine-thirty when we cleaned it up,” Brandon suddenly chimed in.

“You know the exact time?” I asked with surprise.

He blinked as everyone swung to face him. “Uh. Yeah. I know because six-thirty is when the morning Los Angeles surf report is posted. Which is, like, nine-thirty our time. I was refreshing the page when you hit me up on the walkie-talkie and asked me to meet you to start cleaning.” He held up his palms. “I’m not complaining, man. It’s all good. I checked the report when we were done. They had some gnarly conditions today.”

I chuckled. I had pegged Brandon as a surfer bro type of guy, but finding out that he really did care about surfing was funny.

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