Chapter One: Three
When she was three, a man came and stolen her from her family while they watched the chimps play on a visit to the Zoo. The man drugged her and hid her away. He then acted all concerned and assisted the police, Zoo employees, her family and their friends in their search on the grounds and parking lot knowing all the time where the little girl was hidden. He was not worried that she would be found, as he knew the Zoo and all its secret places that even the other employees did not know about. He also knew that the cameras would not show what he did and because of the animals in their cages the police could not bring in the search dogs to look for her. They would use the dogs outside of the Zoo. He hid a joyous feeling under the mask of a concerned person, all the while counting the minutes until he could be alone with her.
As the day lengthen into night the police upon review of the tapes determined that a person or persons unknown had taken the little girl and had left the Zoo and its parking lot. The family and their friends left in their grief and sorrow to start the waiting game at home. The Zoo employees resumed their duties and set about shutting down the Zoo for the night. He sat in his office and kept up the appearance of work while the few night staff, comprising of three cleaning crew, two vet assistants (VA) and one night watchman got settled in their jobs. By nine the cleaning crew had completed their jobs and were getting ready to leave, the two vet assistants were busy keeping watch over a pregnant gorilla ready to give birth and the night watchman settled in his shack for the night.
None of the night staff thought it was strange that he was still there as he often put in long hours in the management of the Zoo to find ways to keep it running with all the budget cuts and reduced staff. He was proud of the way he ran the Zoo and kept all the animals healthy and well fed. He thought that every once in a while he was allowed a special treat and when he saw the little girl he knew she was his. With his body tingling in anticipation he walked toward the closed section of the Zoo with its maze of old cages and locked workrooms.
Reaching his designation, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a flashlight an old key and unlocked the door. He walked in to the building which use to serve as the animal morgue was used now as storage for files and old furniture. He went to the last room down the dark hall and unlocked the door there. He shut the door and turned on the light as he did not worry about the light being seen from outside as there were no windows. This room was the room where the vets use to examine the dead animals and still had the large steel table mounted in the center of the room. He walked over to the table and looked down at the little girl who was just starting to wake up from being drugged.
She looked up the man and sat up rubbing her eyes. "Where's Mommy?"
Looking at the child, he reached out and touched her long, silky white hair, which seem to glow with a light of its own. She looked up at him and he noticed that she had golden eyes, almost cat like. "How lovely," he murmured as he bent down to smell her hair.
"Don't!" She cried, squeaking away from him pushing with her tennis shoes along the top of the table toward the edge.
He grabbed her tiny little right arm hard, making her cry out and jerked her back to him. She started squirming and hitting at him. She managed to rake her left-hand fingers across his face marking it with five bleeding cuts from her sharp nails. He yelled in pain and let go of her, but grabbed her again before she could jump off the table. This time she bit him hard on his hand wrapped around her arm. He yelled again and backhanded slapped her. She fell back to the table as she started to cry.
"Shut up! I was going to be nice to you but no you had to be a little bitch!" He starting tearing her clothes off her with one hand while the other hand had a handful of hair holding her down on the table.
"Mommy! Mommy! I want Mommy!" She cried as the man ripped away her clothes leaving her fully nude.
"SHUT UP! Mommy's not here!" He shouted at her still holding her down by her hair while he fumbled with his pants. "You little bitch you're just ruining every thing! Why couldn't you been as nice as you looked and this would have been just perfect!"
He got up on the table full aroused and was trying to gain entrance to her tiny immature body when the door fell open and a large white tiger jumped into the room. The man screamed in fear and fell off the table pulling the child off the table also. He let go of the girl as he scooted backwards toward the wall while the tiger growling stalked toward the girl. It stopped by the girl and licked her face like an overgrown house cat. The girl hugged the big cat around its huge neck. "Nice kitty."
Then she looked at the cowering man and pointed at him. "Bad man hurt me – kitty get."
The big cat looked at the man and he started to shake as it approached him with all its wicked looking teeth showing in a cat grin. He looked at the little girl and noticed that her eyes were glowing just like the tiger's in the light and those sharp little nails were not nails but were in fact tiny claws. She smiled at him showing sharp white fangs as the tiger jump him and started tearing him apart. The last thing he heard before all went dark was the girl saying softly, over the sounds of his own flesh being ripped to shreds, was "Nice kitty. Hurt bad man like he hurt me. Good kitty."
The next morning the two VAs leaving the Zoo's hospital after watching the gorilla all night were walking by the big cats cages, when one of them noticed that the oldest female white tiger had a cub by her side. Gesturing she said, "When did Lady D have a cub?"
As both moved toward the cage to get a better look, the other said, "She should not have a cub, she was taken off the breeding program after her last cub was borne deformed last year."
"Well there is a cub in there now. You better go and get Dr. Mueller as this is really strange." The male VA ran back to the hospital to tell Dr. Mueller and his staff, while she knelt down out side the cage to see if she could get a closer look at the cub resting between the forelegs of the mother under its large head.
"Well, Lady D, you certainly have surprised us all. How in the world did you manage…" her voice trailing off as the cub stood up on two legs revealing that it was not a cub but a nude white haired little girl. "Oh my goodness, you are the missing girl. Come to me please."
"No!" The little girl stamped one of her tiny feet and sat down again by the tiger. The tiger licked the girl's head and the VA heard the rumbling purr that the big cat made when it was contented.
As VA watched and waited, she noticed that with the way the light and shadows were playing across the cage the little girl's skin appeared to be white fur and black strips. She was thinking about how odd that was and that it must be an optical illusion. As the other VA returned with Dr. Mueller and his staff, the illusion faded and the little girl's skin was just skin. Dr. Mueller look one look and ordered one of his staff to go call the police and for the other to go get a trank gun and a blanket. Within a few minutes the staffer who went to call the police was back.
"They are on their way as are the parents."
The other arrived with the gun case and a blanket. He laid the case down on the ground and opened it. After loading the gun, he handed it over to Dr. Mueller.
The Doctor looked at the tiger and the little girl and saw that the great cat was not trying to harm the girl. "I think it might be prudent to wait for the police and the parents before we trank the cat." Seeing the questioning looks from the others, he clarified, "If I was to trank the cat with the girl so close, the cat might lash out. If the girl was to come over here the cat stayed where it is, there might not be a need to trank it."
Everyone agreed. Dr. Mueller passed the gun back to staffer who had brought the gun and was given the blanket. He looked at the girl who was laying down with her head on one of the tiger's big paws sucking on her thumb. He noticed that the girl's eyes were the same golden color as the tiger's and she was watching the group with the same keen stare that the cat had. He felt a chill as he wondered what was that girl – he buried the thought that she might be a mutant, after all it was not his place to worry about that it was the parents. They all waited as time creaped by, watching the great cat treat the girl like one of her cubs.
After what seemed a long time both the police and the parents arrived. The mother screamed when she saw where her child was. The startled tiger jumped up and started to growl. One of the policemen raised his rifle up and was about to fire when Dr. Mueller shouted "Do not shoot! We can trank it!"
The girl saw her Mother, jumped up and ran to the front of the cage. "Mommy here" she called. She squeezed her tiny form through the bars and ran to her Mother. Dr. Mueller gave the Mother the blanket to cover the child.
"Mommy, bad man hurt me. Nice Kitty came and hurt bad man."
With horror both the parents, the police captain and Dr. Mueller realized what the child was saying. The police captain looked at the parents and said, "We need to take your child to the ER and have her checked out. I will have SVU meet you there as they will have some questions."
While the captain was speaking to headquarters to request that SVU be sent to the ER, the ambulance arrived and very soon thereafter the girl and her parents were heading for the hospital. The police captain looked around and asked, "Who is in charge. The CSIs will need to go into that cage and collect evidence."
"The Zoo's manager is William Weiss but no one has been able to locate him, so I quess in his absence I would be in charge. We can move the tiger to another cage." Replied Dr. Mueller.
"They will also need to comb the tiger."
"It can be tranked."
Several days passed and the Zoo was started to get back to normal despite the disappearance of the manager. All the TV news crews had come and gone once it had been discovered that the girl had not been harmed and neither had the tiger, which the girl had claimed to have saved her from the "Bad Man". A work crew assigned to work one of the old closed up buildings upon entry noticed a bad smell.
"Great a rat must of gotten in and died." As they walked down the hall in search of the source of the smell.
"You got to be kidding! It would have to be a whole nest of the vermin to smell this bad!" They came upon the broken down door and glanced in the room beyond. When they saw what was there they turned and ran. Very soon there after the police came, the CSIs came and the remains of one William Wiess and the rags of a little girl's dress was discovered and the mystery of who the pervert was had been solved.
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