Animal Whisperer: Take Back My Life and Love Chapter 7: The Headless Corpse

"What? Bankrupt?"

Nancy almost dropped her phone.

"Then why did they hire me as director?"

She suddenly recalled Mr. Henry’s frantic rush earlier. Don’t tell her—he’d been running away.

Looking up at Loren Zoo, she saw the weathered wooden sign at the entrance, its paint peeling with age.

But at the ticket booths, a long line of people craned their necks to see inside.

"This is what they call bad attendance? It’s a weekday morning and there’s already a crowd."

"Those online reports must’ve been planted by rivals. Drama-mongering, nothing more."

Relief loosened the knot in her chest. She clipped on her badge and walked toward the staff entrance.

What she didn’t expect was the reaction. The moment the crowd saw the badge, they started shouting. "The zoo director is here!"

Nancy froze.

Wait—these people weren’t here to see animals. They were here to see her?

The young woman at the ticket window gawked at Nancy’s unfamiliar face, then spotted the badge on her chest. She immediately started signaling frantically with her eyes.

Before Nancy could make sense of it, a middle-aged man charged out of the crowd and seized her by the collar.

"So you finally showed yourself."

His face was twisted with rage, veins bulging. "Your zoo’s tiger killed my daughter, Mandy. You’re responsible for her death!"

"Pay up!"

What the hell? She’d been on the job for less than two minutes and was already in trouble?

Nancy waved her hands desperately. "You’ve got the wrong person. I just started today. I don’t even know what happened yet."

"I don’t care if you’re new!" the man bellowed, eyes bloodshot. He jabbed a finger at her badge. "It says you’re the director, doesn’t it?"

And just like that, Nancy realized why Mr. Henry had been in such a hurry to hand everything over. He wasn’t welcoming her—he was dumping the blame.

She wanted to cry. She’d been tricked into carrying the burden.

Unable to break free of the man’s grip, she pleaded, "At least let me see what happened first."

Around them, curious onlookers gossiped noisily.

"That tiger was vicious—bit the girl’s head clean off!"

"Yeah, and they still haven’t found the head. Maybe it’s in the tiger’s stomach!"

So that was it. These weren’t paying visitors at all—they were here for the spectacle.

Nancy frowned. As a trained veterinarian, she knew big cats’ feeding habits. Tigers preferred fatty organs and muscle tissue. They didn’t swallow entire heads—they crushed the skull to get to the brain.

Her tone was steady. "Calm down, everyone. The chances of a tiger swallowing an entire head are very low."

"Calm down?" The father’s fury only spiked. "Fine—come and see the mess your zoo has made!"

He dragged her through the gate. Behind them, people pressed against the turnstiles, buzzing with impatience.

Nancy turned her head just long enough to shout, "If you want to see the excitement, buy a ticket first!"

If there really had been a death inside, business would tank soon enough. Might as well sell some tickets while the buzz lasted—call it hazard pay.

The furious man pulled her straight to the tiger enclosure.

Yellow tape was already strung up.

Several police officers stood inside, photographing the scene around a headless female corpse.

Nancy’s pupils shrank at the sight.

Blood soaked the ground around the body. The neck was torn open, the head missing, the jagged wound raw and horrifying.

She forced herself to stay calm. She’d seen gore before in her line of work.

The grieving father shouted at the police. "Officers, I found the person in charge of the zoo!"

The officers turned, surprised to see someone so young—and so composed.

Nancy raised her phone quickly. "Officers, it’s true, today is my very first day. Look—here’s my hiring email, sent this morning."

One officer glanced at the screen and then coaxed the man. "Terrance, don’t take it out on her. She’s just a scapegoat."

The forensic investigator stood then, voice grim. "Judging by the wound on this corpse, she wasn’t killed by a tiger."

"This was done with a blunt instrument, the head hacked off slowly. The cut isn’t clean at all."

His words carried weight. "This is murder."

Nancy’s stomach tightened.

Her first day on the job, and the zoo had turned into a crime scene. Was she cursed with detective-magnet bad luck?

Terrance’s face collapsed in disbelief. His grip on Nancy slackened, hands falling uselessly to his sides before he buried his face and crouched to the ground.

"No… Mandy was always so kind, so gentle. How could she have provoked a killer?"