Animal Whisperer: Take Back My Life and Love Chapter 8: Perfect, The Crime Expert Is Here!

From the police, Nancy quickly learned the details of the case.

At 7:23 that morning, a keeper had come to the tiger enclosure to let the animals out for the day. Instead, he found a headless female corpse sprawled on the grass. Blood had soaked the ground red.

He had called the police immediately. Investigators checked the victim’s pockets and found her student ID—she was Mandy, a sophomore at Townsville Medical University.

The broken man now kneeling on the ground was her father, Terrance, a construction worker who had worked himself to the bone to support his daughter’s education. He had been called in to identify the body.

Rumors had spread among the gawking crowd outside—that a tiger had mauled someone to death, that the zoo’s director was hiding to avoid responsibility.

Nancy now understood why Terrance had grabbed her in a rage.

At that moment, the keepers wheeled out the tiger cage to let the animal get some sun.

The crowd stared in shock.

The tiger inside was skin-and-bones, ribs sticking out, practically a skeleton. It looked more like a starving stray than a fearsome beast.

Nancy couldn’t help thinking, this poor thing doesn’t even have the strength to gnaw a bone, let alone swallow a human head.

Terrance wiped his face with a trembling hand, then turned to Nancy. "Miss… I’m sorry. I misunderstood you. Please forgive me."

Nancy opened her mouth, but all she could manage was a quiet, "I’m sorry for your loss."

Two officers rubbed their temples. "We’ve already searched the entire tiger enclosure. No murder weapon, no evidence of the killer. This might not even be the primary crime scene. We still don’t know how the body was moved here. And to make things worse, there was a power outage yesterday. The surveillance cameras didn’t capture anything."

Nancy scanned the surroundings. Across from the tiger pen stood the giraffe enclosure.

Two giraffes had stretched their long necks over the fence, gawking at the commotion.

When Nancy’s eyes landed on them, both giraffes quickly turned away in unison, chewing leaves with exaggerated focus.

The shorter one sounded flustered. "Hey, she's looking at us!"

The taller one just kept chewing. "I told you not to stretch that far! Look what you did! You caught her attention!"

The shorter one was so shaken it didn’t realize it wasn’t chewing leaves at all—only air. "Is she the new zookeeper? I hope she's not gonna be mean to us."

They whispered to each other while pretending to eat.

Unaware that Nancy could understand every word.

Her heart skipped. It wasn’t just the squirrel—she could understand giraffes too.

Could she now comprehend all animal speech?

Her fist clenched with excitement. If that were true, she might be able to question the animals. Someone had brought a body into this zoo—surely some sharp-eared creature had noticed something.

Just as she was about to approach the giraffes, heavy footsteps echoed behind her.

The two officers brightened instantly. "Perfect, the crime expert Professor Jack Summers is here!"

Nancy turned, startled.

Jack strode toward them in a crisp white shirt, a luxury watch gleaming on his wrist, exuding authority. Four detectives trailed behind him.

When he saw Nancy, his face darkened. "You? What are you doing here? Are you following me?"

A nearby officer quickly explained, "Mr. Summers, this is Nancy, the new director of Loren Zoo. She just started today—bad luck that she ran into this mess."

Jack let out a sharp laugh. "Figures. Trouble follows wherever you go."

Nancy rolled her eyes. "Better than someone who almost let an A-level fugitive slip through their fingers last night."

His face turned the color of iron.

Wordlessly, he pulled on a white coat, snapped on gloves, and stepped past the tape.

His movements were sharp, professional, commanding. He bent over the corpse with practiced precision.

"Time of death is less than twenty-four hours."

"The cut on the neck is jagged, repeatedly hacked."

Running his fingers over the torn skin, he continued, "This wasn’t done with a professional tool. More likely a household knife, sawing back and forth."

He motioned for a magnifying glass, examining the wound edges.

In moments like this, Jack radiated a different kind of aura—sharp, focused, commanding respect.

Nancy had once admired that. But now, her heart whispered: My brother Simon is even better.

"Look at these serrated skin flaps. The killer cut back and forth at least twenty times. This isn’t the work of a professional assassin. It looks like…"

He hesitated, pulling off his gloves, revealing lean, defined fingers. "Like someone enjoying the process."

Suddenly his gaze caught on a curved mark on the victim’s left shoulder. "This wound…"

He flipped through case files on his phone. His eyes narrowed. "It matches the injuries from last year’s unsolved headless corpse case in University Town. Same blunt cuts. Same method."

Jack straightened, addressing the officers. "The head hasn’t been found yet?"

They shook their heads. "We didn’t locate it anywhere in Loren Zoo."

Another officer hurried up. "Mr. Summers, we checked the paths around the zoo. The cameras are sparse. All we caught was a shadow, about 5'7" tall. No other details."

Jack’s brow furrowed. His voice rang with authority. "Conduct a full sweep. Find that head. Only then can we confirm if the two murders are the work of the same killer."

Nancy’s heart jolted.

A serial killer who decapitated his victims? Was that what they were dealing with?