The tiger didn’t watch anyone, didn’t see their phones being pulled out of back pockets, didn’t see a mother gasp and hold her child back, didn’t even see the car that slammed its brakes to avoid entering the same row as the tiger. The tiger simply walked across the Target parking lot, as if it had walked across that particular stretch of concrete a million times before. Helena kept trying to wrap her head around it to convince herself that what she was seeing was actually a large dog instead of a tiger. But, it was a tiger, and there was no amount of convincing her brain could do to overcome this fact.
The employee next to her, a teen boy who had been on his way out to gather up stray shopping carts, asked, “Are you seeing this, too?” and she nodded, though she wasn’t sure that the question was even intended to have been said aloud. The tiger continued its stroll, as it reached the edge of the parking lot that gave way into the darkness of the back alleys, it turned to the crowd and gave one long stare at the assembled humans before it slipped into the shadows.
When she got home, Helena told her husband, Thierry, “There was a tiger at Target.”
He frowned, “A tiger-like ‘roar’?” He held up his hands with fingers curled into mock claws.
“Yes, a real tiger. What other kind of tiger would there have been?”
He shrugged, “I thought maybe it was a new phrase, like cougar for older women.”
She laughed. “No, it was a real, roar tiger. I think it must have escaped from a zoo?”
The closest zoo, though, was fifty miles away. Something she thought about later, as she gave the baby a bath. She looked up how far tigers could roam and discovered that it was thousands of miles. When they needed to, when food was scarce, when survival was all that mattered. Its paws must have hurt after all that walking.
On the local news that night, the tiger is not the first story. Instead, it is about a local girl who went missing a few days before. A photo of her, a smiling teen, filled the screen. Annamarie Diaz. Last seen on a Friday night at the movies with her friends, she had walked home by herself after and never made it back to her parents, three days before and only now on the news. She could be anywhere in three days, Helena thought.
The newscaster switched from a look of concern to one of surprise, “A local store got a surprise visitor when a tiger appeared in the parking lot.”
Cellphone footage showed the tiger marching through the parking lot. A swagger to its walk. “The public is advised not to approach the tiger if you see it, but you should call animal control immediately. Let’s get this poor guy back to his home!”
***
Helena took the baby for a walk in the morning and saw someone posting a sign-up on a tree in the park. It was a picture of the missing girl. A different photo than the one used on the news. The girl looked younger in the missing poster, her hair in pigtails, a smile that showed off the braces on her teeth. Helena wondered what her favorite subject in school was, who she went to with her secrets.
Helena didn’t work missing people cases. Her work tended to be finding cheating spouses, trailing misused money, occasionally determining where exactly a deadbeat dad was living so child support could be rounded up. It was easy enough work, if depressingly human. Most of it was using the internet well and understanding how people worked.
“She looks so young,” someone said from behind her, and Helena jumped. She turned and a woman about her age was also looking at the poster.
Helena nodded, “Just a kid.”
“What a world we live in,” the woman said.
“Maybe, she’s just a little lost,” Helena said. Recognizing the naivety of her statement but unwilling to not say it.
“No one’s ever just lost,” the woman said. Her face was sadder than anything else, not judging Helena for the words.
But Helena had been lost once. She remembered someone grabbing her, throwing her into the trunk of their car, the trunk closing her into darkness. But her father was a mechanic, and her sitting in his shop with him, as he talked her through what was wrong with a vehicle, had once showed her, in a moment of foresight or maybe just a moment of knowing, that some things should always be taught, some things should always be feared, had showed her where to look in a trunk for an emergency latch. The waiting for the car to slow, the throwing of her body out, the tumble and roll. The pain, her hands raw and bleeding, her body bruised from the tumble, but she knew she could survive, and that was enough to keep her going. It was evening, and, in the backroads, it was dark enough for her to scramble into the trees and not be found. She had hidden, and then she had run and run and run. And then she’d been lost, safe but lost. So deep in the woods, so far in the dark. She was twelve, tall for her age, everyone always said how mature she was, but she was so small in the dark all alone.
As Helena walked home from the park, pushing the baby in her stroller, a large bird flew low overhead. She looked up but didn’t recognize its type. Something large and dark-winged.
***
On the news, that night, the anchor discussed with a local wildlife specialist whether the tiger could be linked to the missing girl.
“When a wild animal gets hungry enough, anything is possible,” the specialist said. “But, in most likelihood, an animal from the zoo will know to not attack a human and will be naturally wary of doing so.”
“But, it could?” the anchorman said.
“I mean, anything’s possible,” the specialist said.
The anchor turned back to the camera. “Chilling to think that such a fate could have befallen Annamaria.”
Helena thought that there were more chilling fates. She flicked the news off. Thierry was already asleep, as was the baby, and the house had the kind of silence only achieved when someone was awake and alone. She walked to the living room window and peered out into the darkness, wondering if the tiger might be lurking in the rose bushes, crouched low, waiting. She’d read that the force of their paw swiping out could feel like 10,000 pounds. What was that like? To know that you could crush anything coming at you?
When falling asleep some nights, Helena would remember falling asleep in the dark of the woods, remembered waking to something sniffing her. She’d opened her eyes in the darkness, moonlight barely filtering through the thickness of the treetops, and something had been crouched over her. The warm breath on her face. In the tiniest bit of light, she’d outlined its shape. Something large and wild. A wolf. Alone in the dark in the woods. Or not alone. The wolf was there, after all.
***
As she worked the next day, Thierry taking the baby off to grand adventures of the park and a café, Helena mostly looked over receipts. She was supposed to be determining if a new young fiancée was swindling her much older husband-to-be. His children, from a first marriage, seemed pretty confident that there was some kind of wrongdoing. She always has new designer purses; our father would never have bought such things for her. Helena had warned them that people change for love, for sex, to chase a youth they missed out on, but they were paying her, and she wasn’t going to turn that away.
When her phone blared, the long, drawn-out buzzing of an alert, she checked it to see that another girl had gone missing. Alice Smith, age 15, was last seen wearing blue jean shorts and a pink tank top. Helena could picture the outfit in her mind—the summer uniform that she and her friends had worn on days they were running about town, going to the mall to buy oversized coffee shakes from Gloria Jean. Thinking this is so grown-up. When she’d had her first cup of actual coffee years later, she’d literally jumped at the bitterness and acidity of the first sip.
What had Alice Smith been doing? Walking in the park, heading to a friend’s house, going to the mall? Her whole life stretched in front of her. 15.
Helena took a walk for her mid-day break. It was her preferred break: go to the café, get something a little sweet so it felt like a treat, and then walk the long way back home. Part of the long way back home involved walking across a little pedestrian bridge that she had always loved. It crossed over a creek, which always got thick with water that time of year. Sometimes, she would spot a turtle or a migrating heron. Always the sun would sparkle off the water.
As she crossed, she stopped with her iced mocha to watch the water for a bit. The problem with computer work was how much of her time was sitting, staring into the glow of a screen, and if she didn’t have breaks, have the outside, by the end of the day she was headache-filled and grouchy.
As she leaned over the bridge, she saw something rustling in the bushes near the creek bed. Too big to be a turtle. Within a few moments, an alligator stepped forward. She had never seen an alligator there and was fairly certain that this wasn’t even their habitat. The large gator had golden green skin, the impossibly long toothy jaws, its muscular legs bringing it forward in what Helena could only think of as a saunter. As she watched the alligator, she saw something from the corner of her eye on the other side of the creek.
The tiger stood, staring at its own reflection in the water. It looked up at her, once, and Helena made eye contact with it. The tiger’s eyes a startling green. The tiger stepped into the water; then it began to swim across. She swung her gaze back to the alligator, worried. The alligator slipped into the water, no splash, barely a ripple with its smooth movement. It began to swim toward the tiger. In the middle of the creek, the two animals paused, face to face, for a moment. Taking the other in. Then, they both kept swimming in opposite directions. When the tiger stepped onto the creek bed, it shook the water from its coat, sending spray into the air, and then strode into the bushes.
Helena thought of calling someone, but who would she call? Animal control seemed more likely to hurt them than to help them. Eventually, she settled on continuing her walk home.
***
Sometimes, if she was alone at night or walking in the dark, Helena would feel the panic creeping up her skin. It always started as an itch at the base of her skull, a tingling in her fingertips, and she’d pick up her pace on a walk or double-check the locks at home. Then she’d feel nauseous, some sweeping wave of sadness that she couldn’t place, and then, always, an anger like she’d never imagined. Rage. She’d ball her hands into fists, shaking, she’d want to sweep things off the counter, punch the walls, fight the dark.
In her mind, she was never not escaping from that trunk. Feeling someone grab her. The darkness. The pain of hitting the road, she still had scars on the palms of her hands, her knees.
And all she wanted was to break that person apart, whoever it was, to slam her fists against them until they were reduced to blood and skin and brokenness.
The wolf had eventually laid down, curled around her, resting its snout on her shoulder. She had run her fingers through its fur, petting it until she fell asleep.
In the morning, with the full light, the wolf had stood up and ran off into the trees. She’d tried to follow, but eventually, she’d seen the road, seen a mile marker she recognized, knew she could get home.
***
Two weeks passed with no sign of the missing girls. A few sightings of the tiger, once it even walked down one of the suburban streets, though no one but Helena seemed to have seen the alligator.
The young fiancée seemed to have spent a lot of money in the past few months. But nothing pointed to it being any kind of financial abuse of her partner. Helena was about ready to tell the children that she was throwing in the towel.
Her last resort was a trip to the mall. The young woman seemed to go there every Saturday, spent money on the same strawberry-banana smoothie each time. Maybe Helena would catch her kissing some other man, some infidelity that would give the man’s children some peace, some feeling of righteousness in their dislike of the fiancée.
Thierry took the baby to visit his parents for the day, so she was free to sleuth, as he called it. She wished she was an actual sleuth, finding people who needed to be found, avenging wrongs, but she knew she’d never be able to take certain cases, to see a parent’s fear written in their eyes.
The mall was bustling. Teenagers out and about, families with little children in tow, holding hands tightly so no little ones would flee to the toy store. Helena couldn’t say for certain why the man stood out. He was remarkably average. Probably early thirties or mid with a good skincare routine, wearing well-fitted jeans and a tight t-shirt. White. Coifed hair. She’d seen so many men who looked like this, he could’ve stepped from an ad in a magazine. But something in him sent a pang up her back, as if her hackles were rising.
She watched him talk to a young girl, probably 14 or 15, wearing a yellow sundress. Unlikely to be his daughter. The girl blushed and laughed at something he said. He leaned too close to her.
Helena tried to make her way towards them, through the crowds, but then someone shrieked. She spun to see a four- or five-year-old escaped from his mother’s grip and racing off. Helena quickly grabbed him, and the mother came up to her.
“He is such a beast!” The woman was red with embarrassment. “I don’t know why I screamed like that. I just.”
Helena waved a hand to show it was nothing, smiled. “Totally, get it.”
She watched the woman re-wrangle her son, and then she turned back. But the man was gone. The girl in the sundress was still there, putting something into her pocket. But, at least, alone. Safe.
Helena made her way to the smoothie shop. She spied on the young fiancée, sipping her smoothie at a table. She was alone, reading a book. Sitting at the table, pink smoothie next to her, hunched over a book, she looked even younger than her 25 years. Helena could imagine the young woman as a young girl, lost in a world of daydreams about whatever story she was reading.
Helena was done with the case. She left the mall and decided to walk home rather than catch the bus. Thierry would be out a few more hours, and the several mile walk would do her brain good.
The path back from the mall would take her through the woods and then alongside the creek. It was funny how much she didn’t realize she missed nature until she was out in it. Suddenly each tree was an old friend welcoming her.
Helena got lost in her thoughts until she heard the man’s voice.
“Where are you exactly? Let me come get you. We can walk together. A pretty girl shouldn’t have to walk alone,” he said into his phone. It was the man from the mall.
Helena felt her body tense. Her muscles aching into rigidity.
“I’m almost there, beautiful. See you soon,” he said.
Helena was far enough back that she could hear him, but he hadn’t yet noticed that someone was walking behind him. Probably, the path wasn’t walked often. Mostly, he probably walked alone.
Helena quickened her pace. She was going to follow him as far as she had to, keep him from doing anything. But, then he stopped, turned around at a speed she didn’t like.
He plastered a grin on his face when he saw her, a front of undangerous, and waved a hand. “Sorry, please go ahead. I’m enjoying my stroll.”
She didn’t pass by him. “I’m enjoying mine as well. Don’t worry, you can keep going.”
His phone chirped from his pocket.
He clenched his jaw, a small gesture that many probably wouldn’t have noticed, a flash of displeasure.
Helena wondered if there was something nearby she could grab if she needed to. She would fight like hell if she needed to. She saw a few small sticks, some small rocks, nothing suitable. Then, she saw the tiger. In the tree branches, it almost disappeared into the foliage. But she saw the flash of golden fur. The green eyes.
The chirp from his phone again, and she turned from the tiger. The man was closer to her. He must have stepped closer. He reached into his pocket, for his phone or something, and Helena thought she should run. But she didn’t.
She had run so much.
He was pulling something out of his pocket. But she never saw what it was, the tiger leaping down was on him before she could even comprehend what was happening really. The man screamed, knocked off his feet. On the forest floor, he struggled with the tiger. Its paw across his face, and then it bit down into his neck. Helena saw his body twitch for a moment. Then nothing.
She didn’t realize she had crouched, her arms in front of her protectively, until the tiger walked toward her. Paws almost silent across the ground.
It stopped in front of her, sat back on its haunches, and they stared at one another. Helena reached a trembling hand out, touched its fur. Warm, soft. The tiger sniffed her once. Then it turned and walked back to the body. It closed its teeth around the man’s arm and pulled him into the bushes.
Helena sat there, alone, for a moment longer.
Then, she stood up and continued to find her way home.
