Criminal Minds: Danika

Stripes

Derek's POV:
"What the hell is that?" I ask as I walk into the room and see something almost unrecognizable.

"What's left of Mr. Strull." Gideon mumbles as he goes over to the half torn apart body.

There's deep gashes on the right side of his face, bite marks on his neck. His torso is torn apart and his one leg is barely hanging on. The other leg is just gone and one of his arms has been stripped of it's flesh.

I get an eerie feeling when I see multiple stuffed, dead animals above us. It's almost like they're looking down at us and the body. There's lions, leopards, Cheetahs, even a crocodile above our heads.

"Why were we called here?" I ask, seeing this is clearly an animal attack.

"Because, Mr. Strull here was a poacher. Mainly big cats, especially lions. Plus, the Russian and US government was trying to track him down after he was reported to have tried to kill a tiger in Siberia." Hotch answers.

"Guess he wanted to complete the collection." I mumble about the stuffed animals.

"By the looks of it, a Siberian tiger did this. They're the largest tiger. Some male tigers have been said to weigh up to 900 pounds. They can also get up to 12 feet in length, and they can jump up to or even more than 20 feet in the air, vertically. Their legs are so strong that some people say that they can stay standing even after they've died-." Reid starts ranting.

"What makes you think this was a tiger?" Hotch interrupts his lesson.

"Like I said before, they are extremely large and-." Reid starts saying.

"But how do you know it's a tiger? Not a lion or a cheetah?" I scoff.

"Because he wasn't completely eaten, and a cheetah couldn't do this damage, trust me." Reid says simply and I furrow my brows.

"Lions kill to eat, as do tigers. Most of the time anyway. But there are studies that suggest that Tigers might actually be capable of acting out of revenge. There was a poacher back in 1995, in Russia, who injured a tiger and took the rest of it's kill. The tiger hunted the man down, found his cabin and waited there for him to return. While it waited for him, it destroyed everything that had the man's scent on it. And when the man finally got back a few days later, the tiger attacked and killed him. It ate him too, but researchers suggest that it might've been more of an after thought. That the tiger wouldn't have done all of that just to get a meal." Reid explains and I can't help but feel horrified.

"He was obviously killed here, the blood spatter tells that story..." Elle says looking at the blood.

"So, where's the tiger now?" Gideon asks the question everyone's thinking.

————

"What do you mean there are no missing tigers from zoos or sanctuaries?" I ask Garcia over the phone.

"No one has reported any missing big cats nearby. I even widened the search and nada." Garcia answers.

"Alright, is there any possible way you can look into possible sightings?" I ask, pacing back and forth.

"I can try, I mean, this is Texas..." She chuckles as if she knows something I don't.

"What does that mean?" I ask feeling a bit scared.

"Texas is a state where a lot of people own tigers." She says as if it's a known fact.

"Hey Reid, Garcia says that Texas has tigers in it." I scoff not believing it.