Ted cleared us back in service. The tension and harsh edge he’d presented for the entire ordeal with the trailer mob disappeared as soon as we left the jail. He cheerfully asked me if I had any questions. I told him that I didn’t I was still sorting it all out. He called the East Zone deputy to get an update on the eleven year old girl. They’d learned a few things, that the girl’s mother had passed away a year before, that she’d stayed with her grandparents since then and only recently moved back in with her father. There was also mention of a boyfriend. This was looking more and more like a runaway than an abduction, though Ted and I agreed that one may not end up as being more desirable than the other.
Another call came up, roughly in the same area as we’d taken the first call. Citizens had reported a woman in sweat pants coming out of the woods behind her house. The woman seemed quite incoherent when they called to her and she disappeared again before they could see where she went.
It only took ten minutes to get there, but it was already getting pretty dark. We found the house and a couple of men were in the yard in front of a small fire pit.
The house was at the end of a county road. As we pulled up we noticed a small car, a green Neon, had been parked past the end of the road in the woods, across rutted, uneven ground. To get as far into the woods as it was, it probably bottomed out a couple of times. We saw it, but ignored it for the time being. The men approached.
They retold their story, a woman in sweatpants and maybe a sweater came out of the woods behind their house. They talked to her briefly, but when asked her name, she responded saying something about a man named Nathan Scott. She was slurring, seemed dazed and confused and when they asked her what she was doing said she needed to find her purse and her keys. They offered some assistance but she turned it down saying something like “No, it’s okay, I’ve got a compass.” At that point they went to the house to call, or let her call someone, but she disappeared back into the woods. They’d not seen her since.
The woods were pretty thick, and it was dark, so Ted decided to cruise the back roads in the area using the car-mounted spotlight. Still, that would only penetrate the thick brush a few feet. If she didn’t want help, she could very easily stay out of sight.
Before we left, Ted ran the plates on the Neon in the woods. Not surprisingly the owner was listed as one Nathan Scott, out of rural DeSoto, a few miles from where we sat. Ted checked the car, it was locked and the dome light was on. He tow-tagged the car and left it. He called in to dispatch asking them to send someone out to check on Mr. Scott. The reply came back that no one was home at either of the addresses on file. Not surprising as one of the addresses was actually a vacant lot. We spent several minutes driving up and down the back roads in the area, seeing no sign of the compass lady.
As we were cruising around, Ted’s phone chirped yet again. He looked at the display. “It’s never good to get a call from your Lieutenant during a shift.” He said.
(To be continued) Go To Part Four
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