Episode 2

   

      Weather in the south is pretty predictable. Hot and humid in the summers, and dry and bitterly cold in the winters. Not much of a transitional period in between the two. Not many extremes. So, when something out of the ordinary does occur, it catches people unawares.
      My grandfather spoke briefly about one of those occurances that happened in his lifetime. I remember it vividly, as it was one of the only times his voice ever slightly broke with emotion. He was a stoic man who rarely showed more cards than what the situation called for.
      In March of 1932, Northern Louisiana lost 143 souls. A tornado, the strength of which had never been seen before in the state, drove a ditch through the territory. It swept across like a broom pushing aside dust. Houses were demolished, timber was destroyed, just about everyone took some sort of loss.
      In the dead of the night the funnel touched down like the finger of God. Preambled by silence and followed by dustruction. We have never seen anything like it since that day.
      It caught people so unexpectedly that there was no time to prepare. Most were caught sleeping in their beds. Took 'em all, women and children alike. The town didn't even have sirens to warn people. People's houses were ripped from around them and scattered into the wind, and a few cases of people scattering along with it.
      He told me our town only had one or two ambulances, or what they used as one, to it's name, so people took to loading the injured in the back of pick-up trucks. He said they stacked the dead up like cords of wood. Just hauled the ones there wasn't no saving on to the funeral home.
      He said the funeral director was still in his boxer shorts and bathrobe when they pulled up. Just stood there with his hand over his mouth shaking his head as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Someone finally shook him out of it and they unloaded right there in the sanctuary. The bodies were laid out head to toe.
      The silence left by the storm, he said, was all but torture. Not a leaf was shaking in the trees, not a drop of rain fell. The only thing it left behind was silence. The kind that makes your ears ring because there's nothing for them to take in.
      After a while, all you could hear was the cryin' and wailin' from some of the women who had lost children or husbands. Most of the men had been in the war, so to them, the carnage was all too familiar. Like an old mistress that had come to visit. They had seen enough friends fall at their feet that they were the only ones able to seperate themselves from the heartbreak.
      By the end of that day, they had seen enough devastation to last a lifetime. And the thing that still holds true today, as it did that day, is that a thing can do the most damage when it takes you unaware. When you are laid comfortably in your bed and have let all the day's worries fall to the wayside. Sometimes, in the dead of the night, the day can jerk you out and let you know it ain't done with you yet.

****

      The noise that was rattling over the cb radio finally stopped and J. W. lowered his pen from his notepad and studied what he had written. He slid the pen back into the front pocket of his shirt and turned back toward Cambell.

"Sherrif, we got it. Car comes back to a Thomas Freemaux. Lives out on Belmont Highway. I know this man. He has a daughter. See 'em at church every Sunday. She's only nineteen years old, sherriff."

      Campbell held out his hand and motioned for J.W. to hand over the notepad he had scribbled the information down on. His eyes swung from left to right as he scanned over everything that was scrawled down.
He looked over to the car and tapped the pad against his open palm before turning back to the third officer, who had locked down the scene before they arrived. He held out the writing for the officer to see.

"Go out to this address. Owner of this car....last name Freemaux. If he's home, wake him up and get him out here. If he ain't, find out where he is."

      J.W. cleared his throat.

"To the scene? We don't know what has happened here or who might be involved. What if he had something to do with it? You just want to bring him out here?"

"Well, if he's asleep then I doubt he's our man. I know I couldn't sleep after a thing like this."

"Yessir."

      The third deputy entered his police cruiser and took a few positioning maneuvers to get the car turned around in the road, before driving off in the opposite direction.

"Shouldn't take him long."

      The two officers continued to search the surrounding area around the car. Which, at first glance, didn't seem to be much to look through. Campbell inspected the driver's side and J.W. inspected the passenger side.
      While the driver's side door was left wide open, the passenger door remained shut. J.W. pulled a hankerchief from his back pocket and shook it out in the wind so that it unfolded. He flopped it onto the tops of his fingers and gently placed it under the handle before pulling up on it. The door creaked open. J.W. stepped back and took in any little details he thought might be of some importance.
       Inside, the passenger seat and floorboard were filled with the same things that could be seen from the other side. Fast food wrappers, receipts, and empty water bottles littered the floorboard. A couple of text books sat neatly on the passanger seat. He lifted the cover of the top book and thumbed through a few of the pages.

"Looks like she was a nursing student..... Basic Concepts of Anatomy and Physiology."

    He ran his eyes along the dashboard of the car and across the fabric of the seat. He noted a small tear in the seam of the fabric where a small amount of yellow foam was pushing through. Upon a closer look, the tear seemed to be fairly new and not a tear at all, but a cut. The threads sliced clean.
     As he continued, he saw lines running across the plastic base runner that met the door when it was closed. He placed his hand up to what he could now tell were scratches, each one spaced out perfectly to line up with his fingertips. He placed his hankerchief across his thumb and finger, and with careful precision, picked up a tiny object poking up from within the fabric of the car's carpet.

"Sherriff......"

     He held the object up to the morning light. Thin. Ragged. Partly white, and partly translucent. It was what he feared.

"Got a fingernail. Looks like it was torn off clawin' at the floor. What'ya make of that?"

"Sounds like a person that didn't want to get dragged outta this vehicle, and put up a hell of a fight not to do so."

"Jesus. What are we dealin' with here?"

"Whatever it is, I got a feelin' we are just dippin' our toe in."

      J.W. bent down at the knees and began studying the dirt, while at the same time, doing his best not to disturb it. Just a foot from the door, dark brown spots led away from the car.

"More blood over here. Trails off down yonder."

"You able to follow it?"

      Campbell stepped carefully around to the other side of the vehicle, and followed J.W. as he walked slowly and deliberately while watching the ground. Making certain not to step on any of the droplets and cause himself to lose the trail.
      The trail was not red, as one would imagine. You see blood in the movies and it's bright red, just about as bright as you could imagine. But here in the real world, when the blood hit the brown dirt and clay of the road, it left a dark brown spot wherever it dropped. Just slightly darker than the surrounding.
      The sparse droppings led off about fifty yards in the direction leading away from the highway and further down into the woods. When they reach the end, they stopped in their tracks at the opening of a hunting lease trail. A thin road notched into the thicket of woods, just big enough for atvs and trucks you don't mind getting scratched by limbs, to fit through. It was prefaced by a long line of ruts in the mud made by just such things. A white metal gate shut off access to the trail a few feet in.

"Ends here, Sherriff. Possible someone was parked here. Gate's still locked, so I don't think they went down into the lease."

"It's possible. Let's get back to the car and get the keys out of there."

"What're you thinkin'"

"Thinkin' there's one thing we haven't checked."

      What was left of the dim headlights of the car shut off as Campbell slid the keys out of the ignition. They jingled in his hand as he raised up out of the car. He flipped them around in his hand. On the end of the key chain was a green and gold emblem that stated the year the girl had graduated high school. Just one year earlier.
      As he made his way to the trunk, he spit another long stream of tobacco juice out on the road, while J.W. stood waiting in silence. Campbell held out the keys and offered them to him, but he shook his head and nodded toward the trunk as if to say, "no thanks, you go ahead".
      As the keys notched it's way into the lock of the trunk, it seemed to happen in slow motion, one long click at a time. The anticipation and fear of what lay inside waiting took over the entire atmosphere. J.W. took a step back, expecting to see something he didn't have any desire to be so close to.
      The key reached it's full revolution and the snap of the lock released as the lid of the trunk popped up an inch. The morning light fought its way against the tiny crack, trying to reveal anything it could to the two men standing reluctantly.
      In the distance, the rumbling of a car approaching on the dirt road could be heard. The sherriff inhaled.....then exhaled slowly. The trunk lifted, and J.W. leaned forward. Campbell popped up the front of his cowboy hat with his finger as to get a better look. J.W.'s voice quivered.

"Sh..Sherriff...."

      The returning police cruiser skidded to a stop and dust from the road englufed the scene. The sherriff looked up to his left and blocked the incoming debris from his eyes. Through the brown haze, he saw a man sitting in the passenger seat of the cruiser being driven by the officer he had sent after him. He could see the man reaching for the door handle and swinging his legs, ready to get out and head toward them.
      Campbell took one last look at the contents of the trunk and slammed it shut.

"J.W. get on the horn. Get the dogs out here."

Have You Seen This Person?

 

Episode 1

    

      At this time there are 243 open and active missing person cases in the state of Louisiana. That's 243 incidents of someone just up and vanishing without a trace. No note, no body, no witnesses. There's alot to be said about a thing like that.
     That's two hundred families left wondering where their loved one might be. Two hundred children going to bed not knowing where thier parent is. Two hundred souls, gone. Vanished into thin air. The rest of us left wondering why and where?
     Louisiana has 20,000 square miles of swamp land in the southern part of the state. Most of it inaccesable to vehicles or by foot. And here, where we live, the northwest portion, it has 25,000 square miles of woodlands. Forests stretched out across the top part of the state like a green, dark blanket. Crawling it's way inch by inch, while man fights back with ax and saw. That's alot of nowhere a person can go. And nowhere is a hard place to find a person.
      You walk into some areas of this state without the proper provisions, and there's a real world chance you won't walk back out, forever lost to the elements. Your memory forever covered by falling leaves and blanketed by the branches of the woods surrounding. Wether you get turned around lost, or succumb to sinkholes or snakes. Those are just the facts of living here. My grandfather use to say, "They'll never stop buildin' cemetaries in Louisiana, people are just dyin' to get in one". Well, that's probably true. Even through the half cracked smile he would give me after sayin' it, it still had some truth to it. Any number of things here can kill you. And we haven't even discussed the people yet.
      For years, parts of Louisiana was lawless. Known many years back as the Sabine Free State, it was neutral ground as far as laws or government were concerned. Due to a dispute within the Louisiana Purchase agreement, it was left ungoverned by anyone for many years. "No Man's Land". That's what they called it.
      Naturally it became a magnet for just about any undesireable that might be trying to escape the law. Theives, murderers, outlaws. And well, generation begat generation, and what we were left with was a bunch of people who were about as hard nosed as they come.
      People handled their disputes however which way they saw fit, and both parties were left changed in the process. One left changed physically and the other left with a changed reputation. That's the way things worked in some parts and people knew it. If you didn't have the grit for that, so be it.
Welcome to Louisiana, the murder capital of the country.

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Sabine Parish
Wednesday, 6:02am
      The complete run of the small town's main street was strung together with a line of electric wire that laced in and around each building like a shoestring. The larger cities in the state had all gone underground with their power lines, but in Louisiana, the money to undertake such projects never seemed to materialize. Atleast not in towns this rural.
      This early in the morning, there was more stirring than you might expect. Business hours are a little different. Log truck drivers and wood workers start mostly before the sun even shows up. And even some of those who had long been out of any trade whatsoever were regulars at a small convenience store on a block corner, huddled around cups of coffee discussing matters that could only be settled at those small age stained tables.
      At just about any spot in town you can you hear the loud hiss of the plywood mill that rests just along the edge. Thick plumes of white smoke creep and dissapear into the sky above a group of warehouses where wood from the surrounding area is hauled in and cut, dried and shipped out.

      As the glass front door to the police station swung closed behind him, Sherriff Campbell shoved one arm through the sleeve of his beiege department jacket, swapped his cowboy hat to that hand, and then reached back and shoved through the other arm. A small puff of white breath floated out into the cold morning air as he shrugged his shoulders until the jacket sat on them properly. He pulled one last mouthful from his cigar as he glanced up at the humming wire snaking into the police station, and then back down at the minute hand on his black wristwatch.

"Smoked it down the lip huh?" , one of his deputies, J.W., leaned over and yelled through the lowered passanger window of a police cruiser.

"That's how much I paid for."

      Campbell's boot ground the remaining bit of the cigar into the pavement. The sound of scratching gravel broke up the momentary silence between the two men. When he looked up, J.W. was holding out a styrofoam cup with a lipped lid.

"I got you some coffee when I filled up the tank this morning."

"Who'd you see was workin'?"

"Believe it was that Franklin girl. Brown haired girl, kinda short."

"That'll do. If it was Erma I might woulda had to decline the offer, I believe her coffee makin' skills have long since expired."

      Campbell took the cup in his hand and lifted on the door handle. It creeked loudly as it swung open. He glanced up into the rearview mirror and the empty main street of town reflected back. The businesses owners won't start to stir for another couple of hours, and even when they do, the streets still won't be full.

"Where's she at?"

"Sir?"

"Our date for morning."

"Call sheet says it came in at 5:34am. Ole boy on his way home from the night shift at the mill come up on her. Uh.... just on the other side of the chicken houses out on the old Plainview Road. Says he damn near ran into the thing."

Campbelled sucked on his teeth.

"Thats a ways"

"Yes sir, a pretty good piece. I don't think there should be too much traffic out that way this time of mornin'. We got a deputy sittin' out there just in case. The caller said he didn't want to stay no longer than he had to."

"I guess we better shake some dust then."

      Campbell removed his hat and placed it on the dash of the cruiser. He slicked back his graying brown hair with one hand. The car rumbled as he turned the key,and the two men fell silent.
      About a mile and a half down a dirt road that connected to the highway, the rocks rumbling underneath the fenderwells began to slow as the tires of the cruiser came to a stop. A deputy stood leaning against a cruiser that was parked in the middle of the road. This time of morning you couldn't see the light coming from his cherry on top, just the reflector spinning around the bulb inside the red case.
      As the sherriff walked past, the deputy took a large bite out of a bacon and egg buiscuit that was half wrapped in cellophane. He tipped his hat as he chewed.

"Sherriff."

"I see you're keepin' a keen eye on things."

"Best trained officer the parish can afford, sherriff."

"mmhhmmm"

      Campbell began to take slow deliberate steps as he approached the scene. A gray 4 door car was sitting diagonal in the roadway. The headlights still faintly shining . The driver's side door was left hanging open out into morning air.
      He stopped to take in his surroundings and process what he was seeing in his mind. He reached around to his back pocket and pulled out a small brown bag of chewing tobacco. Between his two fingers, he pinched a group of moist leaves together and brought them up to his mouth. After a few chews, he turned his head to the side and spit a brown stream into the dirt at his feet.

"What'dya think sherriff?"

"Couldn't say. Odd place to park a car."

"Yessir, pretty odd. Where do you suppose the drive has gone off to?"

"That seems to be the question of the hour, J.W."

      The two men approached the vehicle and inspected the layout a bit closer. J.W. kept a close distant behind the sherriff, knowing from past investigations that he wouldn't want many things disturbed unless disturbed by himself.
Campbell squatted down just inside the driver's door and took a look around the floor board of the car, and up into the seats. He lay the backside of his hand against the fabric of the seat.

"Damp. Been out here all night most likely."

      Campbell continued to look around the interior of the vehicle. A few text books in the passenger seat, used up fast food sacks on the floorboard, and a flowery hawaiian leigh hanging from the rearview mirror of the car. J.W. peered around his knees and around at the gravel and dirt beneath his boots.

"mmmmhmmm. Female."

"You notice any signs of struggle down there, sherriff?"

     Campbell looked down at the gravel and shuffled it around with the tip of his boot. He pinched up a small bit of dirt in between his thumb and finger, holding it in front of himself and dropping it into the wind.

"I got a little indian in me, but not enough for that. Your guess is as good as mine. Get somebody to run these tags, let's see who we got here."

      J.W. walked around to the back of the car and began reading off the plate numbers to the dispatch radio that was clipped onto the shoulder of his uniform. The static that rattled across the line as he released his finger broke up the empty silence of the early morning. The 2 officers were left to stand and wait for a response from the other end.

      The sherriff leaned slightly at the waist to spit another time, and stopped as something caught his eye. He removed a small pocket knife that was resting inside a sheath strung through his belt loop. It was black with the metal blade folding up inside of itself on a hinge. Campbell thumbed it open with one hand and reached forward, lifting up the seatbelt buckle and holding it up so that the morning sun glanced off of it.

"Cousin, it appears to have been some foul play afoot here."

"How's that, sherriff?"

     A thick red dot sat atop the gleaming metal of the buckle.

"Got a drop of blood here."

      Sherriff Campbell stood and looked out into the distance around the vehicle. Wooded thickets on each side of the road stretched out as far as he could see. And into the woods themselves, just as many questions lay waiting as inside the car.