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.
