to an investigator.”
Corporal Brazell paused for a few seconds, then cleared his throat. “With this being a holiday weekend and not an emergency, chances are, it won’t get assigned until Tuesday morning.”
“A missing person isn’t an emergency?” Jim exploded.
“I have to be honest, Mr. Dunn. At most police departments, including the LPD, when the subject of a missing persons report is an adult, it doesn’t become a high priority for investigators unless there’s strong suspicion that harm has come to the missing individual. Don’t worry though. In most missing persons cases involving an adult, there’s nothing for the family or the police to be concerned about. Most of the time, the missing person turns up within a few hours or a few days, safe and maybe a little red-faced. Chances are, this will be true in your son’s case. I would be willing to bet that by Tuesday morning, your son will have turned up, alive and well, after an unscheduled vacation.”
“That doesn’t sound like my son,” Jim insisted. Deep down, though, he hoped and prayed Brazell was right and the growing dread in his heart was only a parent’s irrational fear.
Detective Tal English, a tall, amiable native of Lubbock whose slow, deliberate speech, mild blue eyes and deferential attitude contrasted sharply with a quick mind and intuitive reasoning, was twenty-seven years old and had been a detective assigned to the Crimes Against Persons Department for about a year. That department is divided into two divisions, robbery and sex crimes, but the investigators in each division work on other crimes against persons as well. English was assigned to the robbery detail, partnered with a veteran LPD detective, Corporal George White.
English didn’t even know that Scott Dunn had been reported missing when he reported to work on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. He parked his car in the City of Lubbock lot across the street from the square beige and brown building that housed the Lubbock police department, as well as the city’s Municipal Court and Lubbock Power, Light and Water and covered the entire block between Texas Avenue and Avenue J. English walked just down the hall from his minuscule office, grabbed a cup of coffee from the department coffee pot and had just sat down at his desk, when his telephone rang.
He picked up the phone to hear Jim Dunn, wanting to know what the police had done about finding his son, Scott, over the weekend. English admitted that he didn’t know what Jim was talking about. “The missing persons report has not yet made it to my desk.” Jim gave the detective the same information he had given Brazell on Friday night—how unlikely it would be for his son to go off for this length of time and not tell anyone where he was. According to Dunn, Scott’s boss had fired him. Dunn also told English what Scott’s roommate Leisha Hamilton had said about someone breaking into Scott’s apartment the day after he turned up missing.
English tried to reassure the anxious father that, most likely, Scott was all right and would eventually show up on his own. “We get tons of missing persons reports all the time and very seldom does anything pan out on them, especially on young kids like that,” he told Jim. “They usually show up—in 99 percent of these missing persons incidents, victims waltz back from an unannounced vacation or an extended weekend with a new attraction—or some other explainable circumstance.”
Jim informed English, “Scott has been gone too long for the extended weekend scenario and the timing is entirely wrong for the vacation theory.” Jim also emphasized to English that Scott would never, ever have gone off for such a long period of time without his yellow Camaro.
The detective reassured Jim that he would look into the case as soon as he got the report from the records division. In the meantime, although he didn’t tell the distraught father, English had another missing persons case that he considered more urgent. The other case also involved a young man, a ministerial student who had been reported missing by his family. He was a model student and a respected member of his church and school community. The prior week, he had gone to his bank and pushed a note under the teller’s window, asking for all of his money, both checking and savings accounts, amounting to several thousand dollars in cash. No one had seen him since that day. None of the man’s family members or acquaintances knew of any reason why he would need so much money. English had to face the possibility that the young man had been kidnapped and forced to withdraw his money. If that were the case, the concern became, how long would the man stay alive after he gave up his money? The search for the ministerial student, who appeared to be in more imminent danger than Scott Dunn did, took priority in Tal English’s mind.
English got to work diligently, with his superiors at LPD and the student’s family breathing down his neck, trying to find the missing boy. English had no qualms about working so hard on this case instead of the Scott Dunn matter, because Scott’s case looked like the normal missing persons case where the young man would turn up in a couple of days. By the end of the day, English had not found the other missing person, however, and he went home feeling discouraged and worried.
The next morning, he walked into his office to start the search for the missing student again. Once again, as it had on the previous day, the phone rang. Jim Dunn once again was on the telephone, wanting a progress report on the investigation into Scott’s disappearance. Since he had done nothing so far, to find Scott Dunn, English had nothing to report, but something about Jim Dunn’s persistence got his attention. When the conversation ended, he immediately called the number Jim had given him for Leisha Hamilton.
Leisha answered the telephone and English identified himself. He told her he was investigating the disappearance of Scott Dunn. Sounding more angry than worried, Leisha told the detective she thought Scott had gone off with another woman. She said other girls were always calling Scott, but the calls had stopped since he left. Then Leisha informed English that she thought someone was breaking into her apartment when she went out.
“Why do you think that?” English asked her.
“The day after Scott left, I came home from work and somebody had kicked in the back door. I made a police report. Haven’t you seen the report?” she asked.
Not having seen the report, English did not know anything about this.
Since that time, Leisha told the detective, she had noticed several things inside her apartment had been moved—placemats, chairs and other small things. So she felt that somebody could have been in the house.
“Is anything missing? Do you think it could have been a burglar?” English asked.
“Yes,” she told him, “several items are missing.” On the first day, when she discovered Scott was gone, a waterbed mattress liner, some towels, sheets, a thermal blanket, a comforter and three pillows were also missing. All the bedding had been laid out as kind of a pallet where Scott slept in the bedroom. A laundry basket full of Scott’s clothes also was gone. She told English she assumed Scott had taken these things with him.
Then, on the second day, when the door had been kicked in, tools and spare parts needed to work on the Scott’s remote control boat were gone. Also missing were a gas can for the boat and an empty clothes basket. In addition, Leisha Hamilton said, Scott’s wallet was gone, but the jeans he had worn last were left behind, along with his car keys.
“We lived with Max Gianoli,
