NIGHT CRAWLER

It was the middle of winter on a heavy foggy night with very little visibility on the road when I received the call, “2117, we have a report of a possible prowler at 1471 E. Kamm Avenue , R/p indicated hearing noises coming from the back shelter.”  I was a little confused at first because I had tried to picture the location in my mind, but all I could remember was a large orange orchard in that general area. As I approached the scene, I could see a small dirt road leading to a lonely farm house situated at the very end of the path surrounded by orange trees and almost completely secluded from the rest of the world.  The residence was pitch black as I exited my patrol car and I was surprised to see no signs of any large dogs lingering around as I pulled out my long flashlight from my back pocket and gently tapped on the front screen door.  After a few minutes passed with no response, I tapped again.  Finally someone slowly opened it, but it was so dark inside that I couldn’t quite see their faces.  “Good evening...did you called the Police?” I asked.  The person at the door did not answer me and because of the darkness I couldn’t tell if there was anyone still standing there or if they had just left the door opened for me to come in, so I became a little nervous and placed my hand on the butt of my handgun and even thought of backing away from the front doorway and just wait for my backup to arrive before I proceeded to go any further.  “There’s somebody back there.” said a female voice, “I could hear cans being moved around.”   “Do you have a shelter back there ma’am?” I asked.  “Yes...and it’s only me and my daughter here,” she replied. “We’ve been hearing those noises for awhile..and I store my food there.”  “Do you have any dogs back there?” I asked.  “We use to have a light brown labrador,” she replied, “But I haven’t seen her lately...she usually lets us know when someone's around.”

My partner, Devon Popovich, finally arrived and I quickly briefed him of the situation.  “Ok...let’s go check it out,” he said.  We noticed that the front door from the wood shelter was kicked in and there were cans of food on the floor along with several glass jars with their lids taken off.  I discovered a large muddy shoe print on the floor that led out toward the orange orchard. “She said she’s been hearing these noises for awhile.” I said.  “I wouldn’t be surprise if he lives somewhere out there.” replied Devon.  “In the orchard?” I asked.  “Where else,” he said, “There no houses anywhere near here.”  We entered the orchard with our weapons drawn and began searching from tree to tree using our flashlights.  The fog was so intense and it was almost visibly impossible to make out anything clearly and as we were about halfway inside the center core of the orchard village, Devon happened to come up with a clever idea, “Lets split up...it’ll be a lot quicker.”  “What!” I replied.  I suddenly started to remember about those dumb fools in those “Halloween” movies where they always made the same mistake by separating themselves and ended up getting whacked one by one by some crazy fucker with a sharp knife.  “Uh..uh...not this Mexican!” I thought.  At the time, Devon was looking inside a certain orange tree as I approached him from behind and he turned around all of sudden and nearly bumped right into me, which startled the hell out of him, ‘What the fuck...dude!”  he yelped.  “Hey man...just call me Scooby-Do.” I replied.  I was about to tell his ass off for separating us in the first place especially when the current situation was about looking for someone in a frickin foggy-ass orange orchard, but he motioned for me to be quiet and instructed me to take a look inside the same tree that he had just searched.  I thought he was going to follow me as I was about to go in, but I noticed the scared look on his face as he stood there watching everything else around him when I entered.  There was a small fire burning next to a small pile of dried up orange leaves and I noticed all the insides of the orange tree had been trimmed off and thoroughly cleaned out as if it was made for someone to live in it, which was supported by scattered women’s clothing on the ground that was either used as a bed or a blanket along with several opened cans of food, but what really concerned me was the next thing I saw hanging from the main branch of the orange tree...which was this!

This photo was taken the following morning

I now had a pretty good idea what had happened to the R/p’s brown pet, which by the looks of things, appeared to had been hanging there for quite awhile plus there was a small puddle of blood found underneath it that had dried up and soaked into the ground.  The poor thing looked more like a worn out coat than a once-alive animal, but what really spooked me, besides the lit fire, was the fact that there were no traces of the dog’s inner organs or intestines added immensely by the numerous and obvious signs of torture.  

We immediately called for more back-up and a thorough search of the premises was conducted, which ended up with negative results.  Upon hearing of our findings, the female and her daughter became extremely upset especially after learning what had happened to their pet labrador, so they quickly packed up their belongings as we stood by and they left their home alone for several weeks until they eventually sold it and moved to another state perhaps to be as far away from danger as they possibly could.  Not much came out from our incident and I’m not sure if the prowler or as I call him another fuckin "Michael Myers" was ever caught doing the same thing somewhere else although there had been no more similar reports to the one that we encountered.  Later in the years, I started to work for the detective division and I remembered passing through by that same ranch on my way to working a case and I noticed that all the orange trees around the farmhouse had been cut down.

“Well, it’ll be a lot more difficult for that maniac to sneak around this time.” I thought.  As my mind started to think about the poor dog, “I wonder if that crazy son-of-a-bitch had been watching that female and her daughter from afar as they slept comfortably in their own beds without any clue that they were actually being watched.” I asked myself, “Or I wonder if he was watching us from another orange tree as we were poking around inside his secret hide-place.”  Just the thought of it started to make the hairs in the back of neck to rise up. ”Or worse yet!” I thought, “I wonder what would of happened if by lucky chance I would of located him that night?” Could it of ended with him going down with a pocket full of bullet holes or could it been me hanging from that same orange tree next to that poor Lab...I shatter the thought!