“When this retired police dog stumbled on a suspicious tree, her incessant barking pushed her owner to call the authorities. What the cops found inside the hollow trunk was shocking and unveiled a terrible secret that threatened to destroy the force from the inside.
Zena was a retired police dog, so her owner John believed in her instincts. She was so well-trained that he allowed her to do a lot more than he would another normal dog, like running off-leash in the woods. He would let her run freely, but then she would return to him the moment he told her to. But on this day, she was a lot more restless than normal.
She kept sniffing in the air and stopping to listen. The next moment, she took off. John called her and commanded her to get back, but for the first time since he adopted the dog, she didn’t listen to him. She ran ahead and was growling as she went. He tried to keep up, but she lost him very quickly, and he was forced to follow her voice.
When he found her, she was barking at a big dead tree. Jon didn’t understand what she was barking at. He could see the tree was hollow at the top, but he couldn’t see if anything was inside it. With Zena’s training, Jon was sure that the dog had found something; he just had no idea what it was. He didn’t want to phone the police without knowing what they were dealing with, so he started looking for clues by himself. He tried to pry a piece of bark away from the tree but couldn’t get it off.
He looked around for a while and saw a sharp rock. John listened for a hollow spot and hit it with the rock. The bark split open, and he pulled it away to see what was inside. As he did, something shocking happened: something fell out of the trunk. It was a hand. Jon jumped back in fear; it was for sure time to phone the police. He couldn’t believe he had found himself in such a strange situation. He had just adopted a dog to have a companion, but this was completely out of his comfort zone.
At first, the police didn’t understand what he was saying. But then he explained that he was Zena’s new owner, and she found something. They decided to send out her old partner Jerry to check it out. He sent their coordinates, and the moment Jerry heard that Zena had found something, he rushed over. He trusted the dog with his life. If she was indicating something, then there was something worth checking out there. Zena had been his best friend for years, and he still adored her.
Their last case together had been a rough one; they went into an ambush and were both injured, with Zena getting hurt while she was protecting him. That was why she was retired from the force. He was in the hospital during that time, and when he got out, they had already given her up for adoption. No one had even spoken to him about it. It was devastating. They wouldn’t even tell him who had adopted her. Getting this chance to say goodbye was wonderful.
As soon as Jerry got to the forest, he heard the barking. He walked closer and commanded Zena to stop barking. As soon as she heard his voice, she turned and raced toward him. This wasn’t how she was trained, but the dog had missed him just as much. She jumped up and licked him, then she sniffed his side where he had been injured. It was like she was checking his wounds to make sure he was all healed. John got closer to explain what they had found, but also to find out why this dog was so excited to see this stranger. The bond between them was clear, and when he realized that this was Zena’s handler, he took a respectful step back.
But Jerry was all about business. He went over to the tree, and what he saw shocked even him. They got more police officers to lock down the area and open the tree without losing evidence. Jon tried to leave, but Zena wouldn’t go. She was used to staying at crime scenes and keeping out of the way until she was needed. For now, it looked like John had to stick around too. He watched as the forensic team ripped the bark apart, and a series of shocking objects came out of the trunk. The name tag caught the light and gleamed in the sunlight as they opened it.
Then they could take out the human form that was stuck inside. But that wasn’t even the most surprising part; the clothing was even more shocking than finding a human in there. The body was wearing a police uniform, and it had blood on it. A lot of blood. The name tag had the name ‘Mic’ on it, but something was off about the person they pulled out. They checked it out, and the forensic team confirmed it; this was a doll dressed in a uniform. But the uniform was real, and the blood on it did belong to a human. Why was an officer’s uniform on a doll in a tree, and why was it bloody? This was a mystery that Jerry was determined to solve, but to do so, he would need some help. And there was no one who could help more than his old partner.
He asked Jon’s permission to have Zena help with the investigation, and the man was just relieved that it would free him up from sticking around. Clearly, the dog wanted to help since she refused to leave with him. John wasn’t going to stop her. Jerry let her smell the clothing through an evidence bag, and then she started tracking. She was in her element; it was like she had never been away from the job. She tracked a path through the forest, and Jerry was awed by her incredible nose. He had worked with many police dogs, but Zena was simply on another level.
She walked for 10 minutes, and then she sat down in the middle of a clearing. This was where the smell originated; she couldn’t pick up anything else. Jerry looked closely at the area and saw tire tracks in the dirt. The person who had dumped the doll into the tree probably came in a vehicle; that was why Zena could track the scent until that point but no further. They could make a mold of the tire tracks and compare it to any vehicles that came up in their investigation, but first, they had to get more evidence and figure out what they were dealing with.
They went back to the police station to start searching for officers who had the name ‘Mic.’ As they walked in, everyone was overjoyed to see Zena; she was a bit of a legend in the department, and they all missed her. It was great to see Jerry and Zena reunited, as they all knew how much she meant to him and how devastated he had been when she had been adopted. She lay down in her normal spot next to his table, and he started the search. There was only one ‘Mic’ in the force in the last year, and he was no longer a police officer. This Mic was fired a few months earlier for tampering with evidence. He had been found photographing confidential paperwork and had been fired on the spot. It was strange that they didn’t even have an inquiry into his actions; normally, they would give an officer a chance to defend himself, but there was nothing like that.
While Jerry was searching, some preliminary results came in. The forensic team could tell him the blood type of the blood found on the scene, and he realized that it matched Officer Mic’s. He couldn’t understand what was happening; why had they found a doll with the former officer’s blood on it, but not the police officer himself? The tire tracks gave even more questions instead of answers; they fit the personal car that Mic had on record. It was time to go to Officer Mic’s home address to hear what he had to say.
But the house looked abandoned; piles of mail lay on the porch waiting for someone to collect it, but there was nothing out of place that could make them suspect that something bad had happened. Then one of the neighbors came out and told them that Mic had been gone for weeks, if not months. He had driven away one day and never came back. They just thought he was on holiday, but normally he would arrange for someone to pick up his mail. But then again, Mic had been acting strangely ever since he was fired. He had put up extra security on his home and wasn’t as open and friendly as he always was. She didn’t know what he had done, but it changed him.
When asked what Mic was wearing when he left, she said that this was even stranger. He had been wearing his police uniform despite being fired from the force. Was this the same uniform that lay bloody in the lab? Jerry had Zena smell for any signs of trouble, but she didn’t indicate on anything. He was sure she would have told him if Mic was in the house, be that hiding, injured, or worse. But she did not indicate anything wrong inside the house, so they went back to the office to dig some more.
The police captain was waiting for them when they got there. At first, he looked at Zena with disdain. How had she gotten back here? But then he told Jerry that he needed to back off from Mic’s case; another precinct would take over since they could have a conflict of interest. He had been fired from their department, so they couldn’t investigate. Jerry wasn’t a fan of the captain; after all, he had been the one to arrange Zena’s adoption behind his back while he was recovering in the hospital. He was also reluctant to back off the case, as he wanted to know what had happened. Another officer might not take it seriously because it was only a doll, but something told Jerry that there was more to this story. He wasn’t going to let it go.
So despite promising the captain he would back off, Jerry kept digging. And that’s when he found what he was looking for. Mic’s grandfather had a cabin in the woods; it was the perfect spot to hide out in. He called Zena, and they went searching. What they found shocked them. The cabin door was open, and then Mic came out of the woods from cutting firewood. His face looked horrible, bruised and swollen. He tried to run when he saw them, but Zena jumped on him and held him down. The former officer panicked until he realized that they didn’t mean him any harm. It took a few minutes to get him to trust them, but finally, he explained what happened.
It was true that he was caught taking pictures of documents a few months before. It was even the reason he was fired, but that wasn’t the full story. The papers he had found were a paper trail exposing a dark secret. It was proof that the captain was taking bribes from an influential businessman to turn a blind eye when he did anything illegal. And by the amount of money he was getting, it looked like the guy was doing a lot of illegal things. Mic was fired because the captain caught him taking pictures of the evidence. Since then, he had tried to expose those secrets.
He had been wearing his uniform that day to go to a meeting with the chief of police, but he was ambushed on the way. A lady stood with a flat tire on the side of the road, and when he stopped to help her, three men came out of the woods. They jumped him and told him their boss didn’t like his snooping. He managed to get away with his life, but the guys kept following him. His clothing was bloody, and he was scared. He decided to dress his CPR dummy in the back of his car with his uniform and throw it in the hollow tree. He hoped that they would find it, and it would buy him some time. He didn’t know who to trust, so he had gone into hiding. Jerry promised he could trust him and that they were going to figure this out.
Then another voice joined them. The captain came walking out of the bushes, his gun already drawn. He told them that sadly he couldn’t allow it; they would take everything that he had worked for when they exposed him, and he couldn’t have that. He always thought it would be Jerry and Zena who would stumble on his secret, and that’s why he broke them up as soon as he could. Now he would have to find a more permanent solution to keep his secret safe. He lifted his arms to shoot, but suddenly Zena jumped him and took him down. As soon as he was down, Jerry was there to arrest the captain; he wouldn’t do any more damage.
Mic was later reinstated, and Jerry was promoted to captain. They built a solid case against the businessman and took down his empire too. He would spend many years in jail. But in the meantime, another farewell was getting closer. John came down to the police station to pick up his dog. Zena sat next to Jerry, and each time John called her, she moaned and tried to avoid eye contact with him. It was hard for an obedient dog like her to ignore a command, but she really didn’t want to go.
Everyone could see that she still belonged to Jerry, even John. It hurt his heart that the dog didn’t want to come with him, but he couldn’t deny the bond he saw between the dog and the police officer. He had every right to take her, but he couldn’t do it to them. Jerry and Zena belonged together. If it wasn’t for the interference of a horrible person, Jerry would have adopted her in the first place. So John gave his blessing for them to stay together, as long as they gave him updates and he could take Zena on a walk sometimes. Now that Jerry was Captain, they wouldn’t have as many dangerous situations to deal with, but together they could deal with anything. What a shocking story!
