There had never been such a big police presence in and around this sleepy rural village in Central America, but ex-police dog Zena had shaken things up massively when she would not stop barking at a seemingly random tree. Only when her owner managed to break it open did he realize what Zena had detected inside. He immediately called the police, and they came with every available officer.
The first officer that arrived could not believe what he was witnessing. How could it have come to this, hidden in a tree nonetheless? Deep down, he and everybody else at the force had known that something was going to happen. They just never expected it to be this. Within half an hour, there were at least 20 officers on the scene, ready to start asking questions to everybody who lived in the area.
Also arrived were two forensic experts to investigate what they encountered in the tree. They were there to get answers as quickly as possible. It was a disturbing sight for sure, but the part of the discovery in the tree that really put everybody on edge were the clothes, more specifically the uniform.
But why did ex-police dog Zena keep barking at the tree? What did the police discover inside, and why was such a big reaction necessary?
Jon could hear Zena barking in the distance. He lost her for a second when she unexpectedly ran off during their forest walk. It had caught him completely off guard, as she had not done anything like this since he adopted her. He started running through the forest in the direction of the barking. Suddenly, he started to get a bit afraid. Zena was an ex-police dog. What if she had found something she was trained to find? There was a good chance this was not going to be pretty.
He eventually found Zena just outside the forest. Jon was holding his breath but quickly calmed down when he saw what Zena was doing. But this calm demeanor would quickly fade away when Jon started to discover more about what was truly happening here.
Zena was standing deadly still, staring straight at a strange-looking tree, which was a bit removed from the forest. She just kept barking at it, and for a second, John was just stunned. Could she have maybe been chasing an animal or something? But that would be so out of character for Zena. She was an ex-police dog; she of all dogs should be able to keep herself from getting so distracted or fixated on some random animals. There had to be something else going on.
Jon had never seen her so full of energy and spirit, but what was it? Then, after inspecting the tree, Jon could not find anything wrong with it. All that stood out to him was that the tree seemed to be dead, as nothing was growing on it anymore. But this did not directly raise any concerns for him. But maybe it should have. Part of him wanted to just grab Zena’s line again and drag her home, but he had to admit to himself that his curiosity had been piqued.
The tree was old and had barely any leaves left, so he could see there was nothing up there. Zena reacted to something. There had to be something inside. He inspected the tree and found that the bark seemed relatively thin. When he knocked on it, it sounded hollow. Could Zena actually be up to something?
Jon knew he could not get into the tree with his bare hands, but then he spotted a small house in the distance. Jon tied Zena to a tree nearby and quickly jogged to the house. He was able to borrow an axe from the owner. He did not even need to know what Jon needed it for.
When he came back to the tree, Zena was still there, barking at it. This dog had no quit in her. Jon starts hacking in on the tree. After a few big swings, he already felt like he was breaking through the layer of bark. And with a few well-placed hits, he actually managed to get through it.
But to his great surprise, he actually felt his axe land in something soft inside the tree. Unsure and somewhat nervous about what he had just hit, Jon proceeded with a lot more caution. He placed the axe in the hole he just made and started to make it bigger. Until with one of the pulls, a very large of the bark actually gives way, revealing what was hidden in the tree.
Zena started to bark even louder now, and Jon dropped the axe out of pure shock. He could not believe it. Had he been hacking on this? He needs the police here right away. This needs to be investigated with the highest priority.
The officer that got the call at first didn’t believe Jon when he told him what he had found: an ex-police dog, a strange tree, and then that discovery. It just all sounded ridiculous. But he knew he needed to check it out on the off chance that Jon was telling the truth.
When the backup started arriving, they were able to lead people away from the area. Zena’s owner, Jon, was very much ready to go home after this crazy experience. He had answered all the questions that the officers had for him and wanted to leave. But Zena was not ready to leave at all. She was not barking anymore but still had not taken her eyes off the find. And this, of course, made a decent bit of sense.
Zena was an ex-police dog, and when she would have normally made a find like this, she would have a lot more to do after. But Jerry knew she would only listen to her former partner, so he quickly got on the phone. Zena’s former partner was actually a now also retired officer named Oliver, and luckily, he was more than happy to come over and assist when he heard what was going on.
Zena started sniffing around and then quickly made her way away from the tree, with everybody in attendance watching in anticipation. Zena had found a scent.
Zena’s search had ended at a dirt spot where you could still see some tire marks left in the mud. Something that other officers had already taken note of. The forensic expert eventually managed to come up with some conclusions: one very comforting and one very worrying.
The first was that they were not dealing with a dead body but a somewhat lifelike doll. It seemed to have been handmade. And then there was something else. The police uniform the doll was wearing was an actual uniform of the local police. And the forensic experts even managed to determine who it had belonged to, as they had found the name of the badge. And the name had already been recognized by a lot of officers as it was the name and badge of Corporal Mike.
Corporal Mike had been with the force for about 15 years and had been a model cop up until a few months ago, seen by many as a truly reliable colleague and even a friend. From one day to the next, Mike had suddenly left the force. And not only that, he was also completely scrubbed out of the publicly available registers.
The actual story was that Mike had been caught in the act while he was photographing confidential documents that the police station had in holding. He was not only fired on the spot because of it, but the state also wanted to take him to court for this. But this never came of it, as the very next day, Mike had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth Because the police had not wanted any of this information to come out, they only did some small, low-key search efforts.
But they all came up with nothing. After about a month, they had to give up their efforts and shift their focus to other cases. They were still not sure what Mike had exactly learned from these documents. However, mainly the first officer that had come on the scene, Jerry, felt like he had really let Mike down. He got a pit in his stomach thinking about what could have possibly happened to him and swore that he was going to find out.
He called his chief of police to ask if he could lead this investigation but got a somewhat surprising no in return. Apparently, the chief wanted this case to be handled by a department from another city to avoid a conflict of interest. Why were they not allowed to use this knowledge? He was determined to find out what happened to Mike, whether his chief knew he was investigating it or not.
Over the next couple of days, Jerry collected all the relevant information on the lifelike doll and Mike’s police clothes they had found. Mostly Mike’s DNA and fingerprints but also those of somebody else. But sadly, this person was not in the system. Most of the people in the area that were interviewed after the discovery had no relevant information, except, of course, for Jon and one other man.
The owner of the house where Jon had gone to get the axe to cut the tree open was the only person in the area that actually had a view of the tree from his house. And while he had not seen anybody tamper with the tree, he did get alerted to something when in the early morning one day, he had heard a car speed past his house. The car came from the direction of the tree. The man had found this strange, as there was no way of coming from that direction. It was like the end of the road.
Why did that car need to be there at that time of day? The man had not been able to see the number plate but did recognize what kind of car it was and the color: a red Dodge SUV Hellcat. Not an easy car to forget. Not for the man, not for Jerry, as he remembered this car very well himself. This was the exact car Mike had always come to work with.
For a while, the police felt like they had hit a wall in the investigation. Jerry put out a search warrant for Mike’s car in the hopes that this could get them somewhere, but they did not have high hopes. But they were going to be very surprised.
Just a week after the search warrant was put out, Jerry got a call from a befriended officer one town over. He had worked at the station at the same time as Mike and recognized by the stickers on the car that it was actually Mike’s. He had spotted it going into a garage.
He arrived at the house a couple of hours later and was surprised by what he saw. This did not look like the house of an officer that had been fired and out of a job for a while. It was huge, and it looked expensive as hell.
Jerry collected his nerves and rang the doorbell. After a few moments, the door was swung open, and Jerry recognized the man immediately. It was Mike, and he was looking great. And to Jerry’s surprise, Mike seemed almost ecstatic to see Jerry. They had barely even known each other on the time at the force.
Mike exclaimed loudly, “Finally, somebody had found me! What took you so long?”
A confused Jerry went into the house with Mike, and then he started explaining. The whole police doll in the tree had been a stunt he pulled to somehow get the attention of somebody in the force. He wanted to find somebody who cared about what happened to him, to find him. He knew the chiefs would not come looking for him, so his hope was set on a brave solo officer, and Jerry turned out to be the person.
And the reason he wanted somebody to find him was that he wanted to share the real reason why he had been fired from the force. Mike, while doing some document ordering, had found some hidden documents with incriminating evidence against a local millionaire. But when the chief caught him taking pictures of it, he was fired on the spot.
The chief was working hard to keep everything in that document a secret. Mike found out that same day that the chief was being paid off by the millionaire, as he was also made an offer to have his silence bought, which he accepted. So, he was going to keep the millionaire’s secret hidden. But Mike still wanted to do something about the corrupt police chief.
Jerry found this all a bizarre story, but he disliked the chief a great deal, so he did not need a lot of convincing to try and get him fired. Jerry shared the information that the chief was corrupt with the other senior officers, and eventually, they were enough to get the chief fired.
Mike had his way, but Jerry could have never guessed what was going to happen for him next. With the chief gone, the police force needed a new man in charge, and all the other officers thought that Jerry was perfect for the job. And so, a strange change of events that started with ex-police dog Zena making a discovery in a tree led to a corrupt police chief being fired and good, honest cop Jerry taking his place. How strange the world can work sometimes.”
