“Where’s she going with your buddy?” the lookalike asked Que. He turned around to see a Dodson-shaped hood ornament body surfing ass-first through the parking lot.
Dodson braced himself as the woman hit 25 mph, somehow managing to also keep ahold of the taser in his hand. It went pappap-pappappappap as he tried reaching out to shock her into compliance. “Just stop the f*ckin’ car!” he pleaded. “All I need is your f*ckin’ ID!” When the woman slowed down at a curve near the parking lot’s entrance, Dodson rolled off and came to a running stop.
“It’s not how I planned my day to go,” Dodson said afterward, uncharacteristically terse. To both us and the exasperated police officer who eventually arrived, the lookalike swore up and down he had no idea how to contact his lady friend. After he walked off, the officer told us the guy was definitely “hot.” He had outstanding warrants. We spent time driving around looking for the getaway car and eventually spotted the two rendezvousing behind the muumuu motel. It was a long day.
And yet, the first thing Dodson did when I came to pick him up the next morning was spread his body across the front of my truck. “Okay, I'm just gonna ride on the hood right here for the rest of the way.”
Dodson was devoutly, relentlessly positive. A f*ckin’ saint.
Non-Compliance
Progress was slow going—maybe four weeks, never mind how long precisely—but we got into an ebb and flow.
I’d pick up Dodson from the children’s hospital, where he spent nights watching over his newborn, and we’d drive for hours, working absurdly hopeless cases. Fugitives without address, vehicles, or phone numbers. One didn't even have legs. I had doubts that another, in Pleasant Meadows, even existed at all. It took time to get comfortable, especially conducting field interviews of skips’ friends or family at homes, hangouts, or places of employment. But we did that sh*t professional.
After a number of interviews with Dave’s father, he finally gave us a partial name of the girlfriend, the SUV she drove, and suggested she might have been arrested recently. Boom. All it took was a quick but careful search through court records. There she was. Jane. She’d copped to possession of fentanyl and was scheduled for an initial probation appointment. We called her probation officer, who promised to call us when Jane arrived for their upcoming meeting. We had a gut feeling that wherever Jane went, we’d find Dave.
On the morning of Jane’s probationary meeting, we parked our trucks at separate positions in the parking lot. Dodson was stuck at his grocery-store job and couldn’t join us.
She said she’s on her way, said the P.O. Fifteen minutes. Forty-five minutes later, a beat-up SUV the color of fool’s gold pulled into the lot.
“Whiskey, Tango, uh …,” I pressed the binoculars deeper into my eye sockets, “... Xylophone?”
“X-ray,” Que corrected on speakerphone.
When she left, we tailed her for several miles. Que took the lead while I held back, ready to leapfrog if he was spotted. Jane went straight from her meeting to the one pay-by-the-week motel we hadn’t checked. The receptionist was more than helpful. Giddy almost. Second floor.
