Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [87]
“Now let Dog look for him,” Beth said to one of the cops.
When the cops said they couldn’t find the fugitive, something inside me knew he was hiding inside the trailer. This was where he was at when his last phone call came in less than an hour earlier. Plus, it had been raining for two days and nights. There were twenty-five yards of pure mud surrounding the trailer. I took a flashlight and began circling the perimeter. I was looking for fresh footprints or some other clue that would lead me to him. There wasn’t a single footprint, so I knew he had to be in there.
“He’s in there. I know he is,” I told the commanding officer. Beth and I went back inside the trailer with a couple of the cops on the scene. Most trailers are long and narrow. There’s usually a bathroom in the center, a living room and kitchen on one side, and a bedroom on the other. When we walked through, I opened every door possible until I got to one that was locked.
“Why is this door locked?” I asked the girl who was living there. I didn’t know if she was our fugitive’s old lady, a relative, or a friend. It didn’t matter to me. I was positive she was hiding our guy.
“I know he’s in here, honey. Tell me why this door is locked.”
“It’s not locked, Dog. It’s just stuck,” she said. “I can’t get it to open.”
“Look. I know he’s here. So let me tell you how this is going to go down. If I find him behind this door and he shoots at me or he’s with one of your babies, I’m calling Social Services and they’ll come take them away, got it?” I threatened the woman right in front of the cops.
“C’mon, Dog. Let’s go. He’s not here,” one of the cops said as they all stepped out of the trailer.
And then the girl turned to Beth and asked, “Can I get my baby out of the room before you search it?”
“Absolutely, of course you can,” Beth sweetly replied. If a mother asks if she can get her baby before we search a place, we know our guy’s in there. Beth and I gave each other “the look,” which is a particular exchange of glances that we call our “Bonnie and Clyde” look. Our eyes grow wide and we don’t have to speak a word—we just know what’s coming next.
No sooner did the girl have the baby in her arms than I was right there behind her searching the room. As I knelt down to look under the bed, I saw the seam of an old pair of jeans through the slat of the closet door.
“Either those are really dirty jeans and they’re standing up all by themselves or we’ve got a real mofo hiding in the closet! FREEZE!” I yelled.
When they heard the commotion, the cops came rushing back into the room. I looked up at the three stooges standing there and said, “We got him.”
Beth walked over to the sheriff, pointed her forefinger right at me, and said, “He got him!”
In the meantime, our guy refused to come out of the trailer. He began whining like a girl. “You can’t let him take me. I don’t want to be caught by Dog. He’s going to kill me! Help! Somebody, anybody!” He was swinging his arms and kicking his feet, doing everything he could to avoid being taken by the Dog. I finally put him in a headlock and carried him out under my arm like a football.
The cops were embarrassed by their inability to find the guy. There was no way they’d ever tell the truth in their report. I handed the cuffed prisoner over to the local deputy, who put him in the back of a patrol car. One of the cops told me the guy we caught was a member of the Aryan Nations. Beth and I were stunned, because he was being such a sissy. Being stuffed into the back of a cruiser made the guy even more irate than he already was. He began calling me names, saying I was a half-breed mofo and that the Brotherhood was out to kill me. I didn’t pay much attention.
When you’re cuffed with your hands behind your back, the only thing you can do is move your upper body around. Suddenly, the guy started banging his head against the Plexiglas shield between the front and back seats of the police car. He hit his head so hard that he busted it open. No one did a thing except let the poor bastard bleed in the backseat.