The Sky Is Falling

I get a call to see a woman about her missing son. According to the info on my computer screen, the son is 25 years old and had a fight with mom, then left in his car.  Dispatch tells me over the radio that "she's very distraught", which can usually be translated as "nuts".

As I pull up to the apartment building, she comes running up to my squad car. She gets right in my face and starts yelling.

Mrs. Benzo: "Who's looking for my son!? I wanna know what you're doing to find my son!"

Officer Cynical: "Um, I just got here, so I'm not doing anything yet. Tell me what's going on."

Mrs. Benzo: (look of utter shock) "You're not doing anything?! You have no idea how serious this is! This is really bad! Why aren't you doing something!?"

Officer Cynical: "Before I can do anything, I need to know what happened and who I'm looking for and why. Can you stop screaming at me long enough to tell me that?"

Mrs. Benzo explains that the previous night her 25-year-old son, who has a criminal history a mile long, moved out of his girlfriend's house after an argument and into mom's place. Then this morning, after an argument with mom, he moved out of her place and didn't come back. She has no idea where he's gone. She's positive "this will end badly" and "this is as bad as it gets", but can't give me a straight answer as to why.

Eventually, I call her ex-husband. He tells me he put up with similar incidents for 15 years before he left because he couldn't take the drama and hysteria anymore. He says she needs to be on meds, but won't take any.

I finally get out of there and put a BOLO out for the "missing" son. Mom calls me numerous times during the rest of my shift to find out what all the law enforcement agencies in the region are doing to find her son. I don't tell her "nothing".

The next morning she leaves me a voice mail saying that her son is in jail in a city not far from Cynicalville.

All's well that ends well.