Scout, the old Border Collie, never gave false signals, and today he was locked onto a rusted industrial dumpster behind the school.

It was a quiet Friday afternoon just before a long holiday weekend when Officer Davis and his K9 partner Scout were called to investigate a missing student case at a nearly empty high school. The campus felt unusually still, with most students and staff already gone home.

The situation initially seemed straightforward: a boy named Leo had not been seen since the final bell, and many assumed he had simply left on his own or run away temporarily.