For Brittany Davis, reporting her husband missing to the Columbus Police Department was already a surreal and upsetting experience.
After all, she’d seen Tyler Davis just hours earlier. They’d spoken on the phone several times. Tyler had last assured her he was close enough to the Easton Town Center hotel they were staying in that he could see it, he was walking toward it, he’d be there in five minutes.
But he never showed. Brittany had called him again after that. Once, the call connected as though Tyler had answered but the line simply stayed open for a few seconds. Subsequent calls went straight to voicemail.
Brittany never heard her husband’s voice again.
Before she packed to make the confoundingly solo return trip home to Wilmington, Ohio − a small city about 50 miles northeast of Cincinnati − she called to file a missing person’s report. The Columbus officer who initially spoke with her was dismissive, she said, telling her: “He’s a grown man. He can leave you if he wants to leave you.”