Buttwhack Smuggler

Parked on a grassy shoulder along a remote stretch of Interstate 10 was a stranded pickup loaded with 1,200 pounds of fresh marijuana.

An overwhelming odor gave the cargo away as rookie officer Jeremy Tharp and his veteran partner, David Holland, approached the white Chevy with Louisiana plates around 9:30 a.m. Unlike other drug runners, this one didn’t use mustard or coffee grounds to try to ward off drug-sniffing dogs.

The covered truck bed was packed with bales of cellophane-wrapped marijuana, and 150 more pounds were stashed in trash bags behind the seats of the truck’s extended cab.

With a street value of more than $300,000, it’s one of Baytown’s biggest marijuana busts in recent years.

The only thing the officers didn’t find was the driver.

Police don’t know why he or she would have abandoned the cargo. The most likely explanation, they say, is mechanical trouble. Although the truck showed no obvious signs of damage — such as a flat tire or steaming radiator coils — they believe something must have forced it off the road.

Then, with 46 bales of pungent narcotics in tow, the driver might have gotten nervous.

“What do you do, call your buddy? Have him bring you a belt brake and sit there on the side of the road?” Fischer said. “The police always stop to make sure you’re OK.”

If the driver took off running, he or she might have made it to the tree line before Tharp and Holland showed up, although the nearest gas station was miles away. Or the driver might have ducked down in the prairie grasses to escape notice. Either way, the driver has not been caught.

‘Somebody’s going to be really mad’

But what was a banner day for the patrol officers was a very bad day for whoever has to explain to someone somewhere what happened to 1,200 pounds of marijuana.

“Somebody’s going to be really mad,” Fischer said. “Those drivers usually end up dead.”

Tharp and Holland called in narcotics detectives, who helped load the bales into a police truck, haul them to headquarters and stack them in an evidence room. Eventually, the marijuana will be superheated in an oven that can destroy it without creating smoke.

For now, the one lead police have is the name of the truck’s registered owner. This wasn’t a rental — typical in drug cases — and it hasn’t been reported stolen yet, Fischer said.

Still, they’re not overly hopeful of an arrest — at least not of one of the cartel kingpins who use stash houses around Houston to smuggle drugs across the border.

“Even if we do catch somebody, usually they use mules, so we’re catching the low guy who’s just moving it,” Fischer said.