Drug Dealers --Part 3--Lilly, The Living Zombie

It was a rainy, cold and dark Seattle day when I walked towards that outside door.

I was headed to one of those small anonymous apartments in a concrete sea of bigger anonymous apartments, called Section 8 in these parts. Section 8 is housing any one of us could be living in were our financial needs high enough... and our income low enough, to qualify.

Section 8 often keeps good well-intentioned people off the streets.
Still there are abusers, cheaters, thieves working the system.
Rules aren't merely being stretched, they're being torn to shreds or ignored by some landlords and some tenants.

The building I was about to enter was not like the horizontally based Section 8 apartment complexes I was used to.
Instead, there was one main front entry door, one main back door and one tall building up, I counted five stories.

I approached the back door which was near where I parked. The back door was open.
On the way, to it, I stepped over one big pile of pee and chose not to contemplate whose it was.

The back door was designed to be locked and entered with a key code box.
And at the door I approached, it became clear some one tore the alarm box off. Nothing left but the wires. Anyone could just walk right in the apartment building like I did.

It was early morning. That's when I make my appointments to places like this one the attorney sent me to when I have a choice.
Junkies sleep in the morning. So I figured 9:00 am Sunday, I'd be okay.
I opened the back door.
I almost expected to hear ,"white girl on the floor...." like I have heard "woman on the floor" shouted through the halls of homeless shelters where I have met many male victims or witnesses.
Instead, the only sound I heard was the metal door as it creaked open, then a swoosh as it scraped a dirty carpeted floor spotted with stains.

It took a moment to adjust to the lack of light inside.
I saw no people, just things ahead: doorways and stairs...exit signs ... papers posted to the walls... an occasional eviction notice tacked to a door.
I walked quietly down the hall and then took the stairs up to my destination, Floor 3.

This is always a point of concern for me.
Stairwells, like elevators, tend to lock you in. When you're locked in with a psycho or bad dude, that can be problematic.

The building I was in had no elevators. I had no other choice other than to enter the stair well, which, I discovered, to my relief, was not enclosed. Escape could be had with a leap.

Up I went two flights and down another hallway.
I start tracking the numbers.
"304...Bingo," I thought as I knocked on the door and wondered, as I always do, whatit would open to.

There was no answer.

I knocked again, harder. No response.

I didn't want to wake the neighbors so I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the phone number the attorney gave me for his potential client. I wrote the phone number in ink on the inside of my left hand, a habit developed for occasions such as this one.

I leaned towards the door. I heard the phone ringing through the apartment door.
"Yallow?" a sleepy female voice answered on the fourth ring.
"Good Morning Lilly," I said, " It's me, Susan, the Investigator." I gave her the name of the attorney who sent me. Then I said I was knocking at her front door and no one answered.
"OK . Be right wit' ya" " the voice shouted from behind Door 304.
I guessed the accent was Jamaican.

As I stood waiting at the door, I heard things being moved about... whispers of voices... a house being cleaned up for an investigator on a Sunday morning after who knows what kind of Saturday night.

It took maybe five minutes before she opened the door.

I was right. She was Jamaican. She had the head scarf on, the accent.... and the large Jamaica tourism poster on the wall to my left was a dead giveaway.

There was something wrong with her left eye, it was completely clouded over, a milky white. I looked into her right eye, it was still brown and covered slightly with grey.

"I be 90% blind" she told me as she extended her left hand towards mine.
Her right right arm was broken and she had a sling on.
" I"m Lilly" ( pseudonym) she said. I reached out with my right and shook her left hand.
"Pleased to meet you Lilly, "I said, "Though I wish it were under better circumstances."
"You got dat' right sistah' " she said.

Some investigators don't shake hands.
This one does.
I think when you touch someone, you really say to them, I am willing to commit to this dialogue, to connect with you.
I am not afraid of you.
Sometimes... it means, quite literally, my life is in your hands.

I think the old school of investigation: stepping back from the subject; hands kept in pockets; playing Joe or Josephine Friday; is not the best approach.
A hand shake tends to soften situations which otherwise would be harder to crack.
I was however, aware I had shaken a hand covered with who knows what substances and germs, so I consciously kept that hand away from my eyes, nose and mouth until I could return to my car and my hand sanitizer.

So after said handshake, Lilly led me into her living room. There was a bedroom to the side. Then two other doors. I heard a tv on in one room.

"Anyone else here?" I asked.
"My man" Lilly said, "He be watching his man show in dah' bedroom".

I smiled and accept the seat Lilly offered me, near her on the sofa. Though I hoped there was not not a hypodermic needle where I sat, I was polite enough not to ask.

I get as close as I can to subjects of my interview.
I like them to see me write my notes, to suggest corrections or catch mistakes if I write something down wrong.
I want them to draw me pictures of the crime scene or accident scene.
I deliberately invade their personal space in order to expose it. This is not an easy thing for a white girl to do in a world that doesn't necessary think fondly of, or trust us, white folks.

Lilly, however, was congenial enough though. I showed her my state investigation license. I remembered her blindness and read it to her.

"Do you think I have a case?" she asked.
I told her I wouldn't be there if the attorneys didn't think so. Because they pay me whether or not they take on her case. If they think there is a party at fault, I tell her... and they think there is insurance money they can get.... then they may take her case on.

What I had been told about her case was just a one liner on my Blackberry:
Pedestrian in street hit by car at 1:00 am. Find out everything.

What we did not know was whether Lilly was at a crosswalk.

Or whether the driver that hit her was both identified and insured.

We did not know who was at fault.

Lilly said she had the police report with her but couldn't read it.
I asked her to show it to me.
It was only page 1 of 3.
The police do this on accident scenes.
In cases like Lilly's, an officer usually gives the victim the first page of the report so the victim has the police report number or case number, the names of the people involved and their insurance companies. Then the police write up the rest of the report later when they are stationary, have time to do a scene sketch, get it submitted into their system so an injured party, or someone like an attorney, with power of attorney, can order and get it.

The police report didn't say much. The driver was in a Ford Taurus, female, 32 years old with a two and a four year old in baby seats in the back. She had auto insurance, that was good. There was no citation indicated however and that surprised me.

"Tell me what happened Lilly." I said.

She leaned closer to me, spoke softer, as if she was telling me an old Jamaican tale.

"Well I be poor as you can see. And my man, he be hungry.
So at night, he say to me,
'Lilly, I be hungry. You go out and get me some money so we can get me some food.'
"And I say okay. Only it be midnight... I be sleepy and almost blind.... so it takes me a while.
He tellin' me to hurry up, I tellin' him to shut up while I be gettin' pretty.
Then out the door I go and then I look up and I see the lights of the cars.

The street she was referring to was Highway 99- International Blvd, right by Seattle Tacoma airport. Its where the Green River Killer trolled for victims.

"So I be heading toward the lights of those cars..." she continued, " and I see one car go very slow and I figure he be wanting Miss Lilly and I walk to him cross middle of road and next thing I know I be hit. First in hip, then I go up on windshield, then down on ground. I catch myself with 'dis arm and it snap in two."

I asked Lilly if she was in the crosswalk when this happened.
"No, I can see no crosswalk, I blind remember? I just go to lights."

It was time to ask what I had already deduced.
" Lilly,what is it you do to get your man's money?"

She said, "I be de' lady of de' night. In de' night they do not see my eyes because I wear fancy glasses.

While Lilly spoke, I filled out the form the attorney gave me for the case. Under "occupation" I wrote "blind hooker." I was not feeling optimistic at this point.
I asked Lilly her date of birth. She was 50. She appeared to be in her late 60's.

I looked at Lilly's arms and ankles, all speckled with needle marks -- some new.
"Lilly," I said non -judgmentally, "I can see you use. It's okay to tell me about it, I'm on your side. I work for the attorneys, not the police. What's your drug of choice?"

"Given my druthers," she said, "I be doing Meth right here,right now. You got any?"

"No," I say, "That's evil stuff."

"Devil's brew" she replied.

So I had almost all the information I came for. I played through the case in my head.

At about 1:00 am, a Blind Meth Adddicted Prostitute approached a car in the middle of the night, in the middle of the busiest road by the Sea-Tac Airport. She was hit by a different car with a mother and two kids in it, a car that didn't see her.
Just one more question.

"What were you wearing that night Lilly?"

She said, "I be wearing my black lace nighties sweetie, my red lipstick, my black pearls, them hot black fishnets and my hooker heels."

I thought of the mother of two who hit Lilly. Did she see Lilly coming? Was there a spotlight or camera in the area?
Did her kids she it coming?
The female driver, the hitter, was no doubt horrified. Could she have avoided hitting Lilly?
It seemed to me, she just did not see Lilly. Lilly was dressed in black. In the middle of a dark busy road.
Whose was liable? What would a jury think?
Is it the blind, Meth-adddicted prostitute?
Or the mom and two sweet kids in the Ford Taurus who didn't see see her coming."

I looked long and hard at the Lilly and the case. I decided she would not make a good client for the high-powered attorney who hired me -- an attorney I considered a cut above the ones who would take anyone on as a client.

I made my decision. I would advise the attorney against taking the case on. Now, it was just a was just a matter of making my exit.... without letting her know that her case would be a reject. It's never good to anger a Meth Head.
.
"Well Lilly, " I said, "Sound like I got everything I need for the attorneys. Can I call you this afternoon if I have more questions?

"Afternoon be best," she replied. "So you think they can make me lots of money?"

"Lilly" I said, "They don't tell me anything after I hand in the case notes. It's their call.
But I am curious... if you ever came into a huge chunk of money, like you won a lottery or something, what would you do with it?"

"Why I buy me and my man a mountain of Meth." she answered without hesitating a beat.

"You don't want anything more than that for yourself Lilly?" I asked. "You got no dreams for the future, no hope? Nothing?"

Lilly focused what vision was left in her goodeye on my two healthy blue ones and said,

"Anything you give me to get out of myself... I be all for it.
What can I say? I be just a junkie."

I don't know about you, but I found that sentence quite profound.

"I be just a junkie."

The words still reverberate in my head.
Some girls just don't grow up to be teachers, secretaries or secretaries of state, doctors, soldiers, private investigators,shrinks, artists, steelworkers, truckers...
Some girls grow up to be blind hooker junkies with no way out.
And that would be Lilly.

I called the attorney who sent me out and told him of my interview with his prospective client Lilly. He agreed with my conclusions and asked me to drop the case file by his office and he'd give it all one more "look see." He said based on what we discussed, it was likely, he would have someone from his office call Lilly and tell her they would not handle her case.

Lilly is a Living Zombie.
I met her in her lair. Her man was there behind a closed door. No doubt, he was another of the same species. To this day, I marvel at the fact that I lived to report another encounter with Living Zombies.

I charged the attorney a little extra for that investigation. He reviewed the file again and didn't take the case. Nor did he complain about my fee.

As for Lilly, she went back in back in her shadowlands. Or she is in jail. Or she is dead. One of the three. I see no other ways this one could play out.

What will tomorrow's door open to? This investigator never knows.
Could be another Lilly.

Drug Dealers- Part 2- "Living Zombies"

It all starts innocently enough. A pain in the back, a tweek in the neck, a muscle pulled here, a bone broken there. Car wrecks, dog bites, gun shots, stabbings, shootings, assaults. Bar fights. Falls. Hundreds of thousands, (or is it millions?) of people depart hospitals and doctors offices every day with pills.

Cancer patients have pill bottles littered everywhere. And cancer patients have caretakers, often family members, who unable to deal with their own fears, become stressed as well. They take the cancer patients pain Meds and become addicts themselves.

A doctor friend of mine told me one of her elderly patients had a hip replacement. Her caretaker, the daughter, stole and swallowed all mom's pain pills.

There are others stressed by anxiety -- from the economy, their marriage, their single-hood, their children, their lack of children, deaths of those they love, the feeling of being unloved.
Compound that with more anxiety and fear.

The economy is not just tanking, it is now drilling into the depths of an economic depression all across this great country of ours.
Fears are soothed, nerves are calmed with Valium or Xanax or anti-depressants, anti-anxieties.
And when that's not available, there's always booze, heroin and Meth.

When the pain is real, from a broken bone, a ruptured disk, a broken neck, a crushed toe, endometriosis, you name it -- what the pain meds do is kill the pain without creating the high.

When the pain is gone... or there is no pain to begin with... the pain killers provide nothing but the high. Between that spectrum of real pain treatment and real pain killer highs, are shades of gray hard for the medical professionals and family members to interpret.

When the anxiety is quelled.... and the nerves are calmed.... it sure beats climbing the walls.
But sometimes, the only way to get over walls IS to climb them.

Therein lies the quandry.
Pain is nature's way of telling us something is wrong with the body.
Stress is nature's way of telling us we are in a situation requiring our fight or flight.
When we are drugged and numbed, we really don't know what is happening and down we go.

ER docs and Family Practioners are now officially on the look-out for "drug seeking behavior". Yet, on the other hand, that "drug seeking behavior" is built into the drugs those same doctors prescribed.

If you have excruciating back pain and the doctor gives you pain pills, then why wouldn't you take them?
And as you continue to take them and you heal... then you start getting high from the pain pills.... why would you stop?
Some people can and do stop. Others can not.
I think like cigarettes, there are addictive elements built into many prescription medications and the world is tilting on its psychological and emotional axis because of this.

As soon as I finish this blog, I will hit the road to work the weekend's cases.
Normally I am gone much sooner than this. I usually take an earlier car ferry, drive off through Edmonds and into Seattle via Aurora Blvd, which was the first real freeway in the area before I-5 came into the picture. Now it's like one of those older bigger roadsm Route 66's, all over America.

I like taking Aurora into Seattle, because it is slow.... the road is spotted with stop lights... which gives me time to chill and look around. Because I investigates so many auto wrecks, I am never in a hurry when I drive. I am always observant, ever vigilant.

Aurora Boulevard which becomes Pacific Highway and International Blvd south depending which way you head, is filled with all kinds of fascinating people in a variety of life forms: good people and bad; sane and crazy; happy and said; bag-laden or empty handed. Some have money, many are homeless. Some people haul their whole lives in garbage bags, while others sip their Staburcks Venti Doubleshot down the road.

There is one area with cheezy wall-to-wall motels the prostitutes and their pimps book by the hour. I enjoy passing those places, I'd confess to an affection for them, because I have been in most of them meeting said prostiutues, pimps, and other random players I need statements or info from. Some of those places are now closed and soon to be, I am told, "gentrified."

I can spot a druggy and hooker a mile a way. I watch the women and men, young and old, black white and every color inbetween, roam the streets of Aurora often. This is where Gary Ridgeway, the most prolific serial killer in the country did his hunting.

I used to represent some of these people who walk these streets when I worked at The Public Defender. In particularly rough areas, there are signs posted on poles and posts that say SODA, (meaning Stay Out of Drug Area.) Or SOPA (Stay out of Prostitution Area.) Most people don't even know those signs exist.

So there is a point to all this. And it ties into Drug Dealers, Aurora Ave and one more subject, Living Zombies.

Because there is a spot I pass, if I hit it just right in the morning, where from out of nowhere, twenty, thirty people, and many more people emerge from everywhere as they begin to gather in small groups and lines to enter a Methadone clinic for their daily dose. It is early in the morning when the gathering starts, 6, 7, 8 am, it varies.

What I do know about this place and places like them all over our country and cities, is that people struggling to get off of hard core drugs just for the high... or prescription drugs because of the pain... are now legally dosed in such clinics daily. Every single day, seven days a week.

Some are dropped off by friends or relatives. Some take the bus. Some come from miles by ferry because there are no Methadone clinics where they live.
Others walk miles with backpacks, or shopping carts, and shoes worn with holes.
They all line up, enter this building and get their dose.

Then they all walk outside, mellow, smiling and expressionless. The Living Zombies hang outside while the high takes hold and form small circles os Zombie cliques. Groups of friends, puff cigarettes, tell stories, laugh, wave their arms, shake, twitter and tweek, high.

I confess. I have seen this often and close up with my binocs while I sip my morning drug of choice, caffeine. Living Zombies are far more interesting in real life than movies.

Then they all say goody-bye and the Living Zombies go back to whatever it is they do the rest of the day until the next morning and it begins all over again.

I have concerns about all this and that is why I have chosen to blog, in this series about drugs and dealers -- legal and illegal. I think people just aren't aware of how intoxicated our country, our cities, society has become. And how the Pharmaceutical Industry profits from that.

As I said in Part One of this series, prescription Meds, legal ones can be and mostly are, a blessing.
When they are over-used, abused, they become a burden. Or a killer.
Heath Ledger, for example, took it too far. So did Janis Joplin, John Belushi, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Annie Nicole. Need I go beyond the famous and speak of normal people like you and me?

Today's diary entry is brief because my work calls. But first, one quick analogy.

I was up most of the night last night, trying to process the fact that my friend, who has a chronic pain condition has gone completely psychotic due to mismanagement of prescription Meds.Her family and I, over the course of a couple years, have tried to weave a net to save her and it appears not to be working.

When she spoke to me last night of her house being bugged by aliens, and the blue birds being sent to her trees by neighbor spys...
when she told me I was talking in code...
when she told the one person in her life who would have taken a bullet for her - her husband-- she wanted a divorce, he said fine and walked. The husband is not only a saint, he's a great man, a man's man. The kind of husband a woman would never want to lose.

He called me. He was sane. She called me. She was not.

I tried again and again to tell her she is delusional, her mind is altered by the drugs.
I told her she needs to go back into hospital she just got out of. Or she needs to go to detox. At the very least she needs her husband back.

Instead, she told me to quit my work,and she would "buy me" (she's rich) to take care of her.
That was the point that I realized there was no point. Some people either make it or don't.

So I told her last night I know she is back on drugs. I know she is ordering them on the net. I told her she is delusional, psychotic, she is in grave danger and no, she can not "buy me." I told her she needs help I am unqualified to provide.

I believe we, her family and friends, have all done everything we can.
I told her she has two paths here. S
he can either suck it up, get through withdrawal and live life -- pain, anxiety and all like the rest of us poor schmucks out here.
Or she will end up alone, in a mental hospital, jail, or dead.
She said, "F.U." and hung up on me.

This is the fabric this series on Drug Dealers will be woven of.
As an investigator who works both criminal and civil cases, I have a great deal of experience, and expertise, in this area.
There are the drug dealers on the streets and there are the drug dealers in Doctor's offices. And then, there are the Pharmaceutical companies. It is a subject as vast and as heated ad the Sahara.

Time to grab my water bottle and hit the road.
Part three tomorrow.

Drug Dealers - Part #1

There is one subject I have successfully avoided writing about thus far in this blog. Cases involving Prescription Drugs.
My avoidance is self conflict-based.
Without medications, many of our loved ones would be dead -- or living lives filled with cancer, pain, depression, anxiety, physical and emotional anguish.
Prescription medications can one of life's biggest blessings....
and among life's worst burdens.
They give life and they take life.
And in my humble opinion, curing diseases, stopping infections, saving lives, replacing chemical levels in brains that require those chemicals to function normally.... this is the purpose of pharmaceuticals.

The quandry lies on the razor's edge, the thin line of physical and psychological demarcation.
It's the line between use and abuse, taking the right pill not the wrong one, balancing dosages and side effects.

There are no safety nets when you are given cocktails of prescription meds
When I ask clients what meds they are on, I get laundry lists: one for high blood pressure; another for cholestrol; this for allergies; that for shaky legs, this for depression, that to help sleep through the night; this for occasional anxiety attacks. Individually each of these meds has side effects. Collectively, the side effects are compounded and the end result can be catastrophic.

I think the whole problem really kicked into high gear when the cigarette ads were forced off the air. Taking their place are drug ads for adults. And alcohol ads and tv commercials targeted at young adults. The pharmaceutical companies send you to your doctor for scripts. And tv spots from liquor companies tell kids to "drink responsibly" when we all know:. "one's too many and a thousand's not enough".

Do a demographic study of America's jails and prisons and I contend, most people are there because of drugs or alcohol. Crimes are committed when high. Or people arrested while getting high, carrying, or distributing everything from weed to heroin. America's rehabs and psychiatric hospitals are filled with people who are there because of mind altering substances.

People go insane on meds. Some stick with the tranquilizers -- benzos, valium or xanax (A.K.A. - Vitamin X)
The depressed get uppers, and the manic get downers from their docs.
Little kids with an excess of energy are given Ritalin -- which is sold in schools to other kids for the high.
Long gone is the concept of kids being high with energy and life, now they are hyper kids; or adults who go through depressive episodes because life is depressing.
And now even young men are sold Viagra.
Some self medicate with alcohol or pot.
Other prefer the Russian Roulette approach, heroin or Meth.
In this investigators opinion, it has gotten out of hand.

The adults who are hooked and need more than the doctor will give them, get their drugs from friends; other docs (this is called doctor shopping); or through the internet.
Some, who made the mistake of doing Meth just once,discover how incredibly energizing that first high can be, are thereby usually lost forever. Some go so far as to manufacture their own in kitchen Meth labs.

It's really very frightening the first time this reality, this truth. hits you. I've grown used to it over the years, though the subject still causes me enough angst or anger, that I have avoided blogging about it. Until now.

Over the years, I have done many medical malpractice cases, a large part aimed at pharmaceutical companies whose medications have killed clients, caused strokes, generated diseases, or irrevocably damaged a client's body or brain.

When cigarette commercials were pulled off the TV airwaves, the ad space was filled by pills to be pushed, so the Pharmaceutical companies bought ad space like there's no tomorrow.
Their approach is describe symptoms you may be having, they tell you to tell your doc you need this drug. Then they tell you about the side effects.
The key is the side effects.
Listen hard to those.
And know, the doctors they tell you see have a whole stockpile of free samples to give out, fresh from the drug companies running the tv spots.

The stories I could tell you about this subject could fill a book.
Instead, I'll tell you some of these stories in this blog.
My intent is to give you a layout of the land. Because statistically speaking, it appears people are dying from prescription pills overdoses now at a rate that may be exceeding those dying in auto accidents.
Stay tuned for part two.

Hit On The Bridge

The call just came in. A bad collision, at a high rate of speed on the freeway.
By the time the call was forwarded to me, the attorneys were fairly certain it was a case they were interested in. Meaning the caller is a potential client of theirs and my job is to determine whether they are injured and not at fault. So I call the injured one, I.D.'d myself and proceeded to see if everything sounded on the up and up.

The accident happened at 3:00 am, this very morning. That led to the first round of questions on my end when the victim -- fresh out of the hospital -- and I, finally connected by cell. I machine gun blasted him with questions.

Were you alone in your car? Who was with you? Who was driving?
Where were you coming from at 3:00 in the morning? Where were you going? Was there drinking at the party? Who supplied the alcohol?
How much did you have to drink?
Whose fault was the accident? How do you know it was the other guys fault?

Did the police come? Do you have a police report? Do you have a police report number?
Did the police give anyone a citation? Did the police tell you whose fault it was? Did the person who hit you apologize?
Did an ambulance come?
Did you go to the hospital by ambulance?
Were there any independent witnesses to the accident?

But wait, there's more....

What is the year make and model of your car? Is there a loan on it? How badly damaged is it? Where is the damage? Describe it to me? Do you think it could be totalled? Where is your car now?
How about the other guy? His vehicle? What is the year make and model was he driving? Was he hurt? Was his car towed?

What other accidents have you been in? What other injuries have you had? Any pre-existing conditions?

I kept asking and picking at the bones of today's case until I got to the core, which is either "good case" or "bad case".

If it is not their fault... if liability truly lies with an insured Defendant...and they are really hurt, and there is substantial damage to at least one of the vehicles, preferably theirs... then it is likely an attorney could better help them navigate the uncertain, turbulent and treacherous waters of insurance claims and the companies who lord over them.

It is because of that call and the fact that I still have another half hour to catch the Ferry and see this post goes up now.
I am on the way to investigate a case that happened early this morning so the lawyers could get on it Monday and start helping this guy out right away. He is a steel worker. He blew two discs in his back and broke his right wrist. His is a single father of two.

Suddenly all those stupid things I have been worried about today went "Poof!" All it takes, sometimes, is to just look hard at someone else who has it harder.

"I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet."

Denial -- The River In Their Heads.

While waiting the ferry to arrive, I called another investigator, let's call him Jim, about the physical and legal realities of placing a monitoring device on a home computer. My potential client, the wife, wanted get her husband's email password without his knowing it.

The husband and wife share the same internet/phone service provider and often share the same computers.
He is having an affair and denying it.
The secretive lovers ex-changed emails and she wanted to see all of them. She found some tucked into corners of his car and his pocket. She was obsessed with finding them all.

She'd broken into his email account twice. I told her it was illegal and she didn't care. He caught her each time. The first time she made an excuse. The second time, she said she just had to see for herself the affair was over. He convinced her it was. He changed to a new password. And opened another email account with another secret password.

What she wanted to do next was put a camera in a position where it could capture his finger tips moving over a keyboard - thereby capturing the password as it is being typed.

"That too is not legal," I told her.

"In fact," I add, "It's a Federal Offense. Washington is a two party consent state. You can not monitor any electronic signals, phone signals, do wiretapping, makes tapes or videos without both party's consent. If it goes to trial, his attorney, The FBI and Homeland Security can come down on your for that. Or worse... me."

So my friend, Jim, the investigator I was talking to, agreed that I did the right thing by saying no. He too would have passed on that case, despite the economy.
We were about to say goodbye when he said, "You got time for a quick story?"

"You bet," I told him.It was, after all, Friday in the Ferry line.

"My sister in law...." he began, "She was at a company picnic with her husband. The husband, who's 45, disappeared for a while. The wife went looking or him and found him having sex with this 22 year old female secretary on top of a picnic table."

"Wow" I said , starting to laugh. I couldn't help myself.
You two choices after a week of stress. I choose laughter.
"It gets better" he said.
"So she caught him and her. And I 'm not sure what happened in-between. But now, six months later, there is an.... arrangement" he said.

He explained it like this:

The husband and the wife agreed to stay married.
The only condition was that he gets to spend every other weekend with his girlfriend.
Meantime, the wife agreed the husband could sleep in the same bed with the girlfriend but he could not have sex with her.
"The husband agreed!" my friend Jim exclaimed laughing heartily.
"Are you kidding me?" I asked him. "And she actually, truly believes him? That they aren't doing it?"
Jim laughed louder. "Yep, she still believes him."

And it went on from there.
Jim and I swapped stories of domestic denials like trading cards until the Ferry approached and I played the last card.

"So I had this client once," I told him. "And she found out her husband was having an affair when he confessed it to her after she found these pictures of them together.
She said her husband said even though he paid for this girl's hotel room, her diamond necklace, all her meals.... and they stayed naked in the same bed.... they had no sex, because "she wouldn't let him."

I asked that client the same thing I asked Bob earlier.
"Are you kidding me?"
No kidding.
The wife actually believed her husband when he admitted they slept naked in the bed together every night...
and they never had sex.
She believed him.
We were still chuckling when Jim's cell battery died about the same time the Ferry landed...
so I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. No need really.
The stories will just pick up where they left off when we next talk.

Great Read! Link to Jim Thomsen's Excellent Blog.

This is a great Friday read, even though I didn't write it, lol.
Jim Thomsen's writing is every bit as good as the story. Suffice to say, I am all about justice and it appears Jim is too. You can link to his live blog through the title of this post.

Cougar Claw Marks

"Well you sure earned your stripes," I said.
It was my pathetic attempt at humor, as I photographed the cougar claw marks on her back.
The good news was she thought my comment funny and laughed heartily. She was 17, she got it.

We were in the bathroom of Mickey D's -- AKA, McDonald's, just outside Port Angeles.
For obvious reasons, she was uncomfortable lifting her shirt in the middle of the dining area, so we left her father and the male investigator I brought with me, at the table while we proceeded into the bathroom for the injury shots.

I was surprised by the depth of the claw marks -- considering she had been found clothed in many layers. A red down jacket, a blue sweater, and a long sleeve thermal shirt under that which covered a tank top.
All of those clothes, now in evidence, bore the tell-tale rips of cougar claws running down the length of her back.

There were also bite marks on her arm, they were deep puncture wounds. She showed me where something nibbled at her left baby finger, most of the nail bitten off.
"Creepy huh?" she said.
As my camera closed in tight and I imagined a little rodent chomping her finger , I felt an involuntary shudder.

"Do you know how lucky you are to be alive?" I asked her as I clicked away with the camera.
"Yes, " she said quietly. "I don't understand how they found me, how I lived through it."

I gave my standard reply.
"You must have a guardian angel. Someone close to you die recently?"
"My mother, " she whispered, her eyes tearing up. "Brain embolism. Just like that. One year ago."
I didn't say anymore except, "I am so so sorry."

To me it was one more piece of confirming evidence re: the dead.
The clients, the victims, who live, against the odds, tell me someone close to them has died.
I have found this to be true more times than not.

But this story is not about angels, energy fields, ghost hunting or other psychic matters. I was making conversation with the victim of an ATV accident and a resultant cougar attack, while I accomplished the final task of the long day's investigation, the photos.

The Fall Off Hurricane Ridge

It started at the top of Hurricane Ridge on the Olympic Penninsula.
That's where we did the scene photos, measurements, sketching.
I didn't want to go on this case alone.
The locale was remote -- Deliverance Land -- where good old boys go bad. And a lone woman, investigator or not, can be a target or a toy.
When investigating places like Hurricane Ridge, I bring back-up. Mine was 6'2", a retired Marine and armed.

The two of us worked the scene in perfect synchronicity.
We had the police reports, diagrams and scene photos to assist us.
We saw the spot where the ATV flew off the road at the curve which had just been covered with gravel the morning of the accident.
I noted no "loose gravel" signs anywhere and wondered if they would have made a difference anyway.
I took pictures of "slow", "caution" and "curve" "danger" and "10 mph. signs."
There was nothing but downhill, cliff-like forests to either side of the road on Hurricane Ridge. The ridge was literally the flat top of the mountain the highway drove across.

Off Road

So here's how it all went down.
My client, who we'll call Jenny -- was a minor, 17 years old. Jenny had a friend we'll call "Rich" because he had a rich daddy who bought his man-boy, any toy he wanted.

Jenny was just getting out of school. It was about 3 pm. Rich was parked in the lot at school as she walked by and asked Jenny if she felt like taking a ride up Hurricane Ridge on the new ATV his daddy just bought him.

Jenny said no, she better not, she better ask her dad first. She had no cell phone, though.
Rich said her dad didn't have to know, she'd be home before sunset.
When she said she'd be cold, Rich took off his red down jacket and put it on her.
"I"ve got another coat in the truck" he said.

I asked her if Rich was her boyfriend, she said no, she had a boyfriend who was on a Mission somewhere at the time. Rich was a kid her older brother hung with, he was always nice to her. They grew up together and were friends.

So Jenny figured what the hey.... and felt a little rebellious... so she agreed to take the ATV for a ride on Hurricane Ridge.

Rich had the ATV loaded in a pick-up truck his dad's company owned.
The pickup had the name of Dad's company on the outside of the truck. It was one of a fleet of vehicles Dad's company owned.

Rick and Jenny drove the winding road through the Olympic Forest to the place called Hurricane Ridge. It is very remote, primitive, wild. Very high up.
They pulled into a gravel area on the side of the road where people could do turnarounds or just sight see. They off-loaded the ATV from the pickup.

Rich gave Jenny a helmet and buckled it for her. Then he put his on. Jenny climbed on the back of the ATV. It was winter time, the sun sets early in the Northwest in winter, it was already late in the afternoon.

Jenny wrapped her arms around Rich's waist and off they went driving the ATV round the primitive roads of the remote highway, far to the right in case a car came through.

Then Rich started going faster and faster.
Jenny recalled yelling at him to "Slow down".
He just went faster, she said. Then she said he called her a "baby."
She punched his shoulder and shouted "slow down you idiot" right into his helmet .
Instead, she said, he sped up again.
Then came "the curve." or "The" curve.
It came out of the blue.

It was a tight curve that hugged a huge cliff on two sides, covered with a layer of freshly laid gravel.

At the high rate of speed Rich was traveling, he lost control off the ATV and the last memory Jenny had was the vehicle going air-born and flying directly ahead, then down.
Jenny lost consciousness when her helmeted head hit a tree.

So Jenny wasn't aware Rich lost his life when he flew straight ahead, right off the ATV driver's seat, and head first into an even bigger tree in the old growth forest. It completely crushed his skull. The M.E said Rich died instantly.

Now it was getting dark. Jenny was unconscious and on the ground in thick brush along side a cliff. She could not be seen from the road. Nor could Rich or the ATV.
Jenny's right leg was broken and was wedged on the ledge by a tree surrounded by forest. Her left arm was wrapped around long thick kudzu vines.
Did she grab those, or did they grab her? I wondered as I worked the scene.
Temperatures the night they went over the ridge were dropping by the hour.

Meantime Jenny's father wondered where she was. Dinner was hot, it was dark and she was not home. Rich's parents were also worried. They were all going out to dinner that night. It was Rich's Dad's birthday and Rich was nowhere to be found.

Eventually, everyone put the pieces together about midnight, when someone said Rich asked him to go ATV'ing on Hurricane Ridge. The police, parents, and a team of searchers and friends headed up to the Ridge. They found the pick-up parked where Rich left it. But the night was jet black, no road lights, this was the wilderness. They searched as best as they could finding nothing until dawn. They had no clue where or what side the ATV went off of.

I don't know who saw her red jacket first. Someone caught a glimpse of it while the sun was rising. Jenny was spotted. Then Rich was. Then the ATV.

Rescue operations have their own individual rhythms.
Sometimes there is an odd, sacred silent calm at such a scene.
At this scene there was mass hysteria as Rich's parents saw what little was left of their son's head.
And Jenny's father, who'd just lost a wife, waited anxiously for the rescue workers to get his only child, his little girl off the ledge and tell him if she was still alive.
She was.

Thing was, the animals had been trying to get her throughout the night. A brain injury resulted when her helmet hit the tree... her skull hit the helmet... then her brain hit her skull and bounced back and forth which damaged the frontal lobe. Her jacket was sliced to shreds with claw marks that extended all the way down her back.
Her hands were bitten.Some hair had been pulled out. Yet, mercifully, she slept through it all.

So there we were, in Mickey D's restroom, after the deadly accident on Hurricane Ridge and I was clicking away with my camera.

She said to me then, that she knew she shouldn't have gone.
She should have gone home and at least asked her Dad's permission or told him where she was going.
She said she just wanted to have a little fun and felt so bad for scaring her dad, and so horrible Rich was dead.
She said she was also angry it all could have been prevented had he just driven slow.
Or had she just not gone up there.
Or this. Or that.

Injured people get lost in the "if's" and "or'"s and Jenny was in that place.

"What happened.... happened," I said to Jenny.
"Look at you girl, you made it through. There's some reason for that.
Maybe you are meant to do great things in life.
Maybe its up to you to tell other kids about choices. How you could have chosen not to go. How Rick could have chosen to slow down."

She nodded as she pulled herself back together, took a long look in the mirror and I tucked my camera away. We walked out of the bathroom to meet her dad and the other investigator.

Dad asked if I thought the lawyers had a case.
I said I thought there might be a good shot, because the 20 year old was using his father's company truck to haul the ATV. So maybe there was auto insurance available, and possibly, company insurance as well.

The dad asked whether we could sue the state for laying loose gravel on the road and not putting up signage.
I said only the attonrneys could say. Though, I added, in my opinion, liability was with Rich who was driving too fast for road conditions.

Then dad asked if they could sue the ATV company because two people aren't supposed to be on the model Rich was.
I again replied, only the attorney knows, but my guess was there was a large warning on the ATV that said "one person at time," they ignored.

The case never went to trial. It settled out of court. All Jenny's medical bills were paid, she also got a pain and suffering judgment.

Rich's parents were shattered and never quite the same.
His dad shut his buisiness down because there was no "Son" in his company name with the logo followed by the words: "Father & Son".
He drank himself into a stupor and drove his car down a boat ramp and drowned.
Rich's mom moved in with her sister who had cancer.

Jenny's father told me he thanks God, and the spirit of his dead wife, every night in his prayers, for saving his little girl.

And Jenny, on the outside, seemed "over it", like any other about-to-turn 18 year old.
But, she said, she'll never ride another ATV. Never go to Hurricane Ridge.
And she decided she was never going to drive in any car unless she was the one doing the driving.

Made perfect sense to me.

"When to Hire A PI For A Cheating Mate"

When someone calls me and says "I think my (whatever) is cheating," the first thing I say back is "Why do you think that?"

They give me their reasons, lists of behaviors... and unless fraud or theft is involved... one of my standard replies usually follows.

"They're cheating."
I pause for effect, then continue.
"When you think someone is cheating... and it sure sounds like they are, then.... they are cheating. Surveillance is expensive and you may need that money for a divorce attorney. "

Often, my response does not go over well. The good thing about my profession, being a P.I., is I can be as truthful, cynical and cranky as I want.

"You're in denial" I tell them when they go on with the things the cheating partner is doing.

And then I soften the blow. Because what I can't deny is their need to know for themselves. They need someone else to tell them. They don't trust their gut.

So I found this piece this morning. This is what I consider one of the best ones. Yes, there are thousands of articles and lists out there on the subject. And yes, there's a book being sold linked to the article, there usually is. Yet the article does a great job of summing the whole thing up without needing to buy the book.

So if I get this blogging thing right, not only will the title of this post link you to the article, but so will some words which will magically appear when I push the publish button. It's from "The Carolina Investigator" Here goes...

When to hire PI for cheating mate

Break Ups - Part 4

Drilled Heart

We had not spoken in years, not since we were teenagers… many moons ago... in the same school. We were friends back then. I think we were close friends, though she was close with everyone. Her heart was trusting and open.

30 plus years later we connected on Facebook.

She emailed me and we caught up on three decades in short sentences. Then I got a longer email, it said a great deal about the hardships she had been through.

She said she had two holes drilled in her heart in the past five years. She described the pain as unbelievably intense, centralized in their throat initially. Ultimately, settling in her feet. It was, she said, life altering.
She described abandonment of family and friends, people she trusted.

Being a private investigator, I was confused.

I see all kinds of things on the job. I know a whole lot about the insides of the human body.
I meet many clients, conscious and in comas in intensive and trauma units.
I also see other clients only in their autopsy photos, their innards bared; their organs removed, photographed, weighed.

So when she told me she had two holes drilled in her heart the investigator in me concluded she really did.

I just couldn’t figure out how they’d drill a heart; how big the drill would be; why they’d drill a heart and how they’d avoid the veins. Beyond that, I couldn’t how anyone would survive two heart-drilling operations.

It occurred to me perhaps I was taking her too literally. We P.I.’s tend to do that. So I emailed her back asked her two questions that went something like this:

Did you really have two holes drilled in your heart by surgeons, for a medical condition?
Or were you talking holes drilled by acts of betrayal, deception, and heartbreak?

While I awaited her response, I pondered each possibility and concluded each of the heart drillings–the surgical one and the emotional drilling aren’t all that different. Except, the medical drilling might be easier because you’d be asleep.

In the latter case, when a hole is drilled in your heart by another -- a partner, spouse, new woman, man, there is no anesthesia. No nurses to care for you. Just one massive fall from grace marked by however many holes in your heart that may or may never fill themselves.

The liver is called the liver because it lives.
The heart does not regenerate itself like the liver does. In heart attacks, pieces of it die in percentages and never wake up.

The heart is the nexus, the core, the atom, the engine, and the origin. The heart is the rhythm that our blood moves, grooves and soothes to.

My friend’s reply was that the drilling was not medically related. Rather it had to do with two betrayals from demon women after her husband.
What added insult to her injury, she said, was these women were once friends.

She described the process of processing it all.
She wrote beautifully and admirably. I appreciated the trust she placed by sharing her story with me and told her so.

More Drilling

Then I got a follow-up call on a domestic I’d worked.

It was another friend, one I hadn’t heard from in maybe two years. He wove a tangled tale that spanned about a year’s time. His life had only now stopped unraveling.

It was another Break Up.

He was 41. He’d moved south to be closer to his ex- wife and kids. He met a girl in a bar. They fell in sex, not love, he laughed.

So she moved in. They both hung out together happily for one year. They both had jobs, though he owned the house, the pick-up, the Smoker Craft. She had nothing but about 20k in credit card debt and a car loan. Though she did have a job.

She declared bankruptcy, she confessed to him early in their relationship. It was the result of an emergency hysterectomy and no health insurance. He was fine with that; he didn’t want any more babies anyway. Especially with her.

She drank way too much and she loved gambling, especially the slots at the nearby Casino. She never won, but she spent almost all her paycheck there every Friday night after work with the girls. He didn’t know it, but she also stopped there once or twice a week during lunch, with two of the same girls from work.

So about one month after their first year together, he took a business trip to Denver. He was gone five days. On day six he called me from his home. He said they had this huge fight about something really stupid and she moved out the very night he came home.

Another five months passed without hearing word one from her. No sightings of her in the bar, nowhere at the Casino. She moved two states away to Las Vegas Nevada, gambling Mecca.

He was too busy taking care of problems with his ex-wife, who was now on Meth, to worry about the gambling ex girlfriend.
He had to fight for custody of his boys. Hire lawyers. Get the state involved.
Somewhere in all this mix, some things got ignored. In his case, the mail.

He put all the mail from his bank in a pile and left it there for five months. When he finally studied the statements, he discovered his entire life savings was gone from one of his secret (or so he thought) checking accounts. The one he kept the account book for hidden in his underwear drawer.

Enclosed in the bank statements, were the checks she’d forged... he being the ex-girlfriend who moved out. It amounted to $60,000.

He asked me what to do.
I told him.
He called the police. Filed a police report. Pressed charges.
He called the bank.
We went down the list of everything you do in such circumstances.
She was found at her mother’s home in Vegas, also hooked on Meth.
And all of it was to no avail.

She plead guilty and went to jail
She said she gambled everything away except 10k... and that was what went into her silicone breast implants.... which he never saw until her hearing. That was when my friend said she was sorry, then added something about not squeezing a turnip from a rock and they led her away.
While restitution was ordered, he knew he'd never get it.
Everything he worked his whole life for, all the money, gone.

She will be out soon or maybe already is.

The bank refused to return the money because my friend, the customer, had signed an agreement with them when he opened his account. It said that any discrepancies must be dealt with in a certain time period, which had lapsed. Clearly she forged his signature, but they would not refund his money.
He considered suing, but no attorney would take the case and he had nothing to pay an attonrey anyway because she stole it all.

At the end of his story he said to me,
“She drilled a hole in my bank account.”

Sound familiar? He too was drilled. Through the heart and the wallet.

He learned a valuable lesson and lives alone now.
When the right gal comes around, I’ll check her out first. Turned out this last one, the gambler/thief, had two priors – one for forgery, one for theft.

The morale of this story is to be very careful whom you let into your heart and home.
The most dangerous people can be the ones who wear the nicest masks. Ted Bundy was quite the looker.

Truth be told, in some cases, there is no way to avoid an evildoer.
Good news is, there is always a way to recover from one.
It’s the recovery that turns the problem into an opportunity for change.

Stalked American Idol Star Hires P.I.

This is a brief cyber drive by a because I have a Labor Day case calling and need to get to it.
Meantime, I found this article interesting from one of my favorite cyber pubs, The Carolina Investigator.
So I'd figure I'd connect it to you in case you are surfing the net today.

Not sure how to add  an article like this beyond including them in the headline.
So I'll also insert it here, in the text and see if that works.

http://carolinainvestigator.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/pi-needed-for-american-idol-stalker/

Otherwise go to the title of this blog. It'll take you there.

Also be sure to note the links to record sources on  the Carolina Investigator page.
They have great info providers to bookmark.
Meantime, I'll be back blogging later tonight, provided I don't get squished by a semi on the road today. ;-)

Break Ups - Part 3

I don’t know what’s gotten me into writing about Break Ups that happened to friends I  knew personally… rather than clients who hired me out of the blue. Perhaps the cases that involved friends touched me deepest and therefore come to mind first.

Clients are clients.
Friends are friends.
And when the two paths cross, the cases become more complex… and the memories more poignant and life altering.

In this Break Up, Part 3, I was way too personally involved. I should have known better, though I was a new investigator then.

It was the first time I was a third party observer to the decline of a couple’s marriage. And they were the first couple that befriended me after my first marriage ended.

My husband had just walked out after our 15th wedding anniversary -- not for another woman I was told. Just because I was who I was.
Personally, I think the other woman concept would have been easier to process.

Everyone told me it was a midlife crisis on his part. I didn’t care. I just wanted the marriage back, my family in tact. I wanted marriage therapy, he didn’t. So after 15 years he was gone. I knew not a soul who had been divorced. I did not move in such circles.

There was a five year gap then, in my single-hood. During those years,  I will confess, I was officially a man hater.

We had two daughters between us and we stayed civil for their sake while I sank deeper and deeper in the quagmire of the betrayed, the great gaping hole of nothingness left by a man I loved who simply stopped loving me.

I decided then all men were screw-ups.
My brothers, both married and very much in love with their wives said I needed to get a grip on my man hating. After all, my father was loyal to his wife. No one in our family ever experienced a divorce. Most of my family and friends considered my ex-husband’s move an aberrant one.

Hating men at that time did not turn me to women. Instead, I just chose to hang with myself a while, to become a primo investigator while I got to know who I was, because I married so young. At 21.

15 years later and single, I chose to build a new life for myself. Inch by inch. Brick by brick.

Five years later, I met  a guy the exact opposite of my first husband. He too had been burnt by his wife who was…. let’s just say… two French Fries shy of a Happy Meal.

Neither of us ever planned to marry again. We did anyway. In fact, we eloped. It’s been 10 years now and I am happy as a clam. I think he is too. I am happier with husband number two than I was with husband number one. So maybe husband number one did me a favor.

I write this not to point out the potential upside to Break Ups. But to illustrate a bigger point I am about to make.

Case in Point

In that five-year gap, or window, after my first husband walked and  I became a man hater, I was alienated from all my married friends.

When you’re single or divorced, the couples you knew when married disappeared. Single friends with boyfriends stepped away; scared I would target their beaus. I felt like a leper.

Single  men would hit on me and I would accept offers of dinner, but no more, which pissed them off to no end. I just didn’t trust the guys.

So lonely old me, post divorce and pre new husband, strolled into a sushi bar one day and sat next to the nicest, sweetest couple about my age. I had my P.I. license for only a short time.

She was a young, attractive, all American college graduate who loved her parents and brother. She worked for a big company, spoke fluent Japanese and we were sushi compadres to the max. We both ate Uni topped by raw quail's egg. I never met another woman who did that.

He was a rich, good-old-boy with a GED and self-educated, who owned  real estate, fixed cars… an all-round, good looking, good guy. They knew I was alone, they knew I had no real friends. They befriended me.

I went out of my way to place my loyalties with the female part of the duo, we will call “Christy”.

Her husband, we’ll call  “Johnny”, liked me a lot as a person, though it was clear he loved his wife intensely and never once made a move to me. Nor I to him. I appreciated that because I was still a man-hater then. 

I felt quite safe in their presence as we hung together, went out, ate out, and visited each other’s homes. She was the kind of friend every woman would want, non-judgmental, creative, loving, funny, generous, thoughtful.

Or so I thought. It was just a mask.

The Plot Thickened

It all started with a phone call.

“He pushed me out of a moving car!” she screamed one summer morning and cried at the same time.

“Who did?” I asked. The investigator in me stepped right in.

“Johnny!” she shouted. “We had a fight and he said get out and pushed me out of the car while it was still moving!!! I’m bruised all over, you should see.”

I told her to come by my house immediately and I would take pictures and talk to her about this. I would interview her, get the all the facts straight, and then we would assess whether to call the police, bet to the hospital, what.

So she came right over. I photographed dark bruises down her right side, her hip, her butt, and her leg.

I took notes as she described how she said something he didn’t like and he said the  “F.U.” thing and pushed her out of the car.

She again asked if I thought she should call the police and have him arrested.
I suggested she to go to her mom’s and stay there with her kids while I sorted this out.

I printed the photos, called Johnny, and asked him to meet me for coffee. He was sullen. We sat in the coffee shop and I showed him the photos. I asked for his version of the story, he said just four words.  “She’s nuts. She jumped.”

I didn’t expect that.

Then he cut loose.

He said he didn’t want me to know this really, but she is truly a psychopath, he said. She loses her temper, screams at him and their sons all the time, insults him, degrades him, hits him and calls him filthy names in front of the boys.

He said she jumped out of the car when he said the 1.8-carat diamond ring he bought her when they married was not big enough. She wanted a 2 pointer; he told her they couldn’t afford a bigger one. They needed to start saving for the kids’ future.

I was perplexed.
Loyal to my female friend yet more loyal to the truth.

I suggested they hold on calling the police until  we get them into therapy and see if they can work things out.
So into therapy they went.
We all stayed friends. Things calmed down for months.

One day, I took a little overnight road trip with her to a concert at the Columbia Gorge. I was driving, she was my passenger. There was a police roadblock up ahead due to boulders in the road.

The officer held up his hand and said, “Stop!” authoritatively.

She yelled out the window at the cop.
“ F.U.” she shouted and I was blown away.

“What the hell are you doing?”  I asked her angrily.

“I didn't like his tone.” She replied.

“What tone?”  I responded, “He’s a cop trying to make sure you stop before you get hurt.”

“Bullshit” she said, “He could’ve have been nicer about it.”

“Look,” I replied.   “I’m an investigator. I respect cops. You’re in my car, my passenger and you had no right or reason to talk to him like that. You also put me and my license, in harm’s way.”

“Then F. U. too, then,” she said back to me.

That’s when I realized the friend I knew for a year wasn’t really the friend I knew for a year.

Her aberrant behavior was intermittent and continued through the two-day trip.

I saw no drug use except the usual amount of her drinking.

On this road trip, we stopped by my friend’s bar in a resort we stayed one night in. My friend Will used to be a government investigator and my mentor, we always remained friends.

As Will, the bar owner and I watched, Christy downed three tequila shooters and I stopped her on the fourth. She wandered away from the bar and over to the dance floor where she sidled up to some smarmy dude who bought her two Bacardi 151 shots.

My buddy Will the bar owner asked me  “Isn’t your
Friend married?” as we watched her remove her shirt revealing her bikini top underneath.

“Yes,” I said, “Time for an intervention. “

Will and I as we both walked to her, we each grabbed an arm and led her outside. From there I took her back to our condo for the night.

She was in a blackout and offered little resistance. I tucked her in her bed, fully clothed, and sat beside her until she passed out. I watched her sleep a while then climbed into the twin bed next to her. I didn’t sleep that night and there was little conversation as I loaded her in the car drove her home the next morning.

She did say one thing to me an hour into the ride home after she puked three times into one of many plastic bags I had in anticipation of her hangover.

“My husband’s an asshole.” Christy said.

“Christy, you were the asshole last night, “ I replied. “And if Will and I hadn’t stopped you, you would’ve cheated on your husband with that guy in the bar and ruined your marriage.”

Her reply was her same old, same old… “ F.U.”

My reply was, “Fine, but you be careful. Because some day, some single woman is gonna’ see what a great guy Johnny is and steal him from you.”

That was definitely the wrong thing for me to say.

I didn’t mean “me” stealing him  because I didn’t want him. I knew they both had herpes, not my cup of tea.
I was just giving her a warning.
Instead, my warning triggered a paranoia that resulted in her going off her birth control pills without telling Johnny.
She got pregnant with baby number three and got even crazier.

After that road trip, Johnny called and told me she was more verbally abusive than ever and wanted out and wanted custody for the sake of his sanity and his sons.

He said he needed my help. He was a tough guy, embarrassed, and ashamed. He thought no one believed a woman could abuse a man. I said I did.

I suggested he get a tape recorder or VCR, accidentally leave it on one day, and see what he gets. (In two party consent states this would be illegal. I was a naive investigator then.)

Sure enough, he did just that.
He called me.
He said he was coming over, and wanted to play something for me.

It was the sound from a VCR that was in another room. So it captured only sound no video.

And the sound it captured was mortifying.

She called him every name in the book, criticized the size of his “manparts”, called him impotent in front of his kids, told him she could screw anyone she wanted and he was a failure.

I could hear the kids in the background crying “Mommy, Mommy, stop yelling.”  Clearly, she was out of her mind. Meantime, Johnny kept trying to calm her down.

“Now what?” he asked me after he played me the tape out.

I suggested first he take the tape to both sets of parents, hers and his, and play it for them with her present.

That happened and it was obvious to all.
Intensive therapy was in order, the parents concluded. I suggested a psych ward and DSHS involvement.

Things went downhill from there.

She convinced everyone but me she had been taking pain pills, her behavior was an aberration. She apologized… did a 360 behavior wise… played June Cleaver to Johnny’s Ward Cleaver for just enough time to suck him back into the marriage, get DSHS off her back, and push me out of the friendship.

Last time I heard from them was from him.
Once.
They were leaving Seattle because their two dogs were poisoned and she said the area had “bad vibes”.
Personally, I think she poisoned the dogs. She always hated them and Johnny brought them into the marriage.

They moved to Oregon.

Johnny cut off all contact with me, maintained contact with a mutual friend who became my source of info. That mutual friend was also convinced Christy was nuts and might kill Johnnhy one day just to get the life insurance and the bigger diamond ring.

Ultimately Johnny and Christy got a divorce. He walked away from everything just to shut her up; he got half custody of the boys.

Then she got into Meth and he got full custody of the boys.

Last I heard she lost all her teeth and all her money and was living in the trailer with a Meth cook.

Meantime, Johnny sold used trucks while training to become a bounty hunter.


Lessons Learned

Lessons learned by this investigator in this Break Up story are this:

People are never who they appear to be at first. There are masks beneath masks.

I also learned to be careful with loyalty.
I chose my loyalty in this case I chose the wrong side. Hers.
Now I take no sides until the evidence reveals itself.

This was the last domestic I ever did for either side of one couple I considered a friend.
Clearly, a conflict of interest.
And a conflict of truths.

Break Ups- Part 2

I am writing this post on the assumption… or hope… that the person I am writing about will never read it.

I know she does not surf the net, certainly not on a Saturday night. She’d be out partying on a weekend and sleeping it off on Sunday.
I know she would not seek a blog such as mine.

I am also certain she just as soon forgot me, as I believed pissed her off for a reason I do not know.

All I do know is I hadn't seen her for seven years and today; her true story is worth the telling.

Everything I write is true and in public record because her incident, or case, involved an arrest complete with handcuffs, a police report, an assault record, a prosecutor, plea bargain, hearings, trials and more. All backed by paper trails and a whole lot of money because she went for an expensive Private Criminal Attorney instead of an over-worked freebie Public Defender.

She was 35 when we met the in sushi bar. I was a decade older.
She was there for dinner, as  was I. She drank beer, I sake.

We both ordered unusual foods, which links sushi eaters. Only the pros go for the unique stuff.
She struck up a conversation, I engaged.

She was single. Though in a relationship with a guy who didn’t like sushi as much as she did.  I was newly married.

She had full custody of two pre-teen sons who saw their father once or twice a year, by the father’s choice. He paid not a cent in child support. Also by his choice.  He had money, a girlfriend. I checked around, he had assets.

When she found out I was a Private Investigator… and the sake sank in... I became loquacious, giving up all my child support tools, tips, techniques free of charge as she took notes.

It felt good to help. And I found her engaging and interesting. She had a great job, a sharp mind. She came from an excellent family, well bred and wealthy (not that the two go together).
Suffice to say she was no trailer trash, more the BMW, Botox and Nordstrom type.

She lived in an upscale new condo. She was a top sales rep for reputable national company. Attractive, vibrant, effervescent and very funny with a contagious laugh, she was full of stories, humor -- one of those people who want both a friend and an audience. I was happy to comply and be both.

Some times people give up their secrets instantly. Other times the process is gradual and takes a while. I don't recall how long it was before she told me the story of her boyfriend.
I know she was reluctant, knowing I was a P.I. and she was afraid I would judge her. Eventually she fessed up.

Ultimately, she had this domestic situation... a  Break Up that followed a series of smaller eruptions that one night turned into a volcano.


The Eruption


She was dating a man 7 years younger than herself. He was unemployed. He was pencil thin, much smaller than her. She was on the heavier side, had struggled with weight all her life. Said she needed to lose “like 50 pounds”.

I met him in the sushi bar with her one night earlier at the very beginning of our friendship. She introduced him as friend.

I found him odd, not engaging and unattractive. He was also unemployed, lived with his mother, didn't have a car. Yet he emotionally sucker-punched my friend, went right to her heart and won it. Within weeks, he moved into her condo and bed.

Her teenage sons didn't like him either. But like most kids from broken families that try to make new ones, the kids don’t have a choice. Which, in my opinion, is a really sad thing.

So one night, she, my friend… and he, said boyfriend… they both got drunk at home. The boys were home that night too. They were witnesses to the whole event as the group prepared for a barbecue.

My friend told me she’d been sparring with her boyfriend all day -- about his not working, his spending, his playing on the video games and not cleaning house while she worked all day.
He was yelling at her boys. Told them they were good for nothing.

And just that very morning, he asked her to co-sign a car loan for him and she agreed. Now she wanted to back out of that agreement.

To an investigator, you learn these are the kinds of conversations couples have that go nuclear.

According to her story, after all this conflict transpired, and the family was getting ready for dinner, my friend’s boyfriend was in the downstairs bathroom.

There was an empty bathroom upstairs.

My friend decided he was spending too long in the downstairs bathroom and she was too tired to walk to the upstairs one.  She banged on the door, said hurry up. He told her to hold on, he'd be out in a minute

Maybe it was the fourth beer and third tequila shooter she had that night; or maybe she was just nuts to begin with and I hadn't seen it yet. But for whatever reason, she grew angrier and angrier, banging at that door harder, screaming louder, demanding he open it.
“It’s my house” she screamed, “Get out now.”

He kept saying "Wait one more second."
The boys said, “Use the upstairs bathroom. Mom”
Neither option appealed to her.

Instead, she proceeded into the kitchen, got a clear mixing bowl, carried it to their back porch, lifted up her sundress, squatted down, pulled her panties out of the way and peed in the glass see through mixing bowl.

Her sons stood immobile, aghast and speechless.

Meantime, the boyfriend exited the bathroom, then kitchen, came out the back door and my friend on the back patio and said:
“Sorry I took so long, it’s all yours now.”

“So is this!” she said as she took the mixing bowl of green pee and threw it her soon to be ex-boyfriend’s face in front of her two sons.

When she told me that story, I put my chopsticks down and stared for her. Too much was running through my head to process.

"You’re judging me," she said defensively.

"No, just trying to understand" I replied.” It was a bit extreme.”

"Well he really pissed me off,” she said.

"Literally." I replied.

Then we both started laughing so hard we couldn't stop until I asked the question every investigator asks countless times.

"Then what happened?"

The rest wasn’t funny.

She said her boyfriend, with her pee all over his face, in his hair eyes and mouth, spit at the ground, then looked at her in abject horror. He said absolutely nothing, tuned on his heels, walked into the kitchen and called 911. He did not wash himself off until the police arrived.

The police, came she was arrested, handcuffed, hauled off in the car cop to a county jail that’s no Hilton.

Since she was totally intoxicated and argumentative (she slapped the police officer which added an additional charge)… and it was a holiday… she'd be spending the next couple of days in jail.

The first night she said she'd been shackled to the wall in her cell. She said recovering from a hangover in jail this way is not fun.

Between the jail, the bail, the legal costs, the emotional costs, the effects on her son, the criminal records (felony, assault) among everything else, that one little fight about the bathroom escalated beyond imaginable proportions.

Break Ups are why the criminal and civil justice system are so busy these days.

It took several months to physically extricate her from this guy, because she felt so guilty she wanted to apologize. Oddly, she also wanted him back.

She started stalking him. He got a restraining order.
I could only stop her when I, on my own, took photos with him with another woman he just moved in with. That seemed to take all the winds of anger out of my friend’s sails.

Some Break Ups need not happen.
Some have to.
It would be great if we could all part ways civilly, with a handshake or hug, with a "Have a good life.” But instead, we humans have a way of flinging the fluids of fury in each others' faces.
And that never turns out well.

If you are going through a Break Up, divorce, separation…. just know, there is always a life after that.
And that life will be a better one, and an easier one for all involved, especially the kids, without a criminal record.

Key is to split apart amiably, instead of shattering to pieces.

Break Ups - Part 1

Break Ups are mercurial.
Meaning they are like Mercury... not the planet but the chemical, which is also called Quicksilver. Mercury is solid and safe enough in the confines of a thermometer. It's the only common metal that is liquid at ordinary temperatures.

Mercury has its good sides and bad.

On the good side, Mercury is used in barometers, manometers and thermometers. It has a high rate of constant expansion over wide temperature ranges. It comes in handy in the process of recovering gold.

Set loose from its confines, the mass of Mercury breaks  into tiny balls that take on lives of their own, with unpredictable shapes and pathways.
This is the bad side of Mercury, it's dangerous because it can disrupt the central nervous system and damage brain functions. One touch can kill you.

It's like that with Break Ups.
One couple splits, or divorces... and  new sets of personalities and their interactions form.
These new life forms are a witch's brew of negative emotions that reach a rolling boil of anger, fear, disrespect, betrayal, foreboding, fury, frustration, rejection, vindication, reconciliation, retribution, revenge.

When someone walks out on you, or cheats on you, your soul, body and mind react with the highest  degree of stress response.
In a divorce, the choice is usually flight for the one who leaves and fight for the one who is left.
And your survival, or the survival of the one you feel betrayed you, depends on the sanity of all the actors in this all-to-real, all-to-common drama.

A partner, or spouse with a screw loose may snap and pull the trigger on one lost love... or their whole family.

In my experience, people in periods of emotional crises, either implode or explode.
When they implode, they harm themselves... some going so far as to choose suicide as the only way to end their emotional pain.
Other times they explode and seek revenge. They cause  harm or death to the person they once loved and now demonize.

Let me preface by saying domestics -- calls to homes involving conflict  between family members, particularly partners or spouses --  are the most volatile,  dangerous and deadly for police.
I am also convinced they are the most dangerous ones for investigators because every time I and other investigators I work with have been chased or hassled  by someone, it has been when  we were working domestics.

There is nothing more volatile, treacherous, unpredictable and unrelenting as a Break Up or Divorce between: a man and woman;  a woman and woman;  or  a man and man. Domestic Violence is an equal opportunity destroyer.

That said, there's a story on the news today I will link this blog to. It's probably on U Tube by now.
A couple on a Carnival cruise had a fight that witnesses on the ship heard.
(You'll get the full story about that case if you click on the title of this blog. It's a link should take you there.)
It just happened.
He said something about how if she did something, he'd jump.
She said, "Go ahead."
He jumped... out of the ship and into the sea, the cold rolling ocean, in the middle of the night.
Personally, I think he over-reacted.
But I digress.

Next thing, people hear his cries for help from the sea. He is saved by a Disney ship in the area.
I suspect their relationship will not be saved.
At least I hope not.
Because that last act will be a tough one to follow.

I  am an encyclopedia full of domestic tales of terror, trauma, torture, tempests and woes. Every new P.I. cuts his or her teeth on such domestic cases.
At first they are quite thrilling, filled with adrenalin rush and constant activity -- be it the sordid stories and players, the  surveillance, backgrounds, contacts with divorce attorneys.  I've photographed cheaters in countless places... and positions.

And I've shattered many an illusion that  illusion-holders are unwilling to get rid of.

One of the hard jobs in my domestic cases has been catching cheaters. The hardest part is convincing the person who hired me it really is true.
And perhaps it's time to move on.

Once a cheater. Always a cheater.
Yes, there are exceptions, but they are not the norm.
If he or she swears they only did it just once and it was a rare, drunken moment ....
and the betrayed partner is willing...
and if you go through intensive therapy and stay together 24/7....
and if you make some kind of huge commitment not to cheat, then maybe there's a chance.
I have known couples who have made it past a mid-life crisis or two.

However, I am not optimistic when it comes to betrayal and cheaters. I  believe the cheater continues to cheat.
And  cheaters only admit to the acts they've been caught at or confess to.

I also believe people cheat because it is a compulsion,  an addiction, a need to be wanted in the same way an alcoholic, gambler or drug addict needs the fix.

That's why so many people coming out of recovery have to go through recovery more times before it sticks. Once clean, they chase the dragon for that first pure initial hit or high believing they can keep it under control.
Such is the case with cheaters, betrayers.
And such is the purpose of this Blog on Breaking Up...
the first part in a series inspired by all the domestics I  have worked all these years. And the phone calls I continue to get.

A lot of Break Ups are happening by email these days, this is new. And, in my opinion, tacky. If you are going to cut and run, why be a coward about it?

Mostly, Break-Ups have to do with two things --  cheating or money.

And I think mostly, a cheater cheats for one (or more) of four reasons:
1. because they are addicted to it
2. because they are not getting "it" 
3. because they were targeted by someone who wanted them or "it".
4. because they were stoned, drunk, high.

Whatever the reasons, it's a moot point by the time I, or an attorney. get involved.
By then, it's too late to reconcile.
It simply becomes a matter of Damage Control... the subject of tomorrow's blog.

Cult Girl

She was convinced she was poisoned by a religious cult leader. Plain and simple.
I had received no less than six calls from her  regarding this case and not a penny.

I knew she wouldn't pay me because she was 24 and said she was broke.
She claimed to be the daughter of an heir to a fortune. Her real father, she said, lived in Germany with a new wife and owned a castle. Her  mother, also rich, died and the case was in probate with her brother and sister, who she did not speak to.
So, she said, if I help her now I will be paid down the road.
I hear that a lot... the part about getting paid down the road.
The longer and more complicated the excuse, the less I believe it true.

The first conversation, I focused on her story, taking notes by hand on every word I could capture over the cell phone. She spoke fast.

The second phone call, I assessed her sanity based on the first call.
She had only a message number, she said, she was living with various friends and was homeless. She began to provide specifics about the cult, they way they lured her in, courted, then captured her heart and money.

The third call (and all these calls were from her to me), I found myself vacillating between the validity of her story and her sanity.

Normally, I avoid private clients and work directly through attorneys. Private clients require a whole lot of time and many are either unwilling or unable to pay for my time.
Yet some cases, like this one, are a mission of mercy to me...  pro bono... and possibly tax deductible, IRS permitting.  I was still trying to determine if this would be one of those pro bonos or this caller, this young woman, was a few beers shy of a six pack.

She was from a questionable, rural area of Washington state where bad and most would say, perverted, things recently happened and continue to do so.

Google this: "enumclaw+horse+perforated colon" and you'll know the area I am talking about and what went down... or up... there recently.

The religious cult the young woman called me about operated a web site and operated close to the aforementioned "horse incident" site.

On the fourth call, I asked for every name she could give me about the cult leader and members.  Dates of birth, AKA's (Also Known As), addresses, etc. I did  some background on her subjects.... and her.

On her fifth call, I told her there is indeed a religious cult she described and yes there are people who've had issues with them, but none like hers. I said if she'd be poisoned and defrauded, she needed the police, not me for this.

She said she'd already gone to the police.
They referred her to a retired police officer who referred her to me.
She said everyone said there as nothing she could do.
She willingly joined the cult,  she willingly slept with the leader, she willingly tithed them and she never took blood tests so there was no proof she was poisoned.
I suspected the police suspected she was a nut case.

She said she'd begun her own investigation and just wanted to meet me, talk go me, have me mentor her, infiltrate the cult, and help her put these people away.
She said when her mom died, she got a small inheritance and gave it all to the religious cult.
This contradicted her prior claim that her deceased, rich mom's estate was still in probate.
Major red flag. 

I said I was not a cult expert, though I could refer her to one.
I told her she needed an attorney. If the police weren't going to pursue this, maybe a civil attorney would. 
I said everything I could to convince her  I was didn't want her case.
Every inner alarm in my gut was ringing. There was no snooze button.
However, she was 24 years old, alone and scared. I spoke with caution and compassion.

On the fifth call, I said very little. I just listened as she said she'd begun calling  parents of cult members. She rambled on so quickly, her thoughts leaping so sporadically, I wondered if she was on speed.
She said she wanted to pick my brain and she'd pay for the coffee.
I said no, she needed the police or an attorney, not me.

One the sixth and last call I was blunt. I said we had spent almost 6 hours in phone conversation, yet she was not a client and had not paid a retainer. I told her again she needed to work with the police or attorney. 

I also told her I felt it was in her best interests to walk away from the whole thing and consider the experience a lesson learned. The cult she referred to, she joined willingly. The money she gave them was not coerced from her.  She handed the money and her body over to the cult leader.

I explained  some cults try to pass themselves off as religions. They are seductive and police are limited in their abilities to intervene. I suggested she be grateful for being out of the cult, living in the city, away from them now. I said maybe she should see this past problem as an opportunity for change.

She would hear none of it. She insisted she wanted justice.

I tried one last time. I said she needed to re-frame the picture, look at it from a different perspective.
The fact that she was still alive meant her glass was half full, not half empty. And perhaps she should put her energy elsewhere --  towards an education, a job, reuniting with the sister and brother she was alienated from by her choice, not theirs.
She hung up on me and I never heard from her again.

I follow the cult on the net. I haven't seen any problems with them since I first looked. Nothing criminal, nothing even worthy of a civil suit. Just a whole lot of whining on message boards. 

Truth be told, I'm not even sure they are a cult --  they're more of a like-minded group of people who gather in the name of their version of a religion, tithing to a set of beliefs which they believe will result in eternal salvation.

My job is to investigate, not judge. Though I made a judgment call on that case and I feel it was the right one.

A Private Investigator who works for private  clients instead of attorneys runs real risks because we never know what's under that mask of sanity.

Ever Vigilent

One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb now not to figure out we are in a recession, headed rapidly to...or already in a depression. The ship is sinking... albeit slowly... and we are all trying to find ways to plug the holes in our individual ships. Some are still in smooth sailing.... but most of us are trying to stay afloat in a sea of diminished investment funds, foreclosed homes, diminished property values, increased property taxes, lost jobs, and dashed dreams.

Not all is lost however.
These are not Titanic times just yet.
As long as we walk this planet and control our thoughts, instead of letting them control us, we can stay afloat, we can get through it.

Survival of the fittest  is a concept inherent in every species through time. The strongest always survive, the weakest filter out and fade away.
The weak ones are the ones who scream of falling skies and spew negative energy.
There will always be weak ones.

The good news is there will always be stronger ones. It is the order of things. That challenge lies in maintaining the balance between the two.

There are more of us good guys, than bad ones out here.
But the bad ones are very good at being bad. Sometimes we don't know them until after they've taken off their friendly masks and the real demon has revealed itself. We investigators are trained to see behind those masks.

Child predators, sex offenders, kid killers, family destroyers.... they all talk of watching potential "marks" or subjects, day in and day out. When I worked as an Investigator for the Public Defender, many of these predators were my clients. I've also done a little studying on the subject.
These people don't get better. 
They move in and out the criminal justice system's revolving doors.

Sex to them is power... they have none... that is how they get it.
The feed on others' emotional blood.
So they sit in their parked cars... pretending to read, to talk on the phone or lay under trees in parks, school yards, fields. They can be jolly uncles at a family outing, coaches on school teams or a guy with a puppy he wants to share.
Children are fish, predators use lines and bait to get  in their boat
Now I no longer represent bad guys. I’m a civil investigator, on the side of the victim.

And often, in my travels, I recognize the patterns of predators I use to defend on my daily rounds. Because I too sit in parked cars between cases, I often park in places I feel safe... near school yards, shopping lots, community centers, parks, schools, churches.
Places where it's secure to pull off the road, pull out notes, make calls, email someone, focus or just chill for a while as I am forever on the road.

Sexual predators of children watch recesses and after school activities much like lions do on the Sahara. They lay in wait and watch the herds. Always, in that herd, there are big ones and small ones. Groups, cliques, and the little isolated, single ones. The outcasts.... the rejects...the ones on the periphery... often those are the ones they target.

I use to speak at schools. Tell children how they could rub their fingers in their hair, which has natural grease they can use to write license plate numbers on rocks or windows, if they see a child abducted in a car.

I use to tell parents to teach their kids.... if they were locked in car trucks.... to never, ever give up. To pull at every panel, expose every wire, unplug everything and that would pull out a brake light, headlight, turn light and trigger a police stop.

I use to tell children if they were riding their bikes and a stranger in a car pulled beside them and grabbed their arm, to hold onto to the bike and scream. They couldn't pull the kid and the bike through the car window.

And I use to tell everyone I could... never, ever, get into a car with a stranger who pulls a gun on you and says "get in. " I say t attempt fight and/or flight  --   try to run, scream,  or risk getting shot rather than get in that strangers vehicle. Anything that results from an escape, including injury...  gives you a chance. Once you are taken and abducted, your chances of survival diminish exponentially. 

I used teach a lot things.  Especially to my own children, who lean a bit on the excessively cautious side. I do not know if this is a bad thing. I am sure it is a safe thing
Bottom line, I think the most we can be these days is financially conservative, fully realistic and ever vigilant.

People always ask about my safety when I tell them I am Private Investigator. I am much more worried about the children in the living rooms of people I am investigating. I could possibly survive an on the job injury. Most little kids can't survive an abduction. If they do, they lost their childhood.

So, we must all keep eyes open for each other.
Next time you are someplace public, where people gather -- an airport; train station; community center; playgrounds -- watch the people watching the people. This where you pick up aberrant behavior.
This is where you may be able to make a difference.

Witness Hunting In Deliverance Land

By the time I finish this blog, half the planet will be asleep.
I suppose this is the price I pay for the commitment  I made... being, a post a day as long as I am physically able.

And in every "Day In The Life Of A Private Eye," there is, indeed, a tale of interest to tell.
For a private investigator, there is a seldom a dull day... surveillance aside... when the sun rises and nothing exciting, different, or unexpected happens.
There are always strange, intriguing calls and cases: like someone to find; something to discover or uncover; a secret to expose; a story to unravel.
And so I travel.
I go to to places full of anonymous and cautious faces that I turn into sources of information.

My last mission tonight was just before sunset.

I  am home now home, safe and sound. Just brewed  a small of pot of Seattle's finest coffee lest this blog turn to mental mush.

Tonight's story still is as fresh in my head as the deer reflected in my headlights just  before I turned right into the dirt road that led to my house this evening.
I was going way under the speed limit, I knew the cars behind me were P.O.' ed because I was going so slow and I didn't care.

The deer stopped in the road and looked at me.
I stopped and looked at it.
I turned my headlights down to parking lights and also set my flashers. The deer and I were locked  there for only a few seconds... until it jumped into to the woods on our left and disappeared. I turned  right, turned my lights back up.  And as I drove down the long dirt road to our home, I  considered both myself and that deer quite lucky. A Washington State police officer was killed last week after he hit a moose in the road and his car was bent in half.

Just before my deer encounter,  I was  returning from my attempt to locate a  witness to an accident that happened in June.
I blogged about that accident a while back. A semi-truck changed lanes near a naval base and ran into a Mazda Miata, convertible down. The small car,  which flew into the air, flipped a couple of times, then bounced off the concrete road divider/jersey barrier, bounced off the road and the car landed upside down on the crown of my client's head.

The trucker that hit him, plus a passing National Guard Solider,  and three men in a pick-up, all stopped and righted the upside down Miata.
All the men thought my client was dead. After all, he was hit by a semi,  drove a convertible, the top was down.
They were blown away, one of the men told me, that the guy was still alive and talking. Actually, one guy said, our client was babbling.

I spoke to all the witnesses on the police report except for one.
There was one woman, behind the Miata, who allegedly witnessed the whole thing.
The attorney who hired me wanted to know what that one witness saw. All he wanted was the truth. Nothing more, nothing less.

Even though the semi driver apologized and accepted liability... even thought the police ticketed the trucker... trucking insurance adjustors aren't typically the most pleasant and honest of people.
They figure everyone is out to screw them because they have such big policy limits.
So they can say whatever they want -- that our client changed lanes too, that our client did this or that, they could say anything  to contribute 10, 20 even 30% to our client's liability.
Therefore, the DEF's adjustor may demand our innocent client  pay 10, 20 or 30% of his medical bills. And that posture, lie, manipulation -- whatever you call it --   would lead to a trial.
Our client's medical bills were already close to 600k.

So I had to find this one missing female witness. All I had was a name, phone number and address in a town out here we will call "Port Something." 
You guessed it, it is near the water.

I called that witness based on a number in the police report for about two weeks. Morning, noon and night I tried. All I got was once of those automated anonymous  male voice machine messages that cite the number and no name.

I finally got lucky for just a beat last Sunday night.
A man answered the phone. Then he blew the wind out of my sails when he said  there was no one there by that name, never had been. He'd  lived there with his wife of 25 years. He knew of, or witnessed no accident, in the area I described.

That left me no choice. I had to make a cold call, a door knock.  And that was my last mission of today's long day. To go to the address of the witness on the police report.

To say the location was rural is an understatement.
To those of us old enough remember the movie "Deliverance,"  that would would be more the neighborhood this investigator was in.
I was grateful for my four wheel drive,  new rear tires and the front ones I just inflated. The dirt road was about a half mile long and rutted before it curved right along a more rutted dirt road.

Perfect place for a Meth lab, I thought, looking around the spotted lots of trailers, "keep out" signs  and log or prefab homes for tell-tale signs of Meth manufacture: the big plastic containers or metal cans outside; empty chemical bottles;  piles of trash;  unkempt yards; pitpulls tethered; darkened windows, shades and boarded up windows.

The road I was going down was a dead end that ended in a cul de sac.
There were two houses there, both were occupied.
One, with an older man stepped out his front door with a rifle as I drove up. His grandson followed out the front door with  a BBG Gun. There was one more kid with a fishing rods.
I stepped out of my car with my ID in hand and visible.

The other house had a small mutt run towards my car barking wildly as I stepped out of it. Two woman emerged from that house, one wearing an apron and wiping a kitchen knife. It was obivous they weren't use to strangers.

I flashed them my most convincing smile while displaying my state PI license. I explained I was P.I. from  Seattle. I said I was so sorry to intrude this way, I was looking for a witness.

"A witness to what?" the the old man with the rifle asked.

"A wreck by the naval base," I said and added, "Nice gun. Looks old."

He told me it was his father's as I stepped closer to take a look thereby diffuse any animosity.
"I"m an unarmed investigator" I said to him, "though if I did have a weapon with me, that would do."

"You betcha'," he laughed as the barriers between us crumbled.

Turned out the witness I was looking for was visiting one of the women next door from another state when the accident happened.
The witness went back to one of the Carolinas and no one would give me her name or number. I suspected the witness  had a warrant or something going down that made her keep a low profile.

I gave the woman this witness was allegedly visiting, my business card and asked her to tell the witness to call me. I told her to tell the witness I wanted nothing more than to talk to her, to hear what she saw. Her story would be enough for me to write a "Report  Of Interview" that we would include in the case file.

After some more small talk, I  said my good-byes and thanked the man with the gun for not blowing my head off.
He laughed and said, if it was night, I would've have looked down a few more gun barrels.
"Strangers  usually don't come out to these parts alone, " he said.
I smiled and said I knew why.

As I pulled out of Deliverance-land and made my way back to civilization, I  got a cell signal and called the law firm. I briefed the attorney who hired me on my encounter.
I also told him I wanted hazard pay. He laughed heartily and thought I was kidding.
I wasn't.

It wasn't 30 minutes after I encountered  the deer, walked in my door, ate some salmon caught fresh last night and downed some coffee, that the witness called me. The woman I gave my business card to, called her.

Yes indeed, she said, she was visiting Washington when she saw the accident. She could not get it out of her head she said. She now takes sleeping pills so she ahe doesn't dream about it.

The one story that she kept repeating to me was...  she was the one that called and talked to the 911 operator.
She said the guy's arm, our client's, was almost sliced off.
The men helping him needed a tourniquet.
Everyone was screaming for a tourniquet and she said, "I"m a big girl, I used to be a paramedic, so I offered them my bra."
So. she did that thing girls can do to take their bras off while still wearing their shirts, and they used her bra as the tourniquet for his arm. She wondered if the doctors saved his arm and his life.  

I told her her he survived and his arm was not amputated. I also told her our client was conscious the whole time, remembered this kind woman who gave him her bra and wondered who she was. She asked me to give him her phone number. I said I would give it to the attorneys and  they would take it from there.

I took her statement down by hand, word for word.
I will type up her words in the morning and  get it to the attorneys.
Whether they choose to turn it into a declaration is their choice.
My job for now is done.
Whether or not she testifies, I now can for her.
I am her voice should she choose not to return to Washington,  if this case proceeds to trial.

Still... given my druthers...  I'd rather face the kind of unknowns I encountered tonight, than the knowingness of the same old job, the same old commute, the same old faces, the same old wage, the same old thing, same old day...  day in and out. 

There is something to be said for waking up every day and wondering what adventure that day will bring.... and who you will meet.
Tomnorow is only about 9 hours away for me.
And tomorrow, a dog mauling awaits.