He Made It All Up
When a book’s cover doesn’t match the story inside the pages.
In 1994, I met the woman with whom I became happily married in 1996. We’re still married and have raised two great kids. They are ages 22 and 18 and have no idea what our lives were like before them. We currently live in the White Mountains in New England and this is the only community they have ever known. One of the reasons we moved here is to lessen the chance that we’ll run into someone who was incarcerated because of my work. Because prior to moving here we lived in another State and led a very different life. I had worked for several years in the private security and investigations field and eventually took a position in law enforcement.
While I wore a badge I was involved in everything except routine patrol. I wasn’t performing traffic stops. Instead, I found myself transporting maximum security prisoners across the State, conducting breathalyzer tests on arrestees, commanding security teams in the detention facility and routinely being assigned to a federal agency to assist with secure delivery of federal prisoners to court and other appointments (really scary people) as well as providing security on special ops dealing with cartel cases (even scarier people).
Actually, no. I didn’t do any of that. I made it all up. Just ask my kids, because they refuse to believe it.
When I left law enforcement I obtained a private investigator’s license. For almost a decade I conducted investigations in the private sector on all manner of cases. There were the executive protection cases protecting the wealthy and the various VIP’s requiring close cover for themselves and their families. There were high volume cash transports conducted under cover and heavily armed, IE. machine guns, shotguns and sidearms. Loose, spendable cash bound into a heavy bag. About $3 million in small bills per week. A couple times we were surveilled and followed and later ran an investigation to ascertain who they were.
I met my wife while conducting an investigation and hired her as a decoy. The kind of decoy that is sent into a situation where we’re trying to determine the behavior of a suspect that might be cheating on his spouse. She was good. We recorded conversations and got visual evidence and undertook other measures. Our success rate was very high. We conducted investigations in manslaughter cases, rape cases, vehicular homicide cases, missing person cases, etc. The guy with a gun and the curvy, blonde girlfriend solving cases and living a dangerous, adventurous life. Sorta like in the movies.
Actually, no. I didn’t do any of that. I made it all up. Just ask my kids. They refuse to believe it.
There was this one case where another detective and I had to crawl through a field of tall grass and reach the tree line. Being shot while walking across that field was a distinct possibility. Once we reached the woods we had to continue a low profile as we made our way to the target’s house. Luckily it was a bright, sunny day and the canopy of the woods was dense and made the area of the woods dark by comparison. Our mission was to capture photo and video evidence of the target acting in such a way as to invalidate his disability claim. At one point as we were laying under ferns on the forest floor he came to the edge of the tree line and peered into the darkness as if expecting someone. He was armed. So were we. Then a loud jet aircraft flew overhead giving my partner a chance to snap some photos of him without being heard. In the meantime I continued to record video of him from a prone position. We obtained clear evidence that he was not disabled and waited for the right moment to shrink away and go back to the staging area and leave.
Nah, I made it up…
If they only knew who I am.
My kids don’t really know who I am. They have no clue about the things I’ve seen and done. They just see a boring guy who doesn’t do much of anything that’s exciting and just lives a quiet life. These past 23 years I have been that quiet guy. Mostly its been for them.
