they teach newbies the significance of Dear John letters at the academy anymore?”
He ignored me and turned to Salem. “Bag it as evidence.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Officer Salem,” I spoke up in a surprisingly easy tone that belied the rage welling inside me. “It’s evident your superior skipped the Rules of Search and Seizure class.”
Salem, a young copper I pegged to be about twenty–three, looked to Anderton for some much-needed guidance, which I provided.
“Even though your search of my house was technically legal, having found no evidence a crime was being committed or has been committed here, you must now leave everything exactly as you found it. You can’t take my personal correspondence or any other items—that’s stealing. Furthermore, from what I can recall from my days on the force, stealing is against the law. It would be like attending a noise complaint call, finding no problems at the given address and then confiscating the owner’s CD collection for the heck of it. Just from looking at you, Salem, I can tell you graduated near the top of your class. Think about what I’m saying.”
I sensed I shocked Salem by stating I had once been an officer.
“But this letter could be part of his plan to cover up his crime,” Salem stammered to Anderton.
“And what crime would that be—infidelity?”
“Enough!” Anderton screamed at both of us. “We’ll get a warrant and then bag it,” he addressed Salem sternly.
I hated senior officers like Anderton. He was probably a twenty-year veteran, each year promoted to a higher rank based on “time served” instead of merit. Today, he was trying to impress his young, wet-behind-the-ears officers, for which I gave him full marks. His problem was that from a legal standpoint, his overblown porch bluster would not have a snowball’s chance in hell in a court of law.
“With all due respect, it’s bloody near impossible to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant of a private citizen’s residence, on the basis a librarian failed to show up for work approximately four hours ago. Trust me on this one, boys,” I said to the rookies.
That brain fog I had mentioned previously was now apparently invading the space between the ears of the officers in front of me. The youngsters looked dazed and confused, as their fearless leader stood red-faced with anger. He glared at me, while silently conveying his desire to crack my skull open with his nightstick.
“Why don’t you just tell us where she is then?” Dwyer asked, exhibiting some courage.
“If I knew I’d tell you. Right now, I don’t have a clue. If I did, I could apologize for turning out to be such an idiot.” I paused and added, “But I’m sure you’ll communicate those sentiments for me when you speak to her in the near future.” I looked at each officer present and asked, “So, are we finished here?”
After an impassioned, yet useless, “We’re not finished by a long shot,” speech, Sergeant Anderton and his minions begrudgingly departed, much to the neighbourhood’s relief.
Show’s over. Everybody inside, I wanted to tell all of the sidewalk gawkers.
I carried Linda’s letter into the house and bolted both doors. As I walked toward the fridge to get a cold beer, I noticed my answering machine light blinking.
“Hey Steve-O, it’s your buddy Doogie, the world’s ultimate pig farmer. I was surfing the web and saw an interesting story on the Darrien Free Press page. Do you have a death wish or what, buddy? Anyway, call me on my cell. Do not—I repeat—do not call me at home. Wifey will go ballistic when she finds out about this. Don’t delay, call today. Talkatcha.”
***
The World According To Me
WHEN A GOOD P.I. GOES BAD
Jeremy Atkins
Darrien Free Press
August 14, 1997
A little more than six months ago, Private Investigator Steve Cassidy returned to Darrien a hero—but just barely. Today he is being investigated in a bizarre love triangle gone bad. Very bad.
Cassidy had been hired to learn if a visiting plumber from Plymouth was cheating on his wife. To do so, Steve hired a female accomplice to pose as a willing single businesswoman looking for love in all the wrong places. After dinner the couple returned to the Tecumseh Motel in, where the plumber was hoping to have consensual sex with his attractive date. That is when a problem arose: the woman was paged and informed her father had taken ill. She would have to leave soon. The plumber would have to leave even sooner.
By all accounts, that’s exactly what he did. He left his distressed fake date alone in her room, and returned to his hotel on the other side of the city. Somewhere along the line, however, the Plymouth plumber decided he had to see this wonderful gal one last time.
Now you may be asking yourself, Where was the P.I. during all this activity? Well, after secretly videotaping the couple at a local grill, Mr. Cassidy followed them back to the motel, still recording their every move from the comfort of his heavily tinted van.
When the night’s scheduled fun and games were over, the real show began—this time unscripted. You see, Samantha Jennings was not only good at playing a man’s mistress during work hours but also long after her intended mark left her side.
Maybe that’s why Steve Cassidy hired her in the first place. What better way to cheat on your fiancée then to say, “Of course nothing is happening between Samantha and me. Our relationship is strictly professional. Trust me.”
Regardless of how Mr. Cassidy’s and Ms. Jennings’ relationship began, it ended abruptly with several swings of a hammer and a hail of police bullets.
A few years ago, while employed as a patrol officer, Cassidy turned on several of his fellow officers, in an attempt to save his own hide during a scandalous corruption case, from which that force is still smarting.
Earlier this year Cassidy returned to his old hometown to locate a missing person. Not only did he determine family man Barry Jones had been dead for seven years, he also got the killer to confess to the murder on tape. The killer is now spending the next twenty–five years as a guest of the Sandwedge Penitentiary.
Did I mention that during the same investigation Mr. Cassidy had been arrested for Mr. Jones’ murder? Or that the local police chief was shot and killed by one of his own during a verbal confrontation with Cassidy? For more on that, buy the recently released true crime book Late For Dinner, as newsprint costs don’t allow me to give up the juicier details just now.
Should we feel bad for Steve Cassidy? I don’t think so. Should we feel sad for the homicidal cheating plumber? Nah. The ones for whom we should really feel sorrow for—pity even—are the women involved in this tragedy, who trusted Cassidy: the plumber’s wife, the mistress, and finally his poor fiancée, who was probably the last to know.
At present, Steve Cassidy’s P.I. licence has been suspended by the proper authorities, and the local police continue to probe his involvement in this sordid affair.
THREE
