“A Tragic Case”
A work case that would turn out to be shocking
I’ve always had a knack for seeing things and going unnoticed. When I was seventeen, my boss at the executive park cafe where I worked asked me to surveil a man selling food out of his truck in the parking lot unlicensed. I went undetected during the entire surveillance. It was then I knew I had what it took to become an investigator.
Fast forward six years later and I’m sitting in my office as a staff supervisor at a small investigative firm.
The phone rang.
“Dave, you have a call on line one,” Barbara said in a hushed tone.
“Any idea if it’s a client?” I asked.
This time, “Neil McCauley” was on hold.
“Thanks, I’ll take it,” I said. Evidently, my friend’s voice eluded all recognition. Falling victim to the same fake names — DeNiro’s in the movie Heat being a favorite — made it difficult to take her seriously.
I picked up the phone saturated in frustration. “What`s up, Paul?”
“What`s the good word, David?”
“You do that every time,” I said, “and she still has no idea.”
“I know. What is wrong with those people over there? Are you working at a drive-thru?”
“The people in my office are — ”
“Davyyyy, Wasss-up bruthaaa!” Just then my boss, Don, shot into my office like a lunatic starving for more madness.
“Call ya back,” I said, hanging up on Paul.
“What’s up for the weekend?”
I turned unceremoniously in my black swivel chair. “Not much, really.”
“Listen, I need you to go ahead and do an employment verification on this woman.” He plunked down on my desk a thick manila folder that was held together by a giant red elastic, like what you’d find on the floor of a shipping and receiving warehouse. “Big domestic case. We gotta dot our i’s and cross our t’s on this one. CYA [Cover Your Ass]. Client says his ex-wife is going out drinking most nights and that she’s an unfit mother for their child.”
He removed his gray suit coat, a Jones New York job, and tossed it on a nearby box overflowing with VHS tapes. Propping his foot up on the metal fold-up chair, he tied and then retied his shoe. He looked like a stereotypical mobster from the fifties: clean-shaven, with short, perfectly-manicured dark sideburns, an obnoxiously square neckline. “We can’t screw this one up,” he said.
“Of course. Do we want Peters or Ricky to handle it?” I opened the file. A spelling error, relivant, glared back at me.
“Give it to Peters. Tell him it’s gotta be his best case.”
“We’ll see what else I can find on her.” I sounded out the subject’s last name: “I-z-z-u-p-i-e-t-r-o.”
“Get it done, Dave. Whatever you need to do. And tell Peters to put his other cases on hold for now. Tim Fredrickson from Liberty Mutual has been up my ass about his last few cases.” His cell phone started vibrating.
“I gotta take this,” he said, leaving me hanging, as usual.
On the long table along the far wall in my office stood six large black bins. Each contained numerous hanging green files. At first, I saw only his back to the door. Unable to make out anything more, I didn’t think much of it, but as I got closer, I could sense the agitation. He was fingering through one of the files, rather rapidly. Gimme a break, what did he want now?
“Sorry I’m late,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it, Dave. Good morning.”
I took off my coat. Glancing down at the newspaper spread out on my desk, my eye caught the headline:
Husband kills wife and then himself
My stomach immediately summoned up the sensation felt on a bumpy ride in my father’s old Dodge Granata. “Happened early last night,” Don said, approaching my desk with the file open across both palms, like it was a newborn baby.
I let out a deliberate cough. “I just talked to the client yesterday,” I said, and coughed again, though unintentionally this time. “Peters said he came up to his window.” I swallowed the phlegm in my throat to avoid embarrassment. “Told the guy to go away.”
“I knew something was off,” said Don, leaning against the doorway now, his mouth twisted.
“I don’t know what to say. I just talked to him yesterday.”
“It’s what I always say. We’ve got to be diligent about the information we provide.”
This one really hit me. How could this have happened, on a straightforward child custody case, no less?
But the truth was, the man who had ordered from our firm all those hours of surveillance on his ex-wife had the psychological profile of someone who could do real harm.
“The client is acting very erratic. He keeps calling me. There is something off about him, Dave. We’re gonna need to reevaluate things,” Don had said, putting the case on hold.
When Investigator Peters reported that the client showed up in his car to where he was conducting surveillance, got out, and rapped his knuckles on Peters’ window, it’d become apparent that the man had a serious obsession with his ex-wife.
Of course, Don did, in fact, reevaluate things in the end, deciding to call off the case completely.
The following day, the man would point a loaded gun at his wife and pull the trigger, killing her instantly, and then turn the gun on himself.
A young girl left behind, losing both her parents to murder-suicide.
It was a tragic case, indeed.