Twenty-One:

Considering everything, Katie appeared ready to pounce on my case by the time we parted ways. Her seemingly blind faith in my incorruptibility was likely the only thing standing between her stepping into my case. She trusted that I would enlighten her when the time came. Besides, I might truly require a decent cop who I knew was not on the take by the time this entire picture developed.

My afternoon was spent syncing up to Peter Grimshaw. I and my trusty little stolen Nissan were on him from the time he went on his lunch break, until quitting time. Surveillance is nearly all observation and documentation of the normal life of your suspect. Their daily routine, and their every normal action. Most of what you observe is mundane, and you use it to construct a picture of what their life looks like. That way, you notice when something or someone is out of place in their world. You establish everything that is in place, so you can discover what pieces or actions are a loose fit to the equation that is their life. Finding what’s shaken loose is often the first step to discovering the true puzzle beneath the canvas of life.

Tracking Peter Grimshaw was child’s play. He was completely oblivious to my presence. Considering he was from a long cop family, I had worried that he may have some basic skills of detection, but he didn’t seem to look up from his foggy little world any more than the next person. His ease and comfort seemed almost irrational to me, considering he had a runaway wife who was on to his designs to have her killed. One might expect more hyper-vigilance from him, but Peter moved through his daily routines as if there was not a potential twenty-five-to-life sentence hanging over him.

Being born into a family like his, perhaps Peter had an inflated sense of security? I couldn’t rule anything out with a man willing to hire a hitman. Regardless of his motivations and core behavior, nothing justifies his actions. After my little chat with his brother, I gleaned enough to know Peter is in fact guilty. There are many pieces of information that a girl can gleam between the lines and pull from the snippets of data given in genuine responses. Lucky for me, I made Detective Grimshaw incredibly angry and frequently. Emotional responses are more often the truth or shades of it at the minimum.

Peter didn’t head home, instead, he went to a bar after quitting time. He was friendly with a few of the girls who appeared to be college students at the local university. Like most older men, he was drawn to youth and beauty like a drug or some reminder of a bygone time in their lives. Nothing surprised me anymore. People are disgusting and dark creatures of desire and manifest hunger. I snapped several shots of the interactions if only to document the girls with him, in case there was any need to reference them later or discern any potential patterns through them.

There was a part of me that wondered with every cheater, why they could claim to love someone enough to marry them, and eventually be caught full-naked in some seedy establishment with a barista or some other type of cliché youthful tryst. (Not that all went towards the younger girls, but it did appear to be a large swath of the cliché cheaters.)

Peter seemed to be lingering and nursing his second drink for a long time. It was not obvious to see until the bartender clocked out, and she came over and kissed his cheek, that I realized his real aim was the thirty-ish blonde bartender. The others had simply been passing conversation while he killed time.

(Yeah, I knew condoms in a married bathroom were suspect!)

I mused to myself since it did not take a rocket scientist to figure a woman who married someone, did not often care about protection in his usual circumstances. I carefully pulled my car around the block without turning on my headlights, and I followed them as they walked past Peter’s car, to what I could only assume to be her car.

She was driving a nice-looking little Ford; it was perhaps a few years old. I snapped shots of the car, and then zoomed in and snapped a series of shots on the plate on the rear bumper. Whoever the mystery bartender was, I could run her tag through the DMV database later and I would have some general information about her. Part of me was curious about her side of this arrangement, then there was the part which felt like no one should ever put themselves into such an unseemly position. Personally speaking, I would never be apart of a cheating triangle, gay or otherwise. However, most mature girls are considerably more monogamous than the average male, at least according to every study and statistic I have ever heard.

After the pair turned the corner, I flipped my lights on and I rounded the corner a few seconds later. I followed from the left lane and I stayed about three car lengths back. This was some very standard tailing one-oh-one stuff I have picked up over the years. There is a learning curve to being a good PI. In the past I had people notice me following them, which led to more than a few awkward confrontations. It’s been more than a year since I have ever been found out. When I was a cop, I often had a surveillance network to help me keep track of a target under our microscope and we have teams of vehicles to track a person without tipping them off.

When you’re a solo act, you must be a lot more inconspicuous without losing your target to the general chaos of the road in a big city. Let’s face it, drivers in a big southern city are not any better than drivers in large cities in the north. There is always an endless array of different things that could go wrong and could happen while you’re trying to stick to a tail. City driving is often compared to a form of urban war, or even referenced to that old Mad Max movie from before I was born.

Even at night, the drivers were out in full force, so it was a constant struggle once we were on the main roads and off the little canal strip of music clubs and hip bars where I had been perched. The main streets were ripe with drivers and all their hurried agendas. In the span of a minute, I had two people cut me off, and another three nearly swerve into me while trying to swing over into my lane.

Keeping tabs on the horny murderous Peter was challenging to say the least. I was eternally grateful that miss bartender was a cautious driver and did not want to speed on her way home. I could safely bet this had something to do with how much like alcohol she must smell right now.

I am not typically a very hot-headed chick, but by the time we ended up back at her south-east apartment building, I was ready to club the first person who spoke to me crossly. There were times I could suddenly comprehend the road-rage violence I had often broke up as a patrol officer. Driving in the bustling evening traffic was an experience all it's own.

Henry had been spam-texting me for a while now, and I had been so zonked with my camera lens view on the world, I was ignoring the phone. He knew better than to try to reach me while I was in the middle of tailing someone. There is a heightened focus that comes over me as my world narrows to the target. Yesterday had been a fluke, when he called during that gig, I was already winding down, so I was coming back into the real world mentally speaking.

I turned off the lights, and I parked across from the open apartment complex lot, and I began to snap off zoomed shots of Peter climbing out of the extremely attractive woman’s Ford sedan, and he was not shy about touching her. They were not simple friends. As they reached her door, he pinned her to it in an impassioned kiss.

I snapped shots; it was so like the scene of a thousand money-shots I have taken. However, I waited, and I watched as they entered the apartment, and I spotted the rail and narrow steel staircase of the fire-escape long the right hand of her building. As it was, I had enough, but I wanted a shot of the actual deed if I could swing it.

Being careful, I climbed from my stolen Nissan, and pulled up my hood on my light jogging jacket, and I moved towards the right-hand alley between the buildings. Her light had been on the third floor, so I climbed past the first two side doors connected to the first two floors, and I perched myself outside her bedroom window, and I waited.

There was a sound of faint music, and I could hear the occasional word or two. Nothing important, but it sounded like they may be eating dinner. After about thirty-or-so minutes, I finally saw the pair enter the bedroom, and their clothes began to hit the floor quickly since they did not seem to be keen on waiting any longer.

I raised my camera, and I snapped off a series of shots as they made-out and their clothes hit the floor quickly in-between kisses.

After they were in the bed, I got a series of shots of the first few minutes of the deed itself, enough to prove beyond any doubt that the cheater was indeed committing adultery. After a few heated minutes of frames, I finally began to slowly back down the stairs. My heart rate was up from the sudden surge and the excitement of possible discovery with so much damning evidence. Now, I just had to convince the wife that she needed to file a divorce, and we could begin to get all her grievances on the record, that way a history and a trail is leading back to Peter. He would have a lot less opportunity to have her killed, the more attention that we drew to him as a potential suspect. My endgame was ultimately to ensure her safety in this city or wherever she decided to live. Even with all the corruption ripe in this town, if you had an obvious trail leading to your door, the cops would sniff you out eventually. They are dirty, not stupid. Despite everything, people did go to jail here in Peckford, or else the police commission would lose its funding.

“That’s far enough!”

I heard and my spine froze over at the sound of Ronny Grimshaw’s voice in the night. I heard the clicking of a hammer, which told me he had a piece trained on me.

“Turn around slowly.”

He said in an assertive tone. Began to turn carefully so he could see my hands. He was wearing full black like he had come after me with a purpose in mind. It took a moment’s glance to tell what he meant for me. However, I could bet my last dollar what the reason he had not shot me just yet, was. He needed to secure any information I have on his brother first and to ferret out the location of his sister-in-law.

“Let me guess, a dump gun? Possibly confiscated in a drug house raid?”             

I asked as I sized up his bulky and imposing presence. He was hardly the type of man I liked to lock horns with in a dark alley, but I guess I was not going to have much a choice tonight. It was either him, or it was me.