Chris was former California law enforcement. He had taken his retirement to the far north where forests and lakes and fishing and especially his grandkids were to be found, and was operating a side hustle as a private investigator in his spare time. One golden day, he threw me a bone. Did I want to help with a locate case he had sitting on his desk? Several siblings were looking for their alienated brother; their parents had passed, and they wanted to sell the family house. Only problem was, they couldn’t find one of the owners. Did I want to help? Of COURSE I wanted to help.
By that time I had submitted enough documentation to weasel myself into the good graces of one of the big data aggregators, and had been permitted to purchase their tool for PIs (no small accomplishment), so I even had a database to try. Chris shared what he knew from his clients, and I started digging. I knew from my advocacy work that every person leaves a trail, often way more of a trail than they intend to. The relevance of that fact in both advocacy and investigation is, don’t discount what you can learn from talking to people. Bad people leave what some would call a slime trail; it may not show up on paper until it reaches the level of a criminal record, but it’s there, nonetheless. Talk to enough of the right people, and you’ll begin to form a picture of who a person (we’ll call him our Target) is.
This target proved to be exceptionally difficult to locate, however. Turned out he was not only a fugitive from his siblings but in some sense from Justice, if you include the IRS in that lofty category. In his remote Idaho county, he had been petitioned more than once via the local newspaper to make contact with the government for purposes of paying his social debt. This did not bode well for me.
As I was coming up short on addresses, I tapped on the door of the county assessor, and found the Target had made the mistake of buying a little slice of land some years ago under his own name. Good to know, but not especially helpful, unless he had pitched a tent there, which wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for an Idahoan who didn’t want to be found. The location was a couple hours from me, but I figured maybe Chris could drive by and see.
Next stop was the county jail. My Target, of whom I was becoming quite fond at this point, had done himself a little time in years past; and while I don’t remember exactly what I thought Bonner County Correctional Institution was going to give me over the phone (and in point of fact, they probably shouldn’t have), I do remember the sentence that rang through the line like a thunderbolt, and can probably be credited with hooking me into this line of work for good:
“Mr. So and So? Yeah, he was in here, just released in March.”
“Wait a second. THIS March?” I was struck.
“Yep, just released this March.”
Two months ago. This was getting recent enough to be relevant.
With timid creativity, I scooted a little further down my skinny branch.
“Could you… could you give me the address he was released to?” I had no idea if this line of questioning was allowed or not. Was I (shudder) going to have to pretext? Because I definitely wasn’t prepared to pretext. My brain, amazing at fantastic leaps of connection when under absolutely no pressure is also prone to go utterly blank when confronted with the need to construct a plausible (but false) story. Should I be this guy’s … uh… niece? And somehow or the other I hadn’t realized he was in jail, but I needed his address because I … uh… needed to deliver his pet goldfish that I had been watching ever since Uncle Target had left him with me six years ago… My scrambling thoughts were interrupted by Bonner County.
“Sorry, ma’am, I can’t tell you that.”
Of course. I heaved a sigh of relief and sent up urgent prayers for inspiration, which once again got interrupted by the voice on the other end. “I could tell you what town the address is in, though.”