by William Walsh
As a new member to the Murder Book blog, I’m pleased to be able to write about a few of my passions—writing and investigations. This is my first post, which combines the two. I plan to write about the world of investigations from a point of view of 30 years of experience as a private investigator. Just when I thought I’d seen everything, something would happen that no one could have imagined. These things make for great fiction. To begin, my first job, besides being a paperboy and sloshing through the snow to toss the paper on someone’s front porch, I was a spy.
Now, I’m the director of creative writing at Reinhardt University, both in the undergraduate and the MFA programs, and one thing I emphasize is the use of every day life events in a writer’s fiction. Some of the most insignificant nuances of life can become interesting and useful in a story or novel, but we need to recognize them; however, their significance isn’t always apparent. When you think of something or hear of an event, write it in a note book for future use because you never know when it might be needed for a character. This is exactly what happened to me years ago.
I’m asked quite often how I became an investigator. I assure you, it was not planned. I always wanted to be in the FBI, and after graduating from college, I had the FBI application in hand all filled out for my career path; however, on the last page, the physical requirements were listed, which were easy-breezy. I had already been training and could run a 5-minute mile, do 150 pushups without stopping, and I even trained to hold my breath under water, though this was not a requirement. I figured the FBI would love to have a guy in their ranks who once held his breath underwater for 3:59. Yes, I know, seems impossible, one second short of four minutes. It’s true! It took about six months of training to hit that high mark. Why wouldn’t the FBI want a guy with such as skill? In retrospect, there probably wasn’t much call for that type of skill on a day-to-day basis. Nonetheless, I was ready if they needed me to swim across a river under water and undetected.
Then there was the dreaded last requirement—a field agent could not be colorblind. And, of course, I am—red/green and blue/purple colorblind. So much so, my wife and kids often tell me to go change my clothes because the colors don’t match.
Years later, one of the FBI agents I met during one of my surveillances told me how there were hundreds of jobs in the FBI other than being a field agent. At the time, I did not realize this, but more so, I figured that since I was “flawed,” the FBI wouldn’t want me. I had filled out the application at the office where I worked in the computer department (pretty high-tech for the times). On the back page, I read that one line over and over to make sure they knew what they were doing, and it wasn’t a typo. When that dream was dashed, I shredded the application and never looked back.
Fast forward several years later, I met the owner at Atlantic Investigations, Ralph Perdomo, who has since retired and moved to California. Ralph did not have anyone in his office who could write a decent report, plus he wanted to write a book detailing many of his investigations: the Rob Lowe Sex Tapes, the Lita Sullivan murder, and the biggest of all, the Sarah Tokars murder. Writing a book had always been one of his dreams. I knew nothing about investigations, but I had a skill he needed. I had been an editor, a researcher, had three college degrees under my belt, and two book publications. I could make any report read like Shakespeare or Erma Bombeck.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of being an investigator was conducting surveillance. I loved infiltrating a neighborhood covertly at four a.m. and remaining in position until there was activity on the suspect. Being invisible to everyone walking their dog, jogging, or strolling an infant through the neighborhood was just plain fun. On occasion, I’d get made by a nosey neighbor, but most of the time they accepted my reason for being in the area. Regardless of the investigation, I always had a pretext that was completely different than my true intent. On occasion, when there was absolutely no place to park my car, I’d talk someone into allowing me to sit in their driveway, which was always in view of the subject’s house. These nice neighbors thought I was there to rid the neighborhood of all the drug dealers. It might have been as boring as a worker’s compensation claim on a guy six houses away, but they bought my pretect. In fact, one time, I was conducting surveillance on their neighbor directly across the street. This retired guy brought me drinks throughout the day.
People often asked about the boredom of watching a house hour after hour. I never found it boring, as there was always something going on in the neighborhood to spark my interest. The greatest benefit was having the ability to surveil a subject and at the same time jotting down notes, lines of dialogue, and plot points in a notebook. I wrote many short sections of my novels all while on surveillance and judiciously watching the subject’s house. Once, while testifying, the judge did not believe me when I stated under oath that I had been on surveillance for sixteen hours waiting for this guy to leave. I had stayed up all night until he left at 8:00 a.m. The judge didn’t think anyone would do that. He was wrong. The longest I’ve stayed on one surveillance was twenty-two straight hours in Columbia, SC.
I developed the skill to watch the subject’s house and write at the same time, by looking up every 20 or 30 seconds. In between those pockets of time, you can write a few solid sentences. Here’s a trick of the trade—if there’s a dog in the yard or on the porch, you don’t need to watch this house. Just watch the dog, because the second the dog hears the doorknob begin to turn, he’s at attention.
It doesn’t mean surveillance and investigations are not without danger. I wrote most of a first draft of my novel, The Boomerang Mattress, while on surveillance in a drug-ridden section of Atlanta. It took the better part of a year, but bit by bit, I wrote a page here and there. One case involved a pedophile I had investigated many years ago. Remember the insignificant nuances of life and how they can become useful in a novel. Well, here’s the proof.
In The Boomerang Mattress, I changed his name to Gordon Price, changed the locale, his physical makeup, and the nuances that might I.D. him. Having been released after eight years, a part of Price’s probation prohibited him from visiting the park, coaching kids’ sports, and any having contact with children outside of his immediate family. After I documented him on many occasions going to the park with his mother’s Great Dane and kids approaching him to pet this huge dog, he was arrested for violating his probation.
My friends have asked for years why I haven’t written a novel about a private investigator, to which I always replied, it’s nothing like the movies or TV. No one wants to read about my life as a P.I. It took twenty years before I decided there was a story worth writing. I used the Price material as the beginning of the novel.
Toward the end of the court proceedings when we recessed for ten minutes, one of the deputy sheriffs walked up to me in the hall and grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me toward the water fountain.
“I thought you ought’a know something,” he said, “that Price-fella, he said when he gets out of prison after serving his eighty percent, he’s gonna come looking for you.”
“Is that so?”
“Sure is.”
“You think I need to worry?”
“Not for a few years. But who knows, he may not make it that long in the big house. Pedophiles have a tough time. I say the over-under on him surviving is two years. Someone’s gonna beat him to death once he’s in the general population.”
“But in the event he comes looking for me.”
“Kill’im,” the deputy said. “Get yourself a Glock and make sure you know how to use it.”
“I know how to shoot.”
“No. I mean, know how to shoot without hesitation, no second thoughts. If that fuck-stick shows up, don’t give him an opportunity. Just finish it there. Ain’t none of us going to arrest you for that. It was self-defense as far as I’m concerned or will be. If you gotta put a knife in his hand, ain’t no one gonna question it.”
In the novel, all of the investigations are from my old cases. Of course, the details have been changed to shield identities. The Boomerang Mattress was written on the client’s dime over a year in my surveillance vehicle and has recently been completed. The main character is not me, and yet, how can he not be me. They are all my cases and notes from years of jotting them down.
Here’s my advice if you want to write fiction: keep a note book of ideas, stories, and conversations you hear, anything that has a nuance that might work down the line. You cannot remember all of it, so write it down to use years from now.
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