TWO P.I. MICROS

Post-Katrina Ghost Story

The private investigator never forgot a set up. She even remembered her parking spots on the cases she worked while she was still in college. That’s why the address she was headed to now bothered her so much. Like a memory where faces and names are blank, but still familiar somehow. Like déjà vu.

Even after she eased her van into a great sight line, nothing about the house reminded her of anything. Not the layout of the neighborhood. Not the pitch of roof. Just the address.

This street should’ve been a few blocks away from where she grew up. Should’ve been backed up against pasture land where she looked for shrooms. Should’ve been a quick bike ride from her mother’s voice calling her home for supper.

This address, every one of these houses actually, should have had a big back yard with a scraggly pit bull in it so starved for human touch it would stand up on the fence and piss all over whoever petted it.

This address should’ve had old people in house clothes drinking coffee out on their porch. This address should at least have had a porch.

Instead, the only thing she could focus her camera on here was a red door in the middle of a plain brick slab house, surrounded on all sides by houses just like it.

There wasn’t enough grass at this address to fill a yard, much less a pasture. But still she could almost smell it. Should’ve been able to. The street was plenty wide enough for bikes, but it was completely empty. The breeze was gentle enough to carry a mother’s voice, but didn’t.

Nothing anywhere except the ache of what should’ve been there.

Turns Out Things Don’t Always Have to Get Worse (For Her)

6:42AM, and the private investigator can’t think of a worse way to start a day than a police officer tapping his flashlight on the side of her surveillance van. Those options are scarce: either 1) ignore it and the cop will get mad, go back to his cruiser, run the plates, and have her van towed off the case; or 2) roll the driver’s side window down a crack, show him her license, and then have him go back to his cruiser, run her plates, and have her towed off the case (either choice burning her cover and blowing the job). Turns out, this cop already did his work, confirmed her as owner/operator of the van, knows about her license, and only wants some intel on how many dudes are in the house and what activity she’s seen so far today before he walks over there, kicks in the front door, and starts blasting miscreants. She tells him no activity yet, but two cars still in the driveway means four dudes inside (one of which is her guy, supposedly bedridden after a staged collision with an 18-wheeler). Seeing how his heart sinks when she brings the cop up to speed, the private investigator almost feels sorry for him, sorry for everyone involved, actually, since what the cop’s about to do is going to make all of their days worse than it is already. Thankfully, she leaves her camera rolling anyway when the cop crosses the street, kicks in the door, and starts blasting miscreants, because in a blink all four of the dudes come hauling ass out the door, mostly naked but demonstrating a full range of motion from head to toe as they run through the wide pan of her lens, the last dude in line shockingly being her subject sprinting in frame for a full ten seconds, and that is plenty enough footage for her to call it a day, maybe even go enjoy some hot breakfast while thinking how swell things can work out sometimes given the proper variables.