I get the new case and we immediately drive to the wife’s house. She lives on the border of San Jose and Santa Clara with her mom and her 2 young children in a fairly nice neighborhood. It’s a single story house with a 2 car garage and a fairly large backyard. Since she was so cooperative in the first cast we decide to just knock the door and find out if she knows where he is.

It seems that things are a bit different now. She comes to the door and for some odd reason is not happy to see us. She is short with with her responses and will only give us one word answers to our questions. Hmmmm. My favorite question to ask when I think they are hiding the defendant is “So, is it OK if we do a quick search of your house and get on our way?”. At this point it’s really easy to find out if there lying. If the defendant is there they usually respond with “do you have a search warrant?” or “you’re not searching my house, I told you he/she is not here”.  On response is aggressive and the other passive. Now sometimes you can still tell that the defendant is not there ever if they refuse to a search so you have to use some judgment. However, a good investigator, if asked properly, can almost always get consent to search. You just have to know how to ask.

I ask her the question and she immediately tells me “I already told you he’s not here. I’m busy with the kids and don’t have time for this. Come back at 4:00 and you can search”. Yea sure, I’m not leaving now. She also gave us some lame story that the defendant had checked into rehab but her story made no sense. She had several significant details but could not remember the name of the facility.  I did my best to convince her to allow me to search but nothing was working. I can’t leave now, I am going to sit and wait.

We move 10 or 15 houses up the street and started watching the house. I was around 10:00am when we started and for several hours we did not see any activity. Luckily, I have an in dash DVD player so we watched Hancock with Will Smith. Pretty funny movie. Around 4:00pm a young girl emerged from the house and was looking up and down the street. That’s a good sign, they sent her out to see if we were still here. Either someone wants to leave or someone wants to come home and they nominated her to go check.

She looks around for a bit and then we see the wife exit the house and look up and down the street. She starts walking towards us and it becomes obvious that she has made us. I really don’t care because I am not leaving until he is in my car. Period. I know he is in there and he has nowhere to go. He’s mine. She walks right up to my car and is obviously irate and starts yelling at us to leave. Some bullshit about how we’re upsetting her kids rolls out of her mouth but I don’t hear shit. All I care about is getting him and I am not leaving.

I tell her that if she wants me to leave then let me search the house otherwise we have nothing to talk about. She basically tells me to f-off and goes back inside. I go back to my movie and continue waiting. Surveillance has always been fun for me. I will only do surveillance for extended periods if I believe the defendant is in the house or someone in the house may take me to the defendant. Otherwise I will watch a house for short periods of time, several times a week. I have too many cases to spend all my time on one.

It’s now around 10:00pm and I tell my partner to take off but I’m not leaving. I am going to wait him out and I am going to win. Four more hours go by and I am pretty sure that they are down for the night. I decide to go home, get a few hours of sleep and return early. If I get back at at 4:30 or 5:00 I should be OK. They’re tweekers so I know they won’t be getting up early to go to work.

Back at 5:00 and it does not look like anything has changed. I know the cars are in the same spot because I marked the tires before I left. I did this by placing a little rock next to a tire. If the rock is in the same spot then the car has not moved. It’s a pretty simple trick but it’s effective.

At around 11:00am the wife pokes her head outside I sees me again. When I returned, I parked a lot closer to the house. I need to start putting more pressure on them. For the next hour or so she goes in and out several times. She can feel the pressure. Enough so that she approaches my car again. This time she is yelling at me and her face is turning red. Nearly begging me to leave. No chance. This time I calmly tell her that I am just waiting for a couple of police officers who agreed to do a probation search of the house. She knows her husband is on probation and that the cops can search the house whenever they want.

She leaves a returns about 20 minutes later and her attitude has completely changed. She tells me that she is willing to let me search if I promise to leave and never return. I agree. Just then my partner arrives and we begin to search the residence. Oddly enough the wife is very helpful as she guides us through the house. When I wanted to search the attic, she fetched the ladder. All the while blabbing about how he is in some rehab place and that we are wasting our time.

I finally searched every room, under every bed, every closet and any possible place for him to hide. Nothing. Just as I am ready to throw in the towel I notice a bunch of stuff piled in front of what looks like crawl space access. As I start moving the stuff away from the door I can see her getting more nervous and fidgety. Perfect, he’s hiding under the house. I knew he was here. As I open the door I immediately see a spot of wet, almost muddy soil and notice fresh drag marks through it.

I just look right at his wife and tell her to ask him to come out. She tries to look perplexed and asks “what do you mean? He’s not in there. He has a bad back and would never be able to fit under there.” Yea, sure. I guess I’m going in. I crawl under this house with only my gun and a flash light. I can feel my Tommy Bahama shirt become soaked with wet, muddy soil. I’m pissed now. I get about 10 or 15 feet under the house and still don’t see anything but I know he’s in here. Just then I notice a silhouette of a person hiding behind some ventilation duct.

I yell out to him to come out or I’m going to taze him. I don’t have a taser with me but the threat worked nonetheless. He crawls out and we get him in custody. How I have mud all over my pants and shirt is odd. It hasn’t rained in months. Just then I notice a leaky sewage pipe. Perfect, I have shit all over my clothes….