Situational Awareness
Modern Forensics and Genomics may come into play as I confront the Falters in their home. - Thomas Allston
Columbus Ohio
Stakeouts, where you physically sit and watch a location to log the in-and-out activity, are old-fashioned and something the next generation of investigators are writing off. These days, kids are so full of technical solutions that they would rather find a place to put a camera and then remotely monitor it from a hotel or wherever while they sit and watch Anime and play games online.
I'll be honest; there is a time and a place for that, and I can think of a few times when sitting for long periods in a car was a real struggle where a nice hotel would have made sense. Winters in New England are hard.
So, is the quick tech solution right or wrong for what I do here in Columbus, Ohio?
I could have tacked up a camera on either side of the Falter's house and gone to a hotel to watch Judge What's Her Face, but in my opinion, that would have avoided the potential for conflict.
That's what it is all about. The new detectives are overzealous for clever solutions to old methods because conflicts with suspects are not clever.
It's the last mile in the delivery of the product. In the case of a stakeout at the Falter house, the product will be to physically take suspects down and then zip-cuff them for delivery to the police.
I suppose that somewhere, there is a robotic solution being developed in either a government agency like DARPA or at a university like Stanford, where brute force is being developed for a smartphone app, but today, the cleverest solution is Mrs. Allston's little boy who won't ever dodge an inevitable conflict.
Confrontation and the ability to handle it are essential to this job. It has not been good for my dental bills, but it is a reality.
The Bingo moment arrives when you see what you have been waiting hours for in the truck, and you push yourself immediately into the Three C's.
Confusion (for the suspect) Contact (for the suspect) Conflict (for me) How much force should I deliver to these jerks?
Much of what RECON Marines do is a slow, covert, inch-by-inch movement to get closer and absorb more solid information from a place that a solitary Gyrene has no business being near.
Being RECON was the best thing I ever did. It instilled in me patience and situational awareness, which do not erode.
Here in Columbus, I move inch-by-inch to the target house inside my truck, now littered with empty paper coffee cups, beef jerky wrappers, dog treats, and the ever-present glow of my phone as I keep track of the Boston Bruins score.
I have been two houses away from the Falters for six hours. I have taken Tango for brief walks twice, and we passed the target house.
There have been no patterns of life detected. There are no lights on or off, no deliveries to the porch, and no smells from the kitchen.
The Falter house was nice. It is most likely post-WWII, and at one time, I would guess this neighborhood had hundreds of kids shooting hoops, riding banana bikes over homemade ramps, and walking to the nearby elementary school.
What is left of the neighborhood is now in decline. Some of the once proud lawn-keepers have let things go. Brown patches, vinyl-covered chain-link fences, and small gates that squeak when moved have taken over.
Hundreds of elderly eyes peering around curtains or through the single pushed-down slats of blinds have made this stakeout difficult.
This is no place for Jehovah's Witnesses, porch pirates, vinyl siding salesmen, or people without an apparent purpose like me.
My situational awareness took a leave at one point, and so did Tango.
An old man with white legs and dark socks threw the three C's on me. He CONFUSED me by banging the side of my truck with his walking stick, which caused me to look up from my phone. I did not see him coming (Good for him). He had no problem with CONTACT and CONFLICT "What the fuck are you doing here;?" "Are you trying to steal checks from mailboxes?" "We all have direct deposit now, you idiot!"
He would have escalated things, but then he saw the faded USMC sticker on my truck.
It seems that Parris Island blew as much in the 50s as it did when I was there. The relatives of the sand fleas that feasted on him had feasted on me. We were brothers.
"What do you know about the owners of number 13 over there?" I asked.
"Those assholes?" "There were two brothers who grew up here. I'm pretty sure only one lives here now."
"My wife hated Mrs. Falter because she never returned some Tupperware from a lasagna my wife made for her when she got out of the hospital." "I have been hearing about it since Jaws first came out." "I could have used that Tupperware." Tupperware is not cheap." "I brought her a lasagna." "Mrs. Falter died in early 90."
"Never did get that Tupperware back."
" I need to chat with the house owner, so I'm waiting for him to get home." I'm from a development company, and the owner of number thirteen owns some land in Oklahoma that we want to buy from him. I think I'll be here a bit more and then call it a night."
My new friend leaned on his wobbly walking stick, looked at me, and said, "Now that is some first-class bullshit OOORah" I gave one back and smiled. He moved on.
The Cardinal And The Jack, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Cardinal was in full swing as Ben and Eve sat at the counter. Ben had his head in his hands and was looking down.
"Tell me about Lisa," Eve said.
“She’s funny, bright, very direct, and yes, I cheated on Lauren last night. I feel crappy about that, but it just happened.”
Eve thought about this for a minute and asked Ben, “How did this happen?” “Are you unhappy with Lauren?”
Eve was projecting a bit into her own personal life, and she hoped that things would not “just happen with Allston and The Freaking Idiot.”
Ben was distraught as he thought about the hurt this would cause and that it would scramble existing relationships. They had been together for four pretty good years.
“Was she in here with you the other day?” Eve asked.
"Yes, that was her. You saw us?"
“She’s very beautiful,” Eve said
Mason said, "Evie, it's hard, and I honestly did not expect to be so thunderstruck."
"I can't get her off my mind, and it's only fair that I tell Lauren now."
He continued, "It's as simple and as complex as that."
Eve had now known Ben Mason as long as she had known Allston.
She could see how upset and, at the same time, happy Ben was.
She also knew how much this would hurt Lauren.
The four had road-tripped, vacationed, and drank many margaritas together.
Lauren was her friend.
“I have to tell her tonight.” I have to tell her that I cheated on her and that I am leaving.”
“That’s a double whammy,” said Eve
The natural question Lauren would pose to Ben after being told he was leaving her would be, “Have you cheated on me?” He would have to answer yes, and it would hurt
“What does Lisa do?” Eve asked
“She’s an FBI agent, and she’s in the Navy Reserves.” “She lives around the corner from me.”
“Before you tell Lauren, would you like Allston to check her out? “You know, make sure she’s not a “Bunny Boiler?”
Ben said, "I will get to know her at our own pace".
"No need for a drill down".
Kenmore And Leavitt Analysis - Cambridge, MA
Joshua ValBlevin was gowned and scrubbed in the clean room as he removed what appeared to be an old hunting knife from a plastic box container.
He was thrilled to be able to pull the story from this old blade. It was a big opportunity for a graduate student.
The knife had come from a law firm developing a defense for their client.
The law firm hoped to obtain a workable, identifiable sample from the DNA left on this knife. A portion of the knife had a set of ridges that were supposed to be for scaling a fish or sawing a skinny branch.
It would seem that this knife was used as a weapon long ago.
Joshua laid out the tools and materials he would need to extract a sample that could be sequenced.
Using new techniques, a small piece of dried bloodied skin from the knife's surface would be swabbed with distilled water, and then DNA would be extracted from the swab using a Human DNA Quantification System. The knife sample would then be amplified and cross-checked against a sample of DNA obtained from the knife's user, to differentiate stabber from the stabee.
So, a specimen from the knife scaling area and, the tricky part, perhaps a flake of skin from the knife's handle, would be analyzed.
Joshua chuckled as he thought about this simple explanation.
Joshua is excited about science, particularly the science surrounding forensic genomics. He enjoys helping people understand a complex subject in terms anyone can understand.
The product would then be compared to published commercial DNA summaries of millions of individuals and against crime lab profiles at the FBI, Interpol, and other agencies.
In short, the law firm needed to know two things.
Who got stabbed?
Who did the stabbing?
The bill for all this science presented to the law firm was only $28,000.00. Expert testimony would be extra. Joshua would make enough to take a year off and use his Flying Squirrel suit in the French Alps if it went to trial and he took the stand to read his summary.