Chapter 1

Don Clark sat at his desk going over the papers from his last case. The case had been very lucrative and he was putting the finishing touches on the report that he would be giving to the client. Most of his clients were women that suspected that their husbands were running around on them and they wanted Don to get the goods on the husband. Clark's reputation was earned because his clients knew that when they hired him he would get the evidence that the spouses needed for the divorce; but they came to Clark because he also dug into the financial history of the philandering husband. Don Clark was good and he knew how to get the information on financials that so many husbands tried to hide from the wife. When he turned his reports over to the clients the husbands always set the wives up for life; not that they were always happy to do so.

Don Clark had spent twelve years on the police force. He had a degree in criminal science and he had become a detective after five years. He quickly became the detective that solved the most cases. He was aggressive and was well-liked by his superiors because he made them look good. Don was set to be promoted when the "the incident", as he always called it, happened. The drug dealer took a shot at him and the bullet grazed Don's shoulder. Don went out of his mind and beat the dealer so bad that the man had permanent brain damage. He was about to be indicted for using excessive force. Don had a meeting with the department supervisors and he gave them copies of his logs that he had been keeping since his first day on the force. The police force had a lot of skeletons that they wouldn't want the public to know about and Don knew where many of them were. After Don threatened to let the press see the log he was offered the chance to resign without any charges. He took the offer and left the force with no blemishes on his record. He was well-liked by the rank and file members of the force and he still had a lot of friends on the force that helped him whenever he needed some information.

His dedication to the police force had taken its toll on his marriage and the woman that he had married in college divorced him after ten years of marriage. Things had been getting tense between them for a couple of years. She complained that he loved the police force more than he did her. Two years before "the incident," he would call home while he was on duty; trying to let her know that she mattered to him, only to find that she was not home. Often he would find that she had hired a babysitter to watch their two boys. Don suspected that she was running around on him while he was working. He took some of his vacation time to find out what was happening. He left for work as usual and then staked out his house. He quickly found out that his wife had another life. She would leave the house with one of several men. The men that she was running around with were sleazy types that lived on the fringes of society.

Don bought a good camera with an expensive lens and set out to get the evidence that he needed. The love that he had felt for her left him when he found out that she was leaving their children with a babysitter and running with people that Don would never associate with. He had followed her to a mansion in a better suburb and set himself up in the woods behind the house. He had an excellent view of the rooms at the back of the house and pool area and the patio. After a while the party moved out to the pool area and Don watched as six men and three women, including his wife, cavorted in the pool. Everyone was drinking and having a good time. He knew that this was not enough to nail her so he watched as the party progressed.

Soon Don saw one of the men bring some cocaine out of the house and everyone began to drink and use the cocaine. Don got several full-face pictures of his wife snorting cocaine. One of the men grabbed Don's wife and snatched the top of her bathing suite off of her. She laughed and made a show of covering her breasts. Within minutes everyone had shed their clothes and the party began to get rowdier. Before long each of the women was getting fucked or was giving a blow job to one or more of the men. Before the end of the night Don's wife had been fucked by all six of the men. She usually had one man fucking her and one man shoving himself into her face. She also had sex with one of the women. Don took two rolls of thirty-six exposure film.

A few days later he made arraignments for his parents to watch the kids and he was waiting for his wife when she got home. He had the prints spread out on the kitchen table when she walked in the room. He had put the negatives in a safe deposit box for safekeeping. When his wife saw the pictures she slumped in the chair, beaten. Don gave her his demands; she would give him an uncontested divorce. She would get no alimony, no child support and would take nothing from the house or their bank accounts. She would give up custody of their sons and she would not insist on any visitation rights. She would move out of the state immediately or Don would make sure that the pictures were posted on the Internet and that she would be arrested on drug charges. She protested weakly but Don grabbed her arm and led her to the front door and pushed her out on the porch. That was the last time that he ever saw her.

A year after the divorce, "the incident" happened. Don resigned from the force with no idea how he was going to support his family. Several weeks later, one of Don's mentors on the force met him while Don was on a trip to the mall with his boys. Don sat with the ex-detective in the food court while the boys ate pizza and then began to play in the kid's area. Don didn't tell the man about "the incident" or that he had resigned from the force. The ex-detective told Don how he had opened his own private detective agency but that it wasn't doing too well. The man told Don that he wanted to get out of the business but he owed four months rent on the office and about twenty thousand in other bills. Don could smell the alcohol on the man's breathe so he knew what the problem was.

"Have you considered trying to sell your business?" Don asked.

"Hell, I'd give it to someone if they'd take over the bills. I need to get out of town. In this business you make some enemies. Not too many people know enough about detective work to take over a business like this."

Don expressed an interest in the business and made an appointment to look over the office and the past cases. He found that the office was dirty and papers were everywhere. There was no filing system and the phone was turned off. Don said that he would take over the business and within a week he had his license and was in the detective business.