Cash Aldrick
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Case Garland (b. 1975) is a private investigator in the greater New Orleans region. Although he normally works out of a small office in the city, he lives on the bayou in Des Allemands, Louisiana. During the COVID-19 lockdown, he developed a knack for and reputation as an online presence fixer.
Biography
Early life
Case was born in the village of Sleepy Hollow, Illinois, in the Northwestern suburbs of Chicago, on January 19, 1975. His parents, Fritz and Hannah (nee Smith) Garland, were teachers at a local elementary school. They died in a car accident while driving across the Fox River when Case was 15. As they had no extended family, Case spent the rest of high school living with an elderly pastor of the Evangelical Free Church his parents had attended.
During his senior year of high school, Case began dating Greer Gardner, whom he'd known for a few years at Dundee-Crown High School. During their short relationship, Case learned about the abuse Greer suffered from her alcoholic father, Nick Gardner. Following their graduation, Case helped Greer escape to North Dakota. In the months that followed, Case was dogged by rumors that he had killed Greer, since they had agreed that they would not tell anywhere where she was going lest her father find out.
A few months later, Case met Leslie Goss and quickly fell in love. As Case was beginning to clean up his life after several months of hard living, Leslie suddenly told him she never wanted to see him again. The next day, he drove to St. Louis, where he lived out of his car until he was able to start college the next semester.
Professional life
Case received his BA in Theological Studies from St. Louis University in 1998, focusing on textual interpretation and comparative religions. He was then accepted into the MA program in English at the University of Mississippi. He received his Master's degree in 2001 and moved to Baton Rouge to continue his study of literature at Louisiana State University. His dissertation, Something in the Shape of a Contradiction: The Hero and the Temptress in the Novels of Wilkie Collins, was well-received by his committee, and he received his Ph.D. in May 2006.
That summer, he was hired as a temporary, full-time instructor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he remained for three years. During that time, he taught first-year composition and American literature survey classes on a 5/5 load. He failed repeatedly to get the chapters of his dissertation published, but felt too exhausted by the work of the dissertation and by his heavy teaching load to write anything new. By the start of his the fall semester of his third year at SLU, he had given up on academia, feeling that the exhaustion he felt would never end.
On a whim in August 2008, he applied to become a police officer with the Baton Rouge Police Department. He was accepted and began his training while making a minimal effort to teach his classes at SLU. All of his assigned readings were mysteries and crime fiction. He graduated from the BRPD Police Academy in June of 2009.
His three years as a police officer ... https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/21/why-i-hated-being-a-cop
Out of a job, Case fell back on work he had done in college and grad school, bartending. He took the first job he could find, working the bart at the Best Western Plus near Armstrong Airport. He spent most of his two years at this job reading. While working the late shift, he spoke with guy who had spent the past five nights at the bar. After a number of conversations, the guy admited that he was a private investigator who was trying to get pictures of a cheating husband. Eventually, he encouraged Case to become an apprentice investigator to help him out. For the next three years, Case worked for the Malone Agency as an apprentice investigator while continuing to bartend. During most of that time, he ran background checks for employers, spied on cheating spouses, and took pictures of people who had filed false worker compensation claims for insurance agencies.
In 2016, having gained the necessary experience and having saved up a considerable amount of money, Case started his own company, Epic Investigations. He rented a small office space in the Warehouse District of New Orleans. For the next four years, he had mild success, telling himself that he wanted to focus on real mysteries while still mostly taking pictures of people who were lying to their spouses or their bosses.
In March 2020, Case went into full lock-down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Struggling to pay his bills, he accepted a job from a family Donaldsonville to clean up the online presence of their teenage son who they saw as the next Garth Brooks. His success with that assignment led to a few smaller but similar projects. That June, he was contacted by his high school girlfriend, Greer, to find out what happened to her father after he declared bankruptcy and disappeared in 2000.
Relationships
Greer Gardner
Case met Greer in high school. They were friends with the same people for a year or so, following the death of Case's parents, but did not take notice of each other until the beginning of their senior year, when a large group had a bonfire on Glencoe Beach before classes started. Neither had done much dating before then.
Much of their relationship that year occured in response to the abuse Greer suffered by her father. Case felt intensely responsible for Greer's safety while also feeling incapable of helping, as Greer refused to tell any adults about the abuse and always insisted on returning to her father after he had "cooled down". Although Case was able to come and go as he pleased while living over the garage at Pastor Updike's house, he was unable to give her long-term shelter from her father.
One of the worst incidents occured on Thanksgiving, just a few months after they had started dating, and around a time when Case was starting to feel that the relationship wasn't worth continuing. As a result of the abuse that night, both Case and Greer committed themselves differently. Case committed himself to protecting Greer as long as necessary; Greer committed herself to getting away from her father permanently.
Their final semester as high school students was stressful, as they both worked on their different plans. Case felt himself pulling away from his other friends in order to stay close to Greer, while his friends felt that he was simply not interested in their friendship anymore. They ditched everyone during prom because Nick had given Greer a black eye that morning. When everyone saw Greer at school the following Monday, they assumed Case had done it to her.
Following their graduation, a ceremony neither wanted to attend (although they had to attend to get their diplomas), they again skipped out on all the parties. Without telling anyone, Case put Greer on a bus to North Dakota, so she could start any early-enrollment program for college. Except for a few phone calls during that summer, they didn't speak again until 2020.
Rose Peralta
Case met Rose in June 1998, a month after he put Greer on the bus to North Dakota. Rose worked as a tattoo artist in Schaumburg. Their first date was to see The X-files movie, which they were both deeply disappointed in. They dated throughout the summer, and Rose, who was two years older than Case, helped him find an apartment to rent in Carpentersville, so he could get out from under Pastor Updike's roof.
Rose offered Case a great deal of stability
