How Could This Happen?

This truly is the strangest thing that has ever happened in my life. That's how I'll start. I've been so busy with school, worrying about losing our house yet again that I didn't bother to stop and question anything else that was going on, albeit strange. It started right before Easter when my Las Vegas "client" was "missing." His assistant called me frantic saying she could not get a hold of him and that he would call her 10 times a day but now, nothing. We spoke quite a bit in the next day or so and then about 3 days after Easter she calls me again saying he's been in an accident in California and that he was found unconscious, but that the details are not totally understood, but that he is in a hospital in California. We are all sort of shaken, we were a "family" and we were worried about him. I trugged forward with my school work, regular job, etc not overly concerned about what was going on, but in my head sort of planning for the announcement that he'd passed away. Would his funeral be in Vegas or Indiana where he'd said he was from?

Maybe 2 weeks later I get another call from Brittany saying that he's still unconscious but that the tests are coming back positive and that the plan is to move forward with business. OK? So, I just say well, give me a couple days notice for anything you need and I'll be fine. I should back up a little and state that right before tax time, Rob called me to tell me that he might have to send me a 1099 for all the work I'd done for him and he asked if that would be ok. I said something to the effect of "do you have to?" And, he said, "well, I'll just tell my accountant something, don't worry about it."

So, somewhere around the beginning to middle of this week Brittany calls me again saying that now she can't get a hold of anyone and she thinks something is up. I do to. I mean, he's in some hospital, we are a "family" and yet no hospital name is given, no room number to send flowers to, no phone number to send well wishes, strange!?!? The very next day, Brittany gets a phone call from the Arizona State Campus government saying that she is their point of contact and that they wanted to know what Rob was going to do about the affidavit that he had against him. This was enough to send Brittany into a frenzy of searches and investigation, she is awesome. We email each other back and forth and then I hit the hay for the night. The next morning I check my email and right after I'd gone to bed, Brittany had hit the mother load. The email simply had a link and a message that read "girl, you gotta see this and you gotta call me!" I get to work, check the email, click the link and here is what she sent me: http://www.in.gov/apps/indcorrection/ofs/ofs?lname=peacher&fname=&search1.x=0&search1.y=0

I could not believe what I was seeing, a laundry list of crimes stemming all the way back from 1990! This man I had been working for for over a year had been in prison since 1998, I was working with and for a criminal. Everything I thought had been wrong, I had been duped. I thought, this is insane, I'm dreaming, this is a nightmare, this can't be true. I called Brittany and she had called the jail and by God, this was the same man, and he's been doing this for a long time!!!!!!!!!!

How the hell does something like this happen? In the words of my friend Richard, "you can't write this shit!" I agree, I could never have imagined in a million years that I would be a victim of something like this. Brittany called a bit later and told me that she'd gotten to positively identify him by hearing a recording of his voice that the jail had and she simply stated, "it's him, no guilt here." I got it, we weren't wrong, something was up, but who is involved, who is a victim like we are and why were we paid and who's money were we paid with?

I'm upset, worried about my identity being stolen, all those crazy emotions. I feel like I've been violated and it doesn't help knowing that his greatest crime was attempted rape at knife point. Now I'm just trying to figure out what my next move is, maybe a Chris Hansen episode of Dateline?

I'll keep you posted...