Listen to Andrew Faller describe his life as a private eye and you’ll realize it’s not exactly Miami Vice. Yes, private eyes round up bail jumpers, repossess cars and provide security to VIPs, but a lot of the time they are watching or reading.
Watching the store clerk suspected of pocketing proceeds. Reading the criminal record of a job applicant. Watching the employee chop wood while “nursing” a worker’s comp injury.
“It’s not like on TV,” said Faller, who lives in Meredith and became a private investigator about four years ago after retiring as the police chief in Center Harbor. “There is lots of downtime.”
That’s not to suggest Faller doesn’t love what he’s doing, even when he doesn’t turn up what he was sent to find. “I like it when I can come up with the truth and help a case,” he said. “This isn’t about winning, it’s about getting to the truth of it.”
Private investigations was a natural second career for Faller, who spent four years in the U.S. Coast Guard doing drug enforcement and search and rescue and then 20 years in police work in the Lakes Region. When Faller’s law enforcement peers followed retirement with jobs as car salesman and Realtors, Faller looked for something closer to what he’d been doing, but without the politics of being a police chief.
Faller got his private investigator’s license through the state Department of Safety, as is required, and joined the New Hampshire League of Investigators, a professional organization that holds members to a code of ethics. Faller, owner of Executive Protection, Security Consulting and Professional Services, was just named the group’s vice president.
He’s found that variety is one of the biggest appeals of being a private eye. One day he might be surveying someone from his boat. The next he could be interviewing someone for an attorney defending a criminal case.
Faller has teamed up with other investigators in New Hampshire to repossess cars after their owners have stop making monthly payments. Once he locates a car, Faller will either have it towed or drive off with it using a key he’s been provided. He tries to talk with the owner first so he or she can claim her personal items from inside.
“Most people are reasonable,” Faller said. But not all. Faller said a colleague had a gun pulled on him by an upset car owner.
He has also tracked down bail jumpers for the bondsmen who’ve posted the cash bail. Faller doesn’t appreciate comparisons to Dog the Bounty Hunter, but said it can be risky work if the person is determined to keep running. So far, though, Faller has found that people are sick of running by the time a private investigator arrives.
“We staked out one guy for a couple of days and finally made contact with him,” Faller said. “He said, ‘Fine, pick a point and time and I’ll turn myself in.’ And he did because he knew we were boxing him in.”
Much of Faller’s work is doing background investigations for companies or employers who are trying to confirm an applicant’s resume or background, or interviewing people for a defense attorney. He enjoys the hunt for information. And he hasn’t found it difficult to work for defense attorneys after years as a police officer and chief.
“I never had any problem with defense attorneys,” he said. “I always knew their part and I believed in it. And they know that I’m not going to fabricate information. I’m going to give them the truth.”
Just as Faller doesn’t like comparisons to Dog the Bounty Hunter, he’s doesn’t like to be lumped in with movie screen private eyes who trail cheating spouses with a camera.
For starters, Faller said he and many of his colleagues won’t follow or investigate a person for another private citizen. Instead, they work only for an attorney or a company. That distinction gives Faller some comfort that the results of their investigation will be used professionally and legally.
And Faller said he has no interest in wading into the middle of a messy divorce - even if an attorney hired him to investigate one of the spouses. There’s not enough at stake, Faller said, to make that work meaningful. “People are arguing over monetary things,” he said. The exception, he said, would be if custody were an issue and an investigation could help determine the best place for a child.
Like the work, Faller has found a private eye’s hours pleasantly varied. He can keep himself to days and early evenings most of the time. Occasionally, he works the midnight shift. Sometimes he’s at home, reading files or searching his internet databases. Other times, he’s on the road.
Faller charges between $55 and $75 an hour, depending on the type of work he’s asked to do. With that money, he’s adding to his private eye tools: cameras, computers, binoculars. His wife would like him to put bullet-proof vest on the list too.
The job has it challenges: Finding people when the don’t want to be found. Staying alert during long stakeouts. But going unnoticed is especially difficult for Faller in and around Meredith. Nearly everyone who saw him in a downtown coffee shop last week knew him by name.
So he takes his undercover work out of town, where people don’t know he’s watching them.
