Twenty-five years in the Special Investigations Unit. Insurance fraud — that was my beat. Staged car accidents, arson-for-profit, fake disability claims, death benefits on people who weren't dead. And sometimes, death benefits on people who shouldn't have been.

You learn to follow the numbers. Numbers don't lie. People lie. Doctors lie. Lawyers lie. Photographs lie. But the numbers — the numbers always tell you something's wrong before anyone else does.

Most of my cases were just greed. Ordinary people making bad decisions for money. But some of them weren't ordinary. Some of them had numbers that didn't add up in ways that went beyond fraud. Claims filed before the incidents happened. Beneficiaries who didn't exist. Policyholders whose records changed when nobody was looking.

I'm retired now. But I kept copies of the files I shouldn't have. And I'm finally talking about the cases that the company told me to close and forget.

The numbers are still wrong. They were always wrong.