Steve Stone's new toy fits in the palm of his hand, costs drastically less than its bulky predecessor did nearly a decade ago and can easily be hidden in or on almost anything. It can shoot signals to his cell phone so he can track, say, a moving vehicle through the streets of Allen County while he's eating lunch.

“There it is,” said Stone, looking at the small screen of his cell, following a mark on a map. “See it? They're probably headed to lunch.”

A suspicion of infidelity. A call to Stone. A licensed private investigator, he is the owner and president of Covert Surveillance & Investigations, one of at least 14 such companies and agencies in the county.

The field of private investigations might seem ruled by the latest top-of-the-line gadget, but Stone doesn't think the old-fashioned tactics - all-night stakeouts and the tailing of cars - are passé.

“Nothing can beat the human eye,” said Stone, whose day job is being a spokesman and sergeant for the Allen County Sheriff's Department. “Nothing.”

This isn't the hardboiled world of PIs like Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe either. This is a camera that can be shoved into a pack of gum. This is a data extractor that can retrieve deleted text messages from cell phones.

Stone's new Global Positioning System unit keeps tabs on the suspected cheater's whereabouts. “I can see everywhere the vehicle has been,” Stone said, this time looking at his desktop computer.

“The cases have stayed the same,” says Lance Brattain, a PI for more than 20 years and owner of Brattain Investigations in Fort Wayne, which has offices in several surrounding states. “The technology has made it easier to do my duties.”

Brattain and Stone once could have used a VCR hooked up to a camera to record up to 996 hours of footage of questionable quality. Now they use a DVR (digital video recorder), which is smaller, costs less and records for days or weeks with better picture quality. “I got a new unit about six months ago that's leaps and bounds above the old system,” Brattain said.

Stone's new GPS cost about $1,000. Seven or eight years ago, the latest model - an analog system that's less effective and more difficult to hide because of its antennas - would have cost $25,000.

He didn't bite then, but he still has some costly relics. “We did a job, probably four or five years ago, where we spent $12,000 on equipment that was then top-of-the-line,” Stone said. “It's obsolete now. What you pay for a premium today will eventually cost nothing.”

Stone began his company 10 years ago when it was just he and his wife cramming into cars for obscenely long stakeouts. His company, just as the field itself, has grown in that decade. Now he provides armed security guards - his main contract is for the Fort Wayne Housing Authority - and hires off-duty police officers for jobs.

Employment in the field is expected to jump 18 percent by 2016, according to the Department of Labor, citing heightened security concerns, increased litigation, the need to protect confidential information and property and the proliferation of crime on the Internet.

While the technology is great, it is flawed. A GPS may tell you your husband is at a hotel, but it won't confirm who he's with.

“Are they alone? Did they go in with someone? A tall, leggy blonde? You don't know unless you see,” Stone said.

In his business, he needs to see - he can be called into court to testify under oath about what he knows. The skill required to tail someone can be made easier with technology, not replaced by it.

“It's very difficult,” said his wife, Jill, who works with her husband. She admitted it took her at least a month before she got comfortable with it. “A lot of people have trouble at first.”

Today, with the proper equipment, you can stay two or three blocks back while following a vehicle and never worry about losing your target. No longer are three or more people needed on a job. Usually, two will suffice, Stone said, though he will provide more depending on the client's request and type of job - “one person can't follow anybody.”

“If anyone wanted to know what you were doing, there's nothing you can do about it,” Stone said.

Privacy may be disappearing, but the same technology that makes that so presents pitfalls for the small businessman.

“We pay an attorney to look up laws so that we know exactly what we can and can't do,” Stone said.

For example, he can't go onto someone's private property and plant a GPS on a car without the owner's permission. He could, however, do it while the car's parked at a grocery store, at least in Indiana.

“In some states it's really a gray area,” Brattain said.

What can also be tricky is when the equipment runs out of life. If a GPS begins to lose battery power, Stone or his investigators have to wait until the car is in a public area before anyone can switch out the battery. Or, they can get permission to do so from someone who lives at the home where the car may be parked - like a spurned husband or wife.

Stone and his investigators can use any sort of recording equipment to document someone's whereabouts in public. If a man cheating on his wife is eating in a restaurant with his mistress, an investigator can go in, sit down with a small camera and record as much as possible from a table nearby. A camera cannot be taken into someplace like a bathroom, according to Brattain.

But if an employee who's supposedly injured is chopping wood in his back yard days after an accident, a private investigator can record that - as long as he or she can do so from public property.

“Since, a lot of times, worker-comp cases take about two years, a lot of people who fake injuries forget they're supposed to be faking after two or three months,” Stone said.

Proving privacy — for better and worse — is going the way of the VCR.

PIs must be 21 years old, not have a felony, have some type of training in the field or have prior experience as a law enforcement officer and take out hefty insurance policies. No one is supposed to advertise or claim to be a PI without a license, according to Indiana law. Steve Stone, a licensed PI in Allen County, said any reputable private investigations agency should readily display a license, be insured, have plenty of references, be a member of the Better Business Bureau and have a lawyer to ensure the agency follows all applicable laws.

Famous fictional PIs

♦Sam Spade: Before he was played by Bogey on the big screen, Spade was chasing the Maltese Falcon in the pages of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 book. An iconic figure in the world of hardboiled fiction, Hammett created him from real life. “He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached,” he once wrote.

♦Phillip Marlowe: Dames, drinks, gangsters, blackmail and even porn — Marlowe had his nose in it all in 1930s and '40s Los Angeles. Created by author Raymond Chandler, this PI was never at a loss for a wisecrack — or a femme fatale, for that matter.

♦Charlie's Angels: Yep, they're private eyes. Taken away from their hazardous duties in the police department by the mysterious Charlie, the trio became masters of detection in tight clothing. The Angels' hour on television became known as “Jiggle TV.”

♦Sherlock Holmes: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's cocaine-sniffing (it was legal, then) late 19th- and early 20th-century detective is probably the smartest and most famous of the bunch. He had a cool hat, a cool head and relied on his intellectual wiles instead of his pistol to catch the bad guys.

“We aren't like ‘Cheaters' (the popular TV show featuring the surveillance of wayward spouses). We don't want to ruin anyone's life or take food out of their mouths,” said Steve Stone, owner and president of his own private-investigation company. “We're hired to document.”

With that axiom comes several memorable stories:

♦There was one man who feigned injury and was trying to collect worker's comp from the retailer he worked for. He claimed he couldn't lift things and couldn't bend his back. Stone's wife, Jill, dressed in a business suit one day, went into the store and bought a heavy piece of merchandise. The man didn't hesitate to pick up the box — in the 100- to 120-pound range — for her, carry it to her car and put it in her trunk. All of which was recorded on video.

♦Another man hired Stone to follow his fiancée, whom he suspected of cheating during her lunch hour. “His fiancée told him she'd just read a book in her car during lunch, but he didn't believe her.”

Stone's company followed her for four days. Sure enough, each day she got fast food at the drive- through, parked her car and read a book. Even after showing the man the pictures, he wasn't satisfied. “He still didn't believe something wasn't right,” Stone said. “Hopefully their relationship got better.”

♦An unidentified local PI left a box containing a GPS device on a truck at the Wal-Mart at Apple Glen in January 2007. A passer-by mistook the package for a bomb, and within moments the Fort Wayne Police Department's bomb squad was hosing the package down with water. When it was discovered the package was put there by a PI, his cover was blown, and he left a little “red-faced,” according to police spokesman Michael Joyner at the time.