The Digital Detective: Pay Your Debtors

This continues a series of earlier articles about computer fraud.^† Originally I practiced a career of systems software design and computer consulting, but I sometimes came upon a more shadowy world, that of computer crime. I seldom sought out fraud but I sometimes stumbled upon it, picking up undetected clues others missed.

This episode doesn’t deal with crime, per se, but it includes a banking con, minor as it is. The scheme required a little ‘social engineering’ and, though the word might be Yiddish, no one can schmooze like Southerners.

The story came to my attention while consulting for banks, this one deep in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. My landlord for part of the stay was an eccentric but colorful codger. He talked about a neighbor who leased farm land from him but failed to pay his rent. Outsiders might expect he pulled on a jug of rye whiskey as he talked, but all he did was lean back in his recliner, sip beer, and twirl a never-lit cigarette while a cheerful woman less than half his age clattered in the kitchen. I jotted down his story long before I became a writer, so kindly forgive error and stylistic issues as I strove to capture his dialogue.

Corn picker © John Deere

Damn Ernie. I hounded that man all summer long for the rent. Finally last fall, I hooked up my corn picker and started up the corn rows. Now a corn picker ain’t a quiet machine, and lo and behold, neighbor Ernie come dashin’ out of his farmhouse yellin’ and cursin’ that I’m stealing his corn.

I said to him I couldn’t possibly be stealing corn off my own land, unrented land at that. He steamed and stormed and said the seed and planting labor had been his, and anyway he was just a little late with the rent, three or four months, maybe four or five, weren’t nuthin.

I told him that I was just going to keep picking corn for myself until someone showed up with rent money. He dashed off like banshees themselves chased him. Pretty soon he comes back waving his checkbook.

I said, “Ernie, are you sure there’s money in that account?” Oh yes. He told me twice there was, so I said there’d better be, and he said he wanted the corn I’d picked. I told him to consider the already picked corn interest and collection fees. Fact is, I finished the rest of that row, which he just hated.

So the skinflint S.O.B. hustled off to hitch up his combine and wagon, and I find myself a few bushels better off than I was before. I cleaned up and headed in town to the bank, right past Ernie who’s racing his machinery through the fields.

At the bank, I always get in Molly’s line. She’s a sweet, buxom lass, and I’d been thinking about asking her out.^‡

Anyway, I get up to her teller window and she said the account’s a bit short to cover the check. I asked her exactly how short, and she said she wasn’t allowed to tell me that.

So darlin’, I cajoled, is this check completely worthless, or did Ernie at least come close? Looking at her computer, she said he was purty close.

Well, I says to her kind of reflectively, I want to tell my neighbor Ernie how much he needs to cover my check. Like would he have to deposit only $10? No, she said, ten dollars wouldn’t cover it.

Well, says I, would $20 or $30 do? No, she smiled at me, it’s not quite enough.

Hmm, says I, I wonder if $40 or $50 would suffice? Um, she said to me, that first amount ought to cover it.

Thank you, I says, I’ll tell that rascal he needs to put $40 in the bank. By the way, sweet thing, can I have a deposit slip? And you think maybe I can call you up? For, uh, you know, maybe dinner Saturday?

So I walked out of there with a bounce in my step, a deposit slip and her phone number. I was feelin’ purty good. What I did was get in my car and circle around through the bank’s drive-thru. I already had Ernie’s account number on the check, so I just filled out the slip and shot it through the air tube with two $20 bills. Sure enough, the receipt came back showing $1002.39. Good on Molly.

But wait, I say, I almost forgot to cash a check. This time I send over Ernie’s $1000 check and this time I get back a thousand dollars.

Fair enough. I probably had $40 in shelled corn and a lesson I ain’t gonna rent to Ernie no more.

Ernie got stupid, though, and instead of being grateful I didn’t bounce his worthless ass along with his worthless check and turn both over to the sheriff for collection, he raised holy hell at the bank yelling someone manipulated his account.

I took Molly to the horse show that Saturday. Now I tell you personal like, you want to get a lady in a receptive mood, bein’ around horses will do it. Something about women and horseflesh– can’t explain it– just a word to the wise.

Anyway, Molly, she confided the bank said it was apparent someone had taken liberties, but they couldn’t blame the teller who took the deposit and they couldn’t blame the girl that cashed the check. They just gave everybody a stern reminder warning.

Molly said Ernie wanted to call the authorities, but the branch manager told Ernie he’d be the one in trouble for writing bad checks. He didn’t mention Molly could have fallen in the soup too if they’d figured out her role.

Molly said she knew I’d manipulated her and wanted to know if I’d asked her out from obligation or guilt. I said I didn’t want to sully a relationship thinking I used her. She needed a lot of reassurance about that, and so Friday nights and Saturday nights we just get romantic and I give her plenty of reassuring. Been about a year now. Figure we can go on with this for a long, long time.

And he winked at the cheerful lass in the kitchen doorway.

Cornbine © John Deere & Farming Sim Mods

† This essay had originally appeared 19 May 2013 on SleuthSayers for a matter of hours, when a magazine editor asked me to unpost it with an eye toward publishing. A check never arrived, so I now return the article for your enjoyment.
‡ Commonly in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, ‘out’ sounds are pronounced like a Scottish ‘oot’. Thus he really said, “I’d been thinking aboot asking her oot.”

From Pauper to King

Stephen King,
serious disguise

’Tis the day after Halloween, and I wanted to share a nugget I learned about our favorite modern horror-meister, Stephen King. As a reader, I never considered much about authors except their alphabetic location on my library’s shelf. I didn’t know about that bleeding vein, I thought writers magically appeared fully formed like Botticelli’s proverbial Venus.

Certainly I encountered bad books and terrible tales, but libraries and the book market filter and curate. Same with museums, that’s why we don’t see early sketches of Botticelli’s Birth of Karen.

Not to compare myself to either Botticelli or Stephen King, I had grave doubts about my first story. Who wants to read about alligators and mosquitoes? Only after it was nominated for an award and I found myself sitting in traffic, I finally internalized it, saying to myself in awe, “They liked it! They really liked it.”

Thus I was surprised to learn about the Master of Misery’s angst about his first novel, Carrie.

The Story Behind the Story

Raised by a single mother, King understood hardship. He earned and then unwillingly returned money in school by selling stories to other students, but eventually a short story, ‘I was a Teenage Grave Robber’, was professionally sold.

Hippie disguise

King matriculated at the University of Maine. To finance his studies, he took on odd jobs including laundry worker and school janitor. That turned out a blessing in disguise.

He witnessed a girl relentlessly bullied, an impoverished girl in a holey, worn-out dress. King speculated what it might be like if the girl had abilities, supernatural superpowers to fight back. On his bride’s typewriter, he tapped out a few pages of a bildungsroman featuring a poor girl, Carrie White. Her first menses terrified her. She thought she was bleeding to death while other girls laughed. Annoyed with his own work, he tossed it in the trash.

His wife discovered it in the wastebasket, read those few pages, and wondered what happened next. King didn’t like his own writing, but he was out of sorts and out of ideas. Tabitha urged her husband to take up the story again and, with her help and encouragement, little Carrie became King’s first novel, twice made into movies.

Clark Kent disguise

Tabitha and Stephen were living in a trailer, their phone cut off, so the King’s were surprised by an acceptance telegram and $2500, which they used to purchase a true horror, a Ford Pinto. Weeks later, paperback rights earned him another $200,000.

King still had doubts about his novel, but that sad schoolgirl and Stephen’s spouse made them a very rich couple, not merely monetarily.

Possibly not quite believing their fortune, King continued teaching. You can’t say Boo to that.

Ginger Snaps and Wolfbane

The Premise

Teen girl angst, goth and drama… Sisters’ suicide pact, everything is soooo dramatic… Death scenes staged for a school play project… That day when first period doesn’t refer to school…

For Halloween, a teen girl horror flick, a bildungsromans, a coming-of-age tale.

The cleverly titled Ginger Snaps is a 2001 horror movie for those who don’t like horror movies. It released much too soon after Columbine, which caused distribution problems at home and abroad amid fears of teen violence. A number of theatres banned it outright. The scheduled five and ten year anniversary re-releases failed to materialize, but nevertheless it developed a fan base and ‘cult’ status. I’m convinced anything labeled ‘cult’ refers to creative works with more depth that hurts critics’ limited brain cells.

The Promise

Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald are sisters, 16 and 15, in the same grade at school. Unpopular and bullied, they develop a fascination with death, morbidly filming gruesome death scenes for their school project. If they can’t manage to flee their small town when Brigitte reaches 16, they promise to die together.

Their father, Henry Fitzgerald, dotes upon his daughters, but he’s utterly clueless in the estrogen cauldron of his household. Mother Pamela is marginally better, wavering between complicit and the sole disciplinarian. At one point, she tells her husband, “Go back into your own world; this one only confuses you.”

The Plot

Halloween and the night of a full moon approaches.

Local dogs are found torn to pieces, presumably victims of the fanged Beast of Bailey Downs. The girls factor the legend into a plot against the school bully, but before they can act, Ginger is attacked by a creature and dragged into the woods…

Thus opens the story. A prim editor left the best potential tag line on the cutting room floor, but it made it into the movie’s mythos. In an unused clip, Brigitte tells her sister, “PMS is the least of your problems.”

Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald

The Practice

Conventional horror movies confuse time in the makeup chair with characterization. What makes Ginger Snaps special is the bond between the sisters. After months of fruitless auditions, the prospective leads happened to try out on the same day. When screenwriter Karen Walton saw the results, she said the young actresses were exactly who she was looking for. Coincidentally, the girls were born in the same hospital, attended the same schools, worked out of the same talent agency, and had appeared in separate episodes of Supernatural and The X-Files. Their chemistry was perfect.

Their parents are well-drawn and probably frighteningly close to how real teens view their folks. The school jock, Jason, makes another interesting character. He shows more moral fibre than we might expect. Rather than slut-shame the girl he just slept with, he merely tells his friends, “She rocked my world.”

When’s the last time you encountered an edgy teen drama that classy?

A mediocre sequel and a slightly more interesting direct-to-DVD prequel followed in 2004.

Thanks to Haboob for a list of where-to-view sources in time for Halloween. Enjoy the show.

Ginger Snaps (2001) Crackle Favesome Filmrise Plex Roku Tubi Vudu Wow Now paywall… Amazon iTunes Microsoft Roku YouTube

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed Movie Sphere Plex Roku Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning Movie Sphere Plex Roku Tubi

Small Claims 0

Previously I described the steps I used to take a conglomerate to court. Long before, I was sued by a dishonest man and lost a small claims case that, had I been more knowledgeable, I might have won.

My friend Geri lived a mile from me and I watched over her house when she vacationed. Often she’d schedule work while she was away, and this time she wanted to replace her fence.

Thanks to hurricanes and moisture, fences have short life spans in the Sunshine State. Fences were a concern for me too, so I researched ways to give fences extra years, a realm of excitement beyond words. The following are the fruits of my labor, otherwise called ‘best practices’:

1. Embed posts in concrete.
2. Shape the concrete into a dome to run off water away from the post rather than collect moisture around it.
3. Don’t install panels at ground level, but elevate them an inch or so above.
4. Don't use staples or ordinary nails. Use ring-shank nails to resist winds.

I typed a list of the above and sketched a diagram of setting posts in concrete. These I stapled to the sales proposal given Geri and agreed to the extra charges and signed off. The installer missed their start date, so on her way out of town, Geri asked a neighbor to phone me at work whenever construction commenced.

The First Hint

The neighbor gave me a heads-up at eight the next morning. By the time I arrived, workmen had already set several posts… without concrete. After I explained they were supposed to use cement, a worker with a garden trowel spread dry sandmix around posts.

No, I said, they’re supposed to be set in concrete shaped to aid water runoff. I returned to work leaving them to it.

I flew to Miami and returned the following afternoon. The job had been wrapped minutes before my arrival. Except…

The pickets (paling panels) rested directly on the ground. Grounded palings made wood rot more quickly, wicking moisture from the soil up through the grain.

The crew had removed and reset only the first post in concrete; they hadn’t bothered with the others. Many showed a sprinkling of dry concrete but nearly as many went without.

Now suspicious, I looked closer. On the plus side, they hadn’t used staples but, after pulling one nail, I discovered they’d used ordinary smooth box nails. They company had completed none of the requirements they’d agreed to.

I’d let Geri down. I was so ticked off, I missed the most obvious mistake of all.

“Uh,” said the neighbor. “Why did they install half the fence backwards?”

“What?”

“Half of the fence is inside out.”

The workmen had installed the left side of the fence facing out and the right side facing inward. Stick with me if you can handle the excitement.

Small Claims 3

Home Automation Interface

Last month, I told you about purchasing expensive name brand home automation that madly malfunctioned. The dealer/installer and the manufacturer’s tech support added insults to injury… literal insults, telling me the device failure was my fault. I was stupid. I was annoying. I misrepresented or misinterpreted the sales literature. I was trying to cheat them into getting something for nothing. Surely their mothers wouldn’t have taught them to behave like that.

So what would an American do? I took both parties to small claims court.

Perhaps it’s a character defect, but I’d have loved to witness the deputy striding into the corporation’s Tallahassee headquarters to serve the complaint. No, that’s not quite true. I really wanted to see the consternation of the so-called customer support guy when faced with a subpoena to produce their tech line audio tracks “recorded for training purposes.” Finally! A useful purpose for those things.

First Contact

A few weeks after filing, I received a telephone call from California, a vice president within the conglomerate’s North American legal department. My little case garnered more attention that I’d anticipated. He courteously enquired if I’d hired counsel and then discussed the case.

I was mindful to guard my tongue. Attorneys and competent interrogators know people feel a need to elaborate. Therein lie traps for the unwary. I simply laid out the facts without revealing how much proof and documentation I’d gathered. When he’d question one aspect or another, I simply said I was prepared to demonstrate this or that.

He asked if I’d vented on-line. I had not.
He asked if I would allow their technician to inspect the unit in situ. I was.
He asked if I was willing to settle. I was.
He asked if I was willing to settle for only a replacement. I wasn’t.
He asked if I was willing to continue the conversation. I was.

While cordially but carefully phrasing regrets, he explained I was unlikely to prevail on several accounts, such as loss of income and violations of sharing personal information. Likewise he predicted a judge wouldn’t award me expenses, but might award them attorneys’ fees. He was surprised to learn his conglomerate’s web sites offered no way to opt out of the distribution of shared personal information.

HAL Gone Bad

A technician sent by the vice president arrived. He confirmed everything I said and more. The device wasn’t merely a brain-dead dud, it was a hulking, marauding, unpredictable Frankenstein of a dud.

He verified the firmware serial number 00001. My court filing argued if this were accurate, it meant the assembly line hadn’t yet learned to build this new machine. And if it wasn’t true, then it opened scarier possibilities. A user in California or Calcutta might use their app and suddenly find themselves inside my house.

Mediation

Florida’s Small Claims Courts require pre-trial mediation. This mandatory session takes place prior to a trial in the hope the parties can reach a resolution and avoid tying up the court’s time. I was prepared to back down twenty percent or so, but little more.

Many court-appointed mediators are retired attorneys. They know what they’re doing. The one assigned to my case was pleasant and professional. When the opposing attorney stepped out of the room, he complimented the case’s preparation and suggested, should mediation fail, I might want to move for a jury trial rather than rely on the stricter view of a judge. Good point.

The conglomerate sent down an attorney from Tallahassee. He turned out cordial and likeable. However, he informed the mediator their California Vice President of Legal suggested the gadget wasn’t as bad as claimed, and they’d settle for no more than a replacement product. The lawyer gave an impression he’d urged California to compromise, but they were hanging tough.

This lawyer spent seven hours driving and three hours in the courthouse just to say no. He did what he was told to do, but he didn’t appear pleased as he packed to leave. We shook hands. He said he’d stay in touch and departed on his 3½-hour journey back to Tallahassee.

The Other Party

The independent dealer/installer didn’t appear at all, forfeiting his part of the case. Before leaving the courthouse, I petitioned for a summary judgment.

My intent wasn’t to crush the little guy, crappy as he was. What he had in mind by not appearing, I don’t know, but he panicked. He begged me to settle for a lesser amount, saying he could afford little, and then named a figure more than I would have asked.

I didn’t need an invitation and he had acted a right ass. “Sure,” I said. “Have it to me before the hearing, then I’ll ask the court to dismiss.”

As Seen On TV

Besides court filings, I received a letter with a charming picture of People’s Court Judge Marilyn Milian. Oops, not quite– it was from Lori Mooney, a producer for The People’s Court. They wanted my case on television.

Bad enough I burden SleuthSayers with my laundry, but I’m too private to air it on national television.The dealer’s opinion was immaterial, but I felt certain the conglomerate would not risk publicly broadcasting the problems in their fancy flagship device. They might win the case but lose their appeal, so to speak.

Two more People’s Court letters arrived. They guaranteed I’d receive the money sought if I won the case. They’d pay for my time, which as a writer is about 2½¢ per minute or word or some such. They’d pay my travel expenses. I pictured a coronavirus motel off a Connecticut interstate. I ignored the offer, but I didn’t blame them for trying. It’s not every day a little guy takes on a $2.3-billion conglomerate.

The opposing lawyer wondered how our case came to their attention. I didn’t know, but I hazard producers might offer court clerks rewards or bounties to bring interesting cases to their attention.

Countdown

The court date approached. The Tallahassee attorney said he regretted to tell me California decided to play hardball. Would I accept one last offer of a replacement before they prepared for court? Umm, no but thank you, I said.

Meanwhile, I reminded the absentee dealer I hadn’t received a check or money order. He said negotiations to sell his company had kept him busy. The toad had set the terms of the agreement and he wasn’t meeting the conditions he set for himself.

Subpoenas

Subpoenas are writs or instructions to bring to court a person or thing. A subpoena ad testificandum commands the appearance of a person. A subpoena duces tecum commands the appearance of a thing.

I checked on the subpoena duces tecum for the tech support’s recordings. I gathered company sales brochures, went over my notes, and spent hours creating visuals to explain the technology and why their product failed. Wifi inside the courthouse was next to nil. Accordingly, I loaded their advertising videos on my computer so they could be played without internet.

The date neared. Their lawyer phoned. Would I accept a replacement plus a little (very little) extra to ship the old unit back to them for study? I declined. I contacted the dealer, who said he was travelling out of state and could I wait? He couldn’t get on-line. Use priority mail, I suggested.

The date grew closer. The lawyer enquired if I’d accept a replacement, deinstallation, reinstallation, removal of the old unit to their lab, and a bit more money? I told them they were getting closer.

The date loomed three days hence, then two days. Would I, asked the attorney, accept pretty much all I’d sought if we could finalize an agreement in the next few hours? I went, “Mmm,” drummed my fingers and said, “Of course. That’s all I wanted.”

Thus began a flurry of emails and overnight posts. I had no way of knowing whether the two corporate lawyers were a case of good cop / bad cop, but I believed the Tallahassee counsel encouraged the California Legal Department to stop with the hardball and settle.

I called the twisty dealer and informed him I was out of patience and he was out of time. He was in the hospital, he said, palpitations of the pump due to the stress of this case. Just deliver a check, I said, then you’re done.

In the final hours before the hearing, the conglomerate’s attorney prepared motions to dismiss their part of the case. In our non-disclosure agreement, I consented not to bad-mouth their company. Not a problem– I didn’t hate them, but I refused to accept failure of responsibility for a failed product. One tech support guy could have solved the problem a year earlier.

In the middle of the final exchanges, the phone rang– the dealer. He suddenly remembered he had a wife and she could deliver a bank draft to me in the remaining ninety minutes.

Closing the Case

The dealer’s wife squeaked in with the check. That released him from further obligation.

Several days later, a different installer phoned. Under corporate instruction, he was ready to swap out the defective unit for a… he sounded puzzled… lesser model?

Their company’s flagship ‘smart’ gadget couldn’t be trusted, but their top-of-the-line ‘dumb’ models had a good reputation, I worked out a deal to trade down and then provide my own intelligent controller. The installer swapped gadgets, I attached a new electronic brain, and that’s worked well since.

I emailed the California vice president and the Tallahassee lawyer, thanking them for resolving the problem. I love almost being a Southerner. The email to the Florida lawyer might have been a bit more genuine.

And Now…

Smart appliances, intelligent gadgets, and home automation are running smoothly. The homestead feels secure except… Well, a few weeks ago a burglar attempted a break-in. He made it into the garage. The system notified me and I notified the police. They got him. The state prosecutor loved the videos of the baddie picked up by multiple cameras.

I’ll reveal more about this after the burglar hearing. You won’t believe his last name.

Small Claims 2

Home Automation Interface

The goal of going to court is to be ‘made whole’. If you were injured, either physically or financially, you seek redress. Don’t try to profit, don’t attempt to win the lottery.

If you proceed to Small Claims court, you might find a few useful hints in the following. Otherwise, feel free to skip my scintillating prose and entertain yourself with 9gag.com or that old favorite, Wimp.com, whereupon farewell and I’ll see you in two weeks.

9Gag	Wimp

Meanwhile, on to the article!

Small Claims 1

“Open the pod door, Hal.”

“I’m sorry, Leigh. I can’t do that.”

“Hal, open the door.”

“Nope, sorry, no can do.”

“Hal, open the ¡@#$%£¢†€‡ door!”

“D’accord, Dave. It’s open.”

“Name’s Leigh, and no, it isn’t.”

“Is.”

“Isn’t.”

“Is.”

“Hal!”

“You can’t make me. Nyaa-nya-na-na-nah-nahhh.”

Geek Chic

This was not a conversation from 2001, but one in my own house in 2019. The name Hal has been changed to protect the guilty.

I’ve been upgrading my house with security features and smart home automation. Devices hooked up thus far include several lights and lamps, entry locks and garage doors, ceiling fans, air conditioner, water heater, thermostats, entertainment center, security cameras, a robot, a NAS storage device, and a number of talk-to-the-pod gadgets and displays.

My friend Thrush and I installed most of these as inexpensive, tinker toy, erector set, do-it-yourself doodads. I’ve avoided big, brand name products, which are less fun and très cher. They’re also proprietary– they might reject third party add-ons or charge you subscription fees to maintain connectivity to your products after the first year.

But, for a critical component, I deviated from the DIY rule. It was not cheap. I bought the latest name brand thingamajig from a well-regarded manufacturer, the latter part of a $2.2-billion conglomerate with $2.5-billion in home automation and security sales. Also, *gasp* I paid for dealer installation instead of assembling it myself. I had to wait two months for the initial product to roll off the assembly line. I’m also well aware of ‘bleeding edge’ technology, but with an engineer and a couple of software gurus on the premises, how risky could it be?

As it turns out… there’s a reason I’ve not mentioned the product and brand name– I signed a settlement agreement not to. After a multitude of ‘Hal’ interactions not unlike the above, I sought remedies.

What Could Go Wrong? Wrong? Wrong?

The device would not obey Apple, Android, or Google demands. It often reported contrary information, e.g, it claimed the device was on when it wasn’t, and vice versa. Worse, I couldn’t tell it to turn on the doohickey because it thought it already on, and I couldn’t tell it to turn off the box because it was already off. The only solution was to reboot.

Mashing the on/off buttons often proved fruitless. I pictured some poor schlep in California helplessly watching his kitchen devices cycling on an off, his lights flashing, and his garage door bouncing up and down thanks to a signal routed from Florida.

Meanwhile, lights would go on and doors would unlock and open at three in the morning. Picture Captain Kirk slamming face first into Enterprise doors that abruptly open and close. Fortunately the blast from the rudely awakened entertainment center frightened away any curious burglars.

Internet capability either wasn’t installed or it refused to work. Even if internet had been fully functional, it was poorly designed. If the internet was down (as mine constantly is!), their version of software couldn’t operate the device. You’d have to get out in the rain to open doors and turn on lights, even if you had electricity.

I’d purchased battery backup that of course spectacularly failed. I’m hard pressed to think of anything that did work. Believe me, the situation was so much worse than I’m allowed to describe.

The Consumer’s Fault School of Customer Support

So call tech support, right? Exercise my warranty and call the installer too?

The first techie admitted they didn’t yet have manuals and guidelines, but agreed the unit wasn’t behaving as promised in promotions, including expensive video ads. He'd request a replacement.

Then the second guy I’ll call Dan, but his real name is Butthead. He aggressively began by insisting nothing could be wrong with the device. He said I expected behavior it wasn’t intended to do. Dan dismissed the lack of functionality as a misreading of their advertising. This ‘gentleman’ (Sarcasm cleanup on aisle 4) told me I was annoying, nasty, and abusive. (I never was, but we’ll return to that.) Joining in with the installer, Dan accused me of cheating his company and trying to get something for nothing. From there on out, he fielded subsequent incoming calls and refused to forward me to either the original tech guy or their boss.

Wow. Not only did I pay out $2500, but failure of the device was sucking $100 a month out of my (personal) micro-economy. Details might violate the settlement confidentiality agreement, but the point is that the device was slowly bleeding me.

Believe me, I’ve understated the problems. So what’s an American boy to do? I sued. I took the $2.2-billion conglomerate to small claims court.

Wait! What is she ➡︎ doing here?

In a subsequent article, I’ll explain my experience and offer tips to anyone considering this route. See you in two weeks!

Professional Tips – The Deadwords

Facts and Artifacts

Deadwords, like deadwood, take up space but offer little useful. In the negative space graphic above, your eye thinks it sees a word or two that aren’t there. Deadwords introduce noise, dim and distracting dreck that shouldn’t be there. Authors want to move from empty words to more powerful, robust, descriptive writing.

I find it useful to review deadwords and weak words, those bits that clutter writing and dull the senses. I manage to avoid the usual suspects, e.g, some, very, nice, etc, but not so well at others appearing on recent lists: as, like, then, and so on. My bad habits need reminders. Professional colleagues know these tips, but beginning writers might find some of the following useful.

As mentioned before, I know no other crime writers in Central Florida– most are too sensible to congregate in a coronavirus hotspot. Without fellow mystery enthusiasts, I exchange editing with local romance writers. (Hi, Haboob and Sharon.) Whew! I bet my instruction in anatomy is more fun than most mystery authors.

Romancing the Own

Haboob drew my attention to a word not in the list below, ‘own’, as in ‘my own writing’. I used it everywhere– his own, her own, their own instead of simple his, hers, and theirs. In ordinary conversation, I seem to use it as an intensive, an unnecessary one. While that guy Shakespeare got away with, “To thine own self be true,” ‘own’ sucks the lifeblood out of my sentences.

In turn, I found the words ‘breath’ and ‘breathe’ cropping up far too often in the ladies’ romance works. They have good reason– the thesaurus suffers from a paucity of alternative non-technical words. Consider:

She breathed in his scent. Her breath stopped when his fingertips traced her bare skin.

Other than the words ‘pant’ and ‘wheeze’ (Feel the romance!) what substitutes can they use?

She aspirated into her lungs the molecules of his scent. Her inhalation and exhalation respiration terminated when…

Nahh… What’s a girl writer to do? (Leave brilliant suggestions in the comments so I can look like a genius at the next editing session.)

In the following list, I’m not including verbal tics and the clichés in current conversations, such as store clerk acknowledgements, “Perfect,” instead of “Thank you.”

Deadwords†
actually/basically/virtually almost as awesome/amazing awful/awfully bad be/is/are/was/were/will be beautiful big down/up on/in feel/think fine good/great (have) got	happy interesting just kinda/sorta like literally little/small look/see/saw (a) lot most/mostly/much nearly nice of course often	one of quite rather really seem so some/somewhat/somehow start/begin to that then totally/absolutely used to very well

Notes:

Many words made the list because they’re weak or indefinite. Further to this…

Down/Up, on/in/into

This refers to extraneous coupling of prepositions. “She climbed up into the attic before descending down into the depths of the basement.” Simply: “She climbed into the attic before descending into the depths of the basement.”

Quite, rather

Victoria and Edwardian literature dominated our home library, so both ‘quite’ and ‘rather’ sound normal to my ears, but virtually no one else’s. *delete*

See, saw, look, think, feel

“When she began to look at some of his writing, she felt certain words could weaken sentences, but she couldn’s see how to find a solution.” Simply: “When she looked at his writing, certain words weakened sentences, but she couldn’s find a solution.”

It/there, is/was/were/will be

“There are many examples in literature,” can be reworded “Examples abound in literature.” Jane Austen came up with the cleverest opening line in romance literature: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” She pulled it off. Me, I should stick to basics.

Shakespeare, Jane Austen… who knew where this was headed! Colorful writing… did we achieve it?

---

^† John Floyd would be proud of a SleuthSayer coining a compound— ‘deadword’.

Merciful Air Conditioning Appreciation Festival

Steamy Florida Man

I’m celebrating MACAF, Merciful Air Conditioning Appreciation Festival. Village lads luge ’cross frozen cobblestones on home-grown ice blocks. Hyperboreal maidens dance around The Great Icicle stalactite streaming ice-blue ribbons. Famed artists compete to carve the bestest ice sculpture before melting in the ƒ-ing Florida heat.

You guessed it. My air conditioning went out, in Florida, on a weekend (naturally), coinciding with a record heat wave, and my brain cells are dehydrating. Why, oh why always on weekends?

The original York A/C had passed its 40^th birthday. While it would have happily celebrated its quinquagenary (I cheated and looked that word up), experts claimed its inefficiency was killing glaciers in Manitoba.

I desired a heat pump manufactured in North American, one that wouldn’t keel over milliseconds after the warranty expired. To be fair, LG claimed a unit in Nunavut was rumored to have lasted eleven years. Guinness disqualified it — it hadn’t been plugged in.

My salesman said, “I can offer you a Rheem…”
“No kidding, I saw the prices.”
“… or we can talk Ruud.”
“That was, wasn’t it.”
“You need the Atlas Kazoom Freezer-Kool Polar 3000, fully automatic, four barrel, thirteen stage, multilevel, max-filter, micro-fibre, zip-lock, four-on-the-floor, orthopædic super-traction, six-gigawatt, five-speed, 29 SEER, solar-ready, entertainment-prepped, streaming, IoT featuring Apple Siri, Google Home, Alexa alert, corona-virus secure, mercury-free, gluten-free, biometric, child-proof, NASA-approved, UL listed Intel Inside HVAC with the opt-in hyper-glow platinum-plated Coldplay thermostat…”
“Uh, I just want an air conditioner, you know, a heat pump.”

He gave me a pitying look for my failed foresight and lack of regard for his commission, just when he needed new golf clubs.

I opted for Lennox, still made in America’s heartland, boasting a 125 year history. The outside condenser’s dimensions astonished me, the size and price of a small apartment building. Micro-miniaturization doesn’t apply in the physics of air conditioning. Apparently the ‘SEER’ energy rating grows along with bulk, but at least my house’s interior has dropped below triple °F digits.

So now I’m celebrating Air Conditioning Festival where village dogs pull faux sleds and bark at heat thermals. The madness should fade as the temperature drops.

The following shows my original heat pump, the new one, and the model the salesman tried to foist on me.

The Hypothermia Headliners

I needed to replace the Baby Bear original…

1978 Trash-a-Rainforest Pain-in-theTush model (T.A.R.P.I.T)

So I bought the Mama Bear…

The Woefully Inadequate Middlin’ Pump (W.I.M.P) model

Instead of the recommended Papa Bear…

Penumbra 6000, 3rd largest American Air Heat for Home, Hut, Hovel, House, Hotel, & Hamlet (AAHHHHHHH)

Hey, this is Florida!

Florida… Oh No, Not Again!

Florida’s bizarre politicians overshadow our usual weird news. But let’s take a stab at the strange.

Gator Cater

West Palm Beach, Florida.  No, I am NOT the guy who reads and sings to calm alligators not receiving their share of tourists. Everyone knows I can’t sing.

Marathon, Florida.  I also deny knowledge of the iguana that wrestled a guy and his bicycle to the ground. A spokesman for the bicycle said…

Tampa, Florida.  Nor do I have anything to do with neighbors preventing access to a landlocked bird sanctuary. (I have sympathy in this case. Orange County politicians turned over a county road to a private cattle company, preventing property owners access to their land.)

Head Honcho

St. Petersburg, Florida.  A jogger found a human head on a grassy knoll. Police confirm it is not that of Governor DeSantis, who is known for having lost his mind but not his head. Yet.

Softball Questioning

Jacksonville, Florida.  A hard-hitting woman batted eyelashes at her police detective boyfriend, who gave her a pass during a murder investigation. They made it beyond third base but not quite home when they were called out.

The Mother of All Gifts

Clearwater, Florida.  We missed reporting on Mother’s Day that a spitting, angry Pinellas County wife beat her husband for remembering and giving her flowers. Uh wait. I’m guessing she didn’t want flowers.

Clearwater, Florida.  Another woman attacked her man with a candy cane. And a brick. And a pen. Somehow after a brick and a yard-size candy cane, a pen doesn’t seem all that much.

Micanopy, Florida.  So her boyfriend, see, well, she was on her phone, actually, and her boyfriend, just sorta, kinda, tripped on air and fell on a knife, twisted it in maybe, and writhed and stabbed himself umpteen times or not and raccoons attacked… No flowers for her Mother’s Day.

Sanford, Florida.  Lest ye think it only women who’ve gone corona-mad, there’s the crazed man who stabbed a roommate then turned on police, screaming something about Satan and worms and… You see? Some normal Florida things still happen.

Deltona, Florida.  We mustn’t forget another man who attacked a roommate who’d kindly made him breakfast. Oh wait. The breakfast chef woke him at 5am. That’s like the middle of the night. Last time someone woke me at 5am, police found me sharpening my teeth.

Another Reason to Close the Bars

Indialantic, Florida.  She just spread the love or a message or coronavirus. Just because she kissed strangers without a mask, was that any reason to stop a sunny welcome?

Try as I might, I can’t seem to get away from COVID-19 stories.

Taking the Cure

Bradenton, Florida.  The Genesis II Church of Health and Healing continued selling their Miracle COVID Cure after a judge ordered them to stop selling industrial bleach for human consumption. This is the same chemical their leader wrote about to President Trump who subsequently claimed this wonderful detox would knock out the coronavirus in one minute. Side effects include heartburn, death…

Fort Myers, Florida.  That guy in Costco, you know, the dude who felt threatened by a 60-some year old lady who asked him to wear a mask… from Florida, of course. He’s a star insurance salesman; you’d think he’d want everyone to masque up.

Holly Hill, Florida.  The Costco guy wasn’t as nasty as the woman who spit into Walmart’s fruit and vegetable bins ruining $350 or so of foods. Because of the corona hoax, of course.

Homestead, Florida.  A couple wanted soooo bad to visit the Florida Keys, but those stupid Keys officials didn’t want to spread that hoaxy COVID and like all illegally tyrant-like keep non-residents out, which is soooo Naziish. Anyway, this freedom-loving couple took a teenager prisoner and forced her to drive through the checkpoint. They struck such a blow for freedom, not the terrified girl’s, of course, but theirs. Except they’re locked up.

Hernando, Florida.  Local drivers might not be as bad as Boston’s, but how do you drive backwards and park atop other cars? And we don’t even get snow?

Reedy Creek Control District, Florida.  One guy decided to self-quarantine in Walt Disney World. He shacked up on Discovery Island, Disney’s former zoo of sorts before Animal Kingdom.

Gainesville, Florida.  If you live in Florida and someone removes your testicles, you might be a politician. Or an adopted kitten. Who knew a stuffed dragon might not protect you?

Full Blown Politics

Tallahassee, Florida.  At the same time the White House blames poor coronavirus response on the media for too much coronavirus reporting, Florida’s governor blasts the media for too little reporting. Indeed, Governor DeSantis says the press reported nothing about COVID-19 until April, so he assumed all was okay. Which is weird, because like a kidnap hostage, I can hold up copies of the Orlando Sentinel and Miami Herald dated back in January. Doesn’t he know the Keys have been off limits to visitors since 22 March?

© Tampa Bay Times and Shorty Awards

Florida is famous for costumed characters and since February, the Grim Reaper has patrolled Florida’s beaches warning visitors about the virus. In March, that Grim Reaper, revealed as Daniel Uhfelder, Esq, sued the Governor’s office to require face masks. So apparently our Governor doesn’t check the news, he also pays no attention to lawsuits.

Earlier this month when I wrote about Florida landing the sad position of Nº 1 and setting new pandemic records every day, I hadn’t expected the Sunshine State to continue setting new records. As one observer put it, if Florida was a separate nation, it would rank among the worst countries on the planet for infections.

Governor DeSantis calls that ‘a blip’. Because, you know, the Black Plague was ‘a bump’ and reporters ‘a bleep’. Such ingrates! Florida has done soooo much to keep the numbers down. Like firing our heroine, Rebekah Jones, the state’s database administrator who revealed Florida’s government was grossly under-reporting cases. And sheriff offices complain that as infection hotspots soared, the state cut off critical information to police agencies including addresses of known outbreaks. And the state ordered medical examiners not to release autopsy data. Because no info, no problems.

Milledgeville, Georgia.  Above our border, Georgia’s Brian “Screw ’em” Kemp is posing a challenge to Florida’s Ron ‘Who Me?’ DeSantis for dumbest governor, but I’m afraid Georgia will have to settle for Miss Uncongeniality. Kemp is suing cities that require masks in public. Because no masks, no problems.

Oh God, the clowns! We’re all gonna die! But keep shaking your head and laughing.

Florida Number 1 !

Few recognize the name François-Marie Arouet but probably know his pseudonym, Voltaire. An advocate for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state, he’s little known for writing one of the earliest detective stories and some of the first science fiction, truly a writer ahead of his time.

Voltaire is best known for a satire, Candide, in which “all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.”

And here, in the best of all possible Floridas, we’re setting daily records! For, umm, coronavirus infections. We’re bigger than Texas! We’re bigger than California! We’re bigger than New York!

Florida! We’re number 1! We’re number 1! Er, wait…


We recently broke 10 000 COVID-19 infections per day. Yesterday’s increment came in at 11 458 as the state approaches 200 000 cases and more than 3700 deaths.

Meanwhile the United States is quickly closing in on 3-million infections. It seemed only days ago we wondered if the nation’s death toll would hit 100 000, but already it’s 131 549 and growing. Once our infectious response teams led the world. Now third world nations shun us.

The US has 4¼% of the world’s population, but more than 25% of global infections… and deaths. Yet, in this best of all possible Candide worlds, 41½% of Americans think our government acted just peachy. Ironically, one of the organs the coronavirus attacks is the brain.

This is today’s take home message. I don’t give a damn what your politics are. I simply ask you to error on the side of caution and stay safe.

Additional Risk Factors

• Age– the older you are, the more you’re at risk.
• Sex– males are 6 times more likely to succumb than females.
• Race– blacks are more susceptible than whites.
• Blood– A and AB types pose a significantly higher risk.

How to Be Smarter than the BBC

If you can bear with the numbers a moment longer, the death rates bandied by news outlets, including the venerable BBC, are often in error. Their non-mathematicians typically divide the number of deaths by the number of cases– wrong! To get the correct number, simply divide deaths by the number of recovered patients. In other words,

COVID-19 Death Rates as of 4th July 2020
525 491 ÷ 5890052 = 0.0892 or 8.9% worldwide
131 549 ÷ 864 996 = 0.1520 or 15% nationwide

Statues of Limitations

In the initial wave of Black Lives Matter, I was astonished how many moderates misunderstood the message, good-hearted but befuddled people who responded with “All lives matter.” The debate reminded me of a marital argument where husband and wife talk past one another, those moments when she just wants him to listen.

I hope it still doesn’t need spelling out, but supporting Black Lives Matter is hardly tantamount to, say, embracing the Black Liberation Army, that mirror image of the White Aryan Resistance.

Yes, of course all lives matter, but realize BLM is literally an existential issue for black folks, and by existential, I mean life…and…death. This year more people– not everyone but an accelerating number– begin to understand marginalization and how tenuous the life of a black man can be. I still haven’t got past the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice playing by himself in a Cleveland park on a snowy day. There’s no rationale, man.

Feet of Clay

A professional photographer I knew said, “The Klan does a lot of good. You know they feed children.”

“To what?” I said.

I’m not sure he got it. Hitler liked children too, very, very white ones.

Ten days ago, Brian Thornton wrote about monuments, D.W. Griffith, and the sanitizing and romanticizing of slavery in this country. I commented that a Jacksonville, Florida school only recently changed its name from that of a founder of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Happy Prince © Morry

Perhaps a balance should be sought about the value, equitability, and fairness of controversial statuary. A soldier doing his job, maybe. A murderous jayhawker or bushwhacker, nooooo. A founder of the KKK, nooooo, decidedly not. Just a thought.

Feat of Kaolin

Brian also mentioned Shelley’s poem ‘Ozymandias’, which reminded me of a great short story by Oscar Wilde, one I thought infinitely sad when I was a small child.

In that classics spirit set forth by Brian, here is Wilde’s fable…

The Happy Prince

by Oscar Wilde

3-5-0-0

This past week America witnessed an attack on peaceful protestors at a park in our nation’s capital. Even more disturbing, the government chose to deploy the United States military against its own people, harking back to the days of our founding mothers and fathers. That was dire enough, some units, possibly from the Bureau of Prisons, entered the fray without identifying insignia or nameplates, a violation of the Rules of War.

For those reading or writing thrillers based on the reality, following is a capsule summary of some of the ‘non-lethal’ but nonetheless potentially deadly weapons at the disposal of our government to use domestically. This list does not include contact weapons such as truncheons, tasers, and stun guns.

Aerosol Chemical Weapons

CN – Mace
Mace™ or chloroacetophenone is weaker than CS gas but its affects persist longer. Chemical Mace is a liquid that temporarily immobilizes and disables a person, blinding and disorienting them and causing intense pain in the eyes. It is generally prepared as an aerosol spray.

CR – Fire gas
DBO or dibenzoxazepine is a type of tear gas developed by the British Ministry of Defence as an incapacitating and lachrymatory agent. More powerful than CS gas by a factor of six to ten, it’s also extremely persistent, lasting up to two months, one reason to leave it on the shelf. It cannot be washed off.

CS – Tear Gas
O-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile represents the classic tear gas. Banned by the Geneva Convention for use in War, a number of countries, including the United States, freely use it against its own citizens.

OC – Pepper Spray
Intended for non-lethal use in standoff situations, oleoresin capsicum was develooped by the FBI’s Kamran Loghman in the 1980s. Although deemed non-deadly, deaths and contributions to death have been caused by pepper spray. Its inventor regretted its use against peaceful protestors, saying, “I have never seen such an inappropriate and improper use of chemical agents.”

Disorientation Grenades

Flash-Bangs
A type of stun grenade, a ‘thunder flash’ or ‘flash-bang’ was intended to be a non-lethal mass disabling device. Nevertheless, fatalities have occurred from proximate detonation (including a North Carolina SWAT officer), smoke inhalation, chemical burns, and heart attacks. Injuries can be severe including burns, retina damage, and auditory damage. Minneapolis has undergone more than one unfortunate incident including the deaths of an elderly couple after a grenade set their home afire during a ginned-up drug raid.

Stun Grenades
Concussion devices and flash-bangs fall under the umbrella term of stun grenades. These often use the same packaging and delivery systems of conventional grenades. In addition to attacking sight and sound, some anti-terrorism types instantly consume available oxygen, making breathing difficult. This latter effect should not be confused with smoke and gas grenades.

Sting Balls
Stingers™ and their ilk are built like conventional fragmentation grenades, except they’re constructed of hard rubber instead of pot metal. Typically they pack up to a hundred rubber balls and oftimes powdered capsaicin II (PAVA) to add to injury. Because the projectiles cannot be controlled, they often result in severe injuries including loss of fingers, hands, and eyes.

Kinetic Impact Projectiles

Bean Bags
Called by the manufacturers ‘flexible baton rounds’, beanbag bullets consist of pouches loaded with 2mm #9 lead shot stuffed in shotgun shells. While deaths are infrequent, beanbags can stop the heart, puncture vital organs with a broken rib, crush the larynx, snap the hyoid bone, and shatter the skull.

Pepper Balls aka Fireballs
Often employing PAVA powdered capsaicin II, pepper-spray projectiles are fired from militarized paintball weapons. Also called ‘fireballs’, they’re noted for their sting on contact followed by a painful, debilitating dust or mist.

Plastic Bullets
Intended to be less lethal than rubber bullets, plastic projectiles have largely replaced their rubber counterparts. However, plastic bullets can still prove deadly, especially when targeted above the waist and particularly amongst children.

Rubber Bullets
The British invented so-called ‘batton bullets’ or ‘rubber rounds’ for use in Northern Ireland before they made their way to the United States. Due to their uncontrollable ‘bouncy’ nature, rubber rounds have a death toll of 2-3% and a 15-20% permanent disability rate.

Sponge Balls
Police spokespersons call these ‘nerf balls’, but these are serious weapons-grade projectiles intended to be a little less lethal than rubber, plastic, and wooden bullets. They are capable of breaking bones, as a Florida woman learned when one shattered her eye socket.

Wooden Bullets
The Nazi SS found wooden bullets inflicted lethal wounds that could not be operated on, leaving the victim to face a slow, painful death. When fired into the head, the Germans further learned the wood wreaked terrible destruction without exiting the skull, making them a ‘safe’ bullet. Described as ‘short bolts’, wood projectiles date far back in history but were deployed last week in Washington for ‘pain compliance’ in crowd control.

Are there other ‘compliance’ weapons we readers and writers should know about?

The Murder of Me, part 2

Narrows Gorge Underwater

Last week, a boating companion left Leigh trapped upside down in an overturned canoe in surging waters, fighting to free his ankles. If Leigh didn’t smash face-first into boulders rising from the depths, a whirlpool lay ahead.

He had been targeted for murder.

We return to the story…

— Editor

Upside down in churning, freezing glacier melt, I fought to free my ankles. Threaded under the seat, my long legs proved difficult to extricate from a crevice not made for anyone over six feet. One foot pulled free… tug, twist… then the other. Still submerged, I yanked off my boots so I could swim.

My life preserver popped me to the surface. To my right, a ledge extended. I climbed like a wet rat, reaching that shelf, momentarily safe.

At a distance below, Jeff clung to the capsized canoe, orbiting the whirlpool. He screamed up at me, violently swearing.

Only one way off the ledge presented itself. I needed to plunge back into the freezing waters. It seemed a twelve-foot drop, but was probably half that.

I jumped. I swam for the circling canoe.

One of my boots bobbed there. I never knew hiking shoes could float. The other came within reach. Jeff cursed me the entire time.

“Shut it,” I said. “We need to empty the canoe.”

“How?”

“Give me the paddle,” I said.

“No.”

“The paddle, else stay stuck in this spin cycle.”

“No, you’ll leave.”

“I’ll leave if you don’t.”

He didn’t know how to get out of the predicament. He swore and tossed me the paddle.

“Rock the boat like this,” I said. “Slosh the water out.”

He followed instructions until we emptied much of the water. I stretched across and pulled myself into the stern. Jeff followed suit, clinging to a thwart. I ruddered the canoe until it separated from the grip of the whirlpool. It bounded down the rapids battering the hell out of the hull.

We spotted the portage. Bill, Sandy, and Lauren huddled there, stamping their feet against the cold.

“Where were you?” they said. “What happened to you?”

“Leigh fucked up,” said Jeff before I could speak. “He tipped us over. Leigh lost one of the oars and he’s fucking paying for it.”

The women hovered over Jeff, cooing and cawing. “You poor thing."

“Let’s hike,” I said. “Hypothermia. We need to get warm and dry.”

Moments later, Scott appeared. As the others climbed the trail, he and I hefted the canoe over our shoulders to portage it. In relative privacy under the shell, he spoke quietly.

“Weirdest thing, Leigh. I inched along the cliff face and kept you in sight.”

“You picked your way across that bluff?” I was impressed.

“Yeah. As the canoe aimed at those rocks, I remembered the stern guy steers. When Jeff started rocking the boat. I’m convinced he deliberately capsized it.”

I said, “Pretty much what happened.”

“Why do that? You could have been killed.”

“I don’t know, Scott. I can’t explain it.”

The Malfoy sneer

The Cool

Back at camp, the only warmth arose from the fire. Jeff held court, regarding me with his down-the-nose Malfoy gaze.

He might have been practicing the campfire tale of my misfortune for hours, days, even weeks. His dramatic recounting horrified a sympathetic audience. He held my incompetence forced the canoe into the rocks. I panicked, lost my paddle, and needed rescuing.

“The great canoeing expert man,” he said. “Good thing no one else trusted lives to him. Guy can’t hold onto a paddle.”

Bill glared at me accusingly. “You almost got Jeff killed.”

A childhood defect often renders me speechless against untrue accusations.

Scott remained silent. I imagined he’d filled Sandy in as they glided back to camp, but her eyes showed doubt as Jeff told and retold his story. Who would deliberately capsize a canoe in dangerous waters?

The Cold

Lauren took my protests as churlish and unfair to Jeff. On the drive back to Minneapolis, she hovered under a blanket with him, not me, signaling the beginning of the end of a lengthy relationship.

Thereafter, she brooked no criticism of him. The more I sullenly avoided Jeff, the more Lauren cozied up to him. Except for curt, one-word replies, she stopped speaking with me.

The day came when Lauren called it quits over the phone.

Next morning, Sandy rang me. She couldn’t contain the breakup headline news update.

“We barely got her stuff moved into a condo and in waltzed Jeff with his backpack and ski poles. He sat in the easy chair and ordered the rest of us around, where to put this, where to arrange that. We can’t believe her. Can’t you stop this?”

“Not any more, Sandy. Not any more.”

The Ice

During those moments of the river ‘accident,’ I didn't have time for fear. The real impact came later, shock and internal pain… Once upon a time Lauren caused my world to revolve. Then the planet tilted, stopping dead in its tracks.

No way. I’m a tough guy, big, resilient, not gutted, not hurt, no bruised soft tissue, no seared scars, no brutalization of betrayal, nothing to see folks. No jagged spear tore out a wretched pulsing, pumping organ that couldn’t be mine. No salty water blinded my eyes, no unending oceans of agony, no treacherous waves hammered soft shoals, no dark tunnels flooded with torture and torment, no anguish, no fiery cauldron of pain, no. No problem, nothing, nothing at all, just a… just a fourteen-digit number on the Richter scale of heartbreak.

Custer, Jeff look-alike

Casting Stones

In the time I’d known him, Jeff had become an expensive acquaintance. The never-ending lending for lunch or dinner was the least of it. Around him, things broke, things disappeared, things died.

The year before, he’d mysteriously blown up the new engine in our little Triumph Spitfire. I never let him drive another car, but he persuaded Lauren to let him try out our newly purchased Dodge– an hour after midnight– while I was at work, when good little children should have been sound asleep. Claiming he hit a patch of ice, he’d slammed it into a guardrail on Interstate 494… at one in the morning.

Jeff manifested a couple of peculiarities, especially compulsive lying. Our expanded circle of friends merely wrote that off as Jeff being Jeff. But the cash bag from Lauren’s shop vanished in Jeff’s presence. And animals… critters left in his care curiously died.

The women in our larger circle noticed something else. They remarked how Jeff exhibited a penchant for dating young widows.

Lauren had nearly become one– a young widow.

Constant nightmares haunted me. With difficulty, I caught my breath and began to recover. I threw myself into my work.

That should have marked the end of the saga. It didn’t.

Castle Breached

A freezing January day found me consulting out of state. An emergency phone call rang in from Lauren, she was visiting the house. My peaceful home in the woods– a state forest– had been burglarized and badly vandalized.

Sherburne County’s Sheriff might have presided over a frozen rural fiefdom, but he was no slouch. While his fingerprint maven dusted enough powder to mount a community theatre production of Chim-Chim Cher-ee, the sheriff explained the situation over the phone.

Wood chips from the supposed point of entry were scattered inside, not outside the back door. The sheriff found no footprints in the snow, none, nor footprints anywhere around the house. The only trail was tire tracks straight into the garage. A large screwdriver left at the scene suggested a burglary tool used to break into the house, except… it had come from my toolchest… already inside the house.

“Kinda strange, doncha think?” the sheriff said.

“Very.”

“Anyone besides Lauren have access to your garage opener?”

I unloaded suspicions that had built from the moment she phoned. She’d mentioned Jeff acted particularly odd when she announced her intention of checking the house. Normally Lauren defended him tooth and nail. Now she hesitated.

The sheriff promised to call me back. He did, sooner than I expected. Deputies had picked up Jeff skulking along country roads… in January… in subzero Minnesota.

The sheriff said, “Thirty minutes after question one, our boy painted himself in a corner so tight, he confessed to crimes we never asked about. FYI, this guy hates your guts.”

I said, “Why? I gave him work, I lent him money for lunch and dinner.”

“That’s the problem. You need to pick better pals. He pretended to be a friend while he hung around your companions and targeted you. He invited himself into your group, into your shop, and into your home. He gave the women little gifts stolen from others, robbing from Petra to pay Paula.”

The sheriff continued. “This boy profiled you. He asked innocent questions, gathering personal ammunition. On your previous canoe trips, he said it was goddamn hard to get you talking about yourself, getting you to reveal the private you, but he managed.”

“Why so much effort to come after me? I never did anything against him.”

“He admits that. You gave him lifts when he didn’t have a ride. You often paid for his meals. What you considered generosity and sharing, he took as deliberately showing off and humiliating him. Jeff envied you, he hated you. You had material things he wanted: lovely woman, house, and a couple of cars. Your occupation allowed you to travel. What did you do with your advantages? Nothing, by his reckoning. You didn’t buy fancy stuff, you just kept working. It wasn’t fair, he thought. You didn’t deserve it, he did. So he set out to destroy you and take what he could.”

“Sheriff, did you ask about the canoeing accident?”

“Clearly no accident. He didn’t give us a thing to charge him, but he enjoyed mocking us. It was like he challenged us to prove anything. He fed us cocky TV dialogue and cute tidbits like, ‘An accident couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’”

“Sheriff, I never intended him ill.”

“Son, you do not understand evil.^† No one believes you wronged him. He’s a total narcissist. His world has a population of one. He gets what he wants manipulating innocents. For him, screwing others is more rewarding than working. In the future, try not to be so damn trusting.”

Castle Defence

Jeff’s game wasn’t over.

The sheriff’s office filed burglary, theft, and property damage charges. However, the state attorney wouldn’t prosecute until my insurance company weighed in, and Farmers Insurance hadn’t obliged. For months, they refused to pay for the damage and destruction.

My insurance agent resembled a red-bearded Hagrid. Two metres tall, 6½+ feet of Midwestern muscle, my rep sumo wrestled professionally in the US and Japan. He could have shaded Jesse Ventura, but he proved no match for Jeff. When he sat down with me, he looked morose.

He said, “Farmers won’t pay, they won’t subrogate, they won’t prosecute. This guy’s going to walk.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Jeff persuaded the company investigator you masterminded the burglary of your own house and snared innocent him in your scheme.”

“I’m the guy who wants to see this case go to trial. The sheriff wants to try him and so do I.”

The agent shook his massive Hagrid head.

“The adjuster’s convinced the sheriff got it wrong and you’re the bad guy.”

“How? On what evidence?”

He drummed fingers the size of hammers on his desk.

“The company investigator turned in dinner expenses for two. She said she needed to get Jeff to open up.”

“Why does she…? Oh, no, no. She wined and dined Jeff? He played her?”

“In-depth investigation, according to my secretary.”

“That’s a pun? They’re dating?”

“Who’s to say? Who investigates investigators?”

Farmers’ confidence in their private detective cost them. After I hired counsel, the underwriter realized their statutory window of time to sue Jeff had run out and they could no longer collect. The company begrudgingly paid my attorney and sent a check for replacement and repairs.

The investigator’s position caused further fallout. Because Farmers Insurance contradicted the findings of the sheriff, the prosecutor didn’t indict. His office explained the defense would simply call Jeff’s tame insurance investigator and undermine their slam-dunk case.

After mere days in jail, Jeff skated. A homicidal grifter now walked free.

Case Closed

For a year, nightmares haunted me. They didn’t stem from fear of Jeff, but fear of my inner rage. In my violent dreams, he died a hundred imaginative deaths. That wasn’t me, not the person I wanted to be. During waking hours, I clamped down my anger, but when freed to roam dreamscapes, my nightmares would have terrified him; they certainly horrified me.

For my own well-being, I needed to escape. I stravaiged around Europe, working, consulting, trouble-shooting. A couple of times, word drifted over from the States.

Lauren entered the hospital for a couple of weeks. Her parents confided that absent a meal ticket, Jeff promptly moved in with a younger girl, and then another, always another.

Last I heard, he married a wealthy widow. No word if Jeff was involved in her premature widowhood.

Final Word

It’s taken years to write this, mostly because of my difficulty talking about myself. My words sound all wrong, I can’t properly document my emotions. Please, my apologies.

Ultimately to a writer, everything is fuel or fodder. I experimented, crafting nightmares into a story, which I might yet finish. In my version, the bad guy finally gets his comeuppance. Perhaps that dark chapter inside me could yet open to the light of day.

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^† Years later, another man– this one a pillar of his church and the Orlando community– would tell me those same words, “You don’t understand evil.” Thirty days later, he and his wife would die violently.