August 15, 1953 – A homeowner in Springfield, Missouri killed a 4½ foot long snake with a hoe. The snake was later identified as a deadly hooded cobra. Springfield was soon terrified as one cobra after another turned up. This all happened a year before I was born.
Reo Mowrer, owner of an exotic pet store a block away from where the first snake was found, denied they were his. As the hunt continued, police played snake charmer music through a loudspeaker to lure the snakes out. Cobras are deaf. Music does not draw the snakes through the music except by the vibrations
Frank Pike holding the stick with the cobra. Carl Gustafson is police officer in middle.
The story made national news and was featured in Life Magazine as eleven snakes were eventually killed. Mike O’Brien, a columnist for the News and Leader, reported in the seventies that the mystery had not been solved about the source of the reptiles.
Mister Mowrer had spoken to reporter O’Brien before his death and had admitted that he had a shipment of exotic snakes delivered just before the scare. The cobras were some of this illegal order. This information was not to be released until after his death.
Officers looking for more snakes
Years later, a Springfield man confessed that as a youth he had released the snakes from the pet shop. He was angry that a fish he bought there had died and the owner refused to refund his money. When I managed a pet store, our policy was to give a forty-eight-hour warranty with the return of the dead fish.
Holding another dead snake
If only that had been in effect in nineteen fifty-three this entire adventure would never have taken place. Now you see why enjoy writing non-fiction more than fiction. You just can’t make this stuff up.
One employee is sitting at the computer working on what they were told to do three hours before. The boss is pleased because they are still on the task they were given. He does not know this job will only take them thirty minutes to perform, because he does not know how to do it.
The same official passes another employee who is in a breakroom getting a cup of coffee. He is there with two others who have been drinking coffee for fifteen minutes, and they all go back to their respective desks. “How long have they been in the break room?” he asks his secretary. “Fifteen minutes,” is the reply.
Later that day, the man who was pouring a cup of coffee is reprimanded. He is confused since he had gotten up from his workstation for the first time in three hours and is told he was drinking coffee for fifteen minutes. It is never mentioned to those who were the ones his secretary was talking about.
Perception is the problem in this case. Or, if you have my attitude, the misconceptions of an inefficient supervisor. I hope this has never happened to you. It has been done to thousands of associates at offices and plants all over the world. I know because I’ve seen it here in the U.S., and I believe that people are the same everywhere.
I’ll give you a couple of personal examples. I walked up on the line at a restaurant where I was a manager and saw three people correcting a problem with a customer order. One was out of his workstation. I jumped on him to get back where he belonged.
Once the problem was worked out, the other two informed me that the error was theirs and the young man just came over to help sort things out. I immediately went to him and apologized for my error and thanked him for his efforts.
A few days later, a tray of food flies over his head and hits a wall. The manager who threw it, my boss, storms out of the building. The situation was the same; an order was filled incorrectly. I took this as a sign that I needed to find employment elsewhere and did so. This was my last food service position, and I continued in other industries.
The problem of perception overruling truth is all around us. We often must look beyond what seems to be obvious to us to determine what the reality is. Many companies die because their managers and owners accept perceptions as truth and fail to see the forest for the trees.
I left an employer early on, expecting his business to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and then it took place a few months later. I was a purchasing agent and was constantly having to ask accounting to pay bills that were overdue to clear our accounts to ship new orders. My perception was that our bills should be paid on time.
There are those who have a perception that if they do not pay their bills promptly, nothing will happen. It may take a foreclosure or threat of some catastrophe to correct this erroneous thinking. In business, I’ve made those calls to clients asking for a past-due invoice to be paid. I always considered it a truth that they could pay, if they wanted to. What are your perceptions of the truth, and are you sure you are correct?
He told them he’d found water that boiled without fire and forests made of stone. They called him a liar. Every word was true.
St. Louis, 1822. An 18-year-old orphan named Jim Bridger worked in a blacksmith shop for pennies. No education. No family. No future anyone could see.
Then he saw a newspaper advertisement that would rewrite his entire existence: “Enterprising Young Men” wanted for a fur trapping expedition into the Rocky Mountains. Pay. Uncertain return. Possible death.
Jim Bridger had nothing to lose and everything to prove. He signed his name and walked away from the only life he’d known.
What followed was nearly six decades of exploration that would make him the most knowledgeable man in America about a landscape most Americans couldn’t even imagine.
Around 1824, young Bridger and fellow trappers followed Utah’s Bear River to discover where it ended. When Bridger reached an enormous body of water stretching beyond sight, he knelt at the shore and tasted it.
Salt. Intense, bitter salt.
He’d reached the Pacific Ocean—or so he believed. He was magnificently wrong. He’d discovered the Great Salt Lake, one of the western hemisphere’s largest saltwater lakes, sitting impossibly in the middle of the desert. He was the first non-Native person to document it.
But that discovery was merely his opening act.
In the late 1820s, Bridger ventured into the Yellowstone region. What he witnessed there defied reality itself.
Water exploding from the earth in columns hundreds of feet high. Pools of boiling liquid in every color imaginable. Mud that bubbled like cooking stew. Entire forests of trees turned completely into stone. Ground trembled. Air that smelled of sulfur.
When Bridger returned to civilization and described what he’d seen, the response was universal: laughter.
They called him “Old Gabe the Liar.” Journalists mocked his “tall tales.” Even fellow mountain men questioned whether he’d lost his mind.
He hadn’t invented a single detail. He’d simply witnessed Yellowstone four decades before it would become America’s first national park—before the nation was ready to accept that such a place could exist on Earth.
Every impossible thing he described was real. The world just wasn’t ready to believe him.
For twenty years, Bridger lived as a mountain man, surviving conditions that killed most men within weeks. He learned six Native languages fluently. He married into the Flathead tribe, later marrying twice more after tragedy. He became legendary for reading weather, tracking game, and navigating terrain with supernatural precision.
When the beaver fur market collapsed in the 1840s, Bridger adapted instantly. Thousands of emigrants were beginning the desperate journey west. They needed help.
In 1843, he and his partner, Louis Vasquez, constructed Fort Bridger in southwestern Wyoming. For a decade, that fort served as a critical rest stop where pioneer families could repair wagons, buy supplies, and gather strength before the final brutal push to Oregon or California.
Thousands of lives were saved at Fort Bridger.
As westward expansion accelerated, Bridger became irreplaceable. Military expeditions needed guides who knew every mountain pass. Railroad surveyors needed someone who’d walked every mile of potential routes. Scientific expeditions needed the man who’d accumulated thirty years of geographical knowledge that existed nowhere else.
He guided expeditions well into his sixties, even as his eyesight deteriorated—the price of decades under relentless sun and blinding snow reflecting off endless white peaks.
“I was doing eighty on the highway because the Vice Principal said my second grader was caught “distributing contraband” in the cafeteria. I thought he had drugs. I was wrong. It was pepperoni.
I walked into the administrative office still wearing my work boots, drywall dust on my jeans. The secretary looked at me like I was going to track mud on her carpet. I didn’t care. I just wanted to see Leo.
I found him sitting on the “Cool Down Chair” in the corner of Vice Principal Miller’s office. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look guilty. He looked confused. His hands were folded in his lap, and there was a smudge of tomato sauce on his chin.
“Mr. Russo, thank you for coming so quickly,” Mrs. Miller said. She was a nice enough woman, usually, but today she had the posture of a steel beam. “We have a zero-tolerance policy regarding the exchange of food items. It’s a liability issue. Allergies. Sanitary concerns. We simply cannot have students passing food around like… like it’s a free-for-all.”
She slid a discipline across the desk. Incident: Unauthorized distribution of lunch materials. Defiance of cafeteria protocol.
“He gave away his lunch?” I asked, looking at Leo. “That’s why I’m missing a half-day of pay? Because he gave away a slice of pizza?”
“It’s not just the pizza, Mr. Russo. It’s the defiance,” she sighed, adjusting her glasses. “The lunch monitor instructed Leo to keep his food to himself. He refused. He insisted on giving half to a classmate, Samuel. When told to stop, Leo argued with the monitor.”
I turned to my son. “Leo, buddy. Look at me. Why did you do that? You know you’re supposed to eat your own lunch.”
Leo looked up, his big brown eyes filled with frustration that seemed too heavy for a seven-year-old.
“Sam didn’t have a tray, Dad,” Leo said. His voice was small but steady.
“What do you mean?”
“It was Pizza Friday,” Leo explained, as if that explained everything. In elementary school, it basically did. “Sam got in line, but when he got to the register, the lady took his tray away. She threw the pizza in the trash bin behind her and gave him the cold cheese sandwich in the plastic bag. She said his account was ‘in the red.'”
I felt a tightening in my chest. I knew that term. I knew the ‘Cheese Sandwich of Shame.’ It happens when parents forget to load the lunch account or when money is tight.
“Sam started crying,” Leo continued. “He didn’t want the cold sandwich. He was hungry. So, I broke my pizza in half. I gave him the big piece.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then the monitor came over and took it away from Sam. She threw that piece away, too. She said I was breaking the safety rules.” Leo pointed a small finger at the wall behind Mrs. Miller’s desk. “She said rules are rules.”
I looked where he was pointing.
Directly behind the Vice Principal’s head was a massive, laminated poster, decorated with bright primary colors and cartoon stars. It was the school’s motto for the year.
KINDNESS MATTERS.
Below it, in smaller print: In a world where you can be anything, be kind.
Leo looked at me, then at Mrs. Miller. “Dad, I’m confused. The poster is big. The rule book is small. I thought the big poster was the boss.”
The room went silent. The air conditioner hummed. Mrs. Miller opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked at the liability forms on her desk, then she turned around and looked at the poster she walked past every single morning.
The monitor said I was being bad,” Leo whispered. “But if I ate my pizza while Sam cried… wouldn’t that make me bad?”
Mrs. Miller took off her glasses. The corporate stiffness drained out of her shoulders. She was suddenly just a person in a room with a father and a son who had asked a question she couldn’t answer with a handbook.
“It’s a policy, Mr. Russo,” she said, her voice softer now, almost apologetic. “We have to protect the school from lawsuits. If Sam had an allergy…”
“Does Sam have an allergy?” I asked.
“No,” she admitted. “But we have to assume…”
“I know,” I cut her off. I stood up and pulled out my wallet. It was thin, but I had enough. “How much is Sam’s debt?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sam’s lunch account. How much is he in the red? Five bucks? Ten?”
“Mr. Russo, you don’t have to…”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. How much?”
She typed for a second. “Four dollars and fifty cents.”
I pulled out a twenty. “Clear it. And put the rest on Sam’s account for next week. And if Leo gives him a slice of pizza again, please just… look the other way.”
I didn’t wait for the change. I signed the disciplinary slip—admitting my son was a “disturbance”—and walked out with Leo holding my hand.
We walked to the truck in silence. I buckled him in.
“Am I in trouble, Dad?” Leo asked, looking at his knees. “I promise I won’t do it again.”
I started the engine and turned to him.
“Leo, look at me.”
He looked up, bracing for the lecture.
“You are not in trouble,” I said firmly. “You did the right thing. The school has its rules, and they must follow them to keep their jobs. But you have a heart, and you have to follow that to keep your soul.”
“But they threw the pizza away,” he said sadly.
“I know. Sometimes doing the right thing makes a mess. Do it anyway.”
We stopped at a pizza place on the way home. I bought two large pepperoni pies. One for us, and one for Leo to take to school on Monday, just in case.
As I watched him eat, getting sauce all over his face again, I realized something terrifying.
We spend eighteen years trying to program our kids to fit into the system, to sit still, to stay in line, to follow the handbook. We teach them that “compliance” is the same thing as “goodness.” But today, my seven-year-old showed me that sometimes, you must break the rules to keep the promise on the wall.
Civilization isn’t built on handbooks and liability waivers. It’s built on breaking your pizza in half when your friend is hungry.
If that’s a punishable offense, then I hope my son stays a criminal for the rest of his life.”
I found this on Facebook, and it was not accredited by any author. This is why we should never accept the authorities that claim something as they see it. Rules and manuals are just that. Kindness is a law of God. I think we all need to follow it. If this is your story, please advise me and I will reassign the copyright when you provide proof of authorship.
The only name you may recognize in this list is the Waltons. Earl Hamner, Jr. created this TV series that first aired in 1972. I graduated from high school in May of that year. The first episode of the Waltons aired on CBS television on September fourteenth of that year. You can say that my adult life began with this creation of Mr. Hamner.
This was not the first incarnation of this story by the author. “Spencer’s Mountain” was first published in 1961. He had begun his writing career as a script writer. His first short play that was produced was “The Hound of Heaven” that aired January 15, 1953, on The Kate Smith Show.
Spencer’s Mountain became a movie in 1963 starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara. The plots are similar. The characters are familiar from the Waltons series. This book was the story that John Boy wrote about his family. As writers, we are told to write what we know.
The character John Boy in the original book and movie was named Clay Boy after his father Clay Spenser, Sr. This makes me wonder if Earl Hamner, Jr., was called Earl Boy when he was growing up. He was the first one in a large family to go to college and become a writer.
Most of The Walton episodes were not written by Hamner. He was the Executive Producer and had final say on the scripts. While every story was not his he did make sure they were true to his concept of who his family was. As always, literary licenses were issued as needed.
Many of Hamner’s personal beliefs appear in these episodes. He was constantly exposing problems to those who were trying to take advantage of others. The Ballwin sisters, who were bootleggers, even though they did not know it, were not viewed as criminals. Blacks and orphans were seen as being oppressed.
Walton’s view of World War II was very much the way my mother remembered things as she was growing up at that time. Walton’s was a favorite of hers. She shared with me that many of the news reports of things that were occurring in Europe were viewed with doubt by her family as well.
Many of the story lines resonated with me. John Jr. wanted to be a writer and went to college to study. He was always writing a story or book. The season he purchased an old press and published his own newspaper was especially interesting to me.
The idea of living with grandparents was not that familiar and I was used to having two brothers and a sister at home. I sympathized with the Walton children when they wished they were only children. The different interests and occupations the family chose were as varied as my own. The main variation was that no one in my family became a musician or nurse.
My columns do follow a similar tack that John Boy followed by writing about the family and those things that happened to them. If you are like me and wish that the producers would come up with more family programming like this, at least with our current technology, we can watch these older shows on our streaming services. Happy watching, and I’ll share others that I have watched when they were new.
Have you ever seen this TV series from 2007 to 2012? I am going to tell you something that has never been published anywhere before now. This story is about me. It has been altered greatly from my true original story. I did not go to Stanford University or work as a computer nerd.
I do not know Chris Fedak or Josh Schwartz who are the creators of this show. How they were able to link this fictional tale to my name is beyond me. I do not want any royalties or profit from their scripts. Titles cannot be copy written and I have no claim against anyone for infringing upon my privacy.
Why do I say this series was based on my life? First it is my name. Then there is the beautiful woman that I am married to. The character of Sarah Walker and Cindy do not have the same hair color. Cindy has never worked for the CIA and the way we met was completely different from what the series shows.
My best friend at the time ended up being my best man at our wedding and surprisingly, they got the part correct that we worked together. They also got it right that I have a sister. They did leave out my two brothers. Neither of my parents were spies and they were at our wedding as well.
They also got it correct that I did not finish at the university where I started my degree program. However, I was not expelled, I transferred and did receive my diploma from another college. I also never let my girlfriend drive my company car, so she never wrecked it. I played video games but not much after Cindy and I began dating. As I recall, neither did Chuck after he met Sarah.
That is another way that the writers hit my story head on. I know that if they tried to stay closer to my real life it would have been boring. I am just glad that they did not make it a situation comedy. The dramedy genre was a much more flattering format.
I can just see if they had titled it everybody loves Chuck or according to Chuck. All the crazy stuff my brothers and sister and I did would not have been half as interesting as the scripts for those two shows. I do wish that one of the characters in M.A.S.H., the Waltons, or Dr. Quinn Medicine woman had been Chuck or Cindy. In that case the show I claimed as ours would have lasted a lot longer.
Is there a show that you wish you could claim was about your life? Comment below and tell me the similarities and the differences in yours. If no one comments I will know that I am still a unique individual. Happy watching.
I’ve been a writer for over sixty years. I do not remember ever having writer’s block. I developed a habit in grade school of writing what I wanted when I wanted to. Most of my teachers were just happy that I never asked what to write about. It was usually “write about something that happened to you or something that you are interested in.”
In junior high my teachers were more demanding. I had to write fiction or non-fiction, essays, or reports. Often, I would start more than one paper. If they wanted a particular piece but gave no restriction on the topic, I might write two or three different items. The day before it was due I had to choose which would be submitted.
More than one educator would suggest that we submit an additional paper for extra credit. I was always prepared for that. The fun thing about doing this was that often when a new assignment was given, I had at least one written that could be used.
In high school it became more difficult. Each paper had the maximum and minimum number of words required. Topics were more difficult to choose because the requirements were more restrictive. When I began taking journalism I continued to write multiples of each assignment.
News stories, editorials, features, and even sports articles seemed to come easily. My feature articles were the ones that were accepted most often. News items were not as well accepted. Sports was definitely not my bailiwick. When the staff for the paper senior year was announced, I was the page three feature editor.
Page one was the editor, page two the associate editor and of course page four was sports. Two photographers were chosen as well. Other jobs like yearbook staff were also filled. Our sponsor told us she made the decisions based on our strengths.
Senior year I wrote pieces that appeared on each page including page four. When we selected a theme for the feature page for each week everyone in all the classes were asked to write columns for each issue. Our teacher selected articles from the ones I gave to her. I submitted only one of mine to insert for each edition. We did not submit copy with bylines to prevent preferential treatment.
Each issue featured a bylined piece of mine on at least one page. Photographs from my camera also appeared in the paper and the yearbook. I had editorials that were requested on certain topics for specific issues. These were published with no acknowledgement of authorship.
My skills included interviews which were a mainstay of page three. If no one in the classes volunteered for these stories, they were handed to the feature editor. I spent a lot of time interviewing the principal and most of the staff. Today my favorite joke is to tell people that I was in the principal’s office at least three times a week. I just don’t tell them why I was there.
In my files I have close to a hundred ideas or partial columns. I have been gathering these for over ten years. Each piece I publish may be written completely within the last few days. Others are finished after they have sat in the files for as much as three years or more.
I hope that this has helped you with ways to avoid the dreaded writer’s block syndrome. I always tell young authors that the only way to learn how to write is to write. It always works for me. Tell me if I publish something that you think should have stayed in the file a while longer and gotten more polish.
This is a story I heard many years ago. I wrote it out and saved it in my files. It went into my files for my columns years ago. Before I tell you the story I must make a disclaimer. Although my friends call me Chuck, this story is not about me.
“A fellow named Chuck encountered a farmer one day. The farmer said he had a real deal for him. He was selling raffle tickets to win a horse. Chuck purchased one of the tickets and went on his way.
A few weeks later Chuck gets in touch with the farmer who tells him that he won the horse. Chuck says that is great and asks when he can pick up the horse. The farmer tells him that he regrets to report that the horse died last night.
Chuck demands to claim the horse even if it is dead and shows up at the farm with a truck. The farmer is perplexed as to what Chuck plans to do with a dead horse.
Several months later the two meet up again and the farmer asks about the horse. Chuck tells him he made $2500.00 off of the horse. When asked how he was able to get that much for a dead horse he is told that Chuck raffled the horse off and when the winner came to pick up the horse and was told it was dead, Chuck gave him his money back and disposed of the dead horse.
The farmer then explains that Chuck is now a congressman.”
There are many morals to this story that I could give you. One is that a creative person can accomplish a great deal even with a dead horse. Or I could tell you that caveat emptor is Latin for “let the buyer beware.” I could even explain to you the U.S. economy. It is based on buy low and sell high.
This is Father’s Day and as a dad I am enticed to just accept this as a good dad’s joke. Or you might call it a bad dad joke. I have told a lot of those over the years and a few of the former.
My favorite story about my joke telling experiences is the time we were moving our youngest daughter from one dorm at Rolla to a different building to become a residence assistant. Some of her friends brought trucks and we were using our van to load, move and unload her possessions.
We were all visiting with each other and my daughter told first one and then another of my tales. After a while I had the opportunity to speak to her alone and I mentioned that she was using the material that she always told me was not funny. Each time she told a joke her friends laughed.
Her response was that she knew how to tell a joke better than I did. This was a line from another of my anecdotes. On this occasion I want to wish all dad’s a happy Father’s Day and apologize if once again I have confirmed what Kayla said.
No, it isn’t Kay or Hallmark. It is with desire. When my wife and I watch rom-coms I have a saying, “It’s a Hallmark.” Most Hallmark movies have the starring couple kissing in the last five to fifteen minutes. Others like Larry Levinson productions have lovers kissing much earlier.
My wife and I kissed for the first time after our first or second date. I can’t remember exactly. I think it was the first time. It might not have been. I know I wanted to kiss her every time I saw her and I still do. This was the start of love.
Remember that I do not believe love and lust are the same. Lust is a kind of desire. Love prompts desires of its own. These are not the same. Love makes you want to be with someone. Not for sex or any of that superficial stuff. You want to spend your life with them.
We have been together for over fifty years. Today is our forty-ninth anniversary. We are both retired now and spend almost every moment together. We don’t have to be together all the time; we just enjoy each other’s company. We share the chores around the house, run errands together most of the time, and still sleep in the same bed.
We both have sleep apnea which means without our CPAP machines we snore. During the first year we dated I spent ten weeks over a thousand miles away for the summer. When I returned home, I had turned twenty-one and decided that we needed to be married as soon as possible after I graduated from college the next spring.
Two weeks after the wedding My job moved us to another city, and this gave me justification for marrying her before she graduated from high school. She completed school in the new community and found a job after she was out of school.
Many people think that if you get married at a young age it will be difficult to stay together. For us that has not been a problem. We have learned that the key to loving each other is forgiveness. Everyone has disagreements and makes mistakes. Don’t let these problems break up your relationships.
What we need to do is watch what we say to each other and forgive when we have differences in opinions. Another requirement is to make compromises. When our first daughter was born Cindy wanted to start a tradition of talking about Santa Claus with our daughter. I disagree with that idea.
I felt that promoting this kind of falsehood in our children’s lives would make them distrust what we told them about Jesus and God. She wanted them to be given the fun things these fantasies could bring. It turned out that we were able to explain the differences between real and pretend at the appropriate ages with each of them. Love sometimes is a compromise.
“There’s a package for you on the entry table,” came my wife’s voice as I opened the kitchen door from the garage. “It’s marked ‘urgent,’” she added as she wiped her hands on her apron and kissed me hello.
“When was it delivered?” I asked as I headed to the front door.
“I don’t know. It was lying outside the front door when I went to check the mail.”
Not unusual. It was an express mail package & I zipped it open quickly. Inside were the files I expected to have on my desk in the morning. Interpol printouts, investigation reports from all over the world on probable killings by Mike Richards, etc. Grainy surveillance photos, numerous other items, and a handwritten letter. It was “the note writer.”
It started, “Be very careful. Manny has not left the area. You were supposed to find David Weber. He will take action if he learns you believe he is involved. Quietly investigate the research Carl Freeman has been doing on his own time. Contact his wife at the funeral home through an intermediary. Do not let anyone know that you are looking for Manny or you will be the next victim. I’ll be in touch.”
After a quick dinner, I was back in the office. I usually don’t get spooked, but this case was getting to me. I looked at my mirrors closer than usual, checked to be sure my piece was ready, and made sure I walked in with other officers I knew. I was very cautious.
I accessed Interpol. The pages I had looked at were exactly what was currently posted. “Note writer” must have access to Interpol. He must be another officer or an excellent hacker. I called the funeral home and found out what time Mrs. Freeman would be there tomorrow. David Weber was more cooperative after I told him who the man was in the mug shot, he had identified. When I told him I was going to charge him with possession of stolen goods, so I could hold him, he seemed relieved.
Sleep did not come easy. Too many questions kept coming to mind. What was Freeman working on? Why did it cost him his life? Who was the Note Writer? Could I keep David Webber alive, if Manny wanted him dead?
When the alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., I was still asking myself questions. Today promised to be as strange as yesterday.
By 10:30 I had already checked for additional information on Mike Richards, aka Manny, and was at the funeral home. Mrs. Freeman was surprised when I asked if her husband had any “special projects” he was working on.
“For years he has been working on a new car engine. He applied for a patent a few months ago but found out recently that his design is already patented,” she told me.
“Has any of the stuff in his shop been taken?”
“Not that I can tell,” was her response. “I rarely go out there. The only thing I am sure is not missing is the car with the engine in it.”
I made arrangements to meet her that afternoon to look at the shop. I still did not see why this was important. I drove back to the station and was almost hit in the parking lot as I left my car. Some people even drive like maniacs in the parking lot of a police station.
When I came back to my car to go meet Nicole Freeman, The Note Writer had struck again. “Manny has made you,” it began. “He knows you have Weber. You should watch your step in the parking lot. Next time he won’t miss you. Do not contact the Freeman woman again directly. If Manny thinks you are interested in the car, you and Weber are both dead.”
Could that car that almost hit me have been driven by a paid killer? It made me think. I went back to my office and called a friend to go see Mrs. Freeman. I needed to know all I could about that car and engine.
Mike Richards was a very interesting man. Suspected murders in over twenty countries. Last ten years he had almost been caught at least five times. No indication in my information of who had been close to catching him. No one knew who he killed for, and all the murders seemed random. No known link had been found, yet. That was the Interpol report.
The other papers were clippings that described the deaths of an FBI agent, several police, and assorted citizens. Many were in the U.S., but close to half were from other countries. A few of the articles mentioned experimental work on engines or alternative fuels. Some were murders, but most were accident reports or obituaries. If The Note Writer was to be believed, Mike Richards must be very wealthy, indeed. Between these clippings and Interpol’s report, he had killed over a hundred people. The official score was twenty-two.
I found the reported suicides of three police officers, the accidental deaths of four more, and the killed in the line of duty of two and the agent to be the most disturbing. Each of the officers and the agent was investigating an unsolved death at the time of their deaths. One clipping had a photograph of a group of uniformed officers at the scene of the fatal shooting of another officer. One of the faces was circled. An arrow drawn from the circle pointed to the name “Manny” written on the side. With this clipping was an artist’s sketch entitled “Manny today.”
The articles on the death of the FBI agent described his family, and his partner and showed a map of the area where his body was found in his burned car. Thomas Winston Riley was a twelve-year veteran of the FBI, former military intelligence, and trained hostage negotiator. His partner, Sam Wilkens reported nothing unusual in their cases that would indicate anything other than an accident. The investigation concluded with the statement, “Death due to severe trauma inflicted during an automobile accident.”
There was ice, the guard rails had been taken out by an eighteen-wheeler two days earlier. He ran off the road and the car rolled down an embankment and burned due to a punctured gas tank. Due to the snow and ice, there were no marks on the pavement. All the tires melted in the fire. There was no way to tell if the accident was the result of a blowout.
