Page 98 - NIXBOOK

Local big business owner called the police to report a scammer had hacked his company’s email system. Scammer sent an email
to the CFO, pretending to the be the CEO. Email directed a payment of $38,000 to an out of state vendor for BS “services
rendered.” CFO fell for it and sent away 38k. Then, much too late of course, asked the boss if that that was for reals.

The man who was building a koi pond in his backyard with an excavator. His long-feuding neighbor chose that day to make a
new fence between them; literally trapping the excavator behind the other guy’s house. Of course he did that on purpose.

Sunday night. Raining. Winter. Dark. Cold. Nothing going on. A citizen called 911 for help; she’s got spyware and she’s having
mental problems. The other officer on duty who answered up to the dispatch reaches for his phone to give her a call. “No, no,
we gotta go meet her in person!” I said. The other officer demurred. “I was just going to give her a phone call, she’s just got a
spyware problem.” “Yeah, but the dispatcher notes say she’s got spyware in her car, which is a special kind of crazy,” I said.
“C’mon, there’s nothing else going on; this might be the highlight of our shift tonight,” I begged. “Okay,” he relented. “Let’s go
meet her.” We drive to her house, knock on the door, she lets us in. She’s 30 years old, appears very well put-together; nice
clothes, cute hair, make up is a bit much but she looks good, she’s even got nicely manicured nails. I note all this because I had
recognized her name and the other officer looked her up in the database, which revealed 16 different jail booking photos from
her not-t00-distant past of whoring and drug abuse. 16 pictures of her looking at her ragged and haggard worst. Anyway, on
that Sunday night she looked like she had straightened her life out remarkably well, but as I suspected, one can only do so much
recreational drug use before something in the brain gets permanently broken. She told us that she was hearing voices, coming
from outside her house, and inside, and there might be hidden cameras watching her. We spend a long time calming her down
but there is only so much that we can do. Eventually she feels okay and we leave. We get back to our cars and the other officer
stops in the dark. “Hey, you know what would be really funny?” I can see he’s grinning. I know he’s thinking about going back
and maybe talking crazy outside her door to really mess with her. “Yeah I know what would be funny and we’re not going to do
it.” I replied. But he’s got an even better idea, one that of course we absolutely cannot do. “We could go back there and pretend
like it’s our first time seeing her tonight.” Now I start grinning. “She’d of course ask why we came back,” he continues. “And we
just play it straight like “what are you taking about this is the first time we’ve seen you tonight. How can we help you ma’am?”
No way was that even a casual consideration for us but on the list of Ways to Mess with Crazy People, that one is definitely on
there. The general idea still cracks me up. Do I have to say a hail rosemary now?