“HELLO OUT THERE, FOLKS, this is Truck Schultz on KWIZ, the Voice of Reason, and boy, do I have a problem!”
Schultz sat in the radio station, smoking a cigar, drinking coffee. A tall, muscular white man with a receding hairline, blue eyes, and large ears, he was the host of the most popular talk-radio show in the city and was ready to go national, sure that he would be more popular than Rush Limbaugh. Truck had started with a late-night jazz show on KWIZ a few years earlier. Not long after conservative radio hit it big, KWIZ changed its format to talk and Truck became a star. His promotional billboards were everywhere: KEEP ON TRUCKIN’! Now Truck had a hundred thousand listeners and a drive-time slot. He never played jazz anymore. Leaning close to his microphone, Truck exhaled a cloud of thick, gray smoke and spoke loudly and clearly.
“Through my sources in the Seattle Police Department, I’ve just learned that the body of a white man was discovered in a house in Fremont early this morning. My sources say that the man was scalped and ritually mutilated. That’s right, folks. Scalped and ritually mutilated. My sources say certain evidence makes it clear that an American Indian might be responsible for this crime. My sources would not reveal what that evidence was, but they did make it clear that only an Indian, or a person intimately familiar with Indian culture, would know to leave such evidence behind. What do you think, folks? Give me a call.”