The Syndicate Matter

For your listening enjoyment, John Lund and... Johnny Dollar. Mr. Dollar, this is Wilbur Runyon. Oh, it's all right, uh, sorry you went to that trouble. I took a cab in. Are you at your office now?

Oh, yes. I'll be right over. Oh, no, they didn't. Not after paying our four policies in one employee group in so short a time. Oh, that's... Yeah, it usually does. I'll be there in ten minutes.

Thank you. Expense accounts submitted by Special Investigator Johnny Dollar to Home Office, employees, cooperative group insurance company, Hartford, Connecticut. The following is an accounting of expenditures during my investigation of the syndicate matter.

Expense account item 1, $106.40, airfare and incidentals between Hartford and Dallas, including cab fare to the Alamo building, where I contacted Wilbur Runyon, manager of your Southwestern division. You read my report of the Home Office, Mr. Dollar?

Yeah, what there was, Dollar? Well, wasn't much I can add to it, I'm afraid. Even the sheriff at Tupelo doesn't know any more than what I wrote. With the new oil strike, the fellas are boomed down.

That always means a certain amount of trouble. Four murders seems like an extra large helping though, even for a boom time. I don't know what to think of it. Of course, practically every man working in that field is insured with us under the group plan, so it isn't unusual that we've paid off in all four cases.

No, but it is unusual for all four men to die the same way. You said in each case the victim has been beaten to death. The murders all follow the same pattern. That would seem to indicate that they'd all been done by the same person.