Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder!

DEADRISE, by David Autry

Plunging into the cold water of the Chesapeake Bay jolted me awake. Fear and panic overwhelmed me. I gasped for air as the boat sped off into the darkness. The last thing I remembered before hitting the water was a kaleidoscope exploding in my head. Someone on the boat had hit me from behind before dumping me overboard.

My chest heaved as brackish water washed into my lungs. My arms and legs felt like lead. On the verge of passing out, I swam toward a small green light swaying back and forth in the choppy water. I was determined to survive. I had a score to settle.

Brief snatches of my ordeal and rescue flitted through my sluggish brain as warm sunlight and the smell of fresh coffee began to revive me. I opened one eye. The digital clock on a bedside table read 9:05. I ached. The pain in my head pulsed. My throat was dry, and my eyelids felt like sandpaper. The room faded in and out of focus. I shut my eyes and counted to ten. When I opened them again, a lanky, weathered man stood over me. I guessed he was around seventy.

I felt woozy but strong enough to sit up. The covers were damp, and I felt a sudden chill as I swung my bare legs over the side of the bed.

“I’m washing your clothes, son, and you could sure use a shower,” the old man said, putting a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup on the bedside table. “I thought you might want something to eat.” He helped me into a faded blue terrycloth bathrobe.

The broth was warm and soothing, and my strength began to return. As I ate, he told me how he’d seen me clinging to a navigation buoy bobbing in the bay. “It must have taken all your will to survive. I thought it best to bring you home with me.”

“Where am I?”

“Piney Point.”

“I can’t thank you enough, mister…” I almost choked on the broth.

“Newhouse, Bill Newhouse, and you’re Shelby Reid. I saw your ID when I spread the things in your wallet out to dry. I’m pleased to meet you, Shelby, and you’re welcome.” He offered me a large, work-roughened hand with long, square-tipped fingers.

Clean clothes were on the bed when I finished my shower. “You had only one sock on when we pulled you out of the bay,” Newhouse said from the other room. “Come on in and we’ll get you fixed up.”

“We?” Tucking in my shirttail, I stopped in the doorway, wondering who else was in the house.

“Mr. Reid, this is my niece, Denise. She’s visiting for the weekend, as she often does. Join us for coffee.” He gestured toward a cushioned chair, identical to one occupied by a woman in her early thirties, about my age. Tall and athletic with a generous, friendly smile, she stood to greet me.

“Denise and I like to take my boat out early in the morning to watch the birds and other inhabitants of the bay. It’s really spectacular, and we never know what we’ll find out there,” the old man said.

I took that as my cue to explain how I came to be in their debt.

I made up a story about fishing with some guys I met in a bar. “The three of us were on this fancy, new cabin cruiser, drinking and swapping fish tales. Then the owner said something about his buddy’s ex-wife, and they started arguing,” I said. “When the owner accused the other guy of sleeping with his wife, things got nasty.

“They were pretty drunk,” I continued, “and things got out of hand. They started fighting like a couple of kids, and I tried to get in between them. That’s when one of them punched me, and I hit my head and fell into the water. Don’t think either of them noticed, they were going at it so hard.”

My rescuers looked at one another, then back at me.

“Maybe I should call the cops and tell them what happened,” I said, setting my cup down.

“In a sense, you already have,” the old man said. “My niece is a sergeant with the Maryland Natural Resources Police.”

Denise Newhouse smoothed back an errant strand of dark auburn hair, and her wide-set brown eyes narrowed as she asked, “Do you want to press charges against your fishing buddies?”

I felt a wave of panic in the pit of my stomach. “No, don’t think so. Hell, I don’t even remember their names. Besides, it was pretty stupid of me to get on that boat with a couple of strangers in the first place.”

Later Denise drove me to the bar in Solomons where I’d left my car. We barely spoke on the ride through the Southern Maryland countryside. Every so often a lonely farm house or the skeleton of a tree intruded on the open fields, still brown from the winter’s frosts and snow.

We said our goodbyes, and I promised to return the sneakers her uncle let me borrow. On the drive back to my apartment in Baltimore, I pondered my next move.

I’d spent months tracking the cocaine trade from small-time street dealers to their suppliers, and I wanted to go all the way up the food chain and get the whole story. But all I had come up with so far was a busted head and a pair of borrowed sneakers. What I needed was a different approach.

Thanks to a crash course in undercover work from a cop friend, I eventually was able to pass myself off as an ex-convict looking for some easy money. Over the course of the next three months, I learned a lot about the drug business and could even tell the weight of a gram of coke just by feel. But the hardest part was keeping up with the constantly changing street lingo. It’s not just the names for all the drugs, but I had to know the latest slang for everything from the quantity and price of drugs to ordering a drink. A bartender can hang a jacket on an undercover man faster than anyone.

I got to know most of the dealers and suppliers in Baltimore and bought enough of their wares to convince them I wasn’t a narc-I hoped.

I was just leaving my apartment one chilly night when a supplier named Whitey came up behind. “Word is you’re looking for a payday,” he said in a coarse whisper. “But, hey, ain’t we all? Let’s pull in here for something to warm us up.”

Whitey was about forty years old, blond, and watchful. He had a ruthless reputation that kept his street dealers in line. If anyone ever crossed him, there wouldn’t be a second time.

Even though the weather was cold and windy, sweat ran down the back of my neck as we entered the Komoto Club. I tried to remember anything that might have made Whitey suspicious. Had someone recognized me from my days as a reporter with the old Washington Tribune?

The Komoto was a favorite hangout among Baltimore’s criminal element. Whitey steered me to a corner table in the rear and ordered us both a double Jack Daniels. We waited in silence until the bartender delivered our drinks.

“Yo, what do you know about boats and shit like that?”

Whitey’s question caught me by surprise. That kind of casual conversation just doesn’t happen in the drug world. Strictly business and that’s it. There’s an unwritten law about not asking questions, and no one offers any information about themselves.

I took a thoughtful sip of my drink before telling him I’d worked on a charter boat out of Annapolis before ending up in the state prison at Jessup.

Whitey’s eyes scanned the dimly lit bar for anyone who might be close enough to overhear and leaned toward me. “I got what you might call a situation,” he said. “And maybe you could help me out and do yourself some good at the same time.” He paused. “You know a big supplier named Sketcher?”

I tried to look indifferent even as my heart rate accelerated. But Whitey’s words had triggered a small earthquake under my chair. I reached for my glass, barely able to keep my hand from jerking as I bent to take a drink. Then I shook my head.

“Well, me and him did business together for a few years, until he got greedy and got himself paid off for good,” Whitey said. “Now I got a shot at taking over his operation, and I need somebody who knows about boats to help me move stuff up the bay.”

Sketcher had been one of the area’s biggest wholesalers in the drug trade, and I’d tried to get close to him for a long time. He was to have been an unwitting key source for my exposé on dope smuggling in the bay area, but that hadn’t worked out. Maybe Whitey’s ambition to move up was the break I needed.

Three days later, Whitey and I drove to St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland. I rented a waterman’s cottage on St. George Island, a tiny, two-square-mile community with a few dozen residents. Whitey checked into a motel in Leonardtown where he introduced me to a couple of small-time crooks who had worked for Sketcher a few years back. Whitey explained that when a drug shipment came up the Chesapeake, my job was to collect the drugs by boat and wait at my place for him to come get it. I’d be well paid for one night’s work about twice a month.

Whitey said it would take a couple of weeks to get things set up. He drove back to Baltimore. I began searching the want ads for a used boat, something that wouldn’t draw too much attention.

On my way to look at boats, I drove across the causeway to Piney Point so I could return Bill Newhouse’s sneakers. He seemed glad to see me again, and over coffee told me where I could get a good deal on an old deadrise workboat.

Next day I took delivery. The previous owner, Newhouse told me, built the forty-foot craft in 1949 and used it to dredge oysters and harvest crabs for nearly sixty years. The boat was powered by a government-surplus GM six-cylinder diesel engine still in good shape, but her wooden hull and decking needed some work. I renamed her the Lady Janette and set about making repairs and repainting. I wish it had been so easy to patch up her namesake.

I was washing out paint brushes one sunny afternoon when Whitey called. A shipment of cocaine was coming up the Chesapeake that night and would be stashed in a duck blind along the southern shore of Taylor Cove. My first job.

I put the Lady J through her paces getting to know the area, located the drop point, then headed home for supper. About three in the morning, I took the Lady J out again. Even though the night was clear with a nearly full moon, I had a hard time finding the cache anchored among the reeds and grasses along the shore. The duck blind was an eight-foot flat-bottomed boat with a camouflaged pop-up canopy that blended in with its surroundings. It was an ingenious set-up with a whisper-quiet electric motor so it could be moved from one secluded spot to another.

I hefted the duffle bag from the blind into the Lady J and headed back to my cottage. I covered my illicit cargo with a tarp and some coils of rope and brewed a pot of strong coffee. Whitey was supposed to meet me and take the drugs to a stash house, but by late morning he hadn’t shown. If something went wrong, I sure didn’t want to be left holding a load of coke worth millions.

Repeated phone calls to Whitey went unanswered, so I decided to examine the duffle bag’s contents. Instead of cocaine, I found about forty plastic-wrapped packets of powdered chalk like the stuff used to mark boundaries and baselines on athletic fields. Was this a test to see if I could be trusted or was Whitey being double crossed? Either way, I was in a fix.

I couldn’t think what else to do, so I decided to stay in character and act the part of a pissed-off ex-con. I waited until ten o’clock at night and put the duffle bag in the trunk of my car then drove to a roadside bar where Whitey and his crew often went.

I pulled into the parking lot and backed my Honda up to Whitey’s Mercedes convertible. The afternoon had been unusually warm, and he’d left the car’s top down. I took the bag from my trunk, ripped it open with my seaman’s knife, and emptied the contents into Whitey’s front seat. I took a few minutes to work up my nerve and stomped into the roadhouse like I had a chip on my shoulder as big as a railroad tie.

I spotted my quarry at the bar with his back to me. I scanned the shabby, dimly lit room for Whitey’s thugs and didn’t see them. I made straight for Whitey, grabbed his shoulder with my left hand, and spun him around on the stool to face me. I drew my right arm back, making a tight fist, and unleashed a roundhouse punch that landed solidly on the startled man’s jaw. My hand hurt like hell. I stepped back and let him get up so he’d know who had clocked him. He recovered quicker than I expected and tried to tackle me on the run. I landed three or four hard blows on his head and shoulders before we both crashed to the rancid, beer-spattered floor. I rolled out from under him and started to push myself up on one knee when I felt a jolt on the back of my head, and that kaleidoscope exploded again.

The still night air was clammy and cool when I came to, slumped against a rusty wire fence on the edge of an open field. Along with the smell of damp earth, I caught the distinctive odor of a chicken-processing plant. My head and shoulders complained as I struggled into a lopsided sitting position. With my hands tied behind me around a wobbly wooden fence post, I banged my back against the pole until I could pull it out of the ground. I worked my bound hands down the roughened wood, wincing as splinters dug into my forearms.

Savoring my small triumph, I rested, listening to the night. The flutter of an owl’s wings and a rustle among the dead leaves nearby sent a shiver up my spine.

I maneuvered my arms under my butt and pulled my legs and feet through the loop so my hands were in front. I untied the rope with my teeth. After my head cleared, I stood and willed my shaky legs to carry me toward a murky glow in the distance. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my cell phone, so I walked to a gas station and called the first person I could think of to come get me.

Bill Newhouse answered the phone, but it was his niece who picked me up. Back at my cottage, she dug out splinters and cleaned and patched my cuts.

“I figured we’d cross paths again,” she said. “You should know, I didn’t believe that bull about drunk fishing buddies, so I did some checking. And guess what? Not only did nobody report you missing, you’re a reporter for Inside Access magazine, and you love the big story.” She leaned in. “Well, I love the big story, too, though for other reasons. I’ve been keeping my eye on you the last few months, waiting. Now here’s our chance.”

Our chance?

Sergeant Denise Newhouse, I soon learned, was not just a game warden. In one of those wild, you’re-not-gonna-believe-this coincidences, she was assigned to Maryland’s High Intensity Drug Unit. HIDU, as it is called, was set up to investigate and prevent drug trafficking on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. When I had recovered from my shock, I figured she had a right to know that I was tracking the cocaine trade in the Baltimore-Washington area for my magazine. I told her one of my sources had arranged for me to meet a distributor named Sketcher the night she and her uncle rescued me. I’d driven to a bar in Solomons where two muscle-bound guys with shaved heads took me outside and searched me. When a white Ford van pulled up, one of the baldy twins jammed a hood over my head and-with little apparent effort-lifted me into the back.

“After a torturous, suffocating ride, I was ushered aboard a swanky cabin cruiser that was supposed to take me to Sketcher,” I told Denise. “We were pretty far off shore when one of my escorts got a call on his cell phone. Next thing I knew somebody hit me from behind and dumped me over the side.”

“So, you were supposed to meet Sketcher?” Denise’s gaze shifted from me to the floor. “Word is he got caught holding out on his customers, taking an extra cut for himself,” she said. “He and three of his associates were found in a warehouse. Each one had been shot execution style and had a hundred-dollar bill stuffed in his mouth.”

I’d expected as much after my meeting with Whitey at the Komoto Club.

“You should know that a guy named Whitey had taken over Sketcher’s operation, and I’ve got a job in his organization; or at least I did,” I said.

“Look, if you had any sense you’d walk away from this before you get killed. No job is worth your life,” she said.

“Can’t do it. It’s not just a job; this is personal. I owe it to somebody to shine the light on those cockroaches so the cops can stomp them out.”

I told her about my best friend’s daughter who died of a drug overdose. Her name was Janette, and she was bright and full of life. She’d been an honors student at Johns Hopkins University until her drug habit took control. She ended up selling her books, her car, and herself just to get high.

“It was the worst day of my life seeing her thin, drug-ravaged body in the morgue, and I had to break the news to her dad,” I said. “I felt empty and powerless. So at her funeral I made a promise to do everything possible to keep someone else’s son or daughter from dying that way.”

“So, is it some kind of revenge or vigilante justice you’re after? Because if it is, I’ll have to arrest you for your own good.” Denise poured peroxide on a nasty gouge in my arm and asked what I planned to do.

The medicine stung, and I gritted my teeth. “All I want is to get at the truth about the drug traffic and maybe find a better way to fight it. For years the government’s said they’re making headway against drugs. But my sources at the Drug Enforcement Administration say all this so-called success hasn’t put a dent in the drug trade. More dope than ever is on our streets, and it’s killing people every day. Something’s got to be done to stop it,” I said.

I told Denise about Whitey’s drug-smuggling operation and my part in it. After a pause she said, “Maybe we could help each other,” and gave me an appraising look. Though the remark seemed offhand, I figured this was her goal all along.

“If I can sell the idea to my superiors, would you be willing to work with us in exchange for an exclusive, inside story about drug smuggling in Chesapeake Bay?”

“Why the hell not?” I agreed. “I always said I’d do anything for a story.”

She sat in silence a while, then stood up, giving my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I’ll be in touch,” she said on her way out.

About two o’clock that afternoon, Whitey parked his car in front of my cottage. He looked almost as bad as I felt, and I smothered a smirk at the white smudges on the seat of his pants. He held up a brown business envelope as he walked to the front porch. “I know pulling a switch on you was way cold, but I got to know we can trust you. You down with that? But that shit in the bar last night, I had to teach you a lesson.”

I opened the envelope and fanned a handful of hundred-dollar bills. I gave him a hard stare. “Don’t ever play me again, asshole. I won’t be nobody’s bitch,” I snarled.

“It’s all good, yo. Get back with you soon,” Whitey said as he drove away.

I put the finishing touches on the boat’s repairs and headed into town for more paint. While I was at the hardware store, Denise called my cell phone. The excitement in her voice was unmistakable as she told me that HIDU had a tip from the DEA that a mothership they’ve been monitoring was headed up the coast from the Caribbean. “Get ready for a drug drop,” she said.

Motherships can carry over a hundred tons of drugs and typically linger fifty to a hundred miles out in international waters. Small ships then ferry the drugs closer in where they rendezvous with go-fast boats that can outrun most Coast Guard cutters.

Denise met me at the Piney Point Market the next day to brief me on the plan.

She told me the DEA was pressuring area law-enforcement agencies to prove their drug interdiction efforts are worth the millions in taxpayer money they’ve gotten over the years. “They say if we don’t make a major bust soon, our funding might get cut,” she said. “Hell, federal money’s the only thing that keeps cops on the streets in communities all along the bay.”

With information from the DEA and about my earlier dry run for Whitey, Denise said the HIDU team planned to nab the smugglers as they moved the drugs up the bay to the floating duck blind. The Coast Guard would seal off the bay along the Maryland-Virginia boundary after the smugglers’ boat began its northward trek. A small flotilla of patrol boats would lie in ambush as the drug runners made their way to Taylor Cove. Crucial to the plan’s success, all agreed, was that the best time to pounce would be while the drugs were being off-loaded onto the duck blind. The patrol boats would then close in, giving the smugglers no chance to get away.

After Denise left the market, I was putting groceries in my car when Whitey’s shiny, clean convertible pulled up. “Time to go to work,” he said and followed me home.

The drop was to be that night. Whitey’s plan was for the Lady J to stand off, with no lights showing, to act as the smugglers’ lookout. If anything went wrong, I was to warn them with four long blasts on my horn then make my getaway. If the drop went all right, though, I would pick up the drugs as before and head home. Whitey swore he’d be waiting at the dock behind my cottage.

Only this time a HIDU team would be there when he arrived.

As the Lady J took her lookout station that dark, drizzly night, I switched off her running lights, eased her engine into neutral, and waited. Denise in a dark green tactical uniform was out of sight in the tiny cabin, armed and ready. I pulled my knit cap tighter on my head and hunched deeper into my waterproof coat, ears straining for the sound of the speedboat’s engines.

I heard Denise check her pistol. It felt strange having a woman carrying a.40-caliber Smith & Wesson scrunched up at waist level. I hoped her gun was pointing up and well to the side.

After what seemed like hours, the night air vibrated as the smugglers’ powerful craft approached, its low, black silhouette barely visible in the gloom. I gave the pre-arranged all-clear signal of two long flashes from a red-lensed lantern. Their answer came a few seconds later. The boat continued past our position in a slow, wide turn, its wake slapping against the Lady J’s sides. I figured they were making their own security sweep and held my breath, hoping they wouldn’t spot the ambush.

Apparently satisfied they were in the clear, the smugglers headed back toward us. Fifteen minutes at most, I thought, and the authorities would have the drug runners and their poisonous cargo in custody, and I could go back to being…what?

I barely had time to ponder my uncertain future when a blinding light swept over my boat. The smugglers were taking a closer look, and Denise made herself even smaller at my side. I shielded my eyes against the glare and gave a half-hearted wave in response to the unwelcome scrutiny. As the sleek craft circled, a shark eying its next meal, I prayed that denizen of darkness would soon be on its way to the drop point.

Before I could say amen, though, the entire area erupted in a cacophony of light and noise: the wail of police-boat sirens mixed with an amplified voice ordering the smugglers to heave to and drop their weapons. High-wattage search beams crisscrossed the misty darkness, and the flashing patrol lights gave the scene a nightmarish quality. Someone on the ambush team had jumped the gun, and Denise and I were caught in a dangeous crossfire as the smugglers tried to shoot it out in a high-speed getaway. It was just what their muscle boat was designed for.

A burst of machine gun fire splintered wood all around me. “Down!” Denise yelled and sprang at me. We tumbled to the deck, and she rolled into position to return fire. She got off three or four shots then dove for cover, unleashing a stream of curses as the smugglers swung around, dousing us with their wake.

Neither Denise nor I dared rise up to see what was going on, but we heard and felt enough to understand a little of what it must have been like for the allied forces hitting the beach at Normandy on D-Day. The Lady J rolled and wallowed in the water churned up by the police in pursuit of the smugglers high-tailing it south.

With the running gun battle receding into the distance, I risked a peek over the gunwales. Cold and wet from the rain and spray, I slumped down against the side, shaking. Denise, probably because her hand still gripped a loaded weapon, rose up with more courage to survey our surroundings. She gave a sharp yelp and dived back down as a glaring cone of light stabbed across my boat. Back to holding my breath and praying, I shuddered, huddling Denise to reassure her-and myself.

I started breathing again when a voice called, “Ahoy, the deadrise. Are you all right?”

I left it up to Denise to answer the hail. My vocal cords refused to work.

The patrol craft came alongside the Lady J, and I pulled it close with my boathook, passing a line to a deckhand. “Lieutenant Cliff Thompson,” an officer said, stepping aboard. “Is anyone injured?”

I accompanied the lieutenant to the cabin and turned on the work lights. Denise’s left leg was bleeding, and a thick splinter protruded from the wound. I saw, too, that her jacket had two ragged holes in the back, the armored vest showing through.

“This job is murder on my clothing budget,” Denise hissed through clenched teeth as an EMT with a bright yellow aid box scrambled aboard to tend to her injuries.

Just then, an insistent radio operator yelled for the lieutenant. An urgent message from the chase boat. The smugglers had eluded their pursuers and were headed back north. Thompson ordered Denise and me to board his forty-foot Boston Whaler, which was armed and considerably faster than the Lady J.

I switched off the engine and work lights on my battered, aging craft and took the Thermos of bourbon-laced coffee I’d prepared earlier from my cabin. Something to ward off the chill and steady the nerves.

As Denise boarded the patrol boat, I heard the speedboat’s rumbling engines in the distance, followed by what looked and sounded like giant, demonic lighting bugs hurtling toward us.

The smugglers traveling at breakneck speed were rounding a spit of land at the entrance to Taylor Cove. They must have seen the patrol boat because they veered to port, trying to pass it on the side away from shore.

With one foot on the patrol boat, I hesitated a moment then passed the coffee to Denise and stepped back onto the Lady J. After all, I had made a promise to her namesake.

The reliable little engine caught with the first turn of my key. I spun the wheel, throttling to full power, and switched on all the lights. I made a quick mental calculation and set a course. Bearing down on the smugglers’ boat, I hoped to force it back toward shore. Instead, the Lady J and I were in a deadly game of chicken. One of the thugs opened fire with a machine gun that ripped up still more chunks of her wood. Reluctantly, I figured the safest place for me would be in the water. So I set the wheel and bolted toward the stern. My escape was anything but graceful, and I swallowed a lot of water coming up for air in time to watch the Lady J close in fast on her target.

In their panic to avoid a head-on collision, the drug runners swung hard to starboard and ran aground in the rock-strewn shallows. The impact shredded the boat’s fiberglass hull. Its powerful engines revved, and the twin propellers chewed the silt, gravel, and debris into a roiling slurry that splattered everywhere.

Sputtering and coughing, I was pulled from the water onto another police boat. With sadness, I watched the Lady J recede into the darkness.

As the patrol boat approached shore, I saw one of the smugglers had been thrown clear of the wreck. The other was slumped over the steering wheel. It was to have been a busy night for them, judging from the four duffle bags and several red, plastic fuel containers I saw in the speedboat’s cockpit.

Wrapped in blankets a few minutes later, I shivered in the command boat’s cabin as the smugglers in handcuffs were brought on board. I saw blood trickling down the driver’s shiny head and across his face. The man who had been thrown from the boat had been bald, too. My heart pounded, and anger swelled as I recognized the hoodlums who had dumped me in the bay. Perhaps sensing my rising fury, Denise grabbed my arm, pulling me close. “Shelby, I don’t know about you, but I sure could use a cup of your special coffee.”

My editor and the rest of the Inside Access staff gave me a warm welcome as I walked into the office. In twos and threes, they drifted over to ask what had happened and where I’d been during my sabbatical.

That afternoon I began writing my insider’s account of drug smuggling in the Chesapeake Bay, untangling the spider’s web of motherships, speedboats, stash houses, wholesalers, and street dealers. I worked like a fiend for three weeks, with my editor breathing down my neck and refilling my coffee cup so we could make the next deadline.

Soon every major news outlet in the country ran stories about my exposé and how it helped the DEA and the Coast Guard shut down the Compioso cartel’s entire East Coast drug network. There was even some buzz about a potential Pulitzer Prize. While I was flattered by all that attention, the bottom line was that I had finally settled the score, saving lots of young lives, like Janette’s.

I was working on another story when I signed for a FedEx delivery. In the package was a framed photograph of Denise and her uncle beside the Lady J, all patched up and freshly painted. A hand-written note read, “As long as their memory endures, the dead rise up within the hearts of the living. Anytime you need help with a story, you know where to find us.”

I put the picture on my desk and resumed tapping away at my computer.

David Autry is a recovering newspaper reporter currently employed as a writer/editor for a national non-profit organization. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, his love of reading and writing sprang from the region’s rich traditions of oral storytelling, music, and literature. He grew up reading hard-boiled detective stories, mysteries, spy thrillers, and many of the Beat writers, as well as the usual classics. That exposure to a broad array of styles and subjects helped solidify his preferences for what he likes to read and write. He lives in Olney, Maryland, with his wife and two cats.