crime
Say Hello to the Doula
On a hot Thursday morning, deep in month eight of the red tide outbreak, Cicely and Zinnia walked together to Zinnia’s hideout to retrieve a cold bag of placentas.
Heisenberg’s Light
On the morning of the Inevitable Event, one hundred and eighty adolescents––the early comers, twitching like feral cats at the long mica tables of the cafeteria, heads bowed to handhelds––stiffened in synchrony, reflexively, like an orchestra tensing to the lift of a conductor's baton.
Nibbling at the Bloodstains
To the arborist it's a rope; to the mariner it's a line, but they serve the same purpose. They tie up things you want to stay put, and they keep your loved ones safe. That was the plan, anyway.
The Murder
An excerpt from Trout: A True Story of Murder, Teens, and the Death Penalty...
The Pretender
Disney is something like the second-largest consumer of explosives in the United States, behind our own U.S. military. We’re about to see some fireworks.
South of Heaven
All things in the desert become the desert in the end, and Manuel didn’t feel anything for the mutt. Just meat for the flies.
A Boy Right Here in Town
My wife, Becca, says she was the first one to spot the McCloskey kid washed up on the shore of Franklin Hollow Lake. Ever since spring broke through the stubborn Virginia winter, she’d walked with a group of neighborhood wives in the evening. Twelve, maybe as many as fifteen of them. They walked the two miles around Franklin Hollow Circle, sometimes detouring along the drives that twisted off the road like snakes from Medusa’s head. Neighborhood watch, they called it, and we laughed. They carried weapons with them—Maglites, Little League bats, anything they could find in the garage or attic or basement that might fend off a burglar or vandal. They strapped Nalgene bottles of white wine to their fanny packs...