Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

Sully just quoted it.

So, Mom, I don’t know why you’ve been lying about this all this time. I don’t know why you hate who I’ve become. I can’t do anything about that. But I can do something. I can end it all. I am the last of the Ellisons, and that is one thing that-

The page was torn at that point, leaving the rest of his thoughts to himself.

He was only wrong about one thing, Sully thought. His mother had been the last of the Ellisons.

Had Sully been the type to weep, he might have. He thought Billy Ellison a good man. A young one, but a good man. They died all the time. They always had.

THE PRECEDING ISa work of fiction.

Washington, D.C., did indeed have a series of slave pens in the antebellum era and some of those factual accounts are included herein. The epigraph and the horrific accounts of the Williams and Robey slave pens in the city, and the Franklin and Armfield place just across the river in Alexandria, Virginia, are taken from historical accounts, as is the journey of the Pearl. The Red Summer of 1919 took place largely as presented.

Frenchman’s Bend, however, is cut entirely of fictional cloth. Neither it nor its proprietors and descendants ever existed.

The careful reader will notice that, as in The Ways of the Dead , I have taken small liberties with other D.C. timelines and geography.

This book is affectionately dedicated to the late Tommy Miller, my old professor, mentor, friend, and one of the western world’s most underappreciated newspaper editors. He taught me how to think and write and how to make a living with a pen and a notebook. I miss him, as do so many others.

Many, many thanks are extended to the people who supported the writing of this book and who read, edited, and thought aloud about how it could be better. Most of the mostest is my adorable spouse, the belle of Jamaica, Carol Smith Tucker, my first reader, critic, and watcher of the kids when I am locked in a small room with the keyboard. Also, lookin’ at you, Lynn Medford, my most boss at The Washington Post ; Elyse Cheney, agent extraordinaire; and Allison Lorentzen, my very most wonderful editor at Viking. Thank you, ladies. Take the rest of the day off.

Neely Tucker was born in Lexington, Mississippi, when kids used to run around in the chemical fog sprayed behind the mosquito truck, which his wife thinks explains a lot. He is a former foreign correspondent who worked in a lot of places, many of them where people would shoot you for free. He is the author of Love in the Driest Season , a memoir about war, reporting, and adopting his gorgeous elder daughter. A staff writer for The Washington Post , he lives in a house with a Jamaican, a Zimbabwean, two very small Americans, and one very large dog. They are all Saints fans. For more, see www.neelytucker.com.