Coming Soon! The Blood of Whiskey Run
In 1932, Detective Tom Moorhead discovers murder, betrayal, and a decades-old cover-up in a dying coal town, leading him to a final reckoning in mob-controlled Chicago in this haunting historical noir tragedy.
Fact: Between the 1906 founding of the patch town, Whiskey Run in Western Pennsylvania, and its demolition twenty-four years later, there were more than 22 unsolved murders. Several of these murders were investigated by County Detective Thomas Moorhead. In January 1932, Moorhead told his wife he would see her that evening and disappeared. Five days later, he was found dead in a Chicago hotel. It was ruled a suicide. No one knows why he was in Chicago, or why he would have killed himself. This novel is a work of fiction that attempts to provide answers history never did.
"In Whiskey Run, Pennsylvania, secrets won’t stay buried.”
Based on Actual Events
In the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear, The Blood of Whiskey Run plunges into the heart of a dying coal town gripped by silence, fear, and the long shadow of buried sins.
In 1932, County Detective Thomas Moorhead is sent to investigate a body found in the basement of a burned-out house. But what begins as a local crime soon unravels into something far deeper — a decades-old conspiracy rooted in labor strikes, state-sanctioned violence, and the brutal work of a secret society that once ruled the hills of Pennsylvania.
As Moorhead digs into the past, he awakens ghosts no one wants disturbed — and becomes a target himself. The trail leads from forgotten mines and shuttered boarding houses to the blood-soaked alleys of mob-controlled Chicago, where the final answers come at a terrible price.
Spanning decades, The Blood of Whiskey Run is a haunting historical noir tragedy based on actual events — a story of love and betrayal, justice and regret, and the devastating cost of uncovering the truth
Read the First Chapter:
Chapter 1 Thomas Moorhead
The twisting road to Whiskey Run was slick with mud, and the misting yet steady rain had turned the frozen ground into a treacherous morass. I gripped the wheel, cursing under my breath as the tires slid on an icy patch, and silently thanked the sheriff for lending me the county’s Ford. The 1929 two-door was fully enclosed, keeping me dry, if not warm.
Rounding a sharp bend, the town, what was left of it, came into view. The old roadbed was reduced to a rutted, useless track past a row of decaying patch houses. The red-painted board-and-batten siding had faded to a dull, wet brown, blending with the dreary winter landscape. Most of the original thirty-or-so duplexes had already been dismantled and hauled off to Shelocta, where more were being built to satisfy the needs of Indiana County’s coal fields.
Whiskey Run, a place steeped in misery and bloodshed, was dead.
Only five or six houses were occupied, with a dozen residents lingering in a town that no longer existed. Soon, they would be gone — evicted, forgotten, left to fend for themselves in a world that had no use for them.
I was far too familiar with this road. How many murders, how much bloodshed had this town seen?
My fervent hope had been never to set foot in Whiskey Run again, yet here I was.
At the far end of what was left of the town, young Billy Fulton stood in the middle of the road looking miserable, his hand raised in greeting. He wore a full-length black slicker, and rain dripped off a borrowed Army campaign hat. His horse was tied to a nearby tree, its breath visible in the cold air, and it looked as dejected as Billy.
I stopped the car and set the handbrake, turned up the collar of my leather jacket, pulled down the brim of my old fedora, and sighed deeply before opening the door.
Let’s hope we can wrap this up soon, I thought. It’ll snow before dark.
“Happy New Year, Mr. Moorhead,” Billy said without enthusiasm.
“You rode all the way from Iselin?” I stated the obvious, holding out a hand. I didn’t feel like returning the greeting.
Billy’s hand was wet and soggy, and he smiled ruefully. “That’s how I get around, Mr. Moorhead.” He indicated the steaming car. “We ain’t as rich as youns in Indiana.”
I accepted the light reproach. Iselin, named for the founding family of Rochester & Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company and owner of half the mines in Western Pennsylvania, was considerably larger than Whiskey Run — large enough to support a three-man police station.
“Whatta we got?” I asked, walking toward the burned-out double house. I had passed this charred carcass for years, wondering why it had never been torn down. Black timbers and caved-in walls filled the cinder block basement. Three men sheltered in the ruins beneath a staircase that led nowhere. They were not pleased to have their work stopped.
Billy took a deep breath. “It’s the damnedest thing — pardon me, Mr. Moorhead — I ever seen. The coal bin’s framed out against one wall,” Billy continued, stepping through the empty door frame and pointing at the rough boards that enclosed a pile of wet coal. The rest of the double cellar was filled with cinders and unidentifiable debris.
As we approached the bin, I nodded at the workers, and a man stepped forward. Instead of introducing himself, he growled, “All this crap needs loaded on the truck ‘fore it snows on us. So do what you gotta do and do it quick.”
The man was much taller than my five feet eight and outweighed me by a hundred pounds. He had a thick mustache and was dressed in coveralls with a slicker hanging open — a man who didn’t feel the cold.
I studied him from beneath the brim of my hat and said, “Let me see what we have, and then I’ll let you know if you can go back to work.” My voice was calm and even, barely carrying above the sound of the rain.
The foreman studied me, deciding his next move. Finally, he grunted and returned to the shelter of the staircase. I ignored the looks cast my way.
“Show me, Billy.”
The phone call from the Iselin police station to the Indiana County Sheriff’s Office reported that a body had been found. At the time, no other information was available. The sheriff informed the coroner’s office to arrange for it to be picked up, and then asked the district attorney to send me out to investigate. He was aware of my history with this area of the county.
The workers had been loading the old coal into a wheelbarrow when they found a hole excavated in the dirt under the pile.
Partially buried in mud and coal, a body lay face down. It wasn’t much more than a skeleton, although hair on its head and some flesh on one exposed hand were evident. It wore the remains of a heavy wool coat and trousers typical of a miner.
He had been shot in the back of the head.
I squatted at the edge of the hole, examining the corpse and the ground nearby. I leaned over, reaching as far as I could, and brushed at the coal and mud beside the body. An object reflected in the dim light. I scooped away more mud, gasped, and sat back.
Billy leaned in to see what had affected me so strongly.
We watched in horror as the rain washed away the last layer of black mud, revealing a long-hidden secret.
On either side of the first body, decayed and mummified faces stared at the sky with sightless eye sockets.
“I’ll be damned,” Billy said, forgetting to ask for forgiveness. “There’s four of them!”
Billy’s math was accurate.
There were four bodies in the grave.
Sitting on my haunches, I looked over my shoulder at the men waiting to resume work.
“Send your men home,” I said softly.
God, I hated this town.
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