270 East

A Novel

270 EAST is a work of fiction inspired by real events, the story of a young womans wrongful conviction for murder and the efforts of a retired Federal Agent to exonerate and free her. Ray Webb was a career Foreign Service Officer, Chief Criminal Investigator for the Western Hemisphere with the Inspector Generals Office of the U.S. Agency for International Development. When Ray retires, he and his wife, Melinda, come home to rural Southeast Oklahoma. The peaceful, orderly small town where they grew up is sadly changed, its stability threatened by the methamphetamine drug trade. Ray, a deeply religious man, becomes lay pastor of a little church across the street from the courthouse, the Sheriffs Office, and the county jail. He begins to suspect that police corruption and prosecutorial misconduct have resulted in a young woman being sentenced to life in prison for a terrible crime she did not commit. Rays close, prosperous family worries that his efforts to right this apparent wrong are becoming obsessive. Melinda, and Kenny, Rays politically well-connected brother, both think that Rays stubborn determination to help this young woman arises from his failures as a father to his own troubled daughter. Ray himself believes he is acting in obedience to Gods will. Whatever his motives, Ray finds himself increasingly involved in a dangerous and ambiguous case, with criminal informants, drug-addled witnesses, a defendant who is her own worst enemy, and a local law enforcement establishment that seems determined to thwart his efforts to learn the truth.