The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Scorekeeper, written in 2017, is my second novel. I'll post it, a chapter a day, over the next few weeks.
Over the next two weeks I worked on an appellate brief to the Alabama Supreme Court trying to convince it to overturn the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision refusing to grant my client, Edward Sanderson, a new trial. In addition, I coached, counseled, and conferred with Gina about her case and the probability that Wade would settle and avoid trial. She also conducted two snooping sessions of his Church office turning up nothing but an extra friendly ‘Thank-You’ card from Stella Bridgestone, the Church’s music director. Gina didn’t read anything into Stella’s expressions saying that she was generally effusive and forward with all older men.
On Thursday afternoon, July 20th, I was in the conference room meeting with a new auto accident client when Tina stuck her head in and motioned for me to come out into the hall. When I did she, said that Detective Darden Clarke and Sheriff’s Deputy Clyde Vickers were in the waiting room with a warrant to search the office. Etowah County Detective Pete Morrow was also with them. I walked to the front and asked them what this was about and they showed me the warrant. It was signed by the newly appointed Circuit Court Judge Tyler Broadside. He had been appointed to fill the remaining term of soon-to-be-retiring Judge Allen Naylor who was forced to step down because of declining health. Republican Governor Shawn Applegate was from Gadsden and had received the unanimous support of the Flaming Five and their families.
Since John had disappeared in late April, I expected the issuance of search warrants and possibly even an arrest. As the days ticked by, I became more and more surprised with the absence of these almost certain events. Until, I heard through the lawyer rumor-mill that Judge Naylor, the Marshall County presiding judge, had refused to issue the warrants. He argued that just because I had been framed by the Flaming Five and their families over forty years ago was not probable cause that I had abducted John Ericson. To Naylor, that was too tenuous a connection.
This all changed upon the concurrence of two events. The appointment of sympathetic Judge Broadside, and the discovery of video footage from a flagpole on the west side of the First Baptist Church of Christ’s parking lot that pointed directly to the Family Life Center’s side door. It was closest to where John always parked his car in parking spot 275. My mistake. In all my reconnoitering, I had missed this camera. I had been careful to scour the Family Life Center building itself. I was certain there were none there. However, I failed to even consider a camera could be mounted inside the flagpole on the other side of the parking lot, right up against Gethsemane grove.
I wasn’t the only one who had missed it. The Boaz City Police and the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department deputies and detectives also missed it back in late April when they conducted their initial investigation after finding John’s car still parked by the Family Life Center. It was not until the security company that supplied the Church’s cameras and security system contacted the Church’s maintenance director that there was a problem with this camera did he realize John’s abduction could have been recorded.
This recording converted a once tenuous connection between me and John’s abduction into probable cause that I was involved with the crime. It was Judge Naylor’s missing link. Judge Broadside never hesitated. Once he was shown the video and briefed on my early, but highly controversial, relationship with John Ericson, among others, he issued the warrant to search my Boaz office. He also conferred with law enforcement and Judge Grant in Etowah County, who investigated and issued a warrant to search Hickory Hollow.
It was not like the video showed me lying in wait for John, nor of me using my taser when he reached his vehicle, and it didn’t show me forcing him into the back of his Chevrolet Traverse. However, it did show a man in black, including a black-faced toboggan–with my height and build doing all these things. Without more, something specific to me, this would not have been enough. The reasonable argument would say there are truckloads of other men who fit the height and build of the perpetrator. But, Judge Broadside was appointed by our Republican Governor who owed favors to the Flaming Five and their families.
It took a small army of deputies and police officers over three hours to search my office. At the same time, Hickory Hollow was under a similar siege. Law enforcement found nothing incriminating but they did seize my computer. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that I had come close to making my second mistake in the disappearance of John Ericson. I had disposed of my office computer only two weeks ago. If I had not, the District Attorney’s computer specialist would have found my ransom note and the letter to the Sand Mountain Reporter. That would have been the smoking gun that put a face on the man in black caught on the hidden flagpole camera.
While the office search was being conducted, Detective Darden Clarke asked if I would submit to a formal interview. I quickly agreed. We sat in the conference room while two deputies inspected shelves loaded with over a thousand case books. Darden asked most all the commonly used ‘setting the stage’ questions. After he failed to score any points with the actual abduction and disappearance of John, he asked me if I knew anyone who might want to hurt John and or his family. I told him I did not other than myself. He looked surprised and asked me to explain. I told him that finally it appeared that one of the ones who were directly responsible for the deaths of Wendi and Cindi Murray, and possibly their parents, had received a real dose of justice. He said, “so you yourself wanted to hurt John?” I responded that I did but that I could myself only do my damage with the law and that so far, all my efforts in that regard had failed.
The interview ended with me signing a statement of one sentence: “I did not kidnap John Ericson and I have no knowledge of who did or of his whereabouts.” After Detectives Darden and Morrow, and Deputy Sheriff Vickers, and their crew left, I drove home to reassure Karla and Kaden not to worry about what they had just experienced, that it was routine for law enforcement in such a high-profile case to investigate almost everyone who even knew the victim. I further assured them the searches found nothing because there was nothing harmful to find.
The Pencil-Driven Life 