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.
I left him there and went for my four-wheeler. I had brought it on a small trailer behind my truck. Fred was a little smaller than John but still a big challenge to get him stood up, leaned over, and strapped to the four-wheeler. I had bolted a half-sheet of thick plywood crosswise and installed six hooks to use bungee cords to keep Fred in place. I also cuffed Fred’s hands. I grabbed my duffel bag out of the cab of my truck and set off toward Aurora Lake. I drove past the cabin glancing to my left to see the fire pit and tent still in tack. I wondered whether the sons of the Flaming Five had stepped into the shoes of their Fathers spending their weekends here with chosen females, those from in and out of town. I crossed the little creek that was fed by the runoff from the dam and headed northwesterly up our hiking trail. I had to stop three times to remove dead or dying trees from my narrow path. During the last 150 yards or so a streak of fear raced through my mind. I was now knee deep in the most dangerous of all my Flaming Five missions. It was daylight. In effect, I was cornered. My truck and Fred’s Camaro were setting by the cabin for anyone to see if they drove through the unlocked gate and down Club Eden’s driveway. I was in possession of a semi-unconscious body strapped down with cuffed hands. Someone could be out on the lake or hiking around it. I concluded that I was taking too great a risk for any possible benefit that might someday arise from disposing of Fred here at Club Eden. Within fifteen minutes from the time I had tasered Fred, we were at the southwestern shore of Aurora Lake, about 100 yards from the dam and forty feet or so from my aluminum boat.
I walked to it and pulled back all the limbs and brush I had piled on it. I then slid it over to the shore’s edge. I returned to Fred and started to get him up but decided to leave him lying there on his back. He was beginning to moan just a little. I took two small fold-out chairs and my duffel bag I had strapped to the front of the four-wheeler and set the chairs about five feet from Fred. I sat down in one and unzipped the duffel bag and started laying out the contents on the other. I had brought a high-quality tape recorder and camera. I had also brought my depth finder for my boat and a small notebook that contained a list of questions I had for Fred. I now waited for him to return to planet Earth.
It was almost 4:30 p.m. when Fred turned his head toward me and said, “where’s Wade?” For a first statement from one in physical custody, lying flat on one’s back, I thought Fred would have said something like, “what the hell are you doing?” or maybe “Tanner, you have lost your mind, let me loose.” I told Fred that Wade was not coming and that he was headed to the bottom of the lake unless he complied with my requests. I watched his eyes look around and lock onto the boat that was barely visible from the angle he lay.
I stood up and walked over to him and told him that I would let him sit up in a chair if he would behave. He nodded his head. I removed the bungee cords and helped him up and off the plywood deck. I sat him down in the chair I had been sitting in and pulled a lightweight set of chains and shackles from my duffel bag. I alternated putting them on and removing the handcuffs. I looped an extra chain around a six-inch diameter pine tree that was directly behind where Fred was sitting and used a small pad lock to secure it to the chain between his two shackled hands.
“Why are you doing this Tanner?”
“Are you going to play that lame card? You know exactly why. But, I’ll play along for a bit.” I flipped on the tape recorder and told Fred he had to answer me out loud when I asked him a question. “Do you remember our High School graduation party we had here at Club Eden?”
“Yes.”
“What crimes did you and the other members of the Flaming Five commit that night and early Saturday morning?”
“I had nothing to do with any of that. You know me and Wade stayed with you at the fire pit while James, Randall, and John took the girls and left.”
“Fred, playtime is over. Here is how this is going to work. I ask questions and you tell the truth, the full truth, unshaded in any way. If you lie to me, and I certainly will know when you are lying, I will smack you across the face with this shovel.” I pulled out an Army surplus shovel with a two-foot foldout handle. I mimicked how I would strike him.
“I am as guilty as anyone for what happened that night. After we all took turns raping Wendi and Cindi we realized we had to have a plan and the plan gave no option for them to survive. Please know we had not planned on raping them. In our arrogance, we believed they would willingly consent to having sex with us. We were wrong.”
“So, do you admit raping and murdering Wendi and Cindi Murray the night of May 25, 1972?”
“Yes, but I didn’t actually kill them.” Fred said.
“And, who killed their parents, Bill and Nellie Murray?”
“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know anything about that.”
I used about a quarter of my strength and swung the shovel I was still holding. It struck the right side of Fred’s face and his chair tipped over while his body leaned against the edge of the plywood. I set him back up and noticed a rather shallow cut running from his right eye down to his chin. It was bleeding, but not badly.
“Okay, enough of the shovel. We all met two weeks or so before the beginning of your trial and created a plan. One part of the plan was to offer a million dollars to settle. You well know that offer was rejected. The other part of the plan was to get rid of the Murrays. John and Randall came up with the idea. David and Walter carried it out.”
For the next thirty minutes Fred gave me details on how the Murray’s were killed, how David and Walter broke into their house Friday night while they were at the prayer meeting. How David and Walter had waited on them, how they surprised them, tied them up, injected them with the cyanide, and placed them in their bed.
Fred also told me about how Club Eden had carried out three other murders, all by ancestors of the Flaming Five. He told me the stories of murders taking place in 1901, 1926, 1946, and 1973. All men who were threatening the status quo that had to be maintained at all costs. In 1901, it was Leroy Jones and his son Toby, the son and grandson of an ex-slave. Leroy and family had moved to Boaz from Gadsden. In 1926, it was David Howsley and Baynard Reed, a homosexual couple who had moved from San Francisco to Boaz to operate a flower shop David had inherited. In 1946, Fred shared the story of Vincent Prader, the decorated war hero that Harold Maples had told me about. The man who threatened to build a Volkswagen automobile dealership. The final murder Fred confessed to was Shawn Taylor and his father. Shawn was probably the only reason I was not convicted back in 1973. This young boy had been brave enough to tell my jury that he had seen James, John, and Randall with Wendi and Cindi at the Dairy Queen, and drive off in their little blue Plymouth. Fred told of how David Adams and Raymond Radford had compromised the brakes on Shawn’s father’s car. This led to their crash and the death of this father and son, which, in effect, wrecked the prosecutors murder case against the Flaming Five.
Fred also admitted, after I showed him copies of several bank account statements, the Club’s illegal business activities including payoffs to several local businessmen. After another shovel blast to his head, Fred told me in detail how the Club, with help from four select Boaz Police officers, were seizing and selling pretty Hispanic girls to the Russian mob. I suppose it was the threat of the shovel laying across my lap that made Fred volunteer some things I hadn’t even asked about. He told me how the Flaming Five and their fathers had rigged Deacon elections at First Baptist Church of Christ and City Councilmen elections for the past fifty years or so.
At 5:45 p.m., I gave Fred a drink of water from my canteen. I let him stand while I took about thirty or forty pictures from several angles and multiple distances. I then repacked the duffel bag and secured it, along with the two chairs, back to the front of the four-wheeler. I placed the shovel into the boat. I then unlocked the extra chain and removed it from behind the tree. I ordered Fred into the boat after I had pulled it into the lake. At first, he refused, but then I reached for the shovel and he stepped over into the boat. I had Fred sit at the back of the boat while I pushed it out into the lake climbing in as the water deepened.
After rowing a few hundred yards, I found my spot. I had strapped the depth finder to my waist as I had secured the duffel bag. Two weeks ago, when I had delivered the boat I had found a spot about 150 feet from the dam. The water was 80 feet deep. When I stopped rowing, I asked Fred if he wanted a quick death or one more like what Wendi and Cindi suffered from the force of a shovel. By this time Fred was resigned to his death. He knew there was no need in begging me. While rowing to this spot I had told him about how John and Randall had died. I even described in some detail how John looked after my fifth and final shovel blow. “Shoot me, make it quick.”
I did. With my 45 and my silencer that I also had removed from the duffel bag. It seemed there was always something I hadn’t planned for. I had brought six cement blocks with me when I delivered the boat. Securing them to Fred’s body wasn’t difficult at all. But, getting him out of the boat into the lake while not tipping over was a challenge. I finally figured it out. After I crammed his body into a body bag I had purchased online, I attached three life jackets to his wrapped body and, with considerable strain, pushed him into the lake. I then could secure the six cement blocks with chains to his body. Finally, I cut away the life jacket straps and his body immediately sank.
I rowed the boat across the lake to Jeff Marks’ property, got out and pulled it onto the shore. I then hiked back down to the dam and across to where I had left my four-wheeler at the edge of the lake. I loaded everything and headed back down the trail to the cabin at Club Eden. By 6:30 p.m., I had the four-wheeler loaded on the trailer behind my truck. I backed into the turning around spot and felt the second wave of terror stream through my body. I had failed to removed Fred’s car keys before I dumped his body. My once dangerous mission had now transformed into extremely dangerous territory. I put on gloves and searched Fred’s Camaro. No extra set of keys. But, there was a cell phone on his console. I activated it and noticed he didn’t have it secure. No password required. There were three missed calls. All from his wife Phyllis. I was glad there were no calls from Wade or James.
I thought about keeping his phone but realized what a mistake that would be. Phones were now highly traceable. I returned it to the car’s console. I had no choice but to leave Fred’s red-hot Camaro setting right where it was. No doubt it would be discovered in, at best, a few days. Hopefully, police and investigators would not look for Fred’s body at Aurora Lake. Idiot me, who was I kidding? There would be an extensive search of this area and no doubt someone would discover many clues, such as the trees that had been thrown back from the hiking trail. The indentations in the grass where Fred and I sat in folded chairs having our little conversation. Blood droplets would no doubt be on the ground right behind where the four-wheeler was parked. I was confident that divers would be brought in and the lake would be searched. It would be just a matter of time until Fred’s body was found.
I left in a hurry and raced to Oak Hollow, dropped off the four-wheeler and trailer and connected to the boat trailer. I drove back to Jeff Marks, loaded the boat, and returned to Oak Hollow to drop it off. It was almost 8:00 p.m. when I returned to the office, changed clothes, and drove toward Hickory Hollow. Then, a daring idea sprouted in my head. I knew what I had to do.
I drove on past the turnoff to Hickory Hollow and on to Dogwood Trail and turned right. I opened the gate at Oak Hollow and drove to the barn and backed up to the sixteen-foot flatbed trailer that was under the shed on the left side of the barn. I connected the trailer to my truck bumper and grabbed two come-a-longs and a thirty-foot chain hanging on the wall in the center of the barn. My actions this day were now approaching the stupid zone.
I drove back to the cabin at Club Eden. The gate on Shady Grove Road was still open. When I was rounding the final curve, my headlights caught the front of the cabin and the door stood wide open. For a few seconds, I thought my heart would stop. But then, I recalled that Fred had been on the front porch when I arrived at 3:30. My headlights then caught the red Camaro. It was still here and for now at least, it looked as though it had not been discovered. I turned into the driveway and backed up towards the rear of the Camaro. It took me nearly thirty minutes to connect the chain around the Camaro’s axle and winch it up onto the trailer. It took longer because I was unable, without a key, to put the vehicle into neutral. I secured the car to the trailer using both come-a-longs. I slipped on a pair of gloves and removed Fred’s cell phone from the Camaro’s console. I then walked to the cabin and, using my flashlight, took a good look inside to make sure Fred had not left anything, even though I didn’t believe he had come inside. I walked back on the porch, locked and closed the door, and drove off.
My sudden idea had not matured into a plan containing a destination for Fred’s Camaro. Now, driving down the long Club Eden driveway, I had to think fast. I pulled onto Shady Grove Road and stopped, went back and locked the gate, and raced back to my truck. It was already headed south so I drove in that direction. I drove until intersecting with Highway 179. I turned north and drove until I reached Fairview Cove Road on my left. Turning westward, I drove several miles and turned right on Bud Umphrey Road and continued north until intersecting with Little Cove Road. I turned left and within a minute or so reached the same little road that Randall, James, and John had used. It was a hundred yards off Little Cove Road where they had first come to dispose of Wendi and Cindi and their blue Plymouth. I tried to find the exact spot where I recalled my Wendi and her sweet sister had met a cruel and violent death. I spotted it up ahead and then remembered I was headed in the wrong direction. I couldn’t unload the Camaro behind me and be able to get my truck and trailer out of this narrow and overgrown lane. I wasn’t very good at backing a trailer but finally was able to. This took me precious time that I didn’t believe I had. Finally, I was back onto Little Cove Road pulling up and backing down the lane. I had to be extremely careful not to angle the rear of the trailer down into the ravine on the west side of the lane. I also started worrying about scratching Fred’s Camaro thinking that might give investigators a lead towards concluding that the vehicle had been transported here. After another twenty minutes, I was backed up nearly as far as I could to be able to have a big enough spot for the Camaro to rest. I was fortunate to have a tree close enough behind the trailer to tie to, and pull the vehicle off the trailer. I couldn’t help but think that there is no way for a criminal to properly plan a crime. There are simply too many variables to contend with. No wonder most crimes are solved. At least those that don’t involve the five prominent, well-connected families from Boaz. After disconnecting the chain and the come-a-long I returned to the cab of my truck, put on another set of gloves, and removed Fred’s cell phone, and returning it to the Camaro’s console. While driving here from Club Eden, I had thought about taking his phone to another location but decided if a jury ever had the opportunity to review this case they would more easily believe that Fred had been here with his Camaro if his phone was found right here too.
I raised both trailer ramps, secured them, and drove to Oak Hollow. Approaching the gate, I noted another mistake I had made. I left the chain gate down, unlocked. I drove slowly to the barn and even more slowly backed the trailer under the shed. I drove back to the law office, showered and changed into a clean set of clothes, and finally, this time, drove all the way home.
The Pencil Driven Life 