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 Stenographer, written in 2018, is my fourth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Walt Shepherd, a 35 year veteran of the White House’s stenographic team, is fired by President Andrew Kane for refusing to lie.
Walt returns to his hometown of Boaz, Alabama and renews his relationship with Regina Gillan, his high school sweetheart, who he had ditched right before graduation to marry the daughter of a prominent local businessman. Regina has recently moved back to Boaz after forty years in Chicago working at the Tribune. She is now editor of the Sand Mountain Reporter, a local newspaper.
Walt and Regina’s relationship transforms into a once in life love at the same time they are being immersed in a growing local and national divide between Democrats and traditional Republicans, and extremist Republicans (known as Kanites) who are becoming more dogmatic about the revolution that began during President Kanes campaign.
Walt accepts two part-time jobs. One as a stenography instructor at Snead State Community College in Boaz, and one as an itinerant stenographer with Rains & Associates out of Birmingham.
Walt later learns the owner of Rains & Associates is also one of five men who created the Constitution Foundation and is involved in a sinister plot to destroy President Kane, but is using an unorthodox method to achieve its objective. The Foundation is doing everything it can to prevent President Kane from being reelected in 2020, and is scheming to initiate a civil war that will hopefully restore allegiance to the U.S. Constitution.
While Walt is writing a book, The Coming Civil War, he is, unwittingly, gathering key information for the Constitution Foundation.
Will Walt discover a connection between the Foundation and the deaths of three U.S. Congressmen in time to save his relationship with Regina, prevent President Kane from being reelected as the defacto head of a Christian theocracy, and the eruption of a civil war that could destroy the Nation ?
Chapter 18
The FBI’s ballistic analysis and that of the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences concluded that the bullet that killed U.S.
Representative Kip Brewer was fired from a Springfield 30-06 rifle. The empty cartridge contained finger prints that matched those of Frankie Olinger.
On February 28th, a search warrant was signed by Judge Tyler
Broadside, Circuit Judge of Marshall County. The warrant was executed at 9:30 p.m. while Frankie, Belinda, and Regina were eating a late supper. A matching rifle, with a high-powered scope, was found in the gun case in the basement. A pair of muddy hunting boots were also photographed and removed from a closet beside the basement’s bathroom. Shortly before 10:45 p.m., Frankie was taken into custody and transported to the Marshall County Jail in Guntersville.
By 11:30, Detective Darden Clarke and FBI special agent Cory Stiller were sitting with Olinger in Interrogation Room Four.
Clarke: “Mr. Olinger, you have been arrested for the murder of U.S. Representative Kip Brewer. I need to go over your Constitutional rights.”
Frankie: “I know my rights. I’m ready to talk. I have nothing to hide.”
Cory: “Mr. Olinger, to protect all of us, you and us, we have to follow procedure.”
Clarke: “First, I’m going to read you your rights, then, I’ll ask you to read them, and see if you have any questions.”
Clarke motioned for Cory to read. When he was finished,
Frankie said, “hand it over here.” He glanced at the document, asked for a pen, signed his name, slide the single sheet back over to Clarke, and asked, “what do you want to know?”
“Where were you on the night of Thursday, February 1st, between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m.?”
“Home. In bed with my wife.” Frankie said sitting straight in his gray metal chair.
“Mr. Olinger, let’s not waste your time or ours. We have your fingerprints on a shell casing that was found at the edge of the woods where the Brewer’s killer fired a 30-06 Springfield rifle. We strongly suspect the 30-06 rifle we seized tonight from your house is going to match the bullet we recovered from the cedar siding on Brewer’s back porch.” Cory said, sitting on the edge of the table.
“I know it looks bad for me. I’m trying to figure out how I killed good Mr. Brewer. Unless I was a magic ghost or something similar, I couldn’t have done it. I was at home asleep. But, when I heard he had been shot, I knew you guys would come for me. Since I argued with him at the Bevill Center.”
“You didn’t like Mr. Brewer, did you Frankie?” Clarke said, sitting directly across from Olinger.
“No, I hated the man. He’s a turncoat, won’t support Kane, the best President we’ve had since Reagan, maybe better.”
“During the Town Hall meeting just a few hours before Brewer was killed, you declared him an enemy and promised he would be killed? Am I correct?” Cory said standing up and walking to the other side of the table to sit again crowding into Olinger’s space.
“Not sure I promised him anything. Did say in a war people get killed. Hate it for the man’s family but he should have done the right thing. Be a real Republican or get the hell out of the Party.” Frankie said attempting to stand but pushed back down by Cory.
“Mr. Olinger, let me ask you something. How could your fingerprints be on the empty cartridge we found at the murder scene?” Clarke asked.
“Not my problem. I didn’t have anything to do with his killing.”
“Seems to me it is your problem. You do realize you have been arrested for Mr. Brewer’s murder?” Cory asked.
“Could be somebody borrowed my gun. You ever think of that?” Olinger said sneering up at Agent Cory.
Clarke walked over to the intercom on the wall and asked the deputies to come carry Frankie to a cell.
The Pencil Driven Life 