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 40
Saturday morning was the perfect day to stay in bed. It was raining outside, pouring buckets. It was romantic inside. Regina had stayed over, and we had been awake since a little before three. The power had gone off, along with the steady hum of a floor fan that I had been addicted to since my college days. Like any heart-connected couple who was weeks into ‘going steady,’ we took advantage of the early hour by making love.
The power had come back on just as the post-play was running out of ideas. Instead of dozing back off, Regina got up, took a shower, and went downstairs. At 7:30, I attempted to join her but all I found was a note on the bar: “something came up at the Reporter. Will call later.
Read paper. Sorry I’ve kept mum.”
I hadn’t noticed that her note was laying on top of today’s Sand Mountain Reporter. Regina must have driven to town to buy a copy.
Mine, in the mailbox, wouldn’t arrive for another four or five hours.
I poured a cup of coffee and retired to my chair in the den. The subject article was easy to find. It was on the front page, above the fold. “Russian Suspect Kills Kip Brewer?” The title did its job, although the writer, Regina Gillan, was a draw. I had no choice but to dive in.
Just as I started to read, my phone vibrated on the end table beside my chair. It was Ginger.
“Good morning. I hope I’m not calling too early on a Saturday.” “Not at all.”
“I just wanted to confirm your trip to Tifton, Georgia for the Connor deposition.”
“I think you said it was on Monday, July 2nd. Right?” I said sipping my coffee.
“That’s correct. I’m about to email you the details. I figure you and Regina will drive down on Sunday. You spend Monday morning at work, and then you guys rest, relax, and kick around Tifton for a few days. At least until Thursday, Friday morning at the latest. By the way, I may have you a quick job for Friday afternoon, but it’s in Albertville, at 3:30, just a single, short deposition in a little fender-bender auto accident.
So, you gotta be back before then.”
“Ginger. Regina and I really do appreciate this, but I don’t think I deserve such an extra benefit no longer than I’ve been on board.”
“Ridiculous. It’s already a done deal. You have reservations beginning Sunday, July 1st, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Tifton. They are booked through Thursday.” Ginger said as I heard her typing on a keyboard.
“Regina is excited about getting away. It’s our first trip together. Actually, I think she’s more excited about some furniture shopping than anything.”
“Is she looking for anything in particular?”
“Possibly a bedroom suite. For me.”
“Tell her there are several great antique furniture stores right off the square. I’ve walked through most of them, even bought a little curio cabinet in the one on the corner of Main and something, I can’t remember. Listen, I must run. If you have any questions after reading my email, just give me a buzz. Thanks Walt.”
“You’re welcome. Have a nice day.”
“You too.”
After we hung up I wondered why Ginger had been in Tifton but realized she hadn’t said when she was there. It might have been twenty or thirty years ago.”
I took another sip of coffee and returned my gaze to the Sand Mountain Reporter. Regina started off stating that there appears to be an explanation why Frankie Olinger’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon, the Springfield 30-06. He, along with Warren Tillman, Justin Adams, Ryan Radford, Fulton Billingsley, Danny Ericson, and an unidentified Russian, had met at Club Eden on Aurora Lake two weeks before Kip Brewer was murdered. Frankie had brought the 30-06 to participate in target shooting, and had left the gun there, inside the cabin. He was unclear as how the rifle had made its way back to the gun case in his house. Regina also said that she had learned, from an anonymous source, that the FBI’s crime lab had discovered a second set of fingerprints on the rifle but had been unable to connect them with a suspect.
The heart of the article was, of course, the Russian mystery man.
Regina had included a grainy photograph of a man caught on camera. She described him as around six feet tall and weighing around 175 pounds. Regina confessed the photo was from a service station and convenience store security camera in Snead, Alabama. She didn’t say how she had discovered the photo. A closer inspection of the photo appeared to show the man had a long scar across his right cheek, stretching from the corner of his mouth up towards his right ear. But, the more I looked, the more I thought it might be an illusion since the quality of the photo was rather poor.
Regina bolstered her case when she disclosed information she had obtained from Frankie Olinger. He stated that the unidentified man at Club Eden two weeks before the murder appeared to be the same man in the photo. Frankie had stated that he didn’t talk to the man but had watched him shoot across the lake. Apparently, the only place to practice long shots at Club Eden is to set up a target on the dam, a foot or so below the top, to have a backstop for the bullets. Frankie said the seven men had each taken turns laying on the ground on the east end of the lake and shooting west to the dam over a half-mile away. ‘Dead-aim, never missed his target’ as Frankie recalled how Justin Adams described him. In fact, every shot, no matter which gun he was using, centered the target and layered bullet after bullet on top of the previous one. Frankie stated that ‘Dead-aim’ had shot his 30-06 several times and had described it as, “bloody reliable.”
Regina ended her article with a short paragraph about Kip Brewer and a meeting he had had just a few days before he and his wife Darla had gone on their two-week Town Hall journey right before he was shot. Another anonymous source had told Regina that Kip had his own unnamed source. This genderless person worked at the White House but was no friend of the President. It seems X (how Regina identified this person) had described to Kip that there are rumblings around the White House that Kane is looking for a diversionary opportunity, something to distract Americans from all the bad publicity he is experiencing. X indicated that a confrontation with North Korea or a series of terrorist attacks on American soil are the two things being considered. Finally, X shared that it appeared likely that someone from the White House staff had met with Russian operatives, Putin’s men, during the recent G-7 Summit in Italy. Regina ended, stating that Kip Brewer had met with the Senate Judiciary Committee before leaving town in early February.
Some readers might conclude Regina’s article was simply a show of support for her brother-in-law Frankie Olinger. I read it differently. After two detailed readings, I, at first, was a little angry at Regina for not confiding in me about what she was working on. My second cup of coffee helped. I pondered that she may have thought I might have said something, even something innocuous to say, that might have discouraged her from taking her information public.
By now Sandi kept nudging my left arm wanting me to take her out for a walk. Before we were both off the porch, a perplexing thought raced into my mind. How on earth had Regina discovered all this? This article was the type that almost always originates in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Before we reached the end of the pier I had my answer. Regina was just as much a big-league reporter as anyone working for a national paper. Duh, she had spent almost forty years with the Chicago Tribune.
I was proud of Regina and couldn’t wait to see her and her expression as I bragged on the quality of “Russian Suspect Kills Kip Brewer?”
The Pencil Driven Life 