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 65
The Monday after Zell and Ginger had given me the envelope to give to Professor Romanov, I had decided to call his attorney, Micaden Tanner. That afternoon I had met him at his office and told him, with the agreement our conversation would be kept confidential, about my relationship with the Constitution Foundation and their request for me to visit his client.
Micaden immediately opened the envelope after I told him about how Zell had instructed me on what to say to Romanov about his brother. The envelope contained gruesome pictures of a man held in chains in what looked like a dungeon. It was probably a basement somewhere. Micaden speculated the man was his client’s brother. After spending another hour or so at Micaden’s office I rode with him to the Marshall County Jail where we met with Romanov and discussed everything I knew about the Constitution Foundation. I later pondered whether I did the right thing, but it was all triggered by Regina’s deception about the photo and the false testimony by Rayansh Johar.
Romanov swore that he did not shoot Kip Brewer.
On the drive back to Micaden’s office, he had asked me how much I knew about Regina. I shared our story and realized that I really didn’t know a lot of what had happened in her life from 1972 until the later part of 2017, other than a few bits and pieces. When pressed by Micaden, all I could tell him was that after high school she spent nearly a year in some rehab in Kentucky, years later she had attended the University of Chicago earning a degree in Journalism, and then had gotten a job at the Chicago Tribune where she had worked until retirement in the Fall of 2017.
Micaden said that he was a big believer in private investigations and encouraged me to allow him to hire a company in Atlanta that he had used over the years. At the time I agreed to his request I didn’t realize what a major, life-changing decision I had made. That was three weeks ago.
Micaden had been introduced to Callahan & Associates of Atlanta in 1980, when he started his legal career at the firm of Downs, Gambol & Stevens. The third-generation private investigative firm assigned former FBI agent Bobby Sorrells to researching Regina Gillan. Yesterday, I had met Bobby and Micaden at his office. I don’t think fiction writer John Grisham could have imagined such a story.
I had forgotten that Regina was best friends in high School with Juanita Tillman, Wade Tillman’s sister, the First Baptist Church of Christ pastor who had recently been sent, along with Boaz mayor James Adams, to federal prison in Georgia. Juanita was Warren Tillman’s aunt. Wade and Juanita were classmates of Regina and me although Juanita was ten months younger than Wade. She should have been a year behind in school, but her parents wanted the siblings in the same grade. Juanita was extremely intelligent so holding her back for that reason wasn’t a concern.
After mine and Regina’s break-up and after we all had graduated, her and Juanita left town. Initially, Juanita had told her parents that her and Regina were going on an extended trip to celebrate such an important life milestone. Bobby shared how he had found Juanita living in Beattyville, Kentucky, a small, coal-mining town in Eastern Kentucky. According to several government reports, this town was one of the poorest places in the country.
Juanita told Bobby that her and Regina had wound up in Beattyville two weeks after leaving Boaz. Something about them wanting to experience poverty. She said it was Regina’s idea. She wanted her outer world to match how she felt inside. Juanita didn’t remember exactly how they had chosen this place over dozens of other similar towns throughout the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia.
The two girls rented a garage apartment that belonged to Mavis Colburn. Her son was Thaddeus Colburn, who was his mother’s pride and joy and the brightest student to ever graduate from Lee County High School. The three teenagers became fast friends and spent almost every waking hour together until Thaddeus moved to Chicago to attend the University of Chicago on a full academic scholarship. That Fall, Regina and Juanita were headed to visit Thaddeus and were both hurt when they were t-boned by a pickup truck outside Winchester, Kentucky.
Long story short. The girls eventually recovered but they got addicted to pain killers. Thaddeus felt responsible and, with the help of a friendly professor at the University, arranged treatment at a Rehab facility on the north side of Chicago. There, Juanita and Thaddeus fell in love. After another year, they moved into an apartment with Thaddeus, who by then, had made friends with a set of twin brothers from Dubois, Wyoming. Little did the two girls know that the three guys were on the fast track to becoming White Supremacists. The five spent most every Saturday afternoon at an old rock quarry in Lake Forest, a small community north of Chicago. This is where Regina became an expert marksman.
Juanita told Bobby that she and Thaddeus eventually broke up and she moved out. She hinted that it had something to do with Regina, maybe she had squirreled her way in between the two lovers. Juanita went her own way, enrolled at the University and earned a Master of Arts in Social Work. After graduating she took a job with the State of Kentucky and moved back to Beattyville where she worked to help alleviate drug addiction and poverty. She never married.
Thaddeus’s two friends moved out. Regina enrolled in the School of Journalism about the time Thaddeus graduated and entered graduate school at DePaul University School of Law. Juanita was unable to provide much information after she moved out but referred Bobby to Landon and Logan Miller, the twins who lived with Thaddeus. Bobby found them living back in their hometown of Dubois, Wyoming. Neither had married but were earning a living on the ranch their parents had left them. They shared how close they had become in college of ‘going off the deep end’ as they called it. They said Thaddeus, even at age 20, knew what he wanted. And, that was to return America to its roots. Logan shared how knowledgeable and well-read Thaddeus was on American history. Landon said that he and his brother moved out when Thaddeus started talking revolution and the need to spread the message that America was created by white males and unless the country returned to its roots, it would fail. Both Landon and Logan agreed Thaddeus wouldn’t hesitate to use violence. Logan added, “we spent too much time on the firing range not to know what was in Thaddeus’ heart. He wanted a Thomas Jefferson type in the White House. He would say, ‘Nixon, Ford, and Carter, together, were not as smart as Mr. Jefferson.’” Bobby’s investigation had gone cold after his conversation with Landon and Logan. He did learn that Regina had graduated in 1978 and had gone to work for the Chicago Tribune as a runner but had worked her way up the ladder until she became Editor in Chief in the late nineties. Bobby did not know what had happened to Regina’s and Thaddeus’ relationship. He had checked State Marriage Licenses and the two had never married in Illinois. He reported that Thaddeus had gone on to start a public interest law firm, and the Constitution Foundation. Bobby couldn’t, so far, find anything that would make him believe Thaddeus had acted out in any illegal way.
Bobby had promised to keep digging.
The Pencil-Driven Life 