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 Schoolteacher, written in 2018, is my fifth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
In the summer of 2017, Katie Sims and her daughter Cullie, moved from New York City to Katie’s hometown of Boaz, Alabama for her to teach English and for Cullie to attend Boaz High School . Fifteen years earlier, during the Christmas holidays, five men from prominent local families sexually assaulted Katie. Nine months later, Katie’s only daughter was born.
Almost from the beginning of the new school year, as Katie and fellow-teacher Cindy Barker shared English, Literature, and Creative Writing duties for more than 300 students, they became lifelong friends.
For weeks, Katie and Cindy endured the almost constant sexual harassment at the hands of the assistant principal. In mid-October, after Cindy suffered an attack similar to Katie’s from fifteen years earlier, the two teachers designed a unique method to teach the six predators a lesson they would never forget. Katie and Cindy dubbed their plan Six Red Apples.
Read this mystery-thriller to experience the dilemma the two teachers created for themselves, and to learn the true meaning of real justice. And, eternal friendship.
Chapter 55
I had never taken off from my teaching duties as much as I had during the last two weeks. It was now Wednesday, the 13th of December, and I had only worked four days. Worked, as in taught school at Boaz High. However, I had toiled diligently at developing what I had dubbed my ‘Friends Forever’ project. What had made this both difficult and easy was Cindy’s preliminary hearing set for this afternoon at 2:00 p.m. in Judge Tyler Broadside’s courtroom. Ever since sitting in McDonald’s parking lot, drinking coffee, and designing the outline of a strategy to help Cindy, I knew whatever I did, had to be completed before District Attorney Charles Abbott presented his case for probable cause that she had kidnapped Patrick Wilkins. I had always operated better with a deadline. I was glad the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure mandated such a hearing take place within twenty days of the arrest.
Three major tasks had been accomplished during the past two weeks. One of them was more closely related to mine and Cindy’s ‘Six Red Apples’ project, but it was now clear that was only a component of my ‘Friends Forever’ campaign. I cared more about securing my relationship with Cindy than I did in getting revenge on the Faking Five. This task, the less-related task, had been the most difficult. After a week of tailing Justin Adams, I had finally located Club Eden next to Aurora Lake. Once again, Tina, Matt Bearden’s assistant, had come to my rescue.
Matt’s partner, Micaden Tanner, had been the key to learning the Club’s location. It seemed his files, particularly one involving a civil lawsuit brought by the parents of Wendy and Cindy Murray, two girls who were abducted and murdered in 1972, contained enough notations for me to conclude that where I had followed Justin last Saturday was both the place the Faking Five were rumored to hang out and the place most likely they had taken me in 2002. After seeing Justin last Saturday open a locked gate two hundred yards beyond the Aurora gas and food market and drive a narrow dirt road towards a grove of trees, I had returned late Tuesday afternoon and hid the newly acquired Audio Bug Transmitter Spy Gadget inside an old cast-iron coffee pot above a fireplace in a log cabin nestled beside a small creek. So far, the bug has not activated.
The task that would either set Cindy free or enslave the both of us was my deal with Jed Cole. In a way, it was a simple agreement and didn’t take long hours of preparation on either his part or mine. All he had to do was testify he had shown the tan-colored van to Cindy and me on Saturday, September 30th, and we had taken it for a test-drive. I had called him late Sunday afternoon and met with him on Monday the fourth. Sunday, I had introduced myself and declared my need for an expert in used cars to testify in a civil case in Marshall County. I told him I would make it well worth his time and effort to come to Guntersville during the afternoon of December 13th. On Monday, I had carried him $10,000 in cash I had withdrawn from mine and Cindy’s Wells Fargo money; the withdrawal had been part of my overall scheme at the time of having a lot of cash available in the event Cindy, or Cindy and me, ever needed to make a sudden trip to Siberia.
Immediately after Jed and I sat down at our booth at Lanny’s Diner on Monday, I slid an envelope across the table. Before meeting him in Centre, I had stuffed it with over half of the cash I was carrying. The amount was irrelevant. I simply wanted to whet his appetite. Green happened to be his favorite color and over a slice of fresh and steaming apple pie and hot coffee he had warmed to my idea. What helped us both was his love for justice. I sensed he believed he had some sort of duty to protect the local community from folks like Jeff. Jed also was eager to correct Judge Cole’s divorce decree; nothing could be better for Jed than ridding his life of his ex-wife and her bastard son. I left Lanny’s with a verbal agreement that Jed Cole would cooperate with attorney Matt Bearden and testify before Judge Tyler Broadside on Wednesday afternoon, December the 13th. Jed left with less than $10,000 cash in an envelope, but with an additional $40,000 in a dark green pillowcase I had given him standing beside my car before we drove off in separate directions.
The third main task I had accomplished over the past two weeks was learning that Riley Radford was the one who had planted the bug in my school office. I had already figured it had to be someone at school, someone with easy access to my office. Cullie and I had pulled a sting of sorts. Last Friday morning upon arriving at school, I had returned the bug to the top shelf behind the picture frame. During lunch with Cullie in my little office, a rare treat by itself, we made the perfect presentation of our carefully rehearsed script. The thing that made it perfect was Cullie’s spontaneous statement before leaving for Algebra class. “Ryan called last night and said he was thinking about sending Riley to a private school next year. Oh, by the way, he’s taking me shopping tomorrow in Huntsville.” Riley had bought into our script. She had heard Cullie and me discuss a scheduled meeting after school with the counselor to pre-plan Cullie’s next year’s AP classes. We had made sure I would leave the door open for Cullie to return to my classroom after the meeting since I had to stay for a similar meeting with Alysa. My 2:45 p.m. iPhone photo of Riley standing in a chair holding the Spy Gadget she had removed from my top shelf, was a magical moment. At that point, I knew for sure why Real Justice was akin to real life.
At 1:30 p.m., I walked across the street from the Marshall County Jail and into the Courthouse. I had spent the last two hours with Cindy in Interrogation Room Four as Matt Bearden’s assistant (he had arranged this through the wonderful Sheriff Wayne Waldrup). Cindy and I had used nearly a full notepad scribbling notes back and forth. I wanted her completely prepared for what was about to happen. At first, she thought I was nuts. No doubt, she was correct. After a while, she was elated over my wonderful story idea, gaining hope she might soon be able to see and hold her three children. By the time I had fully explained what Matt should be able to accomplish (I was glad I had lied to him about mine and Cindy’s van-shopping trip and Mr. Cole’s fanciful and fictional story), it was showtime.
At 2:00 p.m., I was seated in the courtroom on a bench in the first row behind Matt and Cindy who were at one of the two counsel tables arranged in front of the old and wise-looking judge.
Judge Broadside: “Mr. Abbott, call your first witness.”
DA Abbott: “The State of Alabama calls Delton Rains.”
The hearing had begun.
In less than five minutes, Abbott directed Rains, the heavy-set man with the gentle smile I had met when first going to see Cindy after being arrested, to describe how he had taken the fingerprints of Cindy Barker at the Boaz City Jail on the morning of Friday, November 24th. His testimony seemed unnecessary, but I guess DA Abbott was not taking any chances because as far as Matt knew, his only evidence tying Cindy to Wilkins’ disappearance was the lone fingerprint in the back of the tan-colored van.
After Abbott directed Dekalb County Sheriff Jimmy Harris to describe the discovery of the tan-colored van just south of DeSoto Falls, he called Quinton Reed with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. He testified about the intricacies of the National Fingerprint Database and the “It’s a Match” software program Wayne and about a zillion other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies used.
Matt had declined to cross examine either of Abbott’s witnesses so far. No doubt, the seasoned criminal defense attorney had a strategy and it included a full admission that Cindy Barker had been in the van and would likely have left one or more fingerprints.
What had surprised Matt, and Cindy and me no doubt, was DA Abbott’s surprise witness. Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin testified that late yesterday afternoon the body of Patrick Wilkins had been found by a youth group from Salem Baptist Church. I could see the small white-clappered church sitting on my right about a hundred yards before turning left towards Wilkins’ final resting place. It seemed the group’s leader was the grandson of the owner of the land. The group had been on some strange search for bigfoot or some similar creature the group believed lived in the forest just northeast of the church. Entrekin testified he was aware of the Marshall County missing persons case and had been for weeks communicating with Sheriff Wayne Waldrup. Apparently, the efficient Wayne had thoroughly investigated Wilkins and learned he had a tattoo of a naked lady on the inside of his right thigh. So far, according to Entrekin, this identification and the fact the corpse was of virtually the same size as the late Wilkins left little doubt they had found the missing educator, although the Department of Forensic Sciences had not completed an autopsy.
DA Abbott completed his case presentation by calling me as a witness. Matt had told me to be prepared but it still came as a surprise. It was maybe the second or third worst time of my life. I had no choice but to give full details of what Cindy had told me about what Wilkins had done to her. By the end of my testimony, even a person of average intelligence would conclude Cindy had a vibrant motive to kill her rapist. I was relieved when Matt stood and started his cross-examination. Before he finished, Judge Broadside heard me testify I had no knowledge whatsoever of Cindy’s involvement with the kidnapping and murder of Patrick Wilkins. This was not the first moment I realized that desperate times call for desperate measures; the word, self-preservation, came to mind.
I was the final witness called by Mr. Abbott. Now, it was the defense’s turn. I assumed Matt felt stronger about it than I did. Even to a layman, Abbott’s case seemed weak. I’d always heard that motive alone was insufficient for a court to find probable cause. Of course, Abbott would say, “we also have opportunity and we have the killer’s fingerprints in the van where the victim’s dog-tag was found.” I guess the State’s case was stronger than I thought. I had forgotten that crime scene investigators had also found a slight trace of Wilkins’ blood in the back of the van. Reed had testified to this. I guess the tarp we used wasn’t as drain-proof as Cindy and I had believed.
Jed Cole was perfect. He was well worth the $250,000 expenditure. The $40,000-plus I had already paid him, and the $205,000 I had in the trunk of my car to give him this afternoon at 5:00 p.m. at the Lake Guntersville State Park Town Creek Fishing Center. I had given him the benefit of the doubt over how much money was stuffed in the envelope I had slid across the table to him at Lanny’s Cafe.
Jed’s testimony was anything but a memorized statement. He was downright believable as he spewed and spurred over whether it was a Friday or a Saturday late September afternoon that he was manning the car lot by himself with Jeff away in Atlanta on a car-buying trip. The thing that sold him as solidly credible could have also been damning if either Cindy or I had been questioned tightly about our schedule and activities that day. Jed said the main reason he remembered Cindy and me coming that day and test-driving the 2005 tan-colored Nissan van was that it was the day of the Cherokee County Public Library’s annual book sale. He said that Cindy had shown him a trunk full of books that she and I had just purchased. Jed then said, “the ladies wanted the van so they could buy more books, but I talked them out of buying this particular one. Jeff had just brought it in a few days earlier and I hadn’t had a chance to check it out.”
On cross-examination, DA Abbott wholly failed to crack Jed’s confidence. But, this was insufficient to stop my heart from racing and my face from sweating. Abbott was ready with a clearer than anticipated video of two shapely women in bold-colored pant-suits, one a curly-headed brunette, the other a pony-tailed blond. If it had not been for the distortions produced by the pair’s fake teeth, I thought Abbot would have noticed a striking similarity between the on-screen dolls, and Cindy and me. Before Judge Broadside ruled that “The DA has failed to show probable cause in the case of State of Alabama vs. Cindy Renee Barker,” he had said, with a smile on his face, “Mr. Abbott, don’t bring this case back before me until you’ve found these two gorgeous Sunday-School teachers with matching fingerprints.” I hope he will never know how accurate he was in labeling the killers as teachers.
The Judge’s ruling was exactly what Cindy and I were after. Along with the Judge’s order that Cindy be released. Of course, the DA could submit his case to a grand jury and it could issue an indictment but without more, Matt stated he believed this would be the end of Cindy’s legal problems. Oh, if Matt only knew.
After a five-minute meeting with Jed at Town Creek, I drove Cindy back to her sprawling ranch-style home in Smith Institute, where three children were eager to hug and hold the best mother in the world.
The Pencil Driven Life 