Novel Excerpts—The Case of the Perfectionist Professor, Chapter 11

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 Case of the Perfectionist Professor, written in 2018, is my sixth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.

Book Blurb

Late on New Year’s Eve in the small town of Boaz, Alabama, Snead State Community College teacher Adam Parker was found dead slumped over in his car. A preliminary investigation indicated the fifty-year-old biology professor died of a heart attack.  Marissa Booth, Adam’s daughter and Vanderbilt School of Divinity professor, didn’t agree.

Four days later, Marissa hired the local private detective firm of Connor Ford to investigate her father’s death.  She declared local police officer Jake Stone had likely murdered her father.  She pointed Ford to a multi-month Facebook feud between Adam and several local people, including Stone and Boaz City Councilman Lawton Hawks.  The controversy allegedly related to Adam’s research that contended that, in layman’s terms, long-term indoctrination caused actual genetic mutations that directly affected future generation’s ability to reason.

Over the next year, Connor Ford discovered multiple and independent sources of motivation to quiet and possibly murder the controversial professor.  Ford learned that a civil lawsuit and widespread public outcry had effectively run Adam out of Knoxville, where he was a biology professor for over thirteen years.  Ford also learned that Adam had become the number one enemy of Roger Williams, a self-made local businessman, and his son Alex, who is a Republican candidate for governor of Alabama.  Adam had discovered Alex and Glock, Inc., the Austrian-based gun manufacturer, was exploring not only the possibility of setting up a large facility in Boaz but also supplying pistols for Alex’s highly touted and controversial ‘arm the teachers’ proposal.

Connor Ford has his hands full enough with these suspects.  Add in his need to determine whether Lawton Hawks and Jake Stone are friends or foes of Roger and Alex, which accentuate the pressure no normal small-town private detective can handle.  

Will Connor’s discovery there is a link between Dayton, Tennessee, and the 1929 Scopes Monkey trial and a rogue group of CIA operatives bend Connor and his two associates to the breaking point?

Read this mystery/thriller to find out if Adam Parker was murdered and how, and what role the long-standing controversy between science and religion had in destroying the life of a single perfectionist professor.

Chapter 11

It was Thursday before I returned to my normal early morning routine: my two-mile walk to Oak Drive and breakfast at Pirates Cove with Garrett.  Emily’s presence in my house had disrupted my life, in more ways than I wanted to admit.  They were not all bad.  The past three days the two of us had, over bowls of oatmeal, shared thoughts on the future, including our hopes and dreams.  These talks had given me hope that Emily was either experiencing a supernatural enlightening if that type thing exists, or she was finally realizing that drinking, partying, and revolving-door boyfriends wasn’t the pathway to peace and happiness.  It seems her one-year marriage to Tyler Tyson in 2013 couldn’t corral the wild stallion.  Driving to Pirates Cove this morning I had my own realization.  My world and Emily’s may never so align again to allow for these father-daughter talks, especially now that today is her first day of work at Gadsden Regional Medical Center.

Garrett, as usual, arrived before me and had already ordered.  Just as I sat down, I gave a thumb’s up to Gloria who was looking at me.  When she was waitressing at breakfast my simple hand gesture was all it took for her to know I wanted my standard breakfast: coffee, two eggs over easy, two slices of buttered toast, one slice of crispy bacon, one sausage patty, and two packets of strawberry jam.

“Good morning Sherlock.”  This was Garrett’s tell, at least one of them.  Whenever he was feeling especially combative, he’d always call me Sherlock.  I wondered which obstacle course he had planned for us today.

“And, good day to you Watson.”  Two could play this game.

“Observation.  You ready?”  Garrett said pouring more maple syrup on his one pancake.  This is one thing I liked about him, he got right to the point.  He was, like me, not much of a chit-chatter.

“Just a second.  I need to turn on my bullshit detector.”  I said, feeling almost like a chit-chatter.

“There must be some form of universal law.  When a new detective, or private investigator as you prefer calling yourself, moves into a small town, the crime rate goes up.”  Garrett said.

“I’m waiting.  I know you have an explanation for this universal principal.”  I said, pouring cream into my coffee.

“You’ve been here now, you and your detecting business, for what, three years?”  Garrett’s questions were often cumbersome.

“Right at it.”

“Now, there’s been a suspicious death and a murder in the past two weeks.  See, the universal principal clearly at work.”

I thought I would lull him by agreeing.  “You’re right, and your evidence doesn’t even include the suspicious drownings at Aurora Lake during the summer of 2016.” 

“That doesn’t count.  Their deaths were ruled accidental.”

“I thought they both had gunshot wounds in their heads.”

“That was just a rumor.”  I raised my eyebrows, leaned my head to the right, and held up both hands like I was surrendering.  If anyone would know the truth it would be Garrett.  “Good work Watson.”   I said.  “Seriously, you said there had been a suspicious death in the last two weeks.  Are you referring to Adam Parker?”

“Definitely.”

“So, what makes you think that?  What have you heard?”  I asked.

“You need to be more observant, maybe spend some time on Facebook, maybe start back to church.  You’d be surprised what you would learn.”  Garrett and I had talked quite a bit lately about me and Camilla spending Sunday mornings at a church of our choice.  Until mine and Amy’s troubles, I had always been a regular church-goer.  I had grown up at Second Baptist Church here in Boaz until the beginning of the eleventh grade.  Then, I had moved my membership to First Baptist Church of Christ, probably because most of the in-crowd were there, including Amy and all the other pretty girls from high school.  Garrett also knew I both hated and loved Facebook.  I utilized it only when needed, when it was relevant to an investigation.  Otherwise, it was a time waster and the perfect place to boost my blood-pressure since most postings were by rednecks and retards who were wholly deficient in reasoning skills.

“I’m still seriously thinking about church.  No way to Facebook.   I’ve got you for all the bullshit I need.  Now, tell me why you think Adam Parker’s death was suspicious.”  I said.

“Most everyone in town hated him.  He had views, including views on abortion, that were foreign to Boaz, in other words, they didn’t align with Southern Baptist Republican Fundamentalism.”

“That may have been the first time I’ve heard that phrase.  I suspect it’s true.  It sure seems that, around here at least, Baptists are bent towards both the Republican Party and hard-core Bible beliefs.”  I said.  “What else, anything more specific?”

“You can’t get more specific than Lawton Hawks.  Well, not unless you’re Jake Stone.  Those two were Parker’s two main adversaries.  To be clearer, those two were Parker’s two main Facebook adversaries.  Again, if you’d spend some quality time on social media you’d know these things.”  Watson was a virtual fountain head of information.

“In my line of work, it takes a lot more than that to generate real suspicion.”  I said.

“Well, what about this.  Something, as far as I know, that never hit Facebook.  A few weeks ago, I was at Waffle House, you know, across from MacDonald’s.  I sometime go there in the middle of the night for a cup of coffee, mainly, something to do when I get bored at home and can’t sleep.  I had seen Adam there several times but this time he got into a shouting match when he was leaving.  He had paid his tab right in front of me and walked outside to the parking.  Before I went outside I made a pit stop in the bathroom.  By the time I walked outside I could hear a heated argument.  It was Adam and a man I didn’t know at the time.  Now, from yesterday’s Sand Mountain Reporter, I know it was Lawton Hawks.”

“What were they saying?”  I asked.

“The only thing I heard before the police arrived, probably they just happened to pull into the parking lot, was ‘You’ll do what I say or wish you had.’” 

“Who said that?” 

“Lawton Hawks.”  Garrett said motioning for Gloria to refill his coffee cup.

“You’re positive it was Lawton Hawks?  I asked.

“No doubt, again, based on the Reporter’s photograph.  I’ve often wondered what would have happened if the police hadn’t driven through the parking lot.”

“So, they didn’t park and get out?  They didn’t approach Parker and Hawks?”  I wanted to know what had kept the heated discussion from accelerating.  Many times, these situations continue to escalate.

“No, I’m not sure they even noticed the two men.  They were across the parking lot standing between two cars.”

“So, they saw you and settled down?”  I asked.

“Actually no.  When I exited the building and heard the shouting, I eased over behind one of those god-awful jacked-up trucks that was parked nearly at the front door.  I almost felt sorry for the two girls who got out of their car just right up from where the argument was taking place.”  Garrett said placing a five-dollar bill and three ones on the table to pay for his meal, including tip.

“Can you describe the two girls?”

“Young.  And bold, I have to say.”

“Why do you say that?”  I said, looking at my iPhone for the time.

“One of the girls, might have been Snead State students, since their car had a blue and gold tag on its front bumper, said, ‘leave him alone or you’ll wish that you had.’

“Again, you’re sure that’s what you heard, what the girl said.”  I asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Observation.”  I liked when Garrett did that, so I tried it.  “The girls were sitting there during the entire argument.  The girl who spoke borrowed words from Mr. Hawk?”  I asked. 

“They may have been there all along.  Come to think of it, I didn’t see them drive up, nor had I seen them inside the Waffle House.  Now, that I’m thinking about it, why would they have backed their car into their parking spot?”  Garrett asked.

“They did?”

“Sherlock, you’re not listening or drawing on your prior knowledge.  I said I saw their blue and gold tag on their car’s front bumper.  They were parked across the parking lot from the restaurant’s front door.  You know the layout of that facility.  They had to be backed in for me to see that tag.”  Garrett certainly was reminding me that my mind was not yet hitting on eight cylinders, although I had already had two cups of coffee.

“One final question and I’ve got to go.  It’s nearly eight o’clock.  Do you recognize either of these girls?”  I pulled out a photocopy of Natalie Goble and Paige Todd.  Yesterday, on a whim, what I called a Mark Hale generated whim, I had driven to Snead State’s library and made a copy of both girls from the school’s most recent annual.  I had then copied my copies to put them side by side on one sheet of paper.

Garrett took the paper and pondered them for several seconds.  “This one.”  He was pointing to Paige Todd.  “She’s definitely the one who promised Lawton a future wish come true if he didn’t obey.  This girl.”  Garrett now was pointing to Natalie Goble.  “She might have been the other girl.  I’m not sure.  No, that’s her.  These two girls in your photo are the two I saw who confronted Lawton Hawks.”

“Thanks Watson, actually, thanks Sherlock.”  See you tomorrow.” I said standing and placing my eight dollars on top of Garrett’s.