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 13
Saturday morning, I was halfway through my walk to Oak Drive when my cell phone vibrated. I hated it when I couldn’t decide. Ever since Emily had moved in I had started back carrying my cell phone with me everywhere I went. Before we reconnected, I left it at home during my early morning walks. It was the best time of my day to, without the possibility of interruption, ponder, plan, and pretend I was happy and satisfied. Seeing Mark Hale’s name on my phone sent mixed signals. And, helped me decide to leave my cell at home, starting tomorrow. It was then I was reminded that I had forgotten to return Mark’s call from Thursday morning.
“Good morning Mark.”
“You back to ignoring me like you did when you became a fancy-pansy lawyer?” Mark had always thought I had gone to law school as a cope out, to avoid the dirt and grime of reality. What little did he know.
“Sorry, I honestly forgot. To save a little face here, I recall Blair saying that it wasn’t urgent.”
“It’s not to me. At all, but you might at least find it interesting.” Mark said. I couldn’t figure out the sound coming from his surroundings.
“What’s that noise?”
“A chainsaw. Two. Kristi’s been after me for over a year to get rid of this old Magnolia tree in our front yard. She hates a messy yard. No tree is messier than a Magnolia. Two of the deputies have started a little business on the side, trying to learn the art of tree surgery.”
“Walk away from them a little if you don’t mind. I can barely hear you. Now, tell me what I might find interesting.” I said as I kept walking.
“Lawton Hawks. Tony and I, you’ve not met him, he’s my new partner after old man Slaton retired, me and Tony searched Hawks’ house. You know, standard stuff with any murder, trying to find someone with a motive.” Mark said, about as disjointed as I could remember him.
“What’d you find?”
“Pullets, Rabies, and Pull Sheet, Triple Lee.” Mark apparently had walked back over closer to the screaming chainsaws. Surely, what I’d heard wasn’t what he had said.
“You’re going to have to go inside or something. I can’t understand you. I heard something about pullets having rabies. The rest made even less sense.
“No, dumbass. I said Bullets, Babies, and Bullshit.” Mark said. Now, I couldn’t hear anything in the background. He must have gone inside his house.
“Well, I’m hearing you clear now, but it still doesn’t make any sense.”
“Tony’s pretty good with a computer. It seems Mr. Hawks didn’t care much for your Adam Parker. Facebook clearly reflects their ongoing shout-fest, along with Jake Stone’s. But, things went even further. Hawks had acted like a hawk and went looking around. You get it? Hawks have eagle eyes.”
“I get it. You still haven’t explained what bullet baby bullshit is all about.” I said.
“Hold on Sherlock, I’m getting to that. Our man Hawks found out Parker had created a little stir up in Knoxville at UT. That stands for the University of Tennessee.” Mark liked being crystal clear.
“I know.”
“Hawks had several articles on his computer. He and Jake Stone, you know, he’s a police officer with Boaz?”
“I know.”
“They had a pretty healthy online relationship, always emailing each other. Hawks would give Stone a summary of an article. Seems like Adam Parker and UT were involved in some type lawsuit. I don’t remember if UT had sued Parker or someone had sued both Parker and UT. Anyway, the title of one of the articles was “Bullets, Babies, and Bullshit: Where’s the Biology?” Mark said.
“That’s certainly a lot of B’s.” Then, I remembered what Camilla had said, that the Mayor had told her that Mr. Hawks had three B’s burned into his back.
“Hawk’s told Stone in the email that a reporter with the Knoxville News Sentinel, that’s a newspaper, learned that Parker was pushing the envelope on Biology by arguing his research was indicating that environment was playing more of a role in producing mutations. That last part I’m reading from my black-book. It was all over my head, so I jotted down a few notes. Oh, here’s something else from that article. Parker was contrasting what was happening now, particularly in the South, with, let me get this right, the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 and the two warring factions of that time.” I could tell Mark was struggling to relay what he had learned.
“I recall something about that from law school. My trial practice professor used it extensively in teaching us how two craftsmen with different styles could argue clearly and forcefully. William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, a famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes, the defendant.” I said.
“Okay, I don’t need to know any of that. Here’s the thing. Hawks figured out that Parker was either fired or otherwise forced to leave UT. Whoever filed the lawsuit argued that a college level Biology class wasn’t the place to talk about guns, abortion, and the Bible.”
“Wow, wait a minute. You’ve gone off the rails. Explain what you just said.” I was having a hard time following the usually clear Mark Hale.
“Bullets are guns, relate to guns. Babies deal with abortion, and bullshit, according to Parker, was another word for Bible. Parker, at least according to the Sentinel reporter and Hawks, was a charlatan and therefore unfit to teach Biology. Hawks believed Parker was doing the same thing at Snead State and was polluting the young and pliable minds of his young students.”
“You haven’t said, but I think it’s pretty clear, that the three B’s carved or engraved on Hawk’s back refer to bullets, babies, and bullshit?” I asked.
“That’s mine and Tony’s conclusion. Hey, where did you hear about that?”
“Rumor mill. You know, word travels fast in a small town.” I said walking up the steps to my back porch.
“Sorry Connor, but I got to go. The guys are finishing up and will want some money. Talk later.”
I went inside, showered, dressed, and drove to the office. I was curious now and wanted to see if there was anything in the eight journals Marissa had brought to the office on her first visit that related at all to what Mark had told me.
After arriving, I made a pot of coffee and responded to an email from Dalton asking if I knew that Bobby was thinking about retiring after the Jackson County case. I simply responded with ‘no,’ and walked to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Just as I opened Adam’s journal from June through December 2014, my cell phone vibrated. It was Marissa.
“Hey Marissa. I was going to call you today, probably late afternoon.”
I could hear a radio playing in the background. “I started to call you last night. I have something I need to tell you. That’s why I’m headed your way. Will you have some time today or tomorrow to see me?” Marissa said.
“I would prefer today. Camilla is working and we’re going to church tomorrow and then on a picnic to DeSoto Falls, assuming the weather holds.”
“I’m about thirty minutes from Huntsville. I could be there in a couple of hours. Would, say, noon be okay?” Marissa asked.
“Just come to the office. I’m here about to look at some of Adam’s journals.”
“I’ll see you then.”
I spent the time scanning the eight journals in Adam’s briefcase. I focused mainly on the summaries and highlights he had written on the inside of the front cover of each journal. I learned that he left the University of Tennessee in May 2014, after nearly fourteen years there teaching Biology. His departure from Knoxville had devastated him. Although he didn’t write anything particularly about his research, he did say that it is not unheard of at all for scientists to be ridiculed when they offer a new hypothesis.
During July and August 2014, he wrote extensively about Galileo and the trouble he had gotten into in the early seventeenth century for proposing that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe as the Catholic Church believed. Because that’s what the Bible said. Galileo concluded that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice-versa. Heliocentrism, the theory that the Earth was a planet, which, along with all the others, revolved around the Sun, contradicted both geocentrism and prevailing theological beliefs. Finally, Parker, in relating to his own circumstances, stated his full commitment to be a modern-day Galileo, even if he met with full condemnation. What energized him, like Galileo, was that he had the truth on his side.
The Pencil-Driven Life 