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 27
Paige and Natalie had finally fallen asleep in a spare bedroom upstairs. The five of us had talked until nearly 1:30 a.m. about what was going on including the murder of Beanpole. Over no one’s opposition, I had decided that Natalie would remain at Hickory Hollow until this whole ordeal could be sorted out and it was safe for her to be in public.
Mark called a few minutes before 8:30 a.m. I was antsy, about to jump out of my skin, but I had a feeling he would call early. On a Monday, I never would have stayed at home this late. Terry Henry, aka Beanpole, was shot one time in the middle of his forehead with what Mark believed to be a nine-millimeter. I told him about meeting a black Tahoe on Signal Point Road as we had driven away from the Williams’ lake house, and that Natalie was certain it was Jake Stone’s vehicle, although she had not seen the driver.
Mark stated that Boaz City police all carry Glock nine-millimeter pistols, but he didn’t have enough evidence to arrest Jake. Mark assured me he would go question him and get an ‘eye-reading’ as he called it. “If he’s up to no good, he won’t admit it with his mouth, but the eyes are independent little creatures.”
Mark made me promise to bring Natalie in to see if she could identify the other man who had abducted her. Before hanging up Mark had said, “Tony has your iPad ready, so don’t forget it while you’re here.” I had almost forgotten that late last Friday afternoon I had driven to Guntersville to drop off Adam’s iPad with Tony.
Before leaving for the office I called Joe and arranged for him to come take the very pregnant Natalie to the Sheriff’s Department.
At 1:00 p.m., Joe dropped by the office and said, “Natalie’s back at Hickory Hollow safe and sound. I hope it was okay to drop by Burger King. The girl was starving. Here’s your iPad. Let me show you what Tony said.”
It only took Joe a handful of minutes to show me five times how to access an APP called ‘Travel & Talk.’ It was a program developed by Sherlock Technologies to receive, store, and manage the data broadcasted by its Open Curtain GPS/audio transmitting device. Adam was one to bury folders and files on his laptop. But he also did the same with his iPad. Tony had found it, the twenty-sixth APP in an icon folder on the third page of Adam’s iPad. The folder was called ‘Apple.’
After Joe left to serve a subpoena for Dalton in Glencoe, I broke one of my own rules and carried the iPad into the war room. I wanted perfect privacy, and this was my best option. I pressed the Travel & Talk icon and noticed a list of three choices. Apparently, the APP enabled its user to name each of the Open Curtain devices. Adam had simply named them: Roger, Robert, Russell, and Marissa. I thought it strange that the sweet and lovely Marissa was even electronically associated with three men I was growing to fully despise. I pressed the Roger file and another screen appeared. It offered two options: Travel and Talk. No doubt, the App gathered the whereabouts of Roger’s vehicle, the one Adam had attached the Open Curtains device, in the Travel file. I selected Talk. I wanted to see if this technology was as good as I had read about on Google.
The Talk file opened to a long list of dates, with the most recent date at the top. I selected yesterday’s date and again another listing appeared. This time, there were three items, all denoted with a time. I selected the third one, which was for 8:45 a.m., the earliest time of the three listed.
The first voice I assumed to be Roger. “We got eyes on the ground?”
The second voice: ‘Yep, plane landed two hours ago.”
Roger: “Keep me posted.”
That was it. I was amazed in two ways. The technology had not only picked up the voice that spoke out inside the car but had recorded the person speaking outside the vehicle. I could only conclude that Roger either had his cell phone on speaker or he was using the sophisticated hands-free Apple Carplay system built in to the dashboard of his Cadillac SRX’s dashboard.
I pressed ‘Back’ to return to the time listing. I selected 12:18 p.m. This was the second and middle choice. “Church is out. I’m heading home. You need anything?” Second voice (a woman speaking gruffly): “Cranberry juice and Hall’s cough-drops. This cold is killing me.” This must have been a conversation between Roger and his wife.
I returned to the time listing and selected 4:10 p.m. This first voice was not Roger, the one I assumed from the first two conversations. This was an incoming call. Caller: “Are we clear?” Roger: “Blue sky, no cloud in site.” Caller: “Not so here. Been a storm. Got one dead tree. We need to meet to discuss the damage.”
I looked again at the time for this call. It was about the time Natalie had seen the black Tahoe yesterday afternoon and identified it as Jake’s. Could this call have been made a few minutes later, after Jake arrived at the Williams’ lake house. After he found Beanpole and shot him?
I was getting way ahead of myself. I was allowing my inquisitive mind to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. First, I didn’t know for sure that it was Jake Stone in that black Tahoe. Also, I didn’t know it was Jake who had called Roger at 4:10 p.m. and who was recorded here in Adam’s Open Curtain system. One thing I believed I could be certain of. These two were slick. They had not said anything incriminating. As far as I knew there had been no bad weather yesterday. They had to be speaking in code.
Before I could back my way to the date screen for the ‘Talk’ portion of the APP, Blair knocked on my door. “Sorry, Connor, but Mark Hale is on the phone and he says its important. I hope it was okay for me to knock.”
I walked out of the war room and sat at my desk. I picked up the land line. “Mark’s on line two.” Blair said.
“Hey Mark.”
“I wanted to give you an update. I just returned from Boaz. Interesting trip. But first. After we talked this morning I returned to the lake house and met with the forensics team. Other than the one body and its aftermath, they found a bunch of fingerprints. I suspect they will all be from folks you would expect to be there routinely, the Williams’ that is.”
“Did you see Roger Williams when you came to Boaz?” I asked.
“I did. I first went to his house. Couldn’t get anybody to the door. Didn’t hear anything. I then drove to the RAND Corporation in the Industrial Park. It was good timing because he was just getting out of his truck.”
“He wasn’t driving his Cadillac?” I asked.
“No, I said his truck. Ford, F250. Listen up. I don’t have a ton of time.”
“Sorry for the interruption.” I said.
“Roger wouldn’t admit to anything. Claimed he had no idea his lake house was being occupied by anybody. He’s not a real good liar, at least in person. Either way, I don’t have enough to make him come in for formal questioning, much less for an arrest.”
“After leaving Roger I drove to Alex’s place. I drove up and walked to the front porch. I heard some yelling, so I didn’t knock. I couldn’t make out what was being said. Until, I cracked open the front door. It wasn’t locked. Then, I heard the woman. I later learned it was Alex’s wife. She said, ‘if you don’t take care of the little whore, I will.’ The next thing I heard was the back-door slam. For some reason I stayed put. A few seconds later, Alex drove off slinging gravels for a country mile.”
“Knowing how you think, you stayed and interviewed the lovely, quiet, and timid Erica. Right?” I asked.
“You’d have done the same. That’s the way we were trained. I pulled the front door shut and rang the doorbell. Erica opened it within a few seconds. Finally, she came out onto the front porch after I showed her my badge and told her we needed to talk. I was surprised she was in a talking mood.”
“She no doubt knows about Natalie and the pregnancy?”
“Right you are my man. She talked but didn’t incriminate Alex or anybody, except Natalie. It seems Erica believes her competition is determined to ruin her and her politically aspiring husband’s lives. She, Erica, threw out a bone I’ve got to pursue at some point. Erica said, ‘she’s a lying whore and a criminal, probably killed Lawton Hawks.’”
“What? I guess I can understand her saying most anything. The perfect life, or so it seems, of a religiously and politically connected couple, with a shit-load of family money backing them, hitting a major speed bump when Alex couldn’t keep his pants up. She is a scorned woman.” I said.
“You can do all your surmising on your own dime. One other thing she brushed against. After Erica virtually accused Natalie of killing Lawton, she said Natalie would do anything to keep guns out of schools. She, Erica, said that it was probably Natalie who shot and killed Beanpole. Get this, I hadn’t even mentioned the lake house or the murder. I guess news travels fast. As we ended our talk and as I was walking back to my car, she hollered at me and said, ‘Mark, follow the smoke to put Natalie behind bars so I can leave this shit-hole town.”
“Smoke. What did she mean by that?”
“All I could think of was guns. Guns smoke you know.” Mark said.
“One thing for sure you learned. Erica hates Natalie. Tonight, I’ll be having a deep discussion with the sweet and pregnant Natalie Goble.” I said.
“One final thing and I’ve got to go. Troy found out the address in Beanpole’s pocket was for an abortion clinic. A place called Choices: Memphis Center for Reproductive Health. The number was a cellular number for a Dr. Kerry Langston. He’s an abortion doctor.”
“It seems Beanpole’s masters had arranged or were arranging a little trip to Memphis.” I said.
“I would say so. To get rid of that little speed bump the sweet Erica mentioned.”
I couldn’t help but think of the pregnant Natalie carrying a twenty-three to twenty-four-week-old baby. It was no longer a fetus, a glob of cells. To me, after all my reading, it was now a human being, quite capable, especially with modern medicine, to sustain itself outside its mother’s womb. No doubt in my mind that Alex Williams was ready to kill, to rub out a life, all to further his, and Erica’s own aspirations. What a fucking hypocrite.
“Talk later.” Mark said ending our call.
After drinking half a Coke to settle my sick stomach, I called Garrett on his house phone. After my question, he made one call on his cellular and told me the location for Roger Williams’ horse farm. By dark I had driven to Meadowlark Farms. It was located on Lackey Gap Road, about a half mile before reaching Highway 179 and the beginning of Little Cove Road. I drove through an open gate several hundred yards to a giant horse barn. The man who was walking towards an old beat-up Chevrolet pickup said he and Beanpole had worked together nearly ten years, ever since Mr. Roger bought the place and built the barn. The man was Carlton Ennis. As I drove to Hickory Hollow, I wondered if Carlton was the one who had helped Beanpole abduct Natalie and carry her to the lake house at Signal Point Road.
The Pencil Driven Life 