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 41
I was getting too old to function with only seven hours of sleep in two days. After leaving Meadowlark on Saturday morning I had called Mark Hale. It had taken him until late Sunday afternoon to secure a search warrant for Roger’s horse farm. If it hadn’t been for Mark and Tony’s persistence and their willingness to sit along Lackey Gap Road outside Roger’s gate, significant evidence would have been lost. At midnight Saturday night, Jake Stone and Carlton Ennis had showed up in a rollback, along with two of Ennis’ buddies in his old beat-up Chevrolet. Mark and Tony’s presence and Jake’s awareness of at least a temporary checkmate kept the premises safe until late yesterday.
As I had hoped, Mark and Tony and a host of Marshall County Sheriff’s deputies, assisted by Etowah County deputies, discovered the aging 1985 Nissan Quest van buried under tons of Coastal Bermuda hay. The van was transported to the Department of Forensic Sciences in Montgomery. I had given Mark a copy of the title I had obtained from Sam at Sand Mountain Transmission. It was Camilla’s old van, and most likely the one used in transporting the dead body of Adam Parker.
If all this wasn’t enough excitement for one weekend, it was something else that kept me up so late last night. Joe had returned from Dayton, Tennessee. I had sent him there over ten days ago. Up until yesterday, all he had been able to do was confirm a few things from Marissa’s email. Finally, last night, about the time Mark was pulling back the rawhide tarp laying across Jake Stone’s Nissan van, Joe had finally convinced Deborah Wray to confide in him and reveal a long-buried secret.
Her love affair with Pastor David Patterson had been kept as quiet as the Scopes Monkey Trial had been made public. Sometimes, but not often, two people meet, two people virtually opposite in beliefs and backgrounds, and there is a romantic spark that blinds the mind and heart to tradition and expectation. David and Deborah were two such people.
“How on earth did you get her to open up like this?” I had asked Joe. It was almost 2:00 a.m. when he called and asked to meet. I had agreed since my adrenal wouldn’t let me close my eyes after hearing the news from Mark.
“I’m a little ashamed to say, but I used the death of her only child, Josh, and the fact his case had never been solved. I went out on a limb when I told her that we believed there was some connection between Kurt Prescott and Josh’s death.” Joe’s statement was about as clear as my head had been right after Jake Stone had landed his hard right across the left side of my head.
Joe’s statement to Deborah had, luckily for us, been the trigger she needed. She shared how her, and Kurt had made a deal. She had something on him, and he had something on her. They two of them had become acquainted because of Kurt’s involvement with Rhea County High School and particularly his and Josh’s budding friendship.
Someway, through Josh, Deborah had learned that Kurt had a secret life of his own. He was working as a set of hidden eyes and ears for his cousin, the then U.S. Congressman Lamar Kilpatrick. Apparently, he was being groomed as an agent for the CIA, and not surprisingly, this was being kept under wraps. All Deborah had learned for sure from Josh was that Kurt spent most every Sunday afternoon in Knoxville with his cousin. Josh had gone along for the ride on several occasions. Once, he had seen the cover of a report Lamar had given Kurt. It had read something like, “Evolutionary Psychology: Diffusing the Bomb.” Josh had confronted Kurt about it and he had dismissed it as “Lamar loves writing science fiction. He just finished a new story.”
Deborah had not been sure how Kurt had found out about her and Pastor Patterson. She said that she didn’t believe it would have come from Josh, that as far as she knew, he didn’t know anything about the three-year affair. One thing that caught Joe’s attention was what she had learned after Josh’s death and Kurt had moved away. David had shared with her that Kurt was a member of his church and had become friends. Kurt had shared some intimate things, things related to what had likely happened to Josh and why he, Kurt, was moving to Boaz, Alabama. The smoking gun was, according to Deborah’s knowledge, acquired through her lover, Pastor David Patterson, that Kurt’s Sand Mountain Bank venture was all a ruse. Someway, he had been persuaded by his cousin, Lamar, to follow Adam Parker to Boaz.
After Joe and I finished our conversation around 2:30 a.m., I sat in my study and recalled what Marissa had said in her email over ten days ago. “Is Kurt Prescott who he says he is?” There was something else she had said but I couldn’t quite frame it. I booted up my computer and located Marissa’s email. Right at the end, she had written, “Dad said in his journal that he had mixed feelings about him [referring to Kurt]. That he was very supportive of his and Kramer Dickson’s work, but that he also was chummy with Pastor David Patterson.”
Joe’s investigation spawned a ton of questions, but they really had provided only one full answer. For the first time, I realized more than one person or group of persons had a motivation to get rid of Adam Parker.
A few minutes before noon Blair stuck her head inside the door to my office. “Don’t forget your lunch with Garrett.” I was glad she had reminded me. I had been sitting here nearly all morning reviewing the events of a long and eventful weekend and had lost all track of time.
I walked across the street to Pirates Cove and met Garrett coming out the front door.
“Connor, I’m sorry but I can’t stay. Gina just called and said that Kramer Dickson has been killed in a car accident. She’s very upset and I’m driving to Birmingham to be with her.”
I told him I understood and returned to the office with my gut telling me that it was unlikely that Dickson’s death was an accident.
The Pencil-Driven Life 