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 44
Last Saturday I had tried to dig deeper into Blair’s Evernote database but quickly learned, without her guidance, all I could do was conduct a basic search. Monday and Tuesday, I had once again been tied up in Jackson County with Dalton and his triple homicide capital murder case. After breakfast with Garrett I sat down in the conference room to several folders, each containing a printout from one of Blair’s carefully crafted searches.
I had just read the query used with her first search which she had written on the outside of a green folder when my cell phone vibrated. I took it out of my pocket. It was Erica.
“Hello Erica.”
“Hi Connor, thought you’d want to know that I’m hearing Russell has been arrested. Alex mentioned it when he was here.”
“You two getting back together?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t any of my business.
“Hell no. As far as I’m concerned, he can live forever at the Hampton Inn, of course, assuming he’s not elected to the governor’s office. No, I let him come to the house to get some of his things.” Erica said, I could hear a boy’s voice, probably Reece, in the background. I wondered why he wasn’t in school.
“Thanks for telling me. I hope DA Abbott can get him and Stone to talking, now that he’s got both in the same jail. I hope Russell reveals how Stone came into so much money. Maybe, they’ll incriminate each other.”
“You are talking about all that money Stone is showing down Bruce Road?” Erica asked.
“That would be some of it.”
“Sandra’s mother, Sarah, left her a boatload.” Erica said.
“You know this for sure?” I asked.
“Pretty sure. The old woman was loaded. Sarah had worked at First State Bank of Boaz for like 50 years. My good friend, Jane Ellsworth, Jake Stone’s sister, used to work in the accounting department at the bank. Gosh, that was probably ten years ago. Jane told me then that Sarah was worth over a million dollars. It doesn’t hurt that Sandra was an only child.”
“When did Sarah die?” I felt one of my solid hypothesis melting into a puddle.
“It’s been a while, maybe the first of the year.”
“You’re a fountain of knowledge. I appreciate you calling.” I said.
“I’ll call back if I hear any more concerning Russell.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate it.”
Our call ended, and I sat silent and still. I was perplexed. The asshole Jake Stone wasn’t looking as guilty as I earlier thought. The money thing certainly didn’t mean he wasn’t involved in criminal behavior. Hopefully, the tan-colored Nissan van would be his undoing. I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted more to have a long visit at Kilby Prison.
The document in the green folder was a result of Blair’s search for the words Josh Wray or Josh or Wray, and David and Caleb Patterson, or either one of them. The query had uncovered two things: a couple of Adam’s journal entries, and a New York Times article. As predictable, Adam had a copy of the article indexed and cross-indexed in his files.
The article had been written the summer after Josh Wray’s death, 2014, and before Adam was fired from the University of Tennessee. The NYT reporter, a Nate Baker, contended there was a connection between the murder and a lawsuit filed by a non-profit organization called Faith Forever. Baker provided a complete list of its members, which included both David and Caleb Patterson. The lawsuit contended that both Adam Parker and Kramer Dickson were public school teachers. Even as Ph.D. professors at UT, Tennessee law clearly considered them public servants. The civil suit contended the two teachers were engaged to prohibit the free exercise of religion. In sum, they argued the government’s (public school teachers) research was an attempt to curtail their freedom of religion. To me, the Faith Forever lawsuit was likewise a First Amendment violation and attempt to suppress Adam and Kramer’s right of expression.
At the end of Mr. Baker’s article, he mentioned a company called Knoxville Concrete. He asserted that without this company’s owner, an Everett Aldridge, a Faith Forever member, the costly lawsuit could not have been prosecuted. On a hunch, I did a Google search for Aldridge. I was shocked to learn, via a Knoxville Tribune article, that in 2012, Aldridge had sold his fifty-year-old concrete company to the Rand Corporation based out of Boaz, Alabama. So, it seemed Roger Williams had known about Adam Parker before he ever moved to Boaz.
By 3:00 p.m., I was tired of reading and decided to go for a drive. This was something I had started a few weeks ago. It seemed to clear my head and energize me to return to the office for a more productive final push for the day. I had just past Boaz Country Club when my cell phone vibrated. It was Mark.
“I hear Russell Williams has been arrested.” I said, skipping the preliminaries.
“Hello to you too.” It was nice to have a good friend you could be open and fully yourself with. “Deputies brought him to the jail around ten this morning. Darden Clarke, the DA’s investigator, has been interviewing him ever since, less a lunch break.”
“You hear anything?” I asked.
“Not much really, although he says he can feed us some big boys if the DA will cut him a deal. Clarke’s holding to standard, you know, tell us what you’ve got, and we can talk about it.”
I thought about the cards Clarke had available in his hand. Why couldn’t he put pressure on Russell with evidence provided by the money trail. That seemed to me his strongest weapon and the subterfuge he used to persuade Dr. Culbert to skip town. A murder charge should be forthcoming. That should get the skinny Russell to squawking. “Clarke’s a smart detective. He’s probably just playing with Russell like a cat does with its helpless little mouse. I’ve heard that’s Clarke’s style.”
“You’re right but I don’t like it. Too damn time consuming. I better not say much. I’m not doing much better.”
“You’ve had a shot at Russell?” I asked.
“No, I’ve been working Stone. We’ve got them side by side, interrogation rooms three and four. They know it too. So far, all Stone will say is he had no knowledge of what happened to his old Nissan van after he sold it to Sam at Sand Mountain Transmission for $1,000.”
“I assume Trevor has got him on a short leash.”
“That’s one attorney I don’t like. Well, that’s one more attorney I don’t like. Too smug.” Mark said.
“He’s alright once you get to know him. I do prefer Dalton though. By the way, who’s Russell’s attorney?”
“Says he doesn’t want one, that he’ll provide his own representation. Daddy’s not liking that.” Mark said. I could imagine Roger Williams standing outside the jail hollering at Russell to not say a word until he has an attorney.
I heard Tony say something in the background before Mark continued. “I suspect Russell boy will wise up and call for legal counsel before he spills too many beans. One other thing. When I questioned Stone about Dean Naylor’s video and accused him of being the man wearing the black hood, he said, ‘Lawton Hawks and I weren’t the only members of the Seekers.’ That’s their Sunday School class. He wouldn’t say more.”
“I think there are about fifteen members of that class, from what Steven Knott has said. He also has said there were four who took a special interest in Adam Parker. It was him and Lawton, the class’s teacher, Stone, and Jerry Todd.”
“Listen, we can talk Sunday School later. I’ve got to get back.” Mark said, attempting to be funny.
I continued my drive down Lackey Gap Road past Meadowlark Farms. I almost pulled in to amble around Roger’s giant horse barn, with hopes of having another talk with Carlton Ennis, but decided against it when I saw Roger’s big red Ford 250 topping the hill on the driveway coming from the barn. I sped away confident he hadn’t seen me. If I had to bet, I would put money on Mr. Roger Williams as the head conspirator in the death of Adam Parker. Hopefully, that was more than a gut feeling.
The Pencil Driven Life 