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 Boaz Safecracker, written in 2019, is my seventh novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Fred Martin, a 1972 graduate of Boaz High School, returns to his hometown after practicing law and living in Huntsville for over thirty-five years with two goals in mind. First, to distance himself from the loss of Susan, his wife of thirty-seven years who died in 2013 of cancer. And second, to partner with his lifelong friend, Noah Waters, to crack the safes of Elton Rawlins and Doug Barber, two men who got under their skin as high school football players.
Little did Fred and Noah realize the secrets the two old Mosler safes protected. Who murdered three Boaz High School seniors in the fall of 1973? Is a near-half-century-old plan to destroy Fred’s sister and steal the inheritance from a set of 44-year-old illegitimate twins still alive and well? How far would Fred’s mother go to protect her family?
What starts out as an almost innocent prank turns life-threateningly serious the more Fred learns and the more safes he cracks. All the while, he falls in love with Connie Stewart, his one-date high school classmate who may conceal a secret or two herself.
Chapter 66
Harrison insisted I ride with him. It didn’t take but a couple of minutes and he was parking us at an old run-down house on Adams Street. He motioned for me to follow him behind the house and across a driveway between two houses facing Darnell Street. I had to almost jog to keep up with the old but fit Harrison. We were inside the school at exactly 12:00 noon according to my iPhone. I was impressed and hoped I could think and move like my old principal when I was his age.
He certainly knew his way around Boaz High School. He should, after fifty plus years. After he disabled the alarm system (I was surprised the school board hadn’t changed the code during the five years since Harrison retired), he stopped and looked down the long hallway towards the front of the school. “Seems like there ought to be a thousand students racing to and from class and me herding the stragglers along. I guess it’s a good thing it’s Fall Break.”
During the short drive from the hospital I had contemplated the best way to access the old Mosler. I had concluded the Vocational Ag shop would likely have a torch. Luckily, Harrison’s memory spun up a set of three numbers. The only thing missing was the order. I was surprised the old Mosler wasn’t better hidden. Inside the Vocational Agriculture teacher’s office was a closet containing several file cabinets, all on rollers. Once they were out of the way, there was a pocket door. Harrison bumped it a couple of times to get it back on track. Once aside, the Mosler stared at us like it was a crouching lion.
It took me five or six times to get the order right, but Harrison’s recall was perfect. The heavy door of yet another Model T20 Mosler safe groaned slightly but didn’t pose much resistance. I was amazed at the number Kodak Super 8 film cartridges stacked inside. Harrison quickly ordered me to remove them and place them on the metal desk in the adjoining office. “Put them in date order. I’ll be right back.” He said and was gone before I could respond. By the time I had the thirty or forty cartridges lined up in rows and by date (starting with the oldest on the top left-hand corner of the desk), Harrison returned. “La Belle Super 8 Cartridge Portable Projector. Old as Moses, still on the top shelf in the Drama Department’s storage closet. I hope it works.”
It did. Perfectly, from what I could tell. Although Kodak’s Super 8 movie camera wasn’t as good as the video camera on my iPhone, it was remarkably clear. The first film Harrison selected wasn’t the oldest. “I hope you’re ready for your Damascus Road revelation.” I certainly didn’t know what to expect.
“Let’s start with the big picture, the view of the forest. Get it, picture.” Harrison giggled like a teenage girl. “Nineteen seventy-one, December,” He said as he shifted the La Belle projector in line with where he had us sit in two straight-back wooden chairs. The film revealed a panoramic view inside First Baptist Church of Christ’s old auditorium. “Probably Wade. Walter’s son.” Harrison said as if I hadn’t graduated with the asshole. I sat and looked at a full house. I assumed it was a Sunday morning.
Harrison continued: “It’s right before the concert.” I could see the giant Christmas tree hand-constructed at the front of the auditorium behind the pastor’s pulpit. Choir members stood on multi-level rows like Christmas tree lights on any other tree. They presented a musical the weekend before celebrating Christ’s birthday. This had been a tradition all my growing up years. “I can’t believe I helped spike the punch. Damn, I was such an idiot.” Harrison commented as the cameraman now was walking the aisles recording the faces of most everyone sitting. Most everyone seemed at peace, almost in a daze.
“What do you mean, spike the punch?” I asked.
“Remember the Quaalude-300?”
“I do.”
“Pastor Walter and his gang, along with the able assistance of Doug Barber, figured out how to get everyone addicted. They called it Communion. We, they also spiked the tea in the cafeteria before each Wednesday night’s fellowship meal.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” What I was watching, and hearing was surreal.
“Addicted folks are more generous with their tithes and offerings.” Harrison said as he removed the Christmas cartridge and inserted one from my third row. “Promise you won’t get mad at me when you see this?”
At first, I couldn’t figure out if he was serious, even whether he was asking a question or just making a statement.
Again, I quickly recognized the setting. This time it was the backroom of the Lighthouse. I couldn’t have mistaken it if I tried. The giant mural of Christ hanging on His cross reaching out with an over-sized arm and hand back in time to Adam was unmistakable. The youth group had spent nearly a year completing the forty-foot work of art.
What I didn’t immediately see was Susan and Connie. They were sitting on the floor with their backs to the camera. Then, that changed. The cameraman moved around the room.
“Fall 1973. Just a week before the triple murders.” Harrison pointed to the empty cartridge on the edge of the desk. It was then my mind awakened. Why had I been so reluctant to remember? Susan and I had already completed a year at Auburn and returned the summer of 1973 to rest and relax at Martin Mansion. A week or so before we were set to return for our sophomore year, Susan decided to stay with Mom and Dad and attend Snead State Junior College. At the end of our freshman year she had changed her major from architecture to education, with her sights set on becoming a high school math teacher.
But, there was one problem. She would have to take two quarters of calculus at Auburn. No easy feat. This drove her to take Lyndell Bate’s pre-calculus class at Snead during the fall of 1973. It wasn’t a fun time for me in Auburn. I moped about missing the love of my life. However, what I was now watching seemed to indicate my shy and sexy Susan had found time for some extracurricular activities while away from me.
“This film drove your father over the edge.” As Harrison said this, the cameraman turned to face the sitting Connie and Susan. It was then I saw Johnny Stewart laying with his head across my Susan’s lap.
“You can blame Connie Stewart.” Harrison said as though he could see inside my mind as I wondered how this had happened.
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.
“Connie, the manipulator. Susan never saw it coming. You know the two of them were at Snead together that fall?” I did recall Connie staying in Boaz after all three of us graduated together in May 1972. She had told me about attending Snead for two years before transferring to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
“Saw what coming? Tell me what’s going on. What happened.”
“If I hadn’t been Pastor Walter’s lap dog I would have never known. There’s more on some of these other tapes. The Lighthouse became a lab, a place to experiment on the effects of various dosages of Quaalude-300.”
“So, Susan became a guinea pig of sorts?” I asked.
“Yes and no. Sometimes the pastor had multiple goals. With Susan he was simply protecting his daughter. You remember Olivia?”
“I sort of do. She was two or three years behind. Oh, I guess she was in Rebecca and Angela’s class. Deidre’s also.”
“I hate to say this, but I suspect this was the night your dear Susan made the mistake of her life. But Fred, you must know, it wasn’t her decision.”
“I’m lost now for sure.”
“The sex, her getting pregnant. You can blame the manipulator for that. And Pastor Walter, but of course he’s dead.” The line between the dots was drawn faster than I could say pencil. What Dad had said wasn’t caused by his hallucinations. He was telling me the truth. Now, here, Harrison was confirming the same. I was concerned I wasn’t madder than hell, but I wasn’t. Susan had been raped. Sex against her will, or when she was legally incompetent from the Quaaludes, was rape. No doubt about it.
“Why would Connie be involved with this? I just don’t get it.” I asked.
“I’m speculating on part of this, but I suspect it was for two reasons. First, and I’m confident of this one, Connie made a deal with the devil. Kind of like I did, kind of like your father did but he got out of his.”
“Why would Connie need to cut a deal with Pastor Walter?” I asked.
“You are in the dark, aren’t you?”
“Apparently so.” I felt like such an idiot. Not only had Johnny Stewart gotten my sister pregnant. He had done the same thing to my own wife.
“She needed to save her neck. You probably don’t know but the pastor and his gang found out that she was part of the burglary. That’s when the coins and diamonds and the million dollars went missing.”
“A million dollars?” I knew the cash stolen was a lot but not anything like this.
“Connie herself also had another motive. You know she was bosom buddies with Rebecca Aldridge and Angela Ericson?”
“That I know. Back to Connie’s motives. I’m confused again. Was there another one you started to mention?”
“Oh yea. Connie would have done anything to breakup you and Susan. Fred, you’re a dumb ass if you didn’t know how much Connie Stewart wanted you for her own.”
“So, the pastor was angry at Dad for him standing up to the five wealthiest and most powerful men in Boaz, and had the influence over Connie to manipulate the manipulator into arranging the perfect setting for Casanova Stewart to bed my wife?”
“I guess it was God’s gift to you and Susan that she miscarried.” Hell, was there no limit to what Principal Harrison knew?
“We can talk more later, but we need to be going.” Harrison said, stood, and started stacking the film cartridges. He walked over to the old Mosler and pulled open the top drawer on the right side. He reached in and turned back to me. “Take these, they might come in handy someday.” Before moving a muscle, I instantly recognized several bullets inside a clear zip-lock bag.
“Let me guess. The four bullets that killed Johnny Stewart. All illegally removed from the Department of Forensic Sciences by a man named Grayson Bolton. Right?” I asked.
“Sounds about right, but I have to admit I never knew the culprit’s name.
Neither Harrison or I said a word during our return trip to Marshall Medical Center South.
The Pencil-Driven Life 