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 43
Saturday morning, I was thankful for Garrett’s call. Gina was in town and wanted to talk. Little Nathan had been up crying half the night, so I needed a break. I guess Camilla did too since she left for work at 6:00 a.m., a good hour before anyone would show up for a haircut.
Garrett and Gina were waiting at his favorite back-corner table when I arrived at Pirates Cove shortly after 7:00.
“We’ve already ordered. For you, a Southwestern Omelet with extra bacon. You’ve probably had enough bull this week.” Garrett could be assertive and a borderline ass, but I couldn’t argue against my favorite breakfast.
“Hi Gina. Nice to see you.” I said looking and smiling at the disheveled professor.
“Back at you detective. Sorry for my appearance. The bulls are down my way too.”
The three of us bantered back and forth about the early cold snap while Gloria made two trips with our food.
“I was sorry to hear about Kramer Dickson. I know you two were working together.” I said, wanting to be respectful.
“He’s why I asked Dad to invite you. I figured you’d be interested in some back story.”
“I’m always interested in a good story, especially if it’s a little suspenseful.”
“Well, we’ll see. Did you know that Adam Parker was like a father to Josh Wray?” Gina asked.
“I assume you’re speaking of the young man murdered in Dayton, Tennessee and whose case is still unsolved as far as I know.”
“She is.” Garrett said. “Listen up.”
Gina took a bite of her biscuit and gravy and said, “Josh’s own father was in prison during his teenage years. A local banker, Kurt Prescott, befriended the young man but it was Adam Parker the boy took to. It seems Parker was instrumental in convincing the high school’s drama department to develop a play, a reenactment of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Josh was a descendant of the original Scopes.”
This was old news to me, in part. “I thought it was Kurt Prescott that was the main moving force behind the play?” I asked.
“Kramer said it was Adam. He had plans for widespread distribution. Meaning, he wanted every school in Tennessee to put on the play. Seems like he, with Josh’s help, had convinced a good number of high school students to participate in an intensive study. On several occasions Adam, in a sense, had brought his lab to Dayton. This is where it gets suspenseful. At least a little.”
“Connor, drink your milk.” Garrett often sounded like my father.
Gina continued. “The local pastor, David Patterson, stirred up most of the locals. He saw the play as heretical to his Christian faith, as did most of the townsfolk. They didn’t believe in human evolution at all, rather God had created Adam ex nihilo, instantly, out of nothing, about six thousand years ago, then Eve from his rib, just like it says in Genesis. It’s believed that David and his cousin, your own pastor Caleb Patterson, killed Josh Wray. Of course, that has never been proven.”
Garrett wiped his mouth and said, “most folks would call it God’s will. Maybe it is. I suspect its fate or coincidence.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“How Adam Parker and Caleb Patterson wound up in the same town. Gina, tell Connor.”
“Kramer thinks there is a connection. He doesn’t know for sure which came first. You know, the chicken or the egg dilemma. But, one move, caused another move. Kramer believed that after Adam was basically run out of Tennessee, David and Caleb plotted to get Caleb pastor at First Baptist Church of Christ. When Adam was hired on at Snead College, Caleb was still a pastor in Prattville.”
I was confused. “Why exactly would the two cousins care about Adam now that he was out of David’s hair?”
“Grudges run deep my friend. You should know that.” Gina said.
“I’m not exactly following you.” I said.
“David’s daughter, Deanna, was an Adam Parker convert. Some way Josh had convinced her, a classmate, to participate in Adam’s study. It was a test of sorts he and Kramer developed that, at least the two hoped, would serve as the first push toward thinking. In other words, it was like a dose of medicine, like a shot of adrenalin. Kramer compared their little exam, a series of exams, to a needle penetrating through the skin and inside a person’s DNA to modify the gene or genes that enslaved the mind.”
“So, David, in a way lost his daughter and sought-after revenge?” I asked.
“Kramer believed there was a connection between Adam’s death and Caleb Patterson. Do you know that Adam was pushing the same thing here in Alabama?” Gina asked.
“Meaning using students as guinea pigs for his study?”
“Basically yes, but also promoting the Scopes Monkey Trial, rather, the reenactment.”
“Tell Connor about Paige and Natalie.” Garrett said.
“As you know, these two young ladies befriended Adam. Although they were already out of high school they tried their best to persuade their former drama teacher to present the Scopes play. That got them in very hot water. The girls were rather naive, I guess. The teacher, Lawton Hawks, was a die-hard creationist. They should have known he, as the science teacher who pushed his Noah’s Ark and young earth ideas, wouldn’t be receptive to a story about human evolution. The whole thing erupted, and this was the beginning of the public attack on Adam Parker. Of course, you can guess who partnered up with Lawton Hawks.” Gina said.
“None other than Caleb Patterson?” I asked.
“Yep. Here’s the bottom line. Southern Baptist Fundamentalists feel greatly threatened by real science. In this regard, they are correct. They should be threatened. The truth of science destroys their beliefs, the ones that make naturalistic claims, like how we as humans got here and how old the earth is. Now, the bottom line. Kramer believed that Adam Parker’s death could have almost naturally flowed from the now-old science vs. religion controversy.”
“One final question before I have to go.” For some reason I was in a hurry to walk across the street to the office and dig once again into Adam’s journals. “What became of Deanna Patterson?” I wasn’t sure why I asked this, why this was relevant in any sense.
Gina took the last bite of her biscuit and gravy, pushed back her plate and said, “That’s another interesting fact. I did promise suspense, didn’t I? She was killed in a car accident a couple of years ago outside Decatur, Tennessee. It was late on a Sunday afternoon. She was returning to Knoxville and the University of Tennessee where she was a Biology student.” Gina answered.
“Maybe just one more question.” I said, knowing I had veered off the rails of anything relevant. “Was she still a Southern Baptist Fundamentalist like her father when she died?”
“Not at all. It seems Adam and Kramer’s study had opened her eyes and mind, had turned on her curiosity. She started asking questions. You know that’s deadly to the Christian faith.”
Garrett insisted he buy my breakfast. I thanked Gina and again shared my sympathy over the loss of her colleague. I walked across the street to the office and sat down at Blair’s computer.
Richard L. Fricks 