The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) Lance McMillian (ereader with android .txt) 📖

Sam’s death. But I don’t need to. Sam’s death is irrelevant to the guilt or innocence of Bernard Barton. If Millwood thinks otherwise, let him explain why. He ain’t going to be able to explain it, either. What does he know about Sam’s death? Nothing. Whatever he comes up with, I can swat it away, say it smacks of desperation on the part of the defense. Unless something more definitive breaks with the cause of Sam’s death, we’re going to have to take our lead from Millwood.”

Ella is unconvinced and shows it. The cracks between us threaten to widen as doubt in me personally bleeds over to doubt in me professionally. Or maybe Sam’s death has made everyone prickly as a cactus.

I ask, “How’s it going with Lara in witness prep?”

“Lara? I don’t call her that. Always ‘Miss Landrum.’ But I guess you would call her ‘Lara.’ I bet you called her a bunch of different things.”

The challenge in her eyes begs me for a harsh response, but I sit and take it. Fighting solves nothing. She breaks eye contact with annoyance upon realizing I won’t take the bait.

“Lara has done all that I’ve asked of her. She takes direction well. I think she will be a strong witness. We don’t like each other, but we can fake our way through.”

Ella starts to stand up but sits back down. She asks, “Do you miss her?”

Her question assumes a fact not in evidence—that Lara and I are actually apart. That fact needs to remain out of evidence. I deflect.

“I miss what you and I had.”

“Then you shouldn’t have thrown it away by sleeping with a witness.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Better that Ella focus on the relationship between the two of us than ask more questions about Lara and me. The nuclear fallout if she discovers the truth is something I don’t want to contemplate. But Ella has always been a dogged questioner once she latches onto something.

“You still didn’t answer my question. Do you miss her?”

Trying hard not to lie, I truthfully respond, “I think about her all the time.”

Disgust spreads in a wave across Ella’s beautiful face. Her previous resort to the racial issue still riles me, but I now wonder if my subconscious did reject her based on the color of her skin. The past months show that all manner of untoward things lurk beneath the veneer of my respectability. Lara’s words of the previous night ring loud—“I’m ugly. You’re ugly. We’re ugly.”

Ella demands, “Why her? I don’t understand. I could’ve made you happy.”

“Honestly, she threw herself at me, and I caught her. Showed up at my house and started taking her clothes off. Literally. I tried to resist even then. Eventually, I stopped resisting. If you would’ve thrown yourself at me like that, I would’ve caught you, too.”

“So it’s my fault for not showing up at your house naked?”

“Not fault. Just an explanation. You patiently waited. She didn’t. Nothing ever would’ve happened with her if she hadn’t chased me down. I wasn’t looking for it.”

“Poor pitiful you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, sure. You going back to her after all this is over?”

“I’m less certain of the future than at any other point in my adult life.”

Ella shakes her head at me, frustrated at the divergence of who I am and who she wants me to be. She gathers her things in an agitated and distracted sort of way. Perhaps she’s past anger and on to bargaining in the five stages of grief—trying to make some deal with herself to make the most of what’s left in this whole business. She stands and gives me a last look filled with the sad recognition that I am a lost cause.

“Let’s just win the case,” she says and shuts the door behind her.

***

Sam’s three kids sit off to the side by themselves when I walk through the door of the church for their father’s funeral. I consider offering them condolences but leave them alone to their pain. The kids need far more than platitudes from me in a time like this.

Liesa receives visitors at the front of the chapel, and I wait my turn to pay appropriate respects. She offers me her cheek to kiss. I oblige.

“I’m so sorry, Liesa.”

“Are you?”

The words hurt and contain an undercurrent of accusation. I scurry away. Jeff Yarber drops next to me in the pew. I wonder if he blames me, too. It would fit the pattern.

He asks, “Did he kill himself?”

“I honestly don’t know. You knew him better than I did. Talk to him lately?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Suicidal?”

“I didn’t think so.”

We sit quietly and ponder. The mirror doesn’t lie. All of us are older now, and the life we anticipated in law school has taken turns too dark for us to have ever imagined. Another one of our classmates, Marilyn Stubbs, was gunned down by a crazy ex-husband five years ago. Trey Miles died in a car wreck. Cancer got Barbara Allen.

“Too much death,” I say.

Jeff agrees.

I skip the burial. Without even intending to do so, I end up back at The Varsity—sitting in the same booth where Sam and I last saw one another. I eat angry, furiously chewing my food as if it were responsible for the dark tide. I remember Sam across from me that night, his investigative research on Barton right next to him.

That gets me to thinking. Sam only turned over what he wanted me to know about Bernard Barton and nothing else. And no Sara Barton divorce files were in Sam’s home or office when the police searched. More files have to exist.

Where is the stuff Sam didn’t want me to see?

“A safe place,” Sam claimed when I questioned him that night. I call Scott.

“Did you impound Sam’s vehicle from that park where he was killed?”

“Of course.”

“Search it?”

“Why else would I impound it? Of course we searched it.”

“Find Sam’s file on the Barton divorce in there?”

“I probably would’ve told you if I had.”

“How thorough a search?”

“Really? Do you take me for some hayseed