The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) by Lance McMillian (primary phonics txt) 📗

verbal assault. Today won’t be that day. Real life doesn’t work like that, and Barton wouldn’t confess even at gunpoint. Rather, the goal is to remind the members of the jury why they dislike the defendant—no knockout blows, just a series of well-placed jabs that do great cumulative damage over time.

A liveliness fills the room that was missing earlier. The trial just became interesting from a certain point of view. Barton and I measure each other across the empty space. I pick up a trial transcript and walk to my spot.

“Mr. Barton, do you remember in opening statements when your counsel said—and I’m reading from the transcript: ‘You won’t like my client. He’s abrasive and arrogant. He cheated on his wife throughout the course of their marriage. He gambles too much, and he acts like a little boy who has never grown up.’ Remember that?”

“I remember.”

“Are you abrasive?”

“Can be.”

“Arrogant?”

“Yes.”

“Did you cheat on your wife?”

“Repeatedly.”

“Gamble too much?”

“Probably.”

“Act like a little boy who never grew up?”

“I guess so.”

The game of getting under Barton’s skin begins. Already he shows annoyance. He’s dying to prove that he’s smarter than me, that he won’t fall into my traps. Good. I hope to use his arrogance against him.

“Do you lie?”

That’s a tough one for him to answer. He sits there plotting for a critical stretch of seconds.

“Everybody lies.”

“We’re not talking about everybody. We’re talking about you. Do you lie?”

“From time to time.”

I can work with that answer. Barton gritted his teeth in giving it to me. Being on the receiving end of the harsh treatment he has doled out his entire career doesn’t agree with him. Bullies don’t like to be bullied.

“Speaking of lying, let’s talk about Monica Haywood. Your testimony is that she lied for your benefit without your knowledge?”

“That’s right.”

“The morning after the murder, you were at her condo?”

“I was.”

“The police were looking for you?”

“Yep.”

“Haywood told them you weren’t there?”

“She did.”

“Yet you were hiding in the bedroom?”

Barton pauses for a second, scowls, then contends that he wasn’t hiding, he was just in the bedroom when the police rang the doorbell and that Haywood decided on her own to lie to the police.

“Did you tell Monica after that to stop lying for you?”

“Didn’t talk about it.”

“A few days later, she went to the police station to talk to the police?”

“She did.”

“She lied to give you an alibi?”

“Yep.”

“You didn’t know she was going to do that?”

“No idea.”

He is no actor, that’s for sure. Every answer comes across as curt with a helping of attitude on the side. Barton has been on the stand all day with his literal freedom hanging in the balance. He’s getting tired. He’s getting cranky. I smell blood.

“And you were in the courtroom when Monica admitted lying to this jury?”

“I was.”

“And you didn’t know she was going to lie for you then?”

“I did not.”

“The two of you live together?”

“We do.”

“Engaged to be married?”

“Sure.”

“And you didn’t know that she was again—for the third time now—going to lie on your behalf?”

“Nope.”

“But as you admitted earlier, you do lie from time to time?”

“Just like you, Counselor.”

He smirks, proud of himself for that one. I smile honey back at him. It’s happening. He’s imploding right before my eyes. Millwood, knowing that his client is a lost cause, barely tries to hide his own contempt toward Barton at this juncture.

“How many women have you sexually harassed in the workplace?”

Anger replaces the smirk. No “yeps” or “nopes” here. He’s going to have to give an actual answer, and all his possible options on that score hurt him. I await patiently while he struggles to pick his poison.

“I’ve never intentionally harassed anyone.”

“How many women have you unintentionally sexually harassed?”

“None. I don’t think I’ve ever sexually harassed anyone. Everything was consensual, flirting on both sides.”

“These women wanted it?”

“I didn’t say that! It was mutual banter between friends.”

“And the unwanted sexual touching was that also banter?”

“You weren’t there. You’re twisting things. The touching was friendly, welcomed.”

“And yet all these women still reported you for sexual harassment?”

“They wanted money.”

“They lied for money?”

“Pretty much.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah.”

We are so often in life our own worst enemy. Barton is overheating and leaking oil at the one moment that he needs to be the calmest. The females on the jury flash their disgust. The pattern is clear. Barton blames women for all his problems—Sara for the 911 call, Monica for lying about him without his knowledge, the women he sexually harassed for making stuff up.

“And Roy Winston—your own witness—was he lying when he said the claims against you were credible and that your conduct was unacceptable?”

“He was just covering his ass.”

Someone in the audience gasps. The judge bangs her gavel. The top of Barton’s head collects tiny pockets of perspiration. The courtroom light falls harsh on him.

“Let’s talk about the gun, Mr. Barton. You bought it a few months before the murder?”

“Yeah.”

“Sara wanted you to buy it?”

“She did.”

“She felt unsafe?”

“That’s what she said.”

“She wanted the gun for her protection?”

“Yep.”

“And that was the gun that killed her?”

“That’s what I’m told.”

“Your gun?”

“Apparently.”

That bit will make it into my closing argument. The very gun that Sara wanted to protect her life took away her life. That’s a nice narrative hook. But I won’t stop there. The only evidence we have that Barton bought the gun for Sara comes from Barton’s own mouth. But maybe he got the gun because he already planned to kill her. Remember Sara’s own words: “He’s going to kill me!” Based on the evidence, the only person Sara feared was Bernard Barton.

“At some point you learned about a video of Sara and another man having sex at a firm party with you in the room next door?”

“I did.”

“And the man in question was a younger attorney whose office was right down the hall from yours?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“The video made you mad?”

“I didn’t care that she slept around. I was mad that she got filmed doing so.”

“You called her a whore in fact?”

“If the shoe fits.”

Dear God. Even Judge Woodcomb—the epitome of courtroom decorum—shoots a glance