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

to Barton’s lies. Calling her back to the stand is unnecessary. The jury heard her loud and clear.

I sit behind my desk—my father’s antique desk from his law office—and stare at the blank legal pad before me. Much of the closing is already written out, but I like to do a fresh rewrite at the end to make my words more organic and well-tuned to the twists and turns every trial takes. Neat stacks of evidence sit expectantly on the wood top—the ingredients to the great recipe I hope to cook up. Trial transcripts, photographs, the autopsy report, a printout of the 911 call, the picture of Sara Barton’s blackened back, and the like—all of it awaits to be used for the greater good.

I’m worn out. I need to sprawl myself on a beach somewhere and let the sunshine carry my soul back to good health. Too much of my adult years have been spent under artificial light. I need the real thing. I have the money. I can disappear for a good long time.

Sara Barton should’ve left—look what staying got her. I put the autopsy photos side-by-side with the photo of her back after Barton beat her. So much pain. Why did she stay? Lara has money. She could’ve moved in with her. Instead, Sara stayed. The choices we make condemn us to death, and we don’t even know it. We swim with the tide, thinking the current will take us wherever it wants anyway. Sara was so beautiful, but nobody looks good in an autopsy photo, the blood all drained from the face. One morning a beautiful woman woke up never to see another day. Happens to ugly people all the time. Everyone should leave when they have the chance.

I access the secret compartment in my father’s desk and remove the two naked pictures of Sara Barton I removed from Sam’s shed in the Georgia mountains. Visions of an inviting Lara cloud my eyes. She would meet me tonight if I said we needed to talk about the trial. This weekend figures to be the only time I will ever be able to hold her again. Once the verdict is read, she’ll slip away from me forever. I stare at her dead sister’s nude body some more, wrestling with the decision, wanting one more taste of the poisoned fruit.

I pass. I’m too tired to handle Lara tonight. Tomorrow maybe.

I think of Sam. Millwood could never effectively work him into the trial. Putting Liesa on the stand was a disaster for the defense, killing any chance to parlay Sam into a not guilty verdict. Sam remains an enigma, much like his death. A healthy helping of conscience reminds me that the failure to turn over that box in Sam’s shed had everything to do with what happened at trial. I refuse to accept the blame. The box was never mine to turn over. Those photographs belong to someone else.

“Then why are there naked pictures of me on your desk?”

I ignore Sara Barton’s question. You can’t argue with a ghost.

Not much work is getting done. I consider throwing in the towel for the night and starting anew in the morning. I have the weekend. But I resist the impulse to get up. Sam still tugs at my mind. I’m missing something. An inkling chews at me but scurries away when I try to catch it. I’m missing something, and the signs point to Sam. The harder I think about the problem, the less I see.

I prod myself to focus on something else for a few minutes. Reshuffling the cards in my mind usually works wonders when I’m stuck on a mental puzzle. When I return to the problem with fresh eyes, new insights invariably emerge. Seeking a distraction, I again consume the naked pictures of Sara Barton and think of Lara’s sculpted body—the marvelous mystery she first revealed to me a few paces from the spot where I now sit. Bad idea. To dampen my incipient lust, I pivot to studying the autopsy photos again. I’m running on fumes at this point. I need this trial to be over.

Back to Sam.

I go back to the night of the murder and see Sam’s sad face as he tried to extricate himself from the fine mess he’d got himself into. I see him at Sara Barton’s funeral, staring at Lara with a cringeworthy intensity. I wince at the memory of him storming into my office with a fake John Wayne tough guy act. I remember the uneasy peace the two of us reached at The Varsity—the last time I ever saw him alive. He gave me his research to throw my scent Barton’s way. It worked. The call from Scott informing me of Sam’s death punches me in the gut one more time. Lara’s hysterical reaction in the aftermath started the tailspin that eventually crashed our relationship. Lastly, I return to the mountains and work over the implications of Sam’s porn stash of Sara Barton and her various lovers. I even replay all my dealings with Liesa.

All these things I think about and still come up blank. What is Sam trying to tell me?

I stand up to stretch. Standing on my toes, straining my Achilles to the max, the flash of a memory breaks through the fog. I refuse to believe it and doubt the accuracy of my recollection. It would be an easy thing for me to mishear in the moment. I pace around the room wrestling mightily with my brain to squeeze out as many details as possible. What I now remember can’t be, which means that I’m misremembering. I’ve been around enough eyewitnesses to know the vagaries of how humans process their memories. All of us carry around things we remember that never actually happened, and most of us refuse to be moved off our certainty of the invented past. I pace some more.

But once I fixate on it, the memory possesses the clarity of crystal. Yet it makes