The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) by Lance McMillian (top 20 books to read TXT) 📕

is a lie. Ella’s reality of who I am and what the two of us might be is a fiction, and she lacks the faintest idea. The real world—the secret world I actively hide from her—mocks her ignorance. I hate her stupidity and hate myself for making her stupid.

We both pretend to work in order to relieve the awkwardness of the moment. I make sure to keep Ella fully clothed in my mind the rest of the night. The focus now rests on Tasha—the last pure and undefiled thing in my life. Maybe Tasha can save me. But first I have to save her by ensuring Corey Miller gets the death sentence his crime surely merits. The high stakes rooted firmly in my mind, I bear down in the ongoing quest to deliver justice to the dead.

16

I call Tasha to the stand. I scrutinize Miller’s face and get nothing but blankness for the trouble. The door in the back of the courtroom opens. Heads turn. I watch Miller. He doesn’t twitch. Tasha enters, trailed closely by Belinda. The courtroom is compact. The journey to the front is short. I open the gate for Tasha, offering up a big smile, hoping to reassure her. Belinda sits in a seat on the front row, providing mom a clear view of where her daughter will testify on the stand.

Miller finally registers Tasha, and the slight flicker of the eyes betrays his knowledge. I imagine the calculations adding up in his head. He killed DeShawn Carter directly in front of Tasha’s house. When Miller notices Belinda, the blank mask he has fronted all trial transforms into a glare of deadly malice. He turns his hand into a gun, points it at her, and fake shoots. God bless Belinda, she absorbs Miller’s hostility and returns it with a death stare of her own.

The mask drops for only a few seconds. Joe and Judge Ross both miss the performance, but the distressed face of Juror Number Seven shows that she witnessed everything. White as a sheet, she physically backs up in her seat to get away from the defendant. I grab a file. Juror Number Seven is named Clarissa Simon, a white 37-year old Buckhead housewife. Perfect. Simon will no doubt spread the word to the other jurors at the next recess. I just got my conviction.

The bailiff swears Tasha in. I position myself for the questioning, making a point to block Miller’s view of Tasha. The plan is to start easy, make her comfortable, and introduce her to the jury.

“Can you state your name for the record?”

“Tasha Favors.”

I walk her through her background. We start with where she goes to school, her teachers, and her favorite classes. Tasha makes straight As, and I bring that fact to light. We talk about church and Sunday school. Tasha sings in the choir, and her favorite song is “How Great Thou Art.” I ask her what she does in her free time. Belinda Favors works in a nursing home, and Tasha draws pictures to brighten the days of the residents who live there. I feel like a movie director who requisitioned central casting for a perfect little girl, and they sent over Tasha.

She projects well. We prepped her early and often. But until people get on the stand, you never know how they will perform under the bright lights. With a 10-year old girl, the unknown is only magnified. Tasha is our entire case. If she freezes, Miller walks free. Her poise so far belies her tender years. She speaks in a clear voice. Everything she says screams authenticity. The jury eats her up.

Having created a favorable impression, the questioning turns to the day of the murder. The goal is to get our identification of Miller and hightail it out of here. The nerves in my body penetrate to the bones. That’s fine. A lawyer who isn’t nervous at trial needs to find another line of work. I ask Tasha where she was at 4:30 p.m. on the date of the murder. She tells the story of how she sat at the kitchen table at her house working on her math homework while her Nana napped.

“What was your math homework about?”

“Fractions.”

Little details enhance the credibility of a witness. You build trust with a jury on the small stuff before asking about the big stuff. Tasha is doing great.

“Did something happen to cause you to stop doing your homework?”

“It got noisy outside. I heard a lot people talking loudly, and I went to the window to see.”

“What did you see when you looked out the window?”

All eyes focus on Tasha. The only sounds are the clicks on the court reporter’s keys. In the silence, the impact of each key strike is magnified far out of its normal proportion.

“I saw a man on his knees in the street. Another man with a gun was talking to him.”

“How far was your window from the street?”

“About the distance between me and my mom now.”

I direct Belinda to stand. The distance between mother on the front row and daughter in the witness stand is maybe forty feet.

“The man you saw on the street on his knees—had you ever seen him before?”

“No.”

Ella moves a blown-up picture of DeShawn Carter into position. I direct Tasha to look at it. She identifies Carter as the man on his knees in the street.

“The man holding the gun—had you ever seen him before?”

“Yes.”

“Who was he?”

“Mr. Corey.”

Tasha’s soft-spoken description of Miller as “Mr. Corey” is powerful. The contrast between the respectful 10-year old and the murderous 21-year old represents the wide gulf between everything that is right with the world and everything that is wrong. And both of them live on the same street. I puzzle at a humanity that can produce such disparate outcomes from the same starting line.

I ask, “How do you know Mr. Corey?”

“He lives in my neighborhood.”

“Do you see Mr. Corey in the courtroom?”

I move for the first time to create a sight