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

“Don’t tell me to relax. Would you relax if the man who murdered your family was about to walk?”

“Barton ain’t walking.”

I say it with more grim determination than I feel. Millwood is going to have me dancing around that courtroom putting out more fires than Smokey the Bear. If you’re explaining, you’re losing—and I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do about how Sam ended up in the woods with a bullet in his head.

Lara mocks, “‘Barton ain’t walking.’ Please! What do you know? I don’t see why I should believe you. You’re going to screw it up somehow.”

That gets my goat, and I try to set her straight without losing my cool.

“I know you’re upset—”

“Don’t patronize me! Sara’s dead. Do you know what that means? She’s my twin. My twin! You hurt one of us, you hurt both of us. We’re conjoined forever. Now she’s gone. Dead! I’m torn apart here, living with half my body missing. I can barely function. And that bastard is going to get away with it—just like he has always gotten away with things his entire life. Men like him are never held to account.”

The monologue complete, frenzied eyes issue a challenge, daring me to contradict her. I answer with silence, willing the storm to pass. I retrieve a broom and dust pan to clean up the shards of the broken wine glass littering the floor. The busy work fails to deliver any cathartic relief for either of us. She continues to stare at me with unnerving intensity as I go about my sweeping. The coolness under pressure I exhibit in the courtroom deserts me before this hostile audience of one. I finally snap.

“What?”

“You need to fix this.”

Bloody hell. I can’t raise Sam from the dead. I inspect the floor, unwilling to meet her eyes for fear of receiving another scolding. A feeling of stress wells up in my body, and I inch closer to turning myself over to the growing anger within me. I gulp a deep breath to beat back the pressure. One of us has to remain sane.

She demands, “Well?”

Another deep breath.

“There’s a reason I’ve never lost a trial. I’m good. There’s a reason I’m the chief homicide prosecutor in Atlanta. I’m good. No trial goes perfectly to script. Complications arise. When they do, I adjust and deal with them. This news is a complication. I’ll adjust and deal with it. I know this situation is emotional for you. I get it, I truly do. But you’ve got to trust me. I’m not going to lose. Bernard Barton is not going to escape justice.”

“You can’t spin your way out of Sam Wilkins’ death.”

“Wanna bet? A wife goes to a divorce lawyer seeking a divorce. Shortly thereafter, the wife and divorce lawyer are dead. Who’s the most likely suspect?”

She smiles and concedes, “The husband.”

That settles her down. We finish the night in my childhood bed—seeking refuge in the violent motion of our bodies rollicking against each other. As she rocks on top of me, I stare at a small crack in the ceiling that has decorated my room for eons. I used to lie here and ponder that crack, impatiently waiting to get out of this house to kickstart my life. If someone back then could’ve convinced that boy that one day he would be having sex in this same room with one of the most beautiful women in the world, the boy would’ve been happy. But reality always falls short of the dream.

26

The next day I wake up to a woman in a bad mood. Lara scowls at me with such accusation that I might’ve killed Sam myself. And maybe I did. Sharing my old twin bed through the night failed both of us. We carry our tiredness around like an anchor attached to our leg. I go through the motions of the morning, keeping quiet in the hope of avoiding the brunt of it. The silence only seems to stoke her building fury. I slide the magic elixir of coffee to her across the kitchen island. She doesn’t throw it in my face, but neither does the darkness lift. The innocent wonder of roasting s’mores together seems lost forever as though two different people shared that experience.

Lara barks, “What are you going to do now?”

“Visit my mother at the hospital on the way out of town. Drive back to Atlanta. See if anyone knows how Sam Wilkins died.”

“That’s not enough. Bernard is going to get away with it. You need to do more.”

“Well, I guess I could go ahead and kill him myself, and we won’t even have to worry about the trial. Would that be enough?”

“It would solve a lot of problems.”

I pretend to chuckle. She doesn’t. Having avoided looking at her for the last hour, I switch gears and check her face for signs of levity. My skin turns cold. She gives no hint—not even a sliver of a millimeter—that she is kidding. Her eyes stare right back at me and demand an answer. Murder? Is she insane? I start cleaning dishes to bring order out of the chaos. Lara watches me like a hawk. I am wide awake.

“Nuts,” I say.

“Do you love me?”

“Not enough to do that. Pack up your things. It’s time to leave.”

“I’ll help you do it.”

“Pack!”

I continue the process of putting Mom’s house back in order. A frustrated Lara lingers a bit but retreats upstairs in the face of my conscious indifference to her. I attack the cleaning with a ferociousness I’ve never shown to household chores before. Ten minutes later, she enters the kitchen with the bags by her side. The hateful glare she unfurls would’ve staggered me at any previous point in our relationship, but not now. She moves toward the back door.

“Wait!”

We face each other like two gunslingers about to drawdown. I pull first and opt for indignant calm.

“My wife and son were shot and left to die in their own blood. My 4-year old boy. A