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

child. I loathe murder with every fiber of my being. I’m not a murderer. If you ever suggest such an idea to me again, I’ll indict you myself. Do you understand?”

“I wasn’t serious. You’re the one who brought it up.”

“Like hell.”

“Open the garage.”

“Do you understand?”

“More than you know.”

She walks the path to the garage, leaving me stranded in the doorway. I have no choice but to follow. She slinks behind the wheel as I lift the garage door. The crispness of the morning reminds me that I’m only in my shirt sleeves. Another storm is coming. She drives off spinning gravel along the way.

***

The hospital visit is short. I tell Mom about Sam. He stayed with us one weekend at the house when a few friends and I went to see UGA play at Auburn. Mom digs for details, but I have few to offer.

“He was such a nice boy,” Mom observes.

Was he? Am I? Is anyone? Maybe once upon a time, but the detours of life divert a person in a direction he never intends to go. Sam is dead, and Lara apparently wants me to kill Barton. I should get in my car and head west. Americans have always gone west to pursue a new world. I should drive west and forever forget this sordid business. The world is dirty, and I cannot make it clean.

But the current of fate is too strong. I drive north to Atlanta, back to the city that is now my home. The fatalist in me needs to see the story through. I have no attic in the city in which to slip away—no place to call all my own. I live alone, but the house belongs to a dead woman and a dead child. I have a condo, but another woman rules that space. I own much but have little. I could go to the woods as Sam did. Was he alone? I don’t know what to believe anymore. A good lawyer can persuade himself of anything—that’s what we are trained to do. I fear that I have convinced myself of a great many things that are not true.

I make it to my house. I should call Scott, get an update, see where things stand. But I don’t. I crumble on the bed—Amber’s bed—and try to outsleep the storm.

***

Scott brings pizza and beer over in the evening—the pizza for both of us, the beer for him. I feel terrible. Long naps should revitalize. With me, they debilitate. The sleep still covers me as I stagger around the house. Coffee at night is a bad idea in the long term, but the short term demands it. That’s my life right now—surviving the moment, even if the tools of survival carry with them a worse future. I check for messages from Lara and find none.

“You look like hell,” Scott observes.

“Great detective work there.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Have I ever wanted to talk about it?”

“Good point.”

We devour the pizza, kicking the can of healthy eating further down the road. The coffee leads me back to the land of the living. The beer works to take Scott away. Two middle-aged white guys, no longer married, separated from their children—the picture isn’t exactly a Hallmark moment. The depressing tableau falls so short of my expectations for life that I’m left questioning the entirety of my existence. What is the bloody point? The shock of Lara’s suggestion that I kill Barton has worn off. The anger dissipates into carnality. I could be mounting Lara right now and losing myself inside of her. That would be something—some Epicurean reason to be. The lust rises.

I ask, “Did you learn anything useful about Sam in the light of day?”

“Don’t know. Some presence of gunshot residue is indicated, more than trace amounts, less than full blown certainty he fired the gun. But remember he was out there overnight. Some of it would’ve degenerated, so no telling. Cecil has the body now. We’re looking at three or four in the afternoon as the time of death. One interesting thing—we found a second bullet lodged in a tree in the vicinity, a little farther back from the clearing where the body was. Ballistics is running tests to see if we have a match.”

“How did you find that?”

“Total miracle. One of the feds is wandering around outside the perimeter, sees something weird, takes a closer look. Voila! A second bullet. Could be nothing, could be everything. I don’t know. The whole situation rubs me the wrong way.”

I agree. Everything is all wrong—suicide, murder, the second bullet, the location, everything. I feel trapped in a maze devoid of exits. I don’t even know whether I need it to be murder or suicide for the case. We’ve entered a realm where every possibility holds the potential for ruin. That my friend’s cold body now lies under Cecil’s bright lights is almost an afterthought. That bullet in the second tree gets me to thinking.

“Assuming a match, you think the second bullet suggests murder?”

“Uh-huh. One kill shot. One stray shot with Sam’s hand around the gun.”

“Barton?”

“Who knows? I don’t like the guy, but … who knows? No suicide note. I think Barton would’ve faked a note from the dead man confessing to Sara’s murder. No point otherwise for him to do it. Is this Sam thing gonna hurt our case?”

“Probably, but at least Sam won’t have to testify now. He was stiff-arming me on trial prep. We were supposed to finally meet later this week. Millwood would’ve sliced and diced him if he caught a whiff of Sam’s deceit. I’m not sad to avoid that heartache.”

“Maybe you killed Sam then.”

“I have an indestructible alibi—my mother.”

“I’ll scratch you off the list.”

I reflect on Sam’s widow, Liesa. Her connection to the case is buried on page three of a document listing the cars that traveled through the traffic light that night—one name on a sheet of paper with a bunch of other names. That document is buried in