The line stays silent as I process the news about my friend. The brutal world I inhabit claims another victim. I fight the good fight, but it is no use. I cannot win.
“I’m sorry,” Scott says to break the quiet.
“What do we know?”
“Not much. I got a call from the FBI a few hours ago about a body found in the East Palisades area of the Chattahoochee National River Park.”
I interrupt, “Is that in the city limits?”
“Barely. I got the call and made my way over there. Very secluded part of the park. I arrived and there he was, lying on the ground with the gun next to his body. He’d been there for some time. The feds think maybe a day, yesterday afternoon probably. Since it is federal property, the FBI technically has the lead. It’s too dark now to do much of anything. They’ll be out early tomorrow morning to see if any evidence is about, and I’ll join them.”
The gun next to the body throws me for a loop. I had assumed murder.
“Suicide?”
Lara’s eyes go wide. I try to make Sam for suicide. That night at The Varsity, he seemed more together than at any other point after Sara Barton’s murder, but that was months ago now. His mood was always one that swam with the tide—up when things were good and down when things were bad. Maybe the tide turned against him again.
Scott answers, “Don’t know yet. We’re not ruling out homicide. The FBI stopped doing gunshot residue testing about ten years ago, and we can’t tell yet if Sam fired the gun or not. The feds are letting us perform the autopsy. I’ll make sure that Cecil tests for the residue. We’ll have a better idea then.”
“The feds going to be a problem?”
“I doubt it. I don’t think they really care and would probably welcome us handling most of it. They’re not murder guys. Now if he had chopped down a tree in their park, they would be all over it. Him being dead under the tree doesn’t bother them as much.”
I agree. The federal connection to the case is marginal. The FBI will likely defer to us. Murder or suicide, the case against Barton just got bushwhacked. All Millwood has to do is convince one juror that reasonable doubt exists. With another dead body muddying the waters, his job becomes that much easier.
I ask, “Does Liesa know?”
“The FBI told her an hour ago. I don’t know how she took it. Should I go try to talk to her?”
“No. Let her grieve. She has her children to think about.”
“Okay. She might better respond to you anyway. You coming up?”
“Not tonight. I’ll head that way in the morning.”
We hang up. I think about Liesa and our disastrous interview following Sara Barton’s murder. I doubt she would respond well to me at all. The thought is short-lived. Lara pounces on me for information.
“Who killed himself? Bernard?” Something akin to hope shows in her.
“No. Sam Wilkins. And we don’t know yet if it was suicide.”
“Sara’s lawyer? The one who found the body?”
“Yeah.”
She looks confused, which matches my own feelings. Her confusion soon gives way to agitation.
She asks, “What does this mean for Bernard?”
“It complicates things.”
The answer doesn’t agree with her. She stands up and stews around the room. I remain numb. The bodies keep piling up around me.
“‘Why does it complicate things? You still have the gun.”
“The more dead bodies, the more Millwood can divert the eyes of the jurors off the core of the case—Barton’s murder of your sister. That’s what we want to talk about. Now Millwood gets to talk about something else.”
I pretend to be Millwood.
“‘Sam Wilkins is dead. That’s interesting. Sam Wilkins had the opportunity to kill Sara Barton. He’s the one who discovered the body. Why was he even there at that time of night? That’s curious. Did he kill her and then kill himself out of guilt over his terrible deed?’ Stuff like that is the problem. It complicates things. But you’re right, we still have the gun. We still have a lot of things.”
I try to sound confident, but doubt seeps into my voice. The threat to the case is deeper than I let on. I know something that Lara does not. Sam was sleeping with her sister. Does Millwood know? Scott never memorialized his interview of Sam on the night of the murder, which means that no written record of Sam’s admission exists. Scott planned on writing it down but never had a chance in the hurried aftermath of the discovery of Sara Barton’s body. By the time he circled back around to it, we had Barton in our sights and decided the less said about Sam the better. But Scott won’t lie on the stand. If Millwood asks the right questions, the information may come out unless I can prevent it on hearsay grounds. That is a battle for another day.
Lara screams, “This is crazy. Just because some guy who barely knows my sister shoots himself, Bernard may walk? You promised me you would get him!”
She smashes her wine glass against the fireplace. The glass is part of my Mom’s favorite set of crystal. Mom will notice it missing within five minutes of returning home. That’s not an insignificant problem in my world. But the trouble before me is a more pressing concern. I dare not tell Lara about Sam and her sister. That news would push her over the edge.
While I work out the new math in my head, Lara paces like a caged tiger in heat. The back-and-forth progression is dizzying. I need her to calm down and think straight.
“Relax,” I caution.
“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 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 thousands of pages of other investigative materials we turned over to Millwood. Even a good lawyer could miss it. Liesa is certainly due a lucky break. But the hunch is that the wheel of fortune will turn against her again. No one has ever made any money betting that Millwood won’t be prepared.
I ask, “Anyone seen Liesa yet?”
“I stopped by. She didn’t want to talk. Asked me to leave.”
“Her husband did just die.”
“Sure. You gonna take a go at her?”
“Nah. No point. She’s not a talker. I’ll see her at the funeral, see what shakes out. Until then let her bury Sam and comfort her children. We need to avoid antagonizing her. She may be a witness at the trial.”
“You think?”
“Her car was near the Barton house that night. If Millwood figures that out, all bets are off. He’ll figure a way to drag Liesa in.”
Scott puts the remaining beers in the fridge and heads for the door. “Two and a half weeks,” he says. I nod and contemplate the work yet to be done. I’ll sputter to the finish line, even as I worry about my hold on events. But I can’t wash my hands of this case. I drove north today to convict Bernard Barton and stay close to Lara Landrum. And that’s what I’ll do.
A few weeks ago, I bought Lara and me burner phones to facilitate surreptitious communication. After Scott departs, I text her to meet me at the condo immediately.
The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) Page 16