The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1)

by Lance McMillian

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll spare you the details, but you need to see one thing.”

  He hands me a USB drive with my name handwritten on it.

  “Some video files on there. I watched a little bit before turning it off. No one else knows about it. No one.” His voice has a special emphasis as he says these last two words.

  “What is it?”

  “Why don’t you watch it and see for yourself?”

  I continue to look at the little item in my hand, as if it were some mystifying object from the far-off future. I don’t like the direction of the conversation.

  Scott continues, “I need you to promise me something. Like I said, I only watched part of it. I’ll let you watch the whole thing. I need you to use good judgment here. If there is evidence relevant to the Lara Landrum murder case on there somewhere, I need it back. If not, as far as I’m concerned, that USB drive does not exist. Understand?”

  I nod—starting to comprehend.

  As he leaves, he says, “I’m cataloguing evidence the rest of the afternoon. If I need to catalogue what’s in your hand, let me know. Otherwise …”

  He does not finish the thought.

  I lock my office door, put the USB into my computer, and hit play. The empty bedroom of a Midtown Atlanta condo fills the screen. Soon Lara Landrum and a man enter the shot and begin having sex. I put the man under the microscope to decipher his state of mind. But he is unreadable. I study the woman for signs of deception and deceit, some clue as to the massive fraud she is orchestrating. Nothing. The storage drive contains two similar scenes, the man making love to a woman who is already dead. The last video file runs out and turns to black, leaving nothing but accusation in its wake.

  Ever the lawyer, I note that Georgia Code Section 16-11-62 makes filming someone with hidden video cameras a felony. Prosecution is unlikely. The perpetrator has bigger problems on her hands, and the victim does not wish to pursue charges. The recording fails to shed any light on the identity of Lara Landrum’s murderer and may safely be destroyed.

  I drop the USB drive on the floor and smash it with my shoe, using my heel to crush the grinds into a vanishing dust. I bag the remains and throw them in a trashcan down the hall, far from me, pushing the contents down deep, just to be safe. Do other copies exist? The murderer’s earlier threats about exposing me take on a new light. Maybe I am not as prepared to accept the consequences of my actions as I let on. But maybe I won’t have a choice.

  The sin we think is done in secret never is.

  ***

  Ella muses, “She has a way with men, doesn’t she?” The question is rhetorical. Ella’s tone does not carry judgment. She simply states a fact.

  I wonder, “How could I have been so wrong about so much?”

  “You’re not the first man to be led astray chasing some tail.”

  I guess so. We sit together in my office. The afternoon winds down. Exhausted by the end of another murder trial, we say little. Ella is here as a friend, worried about my mental state, watching out for me even now, despite everything. The fading light slips past the slits in the blinds, creating a hazy halo in the room. The dust particles dance in the sun’s rays.

  Ella wants to know, “How did you figure it out?”

  “Compare and contrast. The woman in the autopsy photos had a tiny scar on her left breast. The woman in the video with Brice did not. I’ve seen the video and the autopsy photos 100 times each, and the front page of the autopsy report notes the scar. The proof was right in front of my nose the whole time.”

  “Plus you had independent corroboration that today’s witness had no such scar on her breast.”

  The tone is neutral, with the faintest hint of bemusement around the mouth. But yes, my intimate knowledge of the living twin’s perfect breasts helped to crack the case. The mountain theft of Sam’s furtive photos of a naked Sara Barton clinched it. Sam’s crime, combined with my crime, solved the crime. The murderer’s slip of the tongue about Sam shooting himself—her one mistake—put me on the right scent. Ella remains in the dark about these last particulars, and here darkness is a friend to both of us. I continue the story.

  “From there I pulled the thread. Sara Barton dies, and Lara Landrum drops out of all her movies and avoids contact with anyone from her old life.

  “The 911 call—who first told us about it? Lara Landrum the day after the murder. Why did Sara unlock the bedroom door if her husband was going to kill her? Why tell Officer Hendrix everything was a misunderstanding? Because she wanted the audio of the 911 call but still needed Barton to stay in the marriage long enough to get framed. And when Hendrix left that night? Barton says he and Sara had sex for the first time in months. She was keeping him close lest he walk out and defeat the whole plan.

  “The photo of the bruised back—every single thing we know about it comes from one person.

  “The gun—Barton claims Sara wanted it, and she made him load it for her. A playground near the murder scene is a stupid place to ditch a gun, unless the murderer wanted the gun to be found. But why? To allow the police to discover Barton’s fingerprints on the bullets.

  “The missing cell phone on the day of the murder—a wife could hide her husband’s phone with ease.

  “Now think back to the night of the murder. Sara told Sam to meet at ten to ensure that the body was discovered while Barton was out of pocket with her, destroying any chance Barton had at an alibi. She made Brice promise not to come over that night in case he messed up her plans. And remember Barton’s testimony, ‘Lara’ wasn’t there when he arrived at her home that night. She arrived later. She was too busy killing her sister.”

  Ella mulls it all over—connecting the dots as I did Friday night. She says, “Amazing. Something was always off with her. But what about the sex tape with Brice?”

  “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. I don’t see how she could’ve arranged being filmed. Best I figure she planned to use Brice as the trigger in some way. Jeff Yarber told me that Sara and Brice were already dirty dancing in full view of everyone before sneaking off to fool around. She planned to flaunt her affair with Brice to get Barton to bite. The video just did most of the heavy lifting for her.”

  She chews on it some more and adds, “So she slept with Brice to give Barton a motive for murder. She slept with Sam to make sure that he came over to the house that night. Posing as Lara, she slept with Barton to steal his alibi right from under him. She slept with you—why?”

  “Because I was an easy mark.”

  The truth hurts. We both ponder it awhile in mournful silence.

  Barton survived a close call. The certainty of his guilt never wavered in my mind. The evidence demanded it. Now every conviction I’ve ever secured screams at me about injustice. Have I always been so wrong?

  The remembrance of murder trials past breaks when Ella sizes me up with a deadly earnestness. She doesn’t want to talk about the case anymore. Something else is on her mind.

  She asks, “Do you love her?”

  “I love you.”

  The spontaneous response is pure, unfiltered, unscripted. That it escaped from my heart reveals again how little I understand myself. The old gold prospectors in north Georgia would pan for treasure by allowing rushing waters to clear the clutter of distraction and debris, leaving behind the one true thing. The river of life does the same for us by sifting the wheat from the chaff. What remains are the people who love us the most. But whether the discovery is one of gold or identifying the individuals who matter above all others, a trail of tears follows us like a cloud in the sky you can never escape.

  In a loud whisper, Ella Kemp—the woman I love—says, “You can’t have me.”

  “I know.”

  A good woman is hard to find and easy to lose. The pain behind Ella’s words is evident. The deep freeze of the recent past melts away, but she will never let me get close to her again. The broken trust can never be welded together without the fault line of that original
crack showing.

  Ella asks, “What are we going to do?”

  I stare into the abyss of an uncertain future. I miss my wife and son desperately. Still.

  I answer, “I’ll resign. You should have my job. I’ll talk to Bobby.”

  “I don’t want that. This job is your life.”

  “How’s that working out for me?”

  We laugh together—the moment providing a needed dose of shared humor. But time is ephemeral. Ella waits for a moment before becoming serious.

  “For the past few months, I’ve been looking for a new job. A business litigation firm in town needs someone with significant trial experience. They’ve made me an offer. It’s triple the money. I think I’m going to take it.”

  We try not to look at each other. Life is a product of our choices. This exquisite creature stood ready to love me forever—the promising foundation to rebuild the man that once was. I chose a different path.

  “Ella, you don’t—”

  Scott bursts in. The tension between Ella and me releases. The interruption does us good. Scott wears a death mask.

  Ella asks, “Who died?”

  Her attempt to lighten the mood combusts before taking flight. Scott’s face jumps from misery to horror. Somebody did die.

  Ella and I study him, fearing the worst, without even knowing what the worst could be. I see it at once. Sara Barton killed herself. She figured out the engineering and hung herself in a county jail cell. The certainty that I am right provides a cold, remorseless comfort that her death cleanses me from my sins—like a murderer who breathes a sigh of relief when another man is executed for his crimes.

  Failed by his typical strong voice, Scott hoarsely delivers the news.

  “Just got a call. Tasha Favors was shot and killed in Clayton County a little while ago. Execution-style. A piece of duct tape covering her mouth. No witnesses to report yet.”

  The words don’t register at first. I remain stuck on the blond woman. But Ella’s scream forces me to confront the truth. A flush of heat burns me from head to toe and strips me of all physical feeling. Scott sits down, unable to support his weight. I stagger up, trying to navigate the task of standing with no mental awareness of my legs. My mind howls, “Tasha!” Dizzy. I have to get out of this toxic place. I smash my phone against the wall, wanting no more connection to this brutal awful world. That beautiful, brave little girl. Dead. Corey Miller’s smug face flashes through my mind. Q-Bone’s parting words to me ring out: “That little girl is going to get got.” May both suffer the eternal tortures of the damned. I make for the door.

  Down the hallway, Bobby steps out of his office and temporarily stops my escape.

  “Did you hear about the Favors girl?”

  Tasha, her name is Tasha.

  Bobby looks at me and knows the answer.

  “There could be some bad press on that, but I’m hoping the news of the Barton trial will drown it out. We need to change the strategy we talked about earlier. I need you. Are you ready to do a press conference on Barton yet? And we need to make clear that the Favors girl was not killed in Fulton County, but in another jurisdiction. Let Clayton County take the heat.”

  The utter vulgarity. I need fresh air. I walk away with no intention of ever coming back. That beautiful, brave little girl. Dead. And the politicians want to cover it up.

  “Hey! Where are you going? I need you on this.”

  I reach the street. I start to breathe again in the smog-infested freshness of the air. I walk toward the parking garage. A reporter sees me and shouts my name. She and her cameraman launch a mad sprint. I hurry into traffic to get away. Near misses. Horns blow. I’m across and still alive. I see the street sign out of the corner of my eye—Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The realization stabs me in the face. Another person gunned down by the hateful and dark rage of the human heart. Amber. Cale. Lara Landrum. Sam. Tasha. Every murder case I’ve ever tried. Dr. King. Too much death.

  That beautiful, brave little girl. Dead.

  I drive off into the abyss.

  EPILOGUE

  Tasha’s murder drove me to the end of myself. I now sit before the graves of my wife and son. Dried mud cakes my dress pants, and my black, well-heeled shoes are soaked with the wetness of a recent rain. I came to this spot because it was the only place I could think to go. Running from death brought me to a graveyard.

  Anguished hours pass. I feel deader than the corpses that surround me. Memories of Amber and Cale flood forward from the past. The journey from the white wedding dress to the red blood on the living room floor is a story of joy and pain. For the first time since the murders, I long to remember the good. Sara Barton is another matter. I wallow in a ravaging self-disappointment, unsure of whether it was love, lust, or loneliness that made me so blind. The parents of Sara Barton murdered an innocent girl, and the wreckage from their long-ago crimes keeps collecting fresh victims. But abuse only explains. It cannot excuse. The human toll remains. My friend Sam is still dead, and Sara killed him.

  The tears come in torrents when I think of Tasha. I picture her scared little eyes at the end, distraught over humanity’s casual cruelty. The duct tape over her mouth sickens me. The senseless violence that defines my adult life shows no sign of abating. The blood-dimmed tide is everywhere, the ceremony of innocence drowned—and I am too small to stop the evil.

  Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. My heart cries out, “O God, O God, O God.” I am broken.

  I stay through the night, mired in the mud, nowhere else to go. In the midst of my sinking depression, a voice among the trees whispers, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Looking at the headstones of my wife and son, the promise is a hard one to trust. I played my part faithfully before, only to receive unimaginable suffering in return. Why should I believe again? But the tug of repentance pushes me to an unavoidable decision point.

  Change or die.

  A deep tiredness permeates me in a way that goes far beyond the physical. My soul seeks respite, and dying feels easier than change. Two roads diverge—the good and the bad. A deep breath grabs hold of my lungs. I wrestle with God in the early hours and lose. The language of salvation calls to me. You are a new creation in Christ. I want to believe.

  I stand and stretch, eager to tread the road less traveled, praying that God’s forgiveness will allow me to forgive myself. The moment is short-lived. The sense of closure that brought me to my feet seconds before evaporates into the mist. The same small, still voice speaks in a soft undertone, “You’re not finished.”

  The confusing words return me to the sacred ground. The mystery eludes my grasp. Frustration that I am missing something obvious takes root. The harder I strain, the more I flail. The voice commands: “Be still.” I obey. The stirring, at first faint, graduates from a simmer into a boil. The clear instructions despair me because I want no taste of the bitter cup being offered.

  “I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  Dawn beckons, but one last step remains. I open my heart to Corey Miller, Q-Bone, and even Mr. Smith. To each of them, I whisper, “I forgive you.” The words are few, but the healing power behind them restores a measure of myself lost over these past two years. Whether they heard my grant of absolution doesn’t matter. Forgiveness isn’t for them. It is for me. The wisdom of Dr. King rings out across the generations: “Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

  Amen.

  Nature’s morning rituals signal the start of the fresh day—the hummingbird nourishing itself off the moist wildflowers, a rooster crowing two times in the distance, the perspiring dew. The brightness of the growing sun slips through the cracks among the trees to reach the graveyard’s edge. Footsteps beat a tentative path in my direction.

  “Chance?”

  Scott calls out to me, halting his movement a respectful distance away, hesitant to invade the space around me and the graves of my family. I wait to
answer, eager to savor the last vestiges of the solitude. I finally turn and give him an acknowledgment. He keeps his distance.

  “Ella and I have been looking for you. We’ve been worried. Have long have you been here?”

  “Long enough.”

  He comes closer and stands beside me. He, too, wears the same clothes as yesterday. We contemplate life together in silence. Rushing over here from the courthouse, I didn’t take the time to get flowers for my wife and son. I’ll come back soon with a batch of white roses, Amber’s favorite. I read once that grave robbers these days steal cemetery flowers to sell for their own profit. At the time, I judged the perpetrators with Puritanical vigor, railing at the depths of human nastiness. Now I know that in the heart of every person lies the ingredients of a criminal. I have no stones left to hurl at other sinners. The rooster crows for the third time.

  Scott asks, “Are you okay?”

  “For the first time in years. Maybe my life.”

  Standing in the shadows, the chill of the morning hugs me close. But brightness is chasing the shade away, and the warmth of the sun is mere steps. On this morning, I cling to hope. Grace to oneself and to others transforms the dead into the living. My legs resist movement at first, battling with the hesitancy I feel about returning to a dark world. Except this time will be different. From the broken rise the redeemed.

  I go forward and walk into the Light.

  The End

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am beyond thankful to a number of people whose invaluable input made The Murder of Sara Barton a much better book. First, Nancy Boren—or as she has been known to me since I was 15 years old, Mrs. Boren. Nancy Boren is living proof that teachers make a difference. In the two years she taught me high school English, Mrs. Boren pushed me to read Shakespeare, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hawthorne, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Orwell, Harper Lee, and Arthur Conan Doyle. More than any other person in my life, her influence nourished in me a hunger to be both an avid reader and a better writer. I would not be where I am today without her. Her specific contributions to The Murder of Sara Barton include catching my numerous grammar mistakes, providing invaluable input as a non-lawyer to ensure I didn’t leave readers stuck in the legal weeds, and being frank when parts of the story simply didn’t work. Her input improved the novel significantly.