To my surprise, he stands up and heads for the door. I try a final tactic.
“Do you know what Liesa asked me?”
“What?”
“She asked me if you killed Sara Barton. Why would she do that?”
Sam looks genuinely perplexed.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Did Liesa?”
He leaves without answering. I pick up the phone to call Scott.
***
Scott obtains a search warrant from a judge shortly after getting off the phone with me. Less than three hours after Sam leaves my office, Scott and his team scour the Wilkins home. Another group of detectives picks apart Sam’s office. Scott’s methods are thorough, and the searches figure to take a few hours. Wrapping my head around the possibility that Sam or Liesa might be a murderer disorients the rest of my day. I remember the law school years of our youth. We were young, full of energy, ready to take on the world. From where I now sit, the world won.
***
Late afternoon, I hear back from Scott. He says, “We might have the gun in the Barton case.”
“You found the gun at Sam’s house?”
“No.”
Scott tells me the full story. Two days after the murder, a neighbor found a gun in a playground down the street from the Barton residence. The neighbor called the police to collect the weapon, but the officer who answered the call failed to see the potential connection between the gun and our crime. The gun was slated to go to storage when the sergeant processing the weapon put two and two together. Scott received the message about the gun while searching Sam’s house.
“Gun trace?”
“We ran the serial numbers and came up with nothing.”
“Prints?”
“Don’t know. They’re testing now. Ballistics after that. Maybe the murderer will fall into our lap.”
Here’s hoping. We have the prints of Barton, Sam, Brice, and Liesa all in the fingerprint database. All attorneys must get fingerprinted before obtaining a license to practice law. If any of their prints show on the gun, we’ll know it.
“How did the search go?”
“Nothing. We dusted some prints and will run them, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. The wife is a piece of work, a real Ice Queen. Read every word of the search warrant. Grabbed her purse and tried to get into her car to leave. I told her she couldn’t touch the car until we searched it. She asked how was she supposed to get around. I told her she could walk anywhere her legs could take her, but that I would drive her to the station if she had something to say.”
“How did that go over?”
“She started walking down the street without another word—proud as a peacock. But the search was a bust. I talked to my guys who searched Sam’s office. Same story. Nothing. Sam sulked in a corner and looked like he was going to cry. I know who wears the pants in that family. I’m surprised he had the nerve to fool around on her.”
“I’m sure Liesa shares your surprise.”
“We didn’t find any files related to the Barton divorce, which seems strange. They have to be somewhere.”
“You’re not supposed to read those anyway. Attorney-client privilege. It’s kind of a thing.”
“Don’t tell me stuff like that. I like to have deniability on whether I know something’s allowed or not.”
We talk some more about the potential murder weapon. A playground is a strange place to dump a gun. The woods or a sewer would be better for making a gun disappear. A fleeing murderer would also want to remove the weapon farther away from the house—unless the murderer didn’t flee the scene.
I think again of my friend Sam.
***
Despite the fast-moving events of the day, Lara Landrum’s innocent kiss on the cheek consumes more than its fair share of my mental energy. That the touch of those lips to my face would get me thinking untoward thoughts about her doesn’t surprise. I’m not dead yet, and Lara is a beautiful woman. I instruct my mind to change the channel. The impossibility of the situation means meeting her again off the clock is a non-starter. Prosecutors and witnesses don’t mix.
***
My cell sounds later that night while I’m still in the office. I smile at the caller ID and wonder about the mood on the other end.
I answer, “Hello?”
“It’s Sam.”
“Long day?”
“Shut up. You proved your point. You’re a big man with a lot of power. I get it. I still don’t want you talking to Liesa. I’m her lawyer, and you and the police are forbidden from talking to her outside of my presence. But that’s not why I called. I have something for you. Can we meet?”
Sigh. The thought of meeting with him again makes my head hurt. Needless drama bores me, and Sam seems intent on shoveling it out in spades.
“What do you have for me? I don’t have time chasing some fool’s errand.”
“It’s worth it. I promise. The Varsity in 30 minutes? We can grab a bite to eat.”
Sam’s promises don’t hold much weight with me at the moment, but the mention of The Varsity reminds me that I’m hungry. His suggestion of such a public place also lessens the possibility that he has completely snapped and intends to harm me.
I nevertheless ask, “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”
He laughs.
“Man, I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”
“Good. I’ll see you there.”
8
“Why are we here, Sam?”
The Varsity stays busy, and tonight reflects that norm. Sam and I sit in the back room with all the windows, affording us front-row seats of the cars charging along the interstate. The room is the only one in the restaurant without a television blaring sports. The mood here is quieter, more private. Sam pulls out a thick file from his briefcase and slaps it down on the table.
I ask, “What’s this?”
“My investigative file on Bernard Barton.”
The file is thick. Sam now has my full attention, and the interest on my face pleases him. Transparent as ever, Sam’s eagerness to now cooperate shows that he is up to something. I remain cautious.
He says, “I knew you would be interested. You think it’s the husband, huh? I do, too. I want you to have the file. Use it in whatever way you wish.”
We take the measure of each other across a cafeteria-style booth. Three chili dogs sit on Sam’s plate, a large Coke to the side. My greasy bacon cheeseburger and cup of water look healthy by comparison. Sam takes a big bite.
I don’t reach for the file quite yet. Evidence is my stock in trade, but this isn’t going to be some quid pro quo. Sam can turn over the file if he wants, but I’m not buying if he’s looking to sell.
“You can give this to me, and I’ll gladly take it, no strings attached. But you are still on the suspect list. Liesa is still on the suspect list. If either of you killed Sara Barton, I’ll nail you. That’s a promise.”
“I’ve known you long enough to know all of that.”
“Good.”
With the terms understood, I move the file away from Sam to my side of the table. Consuming the file will take hours of work, and the thought fills me with a manic joy. I ask, “Why don’t you give me a preview of what I can expect to find in here?”
While chewing, Sam taps the file with his index finger as he washes the food down with the Coke. Fresh mustard snails its way down his tie. He gives me the low down.
“Well, in lucrative divorces I always like to get a private detective working on the case. You never know what will shake out. Some of the stuff I’ve discovered over the years, you wouldn’t believe. My go-to man is good. Ex-cop. You’d like him. Seems like our Bernard likes to gamble, except he’s not very good at it. Goes to Vegas every few weeks, always taking his mistress, Monica Haywood. Well, the losses keep adding up, $763k at last count. Now Bernard makes good money, about $1 million a year, but he doesn’t take home near that much because of Uncle Sam, so he’s struggling. There’s something
else. The Bartons had life insurance policies on each other. Bernard stands to collect $5 million now that Sara is dead.”
My reaction borders on disbelief. The treasure trove Sam has laid upon my lap sounds too good to be true.
“How do I know everything in here is on the up-and-up? Maybe you’re just feeding me a bunch of bull to cast suspicion elsewhere.”
“I’m not playing you. It’s all documented. Subpoena the casinos. Check flight records. There’s a paper trail.”
I believe him. Part of this meeting is no doubt a hustle. Sam wants to direct my focus to what’s behind door number one and away from doors two and three. I’m not blind to the ulterior motives working in his brain. But the information figures to stand on its own two feet. I have another question.
“The search of your home and office didn’t turn up any files on the Barton divorce. Where were you hiding this?”
“A safe place.”
His proud smile tells me that this non-answer is as far as I’m going to get. This version of Sam presents better than whiny Sam, slippery Sam, or angry Sam. By acting like a lawyer again, he is at least playing the right game. But I’m curious about the reasons behind the change.
“You seemed to have regained your wits about you. What changed since this morning?”
“I talked to Yarber.”
That Sam would reach out to Jeff Yarber, Barton’s partner at Marsh & McCabe, makes sense. Yarber is a friend to both of us and has been doling out levelheaded advice since grade school. I wish Sam had sought his counsel sooner.
Sam continues, “I needed a disinterested opinion. You know sometimes you get so close to something that you can’t see the forest for the trees? That was me. After our argument and the police search, I was on tilt. Liesa was livid. I was livid. It was dark, man. Then Yarber’s face just popped into my mind. Out of the blue. And I’m like, ‘I need to call him.’ And I did.”
“And what did Yarber tell you?”
“He said, ‘Sam, you’ve known the guy a long time. He’s not going to back down. He isn’t some opposing counsel in a two-bit divorce case who you can bluff with a bunch of huffing and puffing. He prosecutes murderers and sends really bad people to death row. Don’t fight him.’”
“Good advice.”
“Yeah, well, you’re still a jerk.”
Sam can blame me until the day he dies. He’s the one who lied to the police, he’s the one who slept with a client, he’s the one who cheated on his wife. His wounds are self-inflicted.
We stand to leave. Our business transacted, lack of interest in small talk is mutual. We loiter together outside on the sidewalk, estranged friends who just negotiated an uneasy truce. The lights from inside give me a good view of his face. Good old Sam. His inability to lie convincingly—whether about Becky Johnson or in poker—seizes on me.
“Did you kill her, Sam?”
He winces in mental pain, a helpless expression of disbelief that I keep pushing. Yarber told him I would. I told him the same. I won’t back down. I see Sara Barton’s lifeless body on her kitchen floor. I see Amber and Cale, too. Hurt feelings are unfortunate, but my first loyalties are to the dead.
Sam pauses before replying, but the hesitation means nothing. His words are irrelevant—the face is the thing. I see the answer before he says a word.
“Man, no.”
He’s telling the truth. He just is. We stare at each other, unsure of what to make of the person in front of us. Law school seems so long ago. I ask the next question.
“Did Liesa?”
He shakes his head slowly and slumps away toward his car. I stand there, watching him until he drives off. I look up at the obscured stars, their brightness failing to bring clarity to a city masked by its own artificial light. Sam is a bad liar because his eyes betray him at that critical moment of deceit. Now is no different. He thinks Liesa may have killed Sara Barton.
Confused, dumbfounded, sad—I take Sam’s file home with me and halfheartedly work through it during the night, thinking of Liesa the whole time.
***
The doorbell shakes me out of my lethargic review of the Barton file. I peer through the window shade and spy Scott’s car in the driveway. It’s 2 a.m. We do this dance all the time.
He says, “I had the lab guys working overtime. No prints on the gun.”
“Wiped?”
“Looks that way.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the murder weapon.”
“I think it is. There were fingerprints on the remaining bullets in the gun.”
Ah yes, the bullets in the gun. Even smart criminals forget about the bullets in the gun. The shell casing itself—the remainder of the cartridge that ripped through Sara Barton’s chest—does us no good as fingerprint evidence. The heat generated from the firing of a gun obliterates any prints that exist on the bullet prior to discharge. The unfired bullets, though, that’s something else entirely. Prints on those can be pristine.
“And do we know who those fingerprints belong to?”
“Yep.”
“Who?”
Revelatory moments like now normally make me happy to be a trial lawyer. The process of putting together a murder puzzle ignites the logical side of my brain. Transforming that two-dimensional puzzle into a three-dimensional story taps the creative half. But tonight I face the real prospect of prosecuting a friend. The truth scares me.
Scott continues to hold his cards close to the vest, hoping to extract a little more urgency from me. My atypical lack of enthusiasm throws him off a bit.
He asks, “What’s your guess?”
“Liesa?”
“Liesa Wilkins? No. Why her?”
“Then who?”
“Bernard Barton, attorney-at-law.”
Relief floods my body. I actually smile. I can prosecute Barton with full vigor. Liesa not so much. I need an enemy, and Barton fits the bill.
“Did you arrest him?”
“I think you would’ve heard about that. I want to talk to you about it first.”
We talk and both agree that the gun has to be the murder weapon. Has to. The timetable on getting confirmation from ballistics is five days. Monica Haywood and Brice Tanner are scheduled to be interrogated by Scott at police headquarters in the interim. An arrest could disrupt those plans, especially the interview of Monica. We need to pin her down while she remains willing to cooperate. Waiting to arrest is the choice.
I bring him up to speed about my night with Sam and my suspicion of Liesa.
He mocks, “His eyes? You saw it in his eyes? Because you played poker with him fifteen years ago? You’re killing me here.”
“You don’t understand. A lot of history exists between us. I can read him.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand. But I do understand fingerprint evidence. Barton is our guy. He loaded that gun. His gun.”
Maybe I am wrong about Liesa, after all.
Sam’s file on the desk takes on a new, hurried meaning in light of Barton’s fingerprint match. In the excitement of the evening, I never get around to telling Scott about my pre-dawn meeting with Lara Landrum.
***
The next morning, Bobby asks, “Where are we on Sara Barton?”
I dole out the latest.
“Is the husband our guy?”
“Stands to reason.”
“Let’s arrest him now. We have enough.”
“Maybe. But we’re better off being patient. Just because it’s his gun doesn’t mean he fired it, and we still haven’t confirmed it is the murder weapon. Too many people watching for us to be wrong. We’ll have him in a few days when ballistics comes in.”
Bobby’s election year nerves are on full display, and every day without an arrest makes him twitchy. But electoral sensitivities can’t outrun the case. Impatience makes fools of us all.
Bobby counters, “I still don’t like him being out there on the loose. What if he runs? He has the money. The press would kill me for that. Do the police have his pass
port?”
“If he runs, he makes our case that much stronger. He’s not so rich that he could simply disappear, not someone like him.”
He snorts his displeasure. To help him sleep better at night, I concede, “Your point about the passport is a good one. I’ll talk to Millwood about it.” That excuse also allows me a chance to feel out my mentor on the case against his client.
***
I’m on the phone with Millwood in minutes. Without going into the particulars of the case, I convey the official concern that his client might bolt the country to escape the reach of justice and that everyone on my side of the fence would sleep easier if Barton would surrender his passport. Millwood absorbs the news in that contemplative way of his.
He asks, “That bad, huh?”
“That bad.”
“What can you tell me about the evidence you think you have against my client?”
“Nothing. Any alibi your client wishes to share with the authorities?”
Millwood grunts and doesn’t answer the question. We parlay back and forth a little longer, but our hearts aren’t in it. The real battle will be in the courtroom. We’re both too experienced to give the game away in a telephone call.
“I’ll let you know about the passport,” he concludes.
“Make sure he doesn’t run.”
9
Brice Tanner sits alone in the police interrogation room, wearing an expensive suit and a scared look that mocks the confidence of his clothes. I watch him through the glass. He glances at his watch and steals a quick look toward the two-way mirror facing him, not knowing I’m on the other side. The building runs warm, and small droplets of sweat form around his temple. Scott enters to face his prey, carrying a folder and notepad.
“Mr. Tanner, my name is Detective Scott Moore. Nice to meet you. You know why you’re here.”
Brice nods, but looks down to avoid eye contact.
“Anything you want to say before we begin?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Anything you want.”
Scott throws out the bait to see if the fish will bite. Sometimes people want to get things off their chest and will reveal information you wouldn’t even have dreamed to ask them about.
The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) Page 5
