Brice responds, “I don’t have anything to say. I just want to answer your questions and get out of here.”
Scott opens the file with a slow turn of the page and organizes his notepad. He begins, “Let’s get the distasteful stuff out of the way first, okay? Did you murder Sara Barton?”
“No!”
“Do you know who did?”
“No!”
“Good.”
Scott regularly uses this technique. Grab attention right off the bat by starting with the big ask and try to establish an immediate rapport by presenting the question as an annoying formality. The goal is to buy focus and trust with the same transaction. Brice can walk out of here at any point, and Scott does not want to waste time with questions that do not advance the ball.
“How did you meet Sara Barton?”
“At a firm function, maybe a Christmas party or something like that.”
“This is Marsh & McCabe?”
“Yeah.”
“When was this?”
“Last year. I had just started at the firm out of law school.”
“Why was Mrs. Barton there?”
“She was with her husband. He’s a partner in the firm.”
“Makes sense. Tell me your story.”
Brice does so. He and Sara met on the night of that initial firm function. Bernard Barton ditched his wife once the two of them arrived at the party, spending all his time with Monica Haywood instead. Brice and Sara hit it off, but nothing happened between them at first. The two continued to see each other periodically at other firm events. Some flirting transpired on these occasions, but nothing more. Five months ago, Sara showed up at his apartment door out of the blue. The affair immediately commenced.
When Brice finishes, Scott observes, “You left out the part about the sex tape.”
“What is there to say? The whole world knows about it at this point. We were recorded without our knowledge. It was an invasion of privacy as far as I’m concerned.”
“You were at the High Museum.”
Brice shrugs.
“And this scene at the High Museum was after she showed up at your apartment unannounced?”
“Yes.”
“What was Sara’s reaction to the video going around?”
“Scared. She warned me that Bernard was steaming mad and I should be careful.”
“Did Mr. Barton ever retaliate against you?”
“We never talked about it.”
“Why weren’t you fired? Sleeping with your boss’ wife at a company party would seem to be a sackable offense. It would get me fired.”
The mental picture of Scott having sex with the police chief’s septuagenarian wife crashes my mind. That would be the world’s worst sex tape.
Brice answers, “Bernard’s a partner but not really my boss. I don’t actually work with him. Other partners don’t like him at all. They protected me, I guess. I never heard anything about him trying to get me fired.”
“Don’t you see him in the halls?”
“Yeah.”
“How does that go?”
“It’s uncomfortable, I guess, but nothing’s ever come of it.”
“Except now his wife is dead.”
Brice digests Scott’s words. They don’t go down well. He looks at his watch.
“I have a meeting I need to make. Am I free to go?”
“Who do you need to meet?”
This simple question catches Brice off-guard. He does not even try to answer. He wants out. Good. When witnesses wish their questioning to be over, impatience leads to mistakes. Brice’s sweating quickens. He looks like someone who would pay $100 to take off his jacket. But taking the jacket off would signal a longer interview, which Brice wants to avoid. He sweats it out instead.
“I have some more questions to ask.”
The authoritative tone creates the impression that Brice is not free to go. Scott carefully avoids those precise words, and no law exists against creating an impression. Brice is not in custody and can leave when he chooses. But Brice does not know his rights—a predictable badge of ignorance for a corporate lawyer from one of Atlanta’s mega firms. No one has to talk to the police. Three years of legal education, and Brice knows less about his rights than your common criminal. Scott resumes his questioning.
“Where were you on the night of the murder?”
“At home. Working.”
“Where’s home?”
“I live in an apartment next to Piedmont Park.”
I estimate that Brice lives roughly a mile from the Barton residence. Cutting through the park on foot could cover most of that distance with minimal detection.
“Can anyone vouch for you?”
“No.”
“Ever been to the Barton residence?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“Ever walk over there from your place?”
Another pause. “Yes.”
“How would you describe your feelings for Sara?”
“I loved her.”
“Did she love you?”
“Of course.”
Doubtful. Sara Barton was over a decade older than Brice, married to another man, and having frequent sexual intercourse with her divorce lawyer. I’m not getting the picture of a woman madly in love with the person on the other side of the glass.
“When was the last time you ever saw Sara Barton alive?”
“The day before she died.”
“Where?”
“At her house.”
“Did you walk over there?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I usually walked in case I needed to make a quick getaway.”
He sounds like a criminal and realizes it. Scott uses the moment to write something down on his notepad. He assesses what he wrote, pondering, and then writes more. Probably a grocery list. Brice is scared out of his wits. I’m struck as to how young he looks. The ten or so years that separate us in age seem like a lifetime.
“I really need to go.”
“Yeah, your meeting. Just a few more questions.”
Scott again consults the deep mysteries of his notepad. The sweat starts to soak through the front of Brice’s shirt. His armpits must be flowing rivers by now.
“What did you talk about the last time you saw her?”
“Our future. She was getting a divorce. We were going to be together.”
“Did you sleep with her that night?”
“Yes.”
Scott makes a disapproving smile. Brice shows shame.
“Was she sleeping around with anyone else?”
The shame evaporates. The wounded animal before me bares his teeth. The rage startles. He does not seem so young now.
Unfazed, Scott continues, “Besides her husband, I mean.”
Through clenched teeth, Brice responds, “No. She wasn’t like that.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. We loved each other.”
“Do you know Sam Wilkins?”
The question defeats him. The anger dissipates. Hapless Brice makes a less than triumphant return. Looking at the wall, Brice says, “No.”
“That does not sound convincing.”
“The answer is no.”
I don’t believe him, but the questioning is over. Brice studies his watch for the third time, contemplates it, and begins to push his chair away from the table.
“I have to go.”
Maybe he knows his rights after all.
10
Scott and I are plumb shocked that Monica Haywood agreed to an interview. Yet there she sits in the same seat that Brice occupied yesterday. Scott enters the room, carrying the familiar notepad and folder.
“Miss Haywood, my name is Detective Scott Moore. We met briefly at your apartment the day after Sara Barton’s murder. I was looking for Bernard Barton. You said he wasn’t with you, but he was. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“B
ernard’s wife had just been murdered. He was grieving. He wanted privacy.”
“Are you going to lie to me today?”
“No.”
She shows poise. Her conservative business suit gives her the veneer of seriousness. The composed picture before me is hard to square with her relationship with a low-grade philanderer like Barton.
“Let’s get the distasteful stuff out of the way first, okay? Did you murder Sara Barton?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“I have a theory.”
“You have a theory? I love theories. Let’s hear it.”
The guess is her theory does not implicate Barton, but I’m open to being pleasantly surprised.
“Brice Tanner. He was obsessed with her. Something must’ve happened, then bang bang. She’s dead.”
Juxtaposed with the composure and sophisticated dress, her nonchalance at the death of another human being cools the warm air. Scott responds, “Brice? You think? I buy him as dopey lover type, but I don’t see him as a murderer. I don’t know.”
“He was arrested for stalking his girlfriend in college.”
The change in the shoulders would be imperceptible to anyone who doesn’t know him well, but I discern Scott’s tense reaction to this previously unknown information. Scott likes springing surprises in his interrogations. He doesn’t like surprises being sprung on him.
“His record doesn’t show anything like that.”
“It was expunged.”
“Then how do you know?”
“He is still required to report the arrest to the state bar examiners in his application to practice law.”
She’s right, and I have a high level of confidence that she speaks the truth about Brice’s stalking arrest. The puzzle of her readiness to talk to Scott clarifies. Monica is here to divert our noses away from her boyfriend to Brice. But the prints on the bullets still point to Barton.
“I’m curious. How do you know what is in Brice’s bar application?”
“I prefer not to answer that.”
I pull up the members of the Board of Bar Examiners on my phone. One familiar name jumps out—Bernard Barton. Mystery solved. The interrogation goes forward.
“You’re Bernard Barton’s girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Two of you going to get married now?”
“I hope so.”
She and Barton are a pair. Both share a contempt for the basic expectations of polite society. I remember the spectacle at the funeral, where Barton and Monica paraded their affair mere feet from the coffin of Sara Barton—Lara Landrum’s scowl choking on the gratuitous vulgarity.
“Where were you on the night of the murder?”
“I got home from work around six-thirty and stayed there for the rest of the night.”
“Can anyone vouch for that?”
“Bernard was with me the whole time.”
Bang bang. She just shot herself, and she doesn’t even know it. We have the surveillance footage. We know Barton left her apartment at 7:38 p.m. She’s lying, and we have direct video evidence proving that lie. I shake my head. Fabricating an alibi is clumsy and stupid. That’s the problem with arrogant people. Convinced of their own superiority, they never question their own judgment.
Scott now has the weapons to carve her up into little bits, but I don’t want her exposed just yet. I send him a text: “Don’t trap her. Wanna talk. Take break.” His buzzing phone alerts him to my message. He reads it and sets the phone aside.
Scott continues, “Did he spend the night?”
“You know he didn’t. He left for home about two-thirty in the morning.”
Barton arrived at his house at 2:43 a.m., his dead wife’s body still in the kitchen. Assume he killed her at 9:30 p.m.—that’s five missing hours. His cell phone conveniently cannot help us, and no hits show up from either his credit cards or the keycard to his office building. Add it all up, and we have zero. Barton’s movements during this critical time constitute a giant black hole.
Scott asks, “What did the two of you do from the time you arrived home until the time Bernard left?”
“What do you think?”
“I have no idea. That’s why I asked the question.”
“We had sex if that is what you want to know.”
“I see. Did it bother you later to realize that you were having sex with a woman’s husband at the same time she was being murdered?”
“No. I’m glad I can provide him with an alibi.”
“Interesting.”
Holding up his phone, Scott says, “I need to step out for a minute and check something in another case. Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
He exits before giving Monica any opportunity to object. When he joins me in the observation room, he crows, “We got her dead to rights. I’m going to bust her with the video.”
“Don’t.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Keep your eyes on the prize—Barton. We bust her now, then he knows what we know less than one minute after she leaves here. What’s he going to do? Start work on a new alibi, one that we cannot as easily disprove. Instead, let’s continue to play stupid and see how far the two of them run with this story. Maybe Barton will start saying that he was with her the whole night, too. I’d much rather catch him in a lie than her. Let’s give him the chance to lie to us.”
We watch her through the mirror. The composure remains intact—the weight of lying to the police in a murder investigation brushing off her like a feather.
Scott concedes, “I see the logic. How would you handle the rest of the interview?”
“Get her to sign an affidavit verifying under oath everything she has told you today. When the time comes, probably at trial, I’ll pop her with it. I can prepare the affidavit right now.”
“Hop to it.”
Within the next half hour, Monica signs the affidavit, cementing herself as a perjurer. The affidavit safely in his hands, Scott has a few more questions.
“You and Bernard go to Vegas a lot?”
He surprises her. She makes calculations in her head. The police already know the truth, might as well admit it.
“We love Vegas.”
“Who doesn’t? Bernard has run up a lot of gambling losses, huh?”
Fidgeting. Monica came here prepared and delivered her lines on cue. But this detour is off-script. The mental wheels work furiously to try and land on the answer Barton would want. But he’s not here. She’s on her own now.
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“You never saw him gamble?”
“Some. Look, I’ve patiently answered your questions, but I need to go.”
“Yes, you’ve been very helpful, and I appreciate your willingness to aid the investigation. I know you’re a busy person, and I value your time. Just a few more minutes, I promise.”
Scott Moore—the most reasonable man on earth. You want to help, you’ve helped, and all I’m asking for is just a little more help. Can’t you give me that? For someone who wants to appear cooperative, the offer is a hard one to refuse.
“My sources tell me that Bernard owes nearly $750,000 to a bunch of casinos. Have you ever heard him talk about that?”
I love Scott’s wording. He has sources. That detail will give Barton and Monica something to chew over during dinner. The wide eyes from the witness confess her surprise. Whether the surprise originates from the size of the debt or the thoroughness of the investigation is unclear.
She answers, “No.”
“Did you know that Bernard has a $5 million life insurance policy on his wife?”
“News to me.”
Maybe she’s lying, maybe not. But the safest course for her in these uncertain waters is to play dumb. She’s not going to tell us anything else of use today. Scott senses it, too.
“Okay. Again, you’ve been very helpful, and I thank you for that. If you want to later clarify anything you’ve said today, please don’
t hesitate to contact me, day or night. If you learn something about Bernard’s possible involvement in his wife’s death and want to talk, let me know.”
“Bernard was with me at the time of the murder.”
“Yeah sure.”
They look at each other knowingly for a few seconds before Monica gets up to leave. I’m guessing she regrets signing that affidavit right about now.
11
The arrest warrant for Bernard Barton sits on my desk, armed and ready to be presented to a judge. The only unchecked box is the ballistics report. Scott’s contact in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation promised to e-mail the report over directly—results still unknown. The warrant declares that Barton’s gun fired the bullet that killed Sara. If the GBI tells us something different, the papers will head to the shredder, and we’ll re-examine the case with fresh eyes.
Scott and Ella Kemp wait with me in my office. Every ding of Scott’s phone brings expectant looks yearning for news. The shake of Scott’s head deflates the balloon each time. A case this big and explosive is virgin ground for all of us. Being on the brink of publicly naming Barton as the murderer feels like our Super Bowl. Quietness pervades the room.
“I hate waiting,” Ella fumes. She’s cute when she’s impatient, and I reflect on how much I care for her. To upend the silence, Ella starts tapping her foot to a steady beat. I rock in my chair to the same rhythm. I hate waiting, too.
The ding we’re looking for arrives at last, and Scott reads the report with practiced calm. When the moment is to his liking, he announces, “In the considered expert opinion of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the gun belonging to one Bernard Barton fired the projectile that killed the late Sara Barton.”
I add everything up in my head one more time—the sex tape between Sara and Brice, the 911 call, Sara Barton’s bruised back, Barton’s threat to kill her, the fingerprints on the bullets in the murder weapon, the gambling debts, the $5 million in life insurance, the girlfriend and her fabricated alibi. Motive. Means. Opportunity. We got our man.
Scott and Ella rush downstairs to get the warrant signed. Once the arrest is made, official responsibility for Barton transfers from the police to the prosecutors. My part in the drama is about to go live. I head over to deliver the good word to Bobby. The lunch hour is near. If we time the arrest right, Barton’s bail hearing will have to wait until tomorrow morning, and he’ll be forced to spend the night in jail.
The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) Page 6
