Brice says, “Um, I guess we can talk, but you can’t come into the house.”
“We know about the dope,” I answer. “We don’t care. That’s not why we’re here. The reason we’re here is to find out why you’re here.”
“I don’t understand.”
I search for a place to sit down outside. Like Brice, I want to avoid going into that house. A clearing ahead offers a few chairs—the green metal chairs emblematic of the country. I used to sit with my grandfather in chairs like these, watching him whittle a stick, a routine scene of a happy childhood. I smile at a memory I haven’t come across in over twenty years. The chairs are rusted, but still retain their country strength. We all take a seat.
I ask, “Why did you quit Marsh & McCabe?”
“Couldn’t do it anymore, man, the whole billable hour thing, keeping track of my day in six-minute increments. It’s inhuman. Had to get away.”
“How did you end up here?”
“Got a deal on the place.”
No doubt. Houses that fail to meet code tend to sell for a discount. Brice probably paid cash, obviating any need for a loan or any appraisals. I don’t envision many lenders signing off on this property as good collateral.
“You look different,” I note.
“Got tired of presenting myself in the way other people wanted to see me. Life’s too short for that. Who says I can’t have long hair? Who says I can’t grow a beard?”
Who says you can’t bathe? Maybe he smokes marijuana to mask his stench. Scott’s eyes may roll out of his head. The happy hippie act never gets far with him. Brice comes across as the dumb college student who thinks non-conformity is the way to stick it to the Man. But the performance lacks sincerity. He sounds like someone trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe.
I say, “Here’s the thing, Brice. Bernard Barton is going to say that you quit your job, came up here to get away from the world, and turned yourself into Grizzly Adams because you have a guilty conscience after killing Sara.”
This alternative explanation for his self-exile from civilization shakes him out of his stoned dimwittedness.
“I didn’t kill her!”
“I know, but the defense is going to make it look like you did.”
Brice presents me with a tough decision. He’s going to testify at the trial. The question is whether I call him to the stand or whether Millwood does. I don’t need Brice to get the video of Sara and him together at the law firm party into evidence. Truth be told, I don’t really need him for anything. But I want to avoid the jury thinking that I’m hiding Brice from them. An attorney should almost always deliver his own bad news.
And Brice is bad news. He was the dead woman’s lover. He was at her house the night before the murder. He has no alibi. He lived within walking distance of the murder scene. Those are objective, hard facts.
“Do I have to testify?”
“If subpoenaed, yes.”
“What if I never accept the subpoena?”
The hint of a bad idea flickers in his face. He considers disappearing. But Barton’s money guarantees Brice would not disappear for long. Throw out enough dollars, and those bounty hunters can find anyone. I need to nip these incipient thoughts in the bud. Running away will not end well for Brice.
“Don’t even think about it. They’ll find you. They always do. Hiding only serves to make you look guilty as hell. There’s no upside in it.”
Sitting across from him now, the decision I’m debating decides itself. Brice is a bomb that I must detonate myself. I’ll soften his rough edges and preemptively take some sting out of Millwood’s cross-examination. Brice graduated from Emory Law School and worked for one of Atlanta’s biggest law firms. He isn’t a total idiot. I can make this work, but first I need some more answers.
Changing the tone of the conversation, I tell him, “You lied to the police about whether you knew Sam Wilkins or not.” The comment is a statement, not open for debate.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” Scott chimes in, marking his first participation in the conversation since sitting down. His silence up to this point adds firmness to his words. Brice contemplates another denial, but knows from the impatience on our faces that we won’t be having any of it. He picks another plan.
“What of it?”
Scott responds, “Liars always have something to hide.”
“Not me. She was getting a divorce to be with me. He was her divorce lawyer. That’s all.”
Scott continues the assault, “Was that all?”
Dark clouds gather behind Brice’s baby blue eyes. That’s the thing with Brice. A lingering hard edge—not quite rage, more like a bubbling seething—reveals itself when you prod the right nerve. With annoyance on his face, he answers, “Don’t know what you’re getting at. I don’t know how the two of them knew each other. I just know that he was her lawyer.”
He is lying, and all three of us know it. I tally the potential damage in my head. Brice’s lie about Sam is a good lie, as long as he can defend it. Any testimony that Sam was having sex with Sara would blow up the case. That affair is still on the down low, and I pray it stays there. I need Brice’s lie to hold.
Scott presses on, “Why did you lie to me in the police station then?”
“I didn’t lie. I forgot the name of her lawyer in the heat of the moment. That’s all. It’s not easy being questioned by the police, you know.”
It could work. Millwood faces obstacles showing Sam and Sara Barton were even lovers, much less that Brice knew about the affair. If Brice sticks to his story and keeps himself emotionally in check if asked about it, his denial should be unimpeachable. At trial, a lie is not a lie unless it can be shown to be a lie. The truth doesn’t matter if Millwood can’t prove it.
Scott assesses Brice’s explanation and decides to let the matter drop. If Brice insists on claiming that Sam was only Sara Barton’s divorce lawyer, we gain no advantage in educating him otherwise. But we’re not finished with Brice. Sam was just the warm-up act. Brice’s arrest for stalking an ex-girlfriend in college—conveniently mentioned during Monica Haywood’s interrogation—still demands an explanation. Scott found the original arrest report. Now we need to hear the story from Brice’s own lips.
Scott says, “Okay, Brice. Now we need to ask you why you stalked Brittany Wood.”
Another nerve exposed. Brice slumps into a pose of defeated disbelief. Not enough weed in the world exists to deaden his pain of hearing that name again. He looks away, far off into the deep forest. I follow his gaze but see nothing but trees. After a couple of deep breaths, Brice finally speaks.
“How do you know about her?”
“I’m a detective. It’s my job to find out things.”
Brice doesn’t appreciate the comment. Scott’s glare challenges him to make something of it. The standoff does me no good. I jump in, “Monica Haywood told us.” I need Brice to focus his anger in the right direction. For better or worse, we’re all on the same team now. Brice considers this new information with great distaste.
“Skag,” he snorts, “but how did she find out?”
I answer, “Bernard Barton is on the Board of Bar Examiners.”
The significance of his application to join the state bar dawns on him, and the hatred oozing from his pores toward Barton strikes me as powerfully authentic. Brice now fully understands we have a mutual enemy.
“Unethical bastard,” he mutters.
True enough.
I continue, “So the bad guys know about your past, which is why we need to know everything you can tell us about whatever happened with Brittany.”
He takes a deep breath.
“We met as freshmen. I was her first serious boyfriend. She was my first serious girlfriend. We loved each other crazy-like, but we fought a bunch. We broke up, got back together, broke up again. During one of these break-ups, I was following her around trying to talk to her. She called the police to get back at me,
claimed I was stalking her. I was arrested. She never pursued it further, we got back together, and the prosecutor wasn’t interested in the case. I mean, I was just walking around campus. That’s it. It was nothing. I got it expunged. Still had to report it to the bar. That stuff is supposed to be confidential.”
He leaks a bit more bitterness as I review the police report. The document is scant on details, saying only that the arrestee was following Ms. Wood around and refused her multiple requests to leave her alone, leading her to call the police. When the police arrived, Brice was still following her around, culminating in the arrest. As stalking goes, it’s pretty light. I can see why the prosecutor wasn’t clamoring to pursue the case.
The mug shot is the worst part. The close-up, invariably taken in unflattering light, shows unkempt hair, unbalanced eyes, and an unfriendly mouth. The visual contrast among Attorney Brice, Mountain Man Brice, and Mug Shot Brice mystifies me. Who is this guy?
I go back to Sara Barton. She was a beautiful woman. Plenty of men would’ve jumped at the chance to bed her, and yet she landed on Brice. Maybe after living daily with the insufferable arrogance of Bernard Barton for so long, Sara sought refuge in the neediness of weaker men like Brice and Sam. It’s a theory.
Scott asks, “If we talked to her today, what would Brittany say about you?”
“Nothing. She’s dead.”
That gets our attention. Scott crosses his arms and stares at Brice with incredulity before saying, “Do tell.”
“I thought it was your job to find things out, Mr. Detective.”
And Jesus wept.
The marijuana must be wearing off, making Brice cranky. The trace of a throbbing vein in Scott’s temple flares with each breath. Like a good lawyer, a good cop is part actor. But I doubt the reaction is an act. Already rattled from the snake encounter, Scott has zero tolerance for insults from some dopehead attorney living like a mountain beatnik. My eyes plead with Scott not to go nuclear on him. We need the dopehead to get Barton.
Scott says, “Listen, Mr. Smart Ass, I have a good friend at the DEA who would be quite interested in the dope house you got going over there. One call, that’s all. And you know the feds. They love drug charges and aren’t happy unless they throw at least twenty-five counts into an indictment. You could be looking at twenty to thirty years. Now, do you want to answer our questions in a pleasant manner or would you rather answer the DEA’s questions in federal lock-up?”
Brice pouts at Scott like a defiant teenager whose only defense against authority is hostility. But Brice is also a lawyer who should know that Scott has him by the balls.
Scott demands, “Well?”
“I’ll answer.”
Let’s call that a teaching moment.
I hope that Brittany Wood’s death isn’t an unsolved murder. Two murdered women in the vicinity of the same lover carries coincidence beyond its stretching point. Even if Brice were in another country at the time, Millwood would find a way to pin Brittany’s killing on him.
“Brittany died in a car wreck. Somebody was texting and driving and killed her.”
“When?”
“The middle of our senior year. She never even graduated. It was sad.”
We all pay a respectful silence to the late Brittany Wood—another random victim of God’s Cosmic Wheel of Fate. The illusive shadow of Mr. Smith teases me, as hard to catch in the forest as he is in the city. Why Amber and Cale? Why Brittany? Why anyone?
Scott brings me back to the present, “Anything else?” He is talking to me. If we leave now, we might beat the worst of afternoon traffic. The woods are quiet. Too quiet. A person living alone up here could easily lose his mind. I assess the disheveled mess of a person sitting across from me and make a plea for him to clean himself up.
“Brice, I need you to testify at trial, and I cannot put you on the stand the way you’re looking now. This is not the image you want to present to the world at the moment the whole world is watching you.”
“I don’t care what people think about me. I don’t even see why I have to testify. I don’t know anything.”
“That doesn’t matter. Bernard Barton is on trial for murder and has already started throwing the blame your way. Why do you think Monica Haywood told us about your stalking arrest? You’re their fall guy. Barton’s lawyer is one of the best around. If I don’t call you to the stand, he will. We need to be teammates here. You owe Sara that much. Barton beat her, and then he killed her. Because of you. Are you going to let him get away with it? Or are you going to avenge the woman you loved?”
The appeal to his thirst for revenge is nakedly cynical. Whatever works. I have a murder trial to win.
Brice nods.
24
My brother Ben calls with “some bad news.” Mom crashed her car into a tree. The breathing in my chest catches—one of those instances in life when you wonder if everything you’ve ever known is about to change forever. I’ve already buried one parent. I’m in no hurry to bury another.
“How bad?”
“The car died. Mom didn’t.”
Thank goodness. But she did earn herself a stay in the hospital with a broken collarbone and soreness everywhere else. I shudder at the thought of her on pain pills. She enjoys her wine a little too much.
I ask, “Do we need to take her keys?”
“I don’t know. She says a deer ran out in front of her.”
“Plausible, I suppose.”
“Yeah. She’s asking for you, by the way, wondering if now you may actually come and visit her.”
Within the hour, I head south on the interstate to my boyhood home ninety minutes away. Breaking the news to Lara fills me with anticipatory dread, even though I’ll only be gone for a few days. The anxiety is stifling and suggests an unfamiliar neediness that threatens to take over my life. I loved Amber madly, but I never lost control of my own identity. Lara is different. I feel stripped of all volition with her.
I call from the road and give her the news.
She responds, “You shouldn’t be alone during a time like this. I’ll come down tomorrow to keep your company.”
“What? You shouldn’t—”
“Give me the address. I’ll be there early evening.”
The idea is galactically stupid, but I keep that objection to myself, opting instead to sink deeper with her into the quicksand.
The rest of the drive down gives me time to contemplate the relationship. The trepidation I felt earlier about leaving Lara for a few days yields to a rising foreboding that her eagerness to join me portends something darker—that the cure of being together is worse than the disease of being apart. But why? Forget the actress stuff. The fame is a nuisance, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. Lara is just like any other woman, filled with the same hopes, needs, and frailties. Perhaps the problem lies there. She is too real. Contrasted with Amber’s perfection—a myth that only grows over time—Lara’s imperfection sets my instincts on edge. She remains to me a mystery.
Or maybe the trouble is closer to home. Attachment frightens me because it portends the possibility of more loss. The monastic quality of my life these past couple of years shielded me from the risk of experiencing another heartbreak—something Ella knows all too well. But the monastery doors didn’t hold, and the monk sinned. The woman isn’t the problem; it’s the man. I need only look in the mirror to confirm the diagnosis. Lara didn’t repair the destruction unleashed by Mr. Smith. She only provided a distraction. The broken man is still broken. The possibility that Lara is a mere diversion leads the broken man to a sobering thought. Is it the sex? Has it always been just about the sex?
The car ride resolves nothing. Amber is dead. Lara is alive. But what am I? I am still the broken man.
I arrive too late to visit Mom tonight. I sit in her living room, the place all to myself for one of the few times in my life. The chirp of crickets carries me back to a time long ago. I learned in high school that the average lifespan of a cricket is three mon
ths. What’s the point? The meaninglessness of it all strikes me as profoundly sad. Some purpose exists in God’s grand plan, I’m sure. But the cricket will never know. It lives only to die.
Lara will arrive tomorrow, and I’ll make love to her in the same house where I lost my virginity. That strikes me as meaningless, too.
***
“Why do I almost have to die before you will come down and visit me?”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
Guilt comes in many forms, but a mother’s guilt has its own special flavor. The guilt here packs a little extra punch because it is well earned. I haven’t been a good son. Seeing Mom in this condition hammers home that truth. I can blame the murders, but losing Amber and her grandson delivered its own searing emotional trauma to Mom. No man is an island. I forget that I’m not the only survivor.
To compensate, I put on my Good Son hat for the day. I buy some tabloid magazines to catch her up on the latest gossip, watch gawd awful morning talk shows with her, and sneak her some Chick-Fil-A to spare her from the hospital food. Her request for wine meets a firm denial. When her friends stop by, I shed the cynicism of the city and adopt the manners of the country, performing with perfection my role in the Southern ritual of “visiting.” Eventually, as inevitable as death and taxes, she gets around to talking about the case.
“When’s the trial?”
“Three weeks.”
“On TV?”
“Yep.”
Mom smiles. Genuine excitement fills her face only to dissolve into a kind of wistfulness as she turns to look out the window. A single tear travels a path from her left eye down her cheek, puzzling me. I consider asking her about it but decide to give her space. Mom will tell me in her good time.
“It’ll be just like watching your father again. I used to go into town and watch his trials. My husband—the star of the courthouse. It made be so proud, made me feel so special. He’d be so proud of you, you know. So proud.” She pauses before asking, “Are you as good as they say?”
The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) Page 14
