The Murder of Sara Barton (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 1) by Lance McMillian

Author:Lance McMillian [McMillian, Lance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bond Publishing
Published: 2020-06-08T22:00:00+00:00

***

Sam’s three kids sit off to the side by themselves when I walk through the door of the church for their father’s funeral. I consider offering them condolences but leave them alone to their pain. The kids need far more than platitudes from me in a time like this.

Liesa receives visitors at the front of the chapel, and I wait my turn to pay appropriate respects. She offers me her cheek to kiss. I oblige.

“I’m so sorry, Liesa.”

“Are you?”

The words hurt and contain an undercurrent of accusation. I scurry away. Jeff Yarber drops next to me in the pew. I wonder if he blames me, too. It would fit the pattern.

He asks, “Did he kill himself?”

“I honestly don’t know. You knew him better than I did. Talk to him lately?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Suicidal?”

“I didn’t think so.”

We sit quietly and ponder. The mirror doesn’t lie. All of us are older now, and the life we anticipated in law school has taken turns too dark for us to have ever imagined. Another one of our classmates, Marilyn Stubbs, was gunned down by a crazy ex-husband five years ago. Trey Miles died in a car wreck. Cancer got Barbara Allen.

“Too much death,” I say.

Jeff agrees.

I skip the burial. Without even intending to do so, I end up back at The Varsity—sitting in the same booth where Sam and I last saw one another. I eat angry, furiously chewing my food as if it were responsible for the dark tide. I remember Sam across from me that night, his investigative research on Barton right next to him.

That gets me to thinking. Sam only turned over what he wanted me to know about Bernard Barton and nothing else. And no Sara Barton divorce files were in Sam’s home or office when the police searched. More files have to exist.

Where is the stuff Sam didn’t want me to see?

“A safe place,” Sam claimed when I questioned him that night. I call Scott.

“Did you impound Sam’s vehicle from that park where he was killed?”

“Of course.”

“Search it?”

“Why else would I impound it? Of course we searched it.”

“Find Sam’s file on the Barton divorce in there?”

“I probably would’ve told you if I had.”

“How thorough a search?”

“Really? Do you take me for some hayseed from where you grew up? I didn’t French Connection it, but it was thorough enough.”

The classic film The French Connection contains a scene where Detective Popeye Doyle and his fellow police officers take apart an entire car in search of heroin only to put it back together again as part of a sting operation. Scott has always wanted to French Connection a suspect vehicle, but this case doesn’t justify it. If Sam hid the file in his car, Scott would’ve found the documents. Where on earth are they?

I text Liesa to ask her about the file. The dwindling options leave me no choice. The galling insensitivity is not lost on me. Yet I ask all the same.

Two hours or so later, the phone beeps its distinctive notification of an incoming text.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.