Of Things Unseen Read online

  Table of Contents

  Of Things Unseen

  PART ONE | THE HOUSEWIFE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART TWO | THE DETECTIVE

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  PART THREE | THE TRUTH

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Book Discussion Guide

  Coming Soon

  Copyright © 2018 L. Jaye Morgan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Morgan, L. Jaye

  Of Things Unseen: A Psychological Thriller / L. Jaye Morgan

  p. cm.

  1. Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense —Fiction. 2. Psychological Fiction. 3. Serial Killers —Fiction. 4. Mental Health —Fiction. I. Title.

  ASIN: B07HLH3M23

  First Edition / November 2018

  Cover Art: © Coverquill

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a figment of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, visit ljayemorgan.com.

  For all the girls who have felt invisible.

  PART ONE

  THE HOUSEWIFE

  Chapter 1

  THE LAST THING ANYBODY wants to think about at a party is a little dead girl. It’s just not proper at a celebration, and even Nikki had to know that. But after years of training myself in the art of conscious forgetfulness and putting her out of my mind, thoughts of my little dead friend popped into my head while I was nursing a glass of cheap white wine in my best friend’s expensive new Midtown apartment.

  It was supposed to be a fun night, and it was before Nikki up and ruined it. Several of us had gathered at her place for a small affair. It wasn’t really a housewarming, although that had been the plan before I talked her out of it. She had warmed her last apartment less than two years ago, so my advice was simply that it was inappropriate to have another (my mother considered such things “gift-grabby”).

  Unlike me, a Georgia peach, Nikki was a progressive northerner and not much for the intricate inanities of etiquette. However, for reasons unknown, she had always valued my opinion so the evite—which I kept my mouth shut about—didn’t have the word “Housewarming” on it and the guests brought liquor instead of gifts.

  The gang was all there. Nikki Thomas, my gregarious best friend. Rashaun Reese, Nikki’s new boyfriend and roommate whom I didn’t know well, yet, but he had locs and he always smelled amazing. Toya Williamson, our friend from college, a sorority girl who annoyingly referred to her husband as “my husband” even though we all knew his name, and Isaac, said husband, who was a personal chef to some local celebrities. And of course, there was my Tony.

  There had been other folks there earlier, randoms from Nikki’s work and church whose names I didn’t bother to learn. I was relieved when they all trickled out and saved me from a night of pointless small talk. Southerners are usually good at it but that particular skill has always eluded me.

  I refilled my glass before settling onto the couch. My overarching goal for the night was to get drunk and forget everything that was wrong in my life. And there was a lot. Alcohol is one of my triggers so it wasn’t exactly wise for me to be drinking, but Tony was driving and it was as good a time as any to wallow in fermented self-pity. Besides, I had never been all that wise.

  I was feeling good, really good, and then Nikki went and asked the question. It wasn’t her fault, really. She didn’t know. She couldn’t have known about the chain of events she would set in motion.

  “Have y’all heard about the missing black girls?”

  That question. It punctured my happy wine cocoon, and just like that, the energy in the room changed. My buzz was gone as if it had been shot right out of my head, and I had to swallow three times in a row to keep from choking on my saliva.

  “No, what happened?” Toya asked as she settled back in Isaac’s arms.

  Tony chose that moment to take a puff on his cigar, sending thick white smoke past my face as he exhaled. I had always enjoyed the sweet smell that reminded me so much of my grandfather and the summers I spent sitting, as quiet as I could, watching him smoke and play solitaire at his kitchen table. But tonight, the smoke wasn’t sweet and it didn’t comfort me, and Tony didn’t look grown and sexy. The white wisps curled through the air like ghostly tendrils, threatening and ominous.

  Nikki addressed us, her audience, and I tried to use my mind to will her not to talk about it. Maybe that only worked with twins. “Okay, so there are a bunch of black girls who have gone missing in the metro area in the past few months. Eastside.” She looked around conspiratorially. “Keep this between us, okay? I’m working on a story. I’m gonna break it soon but I’m keeping it quiet until then.”

  Rashaun snickered. “You’re doing a great job of that, by the way.” Everyone laughed. Everyone except me.

  “Shut up,” she said in Rashaun’s direction. “Anyway, we’re still trying to pin down which cases are related. The police didn’t give any of the cases a lot of attention, of course, so we’re trying to drum up some interest and get these cases linked. The earliest one that we know of that fits is an abduction about six months ago. We’re up to four.”

  “Four? In six months? And the police haven’t done anything?” asked Tony. I cleared my throat loudly but nobody paid me any attention.

  “Yeah,” Nikki continued, “but I mean nobody is shocked by that, right? This isn’t blonde Natasha Hathaway going missing on a beach halfway around the world. These are just a bunch of black folks. Nobody gives a shit but their families.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. I think people care,” Tony said.

  Nikki shot him a look. “Okay, let me rephrase. These are a bunch of black girls. Nobody gives a shit.”

  Tony laughed sarcastically. “Oh, you think people care about black men?”

  “Somebody does. How many marches have there been for y’all?”

  Rashaun squirmed in his seat. “Here we go,” he said, shaking his head dramatically. “It’s a party, Nik.”

  She rolled her eye
s. “Then tell him not to start with me!”

  Any other time, an argument between my husband and my best friend would be the source of endless hilarity, especially since they had once dated. But not tonight. A feeling of dread was taking root inside of me, and it was both familiar and disconcerting, like the melody of an old song that I couldn’t remember the name of or the words to.

  “Anyway,” Nikki continued, “I’m gonna break it soon but I have a few more threads to follow up on.”

  “Who are these girls?” Toya asked.

  Nikki shrugged. “Just regular black girls. Could have been one of us,” she said, gesturing between herself, Toya, and me.

  “I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m surprised I haven’t heard anything about it,” Toya said, shaking her head.

  “I know. That’s why I’m doing this. What good is black media if we don’t tell our own stories?” asked Nikki, the consummate journalist. She and I met when were assigned to the same dorm room at Hampton. My shy, private nature didn’t mesh well with her constant talking and laughing and gossiping, and the tension grew until I finally had enough and snapped.

  She didn’t take it too well, and weeks passed before we spoke again. Once we got over that hump we became inseparable, and Nikki felt more like a sister to me than my own sister did. We were together pretty much every moment of the day outside of classes (she majored in Journalism and I majored in Public Relations, for all the good it did me). We stayed joined at the hip in the cafe, at parties, at chapel, and at the beauty salon (Brianna’s dorm room).

  We even had a joint nickname, although it wasn’t by choice. Biggie Smalls, the guys called us, because Nikki was thick and I was thin. She thought it was hilarious but to me, it was mean. Bony black girls don’t fare well in the South.

  We hadn’t seen each other in a while before this evening. It was just something that happens to friends as they get older. I got married, she got her dream job writing for Noir Daily, and we just didn’t have time to talk every day. That suited me just fine, as I hate talking on the phone, but it bothered Nikki. I told her, and everyone else in my life, that I would do better but so far, no luck. I’m consistently amazed I still have any friends at all.

  Nikki paused, perhaps for dramatic effect, and looked at each one of us. She didn’t seem to notice that I looked away just as she caught my eye. “It could just be me hyping this up,” she said, her voice low, “but this reminds me of the Atlanta Child Murders.”

  Murders. My heartbeat threatened to drown out the roaring in my ears. Why was she talking about this? A good hostess makes her guests feel comfortable in her home. That’s job one. But I wasn’t comfortable. I wanted to climb out of my skin.

  Tony shook his head. “You’re definitely hyping it up. That case had, I don’t know, something like 28 murders. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was a little boy back then, real little. My mama was scared to death. After a while, I couldn’t even go out and ride my bike.”

  My eyes watered, from the smoke, perhaps, but there was something else in the room. A presence. I recognized it because I’d felt it before. I fidgeted in my seat and looked at Tony, who was usually so attuned to me, but he didn’t seem to notice my discomfort.

  “I wasn’t living here back then but I read about it,” Isaac said. “Crazy shit.”

  Tony drained his beer. “It was, man. I’ve never felt anything like that in the community. I mean it’s one thing to grow up in the hood. Bad shit happens. A lot of good, too, but you know what I mean. Shootings, drugs, the whole nine. But you don’t expect your kids to get snatched up and never come home. I won’t even lie, I was scared.”

  “They caught that dude, though, right?” asked Isaac. He stroked Toya’s hair, gently and lovingly I suppose, but to me, at that moment, it looked sinister. Like a predator closing in on its prey, grooming it for slaughter.

  “Yeah, they caught him but there’s all kinds of crazy theories, man. People think the real killer is still out there.”

  Maybe he was. Someone was out there. It may not have been Wayne Williams but whoever or whatever it was, it was evil and it was real, just like the thing that haunted our neighborhood that summer long ago, and I didn’t feel safe anymore, even in a room full of people, because Nikki’s question made me remember what I’d worked so hard to forget.

  Ordinarily, I would have excused myself but there was no time for pleasantries. I simply got up and left the room, hiding in the bathroom until I heard laughter.

  TONY HELPED ME INTO my jacket as he always did. My southern gentleman. “I’m gonna hit the bathroom before we get on the road,” he told me. I didn’t answer.

  I’m not sure if it was the wine, the heaviness of the food, or the conversation during the latter part of the evening that had me feeling sluggish, but everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Nikki approached me while I waited and her movements looked exaggerated and unnatural.

  “T, I wanna ask you something before you go.”

  “Okay,” I said cautiously.

  “First of all, how are you feeling?”

  “Thanks for having us. I enjoyed myself tonight,” I said, sidestepping the real question.

  “Good. So, I know you’re gonna have a lot of free time now and I was wondering if you could use your PR expertise to help me with something.”

  I chuckled. “Expertise? That’s hilarious. Two years of classes do not an expert make.”

  “Okay fine, I need your knowledge.”

  “For what?” The last thing I needed was to get mixed up in another one of Nikki’s schemes.

  “The story. The missing black girls. I know how to frame and write it but I don’t know how to market it for maximum exposure.”

  Please, no. “I don’t know, Nik. You know I’ve never actually worked in PR.”

  “Right but you still know more than I do. Plus you’re from here. I need help understanding the area and these country-ass black folks.”

  Those old feelings were creeping up and I wanted nothing more than to go home and think about something else. Anything else. Nikki frowned at me. “What’s wrong?”

  Everything. “Nothing. Just a lot on my mind. What exactly would you need me to do?”

  “Just advise me on how to craft a story we can sell to the public. We need people to care and we need to put pressure on the police so they take it seriously. Whatever a PR person would do to make that happen, that’s what I need. Matter of fact, I’m gonna send you a link to this Facebook group one of the family members set up. It has information on all the girls. Just get on and poke around. Get a feel for everything.”

  No. “I’m not promising anything. Send it and I’ll look when I can.”

  “Thank you. Don’t take too long though, okay?”

  “I won’t.” The lie came easily to me. I had been doing it all my life.

  Chapter 2

  I KNEW I WOULD WAKE up in pain but I grossly underestimated the severity of it. Every joint ached, whether I bent it or kept it straight, and my muscles both throbbed and burned. Sometimes it was dull and lingering, other times shooting, and still other times a full and consistent onslaught of pain. I suppose I had to appreciate the wide variety of pain selections my illness offered me.

  It was an odd experience, being in absolute misery for no discernible reason. Dr. Lathan gave me the bad news a little over a year ago, and I was only now wrapping my head around the fact that this was my life. Fibromyalgia. Chronic pain. An illness you constantly suffer that no one can see. It’s merciless and persistent, determined to take center stage in my life. It craves the spotlight and isn’t shy about demanding my attention.

  I had already been awake for two hours or so and every moment was sheer agony. As if the pain wasn’t enough, I was also being assaulted by sporadic intrusive thoughts.

  The missing girls. Once Nikki introduced them to me, they decided to follow me home and settle in like unwanted houseguests. They had stayed with me all night and I found myself imagining all t
he different ways they might have been tortured and killed. Beaten, raped, strangled, shot. Or stabbed, perhaps? Even my own horrible death flashed in my mind and I wondered if it was an imagining or a premonition. I prayed it was the former.

  Then there were the thoughts of my little dead friend. Leah was her name. Had she been in pain like me before she died? How much had she suffered? Perhaps my own suffering was penance for what I had done. For the lie I had told. Maybe my disease was my pound of flesh, offered as a sacrifice to Leah’s ghost. Maybe she was haunting me.

  Fortunately, I devised a strategy to rid myself of all of the bad thoughts that had trespassed in my mind over the years. When I was little, I would imagine writing them in the sand and then I would bring the tide in and watch it wash them away. I had already brought the tide in four times that morning, but it was becoming less and less effective each time.

  What exactly happened last night? I remembered leaving Nikki’s place and stumbling to the car, and hearing Tony talking about how much he enjoyed himself. He was in a good mood because I was drunk and I’m always more fun when I’m drunk. Promises were made: he swore he wouldn’t let me throw up and I vowed not to fall asleep on him when we got home. Everything else was a blur.

  I thought for a full minute before I worked out that it was a Saturday. I sat up slowly and deliberately, but my tepid movements did nothing to quell the pounding that exploded between my ears.

  “Good morning,” Tony said as he walked out of the bathroom, shirtless with a towel wrapped loosely around his waist. At almost 40, he was still sexy. Brown and smooth, not really cut, but with the remnants of an athlete’s body from his younger days. He had a face that wasn’t obviously handsome at first glance but became so the longer you spent gazing at it.

  Nikki’s the one who introduced us. After a disastrous blind date with him, she called and told me she had someone who was perfect for me. My daddy issues were a running joke between us (along with a regional rivalry that would put the East Coast-West Coast rap war to shame) and for years, she swore I would marry an older man, which Tony was. Seven years older, to be exact. I was surprised when Nikki told me his name—Antonio—because it went against the pact we had made to never date African American guys with Latin names. Still, I gave him a chance.