Of Things Unseen

by L. Jaye Morgan

  Upon her arrival, she stormed past me into my living room and I was forced to follow. She stopped in the middle of the room and whirled around to face me. “Are you aware that the police are questioning your brother?”

  So much for the privacy Detective Dunn had promised. “How did you know about that?”

  “Okay so obviously you did know.” She sat on the couch and took her shoes off. I wondered if she had been to visit the police station. How else would she have known?

  “Well yeah. I’m the one who gave them the tip.”

  “Are you serious?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  “Very serious.”

  “Why would you call in a tip about your own brother?” she asked, her face a mask of confusion and anger. I found myself unable to answer in a way that didn’t sound ridiculous. It had made perfect sense in my head but it felt different in the moment, saying it out loud to Nikki. “Because I think he might be the one who’s doing this.”

  “Why the hell would you think that?”

  “I have my reasons. I can’t really get into it right now.”

  The silence that followed seemed to last forever. I wanted her to speak first but she wouldn’t, so I tried to think of something to say to her that would justify what I had done.

  “You think I’m wrong for turning in my brother? What if it’s really him?”

  Nikki sighed. “I knew this was a mistake.”

  It was my turn to be confused. “Wait a minute. What was a mistake?”

  “Involving you in this.”

  “Why is it a mistake?”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Because you always do this.”

  I was no longer confused. On the contrary, I knew exactly where she was going with this. “What are you talking about? I always do what?” I asked.

  “Tell me the truth, Tamara. Right now. On everything. Do you honestly believe your brother is a serial killer?”

  I stared out the bay window, the one window in the house that always attracted my attention. The clouds were perfectly visible and they looked like cotton candy. The picturesque view was quite a contrast from my mood, which grew darker by the moment. I spoke as slowly and convincingly as possible. “I believe...that he is capable of being violent against women...and I believe there’s evidence that he has something to do with it.”

  “So is that a yes? You think your brother is a serial killer?”

  I hated her for making me doubt myself. “I don’t know if I would use those exact words. Serial killer is...I don’t know if I can say that yet.”

  Nikki laughed, incredulous and bitter. “I can’t even believe this.”

  “What? Believe what?”

  She looked me in my eyes. “This was just another thing for you. Just something else to get mixed up in. And then you wrecked it. I don’t know if you do this shit on purpose or if you do it without knowing you do it, but I’m over it.”

  “Do what on purpose?”

  She jumped to her feet. “You never finish anything! You get all excited for like a week and then you just quit. Or you find some way to screw it up.”

  “I’ve been working with you on this for two months.”

  “Yeah, you have. That’s a record for you, right? So what happened, was it getting too boring for you? Or no, maybe it was getting to the point where you were actually doing a good job. Can’t have that, can you?”

  I was surprised by the venom in Nikki’s words. “I don’t...I’m not...”

  “Did you ever stop and think for one minute that it would look pretty damn bad if one of the people volunteering on this case and working with the families was related to the murderer?”

  “Why does it matter how it looks if it’s the truth?”

  “But it’s not true. You know good and gotdamn well it’s not.”

  “Why would I lie?” I asked, half hoping she wouldn’t take that question as rhetorical. I wanted her to be honest, no matter how much it hurt. I needed her to see me, and to read me, and to give me what I craved.

  Nikki looked at me and scratched her head. “You tell me. Did Andre piss you off? Is this your way of getting back at him for something? You definitely know how to be petty. You always have.”

  It stung, but it wasn’t entirely untrue. I was grateful for it. Bitterly grateful. I had always believed the people in my life were being polite in their treatment of me. I couldn’t stand the pretending.

  “He looks like the sketch, and his car matches, and—”

  “Really? His car matches? The only description I’ve seen is that it’s a dark sedan. Well done, Murder She Wrote. You cracked the case!”

  “Angela Lansbury,” I said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Murder She Wrote was the show but the detective was Angela Lansbury. Actually no, that was the actress. The character was Jessica Fletcher.”

  “Who the fuck cares?!” screamed Nikki, her face twisted in anger. She flopped back down onto the couch and put her head in her hands.

  “Listen,” I said. “There are other things going on that you have no idea know about. You don’t know my brother like I do.”

  “Save it. I don’t wanna hear shit else.” She paused before dropping the hammer. “Obviously you know how this has to go at this point.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You can’t work with me on this anymore. It doesn’t look right.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Dead ass. Whatever happens with your brother isn’t my business but if I know they’re looking at him, the families are gonna know soon, too.”

  I felt lightheaded, and tears threatened to spill over onto my face. “Is there any possible way I can still help out behind the scenes?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Nikki, I honestly didn’t think...I wasn’t trying to wreck this, I swear. I have reasons for believing this about Andre. Good reasons.”

  Nikki’s face softened and her tone did, too. “Look...I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I can’t afford to let anything jeopardize what we’re doing. You know how close everybody is watching this. You can still advise me off the record but you can’t be seen anywhere near this. It’s too messy. I’m sorry but that’s how it has to be.”

  I felt a flash of anger and decided I couldn’t go out like this. “You know what? I find it so funny that you’re acting all righteous right now when we both know what this is really about,” I said.

  Nikki’s eyes narrowed into slits. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You don’t care about those girls. This whole thing is about your career. That’s why you didn’t want me to write the press release. You couldn’t stand the thought of some other outlet latching onto your story. Is that what Ida Wells would have done?”

  She said nothing and I knew I had gone too far but I was on a roll and figured I might as well get it all out in the open. She had been honest with me so I could return the favor. “Why do you write about Atlanta at all? You hate it here. You don’t care about the history or the culture or the people. All you do is complain and throw shade. If it’s so bad here, why don’t you take your miserable ass back to New York and let somebody who’s actually from this city get a chance to write about it instead of using it to get famous?”

  Nikki rose from the couch and walked toward me, and for a brief moment, I wondered if we were going to fight. I had never been in one before. I’d had some near misses, one of which occurred in tenth grade after someone told Jatoya Williams they saw me flirting with her boyfriend. She approached me after school with three of her friends in tow while I was waiting for my bus. I think she expected me to have an attitude or get buck, but I simply said “okay” when she told me to stay away from him. I wasn’t afraid, and it wasn’t a surrender. I just didn’t care. I didn’t like him like that and there was no face to save as far as I was concerned. She could have that small victory because I knew I had already won the war. I was cuter and smarter than her and th
ere was nothing she could do about that.

  I prepared myself for fisticuffs right there in my living room, but Nikki walked past me into the dining room. I followed her and my heart sank when she touched the stack of file folders sitting on top of the table. The prospect of her taking them away was paralyzing. They had brought something to my life of late. Call it purpose, call it destiny, even. Whatever it was, I felt it slipping away and there was nothing I could do about it. I could beg, I could plead, maybe even cry some more but to what end? Nikki wasn’t wrong about me, as much as I wished she was. I had been fooling myself, stringing myself along like a noncommittal boyfriend, promising big things coming soon if I just held on and believed in the process. I had been on a road to nowhere and she and I both knew it.

  I grabbed the stack before she could. It was heavy but I cradled it like a baby and said a silent prayer over it. I’m sorry I messed this up. I thought I could handle it. I tried, I really tried. Please come back to me one day. I’ll do better, I swear.

  Nikki took the stack from me and gestured toward the grocery bags full of t-shirts. I sat in an upholstered dining chair and nodded, the last bit of fight drained out of me. Nikki balanced the items and walked toward the door before turning back and delivering her final blow.

  “Tell Tony I tried.”

  It didn’t register at first. I had to think for a moment, to figure out what I missed, to understand what Nikki had said or done to Tony that I hadn’t heard about yet. “Tried to do what? What does that mean?”

  Nikki shifted the heavy files and put her weight on one hip. “That night. At my get-together. He asked me if there was some way I could bring you in on what I was doing. He said it would be good for you to have something to do.”

  I stared into space, a million questions firing through my brain. My mind clouded over under the pressure and I wondered how to respond.

  “He was worried about you. That’s what a husband is supposed to do. Don’t be mad at him,” Nikki said.

  I loved how she was suddenly an expert on husbands after being married for two whole weeks. “I’m not mad, I’m confused. So you never really needed my help, then.”

  Nikki took a deep breath, regret spreading across her face. “I did. I still do. But he gave me the idea. He was looking out for you.”

  I barely heard her. Nikki and Tony would never understand no matter how much explaining I did. They couldn’t. They had never felt it. This was a betrayal, and worse than that, it was confirmation of the thing I feared most, the thing that had haunted me all my life. That people I loved and trusted, people I thought loved me in return, were secretly unhappy with me. That they were pretending to love me every day while plotting behind my back to turn me into a person they could actually love. Tony could have been honest. He could have told me he was worried about me, that I needed to find something to do so that I wouldn’t drive myself nuts. But he didn’t. He went behind my back. He thought I couldn’t deal with the truth.

  But he had no clue. No one did. There was nothing they could say that would break me. There are no words in any language that could hurt me more than the ones I said to myself every day. Nobody could possibly hate me more than I hated myself. They could try but I would win every time because I had been training for it all my life.

  Chapter 20

  REAL-LIFE POLICE INVESTIGATIONS are nothing like the movies. Police-work is far more boring than exciting. Barrington had never shot anyone, never been shot at, and besides the rare occasion when the computer finds a DNA match to a known suspect, there are no real aha! moments. Solving cases requires patience. And paperwork. Mountains of paperwork. And then there are the questions. So many questions. Months, sometimes years of knocking on doors and asking people questions, and of the hundreds you speak to, one or two might give you a lead that you then spend another several weeks or months chasing down. There’s a reason cops drink so much.

  Indeed, on that fine Thursday morning, Barrington and several other officers on the task force began a long and tedious day of questioning people. Hundreds of people, as Travis had warned. It had taken them three days of the paper trail to get to this point, and now the real work could begin.

  The tasks had been divvied up among several officers. They were to narrow down the list of vehicles on Travis’ report list to sedans, then narrow down to cars registered in the state. Finally, whittle it down until they were left with dark-colored sedans registered in the city. The resulting list numbered in the low two-thousands.

  Barrington had slammed the printout on his desk and laughed at the absurdity. This was the job they had given the man who was there to add his class and expertise to the investigation? Travis was right, it was bullshit. Nevertheless, he had a job to do, and since nobody else was going to work the case, Barrington would do it, and do it right.

  He and the other officers had spent two days in the war room further narrowing the list. Women who were the sole drivers of their vehicles were stricken crossed off. Male owners over the age of 65 were back-burnered. Their main pool—male owners between 18 and 60—was their baseline group, and its members had to be called in and eliminated. They didn’t have a psych profile yet, if the bosses had even bothered to ask, but that age window seemed appropriate. The most pressing interviews were the men in the main pool who had criminal records. The rest were to be done gradually.

  Andre had been interviewed the day before. Officer Dean had handled him, and he reported back that Andre was cooperative and understanding. No one had verified his alibi yet.

  The interviews were more fact-finding mission than interrogation, and anything off about an interviewee’s behavior or demeanor was to be reported. So far, only a couple of the men had pinged any radars. Their names went on a new list. Andre was placed on the new list.

  Barrington had already interviewed twelve men that morning and was waiting for the next one. The knock on the door sounded just as he was finishing up his coffee.

  “Hey, are you Officer Dunn?”

  Barrington stood. “Detective Dunn.”

  “Oh, my bad.” The man was around 40, give or take, with a beard and goatee. He wore slacks and a V-neck sweater with a button-down underneath, the look of someone with somewhere to be.

  “Not a problem. Antonio Johnston?”

  “Yeah, but you can call me Tony.” The two shook hands and Tony took his seat on the other side of the desk.

  “Tony, do you know why we called you in here today?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Alright, let me fill you in. We’re investigating a homicide.”

  Tony’s eyes widened. “A homicide? Is it someone I know?”

  Barrington regarded him carefully. He always kept in mind what it must be like on the other side of the desk. Alarming, certainly, and scary, wondering if you’re about to be told of the death of a loved one. “Well, that’s just it. We’re not sure, and we were hoping you could clarify some things for us.”

  “Okay. But can I ask who was killed? If it’s somebody close to me I want to know now.” His behavior was normal, and he wasn’t being rude, but he also wasn’t deferential, and Barrington didn’t much care for that. “Jeneice Harwell.”

  “That doesn’t ring a bell.” He looked to be thinking about it. “Yeah, I don’t think I know her.”

  Barrington waited. Better to let him talk through it.

  “Is there any particular reason my name is mixed up in this?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I honestly can’t think of one. I don’t know her, never heard her name, don’t know anything about her.”

  “Okay. Well here’s the thing. This young woman was killed and her body was found outdoors. We were able to collect a lot of important evidence.”

  “Okay...”

  “There were tire tracks leading to and from the area where the body was dumped.”

  “Okay...”

  “We were able to match the tracks with a very specific tread pattern, which is only found on ce
rtain tires. To make a long story very short, you’re on a list of men who own a car with those tires. You are the owner of a dark-colored Lexus, correct?”

  Tony’s shoulders slowly lowered and his face softened. “That’s correct, I have a black Lexus.”

  “Well, that’s why you’re here.”

  “Okay. What do you need from me?”

  “I need to know where you were last Monday.”

  Tony narrowed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I gotta say, you’re asking a lot of an old man.”

  Barrington chuckled. “It’s okay, there aren’t many people who can remember exactly what they did on a particular day.”

  “Yeah, I’m stumped. I have my calendar on my cell. Let me pull it up.”

  “No problem, man.”

  “Alright, let me see...Well, I teach classes on Mondays. On that day I would have left my house at about 9 am. I have office hours from 11 to 1 pm. I had a department meeting at 1:30. I can’t remember how long it lasted but they always run long...”

  “You’re a teacher? Where do you teach?”

  “At Georgia State.”

  Barrington nodded.

  “Alright I had a class at 4, 6, and 7:30, and then I went home.”

  “And were you home alone?”

  “No, I’m married. My wife would have been home.”

  “Okay, and what about Monday night into Tuesday morning?”

  “I was home.”

  “I’m assuming your wife can corroborate what you’re telling me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. That was easy.”

  “Does this have anything to do with those missing black girls?”

  Barrington smiled. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Gotcha,” Tony said knowingly. “You know what’s funny? My wife is actually working on that case.”

  “She a cop?”

  “Nah, she’s just helping out with the families. You may have seen her around.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s her name?”

  “Tamara Johnston.”

  “Tamara’s your wife?” Barrington asked, a large grin involuntarily spreading across his face. Not even a second passed before he regretted letting those words escape his smiling lips. It would have been imperceptible to anyone else, but when speaking to a man you don’t know about his wife, care must be taken. That man has a sixth sense, a preternatural ability to detect the faintest hint of familiarity in your tone. Always be formal. Always be distant. His wife’s good name should never flow casually off your tongue; rather, it should be said with both respect and mild uncertainty, and only after you’ve carefully encased it in a protective shield of qualifiers and pronouns. Oh right, I think I met her or Oh yeah, I think I might have seen her around. And for fuck’s sake, don’t smile, because why is that man’s wife putting a smile on your face? There was a code, an unofficial rulebook, and Barrington had just violated. It was only made worse by the fact that right there, in that room, the balance of power was tilted in his direction. This was bad.