A/N: This might be more of a suspense or thriller-suspense than an outright thriller. This story will be short, probably less than 10 chapters. A warning to all readers, it's going to get very violent.
My name is Normani Kordei Hamilton, and I'm a 29 year old African American woman from Houston, Texas. I have an athletic but curvy body, I'm attractive, I have darker skin, and I'm of average height. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but spent the first several years of my childhood in New Orleans, Louisiana until my family was forced to escape from Hurricane Katrina and settled in Texas.
This story starts when I was 26 years old and already established a life in Miami, Florida. I moved there when I was 24 for a fresh start. See, I was dating a man named Arin whom I met while attending University of Houston. When we were 22 or about to turn 22, I graduated with a degree in sociology, and he graduated with a degree in communications. Even though we were never married or engaged, we got pretty serious and moved in together. I supported him part of the time when the loser couldn't find a good job and ended up working for Starbucks.
That lying, cheating bastard died of an unfortunate accident. He was one of those hypermilers who tried to save gas by overinflating his tires. There was one day when my car was in for repair, and I had to borrow his. He asked that I make sure his tires were at the PSI he wanted them to be. Well, I kind of sort of inflated his tires even higher than he wanted on my way home at a gas station near our apartment. I certainly wasn't going to drive around long with the tires like that.
He took his car out that evening "to hang out with his friends." On his drive home from the other woman's house, one of his tires burst. Oops. He spun around on the highway and slammed into a barricade. Disappointedly, he died on impact. I wanted him to suffer just like I suffered when he gave me gonorrhea. I wanted his car to catch on fire and for him to burn alive, but we don't always get what we want. Do we?
A detective with the Houston Police Department thought it was suspicious that his tires were so overinflated. I became a suspect in Arin's homicide case because of my past. So, I slashed a few tires and keyed a few cars of some ex-boyfriends. Haven't most women done something like that? Just because my boyfriend got another woman pregnant while I was supporting his ass doesn't mean that I wanted to murder him.
Eventually, they would drop me as a suspect due to lack of evidence that I intended to overinflate his tires to the point that they would explode. His death was ruled an accident, and the case was closed, but that wasn't the end of it. I had been all over local news. My friends, family, and coworkers at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services started treating me differently. I had to escape and start over.
I chose to move to Miami because it's warm, diverse, and seemed like a fun place for a young, single woman. I was able to get a job with Florida Department of Children and Families working in the Child Welfare Division. I quickly became friends with two coworkers. One was named Dinah and worked in Child Welfare with me; the other was named Ally and worked in Adult Protective Services. Ally was a really short, married, Mexican woman who spoke the worst Spanish I had ever heard from a Latino. Dinah was a tall, voluptuous, Polynesian woman who thought she was black. She was always trying to hook me up with her cousin Masi, but he had two baby mamas and worked as a cashier at a dollar store. The three of us would eat lunch together almost every day and hang out on the weekends when Ally could find a babysitter.
Working with fucked up families and their self-inflicted problems is draining. There are so many stupid people who breed like rabbits because they don't know the meaning of birth control. I was resting at home on a Friday night after a long day at work when I got a call on my company cell phone. Fuck! I was on call this week for night emergencies. The rundown I got was that there was a domestic violence incident and some dirty kids needed to be removed from the home.
The address they gave me was at a mobile home park. Typical. When I arrived, there were five police cars and an ambulance already there. Shit. I'm going to be here all night. After parking and getting out of my car, I called out to find who I needed to talk to. "Excuse me! Who is the lead officer?"
A female police officer approached me. She was a little bit shorter than me, had long hair that looked like it was dyed black pulled back into a ponytail, porcelain-like skin, and the greenest eyes I had ever seen. Even in her uniform and all the gear she had on, I could see she was a thick one. At the time, I was thinking that I had never been into women, but if I was, I would certainly do her. She held out her hand, and I shook it. "Hi, I'm officer Jauregui. I'm the reporting officer. You must be from Child Welfare."
"Yes," I answered. "I'm Normani Hamilton. I'm the one who's on call for today. So, what's going on?"
"Well, we would have just submitted a report to you guys later, but we ran into some issues we couldn't handle on our own. See, another officer and I responded to a family disturbance call, and we happened upon a woman who was badly beaten by her husband. She's being taken to the hospital, and he's going to jail. The problem is they have children. We found out that they have an aunt who lives in this same mobile home part, but she's unfit to take the children. Her trailer was filthy, and she appeared to be high on something. We would have just taken them to the children's shelter, but we noticed that the kids had bruises on them and are a bit underweight. That's why we called you guys to come out immediately to investigate."
"Jesus, some of these families," I commented.
"Yeah, I know," Officer Jauregui agreed. "There are so many good people who want children but can't have them. Then, you have people like this who shouldn't be let anywhere near children and don't even want them, but they have a ton of them so easily."
"Where are the kids? Can I talk to them?" I asked. I was anxious to get this over with.
Officer Jauregui put her hands behind her back and looked to the ground as she drug her foot around in the dirt making circles. "Yeah, about that. I apologize in advance. Our investigator is interviewing them and taking pictures. I told him to wait for you so that the children wouldn't have to tell their stories twice, but he does what he wants to do. He thinks he's hot shit. It might be a wait."
A wait it was indeed. An hour passed before I was able to interview the kids myself. To pass the time, I chatted with Officer Jauregui who insisted that I call her Lauren. It was like we became friends immediately. When she was about to wrap up and head back to the station to end her shift and I was about to drive the kids to the shelter, Lauren stopped me before I got into my car. "Hey, my girlfriend and I are having a barbecue at our house tomorrow. You should come."
Damn! She's taken, but she's a lesbian. This should be interesting. "Er, I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable. I wouldn't know anyone there."
"You'd know me!" Lauren noted. "And, you can bring a couple of your friends if you want. If they have kids, tell them to bring them too. It'll be family friendly."
"Alright. I think I will come. I have two friends who'd probably like to go."
Lauren smiled at me. "Great! I'll see you there at 6 pm." She pulled out what looked like a business card and wrote something on it. "Here's my address, phone number, and the gate code to the subdivision. See you tomorrow, Normani." She extended her arm to hand me the business card which I took.
"Thanks. See you tomorrow, Lauren."
