What She Doesn't Know: A Psychological Thriller Read online

  The clerk tips up Riley’s paperwork to examine it, then asks with a rumpled brow, “It says here you’ve only been at your current residence for . . . a day?”

  “I recently moved in.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Kristin L. says, then points to a spot on the form. “You can go ahead and add your prior residence right here.”

  Glendale Psychiatric Hospital won’t cut it and will likely bring unwanted recognition, so Riley adds her Meadowview address instead, then looks up at the girl.

  “A current ID?” Kristen L. says. “I still need one.”

  Riley’s cheeks warm with frustration. She’s been off the map for too long, hadn’t considered how difficult it would be to throw down new tracks. This phone was supposed to be the first step in her plan. She needs it, has to find a way to make this happen, so she looks at the application, trying to figure out her next move. The DMV is several miles away. Erin would need to drive her there, but even then, a new license would take weeks.

  The clerk is waiting.

  Riley says, “This is all I’ve got. Is there anything else you can do for me?”

  Kristen L. points to an endcap with a display of burner phones and says, “Next customer, please?”

  But when she looks back at Riley, her expression changes: budding realization, interrupted by a flashing red alert. She reexamines the name on Riley’s application, glances up at her, then back at the application. Then her expression sharpens and becomes more recognizable.

  Startled recognition.

  Kristen L. raises a hand to her lips and staggers backward, and Riley’s heart skips. The girl zeros in on a television hanging on a wall across the room. Riley reels around, looks there, too, and sees video of her chaotic departure from Glendale. She can’t hear the anchorman, but it’s not necessary. The words crawling across the screen say it all:

  FORMER TEACHER SUSPECTED OF MURDER RELEASED FROM GLENDALE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL AMID COMMUNITY FEARS

  “That’s her! That’s the psycho killer!”

  Riley swivels in another direction. A guy in his twenties, wearing a backward baseball cap and loose-fitting shorts, pokes a finger in her direction. She no longer feels her heart skipping—it’s bongoing against her chest, and all she can think about is getting out of there. Before Riley makes it to the door, she glances over her shoulder at the gawking crowd. Some are pointing while others whisper.

  “Good riddance, you crazy bitch!” a woman, blistering with hostile contempt, shouts from a different corner of the room.

  Riley doesn’t wait to field further insults. She bursts through the door and out into the rain, her only companion a blustering wind.

  “Ms. Harper!”

  She jerks her view toward the parking lot. A stray newspaper reporter comes hustling toward her, shouting, “Got a moment to chat? It won’t take long.”

  “Get away from me!” she says, flustered and changing direction.

  “I just want your side of the—”

  “GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!”

  The reporter falls back as Riley quickens her pace. In an effort to seek safety, she lopes through the downpour toward one end of the shopping center. Leaning against a wall, she hunches over and grabs hold of her knees. Rain soaks her hair, her face—everything—while she tries to slow her racing thoughts and keep from hyperventilating.

  Footsteps approach.

  She jolts, lifts her head. Some teenage boys stroll by, joking, chuckling, and splashing through the puddles. They take a look at Riley, and one of them says, “What the hell’s her problem?”

  The boys break out into laughter, and she watches them disappear into the distance, for once craving the privacy of her desolate apartment. Anywhere would be better than here.

  She starts walking and tries to collect herself. Several feet later, a door swings open, nearly slamming her in the face, and out races a beautiful woman. Mid-twenties. Black business suit, flawless complexion. Raven hair that falls past sculpted cheekbones before tumbling onto slender shoulders. The dark-haired stranger breezes past Riley without even looking at her and flippantly says, “Sorry,” as if it were an afterthought. She opens her umbrella, then rushes toward a red late-model Mercedes-Benz.

  Within seconds the woman is gone.

  That’s the psycho killer!

  Good riddance, you crazy bitch!

  Those harsh comments swirl through Riley’s mind like a virulent band of smoke.

  She shoves her key into the apartment’s lock and opens it. After slamming the door shut, she leans against it, then stares up toward the ceiling and waits for her mind and body to unruffle.

  She glances down at the puddle gathering around her shoes, slips out of them, and on her way to the bathroom grabs a towel. She manages to take her hair from soaked to damp, but her clothes are a completely different story. She peels them off and throws them over the shower bar to dry.

  Trembling, she reaches up and pulls the pieces of Erin’s bracelet from her pocket to examine them.

  The links are severed beyond repair, the infinity symbol barely dangling off one end.

  Maybe our kind of infinity is bound to be nothing more than a never-ending wish.

  10

  Evening is on the approach, and life feels a little less chaotic.

  Riley removes the clothes she laid out on her bed this morning. After folding them with the greatest of care, she takes one last look at them, puts them away, then goes to the bedroom window and gazes out at a shimmering, silvery dusk.

  Rain. All I see is rain. This miserable damned rain.

  Abrupt movement distracts her.

  She locates it in time to catch someone practically jumping out of view at that same second-floor apartment across the way. A brambly sensation batters inside her stomach. Either whoever lives there is extremely high-strung, or someone is watching her.

  Don’t be paranoid. People move about all day long.

  The curtains across the way snap shut.

  The dead bolt on her front door jiggles in its housing.

  Her heart hurls a triple whack against her chest. She’s halfway to the door when three solid knocks strike.

  “It’s me.” Erin’s voice booms from the hallway while she unsuccessfully tries to unlock the door again.

  With life running circles around her all day, Riley forgot her sister was coming over to drop off the car and help unpack boxes. Her pulse slows.

  Everything’s okay.

  She tries to stabilize a few nerves before opening the door.

  “Why isn’t my key working?” Erin asks, examining the dead bolt and repeatedly flipping the lever from side to side.

  “Oh, that. It’s nothing.” Riley wheels around and walks away. She doesn’t want her sister to know about the apartment break-in. Erin would demand she call the police, which Riley is adamantly against. She can’t trust law enforcement, and the less she sees of them, the better off she’ll be.

  “What do you mean, nothing?” Erin challenges, then again asks, “Why isn’t my key working?”

  “I changed it out.” Riley tries to affect casual. “You know, with the press hounding me and all.”

  “The press?” Erin says, looking down the hallway as if searching for logic. She slings her gaze back to Riley. “Have any of them tried to break in?”

  “Well, no. Not yet. But you can’t be too careful.”

  “Have they even been inside this building?”

  Riley tosses up a shrug. “Not that I’ve actually seen.”

  Erin’s head falls into a wary slant that speaks her doubt. Riley busily searches through a random drawer for nothing, but she can practically feel the fire of Erin’s gaze heating up the side of her face.

  “I put your car in the lot,” Erin says, her tone suggesting confusion as she slowly lowers her purse onto the countertop.

  “Thanks, but it looks like I won’t be able to drive it yet. Turns out my license is expired.” Riley contemplates how to dodge the next quandary charging dow
n the pike. Erin doesn’t need to know about the driver’s license fiasco at the phone store, either, not to mention the subsequent hate-fest. She’s already unnerved by Riley’s flawed lock explanation—no need to snap the tension rip cord with that particularly unpleasant narrative.

  She changes topics. “Can you find a way home?”

  “I’ll catch a cab,” Erin replies. She looks at her phone’s planner. “I’ve got court next Monday and Tuesday, but we’re in recess on Wednesday, so how about if I take you to the DMV then?”

  “Yes. Perfect. Thank you.”

  “Also, before I forget, I figured you might need this,” Erin the Mind Reader says, pulling a brand-new cell phone from her purse.

  “Oh wow . . . I—you really didn’t have to do that.”

  “All I did was change to a family plan. That’s what we are, by the way.”

  “Huh?”

  “Family.”

  “I know that.”

  “The only one either of us has. And I’ll always be on your side. No matter what.”

  Riley abandons the conversation. They’re treading on delicate terrain, stumbling once again toward the elephant in the room. She busies herself by tearing open a large carton, then parks her attention on the contents.

  “Hey,” Erin says.

  “Yeah?” Riley pulls out an item wrapped in newspaper, studies it.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sure . . . fine.” She finally finds enough moxie to meet Erin’s gaze and tries her best to smile off the edginess.

  “Because you seem awfully overwound tonight.”

  Riley’s laugh is dry. “Well, I did recently leave a mental hospital.” She returns to her unwrapping. “So there’s that.”

  “I know . . . but is there something else?”

  “Oh, look!” She pulls away the paper and holds up a doll for Erin to see—a small rag doll—a girl—expression part sad, part pensive. “I almost forgot about this. Do you remember it?”

  Confusion flattens Erin’s expression like a steamroller. She shakes her head.

  Riley grins at the memory. “Clarissa hated this doll so much as a kid that she’d constantly hide it. Her favorite place was on the floor behind the living room drapes. I’d see this tiny pair of Mary Janes sticking out. I’d laugh, then put it back in its place, but not long after, poof! The doll would be gone, and I’d have to search for it all over again. It became a game with us.”

  Erin responds with a penciled-in nod.

  In this case, at least, Riley is grateful for the silence. She sits the doll on a side table, then with hands on hips takes in all the boxes and says, “So. Guess we should get busy with the rest of these, right?”

  “Right . . . ,” Erin says, consternation so apparent you could drive a spike through it. “Do you have something for me to open these with?”

  “There’s a box cutter in my bedr—” She stops to think about the headboard, then says, “Wait. It’s a mess in there. I’ll go.”

  But Erin is already cruising toward the bedroom. She pulls to a cold halt and stares blankly, silently, at those bare patches marring the headboard.

  Oh. Shit.

  “I decided to refinish it,” is the only answer Riley can come up with on such short notice.

  “Now. You decided to do it now.”

  “Yeah. Uh-huh.”

  “One day after moving in. Before you’re even fully unpacked.”

  “I just wanted to make it my own,” Riley says, going in for the save. “You know how I am once I get an idea to do something.” In an attempt to draw Erin’s observation away from the headboard, she points to a box cutter on the top of her dresser and says, “Go ahead. Take that. I’ll grab a knife from the dishwasher.”

  Riley practically runs toward the kitchen, pulls open the washer’s door, then spins out another change of topic. “I met one of my new neighbors yesterday. Well . . . kind of met her. A rather interesting character, to say the least.”

  Erin’s silence from the other room seems to indicate her bewilderment over having to follow this erratic, quickly shifting discussion.

  “The woman is nasty,” Riley goes on, talking toward the bedroom hallway as she reaches down for the knife. “I don’t think she ever leaves her apart—”

  She stops after feeling a sharp prick to her finger. Looking down, she suppresses a gasp. Her butcher knife has been flipped over in the wash basket, green handle facing down, business end aimed directly up at her.

  Like a threat.

  And she didn’t put it in that way yesterday. She never would.

  “Riley? Are you okay?”

  She slams the dishwasher door shut, spins toward the hall where her sister stands, looking at her.

  “Riley,” Erin says through broadening bafflement, “what’s going on with you?”

  11

  The two make progress in their unpacking efforts.

  As the evening wears on, Erin’s mistrust fades some, and they’re on good terms when she leaves—well, for them, anyway. The moment the front door closes, Riley immediately hurries back to her dishwasher.

  The knife has changed positions.

  Again.

  The green handle faces up, the sharp, menacing tip aimed down.

  What’s going on?

  She knows for sure she didn’t flip that knife back over. There wasn’t enough time. Erin came up on her so fast that she immediately closed the dishwasher door.

  The bitter taste of dismay coats her tongue. Her body feels weak.

  Hold it together. Think this through.

  She puts a hand up to each temple, looks down, and tries to think: she loaded the silverware yesterday, then changed out the lock this morning—which means nobody got in this afternoon while she was away, which means the incident with the knife had to have happened last night while she slept. She thinks about those awful words on the headboard, and her blood pressure spikes, followed by a biting chill that can sever flesh.

  Someone could be stalking me.

  She hurries to the window, sends her wary gaze into the thick, impenetrable darkness—darkness that, in this instant, seems more ugly and threatening than ever before.

  The sound of squealing tires erupts from the parking lot.

  What if they’re still out there?

  She can’t call the police, can’t tell Erin, and the building manager, Aileen Bailey? Forget about that. She has to take care of this herself. On her way out the door, she grabs a hammer resting on top of a box and her keys from the kitchen table.

  Outside in the rain, with senses on high alert, she rounds the building and looks for anyone suspicious or loitering on the premises. Reaching the rear of the building, she spots a plain, dark sedan parked several feet from the entrance. Its lights are off, but someone is definitely in the driver’s seat. She narrows her focus, but the dense night forms a blue-black barrier between them, denying an opportunity to clearly make out a face. But one thing is certain: the person is looking her way.

  That could be the one. That could be the same one who’s been inside my apartment.

  Another sound, the combination of a palpitating engine and crackling asphalt. Riley swings around in time to catch a different car as it wheels into the lot of the new building across from hers.

  A red Mercedes. Driven, improbably, by the raven-haired woman who nearly bowled Riley over outside the shopping center today. She watches while the woman disappears into the slick and opulent building.

  When Riley looks at her own parking lot, the sedan has vanished.

  More people disappearing.

  12

  She wakes to a forceful thunderclap.

  The storm is getting worse, and Riley’s body doesn’t feel right. She looks down at herself and . . .

  What the—?

  She’s still wearing her clothes. A hangover of confusion ensues. She doesn’t even remember getting into bed.

  I . . . I don’t understan—

  The clock says it’s 6:00 a.m.


  Was she so exhausted from all the turmoil that she passed out and slept through the night?

  A downpour slaps against the window, startling her. She rocks her body away from the gray and muted light. She sits up, swings her legs to the edge of the bed. She pulls herself into a standing position. Unsteady. That’s how she feels but is nevertheless determined. Determined to turn her stumbling leap from Glendale into a sprint past the finish line.

  Get out. Stay strong. Trust your truth.

  Vision bleary, she staggers into the kitchen in search of coffee. She opens the dishwasher for a cup, then instantly releases the handle and flies into reverse.

  The butcher knife is gone.

  Gone?

  She looks deeper inside, wondering whether her morning fog is to blame for what she sees—or doesn’t. Then her head swivels toward the front door. Did she forget to lock it before running outside last night? She didn’t check the knife after coming back. Did someone sneak into her apartment while she was gone and take it?

  Not again. This can’t be happening again . . .

  Determined to grab hold of reality, she scrambles from room to room on the hunt for her knife. She checks the closets, looks underneath furniture, scours the carpet.

  In the bedroom, those bare spots in the headboard laugh at her. They mock her sensibilities. She drops into a seated position on the bed, and through her peripheral vision, a thin shimmer of light twinkles at her side. When she looks, her skin flashes hot and cold. She lifts her pillow, and with trembling hands reaches for the butcher knife.

  The one that, all night long, lay inches beneath her head while she slept.

  This is no mistake. No flight of imagination.

  This is real.

  13

  Patricia Lockwood looks much as Riley imagined during their phone conversation. Silvery hair drops into a short, crisp bob that barely grazes her chin. Her smoky-blue silk blouse almost perfectly matches her eyes. And although she appears pleasant enough, her expression falls a few notches below the welcoming point. Too professional. Too intense. It’s the Therapist’s Stare, which Riley grew to know well during her time at Glendale.

  With one leg crossed over the other, Patricia repeatedly flexes her foot, causing the heel of her shoe to snap on and off. Riley finds the action—and the sound—grating. She does her best to ignore it and instead focuses on the blue folder that rests in Patricia’s lap.