OTHER TITLES BY ANDREW E. KAUFMAN
Twisted
While the Savage Sleeps
The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted
Darkness & Shadows
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Andrew E. Kaufman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477809082
ISBN-10: 1477809082
Cover design by PEPE nymi
To those who stood at my side during the battle
CONTENTS
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.
—Eliza Farnham
1
On a Thursday afternoon, beneath a hearty spring downpour, Riley Harper walks out of Glendale Psychiatric Hospital a free woman. But she might as well have PSYCHOTIC MURDERER stamped across her forehead, because that’s how many will always see her.
If you were to ask why she was committed in the first place, Riley would contend her breakdown was the product of bad timing and a lousy memory. The press and public would disagree. They’d argue that her supposed mental illness was an elaborate scam to avoid community disdain and the threat of a retrial.
Shortly after Riley and her sister, Erin, emerge from the hospital entrance, a wave of reporters rolls across the wet tarmac, blocking their path, shooting photos, and shotgunning questions. Erin gave fair warning that the press was camped out in the parking lot, but Riley had no idea there would be this many of them. She pulls down her raincoat’s hood to shield her face from the cameras, and the two women dash for the car.
“Ms. Harper!” hollers a local TV reporter, wagging her microphone as if it were a trophy with a large white 5 affixed to it. “How does it feel to be free?”
Riley ignores the reporter as Erin strides briskly by her side, trying to navigate the driving Northern California rain and a thick storm of aggressive newshounds. As they continue rushing to Erin’s car, the press keeps coming, feet clacking, shutters snapping, jaws flapping.
“Do you still claim you can’t remember what you were doing during the murder?” asks a reporter with an ugly green-and-red tie that makes Riley think of Christmas. Odd, since it’s the middle of April.
“We’ve heard the investigation might be reopened,” another newsperson shouts. “Are you worried your arrest could soon follow?”
But ignoring questions from the reporters only seems to urge them on. Now they form a human barricade between the sisters and Erin’s Jeep Cherokee. A news copter swoops in from high above, battering the darkened, pathless sky while trying to grab aerial shots of Riley’s departure.
“Move it!” Erin says to the press with a sharp snarl that’s barely audible beneath the thundering copter. Dragging Riley by a hand, she shoves through the crowd and shouts, “I said, move it!”
But the mob pushes back, and Riley loses her footing. She slips on slick ground and falls to her knees. The cameras continue to roll, following her mishap to its bitter end.
“What the hell’s wrong with you people?” Erin shrieks with pink-faced anger while she helps Riley up.
“Ms. Harper, did or didn’t you kill her?” says a reporter, jockeying beside them.
Riley pulls to an abrupt stop and battles a ferocious urge to lash out, but if eyes could shoot lightning bolts, this guy would be lying belly-up on the pavement. The reporter must sense she means business, because he shuffles a few preemptive paces backward.
She’s about to turn away when her limbs go weak. Demetre Sloan slinks through the crowd, watching Riley’s every move. For a fleeting moment, the two women’s gazes connect, then Erin steps up just in time. She yanks open the car door and helps Riley inside before slamming it shut, then fights her way around to the driver’s side. Erin is not by any means a large woman, but she’s tough. Determined, too, as she rams her way through the microphones and cameras and flailing hands so she can grab the car door handle.
They make it safely inside the vehicle, although to Riley it feels like a fishbowl. Erin takes a moment to catch her breath, until a jarring palm slap against the window interrupts the effort. Riley flinches. A reporter mouths something indiscernible from behind the glass, obviously last-ditching it for a parting comment.
This time, Riley manages to remain composed. Once more, Erin saves the day—she affords the crowd a long, ear-shattering honk, leaving it little time to clear out before she shoves the car in gear and flies into reverse. Seconds later, they escape the media mayhem, hightailing it away from Glendale and down the road.
2
“She was there,” Riley says. “Demetre Sloan was there.”
“I know.” Erin sucks in a fitful breath. “I saw.”
“Just a few minutes out of Glendale, and already that bitch with a badge is coming after me.”
Neither says anything for a good five minutes. Riley needs these moments to settle her nerves. To decompress. She looks down, runs a hand over her torn and soiled jeans.
“Shit! You’re hurt!” Erin says, splitting her attention between Riley’s bloodstained knees and the road.
“It’s no big deal. Just a few scratches.”
“Damn it! Things weren’t supposed to go like this.” Erin shakes her head. “They were not . . .”
“How did the press even find out I was being released?” Riley checks the side-view mirror to see if they’re following. “Aren’t there rules against giving out that kind of information?”
“There are supposed to be.”
“But?”
Erin sighs. “A few months back, an unnamed source from inside the hospital leaked that your condition was improving and you were due for release. It was all over the news.”
“I suppose that same source also told them today would be the day.”
“Probably, yes.”
Riley stares blindly out her window. In a perfect world, she would have looked forward to this day, but for obvious reasons, she’s been dreading it. This past hour was only the beginning, a watered-down version of what lies ahead. People have been watching TV. They’ve read things. So has Riley, and she can tell which way the wind is blowing. Suspicion has wrapped itself around her like a rancid stench, and she’s being thrust into the hostile community without a lifeline. The resentment toward her that’s been incubating outside the institution walls feels more threatening than anything that could have happened inside them. At least Glendale’s most dangerous were kept under restraint. But who will protect her now?
Though she doesn’t look, she can sense Erin keeping a watchful eye on her. Gaze leveled ahead, Riley works hard to maintain a stoic expression, shedding not a single tear. Then she tastes blood, realizes she’s chewing her bottom lip, and makes herself stop.
“It’s going to be okay, sis,” Erin tries, sounding a shade too measured to pass for believable. “I promise. It will.”
Riley nods. Not because she feels comforted but because it seems like the right thing to do at this moment.
But things aren’t okay.
Erin opens her mouth to talk, hesitates, then stops, and an obstinate silence broadens between them. This was not their norm before Erin had her committed. But then, so much has changed since that day when Erin walked in and found Riley lying on the kitchen floor.
The river of red, snaking its way across tile.
Riley, begging Erin to let her die.
The ambulance. The hospital.
The crushing disappointment and heartbreak.
Riley examines the four-inch scar that runs up her wrist, then squeezes her lids shut and tries to wrestle away those buffeting memories.
The car rounds a corner, and her emotions take a nosedive. They’re passing through Meadowview, the old neighborhood. She didn’t expect this. After being away for a while, it’s a shock to her system. This is where it all happened. The beginning of the end. Where time stopped and life turned inside out.
Her spine hitches ramrod straight. Her tongue feels as gritty as dirt. But she tells herself it’s okay, that she can handle this. In an attempt to derail the gnawing anxiety, she strikes a deal with herself to pull away, to observe how much life in the neighborhood has changed since her public descent into insanity. New buildings have sprung up. Old ones have been renovated. And the general population seems younger—either that or she is growing older. What was once her favorite little movie theater has been converted into a trendy thrift shop called Frock ’n’ Roll Fashion. The video store is now a café, an abundance of Gen-Y boomers lounging outside, gazes glued to laptops while they sip coffee.
Her distraction works for a little while.
Until it doesn’t.
More wind. More unremitting rain. An unforgiving combination that bullies the windshield and assails it with water. Rain that drives her memories deeper into the chaos that spun her world off its axis. Deeper into her private hell. She clutches the armrest and squeezes. Soon, her fingernails are digging into leather.
The car hangs a right and lands them near the one patch of earth she doesn’t want to revisit: Greenday Cemetery, the place where her mind betrayed her. Images and sensations from when she regained consciousness on the side of the road cut through her mind like a filthy, jagged razor blade. The chuffing wind. The rain that stung the back of her neck. Her banged-up forehead.
The bloody sneaker.
This no longer feels like an awful memory. She is there again, somersaulting down the rabbit hole.
“Son of a bitch!” Erin says.
Riley flees from the darkness and pops into the moment.
“I’m so sorry!” Erin pounds her palm against the steering wheel. This time she appears shaken. “I didn’t even think about—I should have gone a different . . . Oh shit.”
Riley clears her throat and, in a voice rough and crackly, says, “It’s okay.”
“It isn’t okay.” Erin slows her car to compensate for the slippery road. “You just got out of Glendale, and here I am, taking you on a drive through Misery Lane.”
More of that uneasy silence. More rain.
“I’m fine,” says Riley in a final attempt to repair the discomfort, but her dull affect strains credibility, making this moment between them that much worse.
She’s not fine.
Because instead of moving away from the hurricane, she’s flat-hatting directly into it.
3
As it turns out, the old neighborhood won’t be a problem, because that isn’t where Riley will live. But her new neighborhood raises an entirely different host of concerns.
The comfortable middle-class community in which she grew up, then created a family, no longer meets her budgetary constraints. Thankfully, Erin stepped in—as Erin always does—by petitioning Glendale to put Riley on the fast track for its Hospital Release Housing Program. HRHP will pay 50 percent of the rent, and the rest will be up to Riley. Erin has taken away some of that financial pressure by fronting Riley enough money to survive until she can get on her feet. That said, her housing options are limited to a designated area.
About thirty-five minutes from the old neighborhood, Rainbow Valley may be the most unbefitting name ever: gray skies shelter a dismal collection of apartment buildings, warehouses, and convenience stores.
Erin pulls the car up to Riley’s development.
“This is it!” Erin says, working hard to show enthusiasm as she points past the flip-flopping windshield wipers.
Riley gets out and sees two police vehicles parked against the curb, blue and red lights twirling, and grapples with her stinging uneasiness.
Fighting the downpour, the two women trek toward a pair of bruised and battered doors, then Erin inserts a key to open them. The inside entryway is a cramped space, barely big enough to house rows of dented, dirt-smudged mailboxes. Overhead hangs a square light fixture constructed of filmy gold-colored glass, the brass housing broken in several spots.
They climb the stairs, and Riley works hard to school her uneasiness. This place is dark. And depressing. Dusty light sconces cling for their lives to peeling wallpaper. Even the sprayed-on popcorn ceilings look cruddy, an occasional spiderweb bridging the lumps. Halfway down one hall, a door stands wide open, the apartment beyond it empty, a carpenter’s bag resting on the kitchen countertop.
Riley’s got no right to complain. In all honesty, she signed up for this. Moving in with Erin wasn’t an option. There’s no way she’d be willing to disrupt her sister’s life—not with all the chaos from the press and public. Besides that, more than ever, she needs privacy.
Get out. Stay strong. Trust your truth, she thinks, reciting her survival plan. She’ll find a job, save some money, and, after wrapping up loose ends, make tracks out of this town. There’s a better life waiting elsewhere, if she can just stay on course.
“This is all part of a whole gentrification project!” Erin exclaims, clearly trying to find light in a situation where there is little of it.
Riley half smiles as an attempt to appear on board with the concept.
“No, really,” Erin goes on. “From your window you’ll be able to see the brand-new building that recently went up, facing the rest of downtown. It’s quite lovely, and I’ve heard there are others on the way. This will eventually be one of the hottest neighborhoods in town.”
&nb
sp; Eventually, Riley thinks, studying the hideously patterned low-pile carpet, but she’ll be lucky to see it in her lifetime.
“And here it is!” Erin says when they near the hallway’s midpoint.
She inserts a key into the door and pushes it open, and Riley braces herself. The combined fetor of dirty bleach and scouring powder rushes out to greet them. Riley forces back tears as she covers her nose and peers inside, but with the blinds pulled down, it’s hard to make out much. When Erin lets in some sunlight, the view doesn’t improve: the only things to see are heaps of boxes stacked throughout the living room.
“I didn’t have a chance to finish everything I wanted to,” Erin says, turning on a few lights, “but I did get the bathroom unpacked. I also made sure your room was in order. Hope you don’t mind that the bed came from my guest room.”
“Thanks, Erin,” Riley says, trying her best to sound grateful for a new life that already feels as if it belongs to someone else. In spite of that, she truly is grateful. Erin has made significant efforts to soften Riley’s landing in the real world.
Erin places a hand against her forehead and winces.
“What is it?” Riley asks.
“Oh . . . one of those stupid migraines.”
“Have they been acting up a lot lately?”
“These last few days.” Erin has been plagued with them since her teens. “It’s the stress. You know, work and stuff. I’ve been getting ready for a murder trial, and it starts next week.”
Riley can’t help but feel that she’s the one responsible for this particular onset.
“Help you start unpacking?” Erin offers.
“Thanks, but you should go home and get some rest. You’ve already done more than enough and—”
“I really don’t mind.”
“—and I’m too exhausted to do much right now anyway. You go take care of yourself, okay?”
Erin nods. She presses a key onto the countertop. “I also had spares made. They’re in the kitchen drawer. And—oh.” Erin points to her. “I can drop your car off tomorrow after work, then help unpack.”
“Thanks again.” Riley smiles her acknowledgment. “For everything.”
Erin goes in for a goodbye hug, but Riley instinctively deflects the move, crossing her arms and turning her body sideways.
What She Doesn't Know: A Psychological Thriller Page 1