What She Doesn't Know: A Psychological Thriller

by Andrew E. Kaufman

  The move only buys momentary relief. In addition to having a lead foot, Samantha’s got a powerful engine to match. She catches up and is soon on Riley’s tail again. Too close, in fact. With mere inches separating their bumpers, traffic snarls, and she finds herself trapped, unable to change lanes or escape Samantha’s road rage. She taps her brakes several times in the hopes that the flickering warning lights will make Samantha back off.

  They do not. The action only seems to inflame Samantha’s anger, fueling her into a more aggressive attack. She surges forward enough to give Riley’s car a good thwack. Retribution is Samantha’s wheelhouse, and her gears are spinning faster than a weather vane in a Texas tornado.

  They hit the parkway, and traffic speeds up—so, too, does the danger, along with Riley’s surging nervous system. Samantha keeps on her tail, and now they’re both moving entirely too fast for safety.

  Crunch. Crunch.

  The Mercedes slams once, slams twice into her car, with neck-jerking force. Riley cranks the wheel to the right, and her car skips into the next lane.

  But the effort proves futile. Samantha keeps up with her, and they’re at it again, courting jeopardy in a perilous game of hawk-dove. Other than maintaining a hazardous speed, she doesn’t know how to free herself from this death derby.

  In a feeble attempt at self-preservation, she checks her mirror, but the psychotic huntress has vanished from view. She pokes her head through her window, checks the blind spot, but doesn’t see the Mercedes, which only elevates her consternation. As she’s quickly learning, Samantha is more dangerous out of sight than in it. All she can do is drive on, but it feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop—although in this case, slam might be a better word.

  SLAM.

  The hit comes from behind again, this time so powerful that it hurls Riley’s car into a reckless shimmy. Her vehicle breaks into an out-of-control spin, barely missing another car while it ferociously skids and screeches and whirls toward the roadside. A blur twirls around her in double time as if she’s flying through a Technicolor tunnel.

  THUD, THUD. CRUNCH.

  Her car skips onto the shoulder and keeps going. She tries to apply her brakes, but speed and a carpet of ice plants make a deadly proposition, lubricating her tires at a time when she least needs it and sending the vehicle into a wicked rate of acceleration. Sweaty palms keep their gorilla grip in place on a steering wheel that has nowhere safe to take her. Up ahead, a concrete bridge column looms directly in her path, moving toward her at an alarming and inescapable rate.

  This is it. Right here. This is how it’s going to end.

  She tries to scream but nothing comes out.

  She’s about to crash head-on into the column of death when she sees a potential safety net. She wrenches the wheel and rockets front-end first into a brambly tangle of shrubs.

  66

  Riley’s car chugs into her building’s parking lot like a rolling train wreck.

  Her tailpipe belches black smoke. Her mangled rear bumper dangles from one end, barely clinging on. Lengthy scratches run along the passenger’s side panel, a mottled array of twigs and leaves sticking out from almost every gap wide enough to allow them.

  She tries to straighten the bumper, but . . .

  “Ouch! Shit!”

  A jagged piece of metal cuts the side of her wrist.

  Her phone dings.

  It’s a message from Francine, and Riley hardly needs to check it to know she’s been fired. Now she doesn’t even have a job to finance her car repairs. But the vehicle—and her wrist—have nothing on her mental state. Death came knocking in the form of a flipped-out woman bent on destruction, and were it not for that heavy patch of tall shrubs, the effort would have been a raging success. Her hands won’t stop shaking. Her stomach feels lodged in a throat so dry, so tight, that it would take a crowbar to pry loose.

  Samantha is nowhere in sight, but that makes Riley’s nerves skyrocket. The woman is an expert at surprise attacks. Today’s failed attempt will only make her a bigger threat.

  She looks out at the parking lot as if it were an active minefield. Rows of densely packed cars can provide great hiding places, which makes the threat of danger more potent at every turn. She rubs her aching clavicle, a threatening reminder of worse dangers that may lie ahead. She considers grabbing a tire iron from the trunk for protection, then nixes the idea. Too dangerous. Too many opportunities for Samantha to go on the assault while Riley searches for it.

  She leaves her car and advances across the parking lot, ears tuned for the sound of approaching footsteps, eyes sifting through every shadow for Samantha’s Mercedes. She knows her life has evolved to the place where, from here on, she’ll live in constant fear, fleeing from the wrath of a dangerously warped mind.

  The sound of tires scratching pebbly asphalt goes off behind her, and she reels around in time to see taillights on a black sedan peel out of the parking lot.

  A banging sensation detonates in her throat. She decides to cut and run.

  Several feet before the entrance, she looks up and stops so fast that she almost trips over her own feet. The lights are on inside her apartment, but that’s not the problem—she left them that way before leaving for work. But the open sliver in her curtains? That’s a problem. Samantha has already proved herself masterfully adept at bypassing locks, so without hesitation, Riley goes to Aileen’s unit. Aileen calls on one of the maintenance guys to escort her upstairs, but after searching each room, he finds that everything appears normal.

  Aileen pokes her head through the door to appraise the situation.

  Maintenance Guy reports there’s nothing out of the ordinary.

  Aileen’s eyes practically roll up into the back of her head. She walks away.

  Great. I’ll end up being the dead girl who cried wolf too many times.

  She locks and secures the apartment, then collapses into her living room love seat, at last succumbing to the exhaustion of running for her life. She studies the barely opened drapes, the new lock, the door frame with its fortified strike plate, and the alarm with its green flashing light.

  She looks back at the drapes. Did she leave them open and not notice? Is she, in fact, becoming paranoid, as Erin accused her of being? She doesn’t know. Her judgment seems knotty, her senses too much on overload to trust any longer.

  She hears a noise outside. She hustles to the window, pulls her curtains open wider, and stares into a night as black as pitch. She’s about to pick up the binoculars when a bright light goes on in the watcher’s apartment across the way. A dark figure brazenly walks up to the window. In this bright illumination, she can see that the person’s head is indeed covered by something.

  A welding helmet.

  Samantha pulls it off and shakes out her hair. Although the distance between them is significant, Riley can feel the woman’s eyes searing feverish holes through hers. Samantha waves, but there’s nothing cordial about it; in fact, the action feels like a warning. Like a silent, mortal threat.

  The thickening sensation in Riley’s chest intensifies into a burn. She yanks her curtains closed, and as she backs away from the window, feels something brush against her foot. She looks down, leaps up.

  Off to one side, two Mary Janes stick out from under the drapes.

  I’m not going crazy. I’m not going crazy. I’m not going crazy.

  Not again.

  After checking and rechecking every lock and window in the apartment, she drops into bed, hoping exhaustion and sleep will pave a temporary escape from her growing fear of the unknown.

  As she dozes, she gives one last thought to Samantha.

  She’ll never leave me.

  “I’ll never leave you,” she hears just as she did during her old days on the streets, then stirs and rolls over.

  “Clarissa? Is that you?” she drowsily mumbles, then again drifts off into sleep.

  67

  Sleep that doesn’t last.

  About an hour later, she
awakens and sits straight up to the sound of commotion outside her apartment. She leaps from bed, grabs her robe, then through a dizzying haze and a pounding head rush, springs toward the living room. At the door, she looks into the peephole, and that’s when a black, ephemeral shadow drifts past the glass. She dodges away from the door, presses a hand against her chest, and feels it rise and fall with each rasping breath.

  When she peers out again, whoever it was seems to be gone, but she’s not taking chances. She unlocks the door and takes hold of the security bar, tightening her grip around it. She opens the door, advances a few paces into the hallway, and looks both ways. Nobody in sight.

  But as she steps back over the door’s threshold, her heart again picks up speed when she sees a folded sheet of paper at her feet. The security bar falls from hand to floor. She feels a little dizzy, a little lost inside her head. She opens the paper, hand shaking so hard that the sheet noisily rattles. It’s a letter.

  Written in blood.

  Mother,

  We both know the truth.

  Our truth.

  We are connected by blood.

  Our blood.

  I’ll never leave you.

  Clarissa

  A thin, wayward trail of dried blood runs from the end of Clarissa’s name to the bottom of the page. A spatter of goose bumps breaks out across Riley’s arms.

  I’ll never leave you.

  The only person she discussed Clarissa’s words with was Patricia. How could Samantha possibly know about them?

  A sharp and fiery sensation twists through her, and for the first time she considers a different scenario—and this one is more frightening. The only way Samantha could know is if Patricia told her.

  This might be much worse than I thought.

  She feels panicked, rocky. She grabs the doorknob for stability. Out of anger or helplessness or—she doesn’t know what anymore—she lets out a scream, loud, fearful, and powerful enough to resound through the apartment.

  She stops. Samantha could be outside, hiding somewhere.

  Without further thought, and most definitely without a moment of hesitation, she grabs the green-handled butcher knife from the counter, then bounds through the door.

  A few minutes later, she stands outside in the middle of the parking lot but can barely remember how she got there. Her mind races with a strange mix of confusion and anger. She throws her view up to the darkened window where Samantha’s been watching Riley’s life fall apart for a second time. She grits her teeth, gnawing against outrage, and with everything left in her, shouts to the apartment, “COME ON, BITCH! COME DOWN HERE AND GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT! I’M READY FOR YOU. DO YOU HEAR ME? I’M READY!”

  “Riley?”

  She turns around, but it’s not Samantha standing before her. Erin takes in her sister from head to toe, eyes wide like half dollars.

  The fixed panic.

  The tattered robe.

  The bare feet.

  She recognizes her sister’s reaction all too well.

  “This isn’t what it looks like!” Riley shouts.

  But she knows exactly how it looks—it looks like ten years ago, like her sister’s worst fear again unfolding before her.

  “Don’t do this to me. DO NOT!” Riley implores. “Let me explain! It’ll all make sense! I promise!”

  With eyes acutely focused on Riley’s right hand, Erin starts backing away. Riley looks down toward the butcher knife.

  Erin’s fear tells Riley this is indeed the same scenario all over again. Not just the part where she’s crazy.

  The part where Erin doesn’t believe her.

  68

  This crisis is no longer snowballing. It’s an official whiteout.

  The two sisters sit across from each other at Riley’s dining room table. Nothing said yet, but the strain between them is so tight and unyielding that it could snap at any moment.

  Erin notices the cut on the side of Riley’s wrist, then looks up at her.

  Riley says, “Don’t worry. It was an accident. If I wanted to slit myself again, I’d pick a much better spot.”

  “That’s not funny, and it’s not what I was thinking. I was just concerned.”

  “What are you doing here anyway? It’s ten thirty at night,” Riley says, hand wrapped snugly around the cup of decaffeinated tea that Erin gave her—an obvious attempt to settle her down.

  “You were supposed to call me after work, so I got worried. And why weren’t you answering your phone?”

  “I went to bed early.”

  “Riley, what on earth were you just doing outside?”

  She gives Erin a long, contemplative look. She shoves the blood letter across the table and says, “Left under my door by Samantha.”

  Erin starts reading, and with each passing second, her mouth opens wider. “What the . . . ?” She drops the letter onto the table, looks up at her sister. “Please don’t tell me you believe this woman could possibly be . . .”

  “Oh, come on, Erin! Would you give me some credit? Can you imagine for a second that I have a little bit of sense?”

  “You were wandering around outside and screaming in your bathrobe with a knife in your hand.”

  “Do you want the actual truth, or do you want to sit there and keep treating me like I’m nuts?”

  “Okay.” Erin sets her hands, palms down, onto the table. She looks at them for a moment, as if she’s trying to calm her thoughts, then raises her gaze to Riley. “So what’s this letter all about? Does she believe you’re her mother or something?”

  “She’s been trying to make me one.”

  “But why would she pick you?”

  With an impatient huff, Riley says, “I don’t know.”

  Erin studies her. She appears doubtful again.

  “If you don’t believe me, take a look out the window at my car. She tried to kill me today.”

  Erin goes there, catches sight of Riley’s car in the parking lot, and her expression deflates.

  Riley says, “And she’s not going to stop. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  Erin walks back to Riley. She exhales through her nose and says, “I want to believe you—I really do.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because it’s been hard! You keep throwing all these disjointed theories at me, and then there are all the lies . . .”

  Riley doesn’t speak, but her eyes are pleading.

  Erin looks back at the window for a long moment. As if she’s thinking on it, maybe even trying to bend her beliefs in Riley’s direction.

  “Okay,” Erin at last says. “So, we have to figure out a way to stop this . . . Samantha.”

  “Except she’s an emotional vampire who won’t unhinge her jaws from my neck.”

  “Luckily, your little sister knows quite a bit about that particular topic. So, here’s how this will play out. First, we file a restraining order, then—”

  “Hang on a minute. No. I’m not involving the cops!”

  Erin gives Riley a sour look, and her bottom jaw juts out. “They don’t have to be. Not unless she violates the order.”

  “But by then it’ll be completely useless. There’s not a cop in this town who would respond to a call for help from me.” Riley balks. “They’d probably give Samantha a police escort right to my door.”

  “Would you relax? Please? Look, I offered a suggestion about how to protect yourself after the apartment break-in, but you thumbed your nose at it. Now that you’ve got no other choice, maybe you’ll finally listen and dump this . . . policiophobia that’s been occupying a giant space in your brain. Do you honestly believe I’d allow any of that shit to happen? That I wouldn’t stand up and rip into anyone who violates your rights?”

  Riley doesn’t answer.

  Erin says, “Give me twenty dollars.”

  “What for?”

  “Just give it to me.”

  Riley opens her purse, roots around for her wallet, then hands over the money.<
br />
  “It’s official.” Erin shoves the bill into her back pocket. “That was my retainer fee. I’m representing you.”

  “Can you do that with your sister?”

  “There’s no law saying I can’t. It’s not completely advisable, but I don’t see any conflict of interest. And you know, desperate times.”

  “You think you can stop her?”

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten my professional reputation in this town. I’m a vulture. I rip out intestines and eat people for lunch while they’re still kicking and screaming.”

  “Okay.” Riley blows out a fast breath. “Good.”

  “Trust me. I’ll come down so hard on that woman’s ass that they’ll need a crane to pluck it out of the ground.”

  69

  Erin has established belief that Riley may not be crazy, after all.

  Or at least it seems that way.

  But this morning Riley knows her troubles continue. She sits on the floor outside Wendy’s apartment but doesn’t knock—she needs to be here. She could . . .

  “I could use a friend right now . . .”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place.” Wendy’s soothing tenor is very much what Riley needs.

  She looks at the door and says, “Would it be possible if—could I come in? Even just for a moment?”

  The door opens. Their eyes meet: Riley’s tearful, Wendy’s compassionate. She’s about to put a hand on Riley’s shoulder but—as if all at once remembering that her personal boundaries take precedence over emotional closeness—stops short of making contact.

  Time stands still.

  Until Wendy says, “This is a one-time offer, so don’t blow it. Either step in or move on.”

  Riley laughs a little through her tears while entering the apartment. Behind her, she hears Wendy closing the door and a dead bolt engaging. She looks around: the apartment is immaculate, everything neatly in place, not a speck of dirt to be found. And decorated quite nicely. It’s kind of unexpected.

  “We’re not all a bunch of sloppy hoarders who collect boxes of strings,” Wendy says, as if catching Riley’s thought in midair.