A crucified human hangs across the shower wall like some barbaric and bloodied drape. A thick metal spike penetrates the center of each hand and the perforated tile behind it. The head lolls to one side. The mouth drops wide in an eternal scream. And where the eyes once were are two deep, vacuous holes, darker than pitch.
Written in blood across the tile above is the haunting question.
WHY MOMMY? WHY?
A knife handle protrudes from the center of the chest: Riley’s butcher knife with the green handle. There’s so much blood covering the face that it’s unidentifiable, hair a congealing, stringy cluster. But the ring on one hand, with a sea-glass, emerald-cut stone, tells her exactly whose body hangs over her tub, and whose blood she’s been bathing in.
That wave of nausea no longer makes a threat to explode. It delivers.
But nothing stacks up to the merciless pain in her shattered heart as she reconciles herself to her dear friend’s murder, the murder of a damaged and defenseless soul who, in the cruelest way possible, was forced to die by her worst fear.
“NOOOOOO!” Riley yells, the word barely distinguishable through her racking wails. Her knees buckle. She collapses and sobs.
“Well, hello there, little sleepyhead!”
Riley’s head flies upward, and a flare of white terror explodes, clouding her vision. When it clears out, Rose Hopkins stands in the doorway, her bloody latex-gloved hands wrapped around a steamy mug of coffee.
“Well!” Rose says, appraising her bloody creation on the wall. “That was a lot of work!”
The tendons in Riley’s shoulders are tighter than overwound rubber bands ready to snap, while legs that feel boneless clumsily struggle to rise.
“Guess your little friend won’t be of much help to you anymore, what with her new vision problems. Oh, and being dead.” Rose speaks with feverish excitement and eyes a-glimmer. She raises her cup. “There’s more in the kitchen. Want some? You’re probably still a bit groggy after that calming drink of water. A little java? Yes?”
“Wh-why?” is all Riley can muster.
“You know why.” Rose’s neurotic and merry facade dematerializes into a pernicious glare. “Because you’ve ruined my life. Because you’re a horrible, evil mother!” She advances closer. “And because you deserve this.”
I’m not your mother. Riley doesn’t dare speak the words, but Rose must know she’s thinking them because she hurls her cup of coffee onto the tile, and it explodes into pieces. Shards of porcelain and scalding coffee go everywhere. Rose’s surgical-shoe covers drip brown liquid. Her bare ankles turn hot pink, but she doesn’t react; her pain is detectible only in the voice that reflects her craze-driven emotions, spinning toward violent hysteria. “How could you do that? How could you abandon me?” Rose asks, lips puffing in and out with each breath as she moves closer, each step ratcheting up the danger.
Riley doesn’t respond. She can’t, vocal cords entering an abrupt state of paralysis, and even if she could, it would only feed Rose’s gathering psychotic hailstorm.
With tears of anger dripping down her face and the whites of her eyes showing, Rose unleashes a frightening, unhinged laugh and says, “Somewhere in your narrow, STUPID mind, can you even comprehend the agony you’ve caused me?”
Riley glances toward the crucifixion. This situation is about to blow, her only hope for survival, the knife buried in Wendy’s chest. If she can just get her hands on—
“LOOK AT ME WHEN I TALK TO YOU!” Rose shrieks.
Riley snaps her gaze back to the lunatic. Rose’s head drops. “Why, Mommy, why?” she says in the voice of a little girl through weak, plaintive sobs. The same question hanging above Wendy’s bloodied, mutilated corpse. “Why couldn’t you just . . . just . . . love me?”
“I tried!” Riley attempts to say earnestly, persuasively, hoping to stabilize a madwoman going madder, in order to save her own life.
Rose’s head rises unnaturally slowly. Lines of wet mascara crawl down her cheeks like the tears of a homicidal clown. And in a tone deep, thick, and husky, she says, “Do NOT lie to me.” She moves even closer. Mere inches separate the two women’s faces, and Riley can almost see venom leaking from the corners of Rose’s mouth.
This is it. This is what she’s been working for. I’m her final victim.
Not if Riley can help it. She closes her eyes, prepares to lunge toward Samantha, but stops when she feels warm breaths against her neck.
“It’s your turn to be crucified, my love,” Rose whispers into her ear.
Riley opens her eyes. A tear falls.
Rose licks it off her cheek and says, “The taste of your fear inspires me.”
Then, without saying anything else, she exits the room. Riley hears the front door close, leaving her alone and helpless in the middle of a murder scene.
About a minute later, she hears sirens wailing up the road and coming closer.
78
Riley’s apartment is a working crime scene.
She watches from the hall, supervised by a uniformed officer while investigators come and go, ducking beneath yellow tape that stretches across the doorway like a heady threat. Her bloodstained clothes have been bagged and tagged as evidence, but she at least had enough foresight to bury the knife inside a planter near her bedroom before the cops showed up. Leaving it out would have been the final nail in her coffin, sure to land her in the middle of a murder charge that already seems imminent. The only concern is whether the cops will find it. Then a gust of worry hopscotches through her when she realizes that Rose could have planted other incriminating evidence in the apartment. There’s nothing she can do about it. Nobody needs to tell her how bad this looks—the writing is on her bloody bathroom wall. All she can do is watch helplessly while authorities build their case.
Footsteps approach behind her. She whirls around.
Great.
Demetre Sloan.
Oh, for the love of—Erin, where are you?
She should have known the viper would come slithering in. This is Sloan’s dream come true, her euphoric moment, her golden opportunity to throw Riley behind bars. She did it once—she can do it again.
“Ms. Harper,” Sloan mutters while passing by, sight fixed on the crime scene as if it were a sumptuous banquet.
Riley slides down the wall until her ass hits the floor.
I’m screwed.
She steals another look inside. Investigators are still busy working the scene, Erin has yet to surface, and Riley’s stomach is kicking up one hell of a twister.
Sloan comes out of the apartment.
Make that a monsoon.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” she begins. “You’ve got two choices. You can come down to the station for questioning, or we can begin our investigation and draw our own conclusions, which, I assure you, would not be in your best interest.”
Riley glances down the hallway and wonders why Erin isn’t standing at her side.
“Looking kind of nervous there, Ms. Harper,” Sloan remarks.
Got that right. Riley checks the empty hallway again.
“Ms. Harper? Is there someplace else you need to go?”
As far away from you as possible.
“I’m not talking until my lawyer gets here,” she instead says.
Sloan shrugs. “Erin’s welcome to join our party.”
“Sorry, Detective. The party’s over.”
Sloan and Riley spin around.
Like a soldier storming the battlefield, Erin marches up, lips pursed and arms swinging. Locked, loaded, and ready to give Sloan what for.
“What took you so long?” Riley asks Erin while they wait in a corridor at the police station.
“I got called to the jail to meet with a client. They don’t love it when phones go off there.”
Riley lets out a ruffled sigh, then asks, “So what have you found out?”
Erin looks in both directions. Nobody is within earshot. She puffs her cheeks full of air, blows it out, an
d says, “This doesn’t look good. From what I’ve heard, there’s some weighty evidence stacked against you.”
“But I’d never hurt Wendy! She was my good friend!”
Erin looks pointedly at Riley, then says, “Nobody saw Samantha, or whoever she is, enter or exit the building.”
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t there!”
Erin studies Riley but doesn’t say anything.
“You know, for a lawyer, you’ve got a lousy poker face.” She walks a few feet past Erin, turns back. “At least Sloan had the nerve to say it, so why don’t you pony up? Come on. Get it all out.”
“Get what out?”
“That you don’t believe Samantha, or Rose, exists. That you think I’m making all this up. It’s like Clarissa all over again!”
“Don’t you go to that again. Don’t you dare!” Erin looks up at the ceiling. Then, in a diminished voice: “Riley . . . please. I’m trying to help you. For once, can you stop judging everything I say? Can you listen to me? With your history of mental health issues, they’ll find a multitude of ways to discredit what you say. I’m only trying to prepare you for that.”
The two sisters look at each other, their silence wealthy with tension.
“Ms. Harper,” Sloan says, poking her head out through the door, “we’re ready for you.”
79
Erin and Riley sit side by side in the interrogation room.
Sloan looks down at the table as if putting facts together in her head.
“So. Ms. Harper, from the beginning, please. What happened in your apartment?”
Riley keeps her focus on Rose as the suspect, explaining about the spiked water, passing out, then waking up in a tub full of blood with Wendy’s corpse hanging overhead. That Rose—who now calls herself Samantha—has been stalking her, killed Wendy, and is trying to frame her for the crime.
Sloan rubs her temple, rubs it again, and says, “You do know how familiar all this sounds, right? A murder and no memory of it?”
Erin clears her throat and levels her gaze on Sloan.
Sloan takes the cue, then to Riley, “Here’s what I don’t understand. You claim that, after committing a gruesome murder, this Rose-Samantha-Stalker-Woman had time to hang around for a while. To chat.” She emphasizes the word chat as if it’s positively ridiculous. “And here’s another strange thing: besides your bloody footprints all over the apartment, we found no others. Thoughts?”
“She had on those surgical-shoe covers.”
“Shoe covers . . . surgical ones . . .” Sloan stares at Riley as if trying to figure out a bad joke, then shakes it off and says, “Continue, please.”
“She had on latex gloves, too.”
“Of course she did.”
“Anyway, I wasn’t able to see the murder because I was passed out from whatever she put in my water bottle. Are you even going to test that for drugs?”
“It’s been sent to the lab.” With a lazy shrug, “But you could have just as easily put something in it to throw us off.”
“That doesn’t make a bit of sense.”
“Quite frankly, a lot isn’t adding up—that’s why we’re having this conversation.”
“But you’re wasting time picking apart everything I say when the real suspect is probably on her way out of town.”
Sloan holds off on saying anything for about five seconds, but everything about her reeks of skepticism. She asks, “Any idea what the phrase Why Mommy, why? might mean?”
“It’s the same message Rose left as a kid when she was stalking us. Before she murdered Clarissa.”
“We’re not going back to that theory again, are we?”
“I’m answering your question.”
“And the broken coffee cup in your bathroom?” Sloan asks. “How did that happen?”
“Rose threw it down.”
“So you were awake for that part.”
“Yes.”
“Why’d she throw it? Didn’t she enjoy the coffee you were serving?”
“Detective,” Erin chimes in, emphasizing each syllable.
Sloan settles.
Riley says, “I didn’t serve anything. She helped herself to it.”
Sloan looks at her notes so fast that reading them would be impossible, then says to Riley, “You’ve got some heavy-duty security hardware inside that apartment of yours.”
It’s not a question, so Riley doesn’t provide an answer.
“Is there a particular reason why the place is locked up tighter than Fort Knox? Been trying to hide a few things in there, maybe?”
“Okay, Detective.” Erin jumps in again. “If you have accusations to make, make them. Otherwise, stop badgering my client.”
“We don’t all have the luxury of living in safe neighborhoods,” Riley tells Sloan. “My apartment has been broken into several times. By Rose.”
“Do you have any evidence to support that?”
“No, but—”
Sloan cuts in. “No reports filed on the alleged incidents?”
Riley hesitates. “No.”
“Because?”
Because I don’t trust you or the people you work with.
Riley can’t say that. It will just make this worse. But now she appears even less credible.
“So,” Sloan goes on, “with all those security measures in place, how do you suppose the Rose-Samantha-Stalker-Woman’s been able to gain access to your apartment?”
“I was never able to figure that out, but she’s been doing it for a while now.”
Sloan cocks a brow. “No signs of forced entry after the murder. Are you sure this Samantha-Rose-Stalker-Woman is exactly real?”
“Detective.” Erin jumps in again. “Where exactly are you going with this?”
“That your client has a history of mental illness, and her information could be unreliable.”
“Then why even bother questioning her in the first place?”
Sloan looks down, shuffles through some notes, and says, “Just trying to keep it real here.”
“It’s like a sickness, that’s why,” Riley weighs in. “Kind of like how you got off on following me around after I left Glendale.”
The muted smirk confirms what Riley suspected all along about the hovering black sedan.
Sloan aims her pen at the cast and says, “What happened there?”
“It’s broken.”
“Obvious. What happened?”
“Rose did it.”
“That didn’t happen to occur around the time of your therapist’s murder, did it?”
“Detective . . . ,” Erin says.
“It’s a reasonable question, counselor. Could be a defensive wound.”
“She already explained how it happened, so unless you can prove otherwise, reel it in and quit with the fishing expedition.”
Sloan moves on. She angles her head up to regard Riley’s hair. “Nice new look. Quite a drastic change. Were you planning on taking that new look someplace else?”
“Okay, Detective,” Erin says, “I’ve about reached my saturation point with you. We’re here to cooperate, but keep this up and we’ll be asses-and-elbows out of here.”
Sloan looks bored. She flips through pages in her notebook but does not glance up when she says, “Here’s me reeling it in: a neighbor reported seeing you enter the victim’s apartment earlier today. Time of death still pending, but since I’ve found out she hadn’t formed relationships with anyone else in the building, it will likely establish you as the last to see her alive. I’ve also gathered that the victim was agoraphobic and never left her apartment. Since there’s no blood at her place—or in the hallway—and not one person saw the victim leave—”
“We walked right down the hallway together! Did anyone happen to see that?”
“Since not one person saw the victim leave,” Sloan reiterates, “there’s reason to believe that she was forced from her residence and into yours, where she was then killed. So. Did you enter the victim’s apartment before
she was murdered?”
“Yes, I went in, but I did not kill her. She was a dear friend, and I was visiting. Besides, why would I crucify her in my own bathroom?”
“To make yourself not look like a suspect?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Believe me, I’ve seen stranger schemes than that.” Sloan flips to a new page and writes on it. “Now let’s talk about Patricia Lockwood’s murder. You were her last patient for the day, and quite possibly the last to see her alive. Do you see the pattern here?”
It’s your turn to be crucified, my love.
Killing Riley would have been too easy; instead, Rose prefers to see her squirm through a slow and painful demise.
“I wasn’t the last person to see Patricia alive,” Riley corrects. “Rose was. When she bludgeoned her to death.”
“Come on, Ms. Harper. This Rose-Samantha-Stalker-Woman has become a worn-out cliché, a go-to for everything you’re unable to answer. Where’s the evidence?”
“Now you want me to do your job for you? How about finding it yourself?”
Sloan answers by pulling out a sealed evidence bag and holding it up. She says, “The note you left for Patricia.”
Riley was worried that could come back to bite her. She shifts her weight in the chair, which complains with two chirpy squeaks.
Erin is visibly stunned.
Still holding up the bag, Sloan narrows her gaze on Riley and says, “Found inside the murder scene.”
“Barely inside. I shoved it under the door. You’re taking that completely out of context. Besides, I left it the morning after she was killed.”
“Got any proof of that?”
Riley doesn’t, so she gives no answer.
Sloan says, “You were pretty upset with her, yes?”
“No, I was worried.”
“‘What’s going on?’” Sloan recites from the note. “‘Stop ignoring me!’” She appears puzzled. “Am I missing something? I don’t see the word worried anywhere here.”
“Relevance?” Erin asks.
“It points to a possible disagreement between the two women. Disagreements can escalate into confrontations.”
What She Doesn't Know: A Psychological Thriller Page 23