Before She Knew Him Read online

“They interviewed the bartender. You had at least five drinks, including a martini.”

  “I don’t know if I had five, exactly.”

  “You know that with your meds it’s like having ten drinks. Did you even eat dinner that night?”

  “I don’t know. Look, don’t yell at me. I was drunk, but I know what I saw. Did you tell them about my meds?”

  “Who? The police? They asked if you drank a lot, and I said no. I said that because of your meds you were usually very careful not to have more than two drinks.”

  “Great.”

  “I’m on your side, Hen. I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t you need to get to work?”

  “It’s Columbus Day.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I do have work to do, but I can do it from here. I don’t want you to be alone.”

  Hen caught herself clenching her teeth together, then stopped. “I was going to go to the studio today. I can’t be here all day. Not with . . . not with him next door.”

  “Okay. You should go to the studio. That makes sense.”

  Hen drank some coffee and tried to eat some toast, but even the feel of food in her mouth made her want to vomit. She changed again and told Lloyd, now on his computer in the living room, that she was going to the studio.

  “Can you do me a favor?” he asked.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Promise me you’re only going to the studio. Promise you won’t do anything foolish.”

  “I promise,” she said, and went out the front door, not even looking at the Dolamores’ house as she got into her car.

  Chapter 21

  Even though Matthew and Mira were told that police had visited and spoken with Henrietta Mazur, they still decided to go ahead with the order. The judge granted it at three that afternoon, and they were told that a process server would deliver the order directly to Henrietta either that evening or, at the very latest, the next morning.

  “It won’t prevent her from continuing to say that she saw you at the scene of the crime,” Detective Shaheen told Matthew over the phone.

  “I know. I just don’t want her following me. I don’t want her in my house. I don’t want her talking to my wife. The last time this happened she attacked someone.”

  “I know. We’ll do everything possible to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

  Mira went to the bedroom with a migraine, barricading herself in, shades drawn. Her headaches were not frequent, but when she got them—always from anxiety, Matthew thought, even though she disagreed—they’d wipe her out for a day. Matthew (his stomach not great) ate cereal for dinner. He realized that since Saturday night he hadn’t had a moment to really recollect what it had felt like to bring that piece of metal down on Scott Doyle’s skull, to feel the crack that meant his life was going to spill out of him and away. The glory of that singular moment had been immediately ruined by Henrietta, appearing like a ghost in the parking lot, her eyes meeting his. He tried to separate the two events, to acknowledge that it was possible to do something both divine and reckless at the same time. And yet, somehow he’d gotten away with it. It was what he’d thought might happen. Henrietta Mazur was an unreliable witness. Worse than unreliable. A false witness. A mentally ill woman unable to tell fantasy from reality. In some ways, it had worked out perfectly.

  As the evening passed—Matthew feverishly reading everything he could find online about the homicide of Scott Doyle—he found himself thinking about Henrietta more than he was thinking about the killing. He kept coming back to that frozen moment, the two of them looking at each other, a current of electricity between them—as Scott lay at Matthew’s feet. It reminded him of something . . . it reminded him of his mother, really, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to think about that. But he let himself do it, just this once. That stare—that blank, knowing stare—was something Natalia Dolamore had mastered toward the end of her life. He pictured it now, the look on her face clearing the dinner dishes, picking hers up from the floor . . . one of those nights when his father had made her eat on all fours down on the kitchen linoleum, her food mushed together in a dog dish. She’d done it, of course, because she knew the consequences of not doing it, but her face had remained a frozen mask, impervious to the humiliation. Her face was the face of a witness, observing what was happening to her. Not living it, but watching it.

  That was how Henrietta had looked. She was the face of a witness also, and Matthew couldn’t help but feel that in that moment she saw everything. Not just what was happening, but everything that had happened to Matthew since he’d been old enough to remember. She saw the monstrosity of his father, the fragility and grace of his mother. She saw his brother, Richard, twisted into a monster himself. She saw the door that had opened inside of Matthew as he watched someone die for the first time; she witnessed him stepping into a world of color that he’d never even imagined before. She saw Jay Saravan, passed out in the front seat of his car, its interior filling with exhaust. She saw Dustin Miller, dead in his chair, and Matthew taking the fencing trophy from the top of his bureau. She even saw how badly he needed that trophy, that desire to claim it as his own. And she saw the foolish compulsion to publicly display the trophy in his office.

  She’d have told the police all about that as well. The trophy she’d seen when she’d come over for dinner. He was safe, though. The trophy was gone. If they asked him about it, he would just have to tell them what he’d told Mira earlier that morning, that he’d gotten rid of it—that it had come from a yard sale and his office was too cluttered and how he’d put it in a dumpster. It would sound suspicious, but what could they do? The trophy was buried way back in the supply closet at Sussex Hall, wiped of prints, pushed behind the spare chairs and old cutlery. If the police decided to search for the trophy, would they possibly even look there? They could look through his house and maybe through his classroom, but not there, could they?

  His stomach tightened. Maybe they would look for it there, and maybe they’d find it. He thought about going to the school at that very moment and retrieving the box, bringing it somewhere it would never be found. But that idea made his stomach knot up even more. Not now, he told himself. It was too risky.

  He went back to his computer, refreshing his searches, seeing if there was anything new about Scott Doyle. One of the stories referred to Scott as a promising musician, a “future rock star.” Well, at least I gave him that, Matthew thought. He went from a wannabe fronting a cover band to a future rock star in one weekend. None of the stories referred to Michelle Brine. He thought it was a little strange, but it wasn’t like they were living together; she was just his girlfriend, and God knows how many of those there were. He wondered if she even knew and considered the possibility that she didn’t. She’d been visiting her dying father. Would the police even know she existed? She’d have tried to call him, of course, on Sunday, to ask him how his show went. How much would she have worried when she hadn’t heard from him? She’d be back now, of course, giving herself time to start to prep for the week ahead. Maybe he should call her, tell her he’d heard what had happened. There was no need to mention that he’d been picked up as a possible suspect. No charges had been filed, and his name had stayed out of the reports.

  He rang her cell phone.

  “I was going to call you,” she said, answering the phone. He could tell from her voice that she knew what had happened.

  “I’m so sorry,” Matthew said. “I just heard the news. What happened?”

  She took a ragged breath. It was clear that she’d been crying.

  “I kept trying to call him on Sunday, just to find out how the show went, and he wasn’t picking up. It’s funny, because I knew that something awful had happened. I felt it. And then Jeremy called me and told me. I was driving back from my parents’—”

  “Who’s Jeremy?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not making any sense. Jeremy was in Scott’s band. He was the drummer. He called me and told me that Scot
t was dead, and I almost said, ‘I know.’ That’s how inevitable it felt. I don’t know . . . Maybe I’m crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy. You’re just in shock, probably.”

  “The thing is, we broke up, right before I left on Friday. You’d have been so proud of me. I asked him one more time if he wanted to come with me to visit my dad—that he was doing so much worse—and he said he couldn’t because of the gig and how important it was. So I suggested he drive out with me on Friday night and just visit briefly, and he could take my car back on Saturday afternoon, and I’d take a train, and he actually said that he needed to be in a good headspace for his performance, and I just told him to fuck off . . . well, not quite, I told him I thought we should break up, and he fought me . . . a little bit, anyway, but then we did it. We broke up.”

  Matthew thought she sounded proud for a moment, almost as though she’d forgotten that Scott was now dead, but then she made a sudden exhalation, almost a groan, and she was crying.

  “Maybe . . .” she started to say, then didn’t continue.

  “Do you know what happened? Was it a robbery?”

  She took two deep sniffs and said, her voice relatively normal again, “It was after the show. He had a flat tire, and while he was fixing it someone hit him on the head. I went to the station. They wanted to know if he had any enemies, and if he was faithful to me, and why we’d broken up.”

  “You told them that you’d had a fight and broken up on Friday?” Matthew asked.

  “Yeah, I told them everything. It’s not like I’m a suspect. I was in Pittsfield all weekend.”

  “So how do you feel?”

  “God, I don’t know. Name an emotion and I have it. I was actually happy this weekend that I’d finally shed myself of Scott. I mean, I wasn’t happy, exactly, because my father is so much worse than my mother’s been saying, but I felt relieved. And now I don’t know what to feel. Am I supposed to grieve for him? I’m just so confused.”

  “You should take the week off work.”

  “God, no. That’s the last thing I want to do. If I have to spend any more time alone here in my apartment I’m going to go crazy. Hey, I don’t know if I should ask this or not, but I don’t really care. Are you free? Can you come over, or is that a strange thing to ask?”

  Matthew rapidly considered his options. If he was going to tell Michelle that he’d been accused of the murder by his unhinged neighbor, now would be the time. On the other hand, she hadn’t heard yet, and she might never hear. Clearly, the police hadn’t even bothered to show her a photograph of him. It was a very good sign that they didn’t take Henrietta Mazur at all seriously. He decided not to tell her. If she found out later, he’d just say that he didn’t want to upset her further.

  “Actually, Mira is sick right now,” he said.

  “Oh no, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s nothing serious, but she gets migraines, and they just knock her out.”

  “No, no. Totally. Forget I asked.”

  “If you do wind up going into school tomorrow, let’s get together after classes. Maybe get coffee and talk.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “And call me back later, okay, if you need someone to talk with. Don’t hesitate.”

  After they ended the call, he knew she wouldn’t call back. He sat for a moment, his mind flipping through images of what it would be like to go over to Michelle’s place—she lived in one of those apartment developments built to look vaguely Tudor-ish and with a name like Courtly Estates or something. How would it feel to comfort a woman whose boyfriend (ex-boyfriend) he’d hunted and killed? And how would it feel when he told her he had to leave, and she pulled him into a hug, pressed her lips against his? He went so far as to allow himself a moment to imagine her sliding back onto her bed, lifting her hips so he could pull her jeans down her long trembling legs. He shuddered a little at the image and thought of Mira in her cocoon of darkness. He had never cheated on her, and he never would. Cheating was what his father did. That wasn’t what he did.

  And besides, as tempting as it was to visit Michelle, released forever from the physical manifestation of Scott Doyle, Matthew found that he was still thinking of Henrietta Mazur. What would it be like to visit her? What would she say to him if he knocked on her door? It wouldn’t be her, though; it would most likely be her husband, Lloyd, who’d probably punch him in the face. Still, he couldn’t stop thinking about her and how much he wanted to know what she was thinking. He knew this much: she’d been thinking about him, too. Nonstop. And sometime within the next twenty-four hours she’d be getting the protective order that barred her from interacting with him and Mira. Would they leave the neighborhood? He doubted it. He also doubted that she would stop interfering with his business. It gave him a perverse thrill that he couldn’t quite understand.

  Chapter 22

  After receiving the protective order from a burly, disinterested process server on Tuesday morning, Hen called Lloyd at work to let him know it had happened.

  “Shit, it’s real,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know,” Hen said. “Like I’ve been validated, a little bit.”

  “But you’re not going to do anything more, right?”

  “What do you mean? Like break into their house?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No. I’m done. I’ve had my say. I’ll get my blood levels checked to see if my meds are working. I’ll keep my head down. I’m fine, Lloyd. I’m not manic.”

  “I believe you.” It had taken all of Hen’s persuasion to get Lloyd to go into the office that Tuesday. She had promised him that she was feeling okay and also that she’d call him every two hours to check in.

  “I will say this, though. If nothing happens in this case . . . if Matthew isn’t arrested, then maybe we should think about moving. He is a murderer.”

  “Okay,” Lloyd said, and she could hear the muffle of the phone as he put his hand over it and spoke briefly to someone in his office. “Yes, I agree. That’s fine.”

  “I’ll call you in a little bit.”

  She went to the large window that looked out onto Sycamore Street. She’d pulled the curtains on all the windows that faced their neighbor. Since she’d confirmed for herself that Matthew was a murderer, and was also sure that he knew she knew, she wondered why she didn’t feel more scared. Wouldn’t he come for her at some point? But she didn’t think that would happen. One of the reasons was that if something bad happened to her, the police would obviously immediately suspect Matthew, the man she’d accused. But it wasn’t just that. It was also that she didn’t think she was his type. He killed men. She didn’t know why, but that’s what he did.

  One of the neighborhood moms walked by. She was wearing yoga pants and carried small weights in her hands. She turned and glanced toward the house, and Hen took a step back from the window into the shadows. Did the woman know anything? Hen didn’t think so; neither Matthew’s name nor hers had been mentioned in any of the reports about the homicide in New Essex. Still, she wondered.

  It was a beautiful day out, the sky a hard blue, and the maple tree across the street fully red now, only a few of its leaves having fallen. Hen loved weather in all its forms, but something about the big months of change—October and April—made her ache with a sadness that she couldn’t quite articulate. She thought of her parents, just back to upstate New York from a three-week river cruise on the Rhine. Her father would be obsessing about the yard, the number of leaves already fallen, and her mother would be planning their next trip to Europe. Hen decided to call them later, after taking a walk down to her studio space. Open Studios was this weekend, and she had a lot of work to do.

  That week, as the weather stayed perfect, each day cloudless and crisp, Hen got into a solid routine, walking every day to the studio after breakfast, working all morning on the remaining prints for the Lore Warriors book, getting lunch at the small riverside café just down the st
reet from the studios, then spending the afternoon preparing for the weekend. She cleaned her space, selected fifteen prints—including her most recent, the cat in bed with the girl on the windowsill—to display on the wall. She even drove to Walmart to buy one of those giant plastic buckets of pretzel nubs filled with peanut butter. It was her favorite junk food, and she only ever allowed herself to buy them on open studio weekends, putting out a bowl for the visitors, but, really, it was her small reward for the misery of having strangers stroll through her workspace, judging her.

  It was a good week, strangely enough, despite how often she found herself thinking of Matthew Dolamore and what she’d seen him do. In the evenings, Lloyd and she cooked dinner together. The Red Sox had bowed out in the first round of the playoffs, sending Lloyd into a silent sulk for twenty-four hours, but now they were free to catch up on the last season of Game of Thrones.

  She kept all the curtains that faced the Dolamore house pulled closed. Lloyd had no doubt noticed, but he hadn’t mentioned it.

  On Saturday morning Lloyd walked with Hen to Black Brick Studios to see what she’d done with the space. Open Studios was noon to five both weekend days, and the place was bustling, as it had been all week. Lloyd drank coffee and looked at the prints she’d selected to hang on the wall. Hen knew that most of them were familiar to him—her “greatest hits” that she always trotted out for shows—but he hadn’t seen her newest work, and he stared at it for a while before asking, “Have I seen this one before?”

  “I just did it.”

  “I like it,” he said. “Creepy. What’s it about?”

  It was a question she hated, and a question that Lloyd should have known she hated, but sometimes he couldn’t help himself. He loved her artwork, at least he always said he did, but also felt a need to analyze it to death.

  “It’s about Matthew Dolamore,” she said.

  Lloyd swung around, concerned, and she bugged her eyes out at him and said, “Kidding. I don’t know what it’s about. It just popped into my head.”