Before She Knew Him Read online

  “I was sure it was schizophrenia,” her mother said, driving Hen back to upstate New York, “because of your uncle. But turns out you’re just batshit crazy like everyone else in this family.” She’d laughed, then apologized. It was what she did.

  After a year back at home—six months spent in a hole so deep and so black she thought she’d never feel joy again, and six months in a gradual return to normalcy—she’d enrolled at the State University of New York at Oneonta. It was there that one of the professors introduced her to engraving, and she felt as though she’d found her life’s purpose.

  Lloyd, who knew all about the disaster that was Hen’s freshman year at Camden, brought it up to her as she was becoming more and more obsessed with the death of Dustin Miller.

  “It’s different,” Hen said, irritation making the skin of her chest and neck flush red.

  “How is it different?”

  “This is an actual crime, on our street. I’m not trying to persecute someone. I’m not paranoid.”

  “But you’re a little manic right now, I can tell.”

  Later, when things got worse, Hen started to believe that Lloyd had somehow pushed a magic button when he used the word manic to her, that it began the three-month period during which she started to study every unsolved homicide in New England for the past ten years, looking for a connection with Dustin Miller. It was also during this time that she’d gotten into an argument with her shift manager at the art supply store where she worked part-time. She stopped going to work, telling Lloyd that she’d be a full-time artist. He said he thought they could swing it, but wanted her to at least give her notice at the store.

  “You might need a reference one of these days,” he said. “I just don’t think you should burn this bridge.”

  “You’re right,” Hen said, but she couldn’t bring herself to call the store. She simply stopped leaving the house, immersing herself in work and studying unsolved murders (she was now looking outside of New England for possible leads). Then one day in November she woke up late and confused, her body aching, and drained of any desire to ever create a piece of art. Lloyd came home to find her still in bed. He tried to talk with her but she wouldn’t stop crying.

  “We’ll get through this,” he promised. “But I need you to do me a favor, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “If you feel suicidal you need to let me know. You can’t leave me, no matter what. You need to stay alive.”

  Hen promised Lloyd that she wouldn’t leave him, and in the end, she kept her promise. For two months she lived in a world of dread and anxiety, her only constructive thoughts ones in which she imagined the way she’d kill herself. But she’d made a promise to Lloyd, even though down deep she knew he would be better off without her. Finally, after a day in which she’d gotten behind the wheel of their shared car with a plan to drive to the North Shore and drown herself in the ocean, she told Lloyd, when he’d returned from work, that she needed to be in the hospital. He drove her to the emergency room that night.

  Hen spent two weeks in a psychiatric ward, then another two weeks in outpatient care, receiving, along with a new cocktail of meds, a series of electroconvulsive treatments. She began to feel better—not immediately, but over time. Her old world—a desire to create art, to see friends, to plan trips—returned. Over time, the terrible episode receded into the past. She was receiving more offers for illustrations than she had time to do, and her fixation on Dustin Miller, on unsolved murders in general, disappeared. One of the benefits of the electroconvulsive therapy was that her memory of the whole episode was hazy at best, and some of it was completely gone. She and Lloyd, who had always considered having children, made a final decision to not have any. Instead, they agreed to move out of Cambridge and find a larger house somewhere in the country.

  Hen finished her coffee, grown cold in the mug. Now that she’d reacquainted herself with the Dustin Miller case, she was more convinced than she’d been the night before that her new neighbor was Dustin’s killer. Most of what she’d read was old news, but there had been a large Boston Globe feature on the unsolved murder that had run in July, back when Hen was orchestrating the exhausting move (“We’re never moving again, you realize that?” Lloyd had said), and she’d somehow missed it. There wasn’t a whole lot of new information in the feature, but it included some details about Dustin’s time at Sussex Hall, during which he’d been accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student. Either Hen had forgotten this detail or it was only being revealed now. No, she thought, there was no way she would’ve forgotten it. Not a chance. It made everything fall into place. The alleged sexual assault took place during that year’s Junior Olympics of fencing, held in St. Louis, Missouri. Her neighbor Matthew Dolamore, a teacher at Sussex Hall, obviously knew Dustin—he’d probably been one of his teachers. Maybe Matthew knew that the sexual assault—never proven—had actually happened. Five years later, he murdered Dustin out of revenge, or a sense of justice, and took the fencing trophy. It was ludicrous, somehow, but also entirely possible. Hen needed to see the trophy, however, and make sure it had the correct date and place. Then, and only then, she would call the police. It was her duty, right? Maybe she could even do it anonymously.

  Hen shut down her computer and stepped out onto her screened front porch, glancing toward the Dolamores’ house next door. There was no car in the driveway, but, like their own house, there was a single-car garage at the end of the drive. Still, she remembered seeing a smallish, dark car there the night before. How was she going to find out the truth about the fencing trophy? She could try to sneak into the house while Matthew and Mira were away, or better yet, she could get herself invited over by Mira again. Maybe she’d send her an email, asking if she could take a look around their house again, to get some ideas about decorating. They had the same layout, after all.

  It was warm outside, warmer than it was inside the house. Hen pulled off her sweater, sat on one of the rocking chairs, and tilted her face to the sun. She was in that position when Lloyd returned, dripping with sweat and breathing heavily from his run.

  “I love it here,” he said, as he held on to the porch railing and stretched out his legs.

  “This house or this town?” Hen said.

  “Both,” he said. “How about you?”

  “Both as well,” she said, and stood up. The warm breeze held the smell of someone’s cookout, and Hen was suddenly hungry.

  Chapter 4

  Mira rarely went into his office, but Matthew found her there on Sunday night. She was brushing her teeth, looking at the books on the shelf.

  “I need something new to read,” she said, foam flying in specks off her lips. “Sorry,” she said, and left the office.

  She came back, toothbrush discarded. Her hair was pushed back under a headband, and her skin was clean of makeup, still shiny from the moisturizer she put on her face every night.

  “How about this one?” Matthew said, handing her The Pillars of the Earth.

  “It’s so long,” she said. “Plus I need a paperback.”

  “What time’s your flight?” Matthew asked. He’d just remembered she was leaving the next day for Charlotte.

  “Not till three in the afternoon. I have the whole morning free.”

  “Have you read The Daughter of Time?” Matthew handed her an old beat-up paperback; on the cover was a toppled chess piece, the king.

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s a mystery novel, but it’s about Richard the Third.”

  “Okay,” Mira said. “I like it. It’s small.” She flipped open the front page. “Who’s Christine Truesdale?”

  “I don’t know. I bought it used.”

  Mira, reading the handwritten inscription, said, “‘Christine Truesdale. Finished March 17, 1999. Five stars.’ Well, she liked it, anyway.”

  “You’ll love it. It’s very good.”

  “Hey, what happened to your trophy?” Mira said, looking at the mantelpiece where Dustin Miller�
�s fencing trophy had taken center stage. Matthew had replaced it with a mounted replica of the Rosetta stone he’d bought at the British Museum.

  He said, “I just got sick of it, I guess. Thought I’d switch it out.”

  Mira stepped forward and touched the Rosetta stone. “Hen from next door was pretty interested in that trophy, did you notice?”

  “I didn’t, no.”

  “Maybe she was a fencer.”

  Later, in bed, they both read their books, Mira starting The Daughter of Time while Matthew was finishing A Distant Mirror, probably the third time he’d read it. He loved all history, but nothing stirred him so much as the Middle Ages, something about the ubiquity of death, the cheapness of life, the rawness and aliveness of that time.

  “You think we’ll see them again?” Mira suddenly said.

  Matthew knew she was talking about the neighbors, about Lloyd and Hen, but he said, “Who?”

  “Hen and Lloyd, from next door.”

  “I’m sure we’ll see them again. Plenty. They live right next door.”

  “You know what I mean. Socially.”

  Matthew and Mira had very few arguments—neither of them was remotely confrontational—but Mira did frequently bring up the fact that she wished they had more friends. She’d never brought it up when they’d been actively trying to have children, but she did now—quite often—after they’d decided that a child was not going to happen.

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t the most sparkling evening, was it?” He felt bad as soon as he said the words.

  “What? You didn’t think it was?”

  “It was fun. It was fine. It just wasn’t . . . there wasn’t necessarily a spark.”

  Mira rubbed a finger against her temple. “I thought I had a spark with Hen. A little bit, anyway. She was really interesting, didn’t you think?”

  “I did. You should get together with her. We don’t need to do things as a couple, always.”

  “Yes, I know. It would be nice if it worked out, though.”

  “Ask her to lunch sometime,” Matthew said.

  “I will,” Mira said, then added, “You were not a fan of Lloyd, huh?”

  “Eh,” Matthew said. “He was okay. Struck me as a poor match for Hen. He lucked out there.”

  “You always say that.”

  “I’m usually right.”

  They went back to reading. As usual, Mira put her book on her bedside table first, turned her lamp off, and curled into Matthew. “I don’t know where I’d be without you,” she said, as she did every night, at least whenever they were in bed together. It was her way of saying good night. Also, it was a kind of a prayer, Matthew thought. He’d almost mentioned that to her once, but realized that it made him sound like he was calling himself a god.

  Matthew kept reading until Mira had fallen asleep. It took her only about ten minutes. She would curl away from him, and her breathing would slow, and, more often than not, she would mutter unintelligible words to herself. Matthew shut his own book, turned off his lamp, and lay on his back. The room was a hazy gray, never completely black like the bedroom he’d slept in for the first seventeen years of his life. He was wide-awake; he always was when he started the process of falling to sleep. It was his favorite time of the day, and he considered his options, considered what story he would recount to himself as he fell asleep. Lately, it had been one of two. In the first, he’d travel back in time—one year ago, almost exactly—to when he’d driven down to New Jersey and murdered Bob Shirley in the apartment he kept secret from his wife. Bob, a town selectman who’d been friends with his father, had been old and weak, and Matthew had knelt on his chest while clamping down on his mouth and nose. The other story he’d been telling to himself of late had been what he’d do with his fellow teacher Michelle’s boyfriend if he ever figured out how to be alone with him. That was really the bedtime story he’d been telling himself the most. But tonight, because of the fencing trophy—and what it had felt like handling it again after all these years—he decided to tell himself an oldie but a goodie. The story of Dustin Miller.

  Matthew had thought about killing Dustin ever since Courtney Cheigh accused him of rape while the two had been on a trip to St. Louis for a fencing tournament. Some teachers at the time had actually sided with Dustin, while most held back, saying they needed to hear both sides, but Matthew, who’d despised that cocky, insignificant shit even when he’d had him in freshman American history, knew that Dustin was guilty. And he knew that, one day, he would mete out justice. Time was on his side—it always was—and after Dustin had graduated from Boston College, he’d conveniently posted on his Facebook page the actual address of the apartment in Cambridge that his parents, no doubt, were renting for him.

  All through late winter and into early spring, Matthew spent time in Huron Village, watching Dustin. He did this only when Mira was away on business. He grew a beard, something he often did in the winter months, and wore a scally cap, and he never let Dustin get a good look at him. The closest call came one night at the Village Inn, the only bar in that part of Cambridge and a place that Dustin sometimes showed up at on Thursday nights. Matthew was in one of the back booths, drinking a ginger ale, when Dustin came in, clearly looking for someone, scanning all the customers. But Matthew felt Dustin’s eyes pass right over him. He was looking for a female, either a particular one or just an available one. He settled at the bar, where he ordered a pint of beer and watched the hockey game on the television mounted in the corner.

  The close call gave Matthew an idea of how he could kill his former student. Two weeks later—Mira was in Kansas City—Matthew returned to the Village Inn on a Thursday night. He didn’t go in, but sat in his car across the street doing the Boston Globe crossword and keeping an eye on the entrance to the bar. Just before ten Dustin, walking a little unsteadily, made his way down the street and pushed his way through the doorway into the Village Inn.

  What happened next was a series of extraordinarily lucky events. Recounting them to himself made Matthew’s skin tighten and his breathing quicken. It was like watching a suspenseful film for the second time and still feeling excitement even though you knew the outcome. Matthew, skirting through backyards, made it, unnoticed, to the rear of the condo-ized Victorian that Dustin lived in. He was on the second floor and there was a rear balcony. It wasn’t easy, but Matthew stood on the railing of the first-floor deck and hoisted himself onto Dustin’s balcony. He had hoped the back entrance was unlocked and it was. Matthew, wearing gloves and a balaclava, entered Dustin’s apartment. He took a quick look around so that he knew the layout, then looked for a hiding place. He had hoped for a closet with an alcove, but the two closets in the apartment were both packed with junk—Dustin was one of those phonies with a tidy apartment that was only tidy because he’d shoved all his belongings out of sight. Matthew hid underneath Dustin’s platform bed. And he waited, hoping that Dustin, when he returned, would be alone.

  Not only did he return alone, but he also returned drunk. Matthew, under the bed, could hear the slam of the front door, the heavy footsteps, and then Dustin was in the bathroom just next to the bedroom taking a long, forceful piss. He was talking to himself—Matthew picked up, among other things, a protracted “Jesus Christ” as he emptied his bladder—and then Dustin went into the living room. Matthew expected to hear the television turn on, but there was nothing. Just silence.

  He made himself wait for an hour, at least, then Matthew slid out from under the bed and stepped quietly into the living room, carrying his backpack with him.

  Dustin was passed out on a reclining chair, still dressed, one hand holding the remote as though he had meant to turn on the television. It was a perfect situation. In Matthew’s bag was a roll of duct tape, a stun gun, several plastic bags, even a jackknife, although the last thing Matthew wanted to do was cause any blood to spill.

  Holding his stun gun in his left hand, just in case, Matthew duct-taped Dustin’s legs to the footrest of the recliner, all w
hile Dustin continued to sleep. He stirred awake only after a piece of tape had been wrapped around his chest and upper arms. “What the fuck?” he said, and Matthew hit him with a volt from the stun gun that doubled as a flashlight. While Dustin recovered, Matthew duct-taped over his mouth, then secured his head to the headrest. It was a handsome head, with blond floppy hair, the dimpled chin, the flawless skin. He was the worst kind of predator, one with the face of an angel.

  Matthew turned the flashlight toward his own face, and when Dustin’s eyes had adjusted and showed what Matthew interpreted as a flash of recognition, he said, “This is for Courtney.” Then he pulled the bag over Dustin’s head, taped it around his neck, and watched him die.

  Afterward, Matthew spent a little bit of time in Dustin’s apartment, looking for something to call his own. He’d already decided that it would make sense to take Dustin’s wallet, plus his laptop, just to make it look like a robbery. But those he’d get rid of right away, unload them in some dumpster or landfill many miles away. No, he wanted something for himself, something he could keep. In Dustin’s bedroom, he spotted it. A fencing trophy, sandwiched between a can of Axe body spray and a bottle of mouthwash. He lifted the dusty trophy and in the dim light was able to make out that it was actually from the trip he’d been on when he’d raped Courtney Cheigh. Just holding the trophy, Matthew knew he had to have it.

  He left the way he’d come. It was a cold spring night and there was no one about. He got back into his car and drove to West Dartford, making sure he never exceeded the speed limit.