Before She Knew Him(40)
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, and she had made the whole thing up. And what 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.