Before She Knew Him(71)

“Okay, Hen, calm down. When was the last time you saw him?”

“He was here last night. When I woke up he was gone.” Hen decided that it wasn’t the best time to talk about Lloyd’s infidelity. “I was going to call 911, but I know that he’s not officially missing at this point.”

“No, it’s good that you called me first, Hen.”

She didn’t like the way he kept using her name; it reminded her of times she’d been hospitalized, times when a counselor or a therapist was trying to make a connection with her. It made her feel like he was coddling her the way he’d coddle an insane person.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said.

“I don’t know what to believe,” he said after a pause. “That’s the best I can do for you. But it doesn’t look good for you, I have to say. From what I heard, he has a pretty solid alibi for the night of Scott Doyle’s death.”

“From his wife.”

“Yes, from his wife.”

“She must be lying for him. She’s his wife—doesn’t that make you doubt her alibi? Just a little bit?”

“She could be lying, yes. But so could you, and that’s the problem. You have a history of lying in a similar situation.”

Hen, realizing that this call was futile, almost hung up. But she took a deep breath and said, “Okay. We don’t need to have this argument. I know how it looks, and I know how I look. But for the record, I just want to tell you that Matthew Dolamore has killed several people, including Dustin Miller and Scott Doyle. I know this for a fact. I know that my testimony will never matter, but there has to be other evidence. There has to be.”

“Okay, we’ll—”

“And one more thing. Check out his brother. He said his name was Richard. Matthew claims that they both got messed up by their parents, but that Richard kills women, not men.”

“He told you that his brother has killed people?”

“No, actually, he didn’t say that. He seems to think his brother is like him, and if he started to kill people, he would kill women, not men. That’s what he told me. He seemed worried, like maybe his brother had actually done something already.”

“I’ll look into it, Hen, okay?”

“You’ll call me if anything changes, or if you find out anything?”

“Of course. And you can call me again if you think of anything else, and let me know if your husband doesn’t show up.”

As he was saying the words, Hen watched as a gray Golf came down the street, slowly pulling into their driveway.

Deciding not to mention this to the detective, she said, quickly, “Thanks for listening to me, Iggy,” using the name he’d asked her to call him, even though it sounded strange in her own mouth. She hung up.

As Lloyd got out of the car, Hen went and stood at the edge of the porch, watching him through the screen. All the worry she’d had about his safety had suddenly dissipated, and now she was just angry again. Angry at his affair. Angry that he’d made her worry about him this morning.

“What the fuck?” she said, as he took the stairs up toward the porch.

“Sorry, I . . . I, uh, left suddenly.”

“You didn’t take your phone. I was freaking out.” Lloyd had come through the door now, and Hen saw how pale he was, how scared his eyes looked. “What happened? You okay?”

“I followed him. I followed Matthew to his school, just because I wanted to talk with him . . . Can we go inside? I’m so cold.”

Once inside, she saw the way he was holding his right hand, trying to flex it, and she asked, “Did you two fight?”

Lloyd told her the story, how he had followed Matthew to Sussex Hall, and how Matthew had incapacitated him.

“Where? In the parking lot?”

“It was at the back of the main building. He drove there and parked, I think, because he knew I was following him.”

“You hit him first?”

“I did, although I think I hurt myself more than I hurt him. He was so calm. He just pushed me to the ground and kind of sat on me, and I . . . I thought I was going to die. Everything went black, and I thought he was killing me, and all I could think about . . . all I could think about was you.”

He was crying again, and Hen, despite not really wanting to do it, put her hand on his back and told him that it sounded scary. “Do you want to try and talk to the local police?”

“No. I don’t. It wouldn’t do any good. I was the one who followed him, and I was the one who hit him first. All he’d say was that he was defending himself. No, I’ve been thinking about it. I think we should just leave here. I’ll call my office and tell them I’ve had an emergency and need to take some time off. We could get in the car and drive somewhere. What about up to Maine? We could go back to that place in Bar Harbor and spend a week. Work on our marriage. What?”

Hen was shaking her head. “I don’t know, Lloyd. We’d still have to come back here. Besides, I don’t know yet if I want to work on our marriage.”

“Then we’ll get separate rooms and at least we won’t be here. I know I sound like a coward, but I don’t care. I now believe he’s dangerous—”

“Right, you now believe he’s dangerous because you experienced it yourself. You didn’t believe it when I told you I literally witnessed him killing someone. You weren’t suggesting a vacation then.”