Before She Knew Him(85)

And when the police—with their pig faces, he thought, and almost laughed again—came and got him, he’d make sure that Richard came along as well. They were brothers, after all. They were in this thing together, just as they always had been.





Chapter 40




After Hen dialed 911 and gave them Matthew’s address, saying she believed her husband was in the house and that he was injured, she got into her car, found the number for Detective Martinez.

“Where are you?” he said immediately after answering.

“I’m at my studio. Why? Where are you?”

“I’m on your street.”

Hen started the car. “You need to go into Matthew Dolamore’s house right now,” Hen said. “Lloyd’s in there, and I think he’s hurt.”

“The police are already there.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something happening at Matthew’s house. I’m going to check it out now. I’ll call you right away—”

“Don’t hang up. Matthew Dolamore is in my studio.”

“What?”

Hen put the phone on speaker and began to back the car out of Black Brick Studios’ parking lot. “He came to see me at my studio. He wants to confess to everything, and I locked him in. He’s there now.” Hen made a sudden decision to not tell the detective about the split personality. Not right now, anyway. “He told me Lloyd was searching through his house, and they got into some kind of fight.”

“Are you on your way?”

“I am.”

“I’ll be here,” the detective said, and ended the call.

There were no stop signs or lights between Black Brick Studios and Sycamore Street, and Hen was pulling onto Sycamore only a minute or so after the detective had ended the call. When she saw the semicircle of police cars, plus the ambulance with its flashing lights, she knew that something bad had happened to Lloyd. She felt it in her stomach—a hollow ache.

She pulled the car into her driveway and sat for a moment; it couldn’t have been more than five seconds, but it felt longer. Then she opened the door and got out, began to walk toward the cluster of officers, some in uniform, some not. She watched as Detective Martinez turned toward her, then disengaged himself from the group, meeting her halfway across the Dolamores’ yard. A dog barked in the distance, the sound of it oddly sharp in Hen’s ears. The day was bleached of color and clouds had filled the sky, but Hen found herself squinting as the detective approached.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“He’s dead?”

“He is, Hen. I’m so sorry.”

There was movement over his shoulder, and Hen watched as a female police officer led Mira Dolamore down her front steps. Mira looked dazed, her head swiveling to take in the scene around her, then settling on Hen. Their eyes met, and Mira seemed to open her mouth to say something—not that Hen could have heard her from that distance—but instead of speaking, Mira lowered her head.

Hen felt the detective’s hands, one on each of her arms. She wondered why he was touching her, then realized that she’d been falling.





Chapter 41




After they let him out of the studio, Matthew was brought to an interview room at the Dartford police station, where he waived his rights to have an attorney present.

He told Detective Shaheen everything about the killing of Scott Doyle, making sure that she understood that Mira, his wife, had not been lying for him, that she truly had thought he’d been next to her in the hotel room all night. Speaking the words out loud, looking at the placid face of the female detective, and feeling the presence of all those other detectives and officers listening in, his words and gestures recorded, he felt a sense of relief wash over him. His muscles relaxed; his pulse slowed.

“So you did it for Michelle Brine?” the detective asked.

“Killed Scott Doyle?”

“Yes.”

“Yes and no. I felt bad for Michelle because he was a shitty boyfriend, but it wasn’t just for her. It was for all the other women that Scott Doyle was going to pollute in the course of his life. He was toxic.”

“I get that,” she said. Both her hands lay on the table that separated them, and Matthew watched her occasionally spin her wedding band with her thumb. He wondered if she’d recently lost weight and hadn’t had the ring resized yet. “But, still,” she continued. “I want to know more about your relationship with Michelle. You must have been close if she told you about her boyfriend.”

“We weren’t really close, I’d say. We were work friends. We worked with one another.”

“I notice you are using the past tense.”

“Right,” Matthew said. “She’s dead now, too.”

“How do you know that, Matthew?”

“Because I saw her body. I went to her apartment and saw her body.”

“When you killed her, you mean?” the detective said.

Matthew shook his head. “No,” he said. “God, no. Of course I didn’t kill her. I’d never hurt a woman. Never.”

“Do you know who killed her?”

“It was my brother, Richard,” Matthew said.