Before She Knew Him(86)

“Your brother killed Michelle Brine?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me. After he killed Michelle he came to my house to visit and he left me the keys to her apartment. It was his way of letting me know what he had done. He was taunting me. That’s how I got into her apartment. I needed to see for myself what he had done.”

Matthew covered his mouth with his hand. He was thinking back to all the blood on the wall, all the blood on the bed, Michelle’s skin gray in the dim light. She would have thought that Richard was him, that he’d come to support her, maybe even make love to her, and then . . .

“Are you okay, Matthew?”

“Sorry, yes. It’s just upsetting to me. She didn’t deserve it. She’d done nothing wrong.”

“Why do you think your brother killed her, then, if she’d done nothing wrong?”

“He doesn’t think that way. He doesn’t think the way I think. He’s like my father was. I think . . . I think that he always wanted to know what it felt like to kill a woman because down deep he hates all women. He’d never done it before because he didn’t have the nerve. He’d thought about it . . . a lot. And then I should never have told him about Scott and Michelle, but he kind of figured out what I had done, and then I think that he knew . . . that he knew that Michelle . . . I think he knew that Michelle wanted me.”

“That she wanted you?”

“The night that Richard went and killed Michelle, she’d invited me over. That’s how he got into her apartment, you see. She thought he was me.”

“Why did she invite you over?”

“I talked to her on the phone, and she told me that she was leaving Sussex Hall for a while to go back home and be with her family, that she couldn’t handle being a teacher anymore. So she asked if I wanted to stop by and see her, just to say good-bye. She knew that Mira was out of town.”

“Did you go?”

“I thought about it. I actually drove over to her place, but then I realized it wouldn’t be appropriate. I’m married, and I think that Michelle thought there was more between us than there was. So, no, I didn’t visit her.”

“But Richard did?” The detective’s hands were off the table now, out of sight. She was leaning in slightly.

“Yes, Richard did.”

“Matthew, where is Richard right now?”

Matthew didn’t speak right away. His body was tense again, for the first time since he’d been brought into the interview room. He’d told himself that he was going to be entirely truthful, that it was time. No more lies, no more pretending. He wanted to tell the detective that he didn’t know where Richard was, but that wasn’t entirely true.

“He’s sleeping,” he finally said.

“Richard’s sleeping?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he sleeping, Matthew?”

Matthew could feel his face frowning. Be truthful, he told himself. “Um, I don’t know how to answer that question exactly. He’s asleep right now, and I can’t tell you any more than that.”

The door to the room opened, and in came the detective who’d come to Matthew’s house and interviewed him about Dustin Miller. He bent down and said something into Detective Shaheen’s ear that Matthew couldn’t hear. When he stood up again, he looked at Matthew, his eyes intense, and Matthew remembered his name—it was Martinez, and he was a Cambridge police detective.

Detective Shaheen stood and said, “We’ll be right back, okay, Matthew? Can we get you anything? Water? Coffee?”

“Water would be good.”

They left, and Matthew was alone, even though he knew the camera in the corner of the square room was watching him. He knew what they were talking about. He knew they wanted to pin everything on him, and that included what had happened to Michelle. But that wasn’t him—it was Richard—and they needed to understand that. His stomach started to hurt, and he knew that if he pressed against it he’d feel better, but they were watching and he didn’t want them to see that.

Some time later Detective Shaheen and Detective Martinez reentered the room, the man carrying a bottle of water. He pushed it across the table to Matthew as they both took seats.

“Hi, again,” the detective said. “You remember me?”

“Of course. Detective Martinez, right?” Matthew twisted the top off the water and took a long swig. It was lukewarm.

“Right. I’ve been told you waived your right to an attorney. Is that correct?”

“Yes. I don’t need an attorney right now. I just want to tell the truth.”

“I understand.” Detective Martinez was tall and rangy, and he made the molded plastic chair he was sitting on look small. “We have a lot of things to get to, Matthew, but for right now, I was wondering if you could tell me about what happened between you and Lloyd Harding today.”

“He broke into my house and attacked me. I was defending myself.”

“Why did he break into your house, you think?”

“Hen must have told him everything. This all started when they came over to our house for dinner.”

“What all started?”

Matthew took another long drink of his water. “Hen and Lloyd came to dinner. Just a neighborly thing. As you know, Hen spotted Dustin Miller’s fencing trophy that I’d left out in my office, and it made her suspicious. That’s why she called you. I should never have left that trophy out. It was arrogant of me, but I have to wonder if maybe, just a little bit, I wanted someone like Hen to come along and see it. That I wanted someone to know.”