Before She Knew Him

by Peter Swanson

The thought that she knew what he had done to Dustin Miller—even if she just suspected—filled him with both a feeling of terror and a feeling of something close to giddiness.

Back in the study, he wrapped the Junior Olympics fencing trophy in newspaper and put it in the bottom of the box. He added Bob Shirley’s lighter, the pair of Vuarnet sunglasses he’d taken from Jay Saravan’s BMW, and, finally, the battered schoolboy’s copy of Treasure Island that had belonged to Alan Manso.

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.

I am a happy person, always have been. But that’s just my personality, which has nothing to do with this broken brain that periodically and very convincingly tells me that I’m a worthless person who doesn’t deserve to live.

It was a habit of Hen’s, and not one she was proud of, that she was often interested only in people who’d suffered in some way.

Hen was sure now that Matthew had killed his former student. She was as sure of it as she’d have been if the fencing trophy had Dustin Miller’s name on it.

Porter Dolamore had a gift; he was a master torturer, someone with so much patience that he could remove just a tiny strip of skin from his victim every day, keeping the victim alive and in pain.

She’d come through foul weather and torrential rain to stand in the sun.

“No, it would be a huge coincidence that we lived on the same street as the victim, then moved to the same street as the murderer.”

dull sex had nothing whatsoever to do with Hen’s mental health and everything to do with the institution of marriage.

Tranquility was his goal, not just after he committed a murder, but before. It was what made it meaningful, and it was what made him impervious to detection.

Some were alone, and some with wives or girlfriends, but they all had that empty-eyed, stoop-shouldered look of men who’d just barely managed to get through their day and were now rewarding themselves with cheeseburgers and alcohol.

They either had fox faces or pig faces. Scott was a fox face, while the drummer and the bass player both had pig faces.

Matthew, besides being bothered by the detective’s presence, was also bothered by the detective’s face. He was neither a fox nor a pig. He was something new, with his round cranium and sunken eyes, his small chin. Was he an owl?

That clunky five-disc player (it also had a cassette player) was like her own personal time machine.

She might be growing older, and she did children’s illustrations now instead of her own art, but the music had stayed the same.

If you gave a man just the smallest amount of power—a handsome face, the ability to sing, a little money—the first thing he’d do is destroy a woman, or two if he could.

For five seconds, Matthew just stood there, the steel in his hand, savoring the immense power he had over the insect crouched in front of him.

Hen wanted to tell him he shouldn’t wear a hat indoors, but remembered that she was wearing one as well.

It was Matthew Dolamore.

“Yes,” she said. “I’d like to make an official statement. I know who killed him.”

“But if you were experiencing an episode of bipolar psychosis right now, you wouldn’t necessarily know it,” the detective said, leaning back a little in her chair. “That’s one of the hallmarks of being divorced from reality, right?”

“I’m fine, Lloyd, but we’re living next to a fucking murderer.”

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.

Would they leave the neighborhood? He doubted it. He also doubted that she would stop interfering with his business. It gave him a perverse thrill that he couldn’t quite understand.

“Or kill me,” Hen said. He smiled, and Hen thought he looked like a child caught saying something dirty at the playground. “No, I would never kill you,” he said.

“Yes. I did.”

She’d go from a living girl, pretty enough to have two thousand followers on Instagram, to a dead girl, pretty enough to make the national news.

He’d seen her artwork, knew how her mind worked. She had a morbid curiosity. He was offering her so much. He was offering himself to her.

They had a secret, the two of them, and there was no better way to start a friendship than with a secret.

This book is so good!

They could meet at the Burlington Mall, grab a couple of Cinnabons, and stroll past the storefronts, Matthew telling her about his life as a psychotic killer.

“And you changed him? You changed Dustin Miller?” “Yes, I did. I changed him from the living to the dead.”

“I’m saying that they were going to spread unhappiness—that they were going to make life miserable for people. By subtracting them from the world, I’ve added to the world’s happiness.”

Hen spontaneously smiled, her brow creasing. For a moment Matthew thought she was going to laugh at him. “You don’t think there’d be a woman bad enough for you to want to kill?”

It would have been easier back then, when the world was full of all those grungy, love-hungry boys in their twenties.

Why did he get to cry so much? She was the one who got cheated on.

Keep it in the family, he’d say. He killed Dad, after all, even though he swears to me that he didn’t.

Her number one problem right now wasn’t even the cheating husband and whether her marriage could be saved; it was the psychotic murderer who lived next door.

Maybe Richard is his twin, she thought, but then she saw the scar below his mouth, the one that made him look a little like Harrison Ford, and she realized that there was no brother named Richard. There was just Matthew, and he was far more insane than she had realized.

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.

Thinking back, Hen realized that before she knew him, before they were neighbors, Matthew had already been a huge part of her life.