The Couple Next Door

“What did you two talk about?” Rasbach asks. He remembers the way Marco flushed when he mentioned having the cigarette with Cynthia, remembers how angry Anne had been about her husband flirting with the woman sitting across from him.

Cynthia says, “Not much. He lit me a cigarette.” Rasbach waits, saying nothing. “He began stroking my legs. I was wearing a dress with a slit up the side.” She looks uncomfortable. “I don’t think any of this is relevant, do you? What does this have to do with the baby being kidnapped?”

“Just tell us what happened, if you don’t mind.”

“He was stroking my legs. And then he got all hot and pulled me onto his lap. He kissed me.”

“Go on,” Rasbach says.

“Well . . . he got pretty excited. We both got a little carried away. It was dark, we were drunk.”

“How long did this go on?” Rasbach asks.

“I don’t know, a few minutes.”

“Were you not worried about your husband or Anne coming out and finding you and Marco . . . embracing?”

“To be honest, I don’t think we were thinking too clearly. As I said, we’d had a lot to drink.”

“So nobody came and found you.”

“No. I eventually pushed him off me, but I was nice about it. It wasn’t easy, because he was all over me. Persistent.”

“Are you and Marco having an affair?” Rasbach asks bluntly.

“What? No. We’re not having an affair. I thought it was just a harmless flirtation. He’s never touched me before. We’d had too much to drink.”

“After you pushed him away, then what happened?”

“We straightened ourselves out and went back inside.”

“What time was it then?”

“It was almost one, I think. Anne wanted to leave. She didn’t like that Marco had been with me out on the back patio.”

I bet, Rasbach thinks. “Were you out on the patio anytime earlier in the evening?”

She shakes her head. “No. Why?”

“I’m wondering if you had an opportunity to notice whether the motion-detector light went on when Marco went into the house anytime earlier in the evening?”

“Oh. I don’t know. I didn’t see him go over there.”

“Other than you and your husband—and Marco and Anne, of course—do you know if anyone else knew that the baby was alone next door?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” She shrugs her elegant shoulders. “I mean, who else would know?”

“Is there anything you can add, Mrs. Stillwell?”

She shakes her head. “Sorry, I’m afraid not. It seemed like a normal night to me. How could anyone imagine something like this happening? I wish they’d just brought the baby with them.”

“Thank you for your time,” Rasbach says, and rises to go. Jennings stands up beside him. Rasbach hands her his card. “If you remember anything else, anything at all, please give me a call.”

“Of course,” she says.

Rasbach looks out the front window. The reporters are milling around, waiting for them to emerge. “Do you mind if we slip out the back?” he says.

“Not at all,” Cynthia says. “The garage is open.”

The detectives slip out the sliding glass doors in the kitchen and make their way across the backyard and through the Stillwells’ garage. They stand in the lane, unseen from the street.

Jennings looks sidelong at Rasbach and raises his eyebrows.

“Do you believe her?” Rasbach asks him.

“About what, exactly?” the other man asks. The two detectives speak in low voices.

“About the hanky-panky in the backyard.”

“I don’t know. Why would she lie? And she is pretty hot.”

“People lie all the time, in my experience,” Rasbach says.

“Do you think she was lying?”

“No. But something about her is off, and I don’t know what it is. She seemed nervous, like she was holding something back or hiding something,” Rasbach says. “The question is, assuming she’s telling the truth, why was Marco making a pass at her shortly after twelve thirty? Was he able to do that because he had no idea that his baby was being taken at roughly that time, or did he do it because he’d just handed the baby off to an accomplice and had to look like he didn’t have a care in the world?”

“Or maybe he’s a sociopath,” Jennings offers. “Maybe he handed the baby off to an accomplice and it didn’t bother him at all.”

Rasbach shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” Virtually all the sociopaths Rasbach has come across—and after decades on the force he’s come across a few—have had an air of confidence, even grandiosity, about them.

Marco looks like he’s about to crack under the strain.

ELEVEN

Anne and Marco wait in the living room by the phone. If the kidnapper calls, Rasbach—or if Rasbach isn’t there, someone else from the police—will be present to coach Marco through the call. But there is no call from the kidnapper. Family and friends have called, reporters, cranks, but no one claiming to be the kidnapper.

Marco is the one answering the phone. If the kidnapper does call, Marco will do the talking. Anne doesn’t think she can hold it together; nobody thinks Anne can hold it together. The police don’t trust Anne to keep a cool head and follow instructions. She is too emotional; she has moments approaching hysteria. Marco is more rational, but he is certainly jumpy.

Around 10:00 p.m. the phone rings. Marco reaches for it. Everyone can see that his hand is shaking. “Hello?” he says.

There is nothing on the other end but breathing.

“Hello,” Marco says, more loudly, his eyes shifting quickly to Rasbach. “Who is this?”

The caller hangs up.

“What did I do wrong?” Marco says, panicked.

Rasbach is by his side instantly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Marco gets up and starts pacing the living room.

“If that was the kidnapper, he’ll call back,” Rasbach says evenly. “He’s nervous, too.”

Detective Rasbach watches Marco closely. Marco is clearly agitated, which is understandable. He is under a lot of pressure. If this is all an act, Rasbach thinks, he is a very good actor. Anne is crying quietly on the sofa, periodically wiping her eyes with a tissue.

Careful police work has determined that nobody with a garage opening onto the lane was driving down the lane at 12:35 a.m. the night before. Of course, the lane is also used by others, not just those with garages there—it opens out to side streets at each end, and drivers use it to get around the problem of the one-way streets. The police are trying desperately hard to find the driver of that vehicle. Paula Dempsey is the only one they’ve found who saw the car at that time.

If there is a kidnapper, Rasbach thinks, they would probably have heard from him by now. Perhaps there will never be any call from a kidnapper. Maybe the parents killed the baby and got help disposing of the body and this is all an elaborate charade to divert suspicion of murder from them. The problem is, Rasbach has pulled their cell-phone records and their home-phone records, and there were no calls made by either of them to anyone after six o’clock the previous night, except the emergency call to 911.

Which means that if they did it, it might not have been spontaneous. Perhaps it was planned all along and they prearranged to have somebody waiting in the garage. Or maybe one of them has an untraceable, prepaid cell phone that was used. The police haven’t found one, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. If they got help disposing of the body, they must have called someone.

The phone rings several more times. They have been told that they are murderers and to stop fucking the police around. They have been told to pray. They have been offered psychic services—for a fee. But no one claiming to be the kidnapper has called.

Finally Anne and Marco go upstairs to bed. Neither of them has slept in the last twenty-four hours, and for the day before that. Anne has tried to lie down, but she’s been unable to sleep. Instead she sees Cora in her mind’s eye and can’t believe that she is unable to touch her, that she doesn’t know where her baby is or if she’s okay.

Anne and Marco lie down on the bed together in their clothes, ready to jump up if the phone rings. They hold each other and whisper.