The Couple Next Door

But Marco still isn’t speaking.

Soon other police cars converge, lights flashing. An ambulance arrives on the scene, and the medics treat Marco for shock.

A short time later, Detective Rasbach’s car pulls up the long drive. He gets out in a rush and speaks to the officer in charge. “What happened?”

“We don’t know for sure. He isn’t talking. But there’s an infant car seat in the garage and no sign of a baby. The trunk is open, empty.”

Rasbach takes in the scene and mutters, “Jesus Christ.” He follows the other officer into the garage and sees the car seat, the little blanket on the floor. His immediate reaction is to feel terribly sorry for the man sitting on the ground outside, guilty or not. He clearly expected to get his child back. If the man is a criminal, he’s an amateur. Rasbach goes outside into the sunlight, squats down, and tries to look Marco in the face. But Marco won’t raise his eyes.

“Marco,” Rasbach says urgently. “What happened?”

But Marco won’t even look at him.

Rasbach has a pretty good idea what happened anyway. It looks like Marco got out of his car, went into the garage expecting to get the baby, and the kidnapper, who never had any intention of returning the child, knocked him out and took the money, leaving Marco alone with his grief.

The baby was probably dead.

Rasbach stands up, gets out his cell, and reluctantly calls Anne on her cell. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Your husband is fine, but the baby is not here.”

He hears her gasp turn into hysterical sobs on the other end of the line. “Meet us at the station,” he tells her.

Sometimes he hates his job.

NINETEEN

Marco is at the police station, in the same interview room as before, in the same chair. Rasbach is sitting across from him, just as he was when Marco gave his statement a few days ago, with Jennings beside him. The video camera is recording him, just like last time.

The press had somehow already gotten the news of the failed exchange. There had been a mob of reporters waiting outside the station when they brought Marco in. Cameras flashed and microphones were pushed in front of his face.

They hadn’t handcuffed him. Marco was surprised that they hadn’t, because in his head he had already confessed. He felt so guilty he didn’t know how they couldn’t see it. He thought it was a mere courtesy that they hadn’t restrained him, or it was simply deemed unnecessary. After all, there was obviously no fight left in him. He was a beaten man. He was not going to run. Where could he go? Wherever he went, his guilt and grief would go with him.

They let him see Anne before they brought him into the interview room. She and her parents were already at the station. Marco was badly shaken when he saw her. Her face showed that she had lost all hope. When she saw him, she threw her arms around him and sobbed into his neck as if he were the last thing in the world she could cling to, as if he were all she had left. They held on to each other, weeping. Two shattered people, one of them a liar.

Then they had taken him into the interview room to get his statement.

“I’m sorry,” Rasbach begins. And he genuinely is.

Marco lifts his head in spite of himself.

“The car seat and blanket have gone in for forensic testing. Maybe we’ll get something useful.”

Marco remains silent, slumped in his chair.

Rasbach leans forward. “Marco, why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”

Marco regards the detective, who has always annoyed him. Looking at Rasbach, he feels his desire to confess dissolve. He sits up straighter in his chair. “I brought the money. Cora wasn’t there. Someone attacked me when I was in the garage and took the money from the trunk.”

Being questioned by Rasbach in this room, the feeling of playing cat and mouse, has sharpened Marco’s mind. He is thinking more clearly now than he was after things went so terribly wrong an hour or so ago. Adrenaline is coursing through his system. Suddenly he’s thinking about survival. He realizes that if he tells the truth, it will utterly destroy not just him but Anne as well. She could never withstand the betrayal. He must maintain the fiction of his innocence. They have nothing on him, no proof. Rasbach obviously has his suspicions, but that’s all they are.

“Did you get a look at the man who hit you?” Rasbach asks. He is tapping his pen lightly against his hand, a sign of impatience that Marco has not seen before.

“No. He hit me from behind. I didn’t see anything.”

“Just one person?”

“I think so.” Marco pauses. “I don’t know.”

“Can you tell me anything else? Did he say anything?” Rasbach is clearly frustrated with him.

Marco shakes his head. “No, nothing.”

Rasbach pushes his chair away from the table and stands up. He walks around the room, rubbing the back of his neck, as if it’s stiff. He turns and faces Marco from across the room.

“It looks like another car was parked in the weeds behind the garage, out of sight. Did you see it or hear it?”

Marco shakes his head.

Rasbach walks back to the table, puts his hands on it, leans forward, and looks Marco in the eye. “I have to tell you, Marco,” Rasbach says, “I think the baby is dead.”

Marco hangs his head. The tears start to come.

“And I think you’re responsible.”

Marco snaps his head back up. “I had nothing to do with it!”

Rasbach says nothing. He waits.

“What makes you think I had anything to do with it?” Marco asks. “My baby is gone.” He starts to sob. He doesn’t have to fake it. His grief is all too real.

“It’s the timing, Marco,” Rasbach says. “You checked on the baby at twelve thirty. Everyone agrees that you did.”

“So?” Marco says.

“So I have tire-track evidence that a strange car was recently in your garage. And I have a witness who saw a car going down your back lane, away from your garage, at twelve thirty-five a.m.”

“But why do you think that’s got anything to do with me?” Marco says. “You don’t know that that car had anything to do with whoever took Cora. She could just as easily have been taken out the front door, at one o’clock.” But Marco knows it hasn’t done him any good, leaving the front door ajar; it hadn’t fooled the detective. If only he hadn’t forgotten to screw the motion-detector light back in.

Rasbach pushes himself away from the table and stands looking down at Marco. “The motion detector in the back was disabled. You were in the house at twelve thirty. A car drove away from the direction of your garage at twelve thirty-five. With its headlights off.”

“So what? Is that all you’ve got?”

“There’s no physical evidence whatsoever of an intruder in the house or the backyard. If a stranger had come into your backyard to get her, we would have some tracks, something. But we don’t. The only footprints in the backyard, Marco, are yours.” He leans on the table again for emphasis. “I think you carried the baby out of the house to the car in the garage.”

Marco says nothing.

“We know that your business is in trouble.”

“I admit that! You think that’s reason enough to kidnap my own baby?” Marco says desperately.

“People have kidnapped for less,” the detective says.

“Well, let me tell you something,” Marco says, leaning forward, looking up into Rasbach’s eyes. “I love my daughter more than anything in this world. I love my wife, and I am extremely concerned for the well-being of both of them.” He sits back in his chair. He thinks carefully for a moment before he adds, “And I have very wealthy in-laws who’ve been very generous. They would probably give us whatever money we needed if Anne asked them for it. So why the hell would I kidnap my own baby?”

Rasbach watches him, his eyes narrowing. “I will be questioning your in-laws. And your wife. And anyone who ever knew you.”

“Knock yourself out,” Marco says. He knows that he’s not handling this well, but he can’t help it. “Am I free to go?”

“Yes, you are free to go,” the detective says. “For now.”