The Couple Next Door

“She showed me the video.” The look she gives him is terrible. All her pain and rage shows on her face. Her hatred.

Marco sags; he feels like his knees will give way. It’s all over now. Maybe Anne wants to kill him for stealing their baby. He can’t blame her. He wants to grab the knife and do it himself.

Suddenly he goes cold. He needs to see the knife. He needs to know if she’s used it. But it’s too dark. He can’t see her well enough to see if there’s blood on her or on the knife. He takes another step toward her and stops. Her eyes terrify him.

She says, “You kidnapped Cora. I saw it with my own eyes. You carried her out of the house wrapped in her blanket and took her to the garage. That man took her away. You planned the whole thing. You lied to me. And you kept on lying to me, all this time.” Her voice is disbelieving. “And then, when he double-crossed you, you went to that cabin and beat him to death with a shovel.” She’s more animated now.

Marco is horrified. “No, Anne—I didn’t!”

“And then you sat at the kitchen table with me and said he looked familiar.”

Marco feels sick. He thinks of how it must seem to her. How twisted everything has become.

Anne leans forward; she is holding the large knife tightly with both hands. “I’ve been living with you in this house, this whole time since Cora was taken, and all along you’ve been lying to me. Lying about everything.” She stares at him and whispers, “I don’t know who you are.”

Marco keeps his eyes on the knife and says, desperately, “I did take her. I did take her, Anne. But it’s not what you think! I don’t know what Cynthia told you—she doesn’t know anything about it. She’s blackmailing me. She’s trying to use the video to get money out of me.”

Anne stares at him, her eyes huge in the dark.

“I can explain, Anne! It’s not how it looks. Listen to me. I got into financial trouble. The business wasn’t going well. I had some reversals. And then I met this man, this . . . Derek Honig.” Marco falters. “He told me his name was Bruce Neeland. He seemed like a nice guy—we became friends. He suggested the kidnapping. It was all his idea. I needed the money. He said it would be fast and easy, that no one would get hurt. He planned the whole thing.” Marco pauses for breath. She is staring at him, her eyes grim. Even so, it is a relief to confess, to tell her the truth.

“I took Cora out to him in the garage. He was supposed to call us within twelve hours, and we were supposed to get her back in two or three days at most. It was supposed to be so fast and easy,” Marco says bitterly. “But then we didn’t hear from him. I didn’t know what was happening. I tried to call him with that cell phone you found—that’s what it was for—but he didn’t answer my calls. I didn’t know what to do. I had no other way to reach him. I thought that maybe he’d lost the cell phone. Or that he’d gotten cold feet, that maybe he’d killed her and left the country.” His voice has become a sob. He pauses to regain control. “I was panicking. It’s been absolute hell for me, too, Anne—you’ve no idea.”

“Don’t tell me I have no idea!” Anne screams at him. “Because of you our baby is gone!”

He tries to calm her by lowering his voice. He has to tell her everything, he has to get it out. “And then when we got the onesie in the mail, I thought it was him, reaching out. That maybe something had happened to the cell and he was afraid to call me directly. I thought he was trying to get her back to us. Even when he increased the ransom to five million, I didn’t think . . . I didn’t think he would double-cross me. I was only worried that your parents might not pay. I thought maybe he’d upped the stakes because he felt the risk had increased.” Marco stops talking for a minute, overwhelmed by reliving it all. “But then when I got there, Cora wasn’t there.” He breaks down, sobbing. “She was supposed to be there. I don’t know what happened! Anne, I swear to you, I never meant for anyone to get hurt. Especially not Cora—or you.”

He’s dropped down onto his knees on the floor in front of her. She could slit his throat now if she chose. He doesn’t care.

“How could you?” Anne whispers. “How could you be so stupid?” Marco lifts his head miserably and looks at her. “Why didn’t you ask my father for money, if you needed it so badly?”

“I did!” Marco says wildly. “But he turned me down.”

“I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t do that.”

“Why would I lie?”

“You do nothing but lie, Marco.”

“Ask him, then!”

They glare at each other for a moment.

Then Marco says, more quietly, “You have every reason to hate me, Anne. I hate myself for what I did. But you don’t need to be afraid of me.”

“Not even after you beat that man to death? With a spade?”

“I didn’t!”

“Why don’t you tell me everything, Marco?”

“I have told you everything! I did not kill that man in the cabin.”

“Then who did?”

“If we knew that, we’d know who has Cora! Derek wouldn’t have hurt Cora, I’m sure of it. He would never have hurt her—I would never have let him have her if I thought he would.” But saying this, Marco is appalled at how easily he let someone else have his daughter. He’d been so desperate that he’d blinded himself to the risks.

But that was nothing to the desperation he feels now. Why would Derek harm Cora? He would have no reason to. Unless he panicked. Marco says, “He just wanted to make the exchange and get his money and disappear. Someone else must have found out he had her, then killed him and taken her. And then they cheated us.” He pleads with her. “Anne, you have to believe me, I did not kill him. How could I? You know I’ve been here with you most of the time, or at the office. I couldn’t have killed him.”

Anne is silent, considering. Then she whispers, “I don’t know what to believe.”

“That’s why I went to the police,” Marco explains. “I told them I’d seen him hanging around the house, so they’d investigate him. I wanted to point the police in the right direction, so they could find out who killed him, to find Cora without giving myself away. But as usual they’ve come up empty.” He adds, his voice defeated, “Although it’s probably just a matter of time until they arrest me.”

“They’ll arrest you really fast if they see that tape,” Anne mutters bitterly.

Marco looks at her. He doesn’t know if she would prefer that the police arrest him or not. It’s hard to read her now. “I did take Cora and hand her over to Derek. We did try to get money from your parents. But I didn’t kill Derek. I couldn’t kill anybody, I swear to you.” He puts a tender hand on her knee. “Anne, let me have the knife.”

She looks at the knife in her hands as if she doesn’t know it’s there.

No matter what he’s done, what havoc he’s wreaked, he does not want to be responsible for any more harm. Her manner is disturbing. He moves then and gently takes the knife from her hands. She doesn’t resist. Relieved, he sees that the blade is clean. There is no blood on it. He studies her closely, looks at her wrists; there’s no blood anywhere. She has not hurt herself. It was meant for him, to protect herself from him. He sets the knife down on the side table, gets up off the floor, and sits beside her on the sofa, facing her. He asks, “Have you heard from your father today?”

“No, but I went to my parents’,” Anne says.

“I thought you said you didn’t see them?”

“I didn’t. I packed a bag. I was going to leave you,” she says bitterly. “After I left Cynthia’s, after I saw the video, I hated you for what you did.” Her voice is agitated again. “And I thought you were a murderer. I was afraid of you.”

“I can understand why you’d hate me, Anne. I understand that you’ll never forgive me.” He chokes on the words. “But you don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m not a murderer.”

She turns her face away, as if she can’t bear to look at him. She says, “I went to my parents’. But I didn’t go in.”

“Why not?”

“Because I remembered where I’d seen that man before, the dead man.”