The Couple Next Door

Richard tells Anne, “They haven’t charged you with anything, and I don’t think they will—I don’t see how they can. But I agree with your mother—if you’re represented by a top defense lawyer, maybe they’ll stop pushing you around and calling you in for questioning all the time and start focusing on who really took Cora.”

Throughout this entire meeting at the kitchen table, Richard has been colder than usual to Marco. Richard barely looks at him. They have all noticed it. No one has made more careful note of it than Marco. How stoic he’s being, Marco thinks, about my losing their five million dollars. He hasn’t mentioned it once. He doesn’t have to. But Marco knows what Richard is thinking: My useless son-in-law screwed up again. Marco imagines Richard sitting around in the lounge at the country club, drinking expensive liquor, telling his rich friends all about it. About what a fuckup his son-in-law is. How Richard has lost his beloved only grandchild and five million of his hard-earned dollars, all because of Marco. And what’s worse, Marco knows that this time it’s true.

“In fact,” Richard says, “we’ve taken the liberty of putting one on retainer, as of this morning.”

“Who?” Anne asks.

“Aubrey West.”

Marco looks up, clearly unhappy. “Really?”

“He’s one of the best goddamned criminal lawyers in the country,” Richard says, his voice rising a notch. “And we’re paying. Do you have a problem with that?”

Anne is looking at Marco, pleading with him silently to let it go, to accept the gift.

“Maybe,” Marco says.

“What’s wrong with having the best lawyer we can get?” Anne asks. “Don’t worry about the money, Marco.”

Marco says, “It’s not the expense I’m worried about. It just looks like overkill to me. Like we’re guilty and we need a lawyer who’s famous for big, high-profile murder cases. Doesn’t that lump us in with his other clients? Make us look bad?”

There’s silence around the table as they consider this. Anne looks worried. She hadn’t thought of it that way.

“He gets a lot of guilty people off—so what? That’s his job,” Richard counters.

“What do you mean by that?” Marco says, slightly menacing. Anne looks like she’s going to be sick. “Do you think we did this?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Richard says, reddening. “I’m just being practical here. You might as well avail yourself of the best lawyer you can get. The police aren’t doing you any favors.”

“Of course we don’t think you had anything to do with Cora’s disappearance,” Alice says, looking at her husband instead of either of them. “But you’re being vilified in the press. This lawyer may be able to put a stop to that. And I think you’re being persecuted by the police, who haven’t charged you and keep bringing you in under the guise of voluntary questioning—it’s got to stop. It’s harassment.”

Richard adds, “The police haven’t got anything on you, so maybe they’ll start to back off. But he’s there if you need him.”

Anne turns to Marco. “I think we should keep him.”

“Fine,” Marco says. “Whatever.”

? ? ?

Cynthia and Graham have been arguing for days. It’s been a week since the fateful dinner party, and they’re still arguing. Graham wants to do nothing, pretend the video doesn’t exist or, better yet, destroy it. It’s the safest thing to do. Yet he’s troubled, because he knows the right thing to do is to go to the police with the video. But it’s not legal to film people having sex without their knowledge, and that’s what they’ve been doing. The video shows Cynthia on Marco’s lap, and they’re enjoying themselves. If Graham and Cynthia were charged, it would be catastrophic to his career. He’s a comptroller for a very large, very conservative company. If this gets out, his career would be finished.

Cynthia isn’t interested in doing what’s right. What matters to her is that the video shows Marco going into his house at 12:31 a.m. the night of the kidnapping and coming out the back door of his house at 12:33 a.m., carrying the baby in his arms and into the garage. He’s in the garage for about a minute, and then he comes back into view and into the Stillwells’ yard. Shortly after that the soft-core porn starts.

Graham was horrified that the man had taken his own child, but he’d been indecisive, he’d dithered. He wanted to do the right thing, but he didn’t want to get into trouble. And now it is too late to approach the police. They would ask why it had taken them so long. He and Cynthia would be in even deeper trouble than they would have been for simply using a hidden camera to secretly film sex acts—they could now be charged with hiding evidence in a kidnapping or obstructing the law or something. So Graham wants to pretend that the video doesn’t exist. He wants to destroy it.

Cynthia has reasons of her own not to go to the police with the video. She has something on Marco, and it’s got to be worth something.

She will tell Marco about the video. She is sure that he will pay her handsomely for it. No need to mention it to Graham.

It’s a heartless thing to do, but what kind of man kidnaps his own child? He has it coming.

TWENTY-TWO

Marco and Anne are sitting at the kitchen table, attempting breakfast. Their toast is barely touched. They are both living mostly on coffee and despair.

Marco is silently reading the newspaper. Anne is staring out the window to the backyard, seeing nothing. Some days she can’t bear the newspaper and asks him how he can stand to read it. Other days she scours it from first page to last for any coverage of the kidnapping. But in the end she reads it all. She can’t help it. It’s a scab she can’t stop picking.

It’s the strangest thing, Anne finds, to read about yourself in the newspaper.

Marco gives a sudden start. “What is it?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer her.

She loses interest. This is one of her hate days with the newspaper. She doesn’t want to know. She gets up and tosses her cold coffee into the sink.

Marco holds his breath as he reads. The story he’s reading is not about the kidnapping—but it is. He’s the only one who could possibly know it’s about the kidnapping, and now he’s thinking furiously, trying to figure out what to do about it.

He looks at the picture in the paper. It’s him. There is no doubt. Bruce Neeland, his accomplice, has been found dead—savagely murdered—in a cabin in the Catskills. The story is very short on detail, but a violent robbery is suspected. The man has had his head bashed in. If not for the photograph of the murdered man, Marco would have missed the brief news article altogether, and the valuable information it contains. The newspaper says his name is actually Derek Honig.

Marco’s heart pounds as he tries to put it together. Bruce—whose real name is not Bruce at all—is dead. The article does not say when he might have been killed. That might explain why Bruce didn’t get in touch when he was supposed to, why he hadn’t answered his cell phone. But who killed him? And where is Cora? Marco realizes with terror that whoever killed him must have taken Cora. And whoever killed him must have the money as well. He has to tell the police. But how does Marco tell them without revealing his own terrible role in this?

He starts to sweat. He looks up at his wife, standing with her back to him at the kitchen sink. There is an inexpressible sadness in the slump of her shoulders.

He must go to the police.

Or is he being a fool? What chance is there that Cora is still alive? The bastards have the money. They must have killed her by now.

Maybe they’ll ask for more money. If there’s even the slightest chance that she is still alive, he must let Rasbach know about this. But how? How the hell can he do that without incriminating himself?

He tries to think it through. Bruce is dead—so he can’t tell anyone anything. And he was the only one who knew. If they find Bruce’s killer or killers, even if Bruce told them Marco was in on it, that’s not proof. That’s hearsay. There’s no proof that Marco took her out of the crib and handed her over to Bruce in the garage.