The Couple Next Door

by Shari Lapena

  “Do you remember?” Rasbach asks.

  Marco can’t remember. He doesn’t remember talking much at all.

  “I don’t know. Just trivial stuff. Chitchat. Nothing important.”

  “She’s a very attractive woman, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Marco is silent.

  “Wouldn’t you agree?” Rasbach repeats.

  “I guess,” Marco says.

  “You say that you don’t remember seeing or hearing anything when you were out back last night between shortly after twelve thirty and just before one a.m., when the two of you returned inside.”

  Marco hangs his head, doesn’t look at the detective. He knows where this is going. He starts to sweat.

  “You said”—and here the detective flips back through his notebook for a bit—“you said you ‘weren’t paying attention.’ Why were you not paying attention?”

  What the hell should he do here? He knows what the detective is getting at. Like a coward, Marco says nothing. But he feels the pulse in the vein at his temple, wonders if the detective notices.

  “Cynthia says that you came on to her, that you made sexual advances to her out on the patio.”

  “What? No I didn’t.” Marco lifts his head sharply and looks at the detective.

  The detective consults his notes again, flips some pages. “She says you ran your hand up her legs, that you kissed her, pulled her onto your lap. She says you were quite persistent, that you got carried away.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “It’s not true? You didn’t kiss her? And get carried away?”

  “No! I mean—I didn’t come on to her, she came on to me.” Marco can feel himself blush deeply and is furious with himself. The detective says nothing. Marco fumbles over the words in his haste to defend himself, all the while thinking, That lying bitch.

  “That’s not how it happened,” Marco insists. “She started it.” He cringes at how that sounds, how juvenile. He takes a steadying breath. “She came on to me. I remember, she came and sat on my lap. I told her she shouldn’t be on my lap and tried to nudge her off. But she took my hand and placed it inside her skirt. She was wearing this long dress with a slit up the side.” Marco is really sweating now, thinking how this must sound. He tries to relax. Tells himself no matter how much of a heel the detective must think him, there’s no reason for him to think this has anything to do with Cora. “She kissed me.” Marco stops, colors again. He can tell that Rasbach doesn’t believe a word of it. “I kept protesting, and telling her we shouldn’t, but she wouldn’t get off my lap. She got my fly down. I was afraid someone would see us.”

  Rasbach says, “You had a lot to drink. How reliable is your memory of what happened?”

  “I was drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk. I know what happened. I didn’t start anything with her. She practically threw herself at me.”

  “Why would she lie?” Rasbach asks simply.

  Why would she lie? Marco is asking himself the same question. Why would Cynthia screw him over like this? Was she pissed that he told her no? “Maybe she’s mad because I turned her down.”

  The detective purses his lips as he looks at Marco.

  Desperately, Marco says, “She’s lying.”

  “Well, one of you is lying,” Rasbach says.

  “Why would I lie about something like that?” Marco says stupidly. “You can’t arrest me for kissing another woman.”

  “No,” the detective says. He waits a moment or two and says, “Tell me the truth, Marco. Are you and Cynthia having an affair?”

  “No! Absolutely not. I love my wife. I wouldn’t do that, I swear.” Marco glares at the detective. “Is that what Cynthia says? Did she tell you we’re having an affair? That’s absolute bullshit.”

  “No, she didn’t say that.”

  • • •

  Anne, sitting in the dark at the top of the stairs, hears it all. She goes cold all over. She now knows that last night, when their baby was being taken, her husband was kissing and fondling Cynthia next door. She doesn’t know who started it—from what she’d observed the night before, it could have been either one of them. They were both guilty. She feels sick to her stomach, betrayed.

  “Are we done here?” Marco says.

  “Yeah, sure,” the detective answers.

  Anne scrambles quickly to her feet at the top of the stairs and, barefoot, pads quickly back to their bedroom. She’s shaking. She climbs into the bed under the duvet and pretends to sleep but fears that her ragged breathing will give her away.

  Marco comes into the bedroom, his footsteps heavy. He sits down on the edge of the bed, facing away from her, looks at the wall. She opens her eyes slightly and stares at his back. She pictures him making out with Cynthia on the patio chair while she was bored out of her mind with Graham in the dining room. And while he had his hand in Cynthia’s panties and Anne was pretending to listen to Graham, someone was taking Cora.

  She will never be able to trust him again. Never. She turns over and pulls the covers higher, while silent tears roll down her face and pool around her neck.

  • • •

  Cynthia and Graham are in their bedroom next door, having a heated argument. Even so, they are careful to keep their voices quiet. They don’t want to be overheard. There is a laptop open on their queen-size bed.

  “No,” Graham says. “We should just go to the police.”

  “And say what?” Cynthia asks. “A little late for that, don’t you think? They were already over here, questioning me, while you were out.”

  “It’s not that late,” Graham counters. “We tell them we had a camera on the backyard. We don’t have to say any more than that. They don’t have to know why we put it up there.”

  “Right. And how do we explain, exactly, why we haven’t mentioned it up till this point?”

  “We can say we forgot about it.” Graham is leaning up against the headboard, looking worried.

  Cynthia laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Really. The police were swarming all over the place because a baby has been kidnapped, and we forgot that we have a pinhole camera trained on our backyard.” She gets up and starts taking off her earrings. “They’re never going to believe that.”

  “Why not? We can say that we never check it, or that we thought it was broken, or that the battery was dead. We can say we thought it didn’t work and it was just for show.”

  “Just for show—to scare thieves away. When it’s so well hidden that the police didn’t even see it.” She drops an earring into a mirrored jewelry box on her dressing table. She shoots him an annoyed look and mutters, “You and your fucking cameras.”

  “You enjoy watching the films, too,” Graham says.

  Cynthia doesn’t correct him. Yes, she enjoys watching the films, too. She enjoys watching herself having sex with other men. She likes the way it turns her husband on to see her with them. But what she enjoys even more is that it gives her permission to flirt with and have sex with other men. Men more attractive and more exciting than her husband, who has proved to be a bit of a disappointment lately. But she didn’t get very far with Marco. Graham had hoped she would be able to give Marco a proper blow job, or that he would lift up her skirt and fuck her from behind. Cynthia knew exactly how the camera was positioned to get the best angle.

  Graham’s job was to keep the wife occupied. That was always his job. It was tedious for him, but it was worth it.

  Except now they have a problem.

  TWELVE

  It is Sunday afternoon. There have been no new leads. No one has called claiming to have Cora. The case appears to be at an impasse, but Cora is still out there somewhere. Where is she?

  Anne walks over to the living-room window. The curtains are drawn shut for privacy, filtering the room’s light. She stands to the side and holds the curtain open a little to peek out. There ar
e a lot of reporters on the sidewalk, spilling over onto the street.

  She is living in a fishbowl, everyone tapping on the glass.

  Already there are indications that the Contis aren’t turning out to be the media darlings the press had hoped for. Anne and Marco haven’t welcomed the media; they clearly see the reporters as an intrusion, a necessary evil. They are not particularly photogenic either, even though Marco is handsome and Anne was pretty enough, before. But it’s not enough to be handsome—one should preferably have charisma, or at least warmth. There is nothing charismatic about Marco now. He looks like a shattered ghost. They both look guilty, beaten down by shame. Marco has been cold in his interactions with the media; Anne has said nothing at all. They have not been warm to the press, and so the press has not warmed to them. This is, Anne realizes, probably a tactical mistake, one they may live to regret.

  The problem is that they had not been home. It has come out that they were next door when Cora was taken from her crib. Anne was horrified when she saw that morning’s headlines: COUPLE NOT HOME WHEN BABY TAKEN, STOLEN BABY WAS LEFT ALONE. If they’d been sound asleep in their own house while their child was kidnapped from her room, there would have been a much greater outpouring of sympathy, from the press and from the public. The fact that they were attending a party next door has scalded them. And of course the postpartum depression has also been made public. Anne doesn’t know how these things happen. She certainly didn’t tell the press. She suspects Cynthia might have been the source of the leak about their leaving the baby alone in the house, but she doesn’t know how the media found out about her depression. Surely the police would not have leaked her private medical information. She has even asked them, and they say it didn’t come from them. But Anne doesn’t trust the police. Whoever is responsible for the leaks, they have only damaged Anne further in the eyes of everyone—the public, the press, her parents, her friends, everyone. She has been publicly shamed.

  Anne turns to look at the steadily increasing pile of toys and other colorful debris collecting on the sidewalk at the bottom of their front steps. There are bouquets of wilted flowers, stuffed animals of all colors and sizes—she can see teddy bears, even an outsize giraffe—with notes and cards stuck on them. A mountain of cliché. Such an outpouring of sympathy. And of hate.

  Earlier that day Marco had gone out and brought an armful of the toys and notes in to her, to cheer her up. That was a mistake he won’t make again. Many of the notes were venomous, even shocking. She read a few of them, gasped, balled them up, and threw them to the floor.

  She twitches the curtains with her fingers and looks out again. This time a thrill of horror slides down her back. She recognizes the women coming single file down the sidewalk toward the house, pushing their baby strollers: it is three—no—four women from her moms’ group. The reporters fall away to let them through, sensing impending drama. Anne watches in disbelief. Surely, she thinks, they have not come to visit her with their babies.

  She sees the one in front, Amalia—mother of cute, brown-eyed Theo—reach beneath her stroller and grab what looks like a large container of prepared food. The other women behind her do the same thing, applying the brakes to their strollers, reaching for covered dishes in the baskets beneath the seats.

  Such kindness, and such thoughtless cruelty. She can’t bear it. A sob escapes Anne as she turns abruptly from the window.

  “What is it?” Marco says, alarmed, coming up to her.

  He pushes the curtain aside and looks out the window at the sidewalk.

  “Get rid of them!” Anne whispers. “Please.”

  • • •

  On Monday morning at nine o’clock, Detective Rasbach requests that Marco and Anne come to the police station for formal questioning. “You are not under arrest,” he assures them as they stare back at him, dumbstruck. “We would like to take a statement from each of you and ask a few more questions.”

  “Why can’t you do that here?” Anne asks, in obvious distress. “Like you’ve been doing?”

  “Why do we have to go to the station?” Marco echoes, looking appalled.

  “It’s standard procedure,” Rasbach says. “Would you like some time to freshen up first?” he suggests.

  Anne shakes her head, as if she doesn’t care what she looks like.

  Marco does nothing at all, just stares at his feet.

  “Okay, then, let’s go,” Rasbach says, and leads the way.

  When he opens the front door, there is a flurry of activity. The reporters cluster around the front steps, cameras flashing. “Are they under arrest?” someone calls out.

  Rasbach answers no questions and remains stonily silent as he steers Marco and Anne through the crush to the police cruiser parked in front of the house. He opens the rear door, and Anne goes in first and slides across the backseat. Marco steps in after her. No one speaks, except the reporters, who clamor after them with their questions. Rasbach climbs into the passenger seat, and the car pulls away. The photographers run after them, taking pictures.

  Anne stares out the window. Marco tries to hold her hand, but she pulls it away. She watches the familiar city pass by the window—the produce stand on the corner, the park where she and Cora sit on a blanket in the shade and watch children splash in the wading pool. They cross the city—now they are not far from the art gallery where she used to work, close to the river. Then they are going past the Art Deco building where Marco has his office, and then suddenly they are out of downtown. It all looks very different from the back of a police cruiser, on the way to be questioned in the disappearance of your own child.

  When they arrive at the police station, a modern building of concrete and glass, the cruiser stops at the front doors and Rasbach shepherds them in. There are no reporters here—there had been no advance warning that Anne and Marco would be taken in for questioning.

  When they walk into the station, a uniformed officer at a circular front desk glances up with interest. Rasbach hands Anne over to a female officer. “Take her to Interview Room Three,” Rasbach tells her.

  Anne looks at Marco in alarm. “Wait. I want to be with Marco. Can’t we be together?” Anne asks. “Why are you separating us?”

  Marco says, “It’s okay, Anne. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay. We haven’t done anything. They just want to ask us some questions, and then they’re going to let us go, isn’t that right?” he says to Rasbach, a hint of challenge in his voice.

  “That’s right,” the detective says smoothly. “As I said, you are not under arrest. You are here voluntarily. You are free to leave at any time.”

  Marco stands still and watches Anne go down the hall with the female officer. She turns and looks back at him. She’s terrified.

  “Come with me,” Rasbach says. He takes Marco into an interview room at the end of the hall. Detective Jennings is already there. The room contains a metal table with a single chair on one side and two chairs on the other side for the detectives.

  Marco doesn’t trust himself to make any sense, to keep things straight. He can feel the exhaustion hitting him. He tells himself to talk slowly, to think before he answers.

  Rasbach is wearing a clean suit and a fresh shirt and tie. He is newly shaven. Jennings is, too. Marco is wearing old jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt that he hauled out of his drawer that morning. He hadn’t known he was going to be brought down to the station. He realizes now that he should have taken advantage of the detective’s offer to shower, shave, change clothes. He would have felt more alert, more in control. And he would have looked less like a criminal on the permanent recording of this interview; he has just realized that he is probably going to be videotaped.

  Marco sits down and nervously watches the two detectives standing across the table from him. It’s different being here, instead of in his own home. It’s frightening. He feels the shift of control.

  “If it’s okay wi
th you, we’re going to videotape this interview,” Rasbach says. He gestures to a camera positioned just below the ceiling, pointing toward them at the table.

  Marco has no idea if he really has a choice. He hesitates for a fraction of a second, then says, “Yeah, sure, no problem.”

  “Would you like some coffee?” Rasbach offers.

  “Yeah, sure, thanks,” Marco says. He tries to relax. He reminds himself he is here to help the police find out who has taken his child.

  Rasbach and Jennings go out to get coffee, leaving Marco alone to fret.

  When the two detectives return, Rasbach places Marco’s paper cup on the table in front of him. Marco sees that he has brought him two sugars and one cream—Rasbach has remembered how Marco takes his coffee. As Marco fumbles with the sugar packets, his hands are trembling. They all notice.

  “Please state your name and today’s date,” Rasbach says, and they begin.

  The detective leads him through a series of straightforward questions that establish Marco’s version of what happened on the night of the kidnapping. It is a rehash of what has gone before, nothing new. Marco can feel himself relaxing as the interview progresses. Finally he thinks they’re finished, that they’re about to let him go. His relief is enormous, although he’s careful not to show it. He has time then to wonder how it’s going in the other room, with Anne.

  “Good, thank you,” Rasbach says when they’ve taken his statement. “Now, if you don’t mind, I just have a few more questions.”

  Marco, who had started to rise out of his metal chair, sits back down.

  “Tell us about your company, Conti Software Design.”

  “Why?” Marco asks. “What has my company got to do with anything?” He stares at Rasbach, trying to hide his dismay. But he knows what they’re getting at. They’ve been looking into him; of course they have.

  “You started your company about five years ago?” Rasbach prompts.

  “Yes,” Marco says. “I have degrees in business and computer science. I’d always wanted to go into business for myself. I saw an opportunity in software design—specifically, in designing user interfaces for medical software. So I started my own company. I’ve got some key clients. A small staff of software-design professionals, all working remotely. Mostly we visit clients on site, so I travel a fair bit on business. I keep an office downtown myself. We’ve been quite successful.”