The Couple Next Door

by Shari Lapena

  “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.”

  “You’ve seen him before?” Marco asks in surprise.

  She turns her head and looks at him again. “I told you.”

  She had, but he hadn’t really believed her. At the time he’d just thought it was the power of suggestion.

  “Where did you see him?”

  “It was a long time ago,” she whispers. “He’s a friend of my father’s.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Marco freezes. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She sounds strange, not like herself. Can he trust anything she says? Marco thinks rapidly. Richard and Derek Honig. The cell phone.

  Was this whole thing a setup? Has Richard been controlling this nightmare from behind the scenes? Has Richard had Cora all along?

  “I’m sure I’ve seen him with my father, when I was younger,” Anne says. “He knows him. Why would my father know the man who took our baby, Marco? Don’t you think that’s strange?” She sounds like she’s drifting away.

  “It’s strange all right,” Marco says slowly. He remembers his suspicions when he’d used the secret cell phone and his father-in-law had answered. Was this the missing link? Honig had approached him, out of the blue. He had befriended Marco, listened to his troubles. He got Marco to trust him. He urged Marco to ask Richard for more money, and then Richard turned him down. What if they were in collusion and Richard had turned down his request for more money knowing that Honig would be there, waiting to pick up the pieces? Honig had suggested the kidnapping that same day. What if this had all been carefully orchestrated by Marco’s father-in-law? Marco feels ill. If so, he has been even more duped than he thought, and by the man he most dislikes in the world.

  “Anne,” Marco says, and then the words spill out in a rush, “Derek Honig found me. He befriended me. He urged me to ask your father for more money. Then, the day your father turned me down for another loan, he showed up again, as if he knew. It was like he knew I’d be desperate. That’s when he suggested the kidnapping.” Marco feels as if he’s emerging from a bad dream, that things are finally starting to make sense. “What if your father is behind this, Anne?” He says urgently, “I think he got Honig to approach me, to set me up for the kidnapping. I’ve been played, Anne!”

  “No!” Anne says stubbornly. “I can’t believe it. My father would never do that. Why would he? What possible reason could he have?”

  It wounds Marco that she seems to have no difficulty believing that he could murder a man with a spade in cold blood yet can’t believe that her father would set him up. But he must remember that she’s seen that damning video. That would shatter the faith of anyone. He must tell her the rest. “Anne, the cell phone, in the duct. The one Honig and I were using.”

  “What about it?”

  “After you found it,
I noticed that there were some missed calls—someone had called from Honig’s cell phone. So I called the number again. And . . . your father answered.”

  She looks at him in disbelief.

  “Anne, he was expecting it to be me on the other end of the phone. He knew I’d taken Cora. I asked him how he got the phone. He said the kidnappers had mailed it to him, with a note, like the onesie. He said the kidnappers got in touch with him because it was in the newspapers that your parents were the ones who’d paid the ransom. He said they were asking for more money for Cora, that he was going to pay it, but he made me promise not to tell you. He said he didn’t want to get your hopes up, in case it all fell apart.”

  “What?” Anne’s face, dazed with suffering, now comes to life. “He’s been in touch with the kidnappers?”

  Marco nods. “He said he was going to deal with them and get her back himself, because I’d fucked it all up.”

  “When was this?” Anne asks breathlessly.

  “Last night.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “He made me promise not to! In case things don’t work out. I’ve been trying to reach him all day, but he won’t call me back. I’ve been going out of my mind, not knowing what’s happening. I assume he hasn’t gotten her back, or we would have heard something.” But now Marco sees it differently. He’s been played by a master. “But, Anne—what if your father has known where Cora is all along?”

  Anne looks like she can’t take in any more. She looks numb. Finally, her voice breaking, she asks, “But why would he do that?”

  Marco knows why. “Because your parents hate me!” Marco says. “They want to destroy me, destroy our marriage, and get you and Cora back for themselves.”

  Anne shakes her head. “I know they don’t like you—maybe they even hate you—but what you’re saying . . . I can’t believe it. What if he’s telling the truth? What if the kidnappers are in touch with my parents and he’s trying to get her back for us?” The hope in her voice is heartrending.

  Marco says, “But you just said that your father knows Derek Honig. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  There’s a long pause. Then she whispers, “Did he kill Derek Honig with the shovel?”

  “Maybe,” Marco says uncertainly. “I don’t know.”

  “What about Cora?” Anne whispers. “What’s happened to her?”

  Marco takes her by the shoulders and looks into her eyes, which are big and frightened. “I think your father must have her. Or he knows who does.”

  “What are we going to do?” Anne whispers.

  “We have to think this through,” Marco says. He gets up from the sofa, too anxious to sit still. “If your father does have her, or knows where she is, we have two options. We can go directly to the police or we can confront him.”

  Anne stares into space, as if her mind has become overwhelmed.

  “Maybe we should talk to your father first, rather than going to the police,” Marco says uneasily. Marco doesn’t want to go to jail.

  “If we go to my father,” Anne says, “I can talk to him. He’ll give Cora back to me. He’ll be sorry, I know he will. He just wants me to be happy.”

  Marco stops pacing and looks at his wife, questioning her grip on reality. If it’s true that Derek Honig was a friend of her father’s, then it could well be true that her father manipulated Marco into financial desperation, into kidnapping their child. Her father might have orchestrated the deception at the exchange; he might have murdered a man in cold blood. He has caused his daughter intense pain. He doesn’t care if she’s happy. He just wants things his way.

  He is utterly ruthless. For the first time, Marco realizes what an adversary he has in his father-in-law. The man is possibly a sociopath. How many times had Richard told him that to succeed in business one had to be ruthless? Maybe that was it—maybe he was trying to teach Marco a lesson about ruthlessness.

  Anne says suddenly, “Maybe my father is not part of this. Maybe Derek befriended you, and manipulated you, because he knew my father and knew he has money. But my father might not know anything about it. He might not know that Derek was the kidnapper—he might have gotten the phone and the note in the mail, like he said.” She seems more lucid again.

  Marco thinks about this. “It’s possible.” But he believes that Richard is running things behind the scenes. He feels it in his gut.

  “We have to go over there,” Anne says. “But you can’t just barge in and accuse him. We don’t know for sure what’s going on. I can tell him that I know you took Cora and that you gave her to Derek Honig. That we need his help getting her back. If my father is involved in this, we have to give him a way out. We have to pretend he had nothing to do with it, beg him to work with the kidnappers, to figure out how to get Cora back to us.”

  Marco thinks about what she’s said and nods. Anne seems more like herself again, and he’s relieved. Besides, she’s right—Richard Dries isn’t the kind of man you back into a corner. The important thing is to get Cora home again.

  “And maybe my father isn’t behind it at all. Maybe he really is in touch with the kidnappers,” Anne says. She so obviously wants to believe that her father wouldn’t do this to her.

  “I doubt it.”

  They sit for a moment, exhausted by all that’s happened, steeling themselves for what’s ahead. Finally Marco says, “We’d better get going.”

  Anne nods. She puts a hand on his arm as they’re leaving. “Promise me you won’t lose your cool with my father,” she says.

  What can Marco do but say yes? “I promise.” He adds miserably, “I owe you that.”

  • • •

  They take a cab to Anne’s parents’ home, passing by increasingly stately houses until they arrive in the wealthiest suburb of the city. It’s late, but they have not called first. They want the element of surprise on their side. Anne and Marco sit in the back of the taxi, saying nothing. Marco can feel Anne trembling against him; her breathing sounds fast and shallow. He takes her hand in his, to calm her. He is sweating with nerves in the hot, sticky cab; the air-conditioning doesn’t seem to be working. Marco puts the window down a bit so that he can breathe.

  The cab drives them up the circular gravel drive and stops at the front door. Marco pays the driver and tells him not to wait. Anne presses the bell. There are still lights on in the house. After a moment Anne’s mother opens the door.

  “Anne!” she says, clearly surprised. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Anne pushes past her mother, and Marco follows her into the front hall.

  And at once all their plans fly out the window.

  “Where is she?” Anne demands. She looks wildly at her mother. Her mother seems stunned and doesn’t answer. Anne starts walking rapidly through the large house, leaving Marco standing in the front hall, horrified by her behavior. Anne has lost it—he wonders how to play this now.

  Anne’s mother follows after her on her frantic search through the house. Marco can hear Anne calling, “Cora! Cora!”

  He senses movement above and looks up. Richard is coming down the grand staircase. Their eyes meet, steel on steel. They can both hear Anne’s cries: “Where is she? Where is my baby?” Her voice is becoming more and more frantic.

  Suddenly Marco questions everything: Was Anne right about recognizing Derek Honig? Was Derek an associate of her father’s, or has her brain supplied a detail that is simply a delusion? He found her at home in the dark, holding a knife. How reliable is anything she says? Everything he believes hinges on Richard’s knowing Derek Honig. Now it’s up to Marco to find out the truth.

  “Let’s go sit down, shall we?” Richard says, and passes him on his way to the living room.

  Marco follows. His mouth is dry. He is afraid. He may not be dealing with a normal person here. Richard is quite possibly a sociopath; Marco knows he’s out of his depth.
He doesn’t know how to handle this situation, and everything depends on how he handles it.

  Marco hears Anne’s footsteps; she is running now, up the elaborate staircase to the second floor. He and Richard stare at each other, listening to Anne call Cora’s name as she flings back bedroom doors, running along the upstairs hall, searching.

  “She won’t find her,” Richard says.

  “Where is she, you son of a bitch?” Marco says. He has gone off script, too. None of this is going according to plan.

  “Well, she’s not here,” his father-in-law says coldly. “Why don’t we just wait for Anne to settle down, and we can all have a meeting.”

  It takes everything Marco has not to get up and go for his father-in-law’s fat throat. He forces himself to sit down and to wait for what’s coming.

  Finally Anne bursts into the living room, her overwrought mother right behind her. “Where is she?” Anne cries at her father. Her face is mottled and streaked with tears. She is hysterical.

  “Sit down, Anne,” her father says firmly.

  Marco gestures for her to join him, and Anne goes and sits beside him on the large, overstuffed sofa.

  “You know why we’re here,” Marco begins.

  “Anne seems to think that Cora is here. Why would she think that?” Richard asks, feigning bewilderment. “Marco—did you tell her the kidnappers were in touch with me? I specifically asked you not to.”

  Marco tries to speak, but he doesn’t know how to begin.