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.
It might even be a good thing that Bruce is dead.
He must tell Rasbach, but how? As he stares at the photograph of the dead man, it comes to him. He will tell the detective that he saw this picture in the paper and recognized the man. He’d seen him hanging around outside the house. He’d forgotten all about it until he saw the picture. They might not believe him, but it’s all he can think of.
He is quite certain that no one ever saw him with Bruce. He doesn’t think anyone can put them together.
He couldn’t live with himself if he doesn’t do everything possible to find Cora.
He will have to tell Anne first. He thinks for another minute, vacillating, and then says, “Anne.”
“What?”
“Look at this.”
She comes and stands over his shoulder looking down at the paper where his finger points. She studies the photo. “What about it?” she says.
“Do you recognize him?”
She looks again. “I don’t think so. Who is it?”
“I’m sure I’ve seen him,” Marco says. “Around.”
“Seen him where?”
“I’m not sure, but he looks familiar. I know I’ve seen him recently, in our neighborhood—around our house.”
Anne looks more closely. “You know, I think I have seen him before, but I don’t know where.”
Even better, Marco thinks.
Before going to the station, Marco gets on his laptop and looks for more information on Derek Honig’s murder, searching all the different newspapers online. He doesn’t want any surprises.
There isn’t much information. The case has attracted little notice. Derek Honig had taken some time off work before his death to stay at his cabin. He’d been found by the woman who cleaned the cabin once a month. He lived alone. Divorced, no kids. Marco feels a chill, reading this. The man he’d known as Bruce had told him he had three kids of his own and knew how to take care of an infant, and Marco had believed him. His own actions now shock him. He’d handed his baby off to someone who turned out to be a total stranger, trusting him to take care of her. How could he have done it?
• • •
Anne and Marco show up at the police station unannounced. The Audi had been returned to them the previous afternoon. Marco clutches the newspaper in his hand and asks for Detective Rasbach at the front desk. He’s in, even though it’s Saturday.
“Do you have a minute?” Marco asks Rasbach.
“Of course,” the detective says, and ushers them into the now familiar room. Jennings, right behind him, grabs another chair. The four of them sit, facing one another.
Marco places the newspaper on the table in front of Rasbach and points to the photo of the dead man.
The detective looks at the photo, skims the short article. Then he glances up from the paper and says, “Yes?”
“I recognize him,” Marco says. He knows he appears nervous, even though he’s trying his hardest not to. He looks the detective deliberately in the eyes. “I think I saw him around in the last couple of weeks before Cora was taken.”
“Saw him where?” Rasbach asks.
“That’s the thing,” Marco equivocates. “I’m not sure. But the minute I saw the picture, I knew I’d seen him recently, and more than once. I think it was around our house, in our neighborhood—on our street.”
Rasbach stares steadily at Marco, pursing his lips.
“Anne recognizes him, too,” Marco says, nodding at his wife.
Rasbach turns his attention to Anne.
Anne nods. “I’ve seen him before, but I don’t know where.”
“You’re sure?”
She nods again.
“Wait here a moment,” Rasbach says, and he and Jennings leave the room.
Anne and Marco wait silently. They don’t want to talk to each other with the video camera in the room. Marco has to consciously fight his urge to fidget. He wants to get up and pace around the room but forces himself to stay in his seat.
Finally Rasbach returns. “I’ll go up there myself, today. If there’s anything relevant to your case, I’ll be in touch.”
“How long do you think it’ll be before we hear from you?” Marco asks.
“I don’t know. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” Rasbach promises.
There’s nothing Marco and Anne can do but go home and wait.
TWENTY-THREE
At home, Marco is restless. He paces the house. He gets on Anne’s nerves. They are snapping at each other.
“I think I’ll go to the office,” he says abruptly. “I need to get my mind off things here and get back to some of my clients. Before I don’t have any clients.”
“Good idea,” Anne agrees, wanting him out of the house. She wishes desperately that she could have a long talk with Dr. Lumsden. Lumsden had called her back quickly after the urgent message Anne had left on her voice mail, and although Dr. Lumsden had been genuinely sympathetic and supportive, the conversation had not been nearly enough. Dr. Lumsden had urged her to speak to the doctor who was covering her patients until her return. But Anne does not want to talk to a doctor she doesn’t know.
Anne thinks about confronting Cynthia. She doesn’t think Cynthia took her baby, not today. But she’d like to know what’s going on between Cynthia and her husband. Perhaps Anne is focusing on what might be going on between her husband and Cynthia because it’s not as painful as thinking about what has happened to her baby.
Anne knows Cynthia is at home. She can hear her occasionally on the other side of their shared wall. Anne knows Graham is away again—she saw him getting into a black airport limo with his bags earlier that morning, from her bedroom window. She could go over there, tell Cynthia off, and tell her to keep away from her husband. Anne stops her pacing and stares at the shared wall of the living room, trying to decide what to do. Cynthia is just on the other side of that wall.
But Anne doesn’t have the nerve. She is too distraught. She’s told the detective what she overheard, but she hasn’t yet confronted Marco about it. And Marco hasn’t said anything about it to her. They seem to have a new pattern of not speaking about difficult things. They used to share everything—well, almost everything. But since the baby, things have been different.
Her depression made her lose interest in everything. At first Marco brought her flowers, chocolates, did little things to lift her mood, but none of it worked, not really. He stopped telling her about his day, about how his business was doing. She couldn’t talk about her own work, because she didn’t work anymore. They didn’t have much to talk about at all, except the baby. Maybe Marco was right. Maybe she should have gone back to work.
She must talk to him, must make him promise that he’ll have nothing more to do with Cynthia. She is not to be trusted. Their friendship with the Stillwells is over. If Anne confronts Marco with what she knows, tells him what she overheard from the top of the stairs, he will feel terrible. He already feels terrible. She has no doubt he’ll stay away from Cynthia now. There’s nothing to worry about on that score.
If they survive this, she will have to talk to Marco about Cynthia, and she will have to talk to him about the business. They will have to start being more honest with each other again.
Anne needs to clean something, but the house is already spotless. It’s odd, the energy she feels now, in the middle of the day, fueled by anxiety. When she still had Cora, she would drag herself through the day. Right about now she’d be praying for Cora to go down for a nap. A sob escapes from her.
She has to keep busy. She starts in the front entryway, cleaning the antique grate that covers the air duct. The scrolled ironwork is covered in dust and has to be scrubbed by hand. She gets a bucket of warm water and a cloth and sits down on the floor by the front door, begins to clean it, getting deep into the grooves. It calms her.
As she sits there, the mail arrives, cascading through the slot in the door, landing on the floor beside her, startling her. She looks at the pile of envelopes on the floor and freezes. Probably more hate mail. She can’t stand it. But what if there’s something else? She puts down her wet cloth, wipes her hands dry on her jeans, and sorts through the pile. There is nothing with a typewritten address label on it like the one on the package that contained the green onesie. Anne realizes she’s been holding her breath and lets herself exhale.
She doesn’t open any of the letters. She would like to throw them all out, but Marco has made her promise to keep everything. He goes through all of it, every day, in case the kidnappers try again to get in touch. He doesn’t share the contents with her.
Anne takes her bucket and cloth and goes upstairs to clean the grates up there. She starts in the office at the end of the hall. When she pulls off the original decorative grate to clean it more easily, she sees something small and dark inside the air duct. Startled, she looks more closely, fearing a dead mouse—or perhaps even a rat. But it’s not a rat. It’s a cell phone.
Anne puts her head between her knees and concentrates on not fainting. It feels like a panic attack, as if all the blood is leaving her body. There are black spots before her eyes. After a few moments, the fainting feeling dissipates and she raises her head. She looks at the cell phone inside the duct. Part of her wants to put the cover back on, go downstairs for a cup of coffee, and pretend she never saw it. But she reaches in to grab it. The phone is stuck to the side of the air duct. She tugs, firmly, and it comes away in her hand. It has been fixed to the inside wall with silver duct tape.
She stares at the cell phone. She has never seen it before. It isn’t Marco’s. She knows his phone. He carries it with him always. But she can’t lie to herself. Someone hid this phone in their house, and it wasn’t her.
Marco has a secret cell phone. Why?
Her first thought is Cynthia. Are they having an affair? Or is it someone else? He sometimes works long hours. She has been fat and unhappy. But until the night with Cynthia, she never thought he might actually be unfaithful. Maybe she’s been completely oblivious. Maybe she’s a complete fool. The wife is always the last to know, right?
The phone looks new. She turns it on. It lights up. So he’s kept it charged. But now she has to draw a pattern to unlock the phone. She has no idea what it is. She doesn’t even know how to unlock Marco’s regular cell phone. She makes a few attempts, and it freezes her out after too many tries.
Think, she tells herself, but she can’t. She sits numbly holding the phone, frozen in place.
• • •
There’s a lot running through Detective Rasbach’s mind on the drive to the crime scene in the Catskills. He thinks about the interview
earlier that day with Marco and Anne Conti.
He suspects that this is Marco’s way of telling him that this dead man was his accomplice—and that Marco is asking him to help him get his baby back. They both know it may be a little late for that. Marco knows that Rasbach believes he abducted Cora and that he’s been outwitted. Clearly this dead man had something to do with it. He must be the mystery man who drove the car down the lane at 12:35 a.m. And what better place to hide the baby than in a remote cabin?
The baby must have been alive when she left the Contis’ house, Rasbach realizes, or Marco would not have come to him now. Marco is taking a big risk, but he is plainly desperate. If what Rasbach believes is true, it puts the mother in the clear—mental-health issues aside, she must not have killed the baby.
He is very interested in seeing what he will find at the murder scene.
Meanwhile Jennings is looking for a connection between Marco and the dead man, Derek Honig. Perhaps they’ll find something, however tenuous, linking the two. Rasbach doesn’t think so, or Marco wouldn’t have come to him. But Derek Honig is dead—maybe Marco feels it’s a risk he can afford to take, on the very slight chance he can get his baby back.
Rasbach is convinced that Marco loves his daughter, that he never intended for her to get hurt. Rasbach almost feels sorry for him. But then he thinks about the baby, who is probably dead, and the mother, who is shattered, and his sympathy disappears.
“Turn here,” he tells the officer driving the cruiser.
They take the highway exit and travel for some time on a lonely dirt road. At last they come to a turnoff. The cruiser bumps and sags down a rutted driveway overgrown with weeds and bushes until it comes to rest in front of a simple wooden cabin, surrounded by yellow crime-scene tape. There’s another cruiser on the scene, obviously waiting for them.