The Couple Next Door(24)

Around 10:00 p.m. the phone rings. Marco reaches for it. Everyone can see that his hand is shaking. “Hello?” he says.

There is nothing on the other end but breathing.

“Hello,” Marco says, more loudly, his eyes shifting quickly to Rasbach. “Who is this?”

The caller hangs up.

“What did I do wrong?” Marco says, panicked.

Rasbach is by his side instantly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Marco gets up and starts pacing the living room.

“If that was the kidnapper, he’ll call back,” Rasbach says evenly. “He’s nervous, too.”

Detective Rasbach watches Marco closely. Marco is clearly agitated, which is understandable. He is under a lot of pressure. If this is all an act, Rasbach thinks, he is a very good actor. Anne is crying quietly on the sofa, periodically wiping her eyes with a tissue.

Careful police work has determined that nobody with a garage opening onto the lane was driving down the lane at 12:35 a.m. the night before. Of course, the lane is also used by others, not just those with garages there—it opens out to side streets at each end, and drivers use it to get around the problem of the one-way streets. The police are trying desperately hard to find the driver of that vehicle. Paula Dempsey is the only one they’ve found who saw the car at that time.

If there is a kidnapper, Rasbach thinks, they would probably have heard from him by now. Perhaps there will never be any call from a kidnapper. Maybe the parents killed the baby and got help disposing of the body and this is all an elaborate charade to divert suspicion of murder from them. The problem is, Rasbach has pulled their cell-phone records and their home-phone records, and there were no calls made by either of them to anyone after six o’clock the previous night, except the emergency call to 911.

Which means that if they did it, it might not have been spontaneous. Perhaps it was planned all along and they prearranged to have somebody waiting in the garage. Or maybe one of them has an untraceable, prepaid cell phone that was used. The police haven’t found one, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. If they got help disposing of the body, they must have called someone.

The phone rings several more times. They have been told that they are murderers and to stop fucking the police around. They have been told to pray. They have been offered psychic services—for a fee. But no one claiming to be the kidnapper has called.

Finally Anne and Marco go upstairs to bed. Neither of them has slept in the last twenty-four hours, and for the day before that. Anne has tried to lie down, but she’s been unable to sleep. Instead she sees Cora in her mind’s eye and can’t believe that she is unable to touch her, that she doesn’t know where her baby is or if she’s okay.

Anne and Marco lie down on the bed together in their clothes, ready to jump up if the phone rings. They hold each other and whisper.

“I wish I could see Dr. Lumsden,” Anne says.

Marco pulls her close. He doesn’t know what to say. Dr. Lumsden is away in Europe somewhere, for the next couple of weeks. Anne’s appointments have been canceled. “I know,” Marco whispers.

Anne whispers back, “She said I could see the doctor who’s covering for her if I needed to. Maybe I should.”

Marco considers. He’s worried about her. He worries that if this goes on too long, it will truly damage her. She has always been fragile when stressed. “I don’t know, baby,” Marco says. “With all those reporters out there, how would you go to the doctor’s?”

“I don’t know,” Anne whispers bleakly. She doesn’t want the reporters following her to a psychiatrist’s office either. She is worried about the press learning of her postpartum depression. She saw what they were like about the mistake with the onesie. So far the only ones who know about her depression are Marco and her mother, her doctor and her pharmacist. And the police, of course, who went through their house right after the baby was taken and found her medication.

If she hadn’t been in treatment by a psychiatrist, would the police be circling them now like wolves? Maybe not. It’s her fault they’re under suspicion. The police have no reason to suspect them otherwise. Unless it’s because they left the baby in the house alone. That was Marco’s fault. So they’re both to blame.

Anne lies in bed remembering what it felt like to hold her baby against her own body, to feel the warmth of her pudgy little infant daughter in her arms, wearing only a diaper, her skin smelling of baby and bath time. She remembers Cora’s beautiful smile and the curl in the middle of her forehead—like the little girl in the nursery rhyme. She and Marco have often joked about it.

There was a little girl, and she had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

And when she was good, she was very, very good,

And when she was bad, she was horrid.

As broken as she feels—what kind of mother feels depressed after the gift of a perfect baby?—Anne loves her daughter desperately.

But the exhaustion had been overwhelming. Cora was a fussy, colicky baby, more demanding than most. When Marco had gone back to work, the days had begun to feel unbearably long. Anne filled the hours as best she could, but it was lonely. All the days began to seem the same. She couldn’t imagine them ever being any different. In her fog of sleep deprivation, she couldn’t remember the woman she used to be when she worked at the art gallery—could hardly remember how it felt to help clients add pieces to their collections or the thrill of finding a promising new artist. In fact, she could hardly remember what she was like before she’d had the baby and stayed home to care for her.