The Couple Next Door (24 page)

‘That would be very difficult for any child to deal with,’ the doctor said. He turned to Anne, who continued to ignore him. ‘Stress can temporarily worsen symptoms of this disorder. I suggest you see me regularly, to try to deal with some of the anxiety you’re feeling.’

Anne cried in the car all the way home. When they got there, before they went into the house, her mother hugged her and said, ‘It’s going to be all right, Anne.’ Anne didn’t believe her. ‘We’ll tell your father that you’re seeing someone for anxiety. He doesn’t need to know about this other thing. He wouldn’t understand.’

They didn’t tell him about the incident at school. Anne’s
mother handled the meetings with the parents of the other three girls from St Mildred’s herself.

Since then there had been other ‘episodes’, mostly harmless, where Anne would lose time – minutes or sometimes hours – when she wouldn’t know what had happened while she was ‘gone’. They were brought on by stress. She would find herself somewhere unexpected, have no idea how she got there, and call her mother, who would come get her. But she’d had no episodes since her first year of college. It had all happened such a long time ago; she’d thought she’d put it behind her.

But, of course, she had immediately remembered it all after the kidnapping: What if the police found out? What if Marco found out and looked at her differently? But then the onesie had arrived – and her mother no longer looked at her as if she were afraid that Anne might have killed her own child and that Marco had helped to cover it up.

Now the police know that she attacked Susan. They think she is violent. All along, Anne has been afraid that the police would believe she was guilty, whether she was or not. But there are worse things than being wrongly accused.

Anne’s greatest fear now is that she
is
guilty.

Those first few days after Cora had been taken, when Anne was so sure that she’d been taken by some stranger – those had been difficult days, having to withstand the suspicion of the police, the public, and her own mother. She and Marco had borne it, because they knew they were innocent. They’d made one mistake – they’d left their baby unattended. But not abandoned.

But now, because of what had happened the other night before she’d fallen asleep on the sofa – she had confused the search for signs of Marco’s unfaithfulness with the search for Cora. Reality had become distorted. She remembers thinking that Cynthia had stolen her child from her.

The illness was back. When, exactly, had it returned?

She thinks she knows. It came back the night of the kidnapping, after she slapped Cora. She lost time. She doesn’t know what happened.

It’s almost a relief now, realizing that she did it. Better that Cora be killed quickly by her own mother, in her own bedroom, with the familiar lambs looking on, than that she be taken by some monster and molested, tortured, terrified.

Anne should call her own mother. Her mother would know what to do. But Anne doesn’t want to call her mother. Her mother will try to cover it up, pretend it never happened. Like Marco. They’re all trying to cover up what she’s done.

She doesn’t want that anymore. She must tell the police. And she must do it now, before anyone tries to stop her. She wants everything out in the open. She can’t stand a minute more of the secrecy, the lies. She needs to know where her baby is, her final resting place. She needs to hold her one last time.

She glances out her bedroom window at the street. She doesn’t see any reporters out there now. She dresses quickly and calls a cab to bring her to the police station.

It seems to take a long time, but finally the cab arrives. She gets into the cab quickly and settles herself in the backseat, feeling strange but determined. She needs this to end. She will tell them what happened. She killed Cora. Marco must have arranged to have her taken away and then urged them to offer ransom money afterward, to mislead the police. But now Marco will have to stop protecting her. He will have to stop lying to her. He will have to tell them where he put Cora’s body, and then she will know. She must know where her baby is. She can’t stand not knowing.

She can’t trust anyone to tell the truth unless she goes first.

When she arrives at the police station, the officer behind the front desk looks at her with obvious concern.

‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ she asks.

‘I’m fine,’ Anne says quickly. ‘I want to see Detective Rasbach.’ Her voice sounds strange to her own ears.

‘He’s not here. It’s Sunday,’ the officer says. ‘I’ll see if I can get him on the phone.’ She has a brief conversation on the phone, puts it down, and says, ‘He’s on his way. He’ll be here in about half an hour.’

Anne waits impatiently, her mind in turmoil.

When Rasbach appears less than half an hour later, he is casually dressed, in khaki trousers and a summer shirt. He looks very different; Anne is used to him in a suit. She finds it disorienting.

‘Anne,’ he says, looking at her closely with those eyes that miss nothing. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I need to talk to you,’ Anne says quickly.

‘Where is your lawyer?’ Rasbach asks. ‘I was informed that you would no longer talk to us without your lawyer present.’

‘I don’t want my lawyer,’ Anne insists.

‘Are you sure? Maybe you should call him. I can wait.’

Her lawyer will just stop her from saying what she needs to say. ‘No! I’m sure. I don’t need a lawyer. I don’t want one – and don’t call my husband.’

‘All right, then,’ Rasbach says, and turns to lead her down the long hall.

Anne follows him into one of the interview rooms. She starts to talk before he’s even sat down. He tells her to wait.

‘For the record,’ Rasbach says to her, ‘please state your name, the date, and the fact that you’ve been advised to call your lawyer but have declined.’

When Anne has done so, they begin.

‘Why are you here today?’ the detective asks her.

‘I have come to confess.’

DETECTIVE RASBACH OBSERVES
Anne carefully. She is clearly agitated, wringing her hands. Her pupils look dilated, her face pale. He is unsure whether to proceed. She has waived her right to counsel, on videotape, but he is not confident of her mental state, whether she is capable of properly making that decision. Still, he wants to hear what she has to say. They can always disallow the confession anyway – they probably will – but he has to hear it. He wants to know.

‘I killed her,’ Anne says. She is distressed, but she seems rational, not out of her mind. She knows who she is, where she is, and what she’s doing.

‘Tell me what happened, Anne,’ he says, sitting across from her at the table.

‘I went over to check on her at eleven,’ Anne says. ‘I tried to feed her with the bottle, because I’d been drinking. But she was very fussy, she wanted the breast. She wouldn’t take the bottle.’ She stops talking, stares at the wall over Rasbach’s shoulder, as if seeing it all again as a film played on a screen behind him.

‘Go on,’ the detective says.

‘So I thought fuck it, and I put her on my breast. I felt bad
about it, but she wouldn’t take the bottle and she was hungry. She was crying and crying and wouldn’t stop. She’s never had trouble taking the bottle before – she’s never refused it. How was I to know she would refuse the bottle the one night I have a few glasses of wine?’

Rasbach waits for her to continue. He doesn’t want to speak and interrupt the flow of her thoughts. She seems to be almost in a kind of trance, still staring at the wall behind him.

‘I didn’t know what else to do. So I nursed her.’ She drags her eyes from the wall and looks at him. ‘I lied before, when I said that I remembered changing her out of the pink onesie. I don’t remember. I just told you that because I assumed that’s what I did, but I don’t actually remember any of it.’

‘What
do
you remember?’ Rasbach says.

‘I remember nursing her, and she suckled for a bit, but she didn’t have a good feed, and then she started fussing again.’ Anne’s eyes slide to that imaginary screen again. ‘I held her and walked around with her a bit, singing to her, but she just cried louder. I was crying, too.’ She looks at him. ‘I slapped her.’ Now Anne bursts into tears. ‘After that I don’t remember. She was wearing the pink onesie when I slapped her, I remember that, but I don’t remember anything after that. I must have changed her and changed her outfit. Maybe I dropped her or shook her, I don’t know. Maybe I held a pillow over her face, to stop her from crying, like you said, but she must have died somehow.’ She begins sobbing hysterically. ‘And when I went over at midnight, she was in her crib, but I didn’t pick her up. I don’t know if she was breathing then.’

Rasbach lets her cry. Finally he says, ‘Anne, if you don’t remember, why do you think you killed Cora?’

‘Because she’s gone!
Because
I don’t remember. Sometimes, when I’m under stress, my mind splits off, disconnects from reality. Then I realize that I’m missing some time, that I’ve done something I don’t remember. It’s happened before.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘You know all about it. You spoke to Janice Foegle.’

‘I want to hear your version. Tell me what happened.’

‘I don’t want to.’ She takes several tissues from the box and wipes her eyes.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

Rasbach leans back in his chair and says, ‘Anne, I don’t think you killed Cora.’

‘Yes you do. You said so before.’ She is twisting the tissues in her hands.

‘I don’t think so anymore. If I put this idea in your head, I’m truly sorry.’

‘I must have killed her. And Marco had someone take her away to protect me. So I wouldn’t know what I’d done.’

‘Then where is she now?’

‘I don’t know! Marco won’t tell me! I’ve begged him, but he won’t tell me. He denies it. He doesn’t want me to know that I killed my own baby. He’s protecting me. It must be so hard for him. I thought if I came and told you what happened, he wouldn’t have to pretend anymore, and he could tell us where he put her, and I would know, and it would all be over.’ She slumps in her chair, her head down.

It’s true that in the beginning Rasbach suspected that something like this might have happened. That the mother might have snapped, killed the baby, and she and the husband covered it up. It could have happened. But not the way she tells it. Because if she’d killed the baby at eleven o’clock, or
even at midnight, and Marco wasn’t aware of it until twelve thirty, how could Derek Honig already have been waiting with a car in the lane to take the body away? No, she didn’t kill the baby. It just didn’t add up.

‘Anne, are you sure that it was at eleven o’clock when you fed her and she was crying? Could it have been earlier? At ten, for instance?’ If that were the case, Marco might have known earlier – when he checked her at ten thirty.

‘No, it was eleven. I always do her final feeding at eleven, and then she usually sleeps through till about five in the morning. That was the only time I was away from the party for more than five minutes. You can ask the others.’

‘Yes, Marco and Cynthia agree that you were gone a long time around eleven – that you didn’t get back until eleven thirty or thereabouts – and you checked on her again at midnight,’ Rasbach says. ‘Did you tell Marco you thought you might have hurt her, when you got back to the party?’

‘No I . . . I just realized last night that I must have done it!’

‘But you see, Anne, that it’s impossible, what you describe,’ Rasbach tells her gently. ‘How could Marco have gone over at twelve thirty not knowing the baby was dead and have someone in a car in the garage waiting to take her a couple of minutes later?’

Anne goes completely still. Her hands stop moving. She looks confused.

There’s something else he needs to tell her. ‘It looks like the man who was murdered at the cabin – Derek Honig – is the one whose car was in your garage and who took Cora away. The tire treads are the right type, and we’ll know soon if they’re a match with the tracks left in your garage. We think Cora was taken to his cabin in the Catskills. Sometime later Honig was beaten to death with a spade.’

Anne looks as if she’s unable to take in this information.

Rasbach is worried about her. ‘Can I call someone to drive you home? Where’s Marco?’

‘He’s at work.’

‘On a Sunday?’

She doesn’t answer.

‘Can I call your mother? A friend?’

‘No! I’m fine. I’ll get home on my own. Really, I’m fine,’ Anne says. She stands up abruptly. ‘Please don’t tell anyone I was here today,’ she says.

‘At least let me get you a cab,’ he insists.

Just before the cab arrives, she turns to him abruptly and says, ‘But . . . there would have been time, between twelve thirty and when we got home. If I’d killed her and he found her at twelve thirty and called someone. We didn’t get home till almost one thirty – he didn’t want to leave. You don’t know for sure that the car going down the lane at twelve thirty-five was the one that had Cora in it. It could have been later.’

Rasbach says, ‘But Marco couldn’t have called anyone without our knowing about it. We have all your phone records. He didn’t call anyone. If Marco had anyone take the baby away, it had to have been prearranged – planned.
Which means you didn’t kill her.
’

Anne gives him a startled look, seems as if she’s about to speak, but then the cab arrives and she says nothing.

Rasbach watches her go, pitying her from the bottom of his heart.

Anne returns to an empty house. She lies down on the sofa in the living room, utterly exhausted, and reviews what happened at the police station.

Rasbach had almost had her convinced that she couldn’t
have killed Cora. But he didn’t know about the cell phone hidden in the wall. Marco
could
have called someone at twelve thirty. She doesn’t know now why she didn’t say anything about the cell phone. Maybe she didn’t want Rasbach to know about Marco’s affair. She was too ashamed.

Either that or that man with the cabin took her away, alive, sometime after Marco checked on her at twelve thirty. She doesn’t know why Detective Rasbach is so convinced that the car going down the lane at twelve thirty-five had anything to do with it.