The Couple Next Door Read online

  • • •

  An air of unreality permeates everything that happens next. Anne and Marco’s comfortable home immediately becomes a crime scene.

  Anne is sitting on the sofa in the living room. Someone has placed a blanket around her shoulders, but she’s still trembling. She is in shock. Police cars are parked on the street outside the house, their red lights flashing, pulsing through the front window and circling the pale walls. Anne sits immobile on the sofa and stares ahead as if hypnotized by them.

  Marco, his voice breaking, has given the police a quick description of the baby—six months old, blond, blue eyes, about sixteen pounds, wearing a disposable diaper and a plain, pale pink onesie. A light summer baby blanket, solid white, is also missing from the crib.

  The house is swarming with uniformed police officers. They fan out and methodically begin to search the house. Some of them wear latex gloves and carry evidence kits. Anne and Marco’s fast, frantic race through the house in the short minutes before the police arrived had turned up nothing. The forensic team is moving slowly. Clearly they are not looking for Cora; they are looking for evidence. The baby is already gone.

  Marco sits down on the sofa next to Anne and puts his arm around her, holds her close. She wants to pull away, but she doesn’t. She lets his arm stay there. How would it look if she pulled away? She can smell that he’s been drinking.

  Anne now blames herself. It’s her fault. She wants to blame Marco, but she agreed to leave the baby alone. She should have stayed home. No—she should have brought Cora with them next door, to hell with Cynthia. She doubts Cynthia would have actually thrown them out and had no party for Graham at all. This realization comes too late.

  They will be judged, by the police and by everybody else. Serves them right, leaving their baby alone. She would think that, too, if it had happened to someone else. She knows how judgmental mothers are, how good it feels to sit in judgment of someone else. She thinks of her own mothers’ group, meeting with their babies once a week in one another’s homes for coffee and gossip, what they will say about her.

  Someone else has arrived—a composed man in a well-cut dark suit. The uniformed officers treat him with deference. Anne looks up, meets his piercing blue eyes, and wonders who he is.

  He approaches and sits down in one of the armchairs across from Anne and Marco and introduces himself as Detective Rasbach. Then he leans forward. “Tell me what happened.”

  Anne immediately forgets the detective’s name, or rather it hasn’t registered at all. She only catches “Detective.” She looks at him, encouraged by the frank intelligence behind his eyes. He will help them. He will help them get Cora back. She tries to think. But she can’t think. She is frantic and numb at the same time. She simply stares into the detective’s sharp eyes and lets Marco do the talking.

  “We were next door,” Marco begins, clearly agitated. “At the neighbors’.” Then he stops.

  “Yes?” the detective says.

  Marco hesitates.

  “Where was the baby?” the detective asks.

  Marco doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to say.

  Anne, pulling herself together, answers for him, the tears spilling down her face. “We left her here, in her crib, with the monitor on.” She watches the detective for his reaction—What awful parents—but he betrays nothing. “We had the monitor on over there, and we checked on her constantly. Every half hour.” She glances at Marco. “We never thought . . .” but she can’t finish. Her hand goes to her mouth, her fingers press against her lips.

  “When was the last time you checked on her?” the detective asks, taking a small notebook from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

  “I checked on her at midnight,” Anne says. “I remember the time. We were checking on her every half hour, and it was my turn. She was fine. She was sleeping.”

  “I checked on her again at twelve thirty,” Marco says.

  “You’re absolutely certain of the time?” the detective asks. Marco nods; he is staring at his feet. “And that was the last time anyone checked on her, before you came home?”

  “Yes,” Marco says, looking up at the detective, running a nervous hand through his dark hair. “I went to check on her at twelve thirty. It was my turn. We were keeping to a schedule.”

  Anne nods.

  “How much have you had to drink tonight?” the detective asks Marco.

  Marco flushes. “They were having a small dinner party, next door. I had a few,” he admits.

  The detective turns to Anne. “Have you had anything to drink tonight, Mrs. Conti?”

  Her face burns. Nursing mothers aren’t supposed to drink. She wants to lie. “I had some wine, with dinner. I don’t know how much exactly,” she says. “It was a dinner party.” She wonders how drunk she looks, what this detective must think of her. She feels like he can see right through her. She remembers the vomit upstairs in the baby’s room. Can he smell drink on her the way she can smell it on Marco? She remembers the shattered mirror in the upstairs bathroom, her bloodied hand, now wrapped in a clean dish towel. She’s ashamed of how they must look to him, drunken parents who abandoned their six-month-old daughter. She wonders if they will be charged with anything.

  “How is that even relevant?” Marco says to the detective.

  “It might affect the reliability of your observations,” the detective says evenly. He is not judgmental. He is merely after the facts, it seems. “What time did you leave the party?” he asks.

  “It was almost one thirty,” Anne answers. “I kept checking the time on my cell. I wanted to go. I . . . I should have checked on her at one—it was my turn—but I thought we’d be leaving any minute, and I was trying to get Marco to hurry up.” She feels agonizingly guilty. If she had checked on her daughter at one o’clock, would she be gone now? But then there were so many ways this could have been prevented.

  “You placed the call to 911 at one twenty-seven,” the detective says.

  “The front door was open,” Anne says, remembering.

  “The front door was open?” the detective repeats.

  “It was open three or four inches. I’m sure I locked it behind me when I checked on her at midnight,” Anne says.

  “How sure?”

  Anne thinks about it. Was she sure? She had been positive, when she saw the open front door, that she’d locked it. But now, with what had happened, how can she be sure of anything? She turns to her husband. “Are you sure you didn’t leave the door open?”

  “I’m sure,” he says curtly. “I never used the front door. I was going through the back to check on her, remember?”

  “You used the back door,” the detective repeats.

  “I may not have locked it every time,” Marco admits, and covers his face with his hands.

  • • •

  Detective Rasbach observes the couple closely. A baby is missing. Taken from her crib—if the parents, Marco and Anne Conti, are to be believed—between approximately 12:30 a.m. and 1:27 a.m., by a person or persons unknown, while the parents were at a party next door. The front door had been found partly open. The back door might have been left unlocked by the father—it had in fact been found closed but unlocked when the police arrived. There is no denying the distress of the mother. And of the father, who looks badly shaken. But the whole situation doesn’t feel right. Rasbach wonders what is really going on.

  Detective Jennings waves him over silently. “Excuse me,” Detective Rasbach says, and leaves the stricken parents for a moment.

  “What is it?” Rasbach asks quietly.

  Jennings holds up a small vial of pills. “Found these in the bathroom cabinet,” he says.

  Rasbach takes the clear plastic container from Jennings and studies the label: ANNE CONTI, SERTRALINE, 50 MG. Sertraline, Rasbach knows, is a powerful antidepressant.

  “The bathroom mirror upst
airs is smashed,” Jennings tells him.

  Rasbach nods. He hasn’t been upstairs yet. “Anything else?”

  Jennings shakes his head. “Nothing so far. House looks clean. Nothing else taken, apparently. We’ll know more from forensics in a few hours.”

  “Okay,” Rasbach says, handing the vial of pills back to Jennings.

  He returns to the couple on the sofa and resumes his questioning. He looks at the husband. “Marco—is it okay if I call you Marco?—what did you do after you checked on the baby at twelve thirty?”

  “I went back to the party,” Marco says. “I had a cigarette in the neighbors’ backyard.”

  “Were you alone when you had your cigarette?”

  “No. Cynthia came out with me.” Marco flushes; Rasbach notices. “She’s the neighbor who had us over for dinner.”

  Rasbach turns his attention to the wife. She’s an attractive woman, with fine features and glossy brown hair, but right now she looks colorless. “You don’t smoke, Mrs. Conti?”

  “No, I don’t. But Cynthia does,” Anne says. “I was sitting at the dining-room table with Graham, her husband. He hates cigarette smoke, and it was his birthday, and I thought it would be rude to leave him alone inside.” And then, inexplicably, she volunteers, “Cynthia had been flirting with Marco all evening, and I felt bad for Graham.”

  “I see,” Rasbach says. He studies the husband, who looks utterly miserable. He also looks nervous and guilty. Rasbach turns to him. “So you were outside in the backyard next door shortly after twelve thirty. Any idea how long you were out there?”

  Marco shakes his head helplessly. “Maybe fifteen minutes, give or take?”

  “Did you see anything or hear anything?”

  “What do you mean?” The husband seems to be in some kind of shock. He is slurring his words slightly. Rasbach wonders just how much alcohol he’s had.

  Rasbach spells it out for him. “Someone apparently took your baby sometime between twelve thirty and one twenty-seven. You were outside in the backyard next door for a few minutes shortly after twelve thirty.” He watches the husband, waits for him to put it together. “To my mind it’s unlikely that anyone would carry a baby out your front door in the middle of the night.”

  “But the front door was open,” Anne says.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Marco says.

  “There’s a lane running behind the houses on this side of the street,” Detective Rasbach says. Marco nods. “Did you notice anyone using the lane at that time? Did you hear anything, a car?”

  “I . . . I don’t think so,” Marco says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see or hear anything.” He covers his face with his hands again. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Detective Rasbach had already checked out the area quickly before coming inside and interviewing the parents. He thinks it unlikely—but not impossible—that a stranger would carry a sleeping child out the front door of a house on a street like this one and risk being seen. The houses are attached row houses set close to the sidewalk. The street is well lit, and there is a fair bit of vehicular and foot traffic, even late at night. So it is odd—perhaps he’s being deliberately misled?—that the front door was open. The forensics team is dusting it for fingerprints now, but somehow Rasbach doesn’t think they’ll find anything.

  The back holds more potential. Most of the houses, including the Contis’, have a single detached garage opening onto the lane—behind the house. The backyards are long and narrow, fenced in between, and most, including the Contis’, have trees and shrubs and gardens. It is relatively dark back there; there are no streetlights as there are in the front. It’s a dark night, with no moon. Whoever has taken the child, if he had come out the Contis’ back door, would only have had to walk across the backyard to the garage, with access from there to the lane. The chances of being seen carrying an abducted child out the back door to a waiting vehicle are much less than the chances of being seen carrying an abducted child out the front door.

  The house, yard, and garage are being thoroughly searched by Rasbach’s team. So far they have found no sign of the missing baby. The Contis’ garage is empty, and the garage door has been left wide open to the lane. It’s possible that even if someone had been sitting out back on the patio next door, he or she might not have noticed anything. But not likely. Which narrows the window of the abduction to between approximately 12:45 and 1:27 a.m.

  “Are you aware that your motion detector isn’t working?” Rasbach asks.

  “What?” the husband says, startled.

  “You have a motion detector on your back door, a light that should go on when someone approaches it. Are you aware that it isn’t working?”

  “No,” the wife whispers.

  The husband shakes his head vigorously. “No, I . . . it was working when I checked on her. What’s wrong with it?”

  “The bulb has been loosened.” Detective Rasbach watches the parents carefully. He pauses. “It leads me to believe that the child was taken out the back, to the garage, and away, probably in a vehicle, via the lane.” He waits, but neither the husband nor the wife says anything. The wife is shaking, he notices.

  “Where is your car?” Rasbach asks, leaning forward.

  “Our car?” Anne echoes.

  THREE

  Rasbach waits for their answer.

  She answers first. “It’s on the street.”

  “You park on the street when you’ve got a garage in back?” Rasbach asks.

  “Everybody does that,” Anne answers. “It’s easier than going through the lane, especially in the winter. Most people get a parking permit and just park on the street.”

  “I see,” Rasbach says.

  “Why?” the wife asks. “What does it matter?”

  Rasbach explains. “It probably made it easier for the kidnapper. If the garage was empty and the garage door was left open, it would be relatively easy for someone to back a car in and put the baby in the car while the car was in the garage, out of sight. It would obviously be more difficult—certainly riskier—if the garage already had a car in it. The kidnapper would run the risk of being seen in the lane with the baby.”

  Rasbach notices that the husband has turned another shade paler, if that is even possible. His pallor is quite striking.

  “We’re hoping we will get some shoe prints or tire tracks from the garage,” Rasbach adds.

  “You make it sound like this was planned,” the mother says.

  “Do you think it wasn’t?” Rasbach asks her.

  “I . . . I don’t know. I guess I thought Cora was taken because we left her alone in the house, that it was a crime of opportunity. Like if someone had snatched her from the park when I wasn’t looking.”

  Rasbach nods, as if trying to understand it from her point of view. “I see what you mean,” he says. “For example, a mother leaves her child playing in the park while she fetches an ice cream from the ice-cream truck. The child is snatched while her back is turned. It happens.” He pauses. “But surely you realize the difference here.”

  She looks back at him blankly. He has to remember that she is probably in shock. But he sees this sort of thing all the time; it is his job. He is analytical, not at all sentimental. He must be, if he is to be effective. He will find this child, dead or alive, and he will find whoever took her.

  He tells the mother, his voice matter-of-fact, “The difference is, whoever took your baby probably knew she was alone in the house.”

  The parents look at each other.

  “But nobody knew,” the mother whispers.

  “Of course,” Rasbach adds, “it is possible that she might have been taken even if you were sound asleep in your own bedroom. We don’t know for sure.”

  The parents would like to believe that it isn’t their fault after all, for leaving their baby alone. That this might have happened anywa
y.

  Rasbach asks, “Do you always leave the garage door open like that?”

  The husband answers. “Sometimes.”

  “Wouldn’t you close the garage door at night? To prevent theft?”

  “We don’t keep anything valuable in the garage,” the husband says. “If the car’s in there, we generally lock the door, but we don’t keep much in there otherwise. All my tools are in the basement. This is a nice neighborhood, but people break into garages here all the time, so what’s the point of locking it?”

  Rasbach nods. Then he asks, “What kind of car do you have?”

  “It’s an Audi,” Marco says. “Why?”

  “I’d like to have a look. May I have the keys?” Rasbach asks.

  Marco and Anne regard each other in confusion. Then Marco gets up and goes to a side table near the front door and grabs a set of keys from a bowl. He hands them over to the detective silently and sits back down.

  “Thank you,” Rasbach says. Then he leans forward and says deliberately, “We will find out who did this.”

  They stare back at him, meeting his eyes, the mother’s entire face swollen from crying, the father’s eyes puffy and bloodshot with distress and drink, his face pasty.

  Rasbach nods to Jennings, and together they leave the house to check the car. The couple sit on the sofa silently and watch them go.

  • • •

  Anne doesn’t know what to make of the detective. All this about their car—he seems to be insinuating something. She knows that when a wife goes missing, the husband is usually the prime suspect, and probably vice versa. But when a child goes missing, are the parents usually the prime suspects? Surely not. Who could harm their own child? Besides, they both have solid alibis. They can be accounted for, by Cynthia and Graham. There is obviously no way they could have taken and hidden their own daughter. And why would they?

  She is aware that the neighborhood is being searched, that there are police officers going up and down the streets knocking on doors, interviewing people roused from their beds. Marco has provided the police with a recent photo of Cora, taken just a few days ago. The photo shows a happy blond baby girl with big blue eyes smiling up at the camera.