The Couple Next Door

by Shari Lapena

  Marco despises his father-in-law. It’s mutual.

  But the important thing now is to get Cora back. That’s all that matters. They’re a complicated, screwed-up family in Marco’s view, but they all love Cora. He blinks back a fresh surge of tears.

  • • •

  Detective Rasbach notes the coolness between Anne’s parents and their son-in-law. In most cases a crisis like this dissolves such barriers, if only for a short time. But this is not an ordinary crisis. This is a situation where the parents ostensibly left their baby alone in the house and she was taken. Watching the family huddled on the sofa, he can see at once that the adored daughter will be absolved from any blame by her parents. The husband is a handy scapegoat—he alone will be blamed, whether it’s fair or not. And it looks as if he knows it.

  Anne’s father gets up from the sofa and approaches Rasbach. He is tall and broad-shouldered, with short, steel gray hair. There is a confidence about him that is almost aggressive.

  “Detective?”

  “Detective Rasbach,” he supplies.

  “Richard Dries,” the other man says, offering his hand. “Tell me what you’re doing to find my granddaughter.” The man speaks in a low voice but with authority; he is used to being in charge.

  Rasbach tells him. “We have officers searching the area, interviewing everyone, looking for witnesses. We have a forensics team going through the house and the surrounding area. We have the baby’s description out locally and nationally. The public will soon be informed by the media coverage. We may get lucky and catch something on CCTV cameras somewhere.” He pauses. “We hope to get some leads quickly.” We are doing everything we can. But it probably won’t be enough to save your granddaughter, Rasbach thinks. He knows from experience that investigations generally move slowly, unless there is an early, significant break. The little girl doesn’t have much time, if she’s even still alive.

  Dries moves closer to him, close enough that Rasbach can smell his aftershave. Dries glances over his shoulder at his daughter and says more quietly, “You checking out all the perverts?”

  Rasbach regards the larger man. He is the only one who has put the unthinkable into words. “We are checking out all the ones we know about, but there are always those we don’t know about.”

  “This is going to kill my daughter,” Richard Dries says to the detective under his breath, looking at her.

  Rasbach wonders how much the father knows about his daughter’s postpartum depression. Perhaps this is not the time to ask. Instead he waits a moment and then says, “Your daughter has mentioned that you have considerable wealth. Is that right?”

  Dries nods. “You could say that.” He looks over at Marco, who is not looking his way but staring at Anne.

  Rasbach asks, “Do you think this could be a financially motivated crime?”

  The man seems surprised but then considers it. “I don’t know. Do you think that’s what it is?”

  Rasbach gives a slight shake of his head. “We don’t know yet. It’s certainly possible.” He lets Dries ponder that for a minute. “Is there anyone you can think of, in your business dealings perhaps, who might have a grudge against you?”

  “You’re suggesting that someone took my granddaughter to settle a grudge against me?” The man is clearly shocked.

  “I’m just asking.”

  Richard Dries doesn’t dismiss the idea at once. Either his ego is large enough, Rasbach thinks, or he’s made sufficient enemies over the years that he considers that it might just be possible. Finally Dries shakes his head. “No, I can’t think of anybody who would do that. I don’t have any enemies—that I know of.”

  “It’s not likely,” Rasbach agrees, “but stranger things have happened.” He asks casually, “What kind of business are you in, Mr. Dries?”

  “Packaging and labeling.” He turns his eyes to meet Rasbach’s. “We have to find Cora, Detective. She’s my only grandchild.” He claps a hand on Rasbach’s shoulder and says, “Keep me in the loop, will you?” He produces his business card and then turns away. “Call me, anytime. I’d like to know what’s going on.”

  A moment later Jennings comes up to Rasbach and speaks low in his ear. “The dogs are here.”

  Rasbach nods and leaves the stricken family behind him in the living room.

  He goes out to the street to meet with the dog handler. A K-9 Unit truck is parked outside the house. He recognizes the handler, a cop named Temple. He’s worked with him before. He’s a good man, competent.

  “What do we have?” Temple asks.

  “Baby reported missing from her crib sometime after midnight,” Rasbach says.

  Temple nods, serious. Nobody likes missing-children cases.

  “Only six months old, so not mobile.” This is not the case of a toddler who woke up in the middle of the night, wandered off down the street, got tired, and hid in a garden shed somewhere. If that were the case, they would use tracking dogs to follow the child’s scent. This baby was carried out of the house by someone.

  Rasbach has asked for the cadaver dogs to see if they can determine whether the child was already dead inside the house or the car. Well-trained cadaver dogs can detect death—on surfaces, on clothing—as little as two or three hours after it has occurred. Body chemistry changes quickly upon death, but not instantly. If the baby was killed and moved immediately, the dogs won’t pick it up, but if she was killed and not moved right away—it’s worth a shot. Rasbach knows that the information that may be gained via the dogs is useless from an evidentiary standpoint without corroborating evidence, like a body. But he is desperate to get any information he can. Rasbach is one who will avail himself of every possible investigative tool. He is relentless in his pursuit of the truth. He must know what happened.

  Temple nods. “Let’s get started.”

  He goes to the back of the truck, opens the hatch. Two dogs jump down, matching black-and-white English springer spaniels. Temple uses his hands and voice to direct the dogs. They don’t wear leashes.

  “Let’s start with the car,” Rasbach says. He leads them to the Contis’ Audi. The dogs heel by Temple’s side, perfectly obedient. The forensics team is already there. Seeing the dogs, they step silently back.

  “Are we good here? Can I let the dogs have a look?” Rasbach asks.

  “Yeah, we’re done. Go ahead,” the forensics officer says.

  “Go,” Temple tells the two dogs.

  The dogs go to work. They circle the car, sniffing intently. They jump into the trunk, into the backseat, then the front seat, and quickly jump out again. They come and sit by their handler and look up. He hands them a treat, shakes his head. “Nothing here.”

  “Let’s try inside,” Rasbach says, relieved. He hopes that the missing baby is still alive. He wants to be wrong about her parents. He wants to find her. Then he reminds himself not to be hopeful. He must remain objective. He can’t afford to become emotionally invested in his cases. He would never survive.

  The dogs test the air all the way up the front steps and enter the house. Once inside, the handler takes them upstairs and they start in the child’s bedroom.

  SIX

  Anne stirs when the dogs come in, shrugs out from underneath her mother’s arm, and stands up unsteadily. She watches the handler go upstairs with the two dogs without a word.

  She feels Marco come up beside her. “They’ve brought in tracking dogs,” she says. “Thank God. Now maybe we’ll get somewhere.” She feels him reach for her arm, but she shrugs him off, too. “I want to see.”

  Detective Rasbach holds up a hand in front of her. “Better that you stay down here and let the dogs do their work,” he tells her gently.

  “Do you want me to get some of her clothing?” Anne asks. “Something that she wore recently, that hasn’t been washed yet? I can get something out of the laundry downstairs.”

 
“They’re not tracking dogs,” Marco says.

  “What?” Anne says, turning to Marco.

  “They’re not tracking dogs. They’re cadaver dogs,” Marco says.

  And then she gets it. She turns back to the detective, her face white. “You think we killed her!”

  Her outburst stuns everyone. They are all frozen in shock. Anne sees her mother put her hand to her mouth. Her father’s face looks stormy.

  “That’s preposterous,” Richard Dries blurts out, his face a rough brick red. “You can’t honestly suspect my daughter would harm her own child!”

  The detective says nothing.

  Anne looks back at her father. He has always stood up for her, for as long as she can remember. But there isn’t much he can do to help her now. Someone has taken Cora. It is the first time in her life, Anne realizes, looking at him, that she has ever seen her father afraid. Is he afraid for Cora? Or is he afraid for her? Do the police really think she killed her own child? She does not dare look at her mother.

  “You need to do your job and find my granddaughter!” her father says to the detective, his belligerence a transparent attempt to mask his fear.

  For a long moment, no one says anything. The moment is so strange that no one can think of anything to say. They listen to the sound of the dogs’ toenails clicking on the hardwood floor as they move around overhead.

  Rasbach says, “We are doing everything in our power to find your granddaughter.”

  Anne is unbearably tense. She wants her baby back. She wants Cora back unharmed. She can’t bear the thought of her baby suffering, being hurt. Anne feels she might faint and sinks down again into the sofa. Immediately her mother puts a protective arm around her. Anne’s mother refuses to look at the detective anymore.

  The dogs come scampering down the stairs. Anne looks up and turns her head to watch them descend. The handler shakes his head. The dogs move into the living room, and Anne, Marco, and Richard and Alice Dries all hold perfectly still, as if not to draw their attention. Anne sits petrified on the sofa while the two dogs, noses testing the air and running along the area carpets, investigate the living room. Then they approach and sniff her. There is a police officer standing behind her to see what the dogs will do, perhaps waiting to arrest her and Marco on the spot. What if the dogs start to bark? Anne thinks, dizzy with fear.

  Everything is tilting sideways. Anne knows that she and Marco did not kill their baby. But she is powerless and afraid, and she knows that dogs can smell fear.

  She remembers that now, as she looks into their almost-human eyes. The dogs sniff her and her clothes—she can feel their panting breath on her, warm and rank, and recoils. She tries not to breathe. Then they leave her and go to her parents, and then to Marco, who is standing by himself, near the fireplace. Anne shrinks back into the sofa, relieved when the dogs seem to draw a blank in the living room and dining room and then move toward the kitchen. She can hear their claws scuttling across the kitchen tile, and then they are loping down the back stairs and into the basement. Rasbach leaves the room to follow them.

  The family sits in the living room waiting for this part to be over. Anne doesn’t want to look at anyone, so she stares at the clock on the mantelpiece. With every minute that goes by, she feels more hopeless. She feels her baby moving farther and farther away from her.

  Anne hears the back door in the kitchen open. She imagines the dogs going through the backyard, the garden, the garage, and the lane. Her eyes are staring at the clock on the mantelpiece; what she sees is the dogs in the garage, rooting around the broken clay pots and rusted rakes. She sits rigid, waiting, listening for barking. She waits and worries. She thinks about the disabled motion detector.

  Finally Rasbach returns. “The dogs drew a blank,” he says. “That’s good news.”

  Anne can sense her mother’s relief beside her.

  “So can we now get serious about finding her?” Richard Dries says.

  The detective says, “We are serious about finding her, believe me.”

  “So,” Marco says, with a touch of bitterness, “what happens next? What can we do?”

  Rasbach says, “We will have to ask you both a lot of questions. You may know something you don’t realize you know, something that will be helpful.”

  Anne looks doubtfully at Marco. What can they know?

  Rasbach adds, “And we need you to talk to the media. Someone might have seen something, or someone might see something tomorrow or the next day, and unless this is in front of them, they won’t put it together.”

  “Fine,” Anne says tersely. She will do anything to get her baby back, even though she is terrified of meeting with the media. Marco also nods but looks nervous. Anne thinks briefly of her stringy hair, her face bloated from crying. Marco reaches for her hand and clasps it, hard.

  “What about a reward?” Anne’s father suggests. “We could offer a reward for information. I’ll put up the funds. If somebody saw something and doesn’t want to come forward, they might think twice about not speaking up if the money’s right.”

  “Thank you,” Marco says.

  Anne merely nods.

  Rasbach’s cell phone rings. It is Detective Jennings, who has been going door-to-door in the neighborhood. “We might have something,” he says.

  Rasbach feels a familiar tension in his gut—they are desperate for a lead. He walks briskly from the Contis’ home and within minutes arrives at a house on the street behind them, on the other side of the lane.

  Jennings is waiting for him on the front step. Jennings taps the front door again, and it is immediately opened by a woman who looks to be in her fifties. She has obviously been roused from her bed. She is wearing a bathrobe, and her hair is held back with bobby pins. Jennings introduces her as Paula Dempsey.

  “I’m Detective Rasbach,” the detective says, showing the woman his badge. She invites them into the living room, where her now wide-awake husband is sitting in an armchair, wearing pajama bottoms, his hair mussed.

  “Mrs. Dempsey saw something that might be important,” Jennings says. When they are seated, he says, “Tell Detective Rasbach what you told me. What you saw.”

  “Right,” she says. She licks her lips. “I was in the upstairs bathroom. I got up to take an aspirin, because my legs were aching from gardening earlier in the day.”

  Rasbach nods encouragingly.

  “It’s such a hot night, so we had the bathroom window all the way up to let the breeze in. The window looks out over the back lane. The Contis’ house is behind this one, a couple houses over.”

  Rasbach nods again; he’s noted the placement of her house in relation to the Contis’. He listens carefully.

  “I happened to look out the window. I have a good view of the lane from the window. I could see pretty well, because I hadn’t turned the bathroom light on.”

  “And what did you see?” Rasbach asks.

  “A car. I saw a car coming down the lane.”

  “Where was the car, exactly? What direction was it going?”

  “It was coming down the lane toward my house, after the Contis’ house. It might have been coming from their garage, or from any of the houses farther down.”

  “What kind of car was it?” Rasbach asked, taking out his notebook.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know much about cars. I wish my husband had seen it—he would have been more help.” She glances toward her husband, who shrugs helplessly. “But of course I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “It was smallish, and I think a dark color. But it didn’t have its headlights on—that’s why I noticed it. I thought it was odd that the headlights weren’t on.”

  “Could you see the driver?”

  “No.”

  “Could you tell if there was anyone in the passenger seat?”

/>   “I don’t think there was anyone in the passenger seat, but I can’t be sure. I couldn’t see much. I think it might have been an electric car, or a hybrid, because it was very quiet.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure. But sound carries up from the lane, and the car was very quiet, although maybe that’s because it was just creeping along.”

  “And what time was this, do you know?”

  “I looked at the time when I got up. I have a digital alarm clock on my bedside table. It was twelve thirty-five a.m.”

  “Are you absolutely sure of the time?”

  “Yes.” She adds, “I’m positive.”

  “Can you remember any more detail about the car, anything at all?” Rasbach asks. “Was it a two-door? Or a four-door?”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I can’t remember. I didn’t notice. It was small, though.”

  “I’d like to take a look from the bathroom window, if you don’t mind,” Rasbach says.

  “Of course.”

  She leads them up the stairs to the bathroom at the back of the house. Rasbach looks out the open window. The view is good—he can see clearly into the lane. He can see the Contis’ garage to the left, the yellow police tape surrounding it. He can tell that the garage door is still open. How unfortunate that she was not just a couple of minutes earlier. She might have seen the car without headlights coming out of the Contis’ garage, if in fact it had. If only he had a witness who could put a car in the Contis’ garage, or coming out of their garage, at 12:35 a.m. But this car might have been coming from anywhere farther down the lane.

  Rasbach thanks Paula and her husband, hands her his card, and then he and Jennings depart the house together. They stop on the sidewalk in front of the house. The sky is beginning to lighten.