The Couple Next Door

by Shari Lapena

  “What do you make of that?” Jennings asks.

  “Interesting,” Rasbach says. “The timing. And the fact that the car’s headlights were off.” The other detective nods. Marco had checked on the baby at twelve thirty. The car was driving away from the direction of the Contis’ garage at 12:35 a.m. with its headlights off. A possible accomplice.

  The parents have just become his prime suspects.

  “Get a couple of officers to talk to everybody who has garage access to that lane. I want to know who was driving a car down that lane at twelve thirty-five a.m.,” Rasbach says. “And have them go up and down both streets again and try to find out specifically if anybody else was looking out a window at the lane at that time and if they saw anything.”

  Jennings nods. “Right.”

  • • •

  Anne holds Marco’s hand tightly. She is almost hyperventilating before meeting the press. She has had to sit down and put her head between her knees. It is seven in the morning, only a few hours since Cora was taken. A dozen journalists and photographers are out on the street waiting. Anne is a private person; this kind of media exposure is awful to her. She has never been one to seek attention. But Anne and Marco need the media to take an interest. They need Cora’s face plastered all over the newspapers, the TV, the Internet. You can’t just take a baby out of someone else’s house in the middle of the night and have no one notice. It’s a busy neighborhood. Surely someone will come forward with information. Anne and Marco must do this, even though they know that they’ll be the target of some nasty press once it all comes out. They are the parents who abandoned their baby, left her home alone, an infant. And now someone has her. They are a Movie of the Week.

  They have agreed on a prepared statement, have crafted it at the coffee table with Detective Rasbach’s help. The statement does not mention the fact that the baby was alone in the house at the time of the kidnapping, but Anne has no doubt whatsoever that that fact will get out. She has the feeling that once the media invade their lives, there will be no end to it. Nothing will be private. She and Marco will be notorious, their own faces on the pages of supermarket tabloids. She is frightened and ashamed.

  Anne and Marco walk out their front door and onto the front step. Detective Rasbach is at Anne’s side, and Detective Jennings stands beside Marco. Anne hangs on to her husband’s arm for support, as if she might fall. They have agreed that Marco is to read the statement—Anne is simply not up to it. She looks as though a stiff breeze will knock her over. Marco gazes into the crowd of reporters, seems to shrink, then lowers his eyes to the piece of paper shaking visibly in his hands. The cameras flash repeatedly.

  Anne looks up, stunned. The street is full of reporters, vans, TV cameras, technicians, equipment and wires, people holding microphones to their heavily made-up faces. She has seen this on TV, has watched this very thing. But now she is front and center. It feels unreal, like it’s not actually happening to her but to someone else. She feels strange and disembodied, as if she is both standing on the front step looking out and also watching the scene from above and a little to the left.

  Marco holds up a hand to indicate that he wishes to speak. The crowd quiets suddenly.

  “I’d like to read a statement,” he mumbles.

  “Louder!” someone shouts from the sidewalk.

  “I’m going to read a statement,” Marco says, more loudly and clearly. Then he reads, his voice growing stronger. “Early this morning, sometime between twelve thirty and one thirty, our beautiful baby girl, Cora, was taken from her crib by a person or persons unknown.” He stops for a moment to collect himself. No one makes a sound. “She is six months old. She has blond hair and blue eyes and weighs about sixteen pounds. She was wearing a disposable diaper and a plain, pale pink onesie. There is a white blanket also missing from her crib.

  “We love Cora more than anything. We want her back. We say to whoever has her, please, please bring her back to us, unharmed.” Marco looks up from the page. He is crying now and has to stop and wipe away the tears to continue reading. Anne sobs quietly at his side, looking out at the sea of faces.

  “We have no idea who would steal our beautiful, innocent little girl. We are asking for your help. If you know anything, or saw anything, please call the police. We are able to offer a substantial reward for information leading to the recovery of our baby. Thank you.”

  Marco turns to Anne, and they collapse in each other’s arms as more bulbs flash.

  “How much of a reward?” someone calls out.

  SEVEN

  No one understands how it could have been missed, but shortly after the press conference outside the Contis’ front door, an officer approaches Detective Rasbach in the living room holding a pale pink onesie between two gloved fingers. The eyes of every person in the room—Detective Rasbach, Marco, Anne, and Anne’s parents, Alice and Richard, are instantly fixed on the piece of clothing.

  Rasbach starts. “Where did you find that?” he asks curtly.

  “Oh!” Anne blurts out.

  Everyone turns from the officer holding the pink onesie to look at Anne. All the color has drained from her face.

  “Was that in the laundry hamper in the baby’s room?” Anne asks, getting up.

  “No,” the officer holding the article of clothing says. “It was underneath the pad on the changing table. We missed it the first time.”

  Rasbach is intensely annoyed. How could it have been missed?

  Anne colors, seems confused. “I’m sorry. I must have forgotten. Cora was wearing that earlier in the evening. I changed her outfit after her last feeding. She spit up on that one. I’ll show you.” Anne moves toward the officer and reaches for the onesie, but the officer moves back, out of her reach.

  “Please don’t touch it,” he says.

  Anne turns to Rasbach. “I changed her out of that one and put her into another one. I thought I put that onesie in the laundry hamper by the changing table.”

  “So the description we have is inaccurate?” Rasbach says.

  “Yes,” Anne admits, looking confused.

  “What was she wearing, then?” Rasbach asks. When Anne hesitates, he repeats, “What was she wearing?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure,” Anne says.

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure?” the detective persists. His voice is sharp.

  “I don’t know. I’d had a bit to drink. I was tired. It was dark. I nurse her in the dark for her last feeding, so she won’t wake up completely. She spit up on her onesie, and when I changed her diaper, I changed her outfit, too, in the dark. I threw the pink one in the laundry—I thought I did—and I took another one out of the drawer. She has a lot of them. I don’t know what color.” Anne feels guilty. But clearly this man has never changed a baby in the middle of the night.

  “Do you know?” Rasbach asks, turning to Marco.

  Marco looks like a deer caught in headlights. He shakes his head. “I didn’t notice that she’d changed her outfit. I didn’t turn the lights on when I checked on her.”

  “Maybe I can look through her drawer and figure out which one she has on,” Anne offers, filled with shame.

  “Yes, do that,” Rasbach agrees. “We need an accurate description.”

  Anne runs upstairs and pulls open the drawer to the baby’s dresser where she keeps all the onesies and sleepers, the little T-shirts and tights. Flowers and polka dots and bees and bunnies.

  The detective and Marco have followed her and watch as she kneels on the floor, pulling everything out, sobbing. But she can’t remember, and she can’t figure it out. Which one is missing? What is her daughter wearing?

  She turns around to Marco. “Maybe get the laundry from downstairs.”

  Marco turns and goes downstairs to do her bidding. He soon returns with a hamper of dirty clothes. He dumps them on the floor in the baby’s room. Someone has cleaned u
p the vomit from the floor. The baby’s dirty clothes are mixed in with their own clothes, but Anne seizes on all the little baby articles and puts them aside.

  Finally she says, “It’s the mint green one, with the bunny embroidered on the front.”

  “Are you sure?” Rasbach asks.

  “It has to be,” Anne says miserably. “It’s the only one that’s not here.”

  • • •

  Forensic study of Anne and Marco’s home has revealed little in the hours since Cora was taken. The police have found no evidence that anyone unaccounted for has been in Cora’s room or in the Contis’ house, none at all. There is not one shred of evidence—not one fingerprint, not one fiber—inside the house that cannot be innocently explained. It appears that no one has been inside their home, other than themselves, Anne’s parents, and their cleaning lady. They have all had to submit to the indignity of being fingerprinted. No one seriously considers the cleaning lady, an older Filipino woman, to be a possible kidnapper. Nonetheless, both she and her extended family are being carefully checked out.

  Outside the house, however, they have found something. There are prints of tire tracks in the garage that on investigation do not match the tires on the Contis’ Audi. Rasbach has not yet shared this information with the parents of the missing baby. This, in combination with the witness who saw a car going down the lane at 12:35, is the only solid lead in the investigation so far.

  “They probably wore gloves,” Marco says when Detective Rasbach tells them about the lack of any physical evidence of an intruder in the house.

  It is now midmorning. Anne and Marco look exhausted. Marco looks like he might still be hungover as well. But they won’t even try to rest. Anne’s parents have been asked to go to the kitchen and have coffee while the detective questions Anne and Marco further. He must constantly reassure them that they are doing everything possible to recover their baby, that he is not simply wasting their time.

  “Very likely,” the detective says, agreeing with Marco’s guess about the gloves. But then he points out, “Still, we would expect to see some footprints or impressions inside the house—and certainly outside, or in the garage—that don’t match yours.”

  “Unless he went out the front,” Anne says. She remembers what she saw: the front door was open. She is clearer on that now, now that she is completely sober. It is her belief that the kidnapper took the baby out the front door and down the front steps to the sidewalk, and that is why they have found no strange footprints.

  “Even then,” Rasbach says, “we would expect to find something.” He looks pointedly at them both. “We have interviewed everyone we possibly can. No one admits to seeing anybody carrying a baby out your front door.”

  “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Marco says, his frustration showing.

  “You haven’t found anyone who saw her being carried through the back door either,” Anne points out sharply. “You haven’t found a damn thing.”

  “There is the bulb that was loosened in the motion detector,” Detective Rasbach reminds them. He pauses, then adds, “We have also found evidence of tire tracks in your garage that don’t match your car.” He waits for the information to sink in. “Has anyone used your garage lately, that you know of? Do you let anyone park there?”

  Marco looks at the detective and then quickly looks away. “No, not that I know of,” he says.

  Anne shakes her head.

  Anne and Marco are clearly stressed. It is not surprising, as Rasbach has just implied that in the absence of any physical evidence of anyone else carrying their baby out of the house—specifically across the backyard to the garage—it must have been one of them who removed her from the home.

  “I’m sorry, but I must ask you about the medication in your bathroom cabinet,” Rasbach says, turning to Anne. “The sertraline.”

  “What about it?” Anne asks.

  “Can you tell me what it is for?” Rasbach asks gently.

  “I have mild depression,” Anne says defensively. “It was prescribed by my doctor.”

  “Your family doctor?”

  She hesitates. She looks at Marco, as if not sure of what to do, but then she answers. “By my psychiatrist,” she admits.

  “I see.” Rasbach adds, “Can you tell me the name of your psychiatrist?”

  Anne looks at Marco again and says, “Dr. Leslie Lumsden.”

  “Thank you,” Rasbach murmurs, making a note in his little book.

  “Lots of mothers get postpartum depression, Detective,” Anne says defensively. “It’s quite common.”

  Rasbach nods noncommittally. “And the mirror in the bathroom? Can you tell me what happened to it?”

  Anne flushes and looks uneasily at the detective. “I did that,” she admits. “When we came home and found Cora missing, I smashed the mirror with my hand.” She holds up her bandaged hand. The hand her mother had bathed and disinfected and bandaged for her. “I was upset.”

  Rasbach nods again, makes another note.

  According to what the parents had told Rasbach earlier, the last time anyone other than one of them saw the child alive was at about two in the afternoon on the day of the kidnapping, when Anne had grabbed a coffee at the Starbucks on the corner. According to Anne, the baby had been awake in her stroller and smiling and sucking her fingers, and the barista had waved at the little girl.

  Rasbach had been to the Starbucks earlier that morning and had spoken to the same barista, who fortunately had already been at work by then. She remembered Anne and the baby in the stroller. But it looks as if no one else will be able to confirm that the baby was alive after 2:00 p.m. on Friday, the day she disappeared.

  “What did you do after you stopped at Starbucks yesterday?” Rasbach asks now.

  “I came home. Cora was fussy—she’s usually fussy in the afternoon—so I was walking around the house holding her a lot,” Anne says. “I tried to put her down for a nap, but she wouldn’t sleep. So I picked her up again, walked her around the house, the backyard.”

  “Then what?”

  “I did that until Marco got home.”

  “What time was that?” Rasbach asks.

  Marco says, “I got home about five. I knocked off a bit early, because it was Friday and we were going out.”

  “And then?”

  “I took Cora from Anne and sent Anne upstairs for a nap.” Marco leans against the back of the sofa and rubs his hands up and down his thighs. Then he starts to jiggle one of his legs. He is restless.

  “Do you have kids, Detective?” Anne asks.

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know how exhausting they can be.”

  “No.” He shifts his own position in the chair. They are all getting tired. “What time did you go next door to the party?” Rasbach asks.

  “About seven,” Marco answers.

  “So what did you do between five and seven o’clock?”

  “Why are you asking us this?” Anne says sharply. “Isn’t this a waste of time? I thought you were going to help us!”

  “I have to know everything that happened. Please just answer as best you can,” Rasbach says calmly.

  Marco reaches out and puts a hand on his wife’s thigh, as if to settle her down. He says, “I played with Cora while Anne slept. I fed her some cereal. Anne woke up around six.”

  Anne takes a deep breath. “And then we had an argument about going to the party.”

  Marco stiffens visibly beside her.

  “Why did you argue?” Rasbach asks, looking Anne in the eyes.

  “The babysitter canceled,” Anne says. “If she hadn’t canceled, none of this ever would have happened,” she says, as if realizing it for the first time.

  This was new. Rasbach hadn’t known there was to be a babysitter. Why are they just telling him this now? “Why didn’t you say this bef
ore?”

  “Didn’t we?” Anne says, surprised.

  “Who was the babysitter?” Rasbach asks.

  Marco says, “A girl named Katerina. She’s our regular babysitter. She’s a twelfth-grader. She lives about a block from here.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “What?” Marco says. He doesn’t appear to be paying attention. Perhaps his exhaustion is catching up with him, Rasbach thinks.

  “When did she cancel?” Rasbach asks.

  “She called about six o’clock. By then it was too late to get another sitter,” Marco says.

  “Who spoke to her?” Rasbach is writing a note in his book.

  “I did,” Marco says.

  “We could have tried to get another sitter,” Anne says bitterly.

  “At the time I didn’t think it was necessary. Of course, now . . .” Marco trails off, looking at the floor.

  “Can I have her address?” Rasbach asks.

  “I’ll get it,” Anne says, and goes to the kitchen to retrieve it. While they wait, Rasbach hears murmured voices coming from the kitchen; Anne’s parents want to know what’s going on.

  “What was the argument about, exactly?” Rasbach asks after Anne has returned and handed him a piece of paper with the name and address of the babysitter scribbled on it.

  “I didn’t want to leave Cora home by herself,” Anne says bluntly. “I said I’d stay home with her. Cynthia didn’t want us to bring the baby because she fusses a lot. Cynthia wanted an adults-only party—that’s why we called the sitter. But then, once she canceled, Marco thought it would be rude to bring the baby when we’d said we wouldn’t, and I didn’t want to leave her home alone, so we argued about it.”

  Rasbach turns to Marco, who nods miserably.

  “Marco thought if we had the monitor on next door and checked her every half hour, it would be fine. Nothing bad would happen, you said,” Anne says, turning with sudden venom on her husband.

  “I was wrong!” Marco says, turning to his wife. “I’m sorry! It’s all my fault! How many times do I have to say it?”