The Couple Next Door

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.

“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.