The Couple Next Door

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 up 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.