The Couple Next Door

When he arrives at the address Anne provided, a distraught-looking woman answers the door. She has obviously been crying. He shows her his badge.

“I understand Katerina Stavros lives here.” The woman nods. “She’s your daughter?”

“Yes,” the girl’s mother says, finding her voice. “I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time,” she says, “but I know why you’re here. Please come in.”

Rasbach steps into the house. The doorway opens into a living room that appears to be full of women crying. Three middle-aged women and a teenage girl are sitting around a coffee table covered with plates of food.

“Our mother died yesterday,” Mrs. Stavros says. “My sisters and I are trying to make arrangements.”

“I’m very sorry to bother you,” Detective Rasbach says. “I’m afraid it’s important. Is your daughter here?” But he’s already spotted her on the sofa with her aunts—a chubby sixteen-year-old, her hand hovering over a plate of brownies as she lifts her eyes and sees the detective enter the living room.

“Katerina, there’s a policeman here to see you.”

Katerina and all the girl’s aunts turn to stare at the detective.

The girl starts spouting fresh, genuine tears and says, “About Cora?”

Rasbach nods.

“I can’t believe someone would take her,” the girl says, putting her hands back in her lap, forgetting about the brownies. “I feel so bad. My grandma died, and I had to cancel.”

Immediately all the aunts hover around the girl while her mother perches on the arm of the sofa beside her.

“What time did you call the Contis’ house?” Rasbach asks kindly. “Do you remember?”

The girl begins to weep. “I don’t know.”

Her mother turns to Detective Rasbach. “It was about six. We had a call from the hospital around then, asking us to come, because it was the end. I told Katerina to call and cancel and come to the hospital with us.” She puts a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “We feel terrible about Cora. Katerina is very fond of her. But this is not Katerina’s fault.” The mother wants everyone to be very clear on this point.

“Of course not,” Rasbach says emphatically.

“I can’t believe they left her alone in the house,” the woman says. “What kind of parents would do that?”

Her sisters shake their heads in disapproval.

“I hope you find her,” the girl’s mother says, looking worriedly at her own daughter, “and that she’s okay.”

“We will do everything we can,” Rasbach says, and turns to go. “Thank you for your time.”

The Contis’ story has checked out. The baby was almost certainly still alive at 6:00 p.m., or how would the parents have dealt with the expected sitter? Rasbach realizes that if the parents had killed or hidden the baby, it had to have happened after that six-o’clock call. And either before seven, when they went over to the neighbors’, or sometime during the party. Which means they probably wouldn’t have had enough time to dispose of the body.

Maybe, Rasbach thinks, they’re telling the truth.

? ? ?

With the detective out of the house, Anne feels she can breathe a little more easily. It’s like he’s watching them, waiting for them to make a misstep, to make a mistake. But what mistake can he possibly be waiting for? They don’t have Cora. If they had found some physical evidence of an intruder, she thinks, he wouldn’t be zeroing in, wrongly, on them. But whoever has taken Cora has obviously been very careful.

Perhaps the police are incompetent, Anne thinks. She is worried that they will bungle everything. The investigation is moving too slowly. Every hour that goes by ratchets her panic up another notch.

“Who could have taken her?” Anne whispers to Marco when they’re alone. Anne has sent her parents home for the time being, even though they’d wanted to settle themselves in the spare room upstairs. But Anne, as much as she relies on her parents, especially in times of stress and trouble, finds they make her anxious, too, and she is anxious enough. Plus, having them around always makes things more difficult with Marco, and he already looks like he’s about to snap. His hair is a mess, and he hasn’t shaved. They’ve been up all night, and the day is half gone. Anne is exhausted and knows she must look as bad as Marco does, but she doesn’t care. Sleep is impossible.

“We have to think, Marco! Who would take her?”

“I have no idea,” Marco says helplessly.

She gets up and starts pacing back and forth in the living room. “I don’t understand why they haven’t found any evidence of an intruder. It doesn’t make sense. Does that make sense to you?” She stops pacing and adds, “Except for the loosened lightbulb in the motion detector. That’s obviously evidence that there was an intruder.”

Marco looks up at her. “They think we loosened the lightbulb ourselves.”

She stares at him. “That’s ridiculous!” There is a note of hysteria in her voice.

“It wasn’t us. We know that,” Marco says fiercely. He runs his hands nervously up and down his thighs on his jeans, a new habit. “The detective is right about one thing—it looks planned. Somebody didn’t just walk by, see the door open, and go in and take her. But if she was taken for ransom, why wouldn’t the kidnapper have left a note? Shouldn’t we have heard from them by now?” He checks his watch. “It’s almost three o’clock! She’s been gone over twelve hours already,” he says, his voice breaking.

That’s what Anne thinks, too. Surely they should have heard from someone by now. What was normal in cases of kidnapping? When she’d asked Detective Rasbach, he’d said, “There is no normal in a kidnapping. They’re all unique. If ransom is demanded, it can be within hours—or days. But generally kidnappers don’t want to be holding on to the victim for any longer than they have to. The risks go up over time.”

The police have put a wiretap on their phone to record any potential conversations with the kidnapper. But so far no one claiming to have Cora has called.

“What if it’s someone who knows your parents?” Marco suggests. “Maybe one of your parents’ acquaintances?”

“You’d like to blame this on them, wouldn’t you?” Anne snaps, walking back and forth in front of him with her arms crossed.

“Hang on,” Marco says. “I’m not blaming this on them, but think about it for a minute! The only ones with real money around here are your parents. So it has to be somebody who knows them and knows they’ve got money. We don’t have the kind of money a kidnapper would be after, obviously.”

“Maybe they should be monitoring my parents’ calls,” Anne says.

Marco looks up at her and says, “Maybe we need to be more creative with the reward.”

“What do you mean? We already offered a reward. Fifty thousand dollars.”

“Yes, but fifty thousand dollars for information leading to our getting Cora back—how much is that going to help if nobody saw anything? If anybody actually saw something, don’t you think they would have told the police by now?” He waits while Anne considers this. “We have to get things moving,” Marco says urgently. “The longer they have Cora, the greater the chance they’ll harm her.”

“They think I did it,” Anne says suddenly. “They think I killed her.” Her eyes are wild. “I can tell from the way that detective looks at me that he’s already made his mind up about me. He’s probably just trying to decide how much you had to do with it!”

Marco jumps up off the sofa and tries to embrace her. “Shhhh,” he says. “They don’t think that.” But he’s worried that that is exactly what they think. The postpartum depression, the antidepressants, the psychiatrist. He doesn’t know what to say to her to soothe her. He can feel her agitation building and wants to prevent a crisis.

“What if they go see Dr. Lumsden?” Anne says.

Of course they’ll go see Dr. Lumsden, Marco thinks. How could she imagine for a moment that they wouldn’t visit her psychiatrist?

“They probably will,” Marco says, his voice deliberately calm, even matter-of-fact. “But so what? Because you had nothing to do with Cora’s disappearance, and we both know it.”