The Couple Next Door

“That’s all.”

The bulbs flash furiously as Marco lowers the piece of paper in his hand. The reporters pepper him with questions, but he turns his back on them and helps Anne into the house. Detectives Rasbach and Jennings follow them inside.

Rasbach knows that regardless of Marco’s message, the kidnapper, whoever he or she is, will not be immune from prosecution. The parents don’t get to make that call. The kidnapper no doubt knows it as well. If this is in fact a kidnapping for ransom, the trick is to get the money into the hands of the person who has the baby and get the baby back unharmed without anybody panicking and doing something stupid. But the crime of kidnapping is a serious one, so for a kidnapper, if things go south, the temptation to kill the victim and dump the body to avoid being caught is strong.

Back inside the house, Rasbach says, “Now we wait.”

? ? ?

Marco is finally able to persuade Anne to go upstairs and try to get some rest. She’s had some soup and crackers—all she’s had to eat all day. She’s had to pump her breast milk periodically, retreating to the baby’s room to do this in privacy. But pumping is not as effective as nursing a suckling baby, and now she is engorged, her breasts swollen, hot to the touch, and sore.

Before she tries to nap, she must pump again. She sits in her nursing chair and is overwhelmed with tears. How is it possible that she is sitting in this chair and instead of looking down at her baby girl at her breast—opening and closing her little fists and staring up at her mother with those big round blue eyes, those long lashes—she is pumping out her milk by hand into a plastic container to be dumped down the bathroom drain? It takes a long time. First one breast, then the other.

How is it that she can’t remember changing the baby out of the pink onesie? What else can she not remember about that night? It’s shock, she’s sure. That’s all it is.

Finally she is done. She rearranges her clothing and gets up out of the nursing chair and makes her way to the bathroom at the top of the stairs. As she dumps the breast milk into the sink, she stares at herself in the fractured mirror.

? ? ?

Rasbach walks a few blocks from the Contis’ home to a street of fashionable shops, galleries, and restaurants. It is another hot, humid summer evening. He stops for a quick meal and reviews what he knows. The babysitter unexpectedly canceled at 6:00 p.m.—he has to assume the baby was alive at that time. The Contis were at the neighbors’ by seven o’clock, probably giving them insufficient time to kill and dispose of the baby between the call from the babysitter and going next door. Also, no one appears to have seen either of them leave the house between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. the day before, with or without the baby.

Both Marco and Anne say that Marco had checked on the baby—using their back door—at twelve thirty. Marco claims that the motion detector was working at that time. Forensics has found fresh tire tracks in the garage that don’t match the Contis’ car. Paula Dempsey witnessed a car without headlights going quietly down the lane away from the Contis’ house at 12:35 a.m. The lightbulb in the motion detector had obviously been loosened.

Which means either the kidnapper struck after twelve thirty—sometime between when Marco checked on the baby and when the couple returned home—and the car Paula Dempsey saw was irrelevant, or Marco was lying and had disabled the light himself and taken the baby out to the waiting car. The baby didn’t fly to the garage. Someone carried her, and the only footprints in the yard belong to Marco and Anne. The driver, or accomplice, if there had been one, likely never got out of the car. Then Marco returned to the party and sat casually smoking cigarettes in the neighbors’ backyard and flirting with the neighbor’s wife.

There’s one problem: the babysitter. Marco could not have known that the babysitter would cancel. The fact that there was supposed to be a babysitter in the home argues against this being a carefully planned kidnapping for ransom.

But—he might be looking at something more spontaneous.

Had the husband or wife killed the baby accidentally, in a fit of anger perhaps, either between six and seven—perhaps the baby was harmed during their argument—or at some time when they were checking on her through the night? If something like that had happened, had they then hurriedly arranged for someone to help them dispose of the baby in the early hours of the morning?

It bothers him, the pink onesie. The mother says she tossed it in the laundry hamper beside the changing table. But it was found hidden underneath the pad of the changing table. Why? Perhaps she was sufficiently drunk that she hadn’t stuffed the soiled sleeper into the laundry hamper but instead shoved it underneath the pad. If she was drunk enough to think she’d put the onesie in the hamper when she hadn’t, was she drunk enough to drop the baby? Maybe she dropped her, and the baby struck her head and died. Maybe the mother smothered her. If that’s what happened, how had the parents arranged so quickly for someone to take the baby away? Who would they call?

He has to find the possible accomplice. He will get the Contis’ home-and cell-phone records and find out whether either of them called anyone between six and twelve thirty on the night in question.

If the baby hadn’t been killed, either accidentally or deliberately by either one of the parents, would they stage a kidnapping?

Rasbach can guess why they might. There’s three million dollars to be had. Possibly more. Motivation enough for almost anybody. The ease with which the child’s grandparents offered the money to the distressed parents was telling.

Rasbach will soon know as much as it is possible to know about Anne and Marco Conti.

Now it’s time to interview the neighbors.

TEN

Rasbach stops by the Contis’ house and picks up Jennings. When the detectives arrive, watched by reporters, at the neighbors’ door, they find that the husband, Graham Stillwell, is not at home.

Rasbach had already met the couple, briefly, in the middle of the previous night, when the child had first been reported missing. Cynthia and Graham Stillwell had been shocked into speechlessness by the abduction of the baby next door. At that time Rasbach had focused his attention on the backyard, the fence, and the passageway between the two houses. But now he wants to talk to Cynthia, the hostess of the dinner party, to see what light, if any, she can shed on the couple next door.

She is a beautiful woman. Early thirties, long black hair, large blue eyes. She has the kind of figure that stops traffic. She is also fully aware of her own attractiveness, and she makes it difficult for anyone else not to be aware of it, too. She is wearing a blouse, deeply unbuttoned, flattering linen trousers, and high-heeled sandals. She is perfectly made up, even though someone stole her guests’ baby while they were at her house late the night before. But beneath the perfect makeup, she is obviously tired, as if she has slept poorly, or not at all.

“Have you found out anything?” Cynthia Stillwell asks once she’s invited them in. Rasbach is struck by the similarities with the house next door. The layout is the same, and the carved wooden staircase curving to the upper floor, the marble fireplace, and the front window are identical. But each home has the unmistakable stamp of its own occupants. The Contis’ home is done in subdued colors and filled with antiques and art; the Stillwells’ has more modern leather furniture—white—glass-and-chrome tables, and punches of bright color.