The Couple Next Door

The lurid lights of the police cars parked outside still play across the walls. The forensic team goes about its tasks in the house quietly, efficiently. The atmosphere inside the house is busy but subdued, grim.

Rasbach has a delicate task before him. He must convey to this couple that he is working for them, doing everything possible to find their missing baby—which he is, along with the rest of the police force—even while he knows that in most cases when a child goes missing like this, it is the parents who are responsible. And there are factors here that certainly make him suspicious. But he will keep an open mind.

“I’m very sorry,” Rasbach begins. “I can’t even imagine how hard this is for you.”

Anne looks up at him. The sympathy makes her eyes instantly well up with more tears. “Who would take our baby?” she asks plaintively.

“That’s what we have to find out,” Rasbach says, setting his mug on the coffee table and taking out his notebook. “This may seem too obvious a question to ask, but do you have any idea who might have taken her?”

They both stare at him; such an idea is preposterous. And yet here they are.

“Have you noticed anyone hanging around lately, anyone showing interest in your baby?”

They both shake their heads.

“Do you have any idea, any idea at all, who might want to do you harm?” He looks from Anne to Marco.

The two parents shake their heads again, equally at a loss.

“Please, give it some thought,” Rasbach says. “Take your time. There has to be a reason. There’s always a reason—we just have to find out what it is.”

Marco looks like he’s about to speak, then thinks better of it.

“What is it?” Rasbach asks. “This is no time to hold back.”

“Your parents,” Marco says finally, turning to his wife.

“What about my parents?” she says, clearly surprised.

“They have money.”

“So?” She doesn’t seem to understand what he’s getting at.

“They have a lot of money,” Marco says.

Here we go, Rasbach thinks.

Anne looks at her husband as if dumbfounded. She is, possibly, an excellent actress. “What do you mean?” she says. “You don’t think someone took her for . . .” Rasbach watches the two of them carefully. The expression on her face changes. “That would be good,” she says, looking up at him, “wouldn’t it? If all they want is money, I could get my baby back? They won’t hurt her?”

The hope in her voice is heartbreaking. Rasbach is almost convinced that she has nothing to do with this.

“She must be so scared,” she says, and then she falls completely apart, sobbing uncontrollably.

Rasbach wants to ask her about her parents. Time is of the essence in kidnapping cases. Instead he turns to Marco. “Who are her parents?” Rasbach asks.

“Alice and Richard Dries,” Marco tells him. “Richard is her stepfather.”

Rasbach writes it down in his notebook.

Anne regains control over herself and says again, “My parents have a lot of money.”

“How much money?” Rasbach asks.

“I don’t know exactly,” Anne says. “Millions.”

“Can you be a little more precise?” Rasbach asks.

“I think they’re worth somewhere around fifteen million,” Anne says. “But it’s not like anybody knows that.”

Rasbach looks at Marco. His face is completely blank.

“I want to call my mother,” Anne says. She glances at the clock on the mantelpiece, and Rasbach follows her gaze. It’s two fifteen in the morning.

? ? ?

Anne has a complicated relationship with her parents. When Marco and Anne are having issues with them, which is frequently the case, Marco tells her that her relationship with them is fucked up. Maybe it is, but they are the only parents she has. She needs them. She makes things work the best she can, but it isn’t easy.

Marco comes from an entirely different kind of background. His family is large and squabbling. They yell good-naturedly when they see one another, which isn’t often. His parents emigrated from Italy to New York before Marco was born and own a dry-cleaning and tailoring business. They have no money to speak of, but they get by. They are not overly involved in Marco’s life, as Anne’s wealthy parents are in hers. Marco and his four siblings have had to fend for themselves from a young age, pushed out of the nest. Marco has been living his life on his own—and on his own terms—since he was eighteen. He put himself through school. He sees his parents occasionally, but they are not a big part of his life. He isn’t exactly from the wrong side of the tracks in anybody’s book, except for Anne’s parents’ and their well-heeled friends at the Grandview Golf and Country Club. Marco comes from a middle-class, law-abiding family of hardworking people, who have done well enough but no better than that. None of Anne’s friends from college or from her job at the art gallery think Marco is from the wrong side of the tracks.

It is only old money that would see him that way. And Anne’s mother is from old money. Anne’s father, Richard Dries—actually her stepfather; her own father died tragically when she was four years old—is a successful businessman, but her mother, Alice, has millions.

Her wealthy parents enjoy their money, their rich friends. The house in one of the finest parts of the city, the membership at the Grandview Golf and Country Club, the luxury cars and five-star vacations. Sending Anne to a private girls’ school, then to a good university. The older her father gets, the more he likes to pretend that he’s earned all that money, but it isn’t true. It’s gone to his head. He’s become quite full of himself.

When Anne “took up” with Marco, her parents acted as if the world were coming to an end. Marco looked like the quintessential bad boy. He was dangerously attractive—fair-skinned for an Italian—with dark hair, brooding eyes, and a bit of a rebellious look, especially when he hadn’t shaved. But his eyes lit up warmly when he saw Anne, and he had that million-dollar smile. And the way he called her “baby”—she couldn’t resist him. The first time he showed up at her parents’ house, to pick her up for a date, was one of the defining moments of Anne’s young adulthood. She was twenty-two. Her mother had been telling her about a nice young man, a lawyer, the son of a friend, who was interested in meeting her. Anne had explained, impatiently, that she was already seeing Marco.

“Yes, but . . . ,” her mother said.

“But what?” Anne said, folding her arms across her chest.

“You can’t be serious about him,” her mother said.

Anne can still remember the expression on her mother’s face. Dismay, embarrassment. She was thinking about how it would look. Thinking about how she would explain to her friends that her daughter was dating a young man who came from nothing, who worked as a bartender in the Italian part of the city and rode a motorcycle. Her mother would forget about the business degree Marco had earned at the same university that was considered good enough for their daughter. They wouldn’t see how his working his way through school at night was admirable. Maybe nobody would ever be good enough for her parents’ little girl.

And then—it was perfect—Marco had roared up on his Ducati, and Anne had flown out of her parents’ house and straight into Marco’s arms, her mother watching from behind the curtains. He kissed her hard, still straddling the bike, and handed her his spare helmet. She climbed on, and they roared away, manicured gravel spitting up in their wake. That was the moment she’d decided she was in love.

But you aren’t twenty-two forever. You grow up. Things change.

“I want to call my mother,” Anne repeats now. So much has happened—has it been less than an hour since they returned home to an empty crib?

Marco grabs the phone and hands it to her, then sits back down on the sofa with his arms crossed in front of him, looking tense.

Anne dials the phone. She starts to cry again before she’s even finished dialing the number. The phone rings, and her mother answers.

“Mom,” Anne says, dissolving into incoherent sobbing.

“Anne? What’s wrong?”

Anne finally gets the words out. “Someone has taken Cora.”

“Oh my God,” her mother says.