The Couple Next Door

“The police are here,” Anne tells her. “Can you come?”

“We’ll be right there, Anne,” her mother says. “You hold on. Your father and I are coming.”

Anne hangs up the phone and cries. Her parents will come. They have always helped her, even when they’re angry at her. They will be angry now, at her and Marco, but especially at Marco. They love Cora, their only grandchild. What will they think when they hear what she and Marco have done?

“They’re on their way,” Anne says to Marco and the detective. She looks at Marco, then looks away.

FIVE

Marco feels like an outcast; it’s a feeling he often gets when Anne’s parents are in the room. Even now, with Cora missing, he is ignored, while the three of them—his distraught wife, her always-composed mother, and her overbearing father—slip into their familiar three-person alliance. Sometimes their exclusion of him is subtle, sometimes not. But then again, he knew what he was getting into when he married her. He thought it was a deal he could live with.

He stands at the side of the living room, useless, and watches Anne. She’s seated in the middle of the sofa, her mother at her side, pulling Anne into her for comfort. Her father is more aloof, sitting up straight, patting his daughter on the shoulder. No one looks at Marco. No one offers him comfort. Marco feels out of place in his own home.

But worse than that, he feels sick, horrified. All he wants is his little Cora back in her crib; he wants all of this never to have happened.

He feels the detective’s eyes on him. He alone is paying attention to Marco. Marco deliberately ignores him, even though he knows he probably shouldn’t. Marco knows he is a suspect. The detective has been insinuating as much ever since he got here. Marco has overheard the officers in the house whispering about bringing in the cadaver dogs. He isn’t stupid. They would only do that if they thought Cora was dead before she left the house. The police obviously must think he and Anne killed their own baby.

Let them bring in the dogs—he’s not afraid. Maybe this is the kind of thing the police deal with on a regular basis, parents who kill their children, but he could never hurt his baby. Cora means everything to him. She has been the one bright light in his life, the one reliable, constant source of joy, especially these last few months as things have fallen steadily apart and as Anne has become increasingly lost and depressed. He hardly knows his wife anymore. What happened to the beautiful, engaging woman he married? Everything has been going to shit. But he and Cora have had a happy little bond of their own, the two of them, waiting it out, waiting for Mommy to return to normal.

Anne’s parents will hold him in more contempt than ever now. They will forgive Anne quickly. They will forgive her almost anything—even abandoning their baby to a predator, even this. But they will never forgive him. They will be stoic in the face of this adversity; they are always stoic, unlike their emotional daughter. Perhaps they will even rescue Anne and Marco from their own mistakes. That is what they like to do best. Even now he can see Anne’s father looking off over the heads of Anne and her mother, his brow furrowed, concentrating on the problem—the problem Marco created—and on how he might solve it. Thinking about how he can rise to this challenge and come out triumphant. Maybe he can show Marco up, one more time, when it really counts.

Marco despises his father-in-law. It’s mutual.

But the important thing now is to get Cora back. That’s all that matters. They’re a complicated, screwed-up family in Marco’s view, but they all love Cora. He blinks back a fresh surge of tears.

? ? ?

Detective Rasbach notes the coolness between Anne’s parents and their son-in-law. In most cases a crisis like this dissolves such barriers, if only for a short time. But this is not an ordinary crisis. This is a situation where the parents ostensibly left their baby alone in the house and she was taken. Watching the family huddled on the sofa, he can see at once that the adored daughter will be absolved from any blame by her parents. The husband is a handy scapegoat—he alone will be blamed, whether it’s fair or not. And it looks as if he knows it.

Anne’s father gets up from the sofa and approaches Rasbach. He is tall and broad-shouldered, with short, steel gray hair. There is a confidence about him that is almost aggressive.

“Detective?”

“Detective Rasbach,” he supplies.

“Richard Dries,” the other man says, offering his hand. “Tell me what you’re doing to find my granddaughter.” The man speaks in a low voice but with authority; he is used to being in charge.

Rasbach tells him. “We have officers searching the area, interviewing everyone, looking for witnesses. We have a forensics team going through the house and the surrounding area. We have the baby’s description out locally and nationally. The public will soon be informed by the media coverage. We may get lucky and catch something on CCTV cameras somewhere.” He pauses. “We hope to get some leads quickly.” We are doing everything we can. But it probably won’t be enough to save your granddaughter, Rasbach thinks. He knows from experience that investigations generally move slowly, unless there is an early, significant break. The little girl doesn’t have much time, if she’s even still alive.

Dries moves closer to him, close enough that Rasbach can smell his aftershave. Dries glances over his shoulder at his daughter and says more quietly, “You checking out all the perverts?”

Rasbach regards the larger man. He is the only one who has put the unthinkable into words. “We are checking out all the ones we know about, but there are always those we don’t know about.”

“This is going to kill my daughter,” Richard Dries says to the detective under his breath, looking at her.

Rasbach wonders how much the father knows about his daughter’s postpartum depression. Perhaps this is not the time to ask. Instead he waits a moment and then says, “Your daughter has mentioned that you have considerable wealth. Is that right?”

Dries nods. “You could say that.” He looks over at Marco, who is not looking his way but staring at Anne.

Rasbach asks, “Do you think this could be a financially motivated crime?”

The man seems surprised but then considers it. “I don’t know. Do you think that’s what it is?”

Rasbach gives a slight shake of his head. “We don’t know yet. It’s certainly possible.” He lets Dries ponder that for a minute. “Is there anyone you can think of, in your business dealings perhaps, who might have a grudge against you?”

“You’re suggesting that someone took my granddaughter to settle a grudge against me?” The man is clearly shocked.

“I’m just asking.”

Richard Dries doesn’t dismiss the idea at once. Either his ego is large enough, Rasbach thinks, or he’s made sufficient enemies over the years that he considers that it might just be possible. Finally Dries shakes his head. “No, I can’t think of anybody who would do that. I don’t have any enemies—that I know of.”

“It’s not likely,” Rasbach agrees, “but stranger things have happened.” He asks casually, “What kind of business are you in, Mr. Dries?”

“Packaging and labeling.” He turns his eyes to meet Rasbach’s. “We have to find Cora, Detective. She’s my only grandchild.” He claps a hand on Rasbach’s shoulder and says, “Keep me in the loop, will you?” He produces his business card and then turns away. “Call me, anytime. I’d like to know what’s going on.”

A moment later Jennings comes up to Rasbach and speaks low in his ear. “The dogs are here.”

Rasbach nods and leaves the stricken family behind him in the living room.

He goes out to the street to meet with the dog handler. A K-9 Unit truck is parked outside the house. He recognizes the handler, a cop named Temple. He’s worked with him before. He’s a good man, competent.

“What do we have?” Temple asks.