The Couple Next Door

by Shari Lapena

  Anne is angry at Marco—she wants to scream at him, pummel him with her fists—but their house is full of police officers, so she doesn’t dare. And when she looks at his pale, bleak face, she sees that he is already blaming himself. She knows she can’t survive this on her own. She turns to him and collapses into his chest, sobbing. His arms come up around her, and he hugs her tightly. She can feel him shaking, can feel the painful thumping of his heart. She tells herself that together they will get through this. The police will find Cora. They will get their daughter back.

  And if they don’t, she will never forgive him.

  • • •

  Detective Rasbach, in his lightweight summer suit, steps out the front door of the Contis’ house and down the steps into the hot summer night, closely followed by Detective Jennings. They have worked together before. They have each seen some things that they would like to be able to forget.

  Together they walk toward the opposite side of the street, lined with cars parked bumper-to-bumper. Rasbach presses a button, and the headlights of the Audi flash briefly. Already the neighbors are out on their front steps, in their pajamas and summer bathrobes. Now they watch as Rasbach and Jennings walk toward the Contis’ car.

  Rasbach hopes that someone on this street might know something, might have seen something, and will come forward.

  Jennings says, his voice low, “What’s your take?”

  Rasbach answers quietly, “I’m not optimistic.”

  Rasbach pulls on a pair of latex gloves that Jennings hands him and opens the door on the driver’s side. He looks briefly inside and then silently walks to the back of the car. Jennings follows.

  Rasbach pops open the trunk. The two detectives look inside. It’s empty. And very clean. The car is just over a year old. It still looks new.

  “Love that new-car smell,” Jennings says.

  Clearly the child isn’t there. That doesn’t mean she hadn’t been there, however briefly. Perhaps forensic investigation will reveal fibers from a pink onesie, DNA from the baby—a hair, a trace of drool, or maybe blood. Without a body they will have a tough case to make. But no parents ever put their baby in the trunk with good intentions. If they find any trace of the missing child in the trunk, he will see that the parents rot in hell. Because if there’s anything Rasbach has learned in his years on the job, it is that people are capable of almost anything.

  Rasbach is aware that the baby could have gone missing at any time before the dinner party. He has yet to question the parents in detail about the previous day, has yet to determine who, other than the parents, last saw the child alive. But he will find out. Perhaps there is a mother’s helper who comes in, or a cleaning lady, or a neighbor—someone who saw the baby, alive and well, earlier that day. He will establish when the baby was last known to be alive and work forward from there. This leaving the monitor on, checking every half hour while they dined next door, the disabled motion detector, the open front door, it could all simply be an elaborate fiction, a carefully constructed fabrication of the parents, to provide them with an alibi, to throw the authorities off the scent. They might have killed the baby at any time earlier that day—either deliberately or by accident—and put her in the trunk and disposed of the body before going to the party next door. Or, if they were still thinking clearly, they might not have put her in the trunk at all but in the car seat. A dead baby might not look that different from a sleeping baby. Depending on how they killed her.

  Rasbach knows that he’s a cynic. He hadn’t started out that way.

  He says to Jennings, “Bring in the cadaver dogs.”

  FOUR

  Rasbach returns to the house, while Jennings checks in with the officers on the street. Rasbach sees Anne sobbing on the end of the sofa, a woman police officer sitting beside her with her arm across Anne’s shoulders. Marco is not with her.

  Drawn by the smell of fresh coffee, Rasbach makes his way to the kitchen at the back of the long, narrow house. The kitchen has obviously been remodeled, and fairly recently; it is all very high-end, from the white cabinetry to the expensive appliances and granite counters. Marco is in the kitchen, standing by the coffeemaker with his head down, waiting for it to finish brewing. He looks up when Rasbach comes in, then turns away, perhaps embarrassed by such an obvious attempt to sober up.

  There is an awkward silence. Then Marco asks quietly, without taking his eyes off the coffeemaker, “What do you think has happened to her?”

  Rasbach says, “I don’t know yet. But I’ll find out.”

  Marco lifts the coffeepot and pours coffee into three china mugs on the spotless stone counter. Rasbach notices that Marco’s hand trembles as he pours. Marco offers the detective one of the mugs, which Rasbach accepts gratefully.

  Marco leaves the kitchen and returns to the living room with the other two mugs.

  Rasbach watches him go, steeling himself for what is ahead. Child-abduction cases are always difficult. They create a media circus, for one thing. And they almost never end well.

  He knows he will have to apply pressure to this couple. It’s part of the job.

  Each time Rasbach is called out on a case, he never knows what to expect. Nonetheless, each time he unravels the puzzle, he is never surprised. His capacity for surprise seems to have evaporated. But he is always curious. He always wants to know.

  • • •

  Rasbach helps himself to the milk and sugar that Marco has left out for him and then pauses in the doorway of the kitchen with his coffee mug in his hand. From where he stands, he can see the dining table and the sideboard near the kitchen, both obviously antiques. Beyond that he can see the sofa, upholstered in dark green velvet, and the backs of Anne and Marco Conti’s heads. To the right of them is a marble fireplace, and above the mantelpiece hangs a large oil painting. Rasbach doesn’t know what it is a painting of, exactly. The sofa faces the front window, but more immediately in front of the sofa there is a coffee table and, across from that, two deep, comfortable armchairs.

  Rasbach makes his way into the living room and resumes his previous seat across from the couple, in the armchair nearest the fireplace. He notes how Marco’s hands still shake as he brings the mug to his mouth. Anne simply holds the cup in her hands on her lap, as if she doesn’t realize it’s there. She has stopped crying, for the moment.

  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.

  “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.