The Couple Next Door (8 page)

‘What’s happened?’ Richard says, alarmed, looking at his daughter, at the detective. ‘Did you find her?’

Alice’s sharp eyes try to take everything in at once. She seems both hopeful and frightened.

‘No,’ Anne says. ‘But we need your help.’

Rasbach watches all of them closely. Marco says nothing.

Anne speaks. ‘Marco and I think we should offer money directly to the kidnapper. A significant amount. Whoever’s got her, maybe if we offer enough money and promise not to prosecute, he’ll give her back.’ She turns to her parents. Marco stands beside her. ‘We have to do something,’ she says piteously. ‘We can’t just sit here and wait for him to kill her!’ Her eyes desperately search her parents’ faces. ‘We need your help.’

Alice and Richard regard each other very briefly. Then Alice says, ‘Of course, Anne. We’ll do anything to get Cora back.’

‘Of course,’ Richard agrees, nodding emphatically.

‘How much do you need?’ Alice asks.

‘What do you think?’ Anne says, turning to Detective Rasbach. ‘How much would be enough to get someone to give her up?’

Rasbach considers the question carefully before answering. If you’re innocent, it would be natural to want to throw money, any amount of money, at the person who has your child. And this family appears to have almost unlimited funds. It’s certainly worth a try. The parents may not be involved at all. And time is running out.

‘What were you thinking, in terms of amount?’ Rasbach asks.

Anne looks uncomfortable, as if she’s embarrassed to put a price tag on her child. She has no idea, really. How much is too much? How much is too little? ‘Marco and I were thinking maybe a couple million, maybe more?’ Her uncertainty is obvious. She looks at her mother and father uneasily. Is she asking too much of them?

‘Of course, Anne,’ Alice says. ‘Whatever you need.’

‘We’ll need some time to get it,’ Richard says, ‘but we’ll do anything for Cora. And for you, too, Anne. You know that.’

Anne nods tearfully. She hugs her mother first, then goes over and puts her arms around her father, who hugs her back. He holds her while her shoulders shake with sobs.

For a brief moment, Rasbach thinks about how much easier life is for the wealthy.

Rasbach watches Richard look over his daughter’s head at his son-in-law, who says nothing at all.

THEY SETTLE ON
three million dollars. It’s a lot of money, but it won’t ruin Richard and Alice Dries. The couple have millions more. They can afford it.

Less than twenty-four hours after they first reported their baby missing, early Saturday evening, Anne and Marco face the media again. They have not spoken to the press since seven o’clock that morning. Once again they have carefully crafted a message at their coffee table with the help of Detective Rasbach, and then gone out onto the front steps to give a statement.

This time Anne has changed into a simple but chic black dress. No jewelry, save pearl earrings. She has showered, washed her hair, even applied a small amount of makeup, trying to put on a brave face. Marco has also showered and shaved and changed into a white shirt and clean jeans. They look like an attractive, professional couple in their thirties, blindsided by tragedy.

When they step out onto the small porch, just before the six-o’clock newscasts, the cameras flash as before. Interest in the case has built throughout the day. Marco waits for the
hubbub to die down and then addresses the reporters. ‘We would like to make another statement,’ he says loudly, but he is immediately interrupted before he can begin.

‘How do you explain the mix-up in what the baby was wearing?’ someone asks from the sidewalk below them.

‘How could you make a mistake like that?’ another voice demands.

Marco glances at Rasbach and then answers, not bothering to hide his annoyance. ‘I believe the police already issued a statement about that earlier, but I’ll tell you again.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘We put Cora down earlier in the evening in the pink onesie. When my wife fed her at eleven o’clock, the baby spit up on her sleeper. My wife changed her into a different one, a mint-green onesie, in the dark, but then in all the distress of her being taken we simply forgot that.’ Marco’s manner is cold.

The crowd of reporters is silent at this, digesting it. Suspicious.

Marco takes advantage of the silence and reads from his prepared text. ‘Anne and I love Cora. We will do anything to get her back. We beg whoever took her to return her to us. We are able to offer the sum of three million dollars.’ There is a gasp from the crowd, and Marco waits. ‘We are able to offer three million dollars to whoever has our baby. I’m speaking to you, to whoever has Cora – call us and we will talk. I know you are probably watching. Please contact us, and we will find a way to get the money to you in exchange for our daughter’s safe return.’

Then Marco lifts his head and says directly to the cameras, ‘I say to the person who has her, I promise you there will be no charges. We just want her back.’

He has gone off the prepared script with this last bit, and Detective Rasbach’s right eyebrow rises slightly.

‘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. 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 have 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.

RASBACH STOPS BY
the Contis’ house and picks up Jennings. When the detectives arrive, watched by reporters, at the neighbors’ house, 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.

Cynthia takes the chair in front of the fireplace and elegantly crosses one leg over the other, dangling a sandaled foot featuring perfectly painted scarlet toenails.

As he and Jennings seat themselves on the sleek leather sofa, Rasbach smiles regretfully and says, ‘I’m afraid we’re not at liberty to discuss details.’ The woman across from him seems nervous. He wishes to put her at ease. ‘What do you do, Ms Stillwell?’ he asks.

‘I’m a professional photographer,’ she says. ‘Freelance, mostly.’

‘I see,’ he says, flicking his eyes to the walls, which display several nicely framed black-and-white photos. ‘Yours?’

‘Yes, actually.’ She gives a small smile.

‘It’s a terrible thing, the baby being taken,’ Rasbach says. ‘It must be very unsettling for you.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ she says, in evident distress. She furrows her brow. ‘I mean, they were here when it was happening. Here we all were, having a good time, oblivious. I feel awful.’ She licks her lips.

‘Can you tell me about the evening?’ Rasbach asks. ‘Just tell me about it in your own words.’

‘Okay.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘I had planned a party for Graham’s fortieth birthday. He just wanted something small. So I invited Marco and Anne for dinner because we sometimes have dinner together and we’re all good friends. We used to have dinner together a lot before the baby, not so much after. We hadn’t seen much of them for a while.’

‘Did you suggest that they leave the baby at home?’ Rasbach asks.

She flushes. ‘I didn’t know they couldn’t get a sitter.’