The Couple Next Door(12)

The detective says nothing.

Anne looks back at her father. He has always stood up for her, for as long as she can remember. But there isn’t much he can do to help her now. Someone has taken Cora. It is the first time in her life, Anne realizes, looking at him, that she has ever seen her father afraid. Is he afraid for Cora? Or is he afraid for her? Do the police really think she killed her own child? She does not dare look at her mother.

“You need to do your job and find my granddaughter!” her father says to the detective, his belligerence a transparent attempt to mask his fear.

For a long moment, no one says anything. The moment is so strange that no one can think of anything to say. They listen to the sound of the dogs’ toenails clicking on the hardwood floor as they move around overhead.

Rasbach says, “We are doing everything in our power to find your granddaughter.”

Anne is unbearably tense. She wants her baby back. She wants Cora back unharmed. She can’t bear the thought of her baby suffering, being hurt. Anne feels she might faint and sinks down again into the sofa. Immediately her mother puts a protective arm around her. Anne’s mother refuses to look at the detective anymore.

The dogs come scampering down the stairs. Anne looks up and turns her head to watch them descend. The handler shakes his head. The dogs move into the living room, and Anne, Marco, and Richard and Alice Dries all hold perfectly still, as if not to draw their attention. Anne sits petrified on the sofa while the two dogs, noses testing the air and running along the area carpets, investigate the living room. Then they approach and sniff her. There is a police officer standing behind her to see what the dogs will do, perhaps waiting to arrest her and Marco on the spot. What if the dogs start to bark? Anne thinks, dizzy with fear.

Everything is tilting sideways. Anne knows that she and Marco did not kill their baby. But she is powerless and afraid, and she knows that dogs can smell fear.

She remembers that now, as she looks into their almost-human eyes. The dogs sniff her and her clothes—she can feel their panting breath on her, warm and rank, and recoils. She tries not to breathe. Then they leave her and go to her parents, and then to Marco, who is standing by himself, near the fireplace. Anne shrinks back into the sofa, relieved when the dogs seem to draw a blank in the living room and dining room and then move toward the kitchen. She can hear their claws scuttling across the kitchen tile, and then they are loping down the back stairs and into the basement. Rasbach leaves the room to follow them.

The family sits in the living room waiting for this part to be over. Anne doesn’t want to look at anyone, so she stares at the clock on the mantelpiece. With every minute that goes by, she feels more hopeless. She feels her baby moving farther and farther away from her.

Anne hears the back door in the kitchen open. She imagines the dogs going through the backyard, the garden, the garage, and the lane. Her eyes are staring at the clock on the mantelpiece; what she sees is the dogs in the garage, rooting around the broken clay pots and rusted rakes. She sits rigid, waiting, listening for barking. She waits and worries. She thinks about the disabled motion detector.

Finally Rasbach returns. “The dogs drew a blank,” he says. “That’s good news.”

Anne can sense her mother’s relief beside her.

“So can we now get serious about finding her?” Richard Dries says.

The detective says, “We are serious about finding her, believe me.”

“So,” Marco says, with a touch of bitterness, “what happens next? What can we do?”

Rasbach says, “We will have to ask you both a lot of questions. You may know something you don’t realize you know, something that will be helpful.”

Anne looks doubtfully at Marco. What can they know?

Rasbach adds, “And we need you to talk to the media. Someone might have seen something, or someone might see something tomorrow or the next day, and unless this is in front of them, they won’t put it together.”

“Fine,” Anne says tersely. She will do anything to get her baby back, even though she is terrified of meeting with the media. Marco also nods but looks nervous. Anne thinks briefly of her stringy hair, her face bloated from crying. Marco reaches for her hand and clasps it, hard.

“What about a reward?” Anne’s father suggests. “We could offer a reward for information. I’ll put up the funds. If somebody saw something and doesn’t want to come forward, they might think twice about not speaking up if the money’s right.”

“Thank you,” Marco says.

Anne merely nods.

Rasbach’s cell phone rings. It is Detective Jennings, who has been going door-to-door in the neighborhood. “We might have something,” he says.

Rasbach feels a familiar tension in his gut—they are desperate for a lead. He walks briskly from the Contis’ home and within minutes arrives at a house on the street behind them, on the other side of the lane.

Jennings is waiting for him on the front step. Jennings taps the front door again, and it is immediately opened by a woman who looks to be in her fifties. She has obviously been roused from her bed. She is wearing a bathrobe, and her hair is held back with bobby pins. Jennings introduces her as Paula Dempsey.

“I’m Detective Rasbach,” the detective says, showing the woman his badge. She invites them into the living room, where her now wide-awake husband is sitting in an armchair, wearing pajama bottoms, his hair mussed.