The Couple Next Door(15)

“Maybe I can look through her drawer and figure out which one she has on,” Anne offers, filled with shame.

“Yes, do that,” Rasbach agrees. “We need an accurate description.”

Anne runs upstairs and pulls open the drawer to the baby’s dresser where she keeps all the onesies and sleepers, the little T-shirts and tights. Flowers and polka dots and bees and bunnies.

The detective and Marco have followed her and watch as she kneels on the floor, pulling everything out, sobbing. But she can’t remember, and she can’t figure it out. Which one is missing? What is her daughter wearing?

She turns around to Marco. “Maybe get the laundry from downstairs.”

Marco turns and goes downstairs to do her bidding. He soon returns with a hamper of dirty clothes. He dumps them on the floor in the baby’s room. Someone has cleaned up the vomit from the floor. The baby’s dirty clothes are mixed in with their own clothes, but Anne seizes on all the little baby articles and puts them aside.

Finally she says, “It’s the mint green one, with the bunny embroidered on the front.”

“Are you sure?” Rasbach asks.

“It has to be,” Anne says miserably. “It’s the only one that’s not here.”

? ? ?

Forensic study of Anne and Marco’s home has revealed little in the hours since Cora was taken. The police have found no evidence that anyone unaccounted for has been in Cora’s room or in the Contis’ house, none at all. There is not one shred of evidence—not one fingerprint, not one fiber—inside the house that cannot be innocently explained. It appears that no one has been inside their home, other than themselves, Anne’s parents, and their cleaning lady. They have all had to submit to the indignity of being fingerprinted. No one seriously considers the cleaning lady, an older Filipino woman, to be a possible kidnapper. Nonetheless, both she and her extended family are being carefully checked out.

Outside the house, however, they have found something. There are prints of tire tracks in the garage that on investigation do not match the tires on the Contis’ Audi. Rasbach has not yet shared this information with the parents of the missing baby. This, in combination with the witness who saw a car going down the lane at 12:35, is the only solid lead in the investigation so far.

“They probably wore gloves,” Marco says when Detective Rasbach tells them about the lack of any physical evidence of an intruder in the house.

It is now midmorning. Anne and Marco look exhausted. Marco looks like he might still be hungover as well. But they won’t even try to rest. Anne’s parents have been asked to go to the kitchen and have coffee while the detective questions Anne and Marco further. He must constantly reassure them that they are doing everything possible to recover their baby, that he is not simply wasting their time.

“Very likely,” the detective says, agreeing with Marco’s guess about the gloves. But then he points out, “Still, we would expect to see some footprints or impressions inside the house—and certainly outside, or in the garage—that don’t match yours.”

“Unless he went out the front,” Anne says. She remembers what she saw: the front door was open. She is clearer on that now, now that she is completely sober. It is her belief that the kidnapper took the baby out the front door and down the front steps to the sidewalk, and that is why they have found no strange footprints.

“Even then,” Rasbach says, “we would expect to find something.” He looks pointedly at them both. “We have interviewed everyone we possibly can. No one admits to seeing anybody carrying a baby out your front door.”

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Marco says, his frustration showing.

“You haven’t found anyone who saw her being carried through the back door either,” Anne points out sharply. “You haven’t found a damn thing.”

“There is the bulb that was loosened in the motion detector,” Detective Rasbach reminds them. He pauses, then adds, “We have also found evidence of tire tracks in your garage that don’t match your car.” He waits for the information to sink in. “Has anyone used your garage lately, that you know of? Do you let anyone park there?”

Marco looks at the detective and then quickly looks away. “No, not that I know of,” he says.

Anne shakes her head.

Anne and Marco are clearly stressed. It is not surprising, as Rasbach has just implied that in the absence of any physical evidence of anyone else carrying their baby out of the house—specifically across the backyard to the garage—it must have been one of them who removed her from the home.

“I’m sorry, but I must ask you about the medication in your bathroom cabinet,” Rasbach says, turning to Anne. “The sertraline.”

“What about it?” Anne asks.

“Can you tell me what it is for?” Rasbach asks gently.

“I have mild depression,” Anne says defensively. “It was prescribed by my doctor.”

“Your family doctor?”

She hesitates. She looks at Marco, as if not sure of what to do, but then she answers. “By my psychiatrist,” she admits.

“I see.” Rasbach adds, “Can you tell me the name of your psychiatrist?”

Anne looks at Marco again and says, “Dr. Leslie Lumsden.”