The Couple Next Door(5)

“You used the back door,” the detective repeats.

“I may not have locked it every time,” Marco admits, and covers his face with his hands.

? ? ?

Detective Rasbach observes the couple closely. A baby is missing. Taken from her crib—if the parents, Marco and Anne Conti, are to be believed—between approximately 12:30 a.m. and 1:27 a.m., by a person or persons unknown, while the parents were at a party next door. The front door had been found partly open. The back door might have been left unlocked by the father—it had in fact been found closed but unlocked when the police arrived. There is no denying the distress of the mother. And of the father, who looks badly shaken. But the whole situation doesn’t feel right. Rasbach wonders what is really going on.

Detective Jennings waves him over silently. “Excuse me,” Detective Rasbach says, and leaves the stricken parents for a moment.

“What is it?” Rasbach asks quietly.

Jennings holds up a small vial of pills. “Found these in the bathroom cabinet,” he says.

Rasbach takes the clear plastic container from Jennings and studies the label: ANNE CONTI, SERTRALINE, 50 MG. Sertraline, Rasbach knows, is a powerful antidepressant.

“The bathroom mirror upstairs is smashed,” Jennings tells him.

Rasbach nods. He hasn’t been upstairs yet. “Anything else?”

Jennings shakes his head. “Nothing so far. House looks clean. Nothing else taken, apparently. We’ll know more from forensics in a few hours.”

“Okay,” Rasbach says, handing the vial of pills back to Jennings.

He returns to the couple on the sofa and resumes his questioning. He looks at the husband. “Marco—is it okay if I call you Marco?—what did you do after you checked on the baby at twelve thirty?”

“I went back to the party,” Marco says. “I had a cigarette in the neighbors’ backyard.”

“Were you alone when you had your cigarette?”

“No. Cynthia came out with me.” Marco flushes; Rasbach notices. “She’s the neighbor who had us over for dinner.”

Rasbach turns his attention to the wife. She’s an attractive woman, with fine features and glossy brown hair, but right now she looks colorless. “You don’t smoke, Mrs. Conti?”

“No, I don’t. But Cynthia does,” Anne says. “I was sitting at the dining-room table with Graham, her husband. He hates cigarette smoke, and it was his birthday, and I thought it would be rude to leave him alone inside.” And then, inexplicably, she volunteers, “Cynthia had been flirting with Marco all evening, and I felt bad for Graham.”

“I see,” Rasbach says. He studies the husband, who looks utterly miserable. He also looks nervous and guilty. Rasbach turns to him. “So you were outside in the backyard next door shortly after twelve thirty. Any idea how long you were out there?”

Marco shakes his head helplessly. “Maybe fifteen minutes, give or take?”

“Did you see anything or hear anything?”

“What do you mean?” The husband seems to be in some kind of shock. He is slurring his words slightly. Rasbach wonders just how much alcohol he’s had.

Rasbach spells it out for him. “Someone apparently took your baby sometime between twelve thirty and one twenty-seven. You were outside in the backyard next door for a few minutes shortly after twelve thirty.” He watches the husband, waits for him to put it together. “To my mind it’s unlikely that anyone would carry a baby out your front door in the middle of the night.”

“But the front door was open,” Anne says.

“I didn’t see anything,” Marco says.

“There’s a lane running behind the houses on this side of the street,” Detective Rasbach says. Marco nods. “Did you notice anyone using the lane at that time? Did you hear anything, a car?”

“I . . . I don’t think so,” Marco says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see or hear anything.” He covers his face with his hands again. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

Detective Rasbach had already checked out the area quickly before coming inside and interviewing the parents. He thinks it unlikely—but not impossible—that a stranger would carry a sleeping child out the front door of a house on a street like this one and risk being seen. The houses are attached row houses set close to the sidewalk. The street is well lit, and there is a fair bit of vehicular and foot traffic, even late at night. So it is odd—perhaps he’s being deliberately misled?—that the front door was open. The forensics team is dusting it for fingerprints now, but somehow Rasbach doesn’t think they’ll find anything.

The back holds more potential. Most of the houses, including the Contis’, have a single detached garage opening onto the lane—behind the house. The backyards are long and narrow, fenced in between, and most, including the Contis’, have trees and shrubs and gardens. It is relatively dark back there; there are no streetlights as there are in the front. It’s a dark night, with no moon. Whoever has taken the child, if he had come out the Contis’ back door, would only have had to walk across the backyard to the garage, with access from there to the lane. The chances of being seen carrying an abducted child out the back door to a waiting vehicle are much less than the chances of being seen carrying an abducted child out the front door.