The Couple Next Door Read Online Free Page B

there. This leaving the monitor on, checking every half hour while they dined next door, the disabled motion detector, theopen 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.’

Chapter 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 thatMarco’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 Contis’ 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