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“Fair enough,” Rasbach says. He pauses, puts down the file and asks, “Would you describe your marriage as a happy one?”
“Yes,” Anne says. “We have some issues, like most couples, but we work them out.”
“What kinds of issues?”
“Is this really relevant? How is this helping to find Cora?” She moves restlessly in her chair.
Detective Rasbach says, “We have every available person working on finding Cora. We are doing everything we can to find her.” Then he adds, “Maybe you can help us.”
She slumps, discouraged. “I don’t see how.”
“What sorts of issues come up in your marriage? Money? That’s a big one for most couples.”
“No,” Anne says tiredly. “We don’t fight about money. The only thing we ever fight about is my parents.”
“Your parents?”
“They don’t like one another, my parents and Marco. My parents never approved of him. They think he’s not good enough for me. But he is. He’s perfect for me. They can’t see any good in him because they don’t want to. That’s just the way they are. They never liked anyone I dated. No one was ever good enough. But they hate him because I fell in love with him and married him.”
“Surely they don’t hate him,” Rasbach says.
“It seems that way sometimes,” Anne says. She looks down at the table. “My mother doesn’t think he’s good enough for me, basically because he’s not from a wealthy family, but my father really seems to hate him. He baits him all the time. I can’t understand why.”
“They have no particular reason to dislike him?”
“No, not at all. Marco’s never done anything wrong.” She sighs unhappily. “My parents are very hard to please, and they’re very controlling. They gave us money when we were starting out, and now they think they own us.”
“They gave you money?”
“For the house.” She flushes.
“You mean, as a gift?”
She nods. “Yes, it was a wedding gift, so we could buy a house. We couldn’t afford one on our own, without help. Houses are so expensive, at least nice ones in good neighborhoods are.”
“I see.”
“I love the house,” Anne admits. “But Marco hates feeling beholden to them. He didn’t want to accept the wedding gift. He would rather have made it all on his own—he’s proud that way. He let them help us for me. He knew I wanted the house. He would have been happy to start out in a crappy little apartment. Sometimes I think I made a mistake.” She’s wringing her hands in her lap. “Maybe we should have refused their wedding gift, started out in some shabby place, like most couples. We might still be there, but we might be happier.” She starts to cry. “And now they think it’s his fault that Cora’s gone, because it was his idea to leave her at home alone. They won’t stop reminding me about it.”
Rasbach slides the tissue box on the table to within Anne’s reach. Anne takes a tissue and dabs her eyes. “And really, what can I say? I try to defend him to them, but it was his idea to leave her at home. I didn’t like it. I still can’t believe I agreed to it. I’ll never forgive myself.”
“What do you suspect happened to Cora, Anne?” Detective Rasbach asks.
She looks away from him and stares at the wall, unseeing. “I don’t know. I keep thinking about it and thinking about it. I was hoping that someone took her for ransom, because my parents are rich, but no one has been in touch with us, so . . . I don’t know, it’s hard to stay positive. That’s what Marco thought at first. But he’s losing hope, too.” She looks back at him, her face bleak. “What if she’s dead? What if our baby is already dead?” She breaks down and sobs. “What if we never find her?”
FOURTEEN
Rasbach had gone through Marco’s office computer. No wonder Marco was worried about that. While it was understandable that a man in Marco’s position might Google postpartum depression, his browser history showed that he’d strayed quite far into postpartum psychosis. He’d read about the woman found guilty of drowning her five children in a bathtub in Texas. He’d read about the mother who’d killed her children by driving her car into a lake, the woman in England who had strangled her two young children in a closet. He’d read about other women who had drowned, stabbed, smothered, and throttled their own children. Which meant, to the detective’s mind, that either Marco was afraid his wife might become psychotic or he was interested in that information for some other reason. It occurs to Rasbach that Marco may be setting his wife up to take a big fall. The baby might just be collateral damage. Does he simply want out?
But this isn’t his favorite theory. As Anne pointed out, she is not psychotic. These women who killed their babies were clearly in the throes of psychosis. If she killed the baby, it was probably accidentally.
No, his favorite theory is that Marco arranged the kidnapping to get the badly needed ransom money—despite what Marco said about things turning around, his business is clearly in serious trouble.
They haven’t been able to account for the car. No one has come forward to acknowledge driving down the lane at 12:35 on the night of the kidnapping. The police have sought the public’s help in the matter of the mystery car. If anyone in the area had been driving innocently down the lane at the relevant time, given all the newspaper and TV coverage, that person would in all likelihood have come forward. But no one had come forward—probably because whoever it was was an accomplice to the crime. Detective Rasbach believes that the person in that car took the baby away.
Rasbach thinks the child was either killed accidentally by the parents and the body taken away by an accomplice or that this is a staged kidnapping and the baby was handed off by Marco to someone who has lost his nerve and hasn’t made the expected arrangements to receive the ransom money and return the baby. If so, the wife may or may not be in on it; Rasbach needs to look closely at her. If what Rasbach suspects is true, Marco must be going out of his mind.
But the babysitter is troubling him. Would Marco have staged a kidnapping if there was going to be a babysitter in the house?
Rasbach sees no point in having a police officer sitting around the Contis’ house waiting for a ransom call that will probably never come. He makes a strategic decision. They will retreat; he will get the police out of the house and see what happens when the two of them are alone. If he is right, and something has gone wrong, if he is to find out what it is, he must take a step back and give Marco enough rope to hang himself.
And the baby? Rasbach wonders if even Marco knows whether the missing child is still alive. Rasbach remembers the famous Lindbergh kidnapping case, where it looked as if the baby died accidentally, either during or soon after the kidnapping. Maybe that’s what happened here. He can almost feel sorry for Marco. Almost.
? ? ?
It is Tuesday morning, the fourth day since Cora went missing. Now the last police officer is leaving. Anne can’t believe that they are to be left all alone. “But what if the kidnapper calls?” she protests to Rasbach in disbelief.
Marco says nothing. It seems obvious to him that the kidnapper is not going to call. It seems equally obvious to him that the police don’t believe there is a kidnapper.
Rasbach says, “You’ll be fine. Marco can handle it.” She gives him a doubtful look. “Maybe our being here is scaring him off—maybe if we leave, he’ll call.” He turns to Marco. “If anyone claiming to have Cora calls, remain calm, try to get instructions, and keep him talking as much as possible. The more you can get him to reveal, the better. We still have the wiretap on, so it will be taped. But it is very unlikely that we would be able to trace the call. Everyone these days uses untraceable prepaid cell phones. Makes our job much harder.”
Then Rasbach leaves. Marco, for one, is glad to see him go.
