‘There is no family that we know of. Everyone at the hospital has become so attached to him. He’s really darling. I’ve given this a lot of thought and my husband David is on board. Sharon, we want to foster the baby and then if all goes well, adopt him.’
Sharon’s jaw dropped. She hadn’t seen that coming at all. During the years she had worked with Angela, she had always admired the physician’s medical skills and bedside manner. But Angela never struck her as particularly maternal. She thought Angela’s career had always come first, although she vaguely remembered hearing a rumor that the Crawfords had gone through infertility treatment. She wondered if Angela had been all business only because she couldn’t have a baby.
‘I didn’t think you wanted children.’
‘For years, I didn’t. My career and my husband were always enough for me. When I was about thirty-three and my biological clock started ticking, I changed my mind.’
‘I had no idea,’ said Sharon.
‘David always wanted kids so we started trying and eventually found out we couldn’t,’ said Angela solemnly. ‘We even tried in vitro but that didn’t work either.’
‘It must have been difficult for you.’
‘I thought I had moved on and accepted that children weren’t on the cards,’ said Angela. ‘This miracle of a little boy appeared out of nowhere, and somehow I know I’m supposed to be his mother.’
‘There’s a lot of things that would have to happen before you could adopt.’
‘As soon as the baby’s strong enough,’ said Angela, getting more animated and smiling, ‘instead of putting the baby in foster care, David and I could foster him in my home and take care of him there. Who would be better than us? I’m a doctor. I can take care of his every need and my husband works from home. David would be the primary caregiver.’
‘This is all highly irregular,’ Sharon said.
‘That’s an understatement. Wouldn’t it be better for the baby to be in a home where he’s loved, versus in some institutional setting or with a family who’s doing it for the money?’
‘Of course it would. I’m sure you’d be a terrific mother,’ said the social services director. ‘I can’t promise you completely smooth sailing on this, but I can pull a few strings to make you the provisional caregiver.’
‘That would be amazing,’ said Angela, smiling.
‘For the time being, you’d simply be classified as a foster family,’ said Sharon. ‘There will be reams of documents to fill out in order for you to be eligible to foster a baby. I can fast-track your application to allow the baby to be in your care while his case is moving through the system. From what you’ve told me, the good news is, you don’t have to worry about someone coming forward and exercising their parental rights. That’s what adopting parents worry about the most. After a certain period of time, you can then apply for the legal adoption.’
‘How long does that take?’
‘It can take years,’ said Sharon. ‘But the courts would most likely grant the adoption in your favor if the child has been thriving while in your care.’
‘What do I need to sign?’ said Angela.
33
Jenny hoped she would finish her research project by the end of the week and get back to what she loved, nursing. As each new name surfaced, she would systematically pass it on to the police. At one point, Jenny got excited because she thought she had figured out who did it. According to the work schedules, there was one male nurse who was on duty at all the right times and dates. She really thought he was the one and was about to call the detectives but stopped when she came across another box of payroll stubs that painted a different picture. Turned out, the male nurse she suspected to be the rapist, had been on the schedule but had a death in the family that month and other nurses took over his shifts. He wasn’t even on the property for four weeks.
When her stomach started to growl, Jenny checked the time. It was half past two and she hadn’t had any lunch. Not wanting to stop because she thought she was close to something, she looked around the room for something to eat. Nurses and aides often used this room for private phone calls on break or lunch or even a quick nap when needed. She hoped someone had left a package of something edible behind. She opened up all the cabinets and drawers and let out a little cry of joy when she found a sleeve of saltines.
After consuming six or seven crackers her mouth was dry. She took a big swig from her water bottle and it went down the wrong way which made her cough. Getting up to clear her throat, she paced around the room until the coughing subsided. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a tall, slim beige file cabinet tucked behind a larger one. She didn’t even know that cabinet was there until that moment. Curious, she opened a drawer and looked through the names in the files. One name looked familiar.
‘Kramer, Paul.’ She took the file out and opened it.
Paul Kramer? I know him. I took care of him once when I filled in for one of the nurses on 4 East. He’s the guy who almost drowned but never regained consciousness. Why are there patient files mixed in with the operations files? These should be in the records department, not in here. Jeez! Oceanside Manor has some serious record-keeping issues.
Jenny sifted through the cabinet until she glanced down at her watch. She had just wasted thirty minutes on something not germane to her task. She shut the drawer and went back to examining the work schedules and visitor logs. She was already in the Ks and certain she’d complete the Ls today, as she had promised Angela. Still hungry, she got up to get a few more crackers and the beige filing cabinet caught her eye again.
I wonder if Eliza Stern has files in there, too?
She opened the second drawer of the beige cabinet and ran her fingers through the Ss. Three quarters of the way back, she found ‘Stern, Eliza.’ She lifted the brown folder out of the drawer and sat down at the table. Slowly, she went through each page of Eliza’s file. It covered the last two years. She carefully read all the notes written in Eliza’s charts. Month after month, no changes. With dozens of papers in the file, in no particular order, Jenny flipped each one over finding nothing out of the ordinary. More than halfway through, she admonished herself for having just wasted nearly half an hour messing with Eliza’s medication files. She was supposed to be going through staff and personnel files and she kept getting sidetracked.
This has nothing to do with my assignment. If I keep going off task I won’t finish on time. Dr. Crawford is counting on me.
About to close the folder and get back to work, she turned over one last document. It was a routine weekly medication chart from a week in June of the previous year.
She looked over the medication directives. Everything looked totally normal, appropriate for a patient in Eliza’s condition, except for one thing. Last June, according to this piece of paper, Eliza had received a new prescription of vitamins and supplements.
Who would have ordered that and why? None of the other patients get that nutrient mixture.
She looked on the form for a nurse’s signature signing off on the new protocols but there was nothing more than a squiggly line that she couldn’t make out.
That’s so weird. Why would someone give Eliza that? It makes no sense.
Jenny googled the common supplements and vitamins prescribed on Eliza’s chart to see if they had other uses—they didn’t. According to Google, there was only one reason someone would take them.
34
The overcrowded bullpen in the police department was buzzing with activity. While she studied her computer screen, impatiently clicking on various links that lead to dead ends, Blade shook her head, rubbed her eyes and groaned.
‘Stop moaning, Anita,’ her partner said without looking up from his computer. ‘You sound like a wounded animal.’
Blade made a face and turned back to her screen. After a few minutes she pushed her chair quietly back, turned and stared at McQ’s back.
‘I know you’re looking at me, Anita.’
‘How di
d you know? Sometimes you freak me out. You’re like a witch.’
McQ turned and faced his partner as he clasped his hands behind his head and smiled. Blade was fiercely chewing the inside of her lip. He knew his partner’s moves as well as he knew his girlfriend Marie’s. When Blade was hiding something, she picked at her nails and looked at her feet. When she was frustrated, she chewed on the inside of her right cheek and when she had no patience for bullshit, she sweet-talked the bullshitter like a southern belle just before she went for their jugular.
‘What’s eating you?’ asked McQ with a paternal smile.
‘Eleven men have refused to give their DNA,’ said Blade. ‘That’s a lot of people to not be able to rule out. We’ve got to get them to give a sample or we’ll never close this case.’
‘Let’s wait and see what comes back from the lab from all the samples we did get,’ said McQ. ‘You never know, we may already have our daddy.’
‘If you were the father, would you have given your DNA?’ asked Blade.
‘Not a chance,’ said McQ. ‘But our perp could be a Simple Simon who just likes incapacitated women but has no understanding of how DNA works. That’s what I’m banking on. Who are the holdouts?’
Blade turned back to her computer and pulled up a list.
‘Looks like all staff members have been swabbed,’ she said.
‘They didn’t have much of a choice,’ said McQ. ‘Crawford told the entire staff that if they didn’t submit, they would be dismissed and she meant it. Who else is left?’
‘Looks like seven outside maintenance and temporary staff—two plumbers, an air-conditioning guy, two temps who worked in food service when some of the regulars were out with the flu, and a guy who waters the plants.’
‘That’s seven. You said there were eleven. Who are the other four?’
‘Patient relatives,’ said Blade. ‘Kevin and Tim Mulcahy, sons of a coma patient on the second floor and Raymond Barbero, the father of a patient on 3 East. But Barbero is nearly eighty.’
‘I know a couple of eighty-year-olds who are major womanizers. If he is mobile, we can’t rule him out because he’s eighty, not in the age of Viagra. If he can get up, he can get it up.’
Blade let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Last but not least, Peter Parris, the twin brother of Martin Parris, who is also a permanent resident on 3 West. If you remember, when we interviewed him, we both thought he was a legit possibility. He would have had easy access from his brother’s room next door.’
‘I’ll take the plumbers, the air-con and plant guys. You do the food service temps and let’s see if we can get some of them to have a change of heart.’
‘What about the patient relatives?’
‘I’ll take the Mulcahy brothers and old man Barbero,’ said McQ. ‘You can have Parris.’
Later that day, while McQ and Blade worked the phones trying to sweet-talk eleven men out of their DNA, the lab reports they had been waiting for arrived. The two boxes were dropped on the detective’s desks making simultaneous thuds as they landed.
Both detectives in the middle of a DNA phone pitch looked up when they heard the noise. Realizing what had just arrived on their desks, McQ signaled to his partner with a circular hand gesture to wrap it up. Minutes later, both detectives dug into the lab results. Within a short amount of time the results were clear. After testing over two hundred DNA samples, the lab had determined there was not a single match. Not even close.
‘Damn,’ said Blade as she read the last page summary for the third time.
‘You didn’t think the perp was going to be in the first two hundred, did you?’ said McQ. ‘It’s never that easy.’
‘I hoped.’
‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. There’s still eleven more people to vet. It ain’t over yet. How did you make out with Peter Parris?’ asked McQ.
‘Doesn’t want to give his DNA,’ said Blade. ‘He said he doesn’t even use Facebook, values his privacy. He’s not going to play nice with us.’
‘We’ll circle back on him later. In the meantime, both plumbers reluctantly agreed and so did the Mulcahy brothers,’ said McQ. ‘They’ll meet us over at Oceanside Manor to do their swab later this afternoon.’
‘How did you get them all to say yes?’
‘I told them they had to.’
‘But they don’t have to,’ said Blade, sitting up straight and looking directly at her partner.
‘I know that and you know that, but they don’t know that,’ said McQ.
‘What happens when they find out?’
‘Then it will be too late.’
35
Nearing the end of their shift, Blade pulled their unmarked car up in front of Oceanside Manor. She noticed the news van and reporter count had grown even larger than from the previous day.
‘Would you look at that,’ she said to her partner. ‘Those reporters are multiplying like rabbits.’
‘This thing is mushrooming. It’s become an international story,’ said McQ, popping an antacid tablet in his mouth as they got out of the car. ‘I got a cousin in the army stationed in Stuttgart, Germany. He called me last night to tell me Oceanside and the baby story was all over the German news.’
As the two cops crossed the parking lot, several reporters with cameramen in tow, including Tommy Devlin, ran towards them.
‘Detective McQuillan,’ said Devlin, pushing his way to the front of the pack. ‘Do you know who the father of Eliza Stern’s baby is? If you don’t know, when will you know? When are the police going to make a statement? Where’s the baby right now?’
Stone-faced, McQ and Blade moved silently through the crowd of relentless newsmen and women and into the building. The Mulcahy brothers, and the two plumbers were waiting in the lobby and were directed into a private room for the official swab. When that was completed, the detectives went to check on Eliza Stern. Climbing the steps to 3 West, they found the new mother where she always was, in her bed, forever silent.
‘If she only knew all the chaos that’s going on,’ said Blade. ‘Hundreds of people are trying to unravel what happened to you, Eliza. If only you could tell us.’
‘She’ll never get to hold her son,’ said McQ, shaking his head.
After they left Eliza’s room, the detectives walked down to the administration floor. They had a few new questions for Angela. It was after five and the doctor’s assistant had already left for the day, leaving the path to her office wide open.
‘Wasn’t expecting you, detectives,’ said Angela, looking up and seeing the two police officers in her doorway. ‘Any news?’
‘We were in the building and had a couple of questions for you,’ said Blade. ‘Got a minute?’
Angela took off her reading glasses and smiled ruefully.
‘Not really,’ said Angela with a sigh. ‘What can I help you with?’
McQ shared the topline DNA results with the administrator.
‘That’s disappointing,’ said Angela. ‘I thought for sure we’d get closure from the DNA. Now what?’
‘We’ve still got about a dozen more people to check out, we’re not close to being done on that angle,’ said McQ.
‘I asked Jenny to triple check the data she’s been working with,’ said Angela. ‘Though unlikely, it’s possible she may still turn up something or someone new.’
McQ nodded. ‘Is there any way we may have overlooked someone? Could a person have used another way into the building that we might have missed? Is there an outside vendor that might have been overlooked or a temporary worker that was accidently omitted?’
‘We’ve checked all the names six ways from Sunday,’ said Angela. ‘We gave you the names of some people that fell outside of the time frame for conception, just in case we were slightly wrong on the dates. We even put the pizza delivery guy on the list and we’re positive he never went past the front desk.’
Blade looked over Angela’s head and noticed for the first time that the medical degrees on the wal
l were not hers but for a Francis Farwell.
‘Dr. Crawford,’ said Blade. ‘Francis Farwell, he’s the Oceanside Manor administrator who’s on sabbatical in Ecuador, right?’
‘Yes. Frank is my boss. I’m filling in for him while he’s gone,’ said Angela. ‘Clearly, that was the worst decision of my life.’
‘Exactly when did Dr. Farwell leave for Ecuador?’ asked Blade, leaning forward.
Angela flipped through the pages of her desk calendar.
‘Here it is. Frank’s last day on the job was May 30th. I think he left for Ecuador on June 1st or 2nd,’ said Angela.
‘Then technically, Dr. Farwell could have been here when Eliza Stern was attacked,’ said McQ.
‘That’s exactly what I said to him after he told me this was my mess to clean up and not his,’ said Angela, scrunching up her face.
‘Is there a picture of Dr. Farwell around here?’ asked Blade, looking around the room.
‘When I moved in, that loquacious windbag had multiple pictures of himself on all four walls of this office,’ said Angela, getting up and walking over to a large wooden credenza. ‘His degrees on the wall were one thing, but I wasn’t planning to look at Frank’s fat bloated face every day for more than a year.’ She reached into the drawer and lifted out a stack of framed pictures and handed them to the detectives. The photos showed a rotund middle-aged man with thinning red hair. McQ felt his ears get hot and itchy and he locked eyes with his partner.
‘Your ears are bright pink,’ said Blade.
‘We’re going to need a sample of Dr. Farwell’s DNA,’ said McQ.
36
Day 8
The day after discovering the notes about the new vitamins and supplements given to Eliza Stern, Jenny went to Eliza’s room to look around—for what, she didn’t know. When she entered, she saw that the baby’s crib was empty.
Without Her Consent Page 13
