Without Her Consent

by McGarvey Black

  Five minutes later, the police technician had the sample and sent it on to the lab.

  69

  Day 164

  Two weeks had passed and the results of Eliza Stern’s DNA test arrived in a large tan envelope and was placed in the in-box that McQ and Blade shared. Both detectives saw it at the same time and reached for it.

  ‘You want to do the honors, Anita?’

  ‘I would love to,’ said Blade with a snort as she pulled the oversized envelope from his fingers and quickly sliced it open with a rather large pocket knife.

  ‘You carry a knife, too?’ said McQ with a smile. ‘A gun isn’t enough for you?’

  ‘You can never have too much firepower,’ said Blade as she put her knife into her pocket and pulled the lab documents out of the envelope. Carefully she scanned the results on the page.

  ‘Well?’ said McQ leaning forward and scratching his ears.

  ‘Would you look at that,’ Blade said, eyes still on the report. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ said an impatient McQ. ‘How about letting me in on it?’

  Enjoying the drama of the moment, Blade took her time. She sat back in her seat and crossed her arms.

  ‘Much to my surprise,’ said Blade, ‘it appears Eliza Stern’s DNA is not a match with that baby.’

  ‘Which means?’ said McQ.

  ‘Which means…’ said Blade, pausing.

  ‘Eliza Stern is not the mother of the baby,’ the two detectives said in unison as they stared at each other.

  ‘My ears are in full throttle right now,’ said McQ.

  ‘If Eliza isn’t the mother…wait…I don’t get it,’ said Blade. ‘How could the baby not have Eliza’s DNA? A team of nurses and doctors saw the baby come out of Eliza’s body.’

  ‘The baby came out of Eliza,’ said McQ, nodding his head. ‘But the bigger question is, how did the baby get into Eliza to begin with?’

  ‘The only DNA we do know that matches the baby is David Crawford and his nephew,’ said McQ. ‘Let’s go see the famous novelist.’

  When they walked out of the police station, a clap of thunder sounded and it began to drizzle. As they walked, several raindrops spotted the blacktop in the parking lot. ‘Great,’ said McQ, looking up at the gray sky, ‘it wasn’t supposed to rain until later tonight, we’re supposed to get a wicked storm.’ Speeding across town on the slick wet streets, they eventually pulled up in front of the Crawford’s house. When David answered the front door holding six-month old Eli, he was once again surprised to see police officers.

  ‘What do you want?’ David asked suspiciously.

  ‘Kid’s getting big,’ said McQ. ‘Anyone ever tell you he looks just like you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can we come in, Mr. Crawford?’ said Blade.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We have a few questions we’d like to ask you,’ said McQ. ‘It would be better to do it inside than out here on the street. Baby might catch a cold.’

  ‘I’m not going to answer any questions,’ said David, bristling. ‘Unless you’re here to arrest me, I don’t have to answer anything. Call my lawyer.’

  ‘Mr. Crawford,’ said Blade. ‘We just got the results of Eliza Stern’s DNA test and your tests. Turns out, she’s not Eli’s mother but it appears that you are indeed his father. You want to explain that to us?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said David, starting to close the front door. ‘Talk to my attorney.’

  McQ stuck his foot in the door. ‘We’d like to talk to your wife as well. Is Dr. Crawford at home?’

  ‘She’s at work,’ said David as he closed the front door and bolted it.

  After the detective’s car pulled away from the curb, David put Eli in his playpen and immediately called his wife.

  ‘Those two detectives were just here again,’ said David frantically. ‘They said Eliza Stern’s DNA shows she isn’t Eli’s mother. I don’t understand any of this. How could Eliza not be Eli’s mother? You delivered the baby. A whole roomful of people saw the birth. The detectives said they wanted to talk to you, too.’

  ‘Did they say anything else?’ said Angela, her voice elevating.

  David didn’t respond, as his brain tried to parse all the information.

  ‘David,’ said Angela, ‘you need to focus.’

  ‘They said I’m Eli’s biological father,’ shouted David. ‘That’s impossible. I’ve never even seen Eliza Stern. I don’t understand any of this. What’s happening?’

  Angela looked out of her office window and stood up. She put one hand on her desk to steady herself. Three police squad cars had just pulled into the front parking lot.

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ she said as she hung up the phone, grabbed her bag and walked out of her office. Once in the hallway, she entered a back stairwell, her entire body shaking. Afraid she might slip, she gripped the railing tightly while sliding her hand down the metal as she walked down. The echo of her heels on the bare cement steps reverberated in the concrete stairwell. When she reached the bottom, she pushed the bar on the heavy metal door and opened it slightly and peered out to the rear parking lot. It had started raining, and there was no one hanging around outside smoking as they often did. Her car was ten seconds away from where she stood. She slipped out the door, briskly walked to her vehicle and got in. Twenty seconds later she was off the hospital grounds and driving down Oceanside’s main street towards her house.

  70

  The rain grew stronger, making visibility difficult. Angela drove as fast as possible, but not enough to draw the attention of a traffic cop. She pulled quickly into her driveway sending the gravel flying in different directions and parked her car in the garage. David, who had been upstairs, came running down when he heard the garage door. When he got to the bottom step, he found Angela standing in the middle of the room staring at a framed photo of Eli that she held in her right hand.

  ‘Angela?’

  His wife didn’t respond.

  He grabbed her arm to get her attention. ‘What’s going on?’ shouted David.

  ‘It’s over,’ screamed Angela, tears mixed with black mascara running down her cheeks as she pulled away from him. She turned and went to the hall closet next to the front door and pulled a suitcase down from a high shelf. ‘I’ve got to leave right now. The police will be here soon.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said David. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I did it for us,’ she yelled as she ran up the stairs, ‘for our baby.’

  David followed her up the stairs and grabbed her at the top step. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t you get it yet?’ she said, crying and hyperventilating. ‘After the in vitro didn’t work and I had my hysterectomy, there was no other way for us. Eliza was just lying there with this young, healthy uterus—a lifeless body attached to machines. I gave her a purpose.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said David with a look of total confusion.

  ‘No one was supposed to know,’ said Angela, her voice catching on every third word while she stuffed random items of clothing into her bag. ‘I got our frozen embryos in a nitrogen canister from when we did the in vitro program.’

  David stared at his wife in disbelief.

  ‘I monitored Eliza’s menstrual cycle and picked the optimal day for conception. I scheduled the staff on skeleton crew that week so there wouldn’t be anyone around during the night shift. The one person who was on, I made certain was called off the floor for a few hours. That gave me time to implant our embryo into Eliza.’

  ‘Angela, the woman was in a coma. She was defenseless.’

  ‘I didn’t hurt her. You’ve got to believe me. I took every precaution. Eliza’s fine and we have Eli. I did it for us, so we could have our own baby.’

  ‘You did this for you,’ shouted a horrified David. ‘How were you going to deliver the baby before anyone found out? This is insane.’

  ‘I was goi
ng to induce labor at night several weeks before the due date and make sure no one was around. After the baby was born, I was going to bring him home and tell people we adopted him.’

  David’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘But Eliza went into labor early which ruined everything and caught me off guard. That’s when everyone realized she was pregnant. Before that day, no one knew.’

  ‘This can’t be true,’ said David, wringing his hands and running them through his hair. ‘What lie were you going to tell me when you walked into our house with a baby?’

  ‘I was going to tell you the truth.’

  ‘Give me a break. You thought I’d be cool with this whole perverted thing?’

  ‘I thought once you knew the baby was actually yours, you’d be happy about it and get used to the idea,’ said Angela, pleading. ‘Everything was going great until that stupid eager beaver nurse had to play detective,’ said Angela. ‘I didn’t think she was that smart. I had to stop her.’

  ‘Did you do something to Jenny O’Hearn?’

  ‘She found out about the prenatal vitamins I’d been giving to Eliza and discovered the bottle of Pitocin that I accidently left in Eliza’s room. She started putting two and two together. I had to protect our baby.’

  David’s face contorted into a mask of horror.

  ‘We would have lost our son,’ said Angela. ‘Your son, Eli.’

  ‘This is sick,’ shouted David as Angela walked away from him towards the stairs.

  ‘Don’t you dare judge me,’ said Angela, raising her voice. ‘I was the one holding down the job, working twelve hours a day. We were drowning financially while you wallowed in your literary fantasy world.’

  ‘Don’t change the subject. I was making progress on my novel.’

  ‘You hadn’t written anything in twenty years,’ screamed Angela. ‘The last book you wrote tanked. We were up to our eyeballs in your gambling debts and half the bookies in South Florida were after you for money. Everyone thinks because I’m a doctor we were rolling in the dough. Oceanside Manor is a small second-rate facility and I was only an acting director. You know what’s happened to the healthcare system in this country. You knew how little money I made, yet you continued to piss it away!’

  ‘Shut up,’ David shouted. For a moment there was complete silence. David put a hand on each of Angela’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘I asked you a question and I want the truth,’ he said. ‘What did you do to Jenny O’Hearn?’

  Angela looked away and chewed on her lip. ‘I was in a meeting in my office with the hospital legal people when my phone rang. My assistant was out so I excused myself and answered the call.’

  ‘Cut to the chase, Angela.’

  ‘It was Jenny, she had been hunting around in Eliza’s room and had gone through some boxes of records. She said she found some of Eliza’s old charts from last year and noticed an odd combination of supplements and vitamins had been added to Eliza’s daily cocktail of food and liquids. She said she wanted me to come have a look at something she found.’

  ‘Then, what happened?’ said David, stone-faced.

  ‘Of course, I knew what she found. I added prenatal vitamins and additional nutritional supplements to Eliza’s daily regimen so that our baby would get everything he needed to grow,’ said Angela. ‘When Jenny started poking around, I knew it would only be a matter of time before she made the connections, if she hadn’t already. She would have figured out that someone was monitoring a pregnancy. She had all the facts, she just hadn’t put them together yet. You don’t use those vitamins for any other reason besides pregnancy.’

  ‘Did you do something to her?’ asked David.

  ‘Why would you say that?’ said Angela. ‘It was well documented in her employment files that Jenny used to have a substance abuse problem.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that Jenny arbitrarily decided to use drugs again just as she was about to mess up your demented scheme,’ said David with a look of disbelief. ‘You think I’m that stupid?’ He glared at his wife as his mind tried to make sense of the incredible story he had just heard. ‘I don’t even know you,’ he shouted. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘It was for us, for Eli,’ said Angela, ‘our flesh and blood son.’

  ‘You did it for you. Don’t drag me into this.’

  ‘Things are so much better for us now. You’re writing again and we have Eli. We’re finally a family.’

  ‘You’re a monster,’ screamed David, running his hands through his silvery hair. ‘You always wondered if you had inherited the same crazy as your brother and I always assured you that you and he were different. I was wrong. You’re just as insane as Michael.’

  David turned and walked out of the room into the den, slamming the door behind him, leaving Angela sobbing in the living room. He sat down on the couch and rubbed his temples. His head throbbed as he tried to make sense of everything he had just learned and figure out what to do next. He ran through every possible scenario but none of them ended well.

  71

  For nearly ten minutes David contemplated his next move, grappling with the realization that the baby he had been taking care of was really his son. Eli is my real son. I’m his biological father. He’s truly mine.

  Deep in thought, he heard the grinding of the garage door motor and jumped up and ran into the living room.

  ‘Angela!’ he shouted, looking around.

  There was no answer. He ran up the stairs to Eli’s room and saw both the baby and the diaper bag were gone. He ran back down the stairs and out into their front yard. He could see the faint glint of Angela’s red tail lights in the distance. He got into his car to chase her, but by the time he backed out onto the street, she was out of sight.

  Racing back into the house to get his phone, he tried to key his wife’s number in. The adrenaline racing through his veins made him type too quickly and he kept dialing the wrong number. Calm yourself. Take a deep breath. Maybe she just went to the store or the park or for a drive. Deep down, he knew the truth. She wasn’t coming back.

  He took a deep breath and slowly punched in Angela’s number. It rang once, twice, three, four, five and six times and went to voicemail. He called again and again. Over and over it sent him to voicemail. He texted her.

  Angela, please answer the phone. We need to talk.

  He paced while he waited for five minutes with no answer and texted again.

  Angie, call me.

  Nothing. ‘Goddammit, Angela,’ said David, shouting as he called again. ‘Pick up the goddamned phone.’

  Again, it rang six times and went to voicemail. This time David left a message. ‘Angela, maybe I’m overreacting and maybe you just took Eli out to the store. But I’m losing it. You laid all that stuff on me and you walked out of the house without saying anything. Please come home, we need to talk. Call me, okay?’

  David Crawford repeatedly called and texted his wife until her voicemail was full and would take no additional messages. Would she do anything to hurt Eli? Would she hurt our baby? Nearly thirty minutes had passed. It was now dark and stormy and David was in a full panic. Not knowing what else to do, and fearing the worst, he reluctantly called the police.

  He was connected right away to Detective McQuillan, who was waiting for sign-off by a judge on a search warrant for the Crawford home. When McQ picked up the call, David could barely get his words out. The detective had to stop him several times and make him repeat what he had just said.

  ‘She said all these crazy things. She said Jenny O’Hearn was getting too close. We had a fight. Angela took the baby and it’s raining.’

  ‘Slow down, Mr. Crawford,’ said McQ, while kicking Blade in the shin. Blade looked up and McQ mouthed David Crawford to his partner and nodded his head towards the exit and waved to her. Without asking questions, Blade obediently followed him out the door as he continued his phone conversation.

  ‘We’re on our way,’ said McQ in a supportive tone. ‘You and your wife had
a fight. She probably just needed to let off a little steam. That’s what my ex-wife used to do after we’d have an argument. We’ll be there in a few minutes.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Blade as she slid into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Looks like the hen flew the coop with the chick,’ said McQ.

  ‘We’ve been working together too long,’ said Blade, ‘I actually understood that.’

  Back at the Crawford house, David dialed and redialed his wife. The rain was coming down harder and the wind had picked up. Not knowing what else to do while he waited for the police, he turned on the nightly news to distract himself. The weatherman was predicting heavy thunderstorms for eastern Palm Beach County that night. Oceanside was in the eye of the storm.

  David punched Angela’s number into the phone for what must have been the fiftieth time. It rang four times and Angela miraculously answered.

  ‘David, I’m going away. I’m leaving with our son.’

  ‘Come home. We need to talk.’

  ‘There’s nothing more to say. If I come back, I’m going to jail. You know that’s what will happen. I can’t do that. All I ever wanted was my own family. I have my son now and I’m not going to give him up.’

  ‘Angela, this is crazy,’ pleaded David. ‘So, you’re going to be a fugitive? Think about what you’re saying.’

  ‘I won’t give up Eli. I’ve waited too long and worked too hard to get him. I’ll go someplace where no one can find us and we’ll start over—just the two of us. Don’t look for us, David. I’m begging you. Give us a chance.’

  ‘He’s my son, too,’ shouted David.

  ‘Not anymore,’ said his wife, crying. ‘I’ll be his mother and father. Eli and I are going far away where no one will ever find us and…’

  David heard the earth-shattering sound of metal crashing, then only the blaring of the car alarm and the faint sound of a baby crying.