72
Less than a minute after David’s phone call with Angela went dead, McQ and Blade pulled up in front of the Crawford house with their siren blaring. McQ immediately called the Palm Beach County police and they put out an APB on Angela’s car and asked for reports of any car accidents in the last thirty minutes. The police figured Angela would have been driving north on the turnpike or I 95 since going south would have put her in the Florida Keys and that would have been a dead-end—she had to be going north. Gauging the time she had left, and the road conditions, the police quickly determined what part of the state Angela was most likely to be in.
‘Make sure you let them know,’ said McQ to the dispatcher, ‘there’s a baby in that car.’
Thirty-five minutes later, outside of greater Orlando during a torrential tropical storm, a rescue team found Angela’s car wreck. A red pickup truck had T-boned the driver’s side of her car after she had gotten off the turnpike to wait out the rain and ran a stop sign. The emergency rescue crew had to use the jaws of life to release her from the mangled metal heap that surrounded her body. When they finally got her out, she was unconscious and had lost a tremendous amount of blood. An EMS team did field triage and rushed Angela to the nearest hospital. Miraculously, Eli, still in his car seat in the back on the passenger side, didn’t have a scratch on him. A police officer lifted the baby, intact in his seat, out of what was left of the vehicle and put the child in a squad car and called the station.
Angela was rushed into surgery with significant head and neck trauma, a broken pelvis and a shattered left arm and leg. The left side of her face had been crushed and broken glass caused numerous lacerations to one full side of her body. During the difficult and lengthy surgery, Angela’s heart stopped twice but she survived and was moved into the ICU.
73
Day 170
Tommy Devlin stood in the crowd in the parking lot behind the Oceanside PD looking up at the podium. Pen in hand, he was waiting for the police to begin their press conference wrapping up the Eliza Stern case. Devlin’s shining star at CNN had fallen like a brick when the Stern case dragged on with no conclusion. It didn’t help that Frank Farwell also threatened to sue the network because of Devlin’s appearance reporting inaccurate information about him. Now that there were brand-new developments in the Stern case, national interest was renewed and Devlin hoped the cable news shows would again come a-calling. He missed those blueberry muffins in the CNN green room before his on-air appearances. He still wanted another bite from the cable news pie.
Oceanside was once again swarming with news vans from all the major networks, cable shows, local TV stations and newspapers. Devlin waved to the CNN guys like they were old college buddies and walked over to greet them. ‘Hey, nice to see ya,’ Devlin said to the CNN crew as he thrust out his hand. ‘Can you believe all this stuff going on around here? I’m available if you need a quote or some local insight.’
A group of uniformed police officers in formal dress fanned across the makeshift stage. One man approached the microphone.
‘Good Morning,’ said Oceanside’s chief of police. ‘We’re here today to report final findings on the Eliza Stern case. It’s been a long and arduous investigation and the police officers and detectives who worked the case morning and night have been focused and determined to bring closure for this community. I’d like to invite the two lead detectives on the case, Detective John McQuillan and Detective Anita Blalock up to the microphone to provide you with the details.’
The police chief stepped back from the microphone and an uncomfortable McQ and Blade took center stage. ‘Good Morning. Detective Blalock and I have been working on this case from day one,’ McQ started. ‘As you know, this crime attracted national and even international attention due to the unusual circumstances. Like everyone else, we made some initial assumptions that turned out to be incorrect. Through meticulous police research we used all the modern technology available and we were ultimately able to discover exactly what had happened.’
Tommy Devlin listened to McQ’s entire explanation and couldn’t get the words down in his notebook fast enough. When Detective McQuillan finished, Devlin looked around at the stunned and mainly silent crowd. Everyone’s mouth hung open. Then all hell broke loose and the questions started flying.
‘Holy shit,’ said Devlin, smiling to his photographer. ‘I’ll tell ya one thing, this is one whacky hospital. Make sure you get pictures of those detectives and the mayor for the lead story. I’m going to have another front pager!’
74
Day 171
The night after the police press conference, McQ and Marie drove over to Blade and Eve’s condo for dinner to commemorate the end of the six-month long investigation.
‘You’re awfully quiet,’ said Marie as their car turned onto Blade’s street.
‘I’m tired and glad it’s over,’ said McQ.
‘You’re glad? I’m ecstatic. You weren’t exactly a peach these last few months.’
‘I’ll make it up to you.’
‘I’m planning on it,’ said Marie as she got out of the car. ‘Another trip to Universal?’
McQ groaned as they went into Blade’s apartment building.
Eve had prepared an incredible banquet for the four of them.
‘You’ve done it again, Evie,’ said McQ. ‘The soup is delicious.’
‘And healthy too,’ said Blade, smiling at Eve.
‘Don’t go ruining it,’ said McQ, wrinkling his nose.
‘This is the kind of thing you should be eating,’ said Marie, pursing her lips and rolling her eyes in lockstep with the two other women.
‘It’s carrot, ginger and coconut with a vegetable-based broth,’ said Eve. ‘Very low calorie.’
‘Okay, message received. I need to drop ten,’ said McQ.
A few minutes later, the foursome cleaned up the dinner dishes and settled down in the living room.
‘Now that the case is over, can you explain to us exactly what happened?’ asked Eve. ‘Anita never tells me anything. I have to learn about everything from the news. I watched your press conference yesterday and you both looked very nice, by the way,’ Eve said, squeezing Blade’s hand. ‘But now I’d like to understand how it all went down.’
‘Me too,’ said Marie.
McQ looked at Blade who gestured with a wave of her hand and a smile that he could do the honors. He nodded his head and leaned forward.
‘Apparently, Dr. Crawford and her husband had been in an in vitro fertilization program for several years at Oceanside Medical Center,’ said McQ. ‘Angela had embryos implanted on five separate occasions but she miscarried all of them and the couple gave up. They still had eleven frozen embryos in storage at the hospital. According to her husband, his wife had hoped that maybe one day, as technology and treatments improved, there still might be a chance. But later, she had to have a hysterectomy, the window closed and that’s when she must have come up with her plan.’
Blade jumped in. ‘Dr. Crawford realized that at Oceanside Manor, she was surrounded by plenty of people who could easily gestate her baby,’ said Blade. ‘She chose Eliza Stern because she was young with no friends or relatives and it would be less likely that anyone would notice anything. Being that Dr. Crawford was a trained gynecologist, she was more than familiar with how to transport, handle and administer the delicate embryos and she eventually transferred them into Eliza.’
‘Why didn’t they just get a surrogate?’ asked Marie.
‘She and her husband had discussed it, but apparently, Angela maintained for years that she wanted no part of it,’ said McQ. ‘She was concerned about monitoring the nutrition, drug and alcohol practices of a surrogate, afraid that somehow her baby would be compromised. Also, finding a healthy and co-operative surrogate isn’t easy and can be extremely expensive. David Crawford told us they didn’t have the money for it. Turns out he frequented the casinos a little too often and owed money to a lot of people, a lot of the wrong p
eople. We found out he had been banned from a number of the casinos in South Florida.’
‘The plot thickens’ said Marie, eyes wide. ‘So, then what happened?’
‘Once her boss, Frank Farwell, left for Ecuador and she was running the show, Angela figured that was her window of opportunity and she went for it,’ said Blade.
‘Wow,’ said Eve, letting out a sigh. ‘That’s so incredibly demented, but at the same time, weirdly brilliant.’
‘Once she knew Eliza was pregnant,’ Blade continued, ‘she adjusted the feeding plan on Eliza’s charts to include everything a pregnant woman needed to grow a healthy baby.’
‘Wasn’t she afraid one of the doctors or nurses would see the girl’s stomach getting bigger?’ asked Marie.
‘One would think so,’ said McQ, shaking his head. ‘But when we talked to a few other OB-GYNs they said that with minimal calories and because the patient was on her back the baby bump might not be very noticeable.’
Marie and Eve looked at each other in amazement.
‘Angela’s orders provided the precise number of calories needed to sustain a baby but to minimize the weight gain,’ said Blade. ‘It must have worked because no alarm bells went off with the staff.’
‘She had it all figured out, only she didn’t anticipate one thing,’ said Blade.
‘What was that?’ said Eve in a whisper.
‘Eliza went into labor early, way ahead of schedule,’ said Blade. ‘Angela had already hidden a bottle of Pitocin, a synthetic form of oxytocin used to induce labor, in Eliza’s room and planned to deliver the baby at an opportune time by using the drug. When Eliza went into labor on her own, it caught Angela completely off guard. She was the only doctor around when the nurses realized Eliza was in labor, they called Angela and she wound up delivering her own baby.’
‘Oh my God, she must have been freaking out when she got that phone call,’ said Marie, mouth open.
‘When the investigation began, everyone in the world assumed the perpetrator was a man,’ said McQ. ‘Me included.’
‘It was a reasonable assumption,’ said Blade defensively.
‘Hey, everyone thought it was a man,’ said McQ. ‘We missed that one. Since Eliza Stern had no family, the baby was headed into foster care. That’s when Angela stepped forward, like a fairy godmother, pulled a few strings and offered to foster the baby. She also recruited the same young nurse who had been there for the delivery to help her.’
‘Jenny O’Hearn,’ said Marie while chewing on her thumb. ‘The girl who overdosed?’
‘Bingo,’ said McQ. ‘Angela put Jenny in charge of compiling all the research. Everything was going great from Angela’s perspective until Jenny stumbled across Eliza Stern’s old feeding, medication and exam schedule. While going through the records, Jenny noticed that Eliza started receiving prenatal vitamins around the time we now know Eliza got pregnant.’
‘Oh snap!’ said Marie.
‘We didn’t know anything about the vitamins until Jenny’s boyfriend turned over her journal,’ said McQ. ‘That’s when the pieces started to come together. As Jenny continued to dig around, she called Angela to tell her what she had discovered. A few hours later, Jenny was found unconscious in a supply room from a drug overdose.’
‘Angela Crawford did something to the nurse, too?’ asked Eve.
‘Based on the last conversation David Crawford had with his wife, he suspected Angela had attacked Jenny,’ said McQ. ‘It was noted in the hospital records that Jenny had a history with drugs. Angela was one of the few people who had access to that information. It was easy enough to make people believe Jenny had a relapse. We believe Angela gave Jenny an overdose of Dilaudid, an opioid pain medication. That poor girl was just collateral damage in Angela’s quest to be a mother.’
It was touch and go for a while and Angela remained in intensive care at the Orlando hospital for a very long time. Almost every part of her body had been injured and she required numerous surgeries. In time, her body started to mend and her broken limbs appeared to be healing to her surgeon’s satisfaction though she still had a long way to go. After twelve weeks, her doctors determined she was stable enough to be moved closer to home and signed orders to have her moved back to Oceanside. She was sent by transport to Oceanside Manor where she would receive additional care and be closer to her husband and son.
Six months later, on his last day of work at The Oceanside Bulletin, Tommy Devlin strutted into his editor’s office with great fanfare and turned in his final column about a student brawl on the south side of town. The older newspaper man shook Tommy’s hand and thanked the reporter for all his hard work. Out in the bullpen, expectant staffers gathered around a cake that had been placed on an empty desk.
‘Looks like your co-workers are throwing you a little going away party,’ said the editor, eyeing the commotion going on outside his door. ‘I guess it’s not every day one of our own gets the nod from CNN.’
‘Cool, right?’ said Tommy, grinning proudly. ‘Soon, I’ll be doing some serious journalism.’
His boss threw him an indignant look.
‘I mean, I was doing that here, too,’ said Tommy, ‘but CNN is international TV, it’s a whole different ballgame.’
Tired of the conversation and not entirely sorry to see the career climbing, hard to manage Devlin move on, the editor waved to the waiting crowd outside his door. ‘You’d better get to your party,’ he said. ‘Good luck.’
Tommy gave a wave and turned to leave when his editor asked him one last question.
‘By the way, Devlin, where’s your new job?’
Tommy spun around with a big smile. ‘They haven’t told me yet. I guess they’re still trying to figure out where to best use my talents. HR asked me if I’d relocate, so I assume I’ll be going to either Atlanta—CNN’s headquarters or better yet, New York. That would be sweet. Hanging in New York with Anderson Cooper, like old times,’ said Devlin. ‘He and I were pretty tight. Watch me take a bite out of the Big Apple.’
‘They’re waiting for you to cut the cake,’ said the weary editor. Tommy saluted and walked out of his editor’s office for the last time and greeted his co-workers. After a few speeches and more high-fives than he could count—Tommy Devlin left the building.
A month later, he was a week into his new post as a correspondent for CNN. It had come as a shock when he got the call from HR that he was being assigned to the CNN field office in Juneau, Alaska.
‘You’ll be covering local Alaskan politics, the oil pipeline, and do some nice feel-good stories on whale watching and migrating herds of moose,’ said the HR woman over the phone. ‘Our viewers just love stories about moose.’
‘But I thought I’d be going to Atlanta or New York,’ said Tommy.
‘The managing directors of the news division felt your skill set and on-camera persona would be best used in Alaska. Better get a warm coat and some mittens.’
75
Four Years Later
Holding Eli’s hand, David Crawford marched across the parking lot and through the front doors of Oceanside Manor and showed his ID as he signed in at the front desk. He waved to the familiar security guard who waved back as he and Eli passed through the lobby and walked to the elevator. As always, Eli asked if he could push the elevator buttons and fidgeted as they went up. When they got to the third floor, the father and son went to the 3 West wing to Eliza Stern’s room.
Once inside the room, David pulled two chairs next to the side of Eliza’s bed and father and son each took a seat.
‘Why do we always come here, Daddy?’ the four-year-old asked his father.
‘You ask that every time we come, Eli,’ said David gently. ‘We come here to visit your mommy.’
‘Okay.’
‘Remember what I told you? This nice lady right here,’ he said, pointing to Eliza, ‘is the mommy who carried you in her tummy for so many months so that you could grow big and strong and be born and become my son.’
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sp; Eli nodded. After ten minutes of mainly silence, David said it was time to go.
‘Say goodbye to Mommy Eliza,’ the boy’s father said.
‘Bye, Mommy Eliza,’ said the little redheaded boy who had grown into the spitting image of his father.
David took Eli’s hand. They walked into the hallway and went directly into the room across from Eliza’s. David pulled two empty chairs next to the bed and the father and son sat down.
‘And this is your Mommy Angela,’ said David with tears in his eyes, looking at the unconscious woman in the bed as the respirator made another long hissing sound. ‘She’s the one who created you.’
THE END
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my wonderful early readers for their time and insightful feedback. First, Peter Black, Diane McGarvey and Marlene Pedersen who read the earlier more painful, disjointed version and gave much needed constructive feedback. For the second rounds, a big thank you to Jill Chaifetz, Charles “Chuck” Kanganis, Jamie Holt, Lolly Arkin, Virginia Arronson, Regina and Bob Turkington and Lisa Goodman. You can’t write in a vacuum and each bit of helpful criticism made the book better. Couldn’t do it without you.
I’d also like to thank Sharon Anderson for her help verifying some of the medical information.
Many thanks to my editor at Bloodhound Books, Clare Law, who identified sections, characters and story arcs that needed fleshing out and pointed me in the right direction. You were right! Finally, thank you to the stellar Bloodhound Books team for all their support.
Book Club Questions
1. Oceanside, Florida seems like a quintessential vacation town and is practically a character in itself, do you think holiday towns like this one provide a normal environment or is living in one of these places different because of all the tourism?
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