The Dark Side

by Danielle Steel

  The paramedics arrived less than five minutes later, and Zoe let them into the apartment looking terrified.

  “My daughter is having an allergic reaction. I don’t know what happened.” They rushed past her and saw Cathy giving Jaime CPR. Her heart began beating on its own then, but the rhythm was irregular. They applied the defibrillator, shocked Jaime’s heart to regulate it, then felt her pulse, and they nodded at Cathy.

  “She needs epinephrine stat,” she told them. “I’m her pediatrician. We need Benadryl and cortisone. She’s had one dose from an EpiPen, she needs more.”

  “We have them downstairs,” they said as they put Jaime on the gurney, and hurried to the door. Her heart was beating, but Cathy knew it might stop again. The allergic reaction had been faster and worse this time.

  “Are you coming?” she asked, looking hard at Zoe, who nodded, grabbed her purse, and rushed to the door. She didn’t dare stay. The two women got in the elevator with Jaime and the paramedics, and they were in the ambulance a minute later, with the siren shrieking as they headed to NYU. They rushed her into the ambulance entrance, and the code blue team came running and worked on her. Zoe was standing in the doorway of the exam room, sobbing, as she watched them fight for her daughter’s life for the second time. Cathy hung back just long enough to send two texts. She sent the same one to Austin and Dan Knoll. “NYU ER Jaime. Come now.” And on Dan’s she added, “Bring cops.” And then she joined the code blue team to watch them fight to bring Jaime back to a normal state. She was in a coma, but they were working frantically as Zoe stood staring at her.

  “What happened?” she kept saying again and again, and Cathy turned to her with fury in her eyes.

  “You know goddamn well what happened. I saw the cake you threw away, and the EpiPen was waiting on the counter. How were you going to explain it if she died from a cake with honey in it that you gave her? You’re a fool, Zoe, and you tried to kill her.” As she said it, Zoe’s eyes turned into those of a devil as she fixed her gaze on Cathy and looked like she wanted to kill her too.

  “I was going to save her. I was all ready for it. I didn’t know what was in the cake. It had no label on it. I was going to give her the shot and save her.” She was screaming at Cathy, inches from her face. “You ruined everything.” Her voice was an evil growl that Cathy didn’t even recognize as the woman she knew, let alone her friend. Zoe wasn’t her friend anymore. She was a monster.

  “You couldn’t save her. Her allergy is too severe. Do you see what it takes? And she’s not out of the woods yet.” They were intubating her as Cathy said it and she had tears in her eyes. She had the feeling she was watching Jaime die. It was entirely possible, even likely. Zoe’s plan to play savior had backfired, and she was a murderess instead.

  Austin showed up a few minutes later, wild eyed and panting. He had run the last five blocks when his cab got stuck in traffic.

  “What happened? Where is she?” he asked both women and then saw his child on the table with the team working on her, intubated and comatose but still breathing.

  “She had another allergic reaction,” Cathy said soberly.

  “How?” He looked at Zoe, unable to understand, as Dan came down the hall with long strides, with two policemen behind him. “What’s going on?” he asked Cathy.

  She tried to give him the fast version and Austin was listening. Zoe looked like she was about to bolt and run but she didn’t dare with the policemen standing there.

  “I dropped by unannounced for a visit. Zoe and Jaime were there, about to have a party. There were two slices of cake on plates on the table. Jaime’s EpiPen was on the counter, ready to go. While Zoe let me in, Jaime took a big bite of the cake. She was choking and couldn’t breathe almost immediately, her airway closed and her heart stopped. I gave her the shot, Zoe called 911, and I gave Jaime CPR till they got there. And now, here we are again.” She looked at Austin. “If you check your garbage and your kitchen, the two slices of cake are in the trash, and I assume the cake is there somewhere, loaded with honey, and pink icing so Jaime would be sure to eat it. I’m sure Zoe was going to claim she didn’t know what was in the cake. She just told me she was going to save her and I ruined everything. But she tried to kill her first. She thought the EpiPen would do it, and bring her back. I told her before it would be worse next time, apparently, she didn’t believe me. Jaime’s allergy is too severe. She’s in a coma now,” she said for Dan’s benefit, as Austin stood there crying and looked with horror at his wife.

  “How could you do it? How could you, Zoe? And you thought you’d get away with it. You’re insane!” He reached out to grab her with fury in his eyes, as Dan stepped forward with one of the two policemen and blocked him before the scene could get uglier than it already was. They were standing in a little alcove, but a few people had noticed the police arriving and heard the commotion outside the exam room when Zoe screamed at Cathy, and Austin shouted at his wife. A few of the nurses were staring at them.

  “You’re under arrest,” one of the policemen said to Zoe in a firm voice, “for attempted murder,” as Austin stared at her. The policeman read her her rights, and snapped handcuffs on her as Austin looked at her and his rage melted into despair.

  “What if she dies, Zoe?” he said in a choked voice.

  “You’ll survive it,” she said harshly. “I did when Rose died. So did my parents. And Jaime wouldn’t have died. I would have revived her myself if Cathy hadn’t showed up and spoiled it.”

  “You couldn’t have,” Cathy said coldly, as the efforts to save Jaime’s life continued in the exam room.

  “Call me before you go back to the apartment,” Dan said to Austin and Cathy, as the police led Zoe away to put her in the squad car outside to take her to jail. She walked down the hall with her head held high and an icy, angry look on her face. She looked crazy and like a person Austin didn’t even know. Her plan to show off by “saving” Jaime had gone awry and she had tried to kill their child. Austin stared after her with a mixture of sorrow, hatred, and disbelief. “The police have to go in before you do, and collect evidence. It’s a crime scene,” Dan explained and Austin nodded. He wasn’t going to leave Jaime at the hospital until she was either safe again or dead.

  Dan left them alone then, and Austin and Cathy waited until the medical team was satisfied that Jaime was stable, and then they let them go in to see her. She still appeared to be in a coma, but was actually heavily sedated. They had pumped her stomach too to get rid of the honey cake.

  Cathy and Austin sat with her, Cathy offered to leave and he asked her not to. He didn’t want to be alone.

  “You saved her life. Thank God you dropped by,” Austin said in a whisper.

  “I don’t know why I did. I just wanted to say hi. The hand of fate, or of God. Something.” She wiped tears off her cheeks, and they sat looking at Jaime, so tiny on the bed, but she was breathing on her own.

  Jaime opened her eyes finally at midnight, and looked sleepy but she recognized them both. Cathy hadn’t left yet. She and Austin had sat in silence side by side all night, watching Jaime. Dan Knoll had called repeatedly to see how she was. And Austin had called his parents and told them what happened. They both cried for what he and Jaime had gone through. Constance wasn’t surprised.

  “Where’s Mommy?” Jaime asked them. “We were going to have a party. Mommy bought me a pink cake. And then Cathy came, and I had some, and I think I fell asleep.”

  “I know, baby,” Austin said, and didn’t answer her question about Zoe. He didn’t want to lie or tell the truth. How did you tell a three-and-a-half-year-old that her mother tried to kill her and was in jail?

  “Try and sleep some more,” Cathy said softly, and stroked her hair. Jaime drifted off again, and they left the room for a few minutes to talk. “What are you going to tell her?” she asked him and he shook his head.

  “I have no
idea. I don’t even know what to tell myself yet. What are they going to do to Zoe?” He looked overwhelmed by everything that had happened.

  “They may put her in a psych hospital for an evaluation, to see if she’s competent to stand trial. I don’t know much about it.”

  “Neither do I,” he said grimly. But they knew Jaime was going to survive now. She was no longer at risk. The danger was over, but so was life as she knew it. Cathy wondered if she would ever see her mother again, or if she would even remember her, if she lost her at three and a half. She had a long life ahead of her, and a father who loved her and would keep her safe from now on.

  Dan Knoll came back in the morning with a detective and two policemen. Cathy had gone home the night before, and Austin had spent the night in a chair in Jaime’s room and looked it.

  They had to go to the apartment with Austin to collect the evidence, and Cathy agreed to meet them there since she had seen what had happened, and the cake, and could identify it. Jaime was still dozing when they left, and Austin told the nurse they’d be back soon.

  Austin unlocked the door to the apartment on Charles Street with his keys, and the police walked in. Zoe had taken hers with her in her purse when she was arrested. Cathy looked around as they walked in. It was the same scene they had left eighteen hours before, with Jaime dying. The EpiPen was on the floor after Cathy had used it. One of the two policemen picked it up and placed it in a plastic bag as evidence, and Cathy pointed to the garbage. They lifted the bag out and set it on the floor, cut it up one side, and spread it out. The two slices of cake with the pink icing were there, on the pink paper plates. They put them in a separate plastic bag to send to the lab, and they were all sure what they’d find. Then they dug through what was below it, and found the see-through plastic lid from the supermarket cake box, with no label on it. The paper label was also in the garbage with the list of ingredients on it, with honey right there. The label had been torn off the box and crumpled. The whole story and the convicting evidence were there. They put the lid and label in separate bags, and took the paper party plates and candles too. They found the rest of the cake in a cupboard where Zoe had put it hastily when Cathy rang the bell.

  Dan commented that Zoe had no way of getting acquitted with what she had done, what Cathy had seen, and the evidence that the police had just collected. And if they deemed her competent to stand trial, she was going away for a long time, hopefully for life.

  In one fell swoop, Jaime had lost her mother, and Austin his wife. The police spent an hour in the apartment, looking around, photographing some things, but all they needed was the cake, and the list of ingredients on the label from the box. The crux of the matter and proof of Zoe’s crime was there.

  They all walked out together, and Cathy left them once they were outside. The detective said they would meet with her later to get a statement. She hugged Austin then, and he went back to the hospital where Jaime was eating lunch. She asked him the same question again the moment he walked in.

  “Where’s Mommy?”

  “She had to go to California to see Grampa Brad,” was all he could come up with to account for her disappearance. It would explain her absence for a while.

  “Is he sick?”

  “A little, but he’ll be fine.” And so was she. Jaime was recovering, and they said he could take her home in a few hours.

  “When is she coming back?” Jaime asked, looking worried.

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly. All he knew and was infinitely grateful for was that Jaime was alive. Cathy had saved her life. And he didn’t have to protect Jaime from her mother anymore. She was safe at last.

  Chapter 18

  The next days were a blur for Austin with everything he had to do. He called Brad and Pam, out of respect for them, before he left the hospital. He told them what had happened and that Jaime was going to be okay. Brad cried like a child when Austin told him, trying to understand what had gone wrong. He told Austin he was going to hire a lawyer for Zoe.

  “It’s nothing against you. It’s just what I have to do for my little girl,” Brad said. Austin told him where she was, in jail, pending a hearing in thirty days to determine if she was competent to stand trial. Zoe would be sent to a psychiatric hospital in the meantime for evaluation and kept in a locked ward. Her crime was so heinous, trying to kill her own child, that it raised the question of whether she was sane or not. She didn’t look it when they’d taken her away. No further hearings were going to happen, and she wouldn’t be arraigned until the psychiatric evaluation came back to the court in thirty days. If they decided she was unable to stand trial, she would be committed to a hospital for the criminally insane.

  After Austin talked to Brad, Pam got on the phone. She spoke gently to Austin, imagining what he and Jaime had been through.

  “I always suspected there was something wrong with her, even when she was a little girl,” she said quietly. “I’ve been telling Brad that for years. We tried to reach out to her, but I think her mom didn’t want her to come to see us. There’s always been a piece of Zoe missing,” she said sadly. “This is going to be very hard on her dad,” and on all of them.

  “Come and see Jaime if you come to New York. But not right now. I told Jaime that her mom had to go to California to visit you. I said Brad was sick, but not too sick. I’m not sure what else to say to her to account for her mother’s disappearance.” The truth was too ugly to tell. It was hard enough for the adults to try and understand, let alone a child her age, not yet four.

  After he spoke to his own parents, he had messages from his brothers. They wanted to know what they could do to help. They offered to take Jaime, but he wanted to be with her, and keep her at the apartment with him. It was where they both belonged.

  He asked Fiona to come in to help him, and explained the situation to her too. She was so shocked she burst into tears. “Imagine if Jaime had died,” she said in a choked voice. And she felt sorry for Zoe too. It was impossible to understand someone so sick that they would risk killing their own child to try to “rescue” them, and pretend to be a hero, not the murderer that she almost was. The whole idea was desperate and sick, and twisted beyond belief. It was exactly what Paul Anders had described to Cathy, that usually when women with Munchausen by proxy killed their children, it was because their plan had gotten out of hand. Zoe had thought she could impress everyone and save Jaime in a spectacular way with the epinephrine shot, but there was no way she could have. Jaime’s allergy was too severe, even more than Zoe understood.

  Cathy had called Paul Anders that morning and told him what had happened. None of it surprised him, but he was sorry for Austin and his child.

  They’d already heard that the story was going to be in the press the next day, probably on the front page. Austin was sure that no one at the non-profit would believe it. Not Zoe the saint and fabulous mother, it just couldn’t be. She had fooled so many people, even her husband for a long time. Austin felt gullible and foolish and guilty now for not reporting her to CPS sooner, but he hadn’t been sure. It seemed so unreal for so long, and at times she was so loving with Jaime that he thought his fears were wrong. In this case, there was a high price to being right.

  Cathy called to check on them as soon as they got home. Austin had just given Jaime lunch, and Fiona was due in any minute.

  “How are you two doing?” she asked in a tone of concern.

  “We’re okay,” he said, still sounding shell-shocked. “I have to figure out where to go from here, and what to tell Jaime eventually. I can’t tell her that her mother is in California forever. Maybe she could write to her from wherever she is.” Or maybe it would be better to let go now. He didn’t want curiosity gnawing at Jaime later, but he also knew that he could never allow Zoe back into their life. She didn’t belong there. It was a privilege someone would have to earn now to come into their home. It wasn’t a casual thing, ope
n to anyone who drifted through or wanted to visit. It was a sacred trust people had to deserve. He needed to protect himself and Jaime, so nothing like it ever happened again, and he was sure it never would. He had been blind when he’d married Zoe, and the cracks deep within her had never shown until after Jaime was born, and then everything inside her began to crack and break apart. He saw that now.

  He called Zoe’s mother too, which was harder than calling Brad. She was a more withdrawn woman, and parts of her were dead, just as parts of Zoe were broken and had been since her sister died. Beth had never been able to give Zoe what she needed, embrace Jaime or reach out to Austin, and now he had to tell her that her other daughter was lost forever. Beth sounded sad but not surprised.

  “I always knew something like this would happen one day. I saw it, but I didn’t know how to stop it. It was like a train coming at her. There’s nothing you can do for her, Austin, there never was. Don’t torture yourself. Take care of yourself and have a good life, whatever that is to you.”

  “I had a good life with Zoe,” he said, crying again. “It just fell apart.”

  “You didn’t have the life you thought you did, nor the woman. And it didn’t fall apart. Zoe did. Remember that. You’re going to be fine and so is Jaime, whatever happens now.” He had the feeling that she was saying goodbye, and he and Jaime wouldn’t be hearing from her again. Beth couldn’t be close to anyone, not even her own daughter, or granddaughter. He wondered if she ever could, even before she lost Rose. Maybe she was colder than Zoe had remembered, since she was so young. Brad had made his mistakes, but he was basically a warm person and he loved his daughter. Austin was sure he would stand behind her now, even if she went to prison. Austin sensed that Brad would do everything he could to get her committed to a hospital instead. It was where she belonged. Austin knew it too.