Miracle Cure (37 page)

"That's where I came into the picture."

"Yes."

"And I fell for your bullshit hook, line, and sinker."

"You helped me finance the clinic."

"So why did you kill Eric?"

"Eric too became suspicious. Worse, he got proof from the blood sample he took from Michael. I tried to reason with him.

I tried to explain why we had to do all this. But Eric wouldn't listen. He had already put a call in to Markey and was going to tell him everything. I had to stop him before Markey called him back."

Sara shook her head in confusion.

"What does Michael's blood have to do with any of this?"

Harvey moved toward Sara. He grabbed a stool, sat down heavily, and turned toward her.

"It's simple," he said.

"Michael does not have AIDS."

Her heart constricted in her chest. She could barely breathe.

"What?"

"Role reversal, Sara. Think about it a second. In order to make it look like Trian, Whitherson, and Martino were cured, I switched their HIV-positive blood with healthy blood. In Michael's case I did the opposite I exchanged his healthy, HIV-negative blood with someone's who was HIV-positive. He was diagnosed with AIDS, but he never had it."

"But what about his symptoms? What about the stomach pain and the jaundice?"

"Oh, Michael does have hepatitis," he said.

"Do you know how easy it is to give someone hepatitis? All you do is jab him with a contaminated needle. Remember when he came to see me when he had the flu a few months back? The flu shot I gave him came from a contaminated needle..."

"You sick son of a bitch..."

"Then all I had to do was wait for the symptoms to crop up.

If they didn't that happens sometimes I would have found some other way to make him think he was sick with something that could preclude AIDS.

And even though Michael was neither gay nor a drug user, his blood transfusion in the Bahamas gave me the excuse to test him without raising too many eyebrows."

His words bombarded her from every direction, but there was no way to fend off the blows.

"How could you?" she screamed.

"What was the point. Why "

" did I pretend Michael has AIDS?" he finished for her.

"Isn't it obvious?"

Her vocal cords would not work. She could only shake her head.

"Do you remember when we first diagnosed Michael as being HIV positive?" he asked.

"I told Michael that he had a responsibility to go public. I told him that he could make the disease real to the millions of people who ignored the threat because they saw AIDS as just a gay disease. A healthy, handsome, popular basketball star like Michael could bring it out in the open, focus the world's attention on this tragedy like no one before him. To the world he is a fairy-tale prince. To me, he was Rock Hudson and Ryan White rolled into one. He could educate the world. His name alone could finance my research for years."

She gripped the cane ever tighter, her rage mounting.

"He was your friend."

"But don't you see? I was right, Sara. Michael accomplished all of that and more. The fact that he was straight and married to the beautiful and famous Sara Lowell made it all the better even though Sanders tried to take some shine off the apple by dragging out Michael's stepdad."

"You callous bastard," she shouted.

"Then what? Were you going to 'cure' him and make yourself a godamn hero?"

"Not me," he said.

"Never me. It was all for the clinic. It was all in pursuit of finding an AIDS cure."

"How could you?" she hissed.

"Michael loved you."

Harvey looked at her strangely.

"And I love him. I would rather have torn off my own limbs than hurt Michael, you know that. But what good would it have done? I needed someone like Michael. And think about it, Sara: what was the big sacrifice?

He never had AIDS. Hepatitis caught early is not very dangerous.

His life was never in any real danger. Yes, he would have been out of basketball for a while, but so what? He was on his last legs anyway.

And even if he wasn't, it was such a small price to pay for so much good."

"You're insane."

"You're not listening to me."

"I don't want to listen to you. I want to rip your eyes out of your head. I want to crush your skull with my cane."

He raised the gun.

"Sara..."

"My father was right about you."

"Huh?"

"You are just like him only worse. Blinded by your passion.

I don't want to hear any more about how you murdered people and turned lives upside down. I want to know where my husband is."

His face clouded over.

"I never planned on having George kidnap Michael. I thought I could keep him as a patient at the clinic for a month or two and then make him an out-patient so that he would lead a fairly normal life. In a year or so, when the AIDS vaccine became a reality, I would take an HIV test and declare him cured. But someone got in the way."

"Who?"

"Sanders and his co-conspirators."

"What do they have to do with Michael?"

"After the Newsflash broadcast, Markey visited me in the clinic, remember? The government wanted proof that SRI worked. So they came up with the idea of making Michael a test case and monitoring his progress from the very beginning.

Remember how upset I was? I screamed about how the government was trying to stall my progress. But in truth "

"You were afraid they would learn you were a fraud."

He nodded.

"All they had to do was run one HIV test on Michael and all my work would have collapsed around my head.

And worse, Markey was sending in his men the next day. What choice did I have? I had to get rid of Michael. So I had George kidnap him."

"Where is he now?"

He did not answer the question. Instead, he stared down at his gun.

"I have to kill you, Sara. I'm sorry."

"What is your plan this time, Harvey? How are you going to explain away my death? Or Eric's?"

"It won't be very difficult. Eric killed you because you discovered the truth about him. Then he ran away. Disappeared."

"What truth?"

"That Eric was the man behind the Gay Slasher plot. First, I'll blow the lid off Sanders' conspiracy. Cassandra will be so outraged by your murder that I am sure she will cooperate. From there it won't be any problem to convince the media that Eric worked for the conspiracy. The media will eat it up, make it sound like the Goliath right-wing government was picking on the little David clinic. The money will come pouring in."

Harvey cocked the gun's hammer.

"The police will search for Eric. They may even find him wherever I dump him, I don't know.

If they do, everyone will figure his co-conspirators murdered him to keep him quiet. The media loves that kind of stuff."

Sara stared at him with a look that was nearly palpable.

"You'll never be able to tie the conspirators to the murders."

"I don't have to. The speculation will be enough."

"Max will figure you out."

"You give him too much credit, Sara. All the evidence is gone.

I killed Martino with the cyanide injection. The blood samples in Bruce's package have been destroyed. There's nothing left to tie me to the murders... except you."

A million questions ran through her mind, but the same one kept surfacing.

"Where is Michael?"

Harvey stepped toward her.

"When I found out that Lieutenant Bernstein knew about George, I realized that it was just a matter of time before he got caught. I had to cut my losses.

So I told George to burn down the storage house in Bangkok something else I could blame on the right-wing conspiracy."

His smile was back, his eyes bright and maniacal.

"Don't you see the irony, Sara? Everyone thinks that the patients were murdered by fascists who wanted to stop me from proving there was an AIDS cure. But actually, it was the opposite the murders made it impossible to prove that there was no cure."

Sara's eyes bore into his.

"What happened to Michael?"

Once again the smile left his face. He lowered his gaze.

"He's dead, Sara. George killed him. I begged him not to, but he hung up on " There was a sudden knock on the lab door.

"Dr. Riker?"

A nurse.

Harvey turned to Sara, his face suddenly panicked.

"If you call out, I will kill her too."

The nurse knocked again.

"Dr. Riker?"

"I'm in the middle of an experiment," he said, his voice cracking.

"Is it important?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Hold on a minute."

He turned back to Sara. Her big green eyes were tear-filled now. There was no longer confusion or horror in them just devastation and pure hatred.

"Get in the refrigeration room," he whispered.

"You killed Michael."

He glanced at the gun and then back at Sara.

"Don't make me kill the nurse too."

She knew it was no idle threat.

"Drop the cane on the floor and move back. Now."

With her eyes still on him, she dropped the cane and slowly backed up into the refrigeration room. Her foot bumped into something and she realized with revulsion that it was Eric Blake's body.

"The room is soundproof so I wouldn't try screaming," he said.

"Please don't bring any more innocent people into this.

Enough have died."

The cold closed in around Sara as Harvey shut the refrigerator door and locked it with a padlock. Then he moved across the room, unlocked the lab door, and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

"What is it?" he asked the nurse.

"It's Michael Silverman," the nurse said excitedly.

"He's here."

"What?"

"He just arrived from Bangkok."

The sirens blasted.

"Drive faster, Willie."

"Jesus, Twitch, I can't drive through cars."

"Then drive on the sidewalk."

"Here." Willie handed him a pencil.

"What?"

"Suck on your pacifier and tell me what's going on."

"I was an idiot, that's what's going on." Max tossed the pencil on the car floor.

"I spent so much time trying to figure out who wanted to destroy the clinic that I couldn't see what was so obvious."

"What?"

"The murders were helping the clinic, not hurting it."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Willie asked.

"I just got the test results. Riccardo Martino was HIV positive.

Krutzer, Leander, and Singer were HIV negative."

"Speak English."

"Martino had AIDS. The other three don't." "I thought Martino was cured by this miracle drug."

"SRI is not a miracle drug. It doesn't work. Harvey Riker faked the whole thing."

"The head of the clinic?"

Max nodded.

"At first I thought it might be his assistant, Eric Blake."

"So what changed your mind?"

"Something that happened the night Michael was kidnapped.

Sara was about to go home for the night when she bumped into Eric Blake. He was heading upstairs to run an errand. Sara volunteered to do it for him, and he let her."

"So?"

"If Eric Blake was behind the kidnapping, he would have never let Sara go back upstairs. He would have insisted on running the errand himself."

"Let me get this straight this Riker guy faked like he had a cure?"

"Right." "But he didn't run all the tests. I thought you said the other docs ran blood tests too."

"They did. But look at the rotation. Our three murder victims were Trian, Whitherson, and Martino. All three were admitted by Bruce Grey.

That meant that Bruce Grey took a blood test, concluded that they had the AIDS virus, and admitted them.

Then Riker took over. He was the one who drew the blood that was used to determine if they were cured. He must have sent the lab someone else's blood someone who never even had AIDS.

Naturally, when the lab tested this blood, it came back negative.

Ergo, they were 'cured'. A 'miracle'."

"But I still don't get it, Twitch. Didn't Bruce Grey do the later tests with some of the patients? And didn't you just say the three guys Dr. Zry tested were all cured?"

Max smiled.

"Krutzer, Leander, and Singer weren't cured," he said, "because they never had AIDS in the first place."

"Huh?"

"All three were admitted by Harvey Riker. So what did he do? He switched the blood samples right in the beginning except this time he switched their HIV negative blood for the blood of someone who had AIDS."

"Mother fucker," Willie exclaimed.

"So it looked like they had AIDS when they never did?"

"Right. Then Harvey probably infected them with a few mild flu viruses to make it look like they were really sick. When the time came, Bruce Grey performed the blood tests. Since they never had AIDS in the first place, their tests came back negative.

Ergo, they were 'cured'."

"Unfuckinbelievable. When did you start putting it together?"

"When George Camron was raving about being paid late. I didn't pay much attention at the time, but then I got to thinking why was he paid all of a sudden? How did his boss get his hands on money so fast? Then I remembered my original question who benefits? Who got the good press? Who put pressure on his foes to keep financing them?"

"The clinic."

Max nodded.

"And all the donations solicited from Newsflash went directly to the clinic."

"Riker used the money to pay off Camron?" "Some of it. Camron also said he never killed Martino. So I got to thinking who had the best opportunity to kill Riccardo Martino? Riker claimed to be the last guy who saw him alive.

He probably injected him with cyanide a few minutes before O'Connor knocked him over the head."

"You got a motive for all of this?" Max thought for a minute.

"It's an unselfish, albeit warped, one Riker thought he could cure AIDS. He tried desperately to keep his clinic financed, but after their first year he must have realized that he needed something big or their grant would get cut off. That's when he decided to fake the cure. But he also knew that Trian, Whitherson, and Martino would never stand up to close scrutiny and eventually they would die. So he had to find other patients who could stand up to any test. He had to find patients who would be legitimately HIV negative when tested by the government. That's when he brought in Krutzer, Leander, and Singer."