How could it be? Had one of the tests been wrong? Did SR1 work? Was it a permanent cure or merely a temporary one? And how did the murders of Scott Trian and Bill Whitherson fit in? Were the murders a plot to destroy the clinic? A terrible coincidence? Or was there something else going on?
On the other hand, I had tested Krutzer, Leander, and Singer myself, and they were all cured. There was no question about it. So what exactly was I afraid Harvey had done? Tampered with some patients and not others? That would make no sense. Besides, Winston O’Connor ran most of the tests. Sometimes Eric. Very rarely did Harvey do any lab work.
It took me a while, Susan, but eventually I figured out what he was up to. The proof of Harvey’s crimes is in this packet.
My plane is landing, so I will have to wrap this up now. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I do not know what will happen once I land. For that reason I will save the long explanations and give you some specific instructions. Enclosed are my private journals on each patient. I picked up the blood samples from our storage house in Bangkok. As per the clinic’s rules, all tested specimens were packaged after each test by either Eric Blake or Winston O’Connor. You will notice that there are two blood samples for each patient, labeled A and B. Sample A was taken from the patient when he was admitted (hence HIV positive). Sample B was taken when he was cured (hence HIV negative). Have someone you can trust run DNA tests on the two blood samples. When they don’t match, it will become clear what has been done.
The plane is on the ground now. I do not know if Harvey is acting alone or with some help. I cannot imagine he slaughtered Trian and Whitherson on his own, so I assume he has accomplices. I am sure that he is on to me. So tonight I will hide someplace. Tomorrow morning I will confront him in the clinic, where I know there will be a lot of witnesses and I will be safe. Since you are reading this letter, I guess I screwed up someplace. Know that I love you, Susan, and I am sorry for all the pain I caused. Please let Tommy know that his father will always love him and somehow I will always be with him.
Good-bye, Susan,
Bruce
She did not move. She just sat for a very long time. There was no need to reread the note.
“Susan?”
She turned toward her sister. “Bruce mentioned a package.”
“I mailed it to Harvey yesterday. He thought it might be important.”
Susan sat up. “Does anyone else know about this?”
“Just Sara. She’s with Harvey now.”
“I’m really sorry, Sara,” Harvey said, moving the gun from his left hand to his right. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
Sara stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and horror. “You?”
“Yes.”
“You murdered your own patients?”
“Not murdered,” he corrected. “Sacrificed. I’m not a monster, Sara.”
She glanced at the still body behind her. “Tell that to Eric.”
He smiled his weary smile. “You don’t understand.”
She said nothing.
“It was an impossible struggle from the beginning,” he continued. “Powerful people tried to squash us. You can’t imagine what we went through to get the initial funding for this place.”
Her voice, when it finally came, sounded hollow. “You killed your own patients?”
“They were already dying.”
“From what?”
“AIDS.”
Pause. “I thought they were cured.”
“No.” He smiled sadly. “Please, Sara, you have known me for a long time. I am not an evil man. I want you to understand before…”
“Before what?”
“I’m sorry. I wish there was another way, but there isn’t. As soon as Jennifer told you about the package, the decision was out of my hands. I’ll have no problem convincing her that Bruce’s package had nothing to do with the Gay Slasher. But you would have insisted on the DNA tests.”
“You’re going to kill me.” It was not a question.
“You will have to be sacrificed, yes.”
“And you’re going to kill our baby.”
He winced. “I wish I didn’t have to. You see, Sara, AIDS is a disease unlike any other. One minute the world is focused on it. The next, no one cares. I needed a way to maintain focus.”
“SR1 doesn’t work, does it? It never did. It was all a lie.”
“It worked perfectly in the animal tests,” he said. “Even the FDA agreed with that. The problem is we have not been able to get it to work on humans. But it’s just a matter of time until—”
“Then Michael is doomed.”
He shook his head. “I’m so close, Sara, so damn close. All I needed was a little more time to perfect the formula. But our grant was not going to be extended. Sanders and his fellow conspirators would have seen to that. Our funds were about to be cut off. I needed something, Sara. Some way of keeping the funds.”
“So you faked a cure?”
“It was easy, really,” he said. “I was the one who drew the blood from Trian, Whitherson, and Martino. All I had to do was switch test tubes — replace their blood specimens with someone’s who was HIV negative. It went perfectly.”
“Then why did you murder them?”
“Because they were dying,” he said. “SR1 had managed to put the HIV into a sort of remission for a while, but eventually the treatment accelerated their deterioration. I could only dismiss their worsening condition as a drug side effect for so long. I had to get rid of the evidence. The AIDS virus would have killed them anyway in another month or two.”
“So you had them murdered.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t have George ‘murder’ anybody. I had him speed up the inevitable.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“I did it for them, Sara, not for me.”
“For them?” she repeated incredulously. “You took away their last precious months of life for them?”
“I did not want them to die in vain. I wanted their deaths to mean something, to benefit the AIDS movement.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
His eyes gleamed now. “The publicity, Sara. The media doesn’t focus very long on medical developments, but throw in a Gay Slasher and whammo, you have nationwide press. Look at the NewsFlash report. Parker spent more time on the serial killings than on the AIDS cure. The murders stirred up the masses in a way even Sanders would have been proud of. Record-setting donations have been flooding in since the show aired, not just because we are on the verge of finding a cure, but because people are outraged by the slashings.”
Sara gripped her cane tightly. “You crazy bastard.”
“No, Sara, I am rational. I am looking at it on a cost benefit basis. Trian, Whitherson, and Martino were going to die awful, painful deaths from AIDS. Instead, they were killed mercifully while helping the development of a cure.”
“You call mutilation and torture merciful?”
His smile evaporated. “That was never supposed to happen,” he said quickly. “That was George’s doing. As soon as I found out about it, I put a stop to it. It was a mistake.”
“And what about Bruce and Janice? More ‘mistakes’?”
“I never wanted to hurt them. Bruce stumbled onto the truth. He had to be silenced. And George killed Janice when she spotted him near Michael’s room. They were both accidents. I mourn for them more than anyone. I can’t sleep at night because of what happened to them. But I have to shut my eyes to my pain. When I think of the goal, Sara, when I think of the possibility of curing AIDS, I realize how insignificant a few lives are. I’m not talking about saving hundreds of lives here. I’m talking about saving thousands, perhaps millions, of people.”