Jennifer Riker woke up on the couch. The contents of the packet were scattered around her.
"I'll look through it later, she thought. She showered, dressed, and poured herself a bowl of Triple-Bran, the latest in a series of fad cereals that were supposed to cure everything from cancer to lockjaw.
It tasted like tree bark.
Her sister Susan bought all those crazy health foods, coming home from the supermarket exclaiming, "I just bought (fill in the blank), and my friend (fill in the blank) swears that this will make you feel one hundred percent more (fill in the blank)."
She sighed, carried the bowl back into the den, and sat on the couch.
She glanced at the file she had read yesterday.
Unbelievable. Harvey and Bruce had done it. Cured AIDS.
Turned an HIV positive into an HIV negative. Historic.
Jennifer picked up Scott Trian's file and fingered through the pages until she arrived at the spot where she had left off. She scanned down the page. There. The spot where Trian became HIV negative. She read on. Trian's condition progressed nicely now, though not without some setbacks. Bruce noted:
There are times when Scott is made so weak from the injections of SRI that I fear for him. Harvey and I talked about it last night. We both agree that we have to do something to lessen the side effects. Still, the alternative death from AIDS is far worse than what we are seeing in Trian.
The file held no more surprising revelations, just a few scattered notes about Trian's reaction to SRI. Bruce's last note read:
DNA? A vs. B
What did that mean? She shrugged, put down the file, and picked up another. Whitherson, William. His file was very much like Trian's.
Whitherson had also been transformed to HIV negative, but he had other problems:
Bill's family is so damn un supportive His father won't speak to him, and his mother feels trapped between her husband and her son, afraid to talk to Bill because her husband would see it as some sort of betrayal.
p" Horse's asses, both of them. The funny thing is Bill still loves them like mad. He calls them all the time. I hear him pleading over the phone in a hushed, defeated voice.
"But don't you understand? I'm dying." Still nothing.
And the same last note:
DNA? A vs. B. She read about Krutzer, Theodore, next. His pattern was very similar to the others with only a few noticeable differences:
Unlike Whitherson's family, Teddy's seems positively unbelievable. His father and mother have not only accepted their son's homosexuality, they seem to encourage it. His father invites Teddy's boyfriend to the house on weekends. They go fishing together.
And then further:
Another cured patient. It's too good to be true. Krutzer's illness had never been acute, nothing worse than a bout with hepatitis and a few skin rashes. And now he's cured. Harvey made a suggestion today which I think is valid. The conversation between Harvey, Eric, and me went something like this.
Harvey: You do all the testing on Krutzer, Bruce. Don't let anyone else but yourself touch this case. You do the tests in the lab yourself.
Eric: Why?
Harvey: Independent research. If different people handle different cases, then one man cannot be accused of tampering with the results. I suggest you try to bring in Markey on this one.
Me: Okay, I'll give him a call. I doubt he'll be interested.
Harvey: At least we can say we offered him the opportunity.
Eric: I'm not sure why we have to do this. We don't have time to play lab technicians.
Harvey: It's too important, Eric. We can't let there be any holes in our research for our enemies to exploit.
The rest of the files read similarly, each with its own unique twists and turns. Nothing odd about that. What was odd, however, was that they all ended with the same strange note:
DNA? A vs. B. Jennifer was about to reach for the last file when she remembered the small styrofoam containers. She glanced at them, stacked on the edge of the couch. Each one had a patient's name taped to the outside. She pried open the one that read
"Trian, Scott."
Inside were two small test tubes labeled A and B. What the...?
She pulled the small test tubes more like vials really out of the snug holders. Blood. They were blood samples. She examined the other styrofoam containers. All were the same. A patient's name taped to the styrofoam outside, two test tubes labeled A and B both filled with blood on the inside.
What for?
Then she noticed the small white envelope.
It had fallen under the couch and only a corner of it was visible.
Jennifer reached down and picked up the envelope. Plain white. No return address, no markings. The kind of envelope you'd buy at a five and ten. Bruce had written "Susan" across the front in his familiar scrawl. Jennifer turned the envelope over.
When she read what Bruce had written across the back seal, she felt her stomach drop into her feet. In small, plain block letters, it said:
TO BE OPENED UPON MY DEATH.
"Need some help?"
Max Bernstein looked up at Sara.
"Yeah, come on in. Where's Michael?"
"Being treated," Sara replied.
"Are those the patient files?"
Max nodded, a fresh pencil in his mouth.
"This sucker just gets weirder and weirder."
Sara sat down, unsnapped her brace and rubbed her leg.
"I'm listening."
"Okay," Max began.
"Here are the medical files for all the victims. Let's start with Trian. He was one of the first patients, admitted almost three years ago. Whitherson came in about the same time. Same with Martino, the intravenous drug abuser."
"And Bradley?"
"That's just it. Bradley is the oddball out. He was in here less than a year. He was in the middle of treatment. He was doing well, but he had not yet turned HIV negative. It doesn't fit. Did Harvey fill you in on our talk?"
"Did he tell you about his theory about someone trying to destroy the clinic?"
Sara nodded.
"It made sense to Michael and me."
"Made sense to me too, but there are so many holes. Take Bradley Jenkins, for example. Let's assume that these conspiracy guys are out to get rid of the cured AIDS patients the proof, to use Harvey's word.
Then why kill Bradley Jenkins? He was a new patient at the clinic. And why move his body behind a gay bar? And another thing. If you're out to do serious damage to a place and you don't care about killing a few people in the process, why pussy-foot around? Why not go all out? Why not burn down the Pavilion? Why not just kill Harvey and Eric and destroy their records?"
"I see your point."
"I don't know, Sara, something just doesn't fit. Why did the killer make the murders so obvious?"
"He's a psycho."
"A psycho who has penetrated the inner sanctum of this hospital? I don't think so."
"Maybe he wanted to distract everyone by making them think he was just targeting the gay community," Sara said.
"How so?"
"His first two victims were blatant homosexuals killed in a gruesome manner," Sara explained.
"The press was bound to pick it up. The killer knew that. He also knew that the world would immediately assume the murders were the work of a psychotic homophobe. No one looked deeper than that pat explanation at first. The world searched for the Gay Slasher, a man who murders homosexuals randomly, not a calculating killer intent on exterminating patients at a confidential clinic."
"But the press didn't go after the story that much until..."
"Until they killed the son of a famous senator," Sara finished.
"Which explains why he killed Bradley. It attracted media attention.
Everyone finally focused in on the Gay Slasher."
Max scratched his face, thinking.
"I see what you're saying, but it still doesn't jibe. Why did the killer move Bradley's body behind the gay bar?"
"So the world would know he was gay," Sara tried.
"The killer wanted everyone to think he was the Gay Slasher, a man who terrorized the gay community. Trian and Whitherson were known homosexuals. Bradley's sexual preference, on the other hand, was a well-kept secret. What better way to reveal the truth than to dump Bradley's body behind a gay bar in the Village?" "Okay," he said, "that's theory one. I'm not sure I buy it, but let's move on."