Miracle Cure (1991)

by Harlan Coben

  Evidently, I was wrong. But if I had gone to the media and exposed th e t ruth, I would have played into the hands of our enemies, the bigots wh o w ant to take away all AIDS financing. Now, it is your choice to make.

  Where did it suddenly go wrong? I don't know. When did I first becom e s uspicious? That too is a tough question to answer. I think it was afte r t he first murder, the murder of Scott Trian, but more likely, it wa s a fter Bill Whitherson was killed in a similar fashion. The timing of th e m urders seemed such a strange coincidence to me. Harvey and Eric did no t s ee it that way.

  They feared that someone was targeting our cured patients. But I sa w s omething else unusual the recent deterioration of both Trian an d w hitherson. We had all assumed that they were suffering from SRI sid e e ffects, but what if that wasn't so? Whatever was wrong with Scott an d b ill had still been in its infancy, but what if it was someho w a IDS-related?

  Now that they were both dead and buried, there was no way to check. I a sked Harvey about the possibility, but he just shrugged it off, whic h w as not like him. I tried to press the issue, but the more I did, th e m ore hostile Harvey became.

  "Whose side are you on anyway?" he would ask.

  "If you think the cure isn't working, go re-test Krutzer, Leander, an d s inger."

  I did. I was relieved to see that they were all still HFV negative.

  But then again, they had not been treated as long as Trian o r w hitherson. That bothered me. I was going to confront Harvey again bu t d ecided against it.

  He was all worked up over the latest round of proposed budget cuts. Th e m embers of the medical budget committee were preparing to pounce upon u s l ike so many vultures on a wounded animal. The competition for funds i s i ncredible. We spend more time agonizing over budget cuts than on curin g p atients a shame but that is reality.

  I decided to sneak behind Harvey's back and draw blood from Riccard o m artino (you will find his chart enclosed in the packet). Then I had hi s b lood tested.

  When the results of his Western blot and ELISA came back, I wanted t o s cream. Martino was HFV positive.

  He had ADDS. I panicked and ran toward Harvey's office to tell him th e a wful news. But something made me stop. Harvey's blind dedication ha s a lways intimidated me, but for the first time I was actually afraid o f h im.

  Our funding was about to be cut off, and I knew Harvey would do anythin g t o keep us operating. But how far had he gone?

  I walked into his office calmly and asked him when he planned on testin g m artino again. He informed me that a result should be ready tomorrrow.

  I, of course, did not sleep that night. When I awoke in the morning, I s printed into the lab, checked Martino's code number, and looked at th e b lood sample for myself. Imagine my surprise to find both the Wester n b lot and ELISA test showed that Martino was HIV negative, not positive.

  How could it be? Had one of the tests been wrong? Did SRI work? Was it a p ermanent cure or merely a temporary one? And how did the murders o f s cott Trian and Bill Whitherson fit in? Were the murders a plot t o d estroy the clinic? A terrible coincidence? Or was there something els e g oing on?

  On the other hand, I had tested Krutzer, Leander, and Singer myself, an d t hey were all cured. There was no question about it. So what exactly wa s i afraid Harvey had done? Tampered with some patients and not others?

  That would make no sense. Besides, Winston O'Connor ran most of th e t ests. Sometimes Eric. Very rarely did Harvey do any lab work.

  It took me a while, Susan, but eventually I figured out what he was u p t o. 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 happe n o nce I land. For that reason I will save the long explanations and giv e y ou some specific instructions. Enclosed are my private journals on eac h p atient. I picked up the blood samples from our storage house i n b angkok. As per the clinic's rules, all tested specimens were package d a fter each test by either Eric Blake or Winston O'Connor. You wil l n otice that there are two blood samples for each patient, labeled A an d b . Sample A was taken from the patient when he was admitted (hence HFV p ositive). Sample B was taken when he was cured (hence HFV negative).

  Have someone you can trust run DMA tests on the two blood samples. Whe n t hey 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 alon e o r with some help. I cannot imagine he slaughtered Trian and Whitherso n o n his own so I assume he has accomplices. I am sure that he is on t o m e. So tonight I will hide someplace.

  Tomorrow morning I will confront him in the clinic where I know ther e w ill be a lot of witnesses and I will be safe. Since you are readin g t his 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 kno w t hat his father will always love him and somehow I will always be wit h h im.

  Good-bye, Susan.

  Bruce She did not move. She just sat for a very long time. There was n o n eed to reread the note.

  "Susanr She turned toward her sister.

  "Bruce mentioned a package." "I mailed it to Harvey yesterday. He t hought 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 han d i nto 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 wen t t hrough 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 a s j ennifer told you about the package, the decision was out of my hands.

  "I'll have no problem convincing her that Brace's package had nothing t o d o 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 an y o ther. One minute the world is focused on it. The next, no one cares.

  I needed a way to maintain focus."

  "SRI doesn't work, does it? It never did. It was all a lie." "It worke d p erfectly in the animal tests," he said.

  "Even the PDA agreed with that. The problem is we have not been able t o g et 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 tim e t o 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 wa y o f 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 wit h s omeone's who was HIV negative. It went perfectly."

  "Then why did you murder them?" "Because they were dying," he said.

  "SRI had managed to put the HIV into a sort of remission for a while , but eventually the treatment accelerated their deterioration. I coul d o nly dismiss their worsening condition as a drug side effect for s o l ong. I had to get rid of the evidence. The AIDS virus would have kille d t hem 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 mea n s omething, 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 medica l d evelopments, but throw in a Gay Slasher and whammo, you have nationwid e p ress. Look at the News Flash report. Parker spent more time on th e s erial killings than on the AIDS cure. The murders stirred up the masse s i n a way even Sanders would have been proud of.

  Record-setting donations have been flooding in since the show aired, no t j ust because we are on the verge of finding a cure, but because peopl e a re 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 death s f rom AIDS. Instead, they were killed painlessly while helping th e d evelopment 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 sto p t o 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 hi m n ear Michael's room. They were both accidents. I mourn for them mor e t han 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 ho w i nsignificant a few lives are. I'm not talking about saving hundreds o f l ives here. I'm talking about saving thousands, perhaps millions, o f p eople."

  Her harsh glare did not waver.

  "So they were expendable?"

  "I know it sounds cruel, but it's true."

  "The end justifies the means?"

  "When the end is something as important as an AIDS vaccine, of cours e t he end justifies the means. Wouldn't you sacrifice one person to save a t housand? If you could go back in time, wouldn't you murder Hitle r r ather than let him kill six million Jews?"

  "Don't compare innocent victims with Hitler."

  "That's not the point and you know it. I am talking about life-and-deat h r ealities here. Sometimes the innocent must suffer, it's a fact of life.

  But if we can stamp out AIDS, isn't it a small price to pay? Wouldn't a ny good person be willing to sacrifice his life to save thousands o f o thers?"

  "Why did you kill Bradley Jenkins? He wasn't one of your cure d p atients."

  "But he was dying and frankly speaking I was terrified of how his fathe r w ould react if he died while under my treatment. It could have bee n d isastrous for the clinic."

  "And that's why you 'sacrificed' him?" "Not just that." Harvey pause d a nd took a deep breath. He tried to renew his smile, but it neve r r eached his eyes.

  "Bradley was the third gay man murdered by the Gay Slasher, remember?

  The first two, Scott Trian and Bill Whitherson, were ignored by th e m edia for the most part. Why? Because no one cared. Trian and Whitherso n w ere nothing but a couple of unknown faggots.

  Ten Trians and Whithersons would have to die before the media reall y p aid attention. But once the Gay Slasher killed the son of a Unite d s tates senator, once Bradley's bloody body had been found behind a ga y b ar, then the media became outraged. You're a reporter, Sara. Thin k a bout it. When did the media become interested in the case? Not unti l b radley was murdered. Then the sympathy began to build. All I had to d o w as let the world know about the connection to the clinic."

  "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 sampl e h e 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 hi m e verything. 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, an d t urned 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 loo k l ike Trian, Whitherson, and Martino were cured, I switched thei r h IV-positive blood with healthy blood. In Michael's case I did th e o pposite I exchanged his healthy, HIV-negative blood with someone's wh o w as HIV-positive. He was diagnosed with AIDS, but he never had it."

  "But what about his symptoms? What about the stomach pain and th e j aundice?"

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

  "Do you know how easy it is to give someone hepatitis? All you do is ja b h im with a contaminated needle. Remember when he came to see me when h e h ad the flu a few months back? The flu shot I gave him came from a c ontaminated 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 wa y t o make him think he was sick with something that could preclude AIDS.

  And even though Michael was neither gay nor a drug user, his bloo d t ransfusion in the Bahamas gave me the excuse to test him withou t r aising too many eyebrows."

  His words bombarded her from every direction, but there was no way t o f end 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 hi m t hat he could make the disease real to the millions of people wh o i gnored the threat because they saw AIDS as just a gay disease. A h ealthy, handsome, popular basketball star like Michael could bring i t o ut in the open, focus the world's attention on this tragedy like no on e b efore him. To the world he is a fairy-tale prince. To me, he was Roc k h udson and Ryan White rolled into one. He could educate the world. Hi s n ame alone could finance my research for years."

  She gripped the cane ever tighter, her rage mounting.

  "He was your friend."

&nb
sp; "But don't you see? I was right, Sara. Michael accomplished all of tha t a nd more. The fact that he was straight and married to the beautiful an d f amous Sara Lowell made it all the better even though Sanders tried t o t ake 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 godam n h ero?"

  "Not me," he said.

  "Never me. It was all for the clinic. It was all in pursuit of findin g a n 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 hur t m ichael, you know that. But what good would it have done? I neede d s omeone like Michael. And think about it, Sara: what was the bi g s acrifice?

  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 o f b asketball 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 muc h g ood."

  "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 you r h ead. 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 turne d l ives 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 kee p h im as a patient at the clinic for a month or two and then make him a n o ut-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 an d d eclare 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 u p w ith the idea of making Michael a test case and monitoring his progres s f rom the very beginning.