“Yes.”
“Interesting.” Max put his pencil into his mouth and looked up at the ceiling. “So the prowler may have been trying to find out names of patients or the prognosis of a patient.”
Harvey sat up. “Could have been,” he said, swinging his feet onto the floor.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to check my files.”
“Wait a second,” Max said, snapping his fingers. “Was there any patient recently admitted? Was there anybody whose identity you wanted to keep confidential?”
Harvey stopped.
“You can tell him,” Sara said.
“Tell me what?”
It was Sara who responded. “Michael was admitted today. He has AIDS.”
NOT too far from where Sara, Max, and Harvey were talking, Janice Matley, the Sidney Pavilion’s most trusted nurse, knew something was wrong the moment she opened the door. She sensed it. There was something about the stillness of the bed, the way the sheet was twisted around the body, the way the head lolled limply off the pillow. Janice felt a creeping dread in the pit of her stomach.
She knew.
Janice Matley was a heavyset black woman in her mid-fifties. She had been a nurse for the better part of thirty years and had worked for Dr. Riker and Dr. Grey for the past decade. She had been crushed when Dr. Grey committed suicide, absolutely devastated. Such a lovely man, poor thing. And a great doctor. He and Dr. Riker had been perfect partners, complementing each other like no other two men could. Dr. Grey was the heart, the team player, the one with the good bedside manner, the one who felt for every patient. Dr. Riker was the brains, the leader, the drive, the one who would do what had to be done and blind himself to the personal price.
And Dr. Eric Blake? Janice was not sure where she would place him. He was a bit of a paradox, that one. He too was dedicated, spending all his time in the clinic like Dr. Riker, but somehow he seemed distant, aloof. Oh, he cared about his patients immensely and Janice knew that Dr. Blake would follow Dr. Riker to the ends of the earth and back, but he still seemed so . . . unfeeling. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Just because she could not warm up to him did not mean he was not a nice man. He was a fine person, a fine doctor, and smart as they come. His patients and colleagues respected him greatly. He just wasn’t . . . warm, that’s all.
Janice stepped toward the patient with the blank facial expression of an experienced nurse. Inside, she could feel something tremble. She reached the bed and flicked on the reading lamp. Her knees went wobbly. The patient’s eyes, glassy and uncomprehending, looked straight through her. His lips were parted and frozen. His arms felt almost brittle, like the branches on an old tree that would break rather than bend.
Janice ran for the door.
MAX stared at Sara. “Michael has AIDS?”
She nodded.
He collapsed into a chair. “I don’t know what to say, Sara.”
“He’ll be fine,” Sara said firmly.
He nodded, unsure what to say next. “Who knows about Michael’s condition?”
“Aside from us,” Harvey replied, “just Eric and maybe one of the hospital nurses.”
“Maybe?”
“There is a good chance that the nurse might recognize his face.”
“Who’s the nurse?”
“Her name is Janice Matley.”
“You trust her?”
“Completely.”
He shook his head. “I don’t care how much security you have around here. There is no way you’re going to be able to keep this a secret.”
“We know that,” Sara said. “Michael has scheduled a press conference for tomorrow evening. It’ll be covered live on NewsFlash.”
Bernstein’s eyes squinted into small slits. “Are you trying to tell me that Michael is going to tell the world he has AIDS?”
Sara nodded.
“And then you’re going to do the report on SR1?”
“Not me,” Sara corrected. “I’m too close to this now. Donald Parker is going to do it.”
“And what exactly is Parker going to cover?” Max asked. “The AIDS cure? The Gay Slasher connection? Senator Jenkins’ kid being treated at the clinic?”
“All of it,” Sara replied.
Max took the pencil out of his mouth and let go a whistle. “That’s going to be one hell of a story. The whole country is already talking about the Gay Slasher story. Wait till John Q. Public finds out that the murders are connected to a clinic that’s found a cure for AIDS. And then add the fact that Michael Silverman has AIDS and is being treated at the same clinic.” Bernstein shook his head again. “It’s going to be unbelievable.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“Okay,” Max said, “switch gears with me a second, Doc. You said the lab door was locked when you tried the knob, right?”
“Right.”
“Who has a key besides you?”
“Eric and Winston O’Connor, the chief lab technician.”
“Does this O’Connor know about Michael?”
“No,” Harvey replied, “Winston doesn’t know the names of any of the patients in here. Like I said before, the test results are coded. The people in the lab never see the names, only numbers. In other words Winston O’Connor sees the test results, but he is ‘blind’ as to whom it involves. We even change their code numbers weekly so that they cannot be traced down.”
“You’re a cautious man, Dr. Riker.”
“Almost paranoid, right?”
Bernstein was about to answer when they heard a shout. Janice Matley stuck her head through the doorway.
“Dr. Riker, come quick!” Janice shouted, though she knew it was much too late.
“What is it?”
“Code blue! A patient’s arrested!”
12
JENNIFER Riker scanned the contents in the packet. Little of it made sense. First, there were the files.
Being a doctor’s wife, Jennifer had seen plenty of patient files before but these were considerably more vague than most. Specifics were not jotted down—more like Bruce’s overall opinions and thoughts on the patient. A journal almost. She read the neatly typed name on the label of the first file: Trian, Scott. She jumped back to the beginning of the file and saw a whole slew of numbers:1/9 897a83
1/16 084c33
1/23 995d42
1/30 774c09
2/06 786m60
They continued in a similar pattern for two full pages. Jennifer went to the kitchen and grabbed a calendar. She guessed that 1/9 must stand for January 9, 1/16 for January 16, and so on. She checked the calendar. January 9 was a Monday, as was every other day that followed. For some reason Bruce had jotted down a five-digit number with a letter between the third and fourth numeral on every Monday.
Why?
She shrugged and continued to read. Very little of it made sense to her—a lot of medical jargon—but early on she read something that she understood all too clearly:HIV positive. T cell count very low. Signs of Kaposi’s sarcoma.
The word wasn’t there, but Jennifer knew what Bruce was trying to say: AIDS. In fact she could not find the term anywhere in any of the reports, as though the very acronym should be avoided, whispered, never written in anything but easy-to-erase pencil.
AIDS.
She continued to read. A few pages later another paragraph gave her reason to pause. Bruce’s handwriting was bright now, soaring, reflecting the mood he had obviously felt at this moment. She had seen what the job of medical research could do to a man, the highs and the lows, how every setback brought on depression and every breakthrough a major high. Emotions swayed on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.
Good news. Trian appears to be getting better. His progress is remarkably similar to the animal tests which proved so successful. It is hard not to get your hopes up when you chart it. The SR1 has taken its toll on him, but for the first time he appears genuinely healthy. Is it simply remission or something much more?
And ten months later:We are finally read
y. Harvey and I will know tomorrow. I can’t believe it. Both of us are so anxious that we keep snapping at one another and anyone who happens to be around us. Poor Eric. Harvey almost bit his head off for nothing. He felt bad about it afterwards, like Harv always does when he loses his temper. Then he tried to make it up to him by repeatedly complimenting Eric on his work.
I can’t blame Harvey for being a little edgy. This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for.
What was Bruce talking about? What were they waiting for? Jennifer noted the date. Nine months ago. So much had happened to her in the last nine months—leaving Harvey, moving to California—but when Jennifer read what happened the next day, she realized how insignificant the changes in her life had been. Bruce’s words put her own private world back in perspective, and for the first time in many months she felt the hollow pang of inadequacy ripple anew from the distant recesses of her mind.
“My God,” she uttered out loud. “It can’t be.”
She swallowed and reread the page, sure that she had misunderstood the words:I am not ashamed to say that tears keep running down my face as I write this. Powerful emotions keep crashing over me. It’s more than I can take. It’s more than I ever expected to hear. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me go back a moment. I’ll try to be as precise as possible for the sake of posterity.
Harvey and I wanted to see the Trian results for ourselves. After all, this is hardly the kind of thing you wait for the lab boys to send you a report on. So we walked toward the lab with the controlled rush of school children heading for recess under a teacher’s watchful eye. Winston seemed surprised to see us. He asked what we were doing in the lab. I told him we wanted the results for 443t90. Why the rush? Winston asked. Harvey became a little impatient, which was certainly understandable under the circumstances, and told him to hand over the file. Winston did.
We were too nervous to open it in the lab so we did our “trying not to run” bit back down to my office. Janice stopped us on the way to ask a question, but we just blew right by her. She looked at us like we had lost our minds. We hustled into my office and closed the door. Harvey handed me the file. I can’t look, he said.
I opened it. Trian was HIV negative. His T cell count was almost normal. My heart leapt into my throat while Harvey stood without moving. I think he was in shock. We called in Eric and told him the news. He and I began to shout and jump around like Super Bowl champs, but not Harv. He just stood to the side and looked off at nothing. What’s the matter? I asked him. We’ve done it.
Harv shook his head. Not so fast, he said. We have a lot still to be done.
But look at the results, I insisted. He’s HIV negative.
Harvey: Yes, but for how long? It’s encouraging but what do we know for sure? We have to test him again.
Me: But this is just what we need to get the place going again. We needed this boost, this kick in the ass. The PHS will give us more money now. Our grant will have to be extended.
Harvey: Timing is everything.
Me: What does that mean?
Harvey: It means that we have to keep this quiet. Can you imagine the uproar if such news got out? The press, the scrutiny? We’ll lose our anonymity.
Eric said nothing.
Harvey: No, my friends, for right now, we should tell no one. We will reveal little bits—enough to maintain interest and finances—but not enough for anyone to know for sure. In the meantime let’s make sure everything is well documented. Send the sample to Bangkok on Friday.
Jennifer could not believe what she was reading. HIV negative? They had turned someone who had been HIV positive back into HIV negative. The disclosure hit her like a heavyweight.
They’ve cured AIDS.
That was probably optimistic thinking, but the evidence was right in front of her. They had done it. Somehow they had found a cure for the AIDS virus. And Harvey had never mentioned it to her.
It was all so unbelievable. The startling revelation wearied her. She put the file down and closed her eyes. She wanted just to rest them for a few minutes before continuing to read, but exhaustion got the better of her. She slid into the cusp between consciousness and slumber and her head tilted back. One question kept gnawing at the base of her brain as she glided down into a deep, sound sleep: Why had Bruce committed suicide right after mailing out this packet?
RALPH Edmund, the county coroner, rolled the stretcher past Max. Ralph looked like a coroner—to be more precise, a mortician. Sallow skin, tall, thin body, thin black hair, long fingers. On the other hand he never dressed like a mortician. He wore loud colors, polyester prints, and ostentatious gold jewelry. He also did not act like a mortician. Ralph was emotional, loud, uncouth as all hell. Even better, he had the charming habit of chewing tobacco and spitting the black-yellow juice wherever and whenever he saw fit.
“I want the autopsy done right away,” Max whispered to the coroner.
“Is that why you called me down here personally?” Ralph asked.
Max nodded. “Check everything.”
“Okay,” Ralph replied, a thick ball of tobacco bulging in his cheek. “I’ll get to it later this afternoon.”
“Now. Right now. And get all the blood samples you can out of him. I want you to run a full battery of tests on him.”
“Like what?”
“We’ll go over it later.”
“Hey, Twitch, why you whispering? He’s not going to wake up. Ha!”
“Hilarious. Just find out what killed him.” Max turned and moved toward Harvey. The doctor looked pale and exhausted. “Where’s Martino’s roommate?”
“Kiel Davis? I had him moved to another room. He’s being sedated.”
“I want to speak with him.”
“Later,” Harvey replied. He shook his head. “My God, I can’t believe this.”
“What’s to believe?” Max asked, flipping through his notepad. “There was no visible trauma, no blood, no stab or gunshot wounds, no signs of a struggle. The victim was a patient at an AIDS clinic, so we can assume he was in poor health. All signs point to death by natural causes, right?”
Harvey did not reply right away. “Ricky Martino was no angel,” he said at last. “He was an intravenous drug abuser. He used to push drugs at a local high school.”
“Irrelevant. How sick was he?”
“Actually,” Harvey replied, “Martino was cured.”
“He didn’t have AIDS?”
“Not anymore. His last test showed he was HIV negative. He was still undergoing more treatment, of course, but he was on his way to a full recovery.”
“Interesting,” Max said.
“To be frank,” Harvey continued, “I wasn’t crazy about treating Martino.”
“Why not?”
“Because he was a lousy candidate. For one thing, he was a heroin addict.”
“Then why did you?” Sara asked. “With so many good candidates willing to give anything a try, why would you choose Martino?”
“Because we wanted a cross section of patients—not just gay men. So Bruce brought Martino in. Bruce liked Martino. He believed in him.”
“And you didn’t?” Sara continued.
Harvey shrugged. “Intravenous drug abusers, by and large, are a rather sordid group. I confess I’m no big fan of treating IVDAs—not for any moral reason but simply because they are unreliable data. Addicts cannot be trusted. On top of that, most of them are already unhealthy from a lifetime of abusing their bodies, which makes their chances of fighting the disease that much slimmer.”
“Then what do you think killed him, Doctor?” Max asked.
“I don’t know.” He paused to gather his thoughts. “I just don’t understand it. I was in this room less than an hour ago.”
“Before you got hit on the head?”
“Right before.”
“And Martino appeared fine?”
“He was breathing, if that’s what you mean. Look, Martino was not the healthiest man alive, but he had nothing that
would have led to an acute death like this. And with the prowler in here tonight and all . . . it just seems like a hell of a coincidence.”
Max folded his arms across his chest, his face twisted in heavy thought. “If Martino was murdered, it puts this whole thing in a new light.”
“What do you mean?” Harvey asked.
“New M.O., for one,” he answered.
“No stabbing,” Sara agreed.
“But what about Bruce?” Harvey said. “He wasn’t stabbed either.”
Bernstein nodded slowly and began to pace. “Let’s slow down a minute. Five people are dead, four patients, one doctor. Three—Trian, Whitherson, and Jenkins—were stabbed to death under similar, though not identical, circumstances.”
“We know all this,” Harvey said impatiently.
“Just bear with me, okay? What do the three patients have in common?”
“They were gay,” Sara began, “and they were all being treated at the same AIDS clinic.”
“Now add Martino to the list, assuming he too was murdered.”
“Then we can rule out a gay basher,” Harvey noted. “Martino was heterosexual.” His beeper went off. “Damn, I have to go.”
“I’ll need to speak to you later,” Max said. “I also want to see your files on the murder victims.”
Harvey nodded and left. Bernstein stopped pacing and looked toward Sara gently. “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I feel fine.”
“Sara . . .”
“Don’t start this shit with me, Max. Crying and moping around is not going to help. I need something to distract me.”
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