by Darrell King
“Usually I would not ask these type of obviously personal questions, especially so soon after you’ve lost such a dear friend, however, due to the circumstances surrounding Kiara’s illness, as well as the overwhelming cases of HIV5X that resulted from her own intentional spreading of this most virulent strain of AIDS, I fear that the man who infected Kiara is still at large and exposing other unsuspecting young women to this killer virus. We’ve gotta stop this son of a bitch before he wipes out half of the metro area. It’s that serious, TaKeisha,” Goehring sighed as he leaned back in his chair.
“Kee-Kee was always into dating a lot of different men; sometimes she’d talk to two or three guys at the same time. Yasmin didn’t like it and neither did I, but hey, whatcha g’on do? Kee-Kee was gonna do what Kee-Kee wanted, regardless,” TaKeisha told him. “She stayed going out to the clubs every weekend and half of the time she ended up having a one-night stand with some dude who she thought was cute or had some long dollars. I knew that sooner or later she’d end up pregnant or catching something and I told her that to her face more than once.”
TaKeisha held back tears as she continued. “I can’t even remember all the different men that Kee-Kee slept with, but one o’ them dudes caused her and Yasmin to start beefin’. I think it was like this tall, older guy. He was jive like a pretty boy type, you know … brown skin, good hair. I ain’t even g’on lie, the nigga was sexy as shit for real. I remember Kee-Kee meeting him at the Classics, I think … yeah, that’s it! I was with her that night too. She was on dude hard, more than any other nigga she’d fucked with except for maybe her baby’s daddy, Jeremy, who also had created a little beef between the two sisters back in the day. Dude stayed coming over to Kee-Kee’s house, but I think Yasmin didn’t like the fact that Kee-Kee was fuckin’ with a dude she’d fucked with earlier or some shit like that. But anyway, they almost came to blows over that guy. I guess Yasmin wasn’t having Kee-Kee try to steal on her man a second time.”
The 24-year-old TaKeisha Goddard also recounted to the chief detective details of the e-mail messages and phone conversations she’d had with her brother, Edward, while he was away on special military detail down in Puerto Rico. She said that Edward had recounted stories of drug dealing, decadence and murder while treating his patient for some terminal illness.
“You’ve been a tremendous help, not only to this case, but to the entire area,” the detective said while jotting down the particulars of TaKeisha’s oral statements on his ever-present notepad. “This is just he info I need before I make my way out to Jessup Corrections tomorrow. I think we may be onto something really big here.”
TaKeisha’s eyebrows rose with sudden piqued interest in the detective’s upcoming prison trip.
“So, what’s up with Jessup? Why you gotta go up there for?” She asked inquisitively.
“Well, I’ve been in contact recently with one of the suspects in the Kentland murders and I sincerely believe that he wants to plea bargain, which is shy he’s willing to tell me what I want to know.” Goehring paused briefly to check the number of an incoming call on his cell phone, which vibrated upon his belt, before finishing the conversation. “I’m almost certain that this guy is in some strange way connected to this killer HIV case. Don’t ask me how . . . I just know.”
TaKeisha moved up closer to the detective, looking squarely in his eyes and taking his hands into her own.
“Detective Goehring, please, please, please lemme go with you tomorrow. It would mean the world to me if you did me this one favor, please!”
Detective Goehring signed lightly while rubbing his thick thumbs across TaKeisha’s dainty hands with fatherly affection.
“Now, TaKeisha,” he said, “I know how bad you’ve felt recently and believe me I’m gonna do everything in my power to bring to justice whoever’s responsible for the deaths of the Reeves sisters, but I just can’t bring a citizen in on official police investigation duties. Not only is it against department policy, but it’s totally unethical and potentially dangerous for you . . . Remember those assholes are behind bars for a good reason. They’re hardened criminals with no regard for the well-being of their fellow man. So, I’m sorry, but . . . I simply can’t honor that request, sweetheart. Please try to understand.”
TaKeisha angrily pulled her hands away from Detective Goehring, while still holding a steely gaze.
“Naw! Hell naw! You try to understand that, detective! You don’t know what it feels like to lose two of your very best friends to some bamma-ass nigga with a dirty dick! I’ve known those two girls since grade school, detective! Fuckin’ grade school, and now they’re both gone forever! That’s not the way it should’ve ended, detective! Yasmin and Kee-Kee should’ve ended their days as hold ladies in a nursing home or somethin’ with grandkids an’ shit standin’ beside their death beds, not in the prime of their lives! And Kee-Kee’s got a lil’ boy who’s never gonna see his mommy again as he grows up into manhood. I gotta do this, man. I gotta go with you to that pen . . . Maybe I could help the investigation along even more than you would by yourself. I’m from the hood myself, so I ain’s scared of nobody for real, ‘cause most o’ my folks is locked up right along with ya man, whoever he may be, right there in Jessup. So yeah, go hard niggas don’t move me . . . Lemme do this . . . lemme do this for Yasmin and Kee-Keep, please. I’m beggin’ you, detective! It’s that important to me,” she said with tears now streaming down her soft, brown cheeks and her voice cracking with emotion.
Detective Goehring was touched to the core by the young woman’s outpouring of grief—this genuine plea for the opportunity to bring some sense of closure to her pain. Reluctantly, the normally by-the-book detective conceded to the wishes of his youthful ally.
“All right, all right . . .You can go, but I’ve got to be there no later than 12:30 p.m., so that means I’ll be here at 10:45 a.m. sharp. Be ready to go at that time or else I’m leaving here, with or without you. Got it?”
TaKeisha eagerly agreed, feeling obligated to the memory of her friends to do whatever was possible to bring the killer to justice.
The following day around noon, Detective Goehring and his pretty young companion arrived at the imposing Maryland state penitentiary. They were escorted to an interrogation room by a prison guard to await the arrival of their requested prisoner. Within 15 minutes, the intimidating Thomas Broome entered the drab, gray-hued room shackled with handcuffs and leg irons. With a devious smile written on his hardened face, Broome shuffled into the room facing the detective and young lady. He sat down with a heavy thud in the cold metal chair and leaned in forward facing Goehring with a set of piercing, bloodshot eyes while he rested his muscular forearms on the cool of the table top before him.
“Hmmmm … so you da young’un whose girlfriend just died from dat shit, huh? Dat’s fucked up, baby girl. Sorry ‘bout ya loss and all, gotta be painful.”
Goehring leaned forward and asked, “How’d you know about that?”
Broome chuckled heartily at the question and replied, “Just ‘cause I’m locked up behind these walls don’t mean shit. I got eyes and ears out there in the free world. If I need somebody touched, I can get ‘em touched. If I wanna know somethin’, I’m gonna know it … work ain’t hard, slim. I got the power to do that. My nigga, Valentino, got that monsta, dawg, but it ain’t no ordinary HIV. This some super AIDS-type shit that the Army done gave to my man. As long as he keeps up his shots with some type o’ anti-AIDS serum, he stays healthy and normal. But for real, for real, he’s got full blown AIDS runnin’ all through his body. The man’s a good lookin’ muhfucka and he’s got a vicious mack game. So, for real, most bitches can’t resist the nigga. That’s where ya problem is gonna come into play. Ain’t no tellin’ how many lil’ chicken heads, Valentino done ran up in by now. Y’all cats betta get y’all game on man, cause time’s runnin’ out.”
After a few more questions were both asked and answered, the interview was wrapped up and Detective Goehring and TaKeisha exited the
interrogation room and walked along with their guard escorts toward the front gates. It was there that the duo entered the detective’s unmarked squad car and cruised away down Rt. 175 to Baltimore Washington Parkway headed back to P.G. County.
Though the visit with the murder suspect was disturbing at best, neither the middle-aged detective nor the twenty-four year old college student could deny the dire significance of the inmate’s revelations about his infected friend’s murderous behavior. A week after the visit to Jessup Correctional Facility, Detective Goehring called together a meeting with the combined police forces of Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties as well as the District in order to discuss the details involving the recent, alarming epidemic of AIDS related illnesses and deaths affecting the Washington, DC area, particularly the black community.
As the assembled lawmen fidgeted in their seats restlessly, conversing amongst themselves, Detective Goehring approached the grand podium from the rear of the stage and respectfully requested the attention of the uniformed audience as he spoke with his familiar baritone vice booming into the microphone and throughout the auditorium’s speaker system.
“First of all, I’d like to thank all of you for coming out tonight for this most important of discussions; probably the singularly most important discussion any of you will have during your entire career in law enforcement. All of you know why you’re here. You’re here for the same reason that I’m here … to stop a killer. A serial killer unlike any that you’ve ever heard of before. This biological menace to society is the cause of this viral pandemic currently afflicting our region at an alarming rate.”
Goehring paused for affect and then continued. “We must do everything in our power to quarantine the unfortunates who’ve become infected with the virus, and more importantly, to apprehend the individual who is responsible for the spread of this deadly new strain of AIDS. The local medical community as well as the National Center of Disease Control in Atlanta is offering us their assistance in the fight to isolate and prevent the further spread of this virus. The entire Washington, DC area is under quarantine, and even the White House has been alerted to the seriousness of this problem. The President himself has expressed concern for the health safety of not only the Beltway region, but the nation as a whole and the east coast in particular. I’ve spoken to a gentleman who has given me the identity and bio of the suspect involved in this case as well as the motive. I assure you that what I’m about to divulge to you at this time will be very disturbing, and at times, some of you, especially those officers who happen to be of African-American and/or Hispanic descent, will be outraged.”
The officers listened intently to their superior.
“Believe me, in my thirty-two years as a lead detective on the Prince George’s County police force, I’ve never dealt with a case as unbelievably outrageous as this one. This individual is Lawrence Oliver Atwood, he prefers to go by the moniker Don Lucien Octavius Valentino, a 29-year-old ex-Naval officer who fought in the Gulf Was as well as in the Bosnian Conflict, in which he was a member of the U.N. Peacekeepers. Somewhere down the line he and quite a few other soldiers contracted HIV from the local girls and/or guys. They were sent back to their native countries in a hurry. Our guy ended up in Puerto Rico where he spent a brief stay at the U.S. Naval base’s infirmary before he was given an honorable medical discharge and a monthly stipend to hold him over for a while. But the lil’ bit of change Valentino was earning from his measly military check wasn’t enough to make ends meet for Valentino. So, he turned to drug dealing to supplement his income.
“Apparently, during this same time the U.S. Army, in conjunction with the World Health Organization, had developed a serum extracted from the sheep visna virus that would indefinitely prolong the life and physical health of patients suffering from HIV/AIDS. However, the new designer drug was in its experimental stage and had not been given approval by the FDA, or any other governmental watchdog group for that matter. So after the tests were ran on laboratory monkeys and the like, the decision was secretly made by certain U.S. Army officials as well as World Health Organization spokesmen to undergo an experiment with the serum known as Biomaximus Officinalis, or Biomax-O, which would be used on a live human subject.
“Valentino, who was currently living with HIV, was chosen. Being black and residing in Puerto Rico’s most violent slum, La Perla, made him the easy choice for the doctors who had not revealed this decision of theirs to their colleagues in the Army or the W.H.O. Their plan would be to offer the Biomax-O injections to Valentino for free, providing both he and his girlfriends monthly supplies of the medication as a part of the experiment called ‘Operation: Inner City Virus’. You see folks, this serum will indeed keep you healthy as a horse if you happen to have HIV or AIDS. You’ll be able to live a normal human lifespan of 60 plus, 70, 80 years or more depending of course on factors such as diet, lifestyle … family genetics … you get the picture. But the patient or patients have to take injections twice a month at the beginning and end of each month for the rest of their lives. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks.
One of Goehrings’ subordinates brought him a glass of water. Goehring took a sip and then continued. “You see, this Biomax stuff mutates the HIV antibodies once it makes contact with the host’s blood, which super accelerates the transformation from HIV into full-blown AIDS. The patient then must continue his or her injections without interruption longer than a month or the host rapidly dies from the wasting and debilitating effects of full-blown AIDS. All within thirty days ladies and gentlemen! Oh, but wait … it’s gets worse … much, much, worse. You see, once you have sex with someone who is shooting up Biomax-O, you are in immediate danger of being infected with what we now know as HIV5X. Your chances of infection after intercourse are more than 95%. And get this … your chances of survival past 90 days is about 10%, yeah … slim to none. Three months … three fuckin’ months and you’re maggot food. And no guys, there’s no cure for it … unless of course you get your hands on some Biomax-O, right? Right. We don’t have any idea who and what we’re up against, but I really, really need your help, guys. I mean, hey, we’re cops and all, but we’re people first … parents, children, siblings and friends. This is our community that is being destroyed … devastated! It doesn’t matter if it’s here in P.G. or over in Montgomery or DC or in a poor neighborhood or a rich one. We are losing loved ones every day. We’re losing ground and precious time. The threat is real. The body count is rising. We’ve got to act now, we cannot allow this animal nor the rogue doctors who created this Frankenstein’s monster to go unpunished. And I vow on my life as an HIV-positive man that Valentino and those so-called doctors are going down as of now!”
Muted silence was immediately broken by a round of thunderous applause that filled the entirely of the auditorium as each and every officer present gave Detective Goehring a rousing standing ovation that lasted for a full five minutes as Goehring stood smiling before the loudly, clapping and whistling assembly while tears streaked down his cheeks. He knew deep down that the beginning of the end of Lucien Valentino’s reign of terror was finally at hand.
Chapter 9
Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is widely reported to believe that HIV/AIDS was created by Western scientists for biological warfare and could not possibly have come from natural causes.
On the morning of April 29, 1998, at approximately 6:40 a.m., Detective Goehring and Lt. Jeremy Williams drove up into the crime-ridden grounds of the Brightseat Garden Apartments accompanied by three police vans filled with heavily armed P.G. S.W.A.T. officers. As the black-clad S.W.A.T. team quickly hopped out of the vans one by one, the detective and lieutenant both drew their service revolvers and carefully shuffled along the graffiti-covered walls of the building to the left marked 1313.
As the long line of P.G. cops wound around the corner and down into the lower reaches of the dimly lit slum tenement, they stepped across and through smelly trash strewn all throughout the cockr
oach-infested hallway, occasionally hopping over an unconscious drunk or two en route to the dark end of the ridiculously long hall. Finally, the lawmen reached the door marked T8.
“All right, Lieutenant, this is it. We’ve got to cautiously, but quickly, move in to catch Valentino and company napping . . . literally,” Detective Goehring whispered before banging a heavy flashlight several times upon the door, which broke the stillness of the early morning. “Open up the door, Valentino. We know that you’re in there! We have a warrant for your arrest. Now we can do this smooth and easy, or we can do it the hard way. Your choice, but you’ve got only five seconds to decide. I’m gonna start counting now… one … two … three … four … five! Move in!”
The phalanx of S.W.A.T. officers smashed into the door twice with a steel battering ram, completely collapsing the heavy door with a deafening crash with the third impact. Seconds after the door crashed to the floor inside the dark apartment did the ear-splitting sound of gunfire accompanied by bright orange flashes of flame erupt immediately from the pitch-black hallway.
“Take cover, men! Fall back and return fire!” barked Lt. Williams as bullets peppered the walls around the officers and harmlessly bounced off their bulletproof face shields and body armor. The gunfire continued to roar repeatedly causing the S.W.A.T. team to stay covered beneath their bulletproof protective covers as round after round of deadly lead shelled the shields surrounding the squatting cops.
“Return fire! Return fire, now! Do it!” yelled Lt. Williams right before squeezing off several powerful shots of his own in the direction of the enemy’s fire.
With the efficiency of a well-trained killing machine, the S.W.A.T. team arose from their crouched position in unison and fired away with their submachine guns into the darkness before them. Blood curdling screams filled the dark hallway with a hideous racket as the A.K. 47’s sung their lullaby of death with relentless fury. Lt. Williams ordered the S.W.A.T. team to cease firing.
