by Neal Baer
“We’re going to that door over there,” Nick whispered. “Follow me.”
Nick got down, crawling on his belly. Claire followed his moves, pulling herself along the floor until they reached Sedgwick’s door. Fortunately, the area was underlit, and Nick hoped his arm wouldn’t be caught on camera when he reached up to the knob, inserted his burglar’s tool, and turned it.
Click.
Nick pushed the door open a crack, and he and Claire squeezed in, still on the floor. They faced a long hallway that was lit by the dim security lighting. Long, narrow cylinders labeled OXYGEN and NITROGEN lined the walls.
Footsteps broke the silence. Claire turned to Nick, her heart starting to pound. He pointed to a door marked SUPPLY ROOM and they entered, closing it just before a security guard passed. They waited until his clicking heels faded away. Then they heard the lock engage and the door they had come through close behind them.
Claire stopped holding her breath in relief. “We’ve got to find his lab,” she whispered. “My guess is it’s at the end of the hallway. Prick like Sedgwick would want everyone to have to walk the distance to see him.”
They opened the door and Claire checked that the hallway was clear. She saw no one, so they exited the supply room and moved quickly toward the door at the end of the long corridor.
Claire was right. The office belonged to Sedgwick, whose name was stenciled in small red letters on the glass door. Nick tried it and it was open. That’s strange, he thought. Unless someone’s still working.
Nick put his finger to his lips, cautioning Claire, stepping silently over the thickly carpeted floor of Sedgwick’s outer office. They reached another door and opened it a sliver. And what Nick saw stunned him.
He was looking at a large, brightly lit hospital room where three men lay asleep on gurneys, their arms attached to IVs.
“What in God’s name is going on here?” Nick whispered.
He opened the door wider, allowing Claire to take in the scene. Her eyes turned to the IV bags, and she read the names on the labels: Adriamycin, bleomycin, and vinblastine. She turned to Nick and said, “Those are cancer drugs. They’re getting chemo.”
“Exactly right, Doctor,” a voice rang out. Then a hand pulled the door open.
“Welcome to my lab.”
It was Sedgwick, in his long white lab coat, wearing a red and white polka-dotted bow tie. Nick reached for his gun.
“Don’t, Detective, please,” Sedgwick said, aiming a 9-millimeter Beretta at Nick. “Both of you, indulge me and put your hands above your heads.”
Sedgwick pulled Nick’s Glock from its holster. Then he patted down Claire, finding nothing.
“That’s better,” Sedgwick said. “Now we can chat.”
He gestured with his gun to two wooden chairs. Nick and Claire sat down.
“I had no choice, you understand,” Sedgwick said.
“How can you say that?” Claire asked incredulously. “No choice but to kill Todd Quimby and all those women?”
“It was the only way,” Sedgwick said.
Claire’s eyes moved from him to the emaciated men on the gurneys.
“Your patients are cachectic, Doctor Sedgwick,” she said, and turned to Nick. “At the end-stage of their cancer,” she explained. “Adriamycin, bleomycin, and vinblastine are all chemotherapies for Hodgkin’s lymphoma—the same cancer that Tammy Sorenson had when she died.”
“Impressive for a psychiatrist,” Sedgwick said.
“Were you experimenting on Tammy?” Claire asked, looking Sedgwick straight on. “Was it a new drug you gave her that didn’t work?”
“It’s far more complicated than that,” Sedgwick said, narrowing his eyes.
And all at once she realized what he had done.
“My God,” she said. “You gave Tammy cancer.”
Sedgwick blinked as if caught in a lie. “My crime against humanity,” he said. “Yes, you’re right. I did give Tammy Sorenson and these poor souls cancer. But not on purpose.”
Claire and Nick heard the unmistakable sorrow in Sedgwick’s voice.
“If you didn’t do it on purpose,” Nick said, “then how did this happen?”
“Tammy worked with me to find ways to train the immune system to fight cancer. A month ago, she developed a virulent form of lymphoma, and I realized that our experiments had gone awry.”
“That’s an understatement,” Claire said.
“I never intended it to happen,” Sedgwick said. “One of the Epstein-Barr viruses we were using mutated, causing Tammy’s lymph cells to lose their ability to fight cancer. Believe me, I tried everything I could to save her.”
“But the cancer was too aggressive,” Claire said, realizing how all the pieces fit together. “So when you couldn’t treat her disease, you killed her to cover up your experiment. You made it look like Todd Quimby was killing women with short blond hair he picked up at clubs or on the street. You even drugged him so that he’d be seen at the nightclub where Tammy disappeared.”
“But that wasn’t enough,” Nick added. “You knew if it was just Tammy who was found dead, she would’ve led us straight to you.”
Sedgwick looked smug.
“That was very clever,” Nick said. “You made it look like Tammy was just another random victim of a serial killer. You murdered eight innocent people.”
“You’re wrong,” Sedgwick argued. “They were sacrificed to keep a terrible secret—an accident—out of the hands of terrorists or any government bent on destroying humanity.”
“You tried to kill me!” Claire said, her voice echoing in the room.
“It had to be done.”
“But not by you,” accused Nick. “You needed a fall guy. So you set up Todd Quimby. You made it look like he murdered those women. You knew he’d been in the Merchant Marines, so you tied knots like he would have. Then you drugged him so he’d be seen at the nightclub where Tammy disappeared.”
“You don’t understand—”
“And when you were done with him, you drowned him outside this building and put his body in the front seat of his grandmother’s car,” Nick said. “You must be an excellent swimmer. When you drove into the East River, you swam to safety and he was the one we found.”
“He was expendable. He was a scumbag sex offender.”
“He was mentally ill!” Claire exclaimed. “And he was innocent!”
“He was insignificant!” Sedgwick screamed. “And they were whores. I had to do what I did for the sake of humanity.”
“Yeah, you’re a real humanitarian,” Nick sneered, pointing to the three unconscious men on gurneys. “What are you going to do with them?”
“They’re all dying,” said Sedgwick. “There’s nothing I can do. Fortunately, they’re all young, single men without wives and children, so no one’s dependent on them.”
“So, what, that makes them expendable too?” Nick asked, his voice rising. “Are you going to let them die painlessly? Or are you going to strangle them and drop a few more innocent bodies around to make it look like another serial killer’s on the loose? When does it end, Doctor? How many more dead people are we going to find with your name on them?”
“Believe me when I tell you,” Sedgwick pleaded, “that I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”
Claire glared at him with contempt. “You killed a cop. And you butchered my boyfriend.”
“Detective Stolls walked in on me searching your apartment,” Sedgwick said, somehow trying to justify it all. “And Ian knew too much. He would have pushed the tumor board to investigate Tammy’s lymphoma, and then everyone would have known.” He took several steps toward her. “You’re a scientist, Doctor. You know that science, and the search for cures, comes with risk. I accidentally opened Pandora’s box, and all I did was try to put back the terrible knowledge I let escape. I sacrificed eight people to save millions. You would have done the same thing.”
“Not in a million years would I have taken a life in the name of science.”
“People must be sacrificed to save others,” said Sedgwick.
He’s sick, Claire thought. He really believes this.
And then she looked at the three men on the gurneys.
“You experimented on them!” Claire yelled, standing up to face Sedgwick. “You claim you want to help humanity, but you’re no better than the Nazis, experimenting on human beings. You’re Josef Mengele. You’re a monster.”
“You’re wrong, Claire,” Sedgwick said, defending himself. “Those men contracted lymphoma from Tammy Sorenson.”
Claire stared at Sedgwick in shock.
“You found a way to block apoptosis in the human cell,” Claire said, her voice shaking. “You shut down the body’s defense to stop cancer.”
Sedgwick let out a long, mournful sigh. “I was searching for a way to activate the immune system. I put an agent on a virus hoping it would boost immune cells to fight cancer.”
“And instead you turned off the immune system and gave Tammy cancer.”
“It was all a horrible mistake,” Sedgwick said.
Now it was all clear. Claire finally understood how this “horrible mistake,” this terrible scientific discovery, had led to the deaths of innocent people.
“Tammy kissed those men,” Claire said, pointing to the comatose patients lying on the gurneys. “She gave them the Epstein-Barr virus that triggered their lymphoma.”
“That’s why I had to cover this up. This cancer can be spread with a kiss. Just imagine how many people could become infected.”
“It’s like getting mono. . . .” Claire stopped short. “Doctor Curtin has mono. Did Tammy infect him, too, you son of a bitch? Is that how he’s involved in all this?”
Sedgwick didn’t answer. Instead he raised his gun and aimed it at the three men.
“No!” Claire screamed.
Sedgwick shot each man once in the head. “I put them out of their misery.”
“You executed them!” Claire yelled.
Sedgwick pointed his gun at her.
Nick jumped up and moved in front of Claire. “So we’re expendable too,” he said. “Anyone who could blow the lid off this garbage can is expendable. Everyone’s expendable, right? Everyone but you.”
Tears were in Sedgwick’s eyes as he aimed straight at Nick’s forehead.
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to do this, Doctor,” said Nick.
“Yes, I do,” Sedgwick said, squeezing the trigger.
The gun fired, but the bullet hit the ceiling.
Sedgwick had a stunned look on his face as his mouth opened and blood streamed out, splashing a crimson stream down his white lab coat.
Claire grabbed Nick’s arm as Sedgwick fell forward onto the floor, revealing the entry hole of the bullet that had just pierced his neck. Behind a drape stood Paul Curtin, holding a .38 revolver.
“It’s almost over,” Curtin said in a raspy voice. He looked more ashen than he had the night before. Thinner too.
“Almost?” Claire asked, not understanding what Curtin was trying to say.
“The end of the story. You deserve to know.”
Curtin placed his gun on a nearby table and moved toward Claire. Slowly, with his hand shaking, he reached for hers and grasped it. His hand is like ice, Claire thought. Then he placed her hand on the right side of his belly, just below his chest.
“Feel that,” Curtain said to her.
Claire felt his ribs pressing through his blue silk shirt and then a massive lump, the size of an egg.
“You’ve got lymphoma,” she said.
“I’m riddled with it,” Curtin replied without emotion. “I’ve only got days.”
“How did this happen?” Claire asked.
“I met Tammy six weeks ago at the club Red. She was utterly beautiful. She came home with me, we slept together, and she infected me with her sweet kisses.”
Then Claire remembered. Red. Kisses. All the men Tammy had slept with. “We read Tammy’s diary,” she said. “Her last entry was ‘EB.’ ”
Curtin smiled. “Epstein-Barr,” he said. “Tammy was a very clever woman.”
“She was giving us a clue?” Nick asked, incredulous.
“Yes, Detective. Sedgwick cleaned her apartment but left the diary to mislead you. He forced Tammy to write Quimby’s name into the diary to make you think she knew him.” Curtin lowered himself into one of the wooden chairs. “You don’t mind if I sit, do you?”
“No,” Nick said, watching the once-virile man painfully adjust his thin limbs in the chair. “How did Sedgwick pull you into this?”
“He contacted me after Tammy got sick—she gave him my name and told him she’d kissed me,” Curtin said; then he closed his eyes, remembering the night with Tammy that had led him to this. Finally, he opened his eyes again. “Sedgwick said he needed to see me. He told me about his research and how he couldn’t afford to let this terrible secret get out.”
Curtin stopped speaking, needing to catch his breath. Claire pitied him, the man who was going to train her to be a brilliant therapist. The man who was going to help her see into the criminal mind.
“Sedgwick quarantined Tammy here, made her call her parents and say she was on vacation in Hawaii, and came up with a plan to make it look like Tammy was murdered,” Curtin said. “He asked me to find a patient to pin it on, and yes, I gave him Todd Quimby. He promised me that he’d kill only Tammy—a mercy killing, really—because no matter what, she was going to die a terrible, painful death.”
“And you gave him me,” Claire said. “You thought I wouldn’t be able to handle the case. That’s why you assigned Quimby to me.”
“I knew all about you, Claire,” Curtin said, his voice now barely above a whisper. “When you applied to the program, your name seemed familiar. I searched it on the Internet and found the connection. You were with Amy Danforth the day she was kidnapped. And I realized then that you were the little girl Peter Lewis kept talking about. He went on and on about Claire—the child who got away.”
“But why me?” Claire asked. “Why did you assign Quimby to me?”
“Because I knew how emotionally fragile you were—your past with Amy still haunted you. I thought you would quit the program and blame yourself for Quimby. I’m a hell of a good shrink, Claire. But you surprised me. I never thought you’d have the strength to investigate Tammy’s murder.”
“You put murderers away for years,” Claire said, sitting down beside him. “How could a man like you let Sedgwick kill all those people?”
“He lied to me. He promised he’d kill only Tammy and Quimby. I could live with that,” Curtin said, laughing at the irony of what he’d just said. “I never knew he’d kill the other women to make it look like a string of serial murders. I never dreamed he’d harm Ian to cover up what he’d done to Tammy Sorenson.”
“Why didn’t you come forward?” Nick asked.
When Curtin answered, his voice was barely a whisper. “For the same reason he killed all those poor people. His secret had to be kept. And I couldn’t be the one to let it out.”
And then Curtin’s eyes filled with tears. Claire turned to Nick, stunned. The man she’d feared, admired, and respected more than anyone else was weeping.
Footsteps came from the hallway, heading in their direction. Nick retrieved his Glock from Sedgwick’s belt and moved toward the sound.
“Security,” he said. “Do they carry weapons?” he asked Curtin.
“No,” Curtin replied.
“Then it’ll be easy to cuff them and get them out of the way.” Nick bolted from the room as Claire turned back to Curtin.
“You’re coming with us,” she said to him. “Can you walk?”
Curtin stood up and walked with agony to Sedgwick’s laboratory bench several feet away.
“There’s one thing left to do,” he said, pulling a large wine bottle out of a brown paper bag.
“My God, no!” she yelled as Curtin lit a liquid-soaked rag stuffed into th
e bottle’s opening.
Claire ran to Curtin, but it was too late. He picked up the flaming torch and with all the strength he could muster, he tossed it toward the hood covering a laboratory bench.
The bottle shot across the room like a Roman candle, bursting into bright orange flames as it hit Sedgwick’s research.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
Bottles of flammable liquids exploded in an array of blues, greens, reds, and yellows, shooting sparks across the room.
“That’s the end,” Curtin said, staring at the flames as they spread around Sedgwick’s body. “The virus is gone.”
Claire headed toward the men on the gurneys, but before she could reach them, their IV bags exploded into shards of fire. Curtin grabbed her arm and pulled her back as gray, putrid smoke billowed through the room. Claire was coughing, her throat burning.
“They’re dead, Claire,” he said. “Leave me here and let me die too.”
“No,” she said. “Not like this.” She pulled Curtin away, his body so light that she felt like it was floating. She reached the door and turned back for one last look.
The laboratory erupted in a gush of flames.
CHAPTER 30
Claire looked out the large plate-glass window of the diner on 11th Avenue. A cool autumn breeze was blowing red and yellow leaves down the dark, nearly empty street. She watched as they swirled upward, catching a glint of light from the streetlamp, then floated back to the ground.
Fall had always been her favorite season; she had fond memories of driving with her parents to view the vibrant, fiery autumn foliage at Letchworth, the state park south of Rochester; of rolling with Amy in the piles of leaves her father would rake up in their backyard; of starting a new grade at school, which she loved. For Claire, autumn marked both an end and a new beginning, and never had she needed both more than now.
A sip of her freshly poured decaf quickly brought her back to the present. She returned the cup to its saucer with a grimace; it was her third refill in the half hour she’d been waiting for Nick, and the coffee had long since lost its taste. She remembered sitting in the same booth, at this same diner, the night Charles Sedgwick murdered Maggie Stolls and tried to kill her. She tried to shake the thought out of her head as she glanced impatiently at her watch. Ten-thirty p.m. Where the hell is he?
