Miracle Cure

by Coben, Harlan

  “Temper, temper.”

  “Everyone keeps screaming how we’re not doing our job. How the hell are we supposed to get anything done with the press breathing down our necks all the time? Bunch of vultures—present company excluded, of course. You know something? I think the media hopes the psycho will strike again, the sick bastards.”

  “Comes with the territory,” Sara replied.

  “I know,” Max said, “but the pressure on this one is unbelievable. At the press conference the other day I felt like fresh meat in front of starving Dobermans. And that’s not the half of it. The mayor’s demanding answers in that holier-than-thou way of his. Every gay activist is coming out of the woodwork accusing the fascist police department of discriminating against homosexuals. I’ve had a dozen phony confessions today alone. Everyone suddenly wants to be the Gay Slasher.” He took a deep breath. “Ah, screw it. So how’s Michael?”

  “Feeling better. His teammates are visiting him now.”

  “Good. I needed to talk this over with you right away.”

  “Bouncing time, eh?”

  Max nodded and smiled wearily. Several years ago Sara had been instrumental in helping Max find a cop killer who had randomly gunned down four of Max’s fellow officers in one week. Max had learned from that experience that he liked bouncing ideas off an intelligent listener, and Sara was about as sharp a listener as there was. Very often they said some crazy things to each other, came up with some crazy hypotheses, even called each other crazy, but eventually the irrational statements began to mesh with the more rational facts, often forming solid solutions.

  “Is this case harder for you than most?” she asked.

  “Meaning?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He smiled nervously, checking to make sure that no one was within earshot. “It’d make an interesting news angle, huh? The fag detective in charge of finding the Gay Slasher?”

  She said nothing.

  “Sara, you’re still the only one who knows—aside from Lenny and my mother.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple visibly sliding up and down. “I wish I could say something, but do you know what would happen to me if the force found out?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I’d lose everything. I’d be lucky if they let me work as a meter maid.”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Max.”

  He nodded, his eyes lowered to the floor. “By the way, Lenny says hello.”

  “How is he?”

  He shrugged. “He’s a nag, but I love him.”

  “As long as you’re happy.”

  “You sound like my mother. Can we get back to the case now?”

  “Okay,” Sara said, “what have you got so far?”

  “Not much. We got a wino who saw Bradley’s body being dumped behind the Black Magic early in the a.m. We also located the car the killer was driving at the time. That’s about it.”

  “Go on.”

  “It seems the wino, a Mr. Louis Bluwell, was sleeping off a couple of bottles of gin under some garbage bags when he heard the car and saw a man he described as ‘a big monster’ get out of the car and dump the body amongst the garbage bags. Mr. Bluwell said the car was a beat-up green Chevy. We found a car matching that description abandoned on Riverside Drive around One Hundred Forty-fifth Street. There was a fair amount—make that gallons—of the victim’s blood splashed all over the floor of the trunk. The car had been stolen the previous evening.”

  “Did the lab find anything else in the car?”

  “One set of fingerprints—the victim’s. A few hairs—all belonging to the victim.”

  “Figures,” Sara said. “Anything else?”

  “According to Mr. Bluwell, the man in the car was big—a mountain-sized guy with dark hair. No noticeable features.”

  “So what do you make of it?”

  Bernstein leaned back, placing his hands together, the fingertips of his index fingers resting against his nose. He put his feet on his desk. “I find it all interesting,” he remarked.

  “How so?” Sara asked.

  “It just doesn’t make sense.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Okay, help me here, Sara. What do we know so far? First, all three victims were homosexuals. Second, all three victims were being treated at the same AIDS clinic. Third, all three died of stab wounds within the past three weeks.”

  “So?”

  “So take a look at the cases one by one for a second.” Max sat up quickly, opened up his pocket pad, and read. “Victim one: Mr. Scott Trian. Trian had been found tied spread-eagle to his bed in apartment 8G at 27 Christopher Street. The corpse was found with twenty-seven stab wounds. The murderer sliced off Trian’s left ear, both thumbs, and left nipple—while he was still alive, we think. He also castrated Trian.”

  “Unbelievable,” Sara whispered.

  Max nodded. “Even more unbelievable is that we’ve managed to keep the mutilation and torture away from the media.”

  “Won’t last,” Sara added. “Someone will open his mouth.”

  “True enough, but until then I can use it to cut through all these phony confessors. When pressed for details about the killings, none of the confessing Gay Slashers knew about the mutilation or torture. They only knew what they had read in the papers. But we’re getting off the subject. Let’s move on to the second victim.”

  “Okay.”

  Bernstein wet his index finger and turned a few pages. “Victim number two: Mr. William Whitherson. Mr. Whitherson’s boyfriend, a Stuart Lebrinski, stepped out of their co-op on the Upper West Side to pick up some groceries. When he came back an hour later, Whitherson was dead. Twenty-three stab wounds. There was no mutilation or signs of torture.”

  “There was no time,” Sara said. “The boyfriend was only gone an hour.”

  “Could be,” Max allowed. “But now things get really interesting. Victim number three: Mr. Bradley Jenkins.” Pages were once again turned before Max continued. “A limousine driver dropped Bradley off in front of his apartment building after the charity ball at your father’s estate. One neighbor thought he saw Jenkins leave the building a few minutes later with another man the neighbor described as ‘very big.’”

  “Probably the same guy the wino saw.”

  “Makes sense,” Max agreed. “Anyway, the next thing we know Jenkins winds up dead behind the Black Magic Bar and Grill. Several patrons of the bar recognized Bradley from his photograph, but all swear that he had not been seen that entire evening.”

  “So? He was at my father’s party until late.”

  “One other thing—the lock on Bradley’s apartment door was jimmied.”

  “The big guy probably broke in,” Sara said. “I don’t see what part of it doesn’t make sense.”

  Max put down his notebook. “Put the whole thing together, Sara. First, Bradley Jenkins comes home from the party. Then some big guy jimmies the lock and breaks in. Fine, okay so far. You with me?”

  “Go on.”

  “Now, from the looks of Jenkins’ apartment, the struggle—if there was one—was painfully short. Then Bradley and the killer leave the apartment and drive off together. Based on the tremendous amount of blood in the trunk, we can speculate that Bradley was murdered while lying in the trunk of the car. No mutilation, but like the other two, approximately two dozen stab wounds cover his face, chest, and groin. The killer keeps the body in the trunk overnight, wakes up the next morning, and dumps his body behind a gay bar.”

  “Maybe Bradley knew the guy,” Sara said. “Hold on. Skip that. If they knew each other, there would have been no need for the jimmied lock.”

  Max managed a grin. “And I was all ready to jump on you for being wrong.”

  “Sorry to spoil it for you.”

  “Never mind. But you’re ignoring the more important question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Why did the killer take Bradley out of the apartment in the first place? Think about it.
Trian and Whitherson were both murdered in their apartments, right? The killer got them alone, did his thing, and left the mess. But not with Bradley. He went to the trouble of taking him out of the apartment. That meant the killer had to go to the trouble of stealing a car, one. Two, he had to risk being seen leaving the apartment as well as risk being seen getting rid of the body behind the Black Magic. Why? Why not just kill him like the others and get it over with? And why dump the body behind a gay bar?”

  Sara thought for a moment. “I see what you mean. Look, Max, I know the heat is coming down on you, but I can’t hold back much longer. I won’t say anything about the mutilation of Trian, but I have to let the public know about the connection of the three victims to the AIDS clinic.”

  “Sara . . .”

  “Someone is going to dig it up soon anyway, and now Bradley’s father can’t be hurt any more than he already is.” She gripped her cane. “More important, Harvey has decided to go public with the clinic’s success. He needs to raise funds. There’ll be an hour story on the success of his AIDS treatment on NewsFlash.”

  Max whistled. “Talk about a major scoop,” he said. “Could be Pulitzer here, Sara. I’d hate to see you miss that.”

  “Not fair, Max.”

  “I know. My bias against the press flaring up again. Sorry.”

  “Forget it.” She watched him start to gnaw on his finger—not the nail, the finger. “Max, don’t you think the connection to the clinic is important?”

  “Crucial,” he answered, removing his finger from his mouth and rubbing his face with the same hand. “My people are checking out everyone involved with the place.”

  “That’s the crux of the whole thing, isn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, everyone assumes that a psychopath is targeting gays, but he could really be after AIDS patients or, more specifically, patients at Harvey’s clinic.”

  “Could be.”

  “What about Harvey’s fear that someone is trying to sabotage the clinic?”

  Bernstein stood up and began pacing in a small, tight circle. “A possibility but a long shot. According to Harvey, nobody outside the clinic—not the FDA, you, or anybody else—knew how close they were to finding a cure. Sure, there were rumors, but people don’t usually try to sabotage a rumor.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with you there,” Sara said. “We’ve both seen plenty of people act on a lot less than unsubstantiated rumors before.”

  “Granted, but look at it this way—if someone wanted to destroy Harvey and Bruce’s work, why go to the trouble of murdering all these people in such a grisly fashion? Why not just burn down the clinic? Or why not just kill . . . ?” His voice trailed away.

  “Just kill?”

  Max swallowed. “I was about to say, ‘Why not just kill the doctors?’ ”

  There was a long silence. “Max, what did the handwriting analyst say?”

  “Bruce Grey wrote the note. No chance of it being a forgery.”

  “Does that mean he definitely committed suicide?”

  Bernstein paused, his hand still nervously massaging his chin. “Not necessarily,” he began. “Because of the note in Grey’s handwriting, the suicide was barely questioned. It was an open-and-shut case.”

  “And now?”

  “There’s so many holes, Sara. I checked out Grey’s history. He seemed happy enough, normal enough, no signs of depression or mental illness.”

  “But if Bruce wrote the note—”

  “Ah, but how did he write the note?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “As you know, I took the liberty of having the handwriting analyst check the note again. But this time I had him look for other details.”

  “Such as?”

  “For one thing, Swinster noted that the handwriting was unusually shaky. Words and letters ran into one another. It was definitely written by Grey—the shape and design of the letters tell you that—but it was not his normal handwriting. He was in a rush or under duress or something like that.”

  “Isn’t that normal in the case of a suicide?”

  “Not really. Usually, the handwriting is slow and even and fairly normal. Grey always wrote very neatly—even when he scribbled down a prescription. The suicide note was uncharacteristically sloppy. It could have been—I said could have been—coerced.”

  Sara sat forward with her eyes opened wide. Her words came fast. “Then what you’re saying is that maybe Bruce was forced to write it,” she nearly shouted. “Maybe somebody put a gun to his head and made him do it.”

  “Calm down, Sara. We don’t know anything of the sort yet.”

  “And if that’s the case, Harvey could be in real danger.”

  Bernstein shook his head. “Don’t start building this into something it’s not. There are a million better explanations for all of this. It could be something as simple as Bruce Grey being so cold his hand shook when he wrote the note. Or it could be that he was nervous at the thought of running headfirst through a window.”

  “You don’t buy any of that.”

  Max pocketed his keys. “But it sounded good.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the Days Inn. I want to check out Grey’s room.”

  “HEY, hey, Mikey, boy! How you feeling?”

  Michael looked up and smiled. Reece and Jerome piled into the room with a half dozen other Knicks. “You guys are a bunch of the ugliest candy stripers I’ve ever seen.”

  “But look what we brought you,” Jerome said, holding up a brown paper bag.

  “What is it?” Michael asked.

  “Hospital food sucks, right?” Jerome continued.

  “Bet your ass,” Michael replied. “Two days of it and I’m already going crazy.”

  “And,” Reece added, “everyone knows how you Jews love food from the Orient.”

  “You mean—”

  “Yup,” Reece interrupted, “takeout from Hunan Empire.”

  “I think I love you guys.”

  “Don’t get mushy on us, old dude.”

  “I’ll try not to break down.”

  “So how you feeling, Mikey?”

  “Okay.”

  “When you coming back?”

  “Probably not till next season.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. But, guys, guess what.”

  There was a pause. “Reece already told us the good news,” Jerome said with a wide smile. “You’re going to be a papa. Congratulations, man.”

  They shook hands. “Thanks.”

  The other players gathered around him to offer their congratulations.

  “Hey, old dude, how you gonna teach me anything from a hospital bed?” Jerome asked.

  “Watch old game films,” Reece suggested. “See how Mikey played when he was in his prime.”

  “They had movie cameras back then?” Jerome joked.

  Reece laughed.

  “What the hell are you laughing at?” Michael asked him. “You’re only a year younger than me.”

  “I know. That’s why I want you back with the team. I don’t want to be the new ‘old dude.’ ”

  “Swell. How’s practice going anyway?”

  “We miss you, Mikey,” Reece said.

  “Nice to hear.”

  “Yeah,” Jerome added, “I miss blocking your shot and putting it in your face.”

  “Just hand over the food, Jerome, before my doctor sees it.”

  “Too late.”

  The tall bodies of the New York Knicks turned toward the door. Harvey stood leaning against the frame of the doorway.

  “Hey, Harv,” Reece said.

  “How’s it going, Reece?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Would you and your cohorts mind if I have a few minutes alone with Michael?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good,” Harvey replied. “In the meantime I’ll have one of the nurses bring you hoodlums over to the pediatric wing. There’s a few kids in there you fellas might
be able to cheer up.”

  “Be our pleasure,” Reece said. “Come on, guys. Let’s go.”

  Michael’s teammates bade him good-bye and left. Then Harvey closed the door and moved into the room.

  “So what’s up?” Michael asked.

  “We just got back results of the blood tests,” Harvey began. “You were HBV positive.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You have hepatitis.”

  “Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Explain, por favor.”

  “Frankly speaking, it’s all a little strange.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Harvey crossed the room. “You have hepatitis B rather than hepatitis A.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Ninety percent of all hep B patients recover fully within three to four months. With a little luck and some good training, you could even be back in shape for the end of the season and the play-offs.”

  “Great.”

  “But we’d like to take a few more tests, Michael,” Harvey said, “including a T cell study and an HIV test.”

  Michael sat up, his eyes finding Harvey’s and locking onto them. “An HIV test? Isn’t that—”

  “Yes,” Harvey interrupted, “it’s a test which is supposed to indicate if you are carrying the AIDS virus.”

  “Why would I need one of those?”

  “It’s merely a precaution,” Harvey continued. “We’re sure you don’t have AIDS or anything of the sort. You’re not homosexual and you’re not an intravenous drug user, which means your chances of having it are next to nil.”

  “So?”

  “So Eric and I discussed it. We also consulted Dr. Sagarel, the gastroenterologist. The thing is no one really understands how you contracted hep B.”

  “Some bad seafood maybe?”

  “You’re thinking of hepatitis A,” Harvey continued. “Hepatitis B is transmitted through blood transfusions, saliva, semen, stuff like that. Now, I know you’re going to want to slap me for asking, but I have to do it anyway. It’s important that you tell the truth.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I know you love Sara, but have you had any extramarital affairs? Any at all. An indiscretion during a Knicks road trip, anything?”