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The blood work.
Max reviewed the medical histories. Then he took out the chart he had made on board the plane:
Max put down the chart. He felt like he was trying to read a record while it spun on a turntable—Michael as Markey’s guinea pig. The night Michael was kidnapped. Sara seeing Eric Blake. Sara going upstairs. Taking something for Eric. Almost ruining everything for George and his employer. And George Camron said his payments came late, that he had finally been paid within the past few days . . .
“Oh no.”
Cold, dark fear rushed over him in high, crashing waves.
Ralph took another bite. “This Gay Slasher thing keeps getting crazier and crazier, huh, Twitch?”
Max shook his head slowly. “No, Ralph,” he began. “For the first time, things are beginning to make sense.”
Ralph stuffed the rest of the souvlaki in his mouth and licked his fingertips. “Do you know who killed these guys, Twitch?”
Max nodded and ran for the door. “I do now.”
SARA’S leg throbbed as she tried to hobble quickly after Harvey. Her heart fluttered wildly, as if a bird were trapped in her chest, but the fluttering was more from fear than exertion. She glanced sideways at Harvey. His face was set, his eyes straight and unwavering, his lips thin, his fists and jaw clenched.
“Did you tell Eric about the package?” she asked.
Harvey hesitated, then nodded. “He’s supposed to be setting up some tests right now.”
With his words they both increased their speed. Sara struggled to keep up with him, changing her steady limp into an awkward sort of one-step hop.
Harvey stopped in front of the lab door. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Fine.”
He nodded and reached for the knob. He tried to turn it. “Locked,” he said.
“Is that normal?”
“Not if Eric is in the lab, it’s not.”
Harvey reached for his key, found it, and placed it in the lock. A moment later the door swung open with an unhappy creak.
“Eric?” Harvey called out.
No answer. The shades were pulled down, and the lights were out. The lab was blanketed in darkness.
Harvey flipped the light switch. The room was immediately illuminated with bright fluorescent lights. He stepped toward a table in the corner. “Damn!”
“What is it?”
“The blood samples are gone. I left them right on the table.” He checked under the counter and in the nearby vicinity. Nothing. “Check the refrigeration room in the corner,” he said. “I’m going to look in Eric’s private file cabinet.”
“I thought the private files were locked.”
“They are. I’m going to bust the damn thing open.”
Sara hobbled past several lab tables, past Bunsen burners, past test tubes, past the large periodic chart on the wall, past tables and adjustable stools, past countless charts and scraps of paper. The lab looked more like an eighth-grade science classroom than an ultramodern research center. Still, it had the feel of professionalism. Everything was spotlessly clean. The microscopes and other assorted gadgets looked hightech and expensive.
When she reached the door to the refrigeration room, she turned around for a brief moment. Harvey had found a metal ruler and was working on the top drawer of Eric’s file cabinet. She could hear him grunting from the effort. She turned back toward the door. She hoped the blood samples were in the refrigeration room. She hoped that her suspicions about Eric were wrong, that he had not done anything wrong, that he was still their friend . . .
The door handle was cold. She gripped it with her fingers and pulled back. The suction gave way and Sara was immediately greeted with a frosty breeze. Little pricks of terror began to rise on the base of her spine. She pulled the door all the way back, stepped into the doorway, and peered inside.
Sara inhaled sharply but could not move.
A scream built inside her throat, but only a strange, unrecognizable sound—a grunt of some kind—managed to push its way through her lips. She stared forward, her eyes wide and fixed.
Eric Blake’s bloody corpse lay twisted on the floor in front of her.
Almost a full minute passed before she turned away from the dead body and looked toward Harvey. He looked back, pointing a gun at her. There was no surprise or panic in his face, just a look of exhaustion, aggravation, defeat—the look of a man whose car had just blown a tire on his way to work. Harvey sighed heavily, closed the lab door behind him, and tried to smile.
“I haven’t had a chance to move him,” he said by way of explanation.
24
SUSAN Grey’s knees felt wobbly. She continued to stare at her name written in Bruce’s familiar scrawl.
“Look at the other side,” Jennifer said in a hollow voice.
Susan turned the envelope over:
TO BE OPENED UPON MY DEATH
She fell heavily onto the couch, her eyes still glued on the envelope. “Another suicide note?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mommy . . .”
“Come with me, Tommy,” Jennifer said, steering the child away. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”
Left alone, Susan flipped the envelope back over.
SUSAN
Her name was written by her dead husband in large block letters. The familiar penmanship raked across her heart. She could look at pictures of Bruce, listen to him talk on a cassette, even watch him on a videotape. But there was something so personal about handwriting, something so individual, so eerie, that she had to look away for a moment.
She pushed back her long brown hair and fumbled open the envelope. Several pages of plain white paper slipped out and fell to the floor. She reached down, picked them up, and unfolded them. As her eyes traveled down the lines of written text, they widened:Dear Susan,
If you are reading this letter, it means that my suspicions were correct. For much of the past two weeks I was hoping that I was merely paranoid or even a full-fledged nutcase. I wanted to be everything but right. I even hesitate in sending you this letter because like it or not, I have put you in danger. Someone will kill to get their hands on this package. Someone has already killed twice (and now that I am dead, three times) because of what has been occurring in the clinic.
I wish I could give you some sound advice about what to do with the contents of this letter, but I can’t. I probably should have gone to the NIH or to the media and showed them what I had, but I was afraid of the results. I thought I could handle it on my own. Evidently, I was wrong. But if I had gone to the media and exposed the truth, I would have played into the hands of our enemies, the bigots who want to take away all AIDS financing. Now, it is your choice to make.
