Miracle Cure (12 page)

Strange.

Even stranger, when she finally asked him if he wanted to go upstairs with her, he answered, "Not tonight." "Why not?" she asked.

The man shook his head and smiled.

"Didn't I see this once on the Twilight Zone? The homely man and the gorgeous woman switch places? I can't believe I'm saying this, but here goes I don't want to be just another notch on your belt."

"Excuse me?"

"I know, I know. I don't believe it either. Look, Cassandra, I'd give my right arm to spend an evening with you."

"So?"

He shrugged, holding up his hands helplessly.

"If I go upstairs with you now, that'll be it. But if I refuse, you might be intrigued.

You might want to pursue it though I can't help thinking that once you're sober you ll think this whole conversation was a nightmare." She smiled.

"You're giving away your strategy, Harvey."

"Yeah, well, I never was very good at this stuff and I'm a bit out of practice like twenty-six years out of practice. Do yourself a favor, Cassandra. Stay away from me. I'm trouble." "Now you really have me intrigued," she said.

"Nothing to be intrigued about," Harvey continued.

"I'm just a workaholic who spends every waking and sleeping moment in a hospital in Spanish Harlem. I have no time for a social life.

It was a fun evening, a wonderful distraction, but it's time I returned to Planet Earth." "I wish you'd reconsider," she said.

Harvey pounded the side of his head like he was trying to clear it.

"I'm dreaming, aren't I?" he asked.

"This whole conversation is a dream."

"Maybe. I guess we'll find out tomorrow."

Now it was tomorrow and for some strange reason, Cassandra wanted to see Harvey Riker again. One problem she had spent most of the morning trying to figure out what she should do next and had come up with nothing. Should she wait until Harvey called? Suppose he didn't? And talk about being out of practice it had been years since Cassandra questioned or cared if a man called her or not.

Then a solution had presented itself when her father came home.

"Where were you?" she had asked him.

"At Columbia Presbyterian," John Lowell replied, distracted.

"Michael was rushed there."

"Is he all right?"

"I think so. His friends are taking care of him."

"Harvey Riker?"

Her father nodded.

"They think he has hepatitis."

"I think I'll go visit him."

"Whatever. When are you going to go?"

"In ten minutes," she said.

"Good. I have a meeting in a little while, and I don't want anyone around when my appointment gets here. Understood?"

But that had been over an hour ago, which was why she was tiptoeing.

Her father's private meetings were just that private.

Bathed in secrecy. He would be furious if he found out she was still home. She crept down the hallway toward the garage. As she passed her father's study, she heard his voice come through the thick oak. He sounded very angry.

"Goddamn it, you shouldn't be here," her father shouted.

"Relax," another voice said, a voice Cassandra could not quite place.

"You said no one was home."

"Doesn't matter. I don't want you in my house."

"Stop worrying so much. There's work to be done."

Who the hell...? Cassandra carefully moved away from the door, her mind racing. The voice was so familiar. She had heard it before, she was sure of it. But where? And who did it belong to?

She was at a traffic light about a mile away when the answer came to her.

"What I found in Dr. Grey's note," handwriting analyst Robert Swinster began, "is pretty rare."

Lieutenant Max Bernstein nodded.

"I know. It might just explain everything."

"Like what?" "Later," Max said.

"I have a million things to do."

"I can take a hint. I'm as good as gone."

Max shook Swinster's hand and patted his back.

"Thanks again, Bob. I really appreciate it."

"No problem, Twitch. I'm glad I could help."

Robert Swinster walked away from Bernstein's desk as Sara hobbled toward it.

"Hi, Max."

He smiled at her.

"Glad you could get here so fast. Have a seat."

Sara examined the man and his desk. All the usual signs were there his red eyes, the ragged edges of his fingernails, the thought lines in his forehead, the fingers twiddling with the pencil, the paper clips he had snapped in half lying all over the desk, the hand constantly rubbing his unshaven face.

For two days Max and his men had investigated the sensational murder of young Bradley Jenkins by the now-infamous Gay Slasher. A distraught Senator Jenkins had gone into hiding and would make no comments to the press about the rumors swirling around his son's death. His Senate spokesman continuously spewed a standard line the murder was clearly a ploy by certain subversive groups to destroy the senator's reputation and personal life.

Max had interviewed Senator Jenkins yesterday, after his son's funeral.

Bernstein had seen during his years in homicide what a tragedy like this could do to even the strongest of men, but he was still taken aback by the senator's appearance. His skin was ashen, his eyes wide and uncomprehending, his shoulder slumped, his whole demeanor defeated.

The senator had answered Max's questions in a flat, distant voice, but it seemed that the man knew very little that would help find the killer.

"Who was that?" Sara asked.

"Robert Swinster," Max replied, "a handwriting analyst. He was rechecking Bruce Grey's note."

"Did he find anything?"

The phone on the desk buzzed. Max put up a finger to signal for her to wait and picked up the receiver.

"Yes?"

"Daily News on line five again. ABC-TV on line eight."

"I'm not talking to the press right now," he snapped. He slammed the receiver back into the cradle.

"Damn reporters," he muttered.

"Enough to drive a man crazy."

"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 145th 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-size 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 onto 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 has." 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 News Flash

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 PDA, 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 haw 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."