“You will have to be sacrificed, yes.”
“And you’re going to kill our baby.”
He winced. “I wish I didn’t have to. You see, Sara, AIDS is a disease unlike any other. One minute the world is focused on it. The next, no one cares. I needed a way to maintain focus.”
“SR1 doesn’t work, does it? It never did. It was all a lie.”
“It worked perfectly in the animal tests,” he said. “Even the FDA agreed with that. The problem is we have not been able to get it to work on humans. But it’s just a matter of time until—”
“Then Michael is doomed.”
He shook his head. “I’m so close, Sara, so damn close. All I needed was a little more time to perfect the formula. But our grant was not going to be extended. Sanders and his fellow conspirators would have seen to that. Our funds were about to be cut off. I needed something, Sara. Some way of keeping the funds.”
“So you faked a cure?”
“It was easy, really,” he said. “I was the one who drew the blood from Trian, Whitherson, and Martino. All I had to do was switch test tubes—replace their blood specimens with someone’s who was HIV negative. It went perfectly.”
“Then why did you murder them?”
“Because they were dying,” he said. “SR1 had managed to put the HIV into a sort of remission for a while, but eventually the treatment accelerated their deterioration. I could only dismiss their worsening condition as a drug side effect for so long. I had to get rid of the evidence. The AIDS virus would have killed them anyway in another month or two.”
“So you had them murdered.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t have George ‘murder’ anybody. I had him speed up the inevitable.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“I did it for them, Sara, not for me.”
“For them?” she repeated incredulously. “You took away their last precious months of life for them?”
“I did not want them to die in vain. I wanted their deaths to mean something, to benefit the AIDS movement.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
His eyes gleamed now. “The publicity, Sara. The media doesn’t focus very long on medical developments, but throw in a Gay Slasher and whammo, you have nationwide press. Look at the NewsFlash report. Parker spent more time on the serial killings than on the AIDS cure. The murders stirred up the masses in a way even Sanders would have been proud of. Record-setting donations have been flooding in since the show aired, not just because we are on the verge of finding a cure, but because people are outraged by the slashings.”
Sara gripped her cane tightly. “You crazy bastard.”
“No, Sara, I am rational. I am looking at it on a cost benefit basis. Trian, Whitherson, and Martino were going to die awful, painful deaths from AIDS. Instead, they were killed mercifully while helping the development of a cure.”
“You call mutilation and torture merciful?”
His smile evaporated. “That was never supposed to happen,” he said quickly. “That was George’s doing. As soon as I found out about it, I put a stop to it. It was a mistake.”
“And what about Bruce and Janice? More ‘mistakes’?”
“I never wanted to hurt them. Bruce stumbled onto the truth. He had to be silenced. And George killed Janice when she spotted him near Michael’s room. They were both accidents. I mourn for them more than anyone. I can’t sleep at night because of what happened to them. But I have to shut my eyes to my pain. When I think of the goal, Sara, when I think of the possibility of curing AIDS, I realize how insignificant a few lives are. I’m not talking about saving hundreds of lives here. I’m talking about saving thousands, perhaps millions, of people.”
Her harsh glare did not waver. “So they were expendable?”
“I know it sounds cruel, but it’s true.”
“The end justifies the means?”
“When the end is something as important as an AIDS vaccine, of course the end justifies the means. Wouldn’t you sacrifice one person to save a thousand? If you could go back in time, wouldn’t you murder Hitler rather than let him kill six million Jews?”
“Don’t compare innocent victims with Hitler.”
“That’s not the point and you know it. I am talking about life-and-death realities here. Sometimes the innocent must suffer. It’s a fact of life. But if we can stamp out AIDS, isn’t it a small price to pay? Wouldn’t any good person be willing to sacrifice his life to save thousands of others?”
“Why did you kill Bradley Jenkins? He wasn’t one of your cured patients.”
“But he was dying, and frankly speaking I was terrified of how his father would react if he died while under my treatment. It could have been disastrous for the clinic.”
“And that’s why you ‘sacrificed’ him?”
“Not just that.” Harvey paused and took a deep breath. He tried to renew his smile, but it never reached his eyes. “Bradley was the third gay man murdered by the Gay Slasher, remember? The first two, Scott Trian and Bill Whitherson, were ignored by the media for the most part. Why? Because no one cared. Trian and Whitherson were nothing but a couple of unknown faggots. Ten Trians and Whithersons would have to die before the media really paid attention. But once the Gay Slasher killed the son of a United States senator, once Bradley’s bloody body had been found behind a gay bar, then the media became outraged. You’re a reporter, Sara. Think about it. When did the media become interested in the case? Not until Bradley was murdered. Then the sympathy began to build. All I had to do was let the world know about the connection to the clinic.”
“That’s where I came into the picture.”
“Yes.”
“And I fell for your bullshit hook, line, and sinker.”
“You helped me finance the clinic.”
“So why did you kill Eric?”
“Eric too became suspicious. Worse, he got proof from the blood sample he took from Michael. I tried to reason with him. I tried to explain why we had to do all this. But Eric wouldn’t listen. He had already put a call in to Markey and was going to tell him everything. I had to stop him before Markey called him back.”
Sara shook her head in confusion. “What does Michael’s blood have to do with any of this?”
Harvey moved toward Sara. He grabbed a stool, sat down heavily, and turned toward her. “It’s simple,” he said. “Michael does not have AIDS.”