A Murder Mystery

Hermes' Viper

by Joseph T. McFadden

Synopsis:

Hermes' Viper is set in a huge 3,000-bed charity hospital. Idealistic Dr. Stuart Holton is a neurosurgeon in a hospital on Chicago's South Side. He chose that exceedingly active practice out of love of humanity and a drive to save lives. In the reaches of the large hospital wards, terminal patients beyond treatment are routinely found dead, but the dedicated Dr. Holton realizes that the mortality rate among his patients is becoming abnormally high.

Then, patients who are not terminal die under troubling circumstances.

Lost in his dedication to patients who would die without his help, Dr. Holton unwittingly carries in the wake of his benevolence third serpent on his caduceus, a viper poisonous unto death, the woman who has secretly stalked him for sixteen years. She has lived in a lost identity since fire scarred and maimed her at the age of five, and she seeks to find her true self through the pursuit of a long sought love and by bringing merciful death to the suffering.

Yet, on the evidence, the troubling deaths can't quite be called murder. In Hera's Journal, the woman describes her daily activities along with many of the hospital abuses, including malpractice and numerous everyday human errors causing preventable deaths and injuries. Memory of fire draws her and threatens to flare again in the fury aroused by the injustices and by her frustration with abortion, birth control, the sight of abused children, and the useless prolongation of life in the throes of terminal maladies and suffering. Imprisoned in this anguish and futility by the injuries of fire, she tries to escape through gaining control.

If she fails, the only release ultimately will be the same fire. She tries desperately, but despite all her mercy and love, nothing works. Finally she must remove everything standing in her way. And if she can't have the man she loves at any cost, then he must go too.

The dilemma about his wife's death four years past and his suspicions of murder and euthanasia in the hospital, continues until Dr. Holton's children awaken him to virtual reality, and he immediately sees the possibilities of using it to reconstruct the past and to predict future events in the hospital environment.

He enrolls the aid of forensic psychiatry, and with the addition of fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence they begin to unravel the mystery as the woman mounts her attack on his housekeeper, his children, and the new woman who has just appeared in his life.

Alert to the dangers, Dr. Holton tries desperately to defend his family from the relentless stalker carrying little syringes loaded with instant death, hidden packets of deadly poisons, and a drawn stiletto as she lunges at his heart in the raging inferno of her derangement.