CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Because Rachel wasn’t supposed to be on the case, they couldn’t just drive to the office and use the database to look for information on Dr. Ben Lucas. It was the first time Rachel truly felt like a hindrance on the case, wondering if maybe she was indeed making a mistake by insisting that she be there—not that Jack’s instincts of including her were helping at all. To make up for this, they decided to take things “old school,” as Jack put it.
He headed for the nearest library while calling up Monty in the records department again. Per usual, he kept the call on speaker mode so Rachel could be kept in the loop. Monty answered on the third ring and, like last time, seemed anxious to assist.
“Monty, I need you to get me some information on a doctor by the name of Ben Lucas. Anything we have. Criminal records, personal information, whatever we can get.”
“I can do that. Is this a top priority sort of thing?”
“I wouldn’t be bothering you with this if it wasn’t a top priority sort of thing. And listen…send me PDFs of whatever you find. I’d like to have copies of this on hand.”
“I can do that. Give me about fifteen minutes, would you?”
“That’s perfect,” Jack said, ending the call.
“You know,” Rachel said, “I don’t quite understand the need for a retired doctor on staff at a place like Life Fulfilled. I totally understand the need for a final line of defense, but wouldn’t a foundation like that just be willing to take the word of non-retired doctors? It just seems weird to me.”
“I thought so, too,” Jack said. “But I also know how very tight this country can be when it comes to anything medical or related to healthcare. I can fully understand a foundation like theirs wanting to make sure they have every base covered several times over.”
Rachel mulled this over as they reached the library. She understood Jack’s point, but at the same time, she started to think that having that last say in whether or not someone was worthy of those kinds of benefits was a heavy responsibility.
When Jack pulled the car into the library parking lot, he checked his email on his phone. “Monty just delivered those documents,” he said “Honestly, I was expecting a message saying he couldn’t find anything.”
“And if there are records on a doctor, there’s bound to be a story there,” Rachel said.
“So let’s get inside and put it together.”
They walked into the library, a two-story building that was quiet, given the time of day (10:40 in the morning) on a weekday. They settled into a small table in a corner on the first floor and started looking over the PDFs Monty had sent them. There really wasn’t much of a story at all, but enough to warrant a criminal file. Before becoming a doctor, Benjamin Lucas had been arrested twice in his twenties, while in med school, for taking part in protests that got out of hand. One of the protests had been in front of a laboratory that had been working on what would later be known as stem-cell research. It had turned violent, and Lucas had ended up tackling a cop to the ground. He’d been fined and spent three weeks in prison. There was also a file on Lucas in terms of his name coming up in past cases where medical issues or discrepancies had popped up in active police cases. He’d never been brought in for questioning or as a suspect, but his name had been flagged on two occasions in the state of Tennessee.
“Tennessee,” Rachel said. “Looks like there might be stories about this guy that wouldn’t have naturally fallen into a criminal record.”
They walked over to the closest available computer, an old Dell desktop model that seemed to populate most public libraries. Rachel took the seat and pulled up Google, typing in Doctor Benjamin Lucas Tennessee. There was a list of hits within seconds, but the headlines of the first few links told them what they needed to know.
“Jackpot,” Jack said as Rachel opened up the first result.
For the next ten minutes, they read several different articles, all from reputable news outlets, about a surprising bit of history pertaining to Dr. Benjamin Lucas. Eleven years ago, Dr. Lucas had been stripped of his medical license in the state of Tennessee. It was a very basic story, though a sad one. Lucas had been treating a terminal cancer patient from their home and had administered almost three times the necessary dose of morphine. For a doctor with a stellar medical record to that point, a mistake of that caliber was practically unheard of. During the trial that followed, Lucas never denied it and made no excuses. He also showed very little remorse. When people started digging, more situations like that arose. And though there were no other deaths linked to him, there were several instances of the patient’s case worsening and needing additional medical treatment.
“Okay, so,” Jack said, “I’m going to assume Life Fulfilled knows about all of this. If not, they need to do some serious recalibration on their process for employee background checks. But how is it that the people who are applying for Life fulfilled benefits aren’t doing their basic research and learning all of this?”
Rachel stared at the last screen she’d pulled up. She thought she knew the answer to this, and it was pretty depressing. “They might be doing their research. But what they’re facing…when they look at the benefits Life Fulfilled offers, they may not give a damn.”
“And as for Life Fulfilled…I’m guessing Wes Dalton and all of the bigwigs probably know that. And I can only assume that a disgraced doctor is going to come with a much smaller price tag than an actual on-staff physician.”
Rachel closed the browser window, conflicted. If they put this in the face of Life Fulfilled and anyone outside of the organization dug even the slightest little bit, it would ruin the foundation. And while Rachel was all about crooked people getting what they deserve, she also knew that Life Fulfilled was indeed fulfilling the wishes of the terminally ill and assisting them in their day-to-day lives.
She forced herself to look beyond that, though. She focused on what they knew about Lucas getting his license suspended. Giving someone three times the amount of necessary morphine was indeed a huge error. And the fact that he’d made no excuses or given any proper explanations seemed odd.
“Do you think he could have killed that patient on purpose?” she asked.
“Don’t know. His responses to it during the investigation certainly make me think it might have been a possibility.”
“Well,” Rachel said, getting to her feet. “If he is indeed working for Life Fulfilled, he’s doing so without a medical license. And I think if we hold that over his head, he might be pretty forthcoming with any information he might have.”
They started walking out of the library and Rachel realized that she felt great—maybe better than she had since getting her diagnosis. Her head was clear and pain free, she had a good deal of energy, and there was no added pressure. It might be a bit dishonest of her, but to know that this wasn’t her case—that she was, in fact, not even technically an agent at the moment—made her feel as if an immense weight had been lifted from her shoulders. And with that sense of clarity, she started to consider the idea that maybe Dr. Lucas was getting a taste of his old life in working through Life Fulfilled. And if he had intentionally killed that patient several years ago, at the same time he’d harmed others, maybe he was remembering what it had been like.
Maybe he was remembering that he’d enjoyed it and was starting over again, only this time in a much more immediate way.