Chapter 4 - The Doctor Who Disappeared
Dr. Aaron Pike had vanished nineteen years earlier.
His medical license expired without renewal.
His house was sold.
His bank accounts were closed.
No obituary.
No forwarding address.
My mother's death certificate said she died from an accidental interaction between sleeping medication and wine.
I had been fourteen.
I believed what adults told me.
Now Miriam told me Aaron Pike had called her office six months before my father's death.
"He wanted to talk about Elena."
"Why didn't he?"
"He disappeared before our meeting."
Again.
People around Lucy had a habit of disappearing.
Chief investigator Rachel Monroe from the state attorney general's office had been invited to the gala by Miriam.
Lucy had assumed she was another donor.
She was not.
Rachel stepped forward.
"This event is now connected to an active financial investigation."
Lucy's attorney Charles Vale stood.
"You have no warrant."
Rachel smiled slightly.
"Not yet."
Lucy laughed.
"Then leave."
Rachel held up her phone.
"A judge just signed one."
The gala became a crime scene.
Officers entered through three doors.
Computers from the foundation office upstairs were seized.
So were Lucy's phones.
Charles attempted to leave.
He was stopped.
Lucy looked at me with pure hatred.
"This is what you wanted."
"No."
I looked around at the guests.
"I wanted my mother to stop being remembered as crazy."
Rachel searched Lucy's private event suite.
Inside a locked case, officers found old prescription pads.
One bore Aaron Pike's name.
Another bore the name of the psychiatrist who had supposedly examined my mother after his death.
Miriam whispered.
"She kept them."
Lucy heard.
"They were historical documents."
Rachel bagged them.
"Then history can explain itself."
The fourth slap came the next morning.
Not from my hand.
From every newspaper in Chicago.
LADY OF GRACE FOUNDATION RAIDED.
FAKE PSYCHIATRIC RECORDS LINKED TO DEAD WOMAN.
BENNETT WIDOW ACCUSED OF TRUST MANIPULATION.
Lucy had spent twenty years controlling headlines.
Now headlines controlled her.
Her first press conference was a disaster.
She called me unstable.
Again.
She said my mother had been sick.
Again.
She called the diary fake.
Then a journalist asked one simple question.
"Why did you have blank prescription pads belonging to two dead doctors in your hotel suite?"
Lucy walked away.
The clip went viral.
That afternoon, Rachel called me.
"We found Pike."
My heart jumped.
"Alive?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Arizona."
"Will he talk?"
A pause.
"He's terrified."
"Of Lucy?"
"No."
Rachel's voice changed.
"Of your father."
I stopped breathing.
"What?"
"Dr. Pike says Jonathan Bennett paid him to falsify your mother's toxicology report."
My entire story shifted.
For years I had imagined Lucy as the person who destroyed my mother while my father stood weakly beside her.
Now I had to face something worse.
My father may not have been only weak.
May you like
He may have been involved.
