Private Detective: BENNINGTON P.I.: A thrilling four-novel political murder mystery private detective series...

by D. W. Ulsterman

  “The kind that wants to remain alive.”

  I wanted to keep the man talking, so kept asking questions.

  “Who’s trying to kill you? I assume it must have something to do with Bruce Morehouse, right?”

  The priest closed his eyes for a half second and then his shoulders slumped. Whatever burden he was carrying within himself appeared to be threatening to push him to the floor of my apartment.

  “Yes, he’s involved, but he’s not in charge. I thought perhaps you might know who was. That maybe they were the ones who sent you.”

  The man was making no sense, but I sensed his fear was genuine, and the last thing he wanted to do was actually kill me.

  “You already know my name. You mind telling me yours?”

  I was pleased to see the priest smiling again as he resigned himself to no longer trying to intimidate me. The gun was lowered as he took a seat in the chair opposite me.

  “I’m Father Victor Barnes. I’m also a medical doctor, specializing in oncology treatment and research.”

  I forced my face to betray no surprise as I recalled Dedra’s initial description during our meeting at the Off the Record of the proposed fast track legislation that was focused on newly developed cancer drugs.

  “There is pending legislation in the House regarding fast-tracking FDA approval for newly developed cancer drugs. Congresswoman Mears is a co-sponsor of the bill. We’re having a terrible time gaining support within the House Subcommittee on Health. The entire bill is going to be killed unless we can gain some traction.”

  And now I found myself sitting in my apartment with a gun toting doctor-priest who specialized in cancer research. I didn’t believe in that kind of random coincidence. This priest, and my assignment, had to be connected somehow.

  What’s that saying? God works in mysterious ways?

  “You look lost in thought, Mr. Bennington. Care to share?”

  I nodded in the direction of my small kitchen area.

  “You want a drink? I have some decent Scotch.”

  The corners of Father Barnes’s mouth curled downward as he considered the offer.

  “Actually, that sounds good, thank you.”

  I stood up slowly and pointed to the kitchen.

  “Right over here. Don’t worry. I’m not looking to do anything stupid. Just pouring some drinks.”

  The priest glanced down at the gun that now rested on the thigh of his right leg.

  “That’s good to know, Mr. Bennington.”

  It took no more than a minute for me to pour some Scotch into two glasses and hand one back to Father Barnes while sitting back down with my own.

  “You mind if I ask you a few questions Father? Or do you prefer I call you doctor? Or---“

  The priest held up his left hand.

  “Whatever you want, I’m not one to obsess over titles.”

  I smiled back at the priest, trying to reassure him. Part of me found that ironic, given he was the one with the gun.

  “What’s the deal between you and Morehouse? You must have been watching his house, right? That’s when you saw me go in there?”

  Father Barnes nodded.

  “That’s right. I had been monitoring the property for a few days, trying to find out who he was working for, so I could then figure out who had pressured the hospital to put me on administrative leave. My research…I have patients whose only hope is the work I do. I need to be allowed to continue my research Mr. Bennington. Lives literally depend on my doing so.”

  I took a sip of my drink, a tactic I used to buy just a moment or two of time while considering what was said during an information gathering conversation.

  “You believe someone is purposely trying to stop your research? Does this research involve cancer treatment?”

  Again the priest nodded, though this time he took a deep breath and then swallowed the entire contents of his glass in one uninterrupted gulp. I had placed the half empty bottle of Scotch in the middle of the small coffee table that separated the couch from the chair Father Barnes sat in, a bottle the priest now used to refill his own glass.

  “Cancer treatment, yes. My hospital has quietly tolerated my work for years because I require little space, and even less funding, and frankly, they owe me. My family was once very wealthy Mr. Bennington. My father was among the original investors of IBM. When I turned twenty-nine, I inherited what most in the world would call, a considerable fortune. I was already a member of the church by then, a Jesuit doctor, so most of those funds went to a Catholic hospital in northern Maryland where I have conducted my research for the last twenty three years.

  “You see, my mother died of breast cancer when I was twelve. She had been diagnosed just a year earlier. We all knew something was wrong. Her body ached, and she had complained of feeling tired all the time. My mother was rarely one to complain, but the months before her diagnosis, she had grown more agitated, more quick to anger.

  “Once they confirmed cancer, they quickly butchered her, removing both breasts, only to inform her just days later that it had already metastasized. I watched as the chemo treatments tore through her body, leaving her a mummified husk that was nothing more than a broken mirror of her former beauty and strength. Even as a young boy I sensed the treatment was possibly worse than the actual disease, and prayed to God that I be given the chance to fight cancer in a way that did not threaten death for those seeking to live.

  “Her last weeks were spent in bed, the morphine drip keeping her quiet, her body transitioning from fighting for life, to welcoming the final release from suffering that death would bring. I watched the life fade from my mother’s eyes, Mr. Bennington. I saw in those eyes fear, rage, sadness, and then, most frightening of all, an absolute absence of hope. That body that yet breathed in that bed was no longer my mother. The cancer, and the barbaric, poison treatment, had taken her from me.

  “So I joined the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church, graduated medical school, and began my life’s mission, a mission that until very recently was showing great promise.”

  I sat silent, both intrigued by what the priest had said, and even more convinced his arrival was something far greater and more important than mere coincidence. A soft whisper of realization nudged my mind at that same moment.

  The fast track legislation, how tired she sounded. How important this assignment is to her.

  “Father Barnes, are you familiar with the name Dedra Donnigan?”

  The priest’s eyes flew open as his right hand tightened on the barrel of his gun.

  “How do you know that name?”

  I took another sip of my drink, my eyes looking back at the priest over the rim of my glass.

  “Maybe you should tell me how you know that name Father.”

  The priest cleared his throat, working to regain his composure. The mention of Dedra’s name was unexpected, had caught him off guard, but he recovered quickly.

  “Dedra Donnigan is a patient of mine, Mr. Bennington. God willing, I hope to save her life.”

  8.

  The interior of my apartment was eerily silent as I sat staring back at the priest, who in turn, placed his handgun on the coffee table and poured himself another drink. The news of Dedra’s apparent illness shook me, forcing me to admit I had developed far deeper feelings for her than I had realized.

  “Will she die?”

  Father Barnes looked down at his hands holding the glass of Scotch.

  “If I am not able to treat her, most likely, yes. If I can once again have access to my office, my research, I may be able to help her. I don’t wish to talk in detail about a patient Mr. Bennington. Do you two work together?”

  It was my turn to refill my glass. The bottle of Scotch was nearly empty.

  “Something like that, yeah. That’s why I was at the Morehouse property – I was doing some investigating for Dedra. Or rather, for the organization we work for.”

  The priest’s eyes widened as he nodded his head.

  “Ah
, now I understand! Dedra thought perhaps you could find someone to exert pressure on the hospital to end my suspension so her treatments could resume.”

  Father Barnes only had a portion of the story right of course. What Dedra had me doing went far beyond his own work, involving legislation that could free up what was likely significant research across the country.

  “My visit with Morehouse had more to do than with just Dedra, Father. There’s pending legislation in Congress that is being stalled. The organization we work for seems to think it’s someone within the FDA who is behind the attack against that legislation, and I’m trying to figure out who – and why.”

  Father Barnes took a slow sip from his glass, staring at me for several long seconds.

  “What’s this stalled legislation you mentioned?”

  I paused, not certain I should trust the priest completely just yet.

  “Before I get to that Father, did the FDA have anything to do with your suspension? These treatments you provide, are they approved by the medical establishment?”

  Father Barnes slammed his glass down upon my coffee table, his lip curling into an angry sneer.

  “To hell with the FDA and their pages of rules that only serve to protect the sick and dying monopoly they have created!”

  Mental note to self – this priest is no fan of the FDA.

  “Yes, Mr. Bennington, the FDA most definitely had something to do with my suspension! It was they who came to my office, seized my research, and threatened the hospital with fines if they did not punish me for my actions! They think they took my work from me, but I’m no fool! I have it all secured, all my research is safe, copied down and easily accessed. The thing is, we had been following FDA protocols as much as possible. I did nothing wrong! It was only when my work showed promise, when patients who statistically should have been dead, were alive and well, that the FDA sent their minions to shut me down. Damn Magnus Tork and his medical establishment Nazis!”

  The priest’s agitation was worsening with each spoken word of his story.

  “Who’s Magnus Tork?”

  “Magnus Tork works with CDER. He’s the one who came to the hospital, to MY office, and shut me down.”

  Though I had spent decades inside of the political bubble world that is Washington D.C., I had no recollection of ever hearing the acronym CDER.

  “Who, or what, is CDER?”

  Father Barnes snorted, his mouth once again snarling back at me.

  “CDER is the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, a branch of the FDA. They are the gatekeepers to all medical research in the country Mr. Bennington. They quite literally have the power of life and death over the sick and dying. And Magnus Tork is a very close associate of your Bruce Morehouse, who in turn, is advising the third largest pharmaceutical in the world – GenEx. And do you know the types of treatment and drugs that make up GenEx’s primary source of profits Mr. Bennington? Cancer. Cancer is that company’s great money maker. Not the curing of cancer Mr. Bennington, but the long, drawn out, and always costly treatment and protection of cancer as a business, cancer as profit.”

  Protection of cancer?

  “Did you just say the protection of cancer?”

  The priest-doctor offered a thin, pained smile.

  “Absolutely, Mr. Bennington. Many cancers, and certainly breast cancer among them, if left untreated will kill the host rather quickly – a matter of months or a handful of years. There is little profit in a quick, untreated death. The same principle applies for the cure of cancer – no longer term profit. Therefore, the current balance must be protected, more cancer, more lengthy and costly treatments, resulting in billions of dollars in profits.”

  Now I’m pretty sure if I’d heard this information some time before joining up with the T3 Group, I’d have dismissed it as crack pot conspiracy bullshit. But since my first case and Walt’s death after investigating the profit driven motive behind the whole global warming machine, I knew better than to be so quick to close my mind to the possibility there’s a hell of a lot of bad going on all around us. Greed can turn ugly, and make killers of many, perhaps even most.

  “I see uncertainty in your eyes, Mr. Bennington. No worry, I understand that. I would have a very hard time accepting this truth if I had not been so personally involved in the process for so many years. How can any society advocate the designed death of so many, just to ensure money continues to be made? I would simply ask then if you know how much we spend on cancer treatment in the world as opposed to cancer research? Do you know, Mr. Bennington?”

  I had no clue, and shrugged as much.

  “Three hundred billion dollars in the last year alone. That is how much we spent dissecting and poisoning patients with our cancer treatments. And how much was then spent on research? Less than one percent of that spent on so-called treatment. Does that sound like a society truly focused on a cure? We spent more on treatment last year, than has been spent on research over the last one hundred years! Clearly, something is amiss.”

  “And you’re telling me you’ve found a cure for cancer, and that’s why this Tork guy with the CDER shut you down?”

  Father Barnes straightened in his chair, his chin lifting upward slightly as he shook his head slowly.

  “I am not saying I found a cure - not yet. What I have found is a method, call it a treatment if you wish, that is both low in cost, while also proving to this point, to show very positive signs of being quite effective. It is an entirely different view of what cancer is, and what it isn’t. This method, this process, did not happen overnight Mr. Bennington. I’ve been researching the origins, and viable treatments of this disease for many years.”

  I wasn’t necessarily doubting the priest at this point. He certainly appeared to believe in everything he was telling me, but I also knew I needed to push him a bit more, which given his form of introduction to me about an hour ago was to enter my apartment with a gun pointed at my head, left me just a touch anxious.

  “So what are you doing that’s so different from anyone else? I assume it doesn’t involve chemo, or radiation, or surgery? So what is your treatment, and why would the government, or the drug companies, want to shut you down for it?”

  The priest leaned forward, his right hand pointing at me.

  “First, I need you to understand that when you say the government, and the drug companies, you are basically talking about the same creature. They are, for the most part, simply different appendages of the same body. Second, you are right. My treatment does not involve surgery, or chemotherapy, or radiation. All of those methods are part of the profit driven form of cancer treatments, and are focused on the killing of cancer cells, but in doing so, they must also kill, or endanger, one’s healthy cells.

  “Now I won’t say that these more traditional treatments don’t sometimes help, despite the cost, and the often very negative side effects for the patient, both emotional and physical. Chemotherapy can be a somewhat effective treatment for hematologic malignancies, particularly Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but it comes at great risk for damage to the patients internal organs, their immune system, bone density, bleeding disorders, and a myriad of other quite serious complications. Radiation is much the same, though can be temporarily localized. I say temporarily, because I believe radiation at those levels has a very high probability of spreading throughout the body over time, resulting in, ironically enough, increased risk for other cancers. And then surgery of course is invasive, expensive, and if the cancer is particularly difficult to safely extract, similarly risky, and surgery is almost always followed by several rounds of aggressive chemotherapy, which introduces those risk and trauma to the patient.

  “The medical industry is in effect, telling these suffering cancer patients to take two, and call them in the morgue, for that is where so many of them invariably end up.

  “We should not be seeking to kill the cancer cells, but to reform them! And this can be done by using materials already provided us by God! You see, Mr. Benni
ngton, I have long believed that everything humankind would need to remain healthy and prosperous, was given to us in the Creation, including the treatment of cancers. God does not wish suffering. He does not wish for us to inject poisons into our bodies, to burn ourselves from the inside with radiation, or be left scarred by the surgeon’s knife. Regarding cancer, and the millions who have died, and the millions more who will, I can only pray God to forgive us, for we know not what we do! Just as Christ Lord raged against the profiteers inside of the temple, so too have I raged against the profiteers of human suffering!”