Chapter 9 - The Hunt for Dr. Lucas Albright
While the corporate restructuring moved forward, one critical monster remained in the wind: Dr. Lucas Albright.
At 2:00 PM that afternoon, Detective Mercer received an emergency alert from the Illinois State Police Automated License Plate Reader network. Albright’s black Lincoln sedan had been spotted pulling into a secluded, run-down motel near the Mississippi River crossing in Galena, Illinois.
"He missed his flight at O'Hare because of the federal airport alert," Mercer told me as we sat in his unmarked cruiser outside the central precinct. "He’s holed up in Room 12 at the Riverfront Motor Lodge, waiting for a forged passport from a local smuggler."
"I'm coming with you, Frank," I said, looking Mercer dead in the eye. "I need to look that butcher in the face."
Mercer nodded slowly. "Put on a tactical vest. We move with the Illinois State Police SWAT team."
Forty-five minutes later, six unmarked police vehicles and an armored tactical van surrounded the dilapidated, snow-covered motel on the banks of the frozen Mississippi River.
The wind howled off the ice, blowing powdery snow across the cracked asphalt parking lot.
SWAT officers in black tactical gear and ballistic helmets stacked up along the exterior wall of Room 12, their assault rifles raised.
"Breach on three," the SWAT commander whispered through the tactical radio. "One... two... three! Hit it!"
BANG!
The hydraulic battering ram shattered the wooden door off its frame, splintering the lock into pieces.
"POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT! GET ON THE GROUND! GET ON THE GROUND NOW!"
Flashbang grenades detonated inside with deafening, blinding concussions.
Detective Mercer and I pushed into the room behind the tactical shield.
The cheap motel room smelled of stale cigarettes, panic, and spilled whiskey. Dr. Lucas Albright—once the most polished, arrogant private physician in Johnson County—was cowering on the bathroom floor between the toilet and the bathtub, clutching a leather medical bag against his chest, screaming hysterically.
"Don't shoot! Don't shoot! I surrender! I surrender!" Albright shrieked, covering his head with his trembling, manicured hands.
Two SWAT officers dragged him out into the main room, slamming him face-down onto the dirty carpet, pulling his arms behind his back, and securing him with heavy zip-ties.
I stepped forward, looking down at the man who had placed my living wife into a body bag and signed her death certificate for thirty pieces of silver.
Albright looked up, his glasses crooked on his nose, blood trickling from a small cut on his temple. When he saw me standing over him, his eyes filled with pathetic, sniveling terror.
"Conrad... Conrad, please!" Albright begged, crying into the carpet. "Brenda threatened me! She said she would expose my prescription fraud to the medical board! She gave me five hundred thousand dollars in cash! I didn't want Vivienne to suffer! I gave her a dose that I thought would keep her unconscious until the end!"
"Until the end?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm, cold, and lethal. "You mean until she woke up six feet under the frozen earth to claw her fingernails against the inside of a mahogany lid until her lungs burst?"
Albright whimpered, burying his face in the floor, unable to bear the weight of his own monstrous reality.
"Take him away," I told Detective Mercer. "Let the federal prosecutors give him the justice he earned."
As Albright was hauled out into the snow, screaming and pleading for mercy that would never come, I looked out over the frozen Mississippi River.
Every single conspirator had been captured.
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Every lie had been exposed.
Every debt had been paid.
