Covenant (37 page)

“Damn! Now? Can it not wait another hour?”

“No, it can’t. You’ll be back here by midday.”

The surgeon gathered himself together and put down his syringe, looking at Lucy.

“A pity,” he said. “I was looking forward to this.”

“You’ll be able to continue within a couple of hours,” the soldier assured him. “Right now, we’ve got to move.”

“I take it that Patterson’s little game is starting to unravel at the seams?” the surgeon asked.

Lucy saw the soldier glare cruelly at the surgeon.

“You mention a name one more time and I’ll put that syringe somewhere that will silence you for good.”

The surgeon, slipping out of his lab coat, chose to ignore the threat and instead walked to a locker. Lucy saw him open it and lift out an old, battered and torn gray jacket. The surgeon looked at her, as if remembering that she was there at all. He strolled over as he slipped into the jacket, and twisted the little dial on her drip.

Lucy felt the darkness slowly enveloping her again.

FIRST DISTRICT STATION
M STREET SW, WASHINGTON DC

T
yrell listened to Lopez as he drove onto M Street Southwest, joining rivers of headlights flowing south.

“Okay, this guy was born in Israel and raised with dual nationality in Huntsville, Alabama,” Lopez read from a report nestled on her lap. “Got a degree in neurological sciences at the University of Alabama, before settling in Israel in 1978 and conducting clinical studies on the suspended animation of mammals using methods involving cryogenic cooling.”

Tyrell glanced at her. “Something like what we saw?”

Lopez sifted through the file and pulled one sheet out that she’d marked in red pen on the corner. She read through a couple of lines.

“… replacing the blood using a controlled saline solution cooled to thirty degrees Fahrenheit, introduced to the subject intravenously. The body of the subject will experience hypothermia with the complete cessation of all major organ activity, rendering the subject clinically dead and in a state of controlled homeostasis. Here, the immune system becomes drastically hindered, allowing otherwise toxic alteration of a given biological system.”

Tyrell blinked. “And he’s done this legally?”

“On animals,” Lopez noted. “He was denied the opportunity to perform the procedures on humans.”

“He actually tried to practice this on people legally?”

“Applied to the Medical Ethics Board of Maryland upon returning to America, for hospital patients suffering from terminal illnesses to undergo the procedure as part of a proposed medical trial. His application was unanimously denied.”

“No shit,” Tyrell murmured. “When was this?”

“Three years ago,” Lopez said. “After that he was employed by a company called Munitions for Advanced Combat Environments, MACE, out of Maryland, doing research into battlefield trauma surgery techniques. He recently resigned his post and took to performing charitable work, splitting his time between Israel and America.”

Tyrell nodded, pulling out his badge and flashing it at the attendant guarding the parking lot. He drove through as the barrier was raised and quickly found an empty space.

“What about those hymns that Claretta Neville mentioned, or whatever they were?”

“The men of renown?” Lopez asked, and read from her notebook. “‘When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose … The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.’”

“The Bible,” Tyrell said, recalling his Sunday school. “The Nephilim were the product of human women and angels and were referred to as giants both physically and intellectually, just the kind of thing Kelvin Patterson might be interested in pursuing. This guy’s got to be the one,” he said as he turned off the engine. “Maybe he’s doing some kind of Frankenstein experiment or something. It all ties in.”

“Correlation does not always mean causation,” Lopez pointed out. “You taught me that.”

Tyrell grinned as he opened his door.

“True, but that doesn’t mean you can’t follow up on a lead, especially when there are three dead people to think of.”

“Okay, you got me,” Lopez conceded. “Pastor Kelvin Patterson currently owns the controlling share of MACE, and we have this surgeon on the record as having performed charitable work for the Evangelical Alliance. It’s how he and Kelvin Patterson must have met.”

Tyrell climbed out of the car. Almost immediately, the world went dark as flashing points of light dazzled him. He staggered backward against the rear door, toppling over as vertigo sent his world reeling. His left knee cracked painfully against the unyielding tarmac as he went down.

“Lucas?”

He heard rather than saw Lopez rush around to his side of the car. Slowly, the sparkling lights obscuring his vision faded as a clammy wash of nausea flushed through him.

“I’m okay,” he mumbled, righting himself against the car and smiling feebly.

“Like hell you are—you’ve lost your color.”

Tyrell dredged up a chuckle. “What, you mean I’m white now?”

“I’m bein’ serious, Tyrell, you look like shit.”

“That ain’t changed for a decade or two, honey.”

Lopez’s dark eyes narrowed. “You gotta get this checked out, Christ’s sake.”

Tyrell sighed, regaining his vision fully and feeling the nausea slide away.

“In the morning,” he said finally. “I’ll do it first thing.”

Lopez jabbed a finger at his chest.

“Just make sure you damn well do. I don’t wanna see yo’ fat ass sprawled on a mortuary slab, okay?”

Tyrell managed to smile, and with Lopez walked slowly through the lot and into the main building itself. They had barely gotten inside when a young lieutenant by the name of Reuben crossed their paths. Fresh out of college, Reuben delighted in his own sense of humor.

“You’ve been summoned by the High and Mighty,” he said with a cheerfully mocking smile. “God knows whose chain you’ve pulled, but half the First District Department’s waiting for you in the briefing room.”

Tyrell noticed Lopez glance with concern down the corridor to their left. “What’s the score?”

“Got me beat,” Reuben admitted. “Bureau’s involved though, so your chances are about as good as the Redskins at the bottom of the ninth ’gainst the Chargers.”

Tyrell sighed. “Cain.”

He led Lopez to the main briefing room, knocking and entering. A large table dominated the room, more than half of the two dozen available spaces filled. A disconcertingly large number of the officers present bore chunky epaulettes, and an equal number of faces were pinched with disdain as he and Lopez entered the room and closed the door. Special Agent in Charge of Investigations Axel Cain and another FBI agent stood briskly.

“Tyrell.” Cain grinned without warmth. “Thought we’d seen the last of you downtown yesterday.”

“So did I,” Tyrell murmured, noting that for once Cain wasn’t grinding his chops around a piece of gum. “What brings the Bureau here?”

Captain Powell, sitting at the head of the table, gestured to the two agents.

“Agents Cain and Denny want the Potomac Gardens case shut down due to lack of manpower. Commissioner Cathy Devereux wants to know what your handle on the investigation is.”

Tyrell nodded at the commissioner, a high-flying and well-respected officer who had begun her career as a beat cop. Before he had a chance to speak, Cain had a stab at grabbing center stage.

“We’ve uncovered some anomalies with the case but don’t consider them worthy of investigation.”

“
You’ve
uncovered?” Lopez uttered beside Tyrell, and before he could intervene she pointed a finger at Cain. “This joker would have shut us down yesterday if it weren’t for our work at the scene.”

A shadow of displeasure creased Cain’s features. “Charming.”

“What’s your angle here?” Cathy Devereux asked Cain.

“The case has crossed state lines as one of the victims was from Maryland. That makes it a federal case, not a district one. Not to mention the near fatality this morning at the medical examiner’s office. We’re here to find out exactly what’s been happening and what the Bureau can do to bring this to a close.”

Tyrell considered Cain to be a card-carrying member of the asshole club but he realized that he was now in a particularly delicate position. He had the tricky job of defending the validity of his case in front of Powell and the brass, while at the same time preventing it from passing into Cain’s jurisdiction or being shut down. Cathy Devereux turned to look at him expectantly.

Tyrell gestured to the file Lopez was holding. She passed it across the table to Cain, who leafed through it as though it were a travel brochure while Tyrell spoke.

“Three victims of an apparent group overdose. One of the victims was a respected scientist by the name of Joseph Coogan, a biochemist working in the District with no history of substance abuse of any kind. Autopsy shows that he underwent a medical procedure before having his blood contaminated with crack cocaine to approximate the appearance of an overdose.”

Cain frowned as he flicked through the file. “Meaning?”

“That his true cause of death was disguised amid crack-addict overdoses.”

“The medical examiner hasn’t even been able to confirm a time of death,” Cain said, scanning the last page of the file before closing it.

“What’s to say that it just looks that way and that this guy did indeed die from an overdose?” Commissioner Cathy Devereux asked.

“Pathology from the lab reports,” Lopez said. “The examiner’s on the record as saying that the victim’s blood had been entirely transfused, meaning that the drugs had to be administered after the procedure not before, as his blood type had changed. Either that or he decided to shoot up about a half hour after dying.”

“Maybe,” Cain said offhandedly.

“Maybe?” Tyrell muttered. “Either we’ve got a homicide or the city’s first case of zombie drug abuse. What’s the problem?”

“Occasionally,” Cain said with a smug smile, “an individual’s blood type can change as a result of antigens in infection, malignancy, or autoimmune disease. It’s been known to occur after liver transplants. We’ve done the research.”

Commissioner Devereux spoke quietly to Tyrell.

“Why do you think that you have enough information to produce a prosecution?”

“The fact that we have both a possible perpetrator and a motive.” Cain raised an eyebrow, but Tyrell kept going. “If you’d looked at the file more carefully than you looked at the crime scene, you’d have noticed that it names a suspect, a neurologist. He’s got a history of experimental procedures on mammals going back years, involving research into homeostasis and the use of induced hypothermia to treat victims of trauma.”

Cain squinted at Tyrell’s advanced terminology, but did not reach again for the file.

“Go on,” Devereux encouraged.

“This surgeon is central to all of this. One of the victims of these procedures survived and remained lucid enough to inform his mother of the basic details, which jibed with the assessment of a clinical surgeon at General Hospital. These people were experimented on illegally and against their will, and those experiments led to their deaths and the scene downtown yesterday morning.”

“What kind of experiments?” Cain demanded impatiently.

Tyrell took a deep breath. In for a penny …

“We talked to a surgeon, and he said that the only possible reason for conducting this procedure would be as part of an attempt to create a chimera, the genetic fusing of two distinct species into one. The victims we found were being used as human incubators, live test tubes providing or receiving rare O-negative blood.”

Commissioner Devereux stared at both Tyrell and Lopez for a long moment. “And this, chimera? Who, or what, exactly is it?”

“We don’t know yet,” Tyrell said. “Once we’ve got further pathology we’ll push for the district attorney to grant us a prosecution.”

Cain smirked in bemusement as Captain Powell unexpectedly chimed in from his seat.

“We’ll need something more than this for the DA to get involved, Tyrell.”

Commissioner Devereux looked at Cain. “What’s your take on this?”

“I’ve got real crimes to investigate,” Cain muttered. “The Bureau doesn’t have time to be chasing around the District after Lucas Tyrell’s mad fantasies.”

“Since when was homicide not a crime?” Tyrell asked.

“Since it was suicide,” Cain shot back and stood from the table, Agent Denny alongside him as he turned to Commissioner Devereux. “What are the chances that this is an international conspiracy involving genetic experiments, against those that it’s an ordinary overdose of three drug abusers in a downtown hovel? I recommend that this case be closed and our time spent on more fruitful avenues of investigation.”

“We have a suspect!” Tyrell almost shouted in disbelief.

“Damon Sheviz?” Cain uttered airily.

Tyrell felt his heart skip a beat and his jaw hang open.