Covenant (52 page)

“You’ve a nice place here, Casey,” Tyrell said, looking around. “Been here long?”

“Sixteen years,” Casey replied, “ever since I’ve worked at the hospital.”

Tyrell retrieved a photograph from his pocket. “Do you recognize this man?”

Casey looked down at the black-and-white image.

“No.”

“His name is Damon Sheviz, and we believe he is responsible for a number of murders in Washington DC and in Israel.”

The Texan shifted as though he were being prodded with hot needles.

“What’s this got to do with me?”

“We think that there may be a connection between this man and Pastor Kelvin Patterson.”

“The pastor?” Casey asked, frowning.

Tyrell looked at the man’s expression and judged his apparent confusion to be genuine. He would need a different tack, and with Casey Jeffs he reckoned that brazenly revealing his knowledge might tease out a confession more quickly than more surreptitious means.

“How come you work at the hospital, instead of for your brother, Casey?”

“He runs a big corporation,” Casey said proudly. “Byron’s in Israel signing a big deal right now.”

“Is he now?” Tyrell replied, lifting one eyebrow.

Casey’s expression quivered as though he had woken from a brief nap. “How did you know about my brother?”

“I know a lot of things, Casey,” Tyrell murmured. “Byron keeps you a secret. Have you ever wondered why?”

Casey’s expression remained stoic, as though he were unable or unwilling to consider the complexities the question provoked.

“I ain’t given it much thought,” he replied awkwardly.

In truth, Tyrell hadn’t been sure of the family connection and maybe Casey wasn’t aware of the truth himself, but it explained everything. Bradley Stone had been a whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking philanderer with a taste for younger women, and he was both willing and able to pay any amount for the company he sought. Casey was the orphaned son of a Texas hooker who had overdosed under suspicious circumstances, and his whole life had somehow been financed by persons unknown. Tyrell had suspected that Bradley and now Byron Stone were behind Casey’s covert financial security, probably to avoid scandal or more likely a lawsuit. Moreover, Casey had been on the stand for killing his own mother, but the case had collapsed due to witness testimony and the defense arguing that Casey was mentally incapable of both premeditated homicide and the deluding of detectives investigating the scene. That, of course, did not mean that the young Casey had done either the planning or the deluding. Nor did it mean that his mother had overdosed.

“How often does Byron fly to Israel on business?” Tyrell asked.

“Maybe twice a month.”

“And he flies with scheduled airlines?” Tyrell baited him.

“No. He has a private company jet.”

Tyrell nodded and smiled an ingratiating little smile. The gesture had the desired effect as Casey squirmed.

“We believe that the AEA is actively involved in illegal medical experiments, which have resulted in the deaths of at least three American citizens.”

Casey blinked, taking a few moments to absorb the information.

“Experiments?”

“Medical experiments on live people, only one of whom survived.”

“There was a survivor?”

“You know about that, Casey?”

Casey’s expression quivered.

“I think it’d be better if we had this conversation with a lawyer present.”

Tyrell sat back on the sofa, casually placing one hand in his jacket pocket to rest on a can of pepper spray nestled within.

“Can you tell me your whereabouts this afternoon?”

“I’ve been at work all day.”

“And you had a particularly busy day, didn’t you, Casey?” Tyrell saw the Texan’s larynx rise and fall silently in his throat. “You were in the hospital kitchens.”

Casey’s blue eyes flared brightly in surprise. Tyrell didn’t give him the chance to speak.

“We have your DNA, Casey,” he lied. “We know how you did it.”

Casey Jeffs shook his head. “No, you don’t, else you’d have arrested me already.”

“So you admit that you were involved?”

“I din’ say that. I din’ go nowhere near the boy.”

“I didn’t say that you went anywhere near him.”

“The boy was found with the pills; they were there in his room!”

“Seemed like the perfect crime, didn’t it?” Tyrell continued. “A mentally impaired boy enduring great suffering commits suicide by overdose in a locked and drug-free room. We find the pills and bottle on the floor, but nobody else went near the room and nobody saw him except his mother, who’s arrested for being the only person who could have given the drugs to him. Neat, Casey.”

Casey Jeffs stared at Tyrell with an impassive gaze that the detective recognized as the visage of the guilty, struggling to conceal emotions behind a facade of indifference.

“I had nothin’ to do with that boy’s murder.”

“
Murder,
Casey?” Tyrell echoed. “So you’re saying that it was murder now?”

Casey slammed a clenched fist down on the table between them.

“I didn’t kill the boy! He overdosed, locked in his room!”

“Didn’t you kill before, Casey?” Tyrell asked.

“I din’ kill no one!”

“The pill bottle on the floor, that was the key,” Tyrell went on. “He couldn’t have gotten them into his room—past all that security and all those checks and a police officer—in clothes that had no pockets. He could barely walk at all. Had to be his mother, didn’t it?”

“Suppose,” Casey muttered.

Tyrell watched Casey’s blue eyes transfixed on his own, unable to tear himself away from his own terminal demise.

“Actually, Casey, I don’t think there were any pills in that room at all.”

I
don’t know what you’re sayin’,” Casey rasped.

Tyrell leaned back on the couch.

“Daniel Neville, a survivor of Kelvin Patterson’s experiments, was a liability. Easy enough to slip a lethal dose of his own medicine into his food and let it leak toxins into his bloodstream. Especially easy if you happen to be on your lunch break in the kitchen at about the same time as Daniel’s food was being prepared, which you were, Casey. While asleep, he suffers a cardiac arrest and dies.”

“The pills he took were in the room with him!”

Tyrell smiled.

“No, they weren’t. You made sure that Daniel Neville was in his room for almost an hour before you walked past, plenty of time for the drugs in his food to have killed him. You punched through the window to open the latch on the inside of his door, even though a few seconds more would have been enough time for the nurse to have arrived with the key. But you had to, Casey, because punching through that window was the only way to scatter that bottle of pills into the room, to make a homicide look like a suicide.”

Casey blurted out a laugh.

“His mother’s already been arrested and charged for the murder.”

“Daniel’s mother was released from custody the moment I got back to the station. I just had her arrested because that’s what you were hoping for, ain’t that right?” Casey swallowed thickly as Tyrell spoke. “You’re on the same anxiety medication that Daniel was, aren’t you? I’m guessin’ that you figure there’ll be no way for us to prove your guilt as you picked up the bottle of pills in the room, which nullifies the fact that your prints are on it.”

“I sure did,” Casey smirked. “Ain’t got nothin’ there.”

“Sure I do. Daniel Neville was taking his medication at a daily twenty-five-milligram dose, but he died of an overdose of two-hundred-milligram pills,” Tyrell said smoothly. “You had to use them of course, because it’s surprisingly hard to kill someone using those kinds of medications. Thing is, Casey, you forgot that the different pills are different colors.”

Casey stared at Tyrell for a moment and licked his lips.

“Ain’t nothin’ that I’d know about. I’m just a cleaner.”

Tyrell hefted himself off the sofa and looked down at Casey.

“You were on the stand for a locked-room homicide twenty years ago, your own mother’s suspicious overdose, but that time the prosecution didn’t see through it. Who put you up to it, Casey? Kelvin Patterson? Your brother?”

Casey bolted upright to his feet, towering over Tyrell.

“They got nothin’ to do with this!”

“They used you, Casey,” Tyrell said, standing his ground. “They’ve always used you.”

“You’re settin’ me up!” Casey wailed. “They tol’ me you would.”

“They made you kill your own mother. Are they the kind of people you trust, Casey?”

“Shut up, they ain’t usin’ me!”

“I can help you, Casey,” Tyrell offered, fingering the can of pepper spray in his pocket. “But I can’t do anything unless you’re straight with me.”

Casey’s eyes danced crazily as though looking for an escape. His huge hands gripped each other in desperation.

“They ain’t been usin’ me,” Casey uttered, halfway between a threat and a plea. His blue eyes welled with trembling tears. “The pastor’s my pa.”

“No, Casey, Bradley Stone was your pa. Kelvin Patterson’s a man who has arranged murders, and you’re the man he’s put in the dock for committing them.”

Casey shook his head, his voice strained with grief. “He’s all I’ve got.”

Tyrell belatedly realized the depth of Casey’s attachment to Kelvin Patterson.

“The police are searching for a murderer but I believe that you’ve been manipulated by Patterson. If you just tell me what—”

“The police ain’t interested in me!” Casey snapped with sudden vigor.

“They sure are, and there’s—”

“You’ve been suspended from duty, Mr. Tyrell.”

Tyrell blinked, feeling suddenly dizzy. “How the hell would you know that?”

Casey’s mouth twisted into an angry grimace. “Ain’t none o’ your business.”

Shit.
A dawning realization began creeping upon Tyrell like a dark and ominous wave as it rushed toward shore, and he knew it was going to swallow him whole. Someone on the force? Cain? Lopez?

“I think that you’re hiding something and you should tell me what it is,” he uttered. “You need to cooperate with us, Casey.”

“There ain’t no
us
!” Casey shouted, jabbing a thick finger in Tyrell’s face. “I ain’t goin’ to jail. You’re here on your own an’ there ain’t nobody left to help you now, you black motherfu—”

Tyrell whipped the can of pepper spray from his pocket and shoved it into Casey’s face, squeezing the button hard. A thick hiss of vapor blasted the Texan and he staggered backward with a cry of panic, clawing at his face.

Tyrell stepped in, lifting one foot and smashing it sideways into Casey’s knee joint. Blinded and off balance, the Texan crashed onto the thickly carpeted floor with a strained rush of expletives as Tyrell turned to get away.

Casey’s thick hand latched onto Tyrell’s arm like a vice, the Texan swearing and shouting as he swung a wild punch. Tyrell ducked the blow before dropping deftly and driving the point of one knee down hard into Casey’s plexus. The Texan’s swearing gave way to a sharp, strangled intake of breath as his nervous system convulsed under the blow, but his thick arms and chunky hands kept their maniacal grip. Tyrell jerked himself backward onto his heels.

Suddenly, he felt his balance waver, stars and points of light flashing in front of his eyes.
Shit, not now.
He dropped down onto one knee again as his balance failed him.

The blow came from nowhere. Casey’s grip relented for an instant before the shape of a fist flashed in front of Tyrell’s eyes and smashed into his face, crunching through the cartilage of his nose. The world tilted wildly as he reeled sideways, tripping over a thick rug and slamming hard onto the carpet.

The Texan crawled onto his knees, wiping his eyes with his sleeve as his chest surged with chronic wheezes. To Tyrell’s dismay, despite the liberal dosage he’d unleashed into Casey’s face, he appeared to be recovering swiftly. In contrast, Tyrell could barely breathe, sucking air down in desperate, rattling gasps past his ruined septum.

Casey lunged toward him and Tyrell emptied the can into his face from point-blank range. Casey managed to shield his eyes, but the stinging haze forced him away.

Tyrell turned and crawled on his hands and knees, stars flashing before his eyes in a nauseating whorl of colors. Behind him he heard Casey scramble in pursuit, and looked over his shoulder to see the once wide blue eyes now puffy and contracted into slits. Tyrell lurched on rubbery legs the final couple of steps to the front door, reached out, and grasped for the handle as he sank to his knees.

The door swung open, the handle yanked from Tyrell’s grasp as a tall figure loomed in the doorway before him. Tyrell looked up through his bleary eyes and a flush of relief flooded through his body as Captain Louis Powell stared down at him.

He watched as Powell took in the scene and dropped onto one knee, his gloved hands grasping the dull metal of a service pistol that glinted in the light. Casey Jeffs stared through puffy eyes into the gaping maw of the weapon, and then two deafening gunshots crashed out. Casey quivered as two bloody red splatters smeared his chest, and then he toppled over and slumped against the wall as thick blood oozed from his fractured heart to drench his shirt.