Covenant A Novel

FIRST DISTRICT STATION

M STREET SW, WASHINGTON DC


Lopez tossed her case files onto her desk like a spoiled child discarding an old toy and picked up her jacket and car keys. She couldn’t bring herself to hate Captain Powell but she sure as hell hated herself. If she hadn’t reported Tyrell, then none of this would have happened. By now he’d probably be having his ass whipped by Commissioner Devereux, and Lopez herself was headed home with her own tail between her legs.

From where the files had fallen, a picture of Damon Sheviz stared out at her in black and white, his eyes a mischievous cross between those of the enlightened and the fanatic. There was something about the image that made her feel uneasy, something primal.

Beside her Lucas Tyrell’s phone rang suddenly, making her jump. She reached across and picked the receiver up.

“Yeah?”

“Hello,” came a voice that Lopez guessed was probably from the Windy City. “Is Detective Tyrell there?”

“He’s”—Lopez picked her words with care—“off duty right now. Let me take your name and number and I’ll get hold of Tyrell.”

“Of course,” the voice said, “my name’s Douglas Jarvis, Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“And what’s it regarding?”

“It’s regarding a report filed with the ICMP. I’ve been trying to reach Detective Tyrell but he’s been away from his desk.”

Lopez looked at the file in her hands and felt an almost supernatural tingle rippling down her spine.

“I posted information to the ICMP about a man found dead in the capital two days ago, a scientist by the name of—”

“Joseph Coogan?” asked the voice.

“How did you know that name?” Lopez asked in surprise.

“What’s your connection to this?”

“Lucas Tyrell is my partner. We’ve been working on this case for the past forty-eight hours or so.”

There was a pause on the line. “What sort of case?”

“Homicide that looked like an overdose but the pathology didn’t figure.”

“What was the discrepancy?”

“Too complicated to go into without the paperwork, but Coogan appeared to have died after some kind of unexplained medical procedure performed by a Damon Sheviz.”

“Was that analysis obtained during autopsy, something to do with traces of excess hydrogen sulphide in the blood?”

Lopez stood bolt upright.

“It was, along with signs of hypothermia and altered blood groups.”

The voice on the other end of the line became equally agitated.

“I think that we need to talk. I’ve been in touch with our embassy in Israel. It would appear that wherever Mr. Sheviz goes he leaves a trail of bodies behind him. We’ve also got some evidence of a company owned by the American Evangelical Alliance called MACE, purchasing and importing medical equipment into Israel that doesn’t correspond with their stated research programs, things like heart-bypass machines.”

Nicola Lopez could barely suppress the smile that broke out on her face as she grabbed a pen.

She quickly wrote down Jarvis’s details and hung up. Before she had even a chance to think about what had just happened, Larry Pitt, one of the junior officers in her division charged with administration duties, walked up to her desk and tossed a file in front of her.

“History on Casey Jeffs that you asked for,” he said casually. “Didn’t have enough time to grab all the files for your PDA earlier. Interesting guy.”

Lopez picked the file up as Pitt strolled away, opening it to find two pages of information, the first filled with what she already knew. As she read the second, however, her jaw fell slack and a sudden premonition of doom swamped her like a heavy blanket.

Lopez reached into her pocket for her cell phone, quick-dialing Kaczynski’s number, but the engaged tone cut her off. She rang off and tried Tyrell instead. Another recorded message droned in her ear.

Lopez leaped out of her chair and ran through the office until she caught up with Pitt.

“Larry, you seen Kaczynski?”

“He left about an hour ago,” Pitt said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

“Shit.”

Lopez knew that she had to get to Tyrell before he did something he would regret.

“Get on a terminal. I need Casey Jeff’s home address!”





ANACOSTIA, WASHINGTON DC


Casey Jeffs shook Tyrell’s hand and regarded him with a serene expression as they sat down opposite each other in the living room of Casey’s small apartment.

“What can I do f’ya, Detective?”

The apartment was devoid of excess furniture or trinkets. A simple crucifix dominated one wall of the lounge, and there was no television or music system in the room.

“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.

Tyrell, slumped on his knees against the wall in the corridor, looked up at Powell.

“Jesus, am I glad to see you,” he managed to rasp.

In one fluid motion that seemed to take an age, Tyrell watched as Powell stood and swung one heavy boot deep into his belly like a freight train through a balloon. Tyrell felt the remainder of the air in his lungs expelled in a great rush that surged through him, his vision melting into a milieu of swirling colors.

Tyrell collapsed onto his side with his back against the wall, his mouth wide open in a silent scream, eyes bulging and skin sheened with a cold, clammy sweat. He tried to speak but no sound came forth. The pulsing agony in his chest reached a new and excruciating plateau that forced a strangled cry of anguish from somewhere deep in his throat.

Captain Powell squatted down alongside him, his face taut with regret.

“You should’ve left this one alone, Lucas. I gave you every chance that I could,” he said softly. “Another twenty-four hours and this would all have disappeared, but you just couldn’t leave it alone.”

Tyrell tried to speak, but no sound issued forth from his tortured lungs.

Powell shook his head slowly.

“You and Lopez have turned yourselves into liabilities and there’s nothing more I can do for you. Believe me, if there was any other way I would take it, but I’m sure as hell not giving up my share of Patterson’s fortune or going to jail for either of you.”

Powell reached down and shoved his gloved hand across Tyrell’s bloodied face, leaning his weight behind it.

Tyrell gagged for air and struggled ineffectually against Powell’s grip until the last remaining strength seemed to vanish from his body. His lungs burned and tears filled his eyes, a melancholy as vast as the universe weighing him down as he felt Powell force the still-smoking pistol into his helpless hand. In dismay Tyrell recognized the weapon as his own, taken from him barely an hour before by the captain himself.

Tyrell, entrapped in a throbbing crucible of agony, felt a sudden release from the pain.

And then the blackness finally enveloped him as Powell stood and vanished into the night.





FIRST DISTRICT STATION

M STREET SW, WASHINGTON DC


I still can’t reach him.”

Lopez put her cell phone back in her pocket and looked at Larry Pitt, who pointed at the screen of his computer terminal.

“Here you go, Casey Jeffs is listed at 1216 Juventus Place, on the corner of K Street and Potomac Avenue, near the docks.”

Lopez turned abruptly away from the terminal and walked out of the office. She was surprised to see Kaczynski hurrying toward her, his features strained.

“I just tried to call you,” she said, and then caught the look on his face. “What is it?”

“I was speaking to Emergency Services.”

“Don’t tell me they’ve been called down to K Street.”

Kaczynski looked at Lopez as though she’d grown horns. “How the hell did you know that?”

“Is Tyrell okay?”

Kaczynski snapped out of it. “I don’t know. I’m on my way down there.”

She didn’t wait for Kaczynski to offer her a ride, dashing past him toward the exit.

K Street SE, Washington DC




The sight of the squad cars amid a blaze of hazard lights beside apartment blocks on the corner of K Street and Potomac Avenue sent a shiver down Lopez’s spine. She sat in silence as Kaczynski pulled the car in alongside one of the beat cops guarding the scene. He flashed a badge through his open window at the cop.

Lopez was out of the car before it had stopped moving, hitting her stride fluidly as she crossed to where an ambulance sat idle, paramedics standing in silence around the vehicle. Jesus, no. Please, no.

“Where is he?” she asked one of the paramedics.

The man gestured to the open front door of the ground-floor apartment opposite them. Lopez felt a flush of hot tears scald her cheeks as she saw Lucas Tyrell lying slumped against a wall, his eyes staring vacantly out of the open door. One arm was pinned uselessly behind him, the other resting on the carpet as though caressing it, a pistol in his grasp. Farther down the hall Casey Jeffs lay in the corridor, his features a lifeless mask. The lights gently flickering against the Anacostia River nearby made the scene seem almost serene.

Bailey, Tyrell’s dog, must have gotten out of the car. The little dachshund lay curled up against his master’s lifeless body.

“Christ’s sake,” Lopez uttered, turning away.

Kaczynski spoke so softly that he was barely audible.

“Paramedics say he suffered a heart attack. His car’s parked around the corner. Looks like he shot Casey in self-defense but was too far gone to call for help …”

Lopez saw Kaczynski hold up a sealed plastic bag in which lay Tyrell’s cell phone, switched on but unused. She could see alerts to her missed calls on the screen. Lopez looked away, trying to blink back her tears but in the end swiping them angrily away with her sleeve.

“He was checked in to see a specialist tomorrow morning,” she said. “Took me three years to get the fat a*shole to book an appointment.”

Lopez felt as though the world had weighed in upon her shoulders. Her legs quivered and she slumped down onto the dusty sidewalk.

Kaczynski squatted down beside her and placed a hand around her shoulder.

“There’s nothing more you could have done, Lopez. It was his choice not to seek medical attention. We all knew that.”

Lopez thumped her thigh with a clenched fist. “Stupid a*shole.”

Kaczynski managed a feeble smile. “An epitaph he would have agreed with entirely.”

Kaczynski stood, calling out to the paramedics.

“Okay, let’s get him out of here.”

Lopez looked out at the twinkling sea of lights rippling on the surface of the Anacostia. A tiny, muted thought infiltrated the veil of her grief. She got up.

“Wait.”

“What?” Kaczynski asked.

Lopez turned to the medics as they approached with the gurney.

“Any of you guys touched him?”

The senior medic shook his head. “He’s been gone for a while, ma’am,” he said respectfully. “CPR or defib wouldn’t have saved him.”

“I want him checked over,” Lopez said to Kaczynski.

“His number was up, Lopez. There isn’t anything to find here.”

“Then there’s no harm in having him checked out,” she pointed out. “I want ballistics out here too. How soon can we get a forensic team?”

“Right away”—Kaczynski shrugged—“but why would you think he’d need that?”

“Lucas just wasn’t the type to shoot,” she said softly. “I don’t think he drew his weapon in thirty years of service. He was proud of that.”

“You don’t think he got whacked?”

“I’d put my salary on it,” Lopez said. “Only other witness that we had committed suicide five hours ago in a secure and guarded room. That’s two deaths in one day connected to Lucas’s work on this case.”

“Why?” Kaczynski asked, looking at Casey Jeff’s body. “What the hell’s this guy got to do with the case?”

Lopez’s features hardened.

“Casey Jeffs was born as Casey Stone, the brother of Byron and the son of Bradley Stone, founder of a security company called MACE that’s run out of Maryland.”

“How the hell would you know that?” Kaczynksi asked.

“Blood,” Lopez said quickly. “Casey had a history of mental disorders. His blood was taken regularly during his treatment, and matches that of his father, Bradley Stone.”

“Why? How would this guy’s history link him in with all of this?”

“Tyrell had found links between MACE and the American Evangelical Alliance’s activities in Washington and Israel. That’s what he was questioning Senator Black about when the Capitol police busted him. Casey Stone had a history of violence and psychosis and was employed by the Evangelical Alliance at the hospital.”

Kaczynski stared at her silently for a long beat.

“That’s a weak link, Lopez. You’re starting to sound too much like Tyrell did.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Lopez said tartly. “We need to find out if Tyrell fired the gun that’s in his hand.”

“Ballistics could take days or even weeks to confirm.”

Lopez said nothing. Kaczynski stood for a moment longer and then glanced at Tyrell’s corpse. He exhaled softly.

“Guess we owe him this much.”

Lopez produced her notebook and tore off a page.

“This is the name of a guy who works for the DIA who I spoke to a half hour ago. He’s linked several homicides in Israel to ours in Washington with medical evidence from the autopsies. Tyrell was right. You need to speak to this guy as soon as you can and he’ll confirm what I’m telling you.”

Kaczynski took the number. “What the hell am I supposed to do then?”

Lopez kept her tone neutral, controlling her grief and setting herself a course upon which she could rely, one based on evidence.

“According to the DIA, this whole thing has something to do with fossils being shipped from Israel to DC tonight.”

“Fossils?” Kaczynski repeated in confusion.

“My first suggestion would be to go to the Interpol Bureau in the District and request a Red Notice for the extradition of one Damon Sheviz. The district attorney should back the move if it comes from the FBI, and it’ll let us intercept the MACE jet that’s on its way right now from Israel and find out what the hell’s on it. If it does connect Kelvin Patterson to events in Israel, then we have a real reason to apprehend him.”

“The Bureau can broadcast an international all points bulletin to law enforcement agencies in nearly two hundred countries and the Interpol general secretariat in Lyon, France,” Kaczynski agreed, “but we’ll need a national security letter as well, and only the agent in charge of the Bureau field office can issue one. Boarding that jet without it is a crime, and there’s no way Axel Cain’s going to go for it.”

Lopez nodded, well aware that to search private premises, documents, and bank accounts would need the contentious letter, designed specifically to override the need for judicial overview and accountability.

“Homicide is a crime too, Terry. Offer whatever you can to Axel Cain to get it.”

“What about Powell? He’ll have to clear this.”

Lopez, gambling that Kaczynski was just too damned straight to have climbed up Powell’s ass, took a chance.

“The only link between the events here in DC and what’s happened in Israel is Powell himself.”

Kaczynski thought for a moment, looked at Tyrell’s corpse, and then began shaking his head.

“No way, Lopez. Don’t even go there. It’s so insane even Tyrell would have walked away from it.”

“Would he?”

“Don’t be an ass, Lopez,” Kaczynski pleaded. “Let’s talk about it in the morning. You’re not thinking straight after what’s happened, and—”

Lopez turned and strode to the car, retrieving the file that Larry Pitt had handed her at the office. She stormed back across to Kaczynski, opening the file to the second page.

“Homicide trial, San Antonio, Texas, back in 1984. Perp’s name was Casey Jeffs, who we now know as Casey Stone.”

“So he’s a convicted felon too?” Kaczynski asked.

“No. Casey Jeffs was on the stand for the suspected homicide of a prostitute who’d apparently overdosed and who, it turned out, was Casey’s mother. Prosecution reckoned he’d planned her murder to look like a suicide, while the defense held that he wasn’t smart enough to premeditate the crime. But the defense was gettin’ screwed because on the witness stand Casey just couldn’t handle the stress and kept slipping up during questioning. He was looking at twenty to life when next thing you know, he’s off after a late witness testimony gives him a cast-iron alibi. Now, look at the investigating officers listed here, and the officer who supposedly found the witness.”

Kaczynski looked at the list of officers at the bottom of the page, and stopped at one.

“Sergeant Louis Powell,” he whispered as he read the name.

“Ring any bells?” Lopez asked. “A body found by Casey Jeffs, a locked-room homicide, an overdose? Tyrell must have worked this all out after he was suspended. Casey Jeffs is the bastard son of Bradley Stone. Bradley must have been paying Casey’s hooker mom off for years to keep her silent and avoid a scandal, and MACE has paid for Casey’s hospitalization and treatment both then and ever since. Somewhere along the line the hooker gets too greedy, someone decides that enough is enough and has her iced. What if Tyrell worked it all out, but it’s not Casey who’s planned this and he’s just the fall guy?”

“Patterson,” Kaczynski guessed, “or Byron Stone. And you linked Casey to his dead mother through the blood taken at the scene of the homicide?”

“Exactly, and to his father, through genetic profiling that wasn’t available when this homicide case went to trial. Powell must have been in Byron Stone’s pocket for decades, ever since this case put a black mark on his career. It’s no wonder nobody’s picked up on these suspicious overdoses in the District before now if Powell’s been sweeping them under the carpet. He’s covering for either MACE or the Evangelical Alliance, maybe even both. You know he’s retiring soon, got himself that nice condo down in Florida? Think it’s worth finding out how he paid for it?”

Kaczynski stared at her with an expression of bewilderment.

“Christ,” he finally muttered. “If I get the national security letter we could tap some bank accounts, see what they’ve been up to, but what about jurisdiction? This case was signed off by the commissioner herself. I go strolling down to Dulles without any paperwork I’ll get my cojones chewed off.”

Lopez nodded.

“I’m officially off duty, Powell’s orders. Just get the letters. I’ll head down to the airport and see if I can find the jet we’re looking for before Axel Cain hears about what’s happened here and screws the whole goddamn thing up.”

Kaczynski nodded and hurried away, leaving Lopez to stand over Lucas Tyrell’s body.

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” she said softly.