Covenant

35

What do we got?”

Tyrell drove out of the MPD Headquarters onto Delaware Avenue, his headlights illuminating the colorful murals painted on the walls of the station claiming “We can” and “We will” as Nicola Lopez read the files she had downloaded from the Metropolitan Police Department’s servers.

“Kelvin Patterson, born 1954, Huntsville, Alabama. Married to Julie, no fewer than six kids. The guy’s an evangelical fruit loop, the type who appears on TV after every disaster and claims it was the hand of God. Last time he got major news coverage was after Hurricane Katrina, claiming the storm was God’s wrath for the American tolerance of homosexual marriages and abortions.”

“Criminal activity?”

“The guy’s as clean as a pastor could be. Earned a degree in theology from the University of Phoenix in Austin, Texas, before joining a revolution in political religious activism in the early eighties. Moved to the District and attached himself to the hard-right political parties before starting his own ministry. Was a millionaire within five years and now heads a congregation of around thirty million Americans gathered under a federation of evangelical churches across several states. He has his headquarters in the District in a purpose-built megachurch he had constructed four years ago.”

Tyrell changed lanes.

“What about these radio and TV shows that the kid mentioned?”

“Patterson does a weekly radio piece called This Bread, an ad for various faith leaders pushing the boat out for bringing God into the public sphere. Apparently, they either don’t know or don’t care that to do so would be against the Constitution. The TV show is the vehicle that made him a millionaire, with regular tithing events and requests for viewers’ money donated for charitable causes.”

“Like the hospital?”

“Among other things,” Lopez noted, scanning through the files. “It would seem that the good pastor manages to cream off a holy slice for himself. Three houses, plenty of cars. This guy’s big and he’s well connected. He’s allied to the current opposition front runner for the primaries, Senator Isaiah Black. They were college friends, apparently.” Lopez put the file down. “It’s hardly a lead, though. This guy recruits from prison populations through his charities and hospitals, but he has no direct contact with them.”

Tyrell massaged his temples with his free hand, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The car was hot but his skin felt cold to the touch and a dull nausea infected his stomach.

“There’ll be something,” he said. “We’ve got enough here to at least make some inquiries, provided I can get it past Powell.”

“There’s no way he’s gonna let you harass this guy. Everything we’ve got is circumstantial and none of it actually points to a homicide. Where are we goin’ anyway?”

“General Hospital Southeast. I’ve got an appointment with a doctor there.”

“Great.” Lopez smiled brightly. “It’s about damned time.”

“The appointment’s not for me,” Tyrell countered. “Suppose that Claretta’s recollections were all correct. This kid was pulled from the AEA’s institute and subjected to medical experiments. What the hell do you think would be the point of that?”

Lopez shrugged.

“There’s no point in killing someone just to bring ’em back. You want a mark to stay down, not get up and start wanderin’ around looking for the cops.”

“Unless there was some reason for keeping them dead,” Tyrell said quietly, “even just for a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

Tyrell found a space in the hospital’s parking lot before he and Lopez entered the crowded ER. Tyrell was directed to a small room overlooking one of the operating theaters.

The windows were of smoked glass, allowing people to look in from the viewing platform without distracting the attention of the surgeons below. A man stood on the platform with his arms folded, observing the surgery going on within the theater below as Tyrell and Lopez joined him.

“Dr. Holloway?”

Dr. Graham Holloway was shorter than Tyrell and armed with quick, alert blue eyes and an aura of supreme confidence.

“Detective Tyrell,” he said, shaking Tyrell’s hand.

Tyrell introduced Lopez before looking down into the theater below. Eight surgeons surrounded a patient on the table, the theater filled with computers and complex-looking devices all connected to each other and the patient with a web of wires and tubes.

“What can I do for you?” Holloway asked.

“I understand that you’re the senior surgeon here,” Tyrell said, transfixed by the surgery below them.

“I’m the most experienced by years but there’s no real order of seniority.”

“Okay,” Tyrell said, opening his notebook. “When you perform surgery on your patients, how often is it necessary to put them into a homeostatic state?”

“Only when we’re required to perform deeply invasive brain surgery in hemorrhagic brain injuries or aggressive melanoma cases.”

“Cancer?” Lopez asked from one side.

“Yes. Very occasionally patients will be referred to us suffering from malignant tumors close to the brain stem or deep in the cerebral cortex.”

“And if you are required to perform such a procedure, you might bring the patient’s heartbeat down to a crawl,” Tyrell suggested. “How would you go about that?”

“There are several methods,” Holloway said, “but the principal ones include chemicals that relax the major organs. Another is via induced hypothermia.”

Tyrell caught Lopez’s look of surprise. Dr. Holloway didn’t miss the silent exchange. “It might help if you were to tell me what the problem is,” he suggested.

Tyrell nodded.

“We noticed some unusual pathology in the autopsies of three bodies discovered yesterday morning. All three had suffered from the early stages of hypothermia.” Tyrell saw Holloway raise his eyebrows at that. “You’re aware that it’s been nearly eighty degrees across the District over the past few days.”

“Go on,” the surgeon said quietly.

“The medical examiner confirmed that all three individuals showed excessive hydrogen sulphide in their blood.”

“Anything else?”

“All of the victims were of the same blood group, O-negative, but originally their blood had been AB, suggesting a transfusion.” Tyrell took a breath. “Given what I’ve just told you, what would be your best estimate of the kind of procedure that these individuals were subjected to?”

Holloway let out a long breath before speaking.

“It’s possible that a human body cooled using a saline solution to transfuse blood could suffer effects somewhat like frostbite if the procedure was poorly conducted.”

“They were actually frozen?” Lopez asked, mortified.

“Yes, it’s a common procedure developed to make open-heart surgery easier and is being enhanced for battlefield trauma victims and automobile accidents. By rapidly cooling the body using a chilled saline solution, a form of controlled hypothermia can be induced in the victim, slowing their metabolism to clinical death.”

“How does it work?” Tyrell asked.

“The patient is anesthetized, hooked up to a heart-bypass machine, and receives heparin, which is made from cow’s gut, to prevent blood clotting. The heart is then stopped via intravenously administered potassium chloride. The body is cooled over a period of about one hour to a temperature of around sixteen degrees Centigrade, essentially as cold as a corpse. We then drain the blood from the body and replace it with a chilled saline solution. By this time the patient is clinically dead, with no heartbeat, no blood, and no brain activity. Surgery is undertaken and when the work is complete the process is reversed, ending with a small electrical charge applied to the heart to initiate rhythm.”

“And this is done on a regular basis?” Lopez asked.

“Only in extreme cases to allow prolonged access to the brain or heart,” Holloway admitted. “Long-term hypothermic methods have only been conducted so far on dogs and mice in an experimental manner. The method was reported as having a success rate of better than eighty percent. The dogs even answered to their own names.”

“Eighty percent,” Lopez repeated softly. “And the other twenty?”

“Hard to tell in animals,” Holloway said, “but probably a condition similar to posttraumatic stress or schizophrenia. Mood swings and evidence of depression were noted, along with motor deficiency.”

Tyrell nodded, thinking furiously now.

“What about the altered blood group of the victims?”

“Entire blood transfusions are not uncommon,” Holloway said, “but would only occur to prevent rejection of foreign organs.”

Tyrell nodded, gathering his thoughts. “We have a survivor.”

“A what?”

“A twenty-one-year-old who survived this procedure. He’s suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and will be on antidepressants for the rest of his life. His mother told us that he and others were experimented on by physicians who, among other things, were attempting to extract and replace their blood. Many of the victims died. When we spoke to the medical examiner who examined the bodies we found, he said that the blood in their bodies was genetically unrecognizable, not human. One of the victims had suffered the extraction of reproductive tissues.”

Dr. Holloway’s face drained of color, turning almost as pale as the white of his coat. He looked from Tyrell to Lopez and back again.

“I can’t imagine what that would mean.”

“Try.”

“If you were to put a gun to my head and force me to suggest something, then the only thing that I can think of is that somebody was trying to use humans as incubators, perhaps to generate blood lines or stem cells for a chimera.”

Tyrell looked at Lopez, who had also paled. “What’s a chimera?”

Holloway spoke quietly.

“A species that is a combination of the genetic codes of two preceding species, a hybrid if you will.” Holloway paled again. “Whoever conducted those experiments is using human incubators in order to bring something back to life.”