Covenant

85

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.