Tyrell’s face twisted into the kind of smile that looked to Lopez as though he were trying to bend an iron bar with his lips.
“Local PD will take one look at those bodies and be glad to have swept them off the streets. I doubt a coroner would even glance at the paperwork before signing it off.”
“He probably didn’t,” Powell agreed.
“What?” Lopez and Tyrell asked in perfect unison.
“Recorded a verdict of misadventure.”
“We’ve got a crime scene here and we’re going to shut the door on it?”
“The door, Tyrell, is already shut,” Powell insisted.
“What if this is just a small piece of a bigger picture?” Tyrell pushed. “Those people were moved there after they died. If you give me just—”
“Just what?” Powell asked. “A few hours, a few days, a few careers? We haven’t got the resources for this right now. People die, Tyrell, sometimes for no other reason than their own damned stupidity. Let it go.”
Lopez watched as Tyrell took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. Powell tossed the file into his out box with a flourish as Tyrell hauled himself out of the chair in disgust, walking across to the door and opening it. Lopez got up to follow him. The open corridor beckoned, but she could see that Tyrell couldn’t help himself as he turned back to look over his shoulder at the captain.
“You remember 2000? Y’know, Y2K and all that?”
“My parents’ golden anniversary,” Powell replied without looking up.
“An FBI agent reported high numbers of people attempting to acquire pilot’s licenses in local schools down in Florida. He reported back to the Barn in DC several times, documenting what they were doing and rating the activities as highly suspicious and worthy of extensive resources. He got turned down.”
“Your point?” Powell muttered, finally looking at Tyrell.
“The people he was watching hijacked four American airliners a year later, and killed over three thousand American citizens.”
Powell winced. “Tyrell, your three dead bodies aren’t going to become a national incident no matter how much you might want them to be.”
Tyrell shook his head. “I’m sure that’s what they said back in 2000.”
Before Powell could retort, Tyrell lumbered out of the office. Lopez made to follow him.
“One moment, Detective,” Powell rumbled.
Tyrell glanced back at her, a glimmer of suspicion crossing his features, and then she closed the office door and sat back down opposite Powell.
“He’s onto something,” she insisted.
“Jesus, not you as well?”
“What’s your problem with Tyrell? Why reject everything he says?”
“Because most of it’s bullshit,” Powell said sharply, and then visibly reined himself in. “You haven’t worked with him all that long. Tyrell’s desperate for the big bust and he’s been looking for it for years.”
“C’mon, he’s just willing to look a little further than most all cops working homicide.”
“He looks too goddamn far into everything,” Powell shot back. “He’s been up in front of a committee three times in the past four years for misappropriation of resources, chasing everything from Russian spy networks, JFK conspiracies, and the friggin’ Illuminati. For all I know, he thinks the Apollo landings were faked. Commissioner Devereux’s nearly suspended him twice.”
Lopez’s train of thought changed track. “You sayin’ he’s on an agenda or something?”
Powell ran a hand over his face as though rubbing the fatigue from his body.
“You ever been to the Big Apple?”
“Not yet.”
“You ever do, make sure you visit Ground Zero and the memorial there.”
Lopez’s skin felt suddenly cold in the breeze from Powell’s desk fan.
“The attacks?” she asked, and was rewarded with a quiet nod.
“Tyrell lost his wife and both of his daughters in the attacks and his brother to drugs two years later,” Powell said. “He’s been on the warpath ever since, no matter how carefully he thinks he disguises it.”
“How’d they get caught up in it?” she asked, as gently as possible.
“Amelie Tyrell had family out in Boston,” Powell explained. “She’d traveled to visit them while Tyrell was working in Maryland. She took their daughters with her, Ellen and Macy. Tyrell knew nothing of what had happened until he returned home; it was only supposed to be an overnight stay. They died on the return flight home.”
“He doesn’t talk about it,” Lopez admitted, feeling strangely disappointed that Tyrell hadn’t confided in her, and then guilty for having thought that he should.
“The investigations and commissions all found failings in the intelligence community to prevent the attacks, and that’s what put a rocket up Tyrell’s ass,” Powell said. “He knows that the towers were dropped by suicidal lunatics from another country,