he’d figured out another way of creating a distraction as he massaged his throbbing face, then turned to the young nurse who had witnessed the entire exchange.
“I need access to Daniel Neville.”
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I don’t have the authority to let you—”
“If you don’t open those doors, right now,” Tyrell said, “I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice. Whoever employs Michael Shaw doesn’t want anybody to see Daniel Neville, and I need to know why. You can accompany me if you wish.”
“But—”
“The keys,” Tyrell rumbled. “You’re not paid to obstruct the law, ma’am, and I doubt this hospital will pay your court costs.”
The nurse was flustered and gasped an expletive in despair, then yanked her keys from her belt before opening the metal gates to the corridor beyond.
“Fourth room on the right,” she uttered, and handed him another key. “You’ll need this; the door is always locked.”
Tyrell slipped through the gates and edged his way down the white corridor, looking in through the plastic windows of each door as he passed. Small rooms, half-darkened, held ghostly forms that stared back out at him with eyes devoid of understanding, as though from other worlds.
Tyrell reached the fourth door, peering into what appeared to be an entirely darkened room, the blinds pulled shut on the window. A figure was just visible lying on the bed.
Tyrell eased the key into the lock, turning it as quietly as he could until the barrel clicked. He gently pushed down on the handle and opened the door, catching a whiff of disinfectant as he slipped into the darkness.
The room was bare but for the bed and a small sink, more like a cell than a hospital room. An intravenous line ran from an IV pole down beneath the sheets where Daniel Neville lay. Tyrell could see the boy’s scalp, coils of braided black hair tight against the skin but also scattered across his pillow where they had fallen out. Tyrell edged closer, peering over the top of the sheets to see the boy’s face.
Tyrell stifled a gag reflex as he caught the odor of putrefying flesh. The boy’s eyes were closed, the lids laced with veins that spread like a web across his face, the once rich black skin now ashen and transparently thin. Forcing himself to overcome his disgust, Tyrell reached out and eased the sheets back.
Daniel Neville’s body was a graying mass of decaying tissue, the skin dry and breaking up into plates like the surface of a scorched riverbed. Desiccated slabs of skin and flesh littered the bedsheet beneath him, as though his skin was turning to scales and falling from his body. His abdomen heaved with rapid, hyperventilating breaths. Overcome with morbid fascination, Tyrell leaned closer to one of the boy’s scaled lesions.
One hand jerked up and grabbed Tyrell’s face like a gray spider, the smell of the boy’s ruined skin thick in his nostrils as he jerked back in horror, yanking the skeletal fingers from his face.
Daniel Neville stared up at Tyrell with eyes as black as night, devoid of iris or pupils as though filled with ink, and a weak but keening cry rasped from his throat.
“Kill me!”
As Tyrell jerked backward in shock, he bumped into the nurse who stood behind him at the entrance to the room. Tyrell managed to find his voice.
“What the hell’s happening to him?” he uttered.
“Acute hemolytic reaction,” she whispered. “Worst I’ve ever seen.”
Tyrell staggered out of the room and sucked in a deep breath of air as the nurse closed the door behind him. He slowly made his way back to the gates just as Lopez appeared.
“You find him?” she asked.
Tyrell nodded slowly. “What’s left of him. Who owns this hospital?”
Lopez retrieved a notebook from her pocket as they turned and walked toward the hospital exit.
“It’s owned and maintained by the American Evangelical Alliance.”
“Eternal Flame,” Tyrell murmured thoughtfully, hearing Claretta Neville’s words echoing through his mind. “Ain’t that a radio or television show that’s got something to do with the alliance?”
“Television show.” Lopez nodded. “Got a membership of about eight million. And then there’s the same guy who does a radio broadcast out of DC called This Bread and …” Lopez stopped talking, looking at him.
“Eternal Flame, This Bread,” Tyrell repeated. “Who’s the pastor who hosts the shows?”
Lopez turned a page in her notebook.
“Kelvin Patterson, pastor of the American Evangelical Alliance. Last showed up on a televised stage rally with presidential candidate Senator Isaiah Black—some kind of charity gig involving