“Either Customs or the Immigration and Naturalization,” Lou said. “Your best bet would be Immigration unless, of course, he brought back so much stuff he had to pay duty. Besides, I have a friend in Immigration. That way I can get the information much faster than going through the usual bureaucratic channels. Want me to check?”
“I’d love it,” Jack said. “This case is bugging the hell out of me.”
“My pleasure,” Lou said. “As I said this morning, I owe you.”
Jack hung up the phone with a tiny glimmer of hope that he’d thought of a new angle. Feeling a bit more optimistic, he leaned forward, looked into his microscope, and began to focus.
Laurie’s day had not gone anything like she’d anticipated. She’d planned on doing only one autopsy but ended up doing two. And then George Fontworth ran into trouble with his multiple gunshot wound case, and Laurie volunteered to help him. Even with no lunch, Laurie didn’t get out of the pit until three.
After changing into her street clothes, Laurie was on her way up to her office when she caught sight of Marvin in the mortuary office. He’d just come on duty and was busy putting the office in order after the tumult of a normal day. Laurie made a detour and stuck her head in the door.
“We found Franconi’s X rays,” she said. “And it turned out that floater that came in the other night was our missing man.”
“I saw it in the paper,” Marvin said. “Far out.”
“The X rays made the identification,” Laurie said. “So I’m extra glad you took them.”
“It’s my job,” Marvin said.
“I wanted to apologize again for suggesting you didn’t take them,” Laurie said.
“No problem,” Marvin said.
Laurie got about four steps away, when she turned around and returned to the mortuary office. This time she entered and closed the door behind her.
Marvin looked at her questioningly.
“Would you mind if I asked you a question just between you and me?” Laurie asked.
“I guess not,” Marvin said warily.
“Obviously, I’ve been interested in how Franconi’s body was stolen from here,” Laurie said. “That’s why I talked to you the afternoon before last. Remember?”
“Of course,” Marvin said.
“I also came in that night and talked with Mike Passano,” Laurie said.
“So I heard,” Marvin said.
“I bet you did,” Laurie said. “But believe me I wasn’t accusing Mike of anything.”
“I hear you,” Marvin said. “He can be sensitive now and then.”
“I can’t figure out how the body was stolen,” Laurie said. “Between Mike and security, there was always someone here.”
Marvin shrugged. “I don’t know, either,” he said. “Believe me.”
“I understand,” Laurie said. “I’m sure you would have said something to me if you had any suspicions. But that’s not what I wanted to ask. My feeling at this point is that there had to be some help from inside. Is there any employee here at the morgue that you think might have been involved in this somehow? That’s my question.”
Marvin thought for a minute and then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“It had to have happened on Mike’s shift,” Laurie said. “The two drivers, Pete and Jeff, do you know them very well?”
“Nope,” Marvin said. “I mean, I’ve seen them around and even talked with them a few times, but since we’re on different shifts, we don’t have a lot of con tact.”
“But you don’t have any reason to suspect them?”
“Nope, no more than anybody else,” Marvin said.
“Thanks,” Laurie said. “I hope my question didn’t make you feel uncomfortable.”
“No problem,” Marvin said.
Laurie thought for a minute, while she absently chewed on her lower lip. She knew she was missing something. “I have an idea,” she said suddenly. “Maybe you should describe to me the exact sequence you go through when a body leaves here.”
“You mean everything that happens?” Marvin said.
“Please,” Laurie said. “I mean, I have a general idea, but I don’t know the specifics.”
“Where do you want me to start?” Marvin asked.
“Right from the beginning,” Laurie said. “Right from the moment you get the call from the funeral home.”
“Okay,” Marvin said. “The call comes in, and they say they’re from so-and-so funeral home and they want to do a pickup. So they give me the name and the accession number.”
“That’s it?” Laurie asked. “Then you hang up.”
“No,” Marvin said. “I put them on hold while I enter the accession number into the computer. I gotta make sure the body has been released by you guys and also find out where it is.”
“So then you go back to the phone and say what?”
“I say it’s okay,” Marvin said. “I tell them I’ll have the body ready. I guess I usually ask when they think they’ll be here. I mean, no sense rushing around if they’re not going to be here for two hours or something.”
“Then what?” Laurie said.
“I get the body and check the accession number,” Marvin said. “Then I put it in the front of the walk-in cooler. We always put them in the same place. In fact, we line them up in the order we expect them to go out. It makes it easier for the drivers.”
“And then what happens?” Laurie asked.
“Then they come,” Marvin said with another shrug.
“And what happens when they arrive?” Laurie asked.
“They come in here and we fill out a receipt,” Marvin said. “It’s all got to be documented. I mean they have to sign to indicate they have accepted custody.”
“Okay,” Laurie said. “And then you go back and get the body?”
“Yeah, or one of them gets it,” Marvin said. “All of them have been in and out of here a million times.”
“Is there any final check?” Laurie asked.
“You bet,” Marvin said. “We always check the accession number one more time before they wheel the body out of here. We have to indicate that being done on the documents. It would be embarrassing if the drivers got back to the home and realized they had the wrong corpse.”
“Sounds like a good system,” Laurie said, and she meant it. With so many checks it would be hard to subvert such a procedure.
“It’s been working for decades without a screwup,” Marvin said. “Of course, the computer helps. Before that, all they had was the logbook.”
“Thanks, Marvin,” Laurie said.
“Hey, no problem, Doc,” Marvin said.
Laurie left the mortuary office. Before going up to her own she stopped off on the second floor to get a snack out of the vending machines in the lunch room. Reasonably fortified, she went up to the fifth floor. Seeing Jack’s office door ajar, she walked over and peeked in. Jack was at his microscope.
“Something interesting?” she asked.
Jack looked up and smiled. “Very,” he said. “Want to take a look?”
Laurie glanced into the eyepieces as Jack leaned to the side. “It looks like a tiny granuloma in a liver,” she said.
“That’s right,” Jack said. “It’s from one of those tiny pieces I was able to find of Franconi’s liver.”
“Hmmm,” Laurie commented, continuing to look into the microscope. “That’s weird they would have used an infected liver for a transplant. You’d think they would have screened the donor better. Are there a lot of these tiny granulomas?”
“Maureen has only given me one slide of the liver so far,” Jack said. “And that’s the only granuloma I found, so my guess would be that there aren’t a lot. But I did see one on the frozen section. Also on the frozen section were tiny collapsed cysts on the surface of the liver which would have been visible to the naked eye. The transplant team must have known and didn’t care.”
“At least there’s no general inflammation,” Laurie said. “So the transplant was being tolerated pretty well.”
“Extremely well,” Jack said. “Too well, but that’s another issue. What do you think that is under the pointer?”