“I appreciate it, Mrs. Franconi,” Jack said. “First let me extend my sympathies to you in regards to your son.”
“Thank you,” Imogene said. “Carlo was a good boy. He didn’t do any of those things they said in the newspapers. He worked for the American Fresh Fruit Company here in Queens. I don’t know where all that talk about organized crime came from. The newspapers just make stuff up.”
“It’s terrible what they’ll do to sell papers,” Jack said.
“The man that came this morning said that you got his body back,” Imogene said.
“We believe so,” Jack said. “That’s why we needed some blood from you to confirm it. Thank you for being cooperative.”
“I asked him why he didn’t want me to come down there and identify it like I did last time,” Imogene said. “But he told me he didn’t know.”
Jack tried to think of a graceful way of explaining the identity problem, but he couldn’t think of any. “Some parts of the body are still missing,” he said vaguely, hoping that Mrs. Franconi would be satisfied.
“Oh?” Imogene commented.
“Let me tell you why I called,” Jack said quickly. He was afraid that if Mrs. Franconi became offended, she might not be receptive to his question. “You told the investigator that your son’s health had improved after a trip. Do you remember saying that?”
“Of course,” Imogene said.
“I was told you don’t know where he went,” Jack said. “Is there any way you could find out?”
“I don’t think so,” Imogene said. “He told me it had nothing to do with his work and that it was very private.”
“Do you remember when it was?” Jack asked.
“Not exactly,” Imogene said. “Maybe five or six weeks ago.”
“Was it in this country?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know,” Imogene said. “All he said was that it was very private.”
“If you find out where it was, would you give me a call back?” Jack asked.
“I suppose,” Imogene said.
“Thank you,” Jack said.
“Wait,” Imogene said. “I just remembered he did say something strange just before he left. He said that if he didn’t come back that he loved me very much.”
“Did that surprise you?” Jack asked.
“Well, yes,” Imogene said. “I thought that was a fine thing to say to your mother.”
Jack thanked Mrs. Franconi again and hung up the phone. Hardly had he had his hand off the receiver when it rang again. It was Ted Lynch.
“I think you’d better come up here,” Ted said.
“I’m on my way,” Jack said.
Jack found Ted sitting at his desk, literally scratching his head.
“If I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to put one over on me,” Ted spat. “Sit down!”
Jack sat. Ted was holding a ream of computer-generated paper plus a number of sheets of developed film with hundreds of small dark bands. Ted reached over and dropped the mass into Jack’s lap.
“What the hell’s this?” Jack questioned. He picked up several of the celluloid sheets and held them up to the light.
Ted leaned over and with the eraser end of an old-fashioned wooden pencil pointed to the films. “These are the results of the DNA polymarker test.” He fingered the computer printout. “And this mass of data compares the nucleotide sequences of the DQ alpha regions of the MHC.”
“Come on, Ted!” Jack urged. “Talk English to me, would you please? You know I’m a babe in the woods when it comes to this stuff.”
“Fine,” Ted exclaimed as if vexed. “The polymarker test shows that Franconi’s DNA and the DNA of the liver tissue you found inside him could not be any more different.”
“Hey, that’s good news,” Jack said. “Then, it was a transplant.”
“I guess,” Ted said without conviction. “But the sequence with the DQ alpha is identical, right down to the last nucleotide.”
“What does that mean?” Jack asked.
Ted spread his hands like a supplicant and wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Mathematically, it couldn’t happen. I mean the chances are so infinitesimally small, it’s beyond belief. We’re talking about an identical match of thousands upon thousands of base pairs even in areas of long repeats. Absolutely identical. That’s why we got the results that we did with the DQ alpha screen.”
“Well, the bottom line is that it was a transplant,” Jack said. “That’s the issue here.”
“If pressed, I’d have to agree it was a transplant,” Ted said. “But how they found a donor with the identical DQ alpha is beyond me. It’s the kind of coincidence that smacks of the supernatural.”
“What about the test with the mitochondrial DNA to confirm the floater is Franconi?” Jack asked.
“Jeez, you give a guy an inch and he wants a mile,” Ted complained. “We just got the blood, for crissake. You’ll have to wait on the results. After all, we turned the lab upside down to get what you got so quickly. Besides I’m more interested in this DQ alpha situation compared to the polymarker results. Something doesn’t jibe.”
“Well, don’t lose any sleep over it,” Jack said. He stood up and gave Ted back all the material Ted had dumped in his lap. “I appreciate what you’ve done. Thanks! It’s the information I needed. And when the mitochondrial results are back, give me a call.”
Jack was elated by Ted’s results, and he wasn’t worried about the mitochondrial study. With the correlation of the X rays, he was already confident the floater and Franconi were one and the same.
Jack got on the elevator. Now that he’d documented that it had been a transplant, he was counting on Bart Arnold to come up with the answers to solve the rest of the mystery. As he descended, Jack found himself wondering about Ted’s emotional reaction to the DQ alpha results. Jack was aware that Ted didn’t get excited about too many things. Consequently, it had to be significant. Unfortunately, Jack didn’t know enough about the test to have much of an opinion. He vowed that when he had the chance he’d read up on it.
Jack’s elation was short-lived; it faded the moment he walked into Bart’s office. The forensic investigator was on the phone, but he shook his head the moment he caught sight of Jack. Jack interpreted the gesture as bad news. He sat down to wait.
“No luck?” Jack asked as soon as Bart disconnected.
“I’m afraid not,” Bart said. “I really expected UNOS to come through, and when they said that they had not provided a liver for Carlo Franconi and that he’d not even been on their waiting list, I knew the chances of tracing where he’d gotten the liver fell precipitously. Just now I was on the phone with Columbia-Presbyterian, and it wasn’t done there. So I’ve heard from just about every center doing liver transplants, and no one takes credit for Carlo Franconi.”
“This is crazy,” Jack said. He told Bart that Ted’s findings confirmed that Franconi had had a transplant.
“I don’t know what to say,” Bart commented.
“If someone didn’t get their transplant in North America or Europe, where could it have taken place?” Jack asked.
Bart shrugged. “There are a few other possibilities. Australia, South Africa, even a couple of places in South America, but having talked to my contact at UNOS, I don’t think any of them are likely.”
“No kidding?” Jack said. He was not hearing what he wanted to hear.
“It’s a mystery,” Bart commented.
“Nothing about this case is easy,” Jack complained as he got to his feet.
“I’ll keep at it,” Bart offered.
“I’d appreciate it,” Jack said.
Jack wandered out of the forensic area, feeling mildly depressed. He had the uncomfortable sensation that he was missing some major fact, but he had no idea what it could be or how to go about finding out what it was.
In the ID room he got himself another cup of coffee, which was more like sludge than a beverage by that time of the day. With cup in hand, he climbed the stairs to the lab.
“I ran your samples,” John DeVries said. “They were negative for both cyclosporin A and FK506.”