Jack was astounded. All he could do was stare at the pale, gaunt face of the laboratory director. Jack didn’t know what was more surprising: the fact that John had already run the samples or that the results were negative.
“You must be joking,” Jack managed to say.
“Hardly,” John said. “It’s not my style.”
“But the patient had to be on immunosuppressants,” Jack said. “He’d had a recent liver transplant. Is it possible you got a false negative?”
“We run controls as standard procedure,” John said.
“I expected one or the other drug to be present,” Jack said.
“I’m sorry that we don’t gear our results to your expectations,” John said sourly. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Jack watched the laboratory director walk over to an instrument and make some adjustments. Then Jack turned and made his way out of the lab. Now he was more depressed. Ted Lynch’s DNA results and John DeVries’s drug assays were contradictory. If there’d been a transplant, Franconi had to be on either cyclosporin A or FK506. That was standard medical procedure.
Getting off the elevator on the fifth floor, he walked down to histology while trying to come up with some rational explanation for the facts he’d been given. Nothing came to mind.
“Well, if it isn’t the good doctor yet again,” Maureen O’Conner said in her Irish brogue. “What is it? You only have one case? Is that why you are dogging us so?”
“I only have one that is driving me bananas,” Jack said. “What’s the story with the slides?”
“There’s a few that are ready,” Maureen said. “Do you want to take them or wait for the whole batch?”
“I’ll take what I can get,” Jack said.
Maureen’s nimble fingers picked out a sampling of the sections that were dry and placed them in a microscopic slide holder. She handed the tray to Jack.
“Are there liver sections among these?” Jack asked hopefully.
“I believe so,” Maureen said. “One or two. The rest you’ll have later.”
Jack nodded and walked out. A few doors down the hall, he entered his office. Chet looked up from his work and smiled.
“Hey, sport, how’s it going?” Chet said.
“Not so good,” Jack said. He sat down and turned on his microscope light.
“Problems with the Franconi case?” Chet asked.
Jack nodded. He began to hunt through the slides for liver sections. He only found one. “Everything about it is like squeezing water from a rock.”
“Listen, I’m glad you came back,” Chet said. “I’m expecting a call from a doctor in North Carolina. I just want to find out if a patient had heart trouble. I have to duck out to get passport photos taken for my upcoming trip to India. Would you take the call for me?”
“Sure,” Jack said. “What’s the patient’s name?”
“Clarence Potemkin,” Chet said. “The folder is right here on my desk.”
“Fine,” Jack said, while slipping the sole liver section onto his microscope’s stage. He ignored Chet as Chet got his coat from behind the door and left. Jack ran the microscopic objective down to the slide and was about to peer into the eyepieces, when he paused. Chet’s errand had started him thinking about international travel. If Franconi had gotten his transplant out of the country, which seemed increasingly probable, there might be a way to find out where he’d been.
Jack picked up his phone and called police headquarters. He asked for Lieutenant Detective Lou Soldano. He expected to have to leave a message and was pleasantly surprised to get the man himself.
“Hey, I’m glad you called,” Lou said. “Remember what I told you this morning about the tip it was the Lucia people who stole Franconi’s remains from the morgue? We just got confirmation from another source. I thought you might like to know.”
“Interesting,” Jack said. “Now I have a question for you.”
“Shoot,” Lou said.
Jack outlined the reasons for his belief that Carlo Franconi might have traveled abroad for his liver transplant. He added that according to the man’s mother, he’d taken a trip to a supposed spa four to six weeks previously.
“What I want to know is, is there a way to find out by talking to Customs if Franconi left the country recently, and if so, where did he go?”
“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.”