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.’
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.’