Both her nose and lip were swollen, and she was developing a black eye.
‘This case has been bizarre from the start, now it’s getting out of
hand. I think you’d better tell me everything that happened.’
Laurie related to Jack the details from the moment she’d walked in the
door until she’d called him on the phone. She even told him why she’d
hesitated calling 911.
Jack nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘There’s little the local precinct
could do at this point.’
‘What am I going to do?’ Laurie asked rhetorically. She didn’t expect an
answer.
‘Let me look at the back door,’ Jack said.
Laurie led him through the kitchen and into the pantry.
‘Whoa!’ Jack said. Because of the multiple dead bolts the entire edge
split when the door had been forced. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, you’re
not staying here tonight.’
‘I suppose I could go home to my parents,’ Laurie said.
‘You’re coming home with me,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll sleep on the couch.’
Laurie looked into the depths of Jack’s eyes. She couldn’t help but
wonder if there were more to this sudden invitation than the issue of
her safety.
‘Get your things,’ Jack said. ‘And pack for a few days. It will take
that long to replace this door.’
‘I hate to bring this up,’ Laurie said. ‘But I have to do something with
poor Tom.’
Jack scratched the back of his head. ‘Do you have access to a shovel?’
‘I have a gardening trowel,’ Laurie said. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘We could bury him in the backyard,’ Jack said.
Laurie smiled. ‘You are a softie, aren’t you?’
‘I just know what it’s like to lose things you love,’ Jack said. His
voice caught. For a painful moment he recalled the phone call that had
informed him of his wife and daughter’s death in a commuter plane crash.
While Laurie packed her things, Jack paced her bedroom. He forced his
mind to concentrate on current concerns. ‘We’re going to have to tell
Lou about this,’ Jack said, ‘and give him Vido Delbario’s name.’
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Laurie said from the depths of her
walk-in closet. ‘Do you think we should do it tonight?’
‘I think we should,’ Jack said. ‘Then he can decide when he wants to act
on it. We’ll call from my house. Do you have his home number?’
‘I do,’ Laurie said.
‘You know, this episode is disturbing for more reasons than just your
safety,’ Jack said. ‘It adds to my worry that organized crime is somehow
involved in liver transplantation. Maybe there is some kind of
black-market operation going on.’
Laurie came out of her closet with a hangup bag. ‘But how can it be
transplantation when Franconi wasn’t on immunosuppressant drugs? And
don’t forget the strange results Ted got with his DNA testing.’
Jack sighed. ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘It doesn’t fit together.’
‘Maybe Lou can make sense of it all,’ Laurie said.
‘Wouldn’t that be nice,’ Jack said. ‘Meanwhile, this episode makes the
idea of going to Africa a lot more appealing.’
Laurie stopped short on her way into the bathroom. ‘What on earth are
you talking about?’ she demanded.
‘I haven’t had any personal experience with organized crime,’ Jack said.
‘But I have with street gangs, and I believe there’s a similarity that I
learned the hard way. If either of these groups gets it in their mind to
get rid of you, the police can’t protect you unless they are committed
to guarding you twenty-four hours a day. The problem is, they don’t have
the manpower. Maybe it would be good for both of us to get out of town
for a while. It could give Lou a chance to sort this out.’
‘I’d go, too?’ Laurie asked. Suddenly the idea of going to Africa had a
very different connotation. She’d never been to Africa, and it could be
interesting. In fact, it might even be fun.
‘We’d consider it a forced vacation,’ Jack said. ‘Of course, Equatorial
Guinea might not be a prime destination, but it would be . . .
different. And perhaps, in the process, we’ll be able to figure out