by Robin Cook
“It’s not over yet,” Melanie said. “We still have to get out of here. But at least we got what we came for.” She opened her fist and held up the key. Light glinted off its chrome-colored surface.
Kevin looked at his own hand. Without realizing it, he was still clutching the detailed contour map of Isla Francesca.
Bertram turned on the light in the hallway as he exited the stairwell. He’d gone up to the second floor and had entered the pediatric unit. He’d asked the crew if anybody had just run through. The answer was no.
Entering his examination room, he switched on the light in there as well. Siegfried appeared at the door to Bertram’s office.
“Well?” Siegfried questioned.
“I don’t know if someone was in here or not,” Bertram said. He looked down at the stainless-steel pail that had moved from its normal position under the edge of the examining table.
“Did you see anyone?” Siegfried asked.
“Not really,” Bertram said. He shook his head. “Maybe the janitorial crew left the lights on.”
“Well, it underlines my concerns about the keys,” Siegfried said.
Bertram nodded. He reached out with his foot and pushed the stainless-steel bucket back to its normal position. He turned out the light in the examining room before following Siegfried back into his office.
Bertram opened the top drawer of the file cabinet and pulled out the Isla Francesca folder. He unsnapped the securing elastic and pulled out the contents.
“What’s the matter?” Siegfried asked.
Bertram had hesitated. As a compulsively neat individual he could not imagine having crammed everything into the folder so haphazardly. Fearing the worst, it was with some relief that he lifted the Stevenson Bridge envelope and felt the lump made by the ring of keys.
CHAPTER 12
March 5, 1997
6:45 P.M.
New York City
“This is the damndest thing,” Jack said. He was peering into his microscope at one particular slide and had been doing so intently for the previous half hour. Chet had tried to talk with him but had given up. When Jack was concentrating, it was impossible to get his attention.
“I’m glad you are enjoying yourself,” Chet said. He’d just stood up in preparation to leave and was about to heft his briefcase.
Jack leaned back and shook his head. “Everything about this case is screwy.” He looked up at Chet and was surprised to see he had his coat on. “Oh, are you leaving?”
“Yeah, and I’ve been trying to say goodbye for the last fifteen minutes.”
“Take a look at this before you go,” Jack said. He motioned toward his microscope as he pushed away from the desk to give Chet room.
Chet debated. He checked his watch. He was due at his gym for a seven o’clock aerobics class. He’d had his eye on one of the girls who was a regular. In an effort to build up the courage to approach her, he’d been taking the class himself. The problem was that she was in far better shape than he, so that at the end of the class he was always too winded to talk.
“Come on, sport,” Jack said. “Give me your golden opinion.”
Chet let go of his briefcase, leaned over, and peered into the eyepieces of Jack’s microscope. With no explanation from Jack, he first had to figure out what the tissue was. “So, you’re still looking at this frozen section of liver,” he said.
“It’s been entertaining me all afternoon,” Jack said.
“Why not wait for the regular fixed sections?” Chet said. “These frozen sections are so limiting.”
“I’ve asked Maureen to get them out as soon as she can,” Jack said. “But meanwhile this is all I have. What do you think of the area under the pointer?”
Chet played with the focus. One of the many problems with frozen sections was they were often thick and the cellular architecture appeared fuzzy.
“I’d say it looks like a granuloma,” Chet said. A granuloma was the cellular sign of chronic, cell-mediated inflammation.
“That was my thought as well,” Jack said. “Now move the field over to the right. It will show a part of the liver surface. What do you see there?”
Chet did as he was told, while worrying that if he was late to the gym, there wouldn’t be a spot in the aerobics class. The instructor was one of the most popular.
“I see what looks like a large, scarred cyst,” Chet said.
“Does it look at all familiar?” Jack asked.
“Can’t say it does,” Chet said. “In fact, I’d have to say it looks a little weird.”
“Well said,” Jack remarked. “Now, let me ask you a question.”
Chet raised his head and looked at his office mate. Jack’s domed forehead was wrinkled with confusion.
“Does this look like a liver that you’d expect to see in a relatively recent transplant?”
“Hell, no!” Chet said. “I’d expect some acute inflammation but certainly not a granuloma. Especially if the process could be seen grossly as suggested by the collapsed surface cyst.”
Jack sighed. “Thank you! I was beginning to question my judgment. It’s reassuring to hear you’ve come to the same conclusion.”
“Knock, knock!” a voice called out.
Jack and Chet looked up to see Ted Lynch, the director of the DNA lab, standing in the doorway. He was a big man, almost in Calvin Washington’s league. He’d been an all-American tackle for Princeton before going on to graduate school.
“I got some results for you, Jack,” Ted said. “But I’m afraid it’s not what you want to hear, so I thought I’d come down and tell you in person. I know you’ve been thinking you’ve got a liver transplant here, but the DQ alpha was a perfect match, suggesting it was the patient’s own liver.”
Jack threw up his hands. “I give up,” he said.
“Now there was still a chance it was a transplant,” Ted said. “There are twenty-one possible genotypes of the DQ alpha sequence, and the test fails to discriminate about seven percent of the time. But I went ahead and ran the ABO blood groups on chromosome nine, and it was a perfect match as well. Combining the two results, the chances are mighty slim it’s not the patient’s own liver.”
“I’m crushed,” Jack said. With his fingers intertwined, he let his hands fall onto the top of his head. “I even called a surgeon friend of mine and asked if there would be any other reason to find sutures in the vena cava, the hepatic artery, and the biliary system. He said no: that it had to be a transplant.”
“What can I say?” Ted commented. “Of course, for you I’d be happy to fudge the results.” He laughed, and Jack pretended to take a swipe at him with his hand.
Jack’s phone jangled insistently. Jack motioned for Ted to stay, while he picked up the receiver. “What?” he said rudely.
“I’m out of here,” Chet said. He waved to Jack and pushed past Ted.
Jack listened intently. Slowly, his expression changed from exasperation to interest. He nodded a few times as he glanced up at Ted. For Ted’s benefit he held up a finger and mouthed, “One minute.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jack said into the phone. “If UNOS suggests we try Europe, give it a try.” He glanced at his watch. “Of course it’s the middle of the night over there, but do what you can!”
Jack hung up the phone. “That was Bart Arnold,” he said. “I’ve had the entire forensics department searching for a missing recent liver transplant.”
“What’s UNOS?” Ted asked.
“United National Organ Sharing,” Jack said.
“Any luck?” Ted asked.
“Nope,” Jack said. “It’s baffling. Bart’s even checked with all the major centers doing liver transplants.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a transplant,” Ted said. “I’m telling you, the probability of my two tests matching by chance is very small indeed.”
“I’m convinced it was a transplant,” Jack said. “There’s no rhyme or reason to take out a person’s liver and then put it back.”
“Yo
u’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Jack said.
“You seem committed to this case,” Ted commented.
Jack gave a short derisive laugh. “I’ve decided that I’m going to unravel this mystery come hell or high water,” he said. “If I can’t, I’ll lose respect for myself. There just aren’t that many liver transplants. I mean, if I can’t solve this one, I might as well hang it up.”
“All right,” Ted said. “I’ll tell you what I can do. I can run a polymarker which compares areas on chromosomes four, six, seven, nine, eleven, and nineteen. A chance match will be in the billions to one. And for my own peace of mind, I’ll even sequence the DQ alpha on both the liver sample and the patient to try to figure out how they could have matched.”
“I’ll be appreciative whatever you can do,” Jack said.
“I’ll even go up and start tonight,” Ted said. “That way I can have the results tomorrow.”
“What a sport!” Jack said. He put out his hand and Ted slapped it.
After Ted left, Jack switched off the light under his microscope. He felt as if the slide had been mocking him with its puzzling details. He’d been looking at it for so long his eyes hurt.
For a few minutes, Jack sat at his desk and gazed at the clutter of unfinished cases. Folders were stacked in uneven piles. Even his own conservative estimate had the figure somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. That was more than usual. Paperwork had never been Jack’s forte, and it got worse when he became enmeshed in a particular case.
Cursing under his breath from frustration at his own ineptitude, Jack pushed back from his desk and grabbed his bomber jacket from the hook on the back of his office door. He’d had as much sitting and thinking as he was capable of. He needed some mindless, hard exercise, and his neighborhood basketball court was beckoning.
The view of the New York City skyline from the George Washington Bridge was breathtaking. Franco Ponti tried to turn his head to appreciate it, but it was difficult because of the rush-hour traffic. Franco was behind the wheel of a stolen Ford sedan on the way to Englewood, New Jersey. Angelo Facciolo was sitting in the front passenger seat, staring out the windshield. Both men were wearing gloves.
“Get a load of the view to the left,” Franco said. “Look at all those lights. You can see the whole freakin’ island, even the Statue of Liberty.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it already,” Angelo said moodily.
“What’s the matter with you?” Franco asked. “You’re acting like you’re on the rag.”
“I don’t like this kind of job,” Angelo said. “It reminds me of when Cerino went berserk and sent me and Tony Ruggerio all over the goddamn city doing the same kind of shit. We should stick to our usual work, dealing with the usual people.”
“Vinnie Dominick is not Pauli Cerino,” Franco said. “And what’s so bad about picking up some easy extra cash?”
“The cash is fine,” Angelo agreed. “It’s the risk I don’t like.”
“What do you mean?” Franco questioned. “There’s no risk. We’re professionals. We don’t take risks.”
“There’s always the unexpected,” Angelo said. “And as far as I’m concerned, the unexpected has already occurred.”
Franco glanced over at Angelo’s scarred face silhouetted in the half light of the car’s interior. He could tell that Angelo was dead serious. “What are you talking about?” he questioned.
“The fact that this Laurie Montgomery is involved,” Angelo said. “She gives me nightmares. Tony and I tried to whack her, but we couldn’t. It was like God was protecting her.”
Franco laughed in spite of Angelo’s seriousness. “This Laurie Montgomery would be flattered that someone with your reputation has nightmares about her. That’s hilarious.”
“I don’t find it funny at all,” Angelo said.
“Don’t get sore at me,” Franco said. “Besides, she’s hardly involved in what we’re doing here.”
“It’s related,” Angelo said. “And she told Vinnie Amendola that she’s going to make it her personal business to find out how we managed to get Franconi’s body out of the morgue.”
“But how is she going to do that?” Franco said. “And worse comes to worse we send Freddie Capuso and Richie Herns to do the actual dirty work. I think you’re jumping to conclusions here.”
“Oh yeah?” Angelo questioned. “You don’t know this woman. She’s one persistent bitch.”
“All right!” Franco said with resignation. “You want to be bummed out, fine by me.”
As they reached the New Jersey side of the bridge, Franco bore right onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway. With Angelo insisting on sulking, he reached over and turned on the radio. After pushing a few buttons he found a station that played “oldies but goodies.” Turning up the volume he sang “Sweet Caroline” along with Neil Diamond.
By the second refrain, Angelo leaned forward and turned off the radio. “You win,” he said. “I’ll cheer up if you promise not to sing.”
“You don’t like that song?” Franco questioned as if he were hurt. “It’s got such sweet memories for me.” He smacked his lips as if he were tasting. “It reminds me of making out with Maria Provolone.”
“I’m not going to touch that one,” Angelo said, laughing despite himself. He appreciated working with Franco Ponti. Franco was a professional. He also had a sense of humor, which Angelo knew he himself lacked.
Franco exited the parkway onto Palisades Avenue, passed Route 9W, and headed west down a long hill into Englewood, New Jersey. The environment quickly changed from franchise fast-food restaurants and service stations to upper-class suburban.
“You got the map and the address handy?” Franco asked.
“I got it right here,” Angelo said. He reached up and turned on the map light. “We’re looking for Overlook Place,” he said. “It will be on the left.”
Overlook Place was easy to find, and five minutes later, they were cruising along a winding, tree-lined street. The lawns that stretched up to the widely spaced houses were so expansive they looked like fairways on a golf course.
“Can you imagine living in a place like this?” Franco commented, his head swinging from side to side. “Hell, I’d get lost trying to find the street from my front door.”
“I don’t like this,” Angelo said. “It’s too peaceful. We’re going to stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Now don’t get yourself all bent out of shape,” Franco said. “At this point, all we’re doing is reconnoitering. What number are we looking for?”
Angelo consulted the piece of paper in his hand. “Number Eight Overlook Place.”
“That means it’s going to be on our left,” Franco said. They were just passing number twelve.
A few moments later Franco slowed and pulled over to the right side of the road. He and Angelo stared up a serpentine driveway lined with carriage lamps to a massive Tudor-style house set against a backdrop of soaring pine trees. Most of the multipaned windows were aglow with light. The property was the size of a football field.
“Looks like a goddamn castle,” Angelo complained.
“I must say, it’s not what I was hoping for,” Franco said.
“Well, what are we going to do?” Angelo asked. “We can’t just sit here. We haven’t seen a car since we pulled off the main drag back there.”
Franco put the car in gear. He knew Angelo was right. They couldn’t wait there. Someone would undoubtedly spot them, become suspicious, and call the police. They’d already passed one of those stupid NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH signs with the silhouette of a guy wearing a bandana.
“Let’s find out more about this sixteen-year-old chick,” Angelo said. “Like, where she goes to school, what she likes to do, and who are her friends. We can’t risk going up to the house. No way.”
Franco grunted in agreement. Just as he was about to press on the accelerator, he saw a tiny figure come out the front of the house. From such a distance he couldn’t tell i
f it was male or female. “Somebody just came out,” he said.
“I noticed,” Angelo said.
The two men watched in silence as the figure descended a few stone stairs and then started down the driveway.
“Whoever it is, is kind of fat,” Franco said.
“And they got a dog,” Angelo said.
“Holy Madonna,” Franco said after a few moments. “It’s the girl.”
“I don’t believe this,” Angelo said. “Do you think it really is Cindy Carlson? I’m not used to things happening this easy.”
Astounded, the two men watched as the girl continued down the driveway as if she were coming directly to greet them. Ahead of her walked a tiny, caramel-colored toy poodle with its little pompom tail sticking straight up.
“What should we do?” Franco questioned. He didn’t expect an answer; he was thinking out loud.
“How about the police act?” Angelo suggested. “It always worked for Tony and me.”
“Sounds good,” Franco said. He turned to Angelo and stuck out his hand. “Let me use your Ozone Park police badge.”
Angelo reached into the vest pocket of his Brioni suit and handed over the walletlike badge cover.
“You stay put for the moment,” Franco said. “No reason to scare her right off the bat with that face of yours.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Angelo said sourly. Angelo cared about his appearance and dressed to the nines in a vain attempt to compensate for his face, which was severely scarred from a combination of chicken pox as a child, severe acne as a teenager, and third-degree burns from an explosion five years previously. Ironically, the explosion had been ignited thanks to Laurie Montgomery.
“Ah, don’t be so touchy,” Franco teased. He cuffed Angelo on the back of the head. “You know we love you, even though you look like you should be in a horror movie.”
Angelo fended off Franco’s hand. There were only two people he allowed even to make reference to his facial problem: Franco and his boss, Vinnie Dominick. Still, he didn’t appreciate it.