“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.”

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.