Dr. Malovar’s lab was a dusty clutter of books, journals, and hundreds of slide trays. The wastebaskets were perennially overflowing. The professor steadfastly refused to allow anybody into his work space to clean lest they disturb his structured disorder.

With surprising speed, the professor located Jack’s slide on top of a veterinary pathology book. His nimble fingers picked it up and slipped it under the microscope’s objective.

“Dr. Osgood’s suggestion to have this reviewed by Dr. Hammersmith was crackerjack,” Dr. Malovar said as he focused. When he was satisfied, he sat back, picked up the book, and opened it to the page indicated by a clean microscope slide. He handed the book to Jack.

Jack looked at the page Dr. Malovar indicated. It was a photomicrograph of a section of liver. There was a granuloma similar to the one on Jack’s slide.

“It’s the same,” Dr. Malovar said. He motioned for Jack to compare by looking into the microscope.

Jack leaned forward and studied the slide. The images did seem identical.

“This is certainly one of the more interesting slides you have brought to me,” Dr. Malovar said. He pushed a lock of his wild, gray hair out of his eyes. “As you can read from the book, the offending organism is called hepatocystis.”

Jack straightened up from looking at his slide to glance back at the book. He’d never heard of hepatocystis.

“Is it rare?” Jack asked.

“In the New York City morgue I’d have to say yes,” Dr. Malovar said. “Extremely rare! You see, it is only found in primates. And not only that, but it is only found in Old World primates, meaning primates found in Africa and Southeast Asia. It’s never been seen in the New World and never in humans.”

“Never?” Jack questioned.

“Put it this way,” Dr. Malovar said. “I’ve never seen it, and I’ve seen a lot of liver parasites. More important, Dr. Osgood has never seen it, and he has seen more liver parasites than I. With that kind of combined experience, I’d have to say it does not exist in humans. Of course, in the endemic areas, it might be a different story, but even there it would have to be rare. Otherwise we’d have seen a case or two.”

“I appreciate your help,” Jack said distractedly. He was already wrestling with the implications of this surprising bit of information. It was a much stronger suggestion that Franconi had had a xenotransplant than the mere fact that he’d gone to Africa.

“This would be an interesting case to present at our grand rounds,” Dr. Malovar said. “If you are interested, let me know.”

“Of course,” Jack said noncommittally. His mind was in a whirl.

Jack left the professor, took the hospital elevator down to the ground floor, and started toward the medical examiner’s office. Finding an Old World primate parasite in a liver sample was very telling evidence. But then there were the confusing results that Ted Lynch had gotten on the DNA analysis to contend with. And on top of that was the fact there was no inflammation in the liver with no immunosuppressant drugs. The only thing that was certain was that it all didn’t make sense.