Arriving back at the morgue, Jack went directly up to the DNA lab with the intention of grilling Ted in the hope that he could come up with some hypothesis to explain what was going on. The problem as Jack saw it was that Jack didn’t know enough about current DNA science to come up with an idea on his own. The field was changing too rapidly.

“Jesus, Stapleton, where the hell have you been!” Ted snapped the moment he saw Jack. “I’ve been calling all over creation and nobody’s seen you.”

“I’ve been out,” Jack said defensively. He thought for a second about explaining what was going on then changed his mind. Too much had happened in the previous twelve hours.

“Sit down!” Ted commanded.

Jack sat.

Ted searched around on his desktop until he located a particular sheet of developed film covered with hundreds of minute dark bands. He handed it to Jack.

“Ted, why do you do this to me?” Jack complained. “You know perfectly well I have no idea what I’m looking at with these things.”

Ted ignored Jack, while he searched for another similar piece of celluloid. He found it under a laboratory budget he was working on. He handed the second one to Jack.

“Hold them up to the light,” Ted said.

Jack did as he was told. He looked at the two sheets. Even he could tell they were different.

Ted pointed to the first sheet of celluloid. “This is a study of the region of the DNA that codes for ribosomal protein of a human being. I just picked a case at random to show you what it looks like.”

“It’s gorgeous,” Jack said.

“Let’s not be sarcastic,” Ted said.

“I’ll try,” Jack said.

“Now, this other one is a study of Franconi’s liver sample,” Ted said. “It’s the same region using the same enzymes as the first study. Can you see how different it is?”

“That’s the only thing I can see,” Jack said.

Ted snatched away the human study and tossed it aside. Then he pointed at the film Jack was still holding. “As I told you yesterday this information is on CD-ROM so I was able to let the computer make a match of the pattern. It came back that it was most consistent with a chimpanzee.”

“Not definitely a chimpanzee?” Jack asked. Nothing seemed to be definite about this case.

“No, but close,” Ted said. “Kind of like a cousin of a chimpanzee. Something like that.”

“Do chimps have cousins?” Jack asked.

“You got me,” Ted said with a shrug. “But I’ve been dying to give you this information. You have to admit it’s rather impressive.”

“So from your perspective it was a xenograft,” Jack said.

Ted shrugged again. “If you made me guess, I’d have to say yes. But taking the DQ alpha results into consideration, I don’t know what to say. Also I’ve taken it upon myself to run the DNA for the ABO blood groups. So far that’s coming up just like the DQ alpha. I think it’s going to be a perfect match for Franconi, which only confuses things further. It’s a weird case.”