“Enough of this external stuff,” Jack said to Vinnie. “Let’s move on to the internal part of the autopsy.”

“It’s about time,” Vinnie complained. It was now after eight and bodies were coming in along with their assigned techs and medical examiners. Despite the early start, he and Jack were not significantly ahead of the others.

Jack ignored the friendly banter evoked by his hapless corpse. With all the obvious trauma, Jack had to vary the traditional autopsy technique and that took concentration. In contrast to Vinnie, Jack was oblivious to the passage of time. But again his meticulousness paid off. Although the liver had essentially been obliterated by the shotgun blasts, Jack discovered something extraordinary that might have been missed by someone doing a more haphazard, cursory job. He found the tiny remains of surgical sutures in the vena cava and in the ragged end of the hepatic artery. Sutures in such an area were uncommon. The hepatic artery brought blood to the liver, whereas the vena cava was the largest vein in the abdomen. Jack didn’t find any sutures in the portal vein, because that vessel was almost entirely obliterated.

“Chet, get over here,” Jack called. Chet McGovern was Jack’s office mate. He was busy at a neighboring table.

Chet put down his scalpel and stepped over to Jack’s table. Vinnie moved to the head to give him space.

“What’cha got?” Chet asked. “Something interesting?” He peered into the hole where Jack was working.

“I sure do,” Jack said. “I got a bunch of shotgun pellets, but I also have some vascular sutures.”

“Where?” Chet asked. He couldn’t make out any anatomical landmarks.

“Here,” Jack said. He pointed with the handle of a scalpel.

“Okay, I see them,” Chet said with admiration. “Nice pickup. There’s not a lot of endothelialization. I’d say they weren’t that old.”

“That’s my thought,” Jack said. “Probably within a month or two. Six months at the extreme.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I think the chances of me making an identification just went up a thousand percent,” Jack said. He straightened up and stretched.

“So the victim had abdominal surgery,” Chet said. “Lots of people have had abdominal surgery.”

“Not the kind of surgery this guy apparently had,” Jack said. “With sutures in the vena cava and the hepatic artery, I’m betting he’s in a pretty distinguished group. My guess is that he’d had a liver transplant not too long ago.”

CHAPTER 8

March 5, 1997

10:00 A.M.

New York City

Raymond Lyons pulled up his cuff-linked sleeve and glanced at his wafer-thin Piaget watch. It was exactly ten o’clock. He was content. He liked to be punctual especially for business meetings, but he did not like to be early. As far as he was concerned being early reeked of desperation, and Raymond had a penchant for bargaining from a position of strength.

For the previous few minutes he’d been standing on the corner of Park Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, waiting for the hour to arrive. Now that it had, he straightened his tie, adjusted his fedora, and started walking toward the entrance of 972 Park Avenue.