Surrounded by heavy insulation, Kevin and the others could not hear a sound inside the refrigerator, not even the whine of the elevator. At least not until they heard the unmistakable click of the refrigerator door’s latch.

Kevin felt his heart skip a beat as the door was pulled open. Preparing himself to see the sneering face of Siegfried, Kevin slowly raised his head to look over the bulk of the dead gorilla. To his surprise it wasn’t Siegfried. It was two men in scrub suits carrying in the body of a chimpanzee.

Wordlessly, the men placed the remains of the dead ape on a shelf to the right just inside the door and then left. Once the door was closed, Kevin looked down at Melanie and sighed. “This has to have been the worst day of my life.”

“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!”