After donning his coat for the second time, Jack left his office. Given the proximity of the University Hospital, he didn’t bother with his bike. It only took ten minutes by foot.

Inside the busy medical center, Jack took the elevator up to the pathology department. He was hoping that Dr. Malovar would be available. Peter Malovar was a giant in the field, and even at the age of eighty-two he was one of the sharpest pathologists Jack had ever met. Jack made it a point to go to seminars Dr. Malovar offered once a month. So when Jack had a question about pathology, he didn’t go to Bingham because Bingham’s strong point was forensics, not general pathology. Instead, Jack went to Dr. Malovar.

“The professor’s in his lab as usual,” the harried pathology department secretary said. “You know where it is?”

Jack nodded and walked down to the aged, frosted-glass door which led to what was known as “Malovar’s lair.” Jack knocked. When there was no response, he tried the door. It was unlocked. Inside, he found Dr. Malovar bent over his beloved microscope. The elderly man looked a little like Einstein with wild gray hair and a full mustache. He also had kyphotic posture as if his body had been specifically designed to bend over and peer into a microscope. Of his five senses only his hearing had deteriorated over the years.

The professor greeted Jack cursorily while hungrily eyeing the slide in his hand. He loved people to bring him problematic cases, a fact that Jack had taken advantage of on many occasion.

Jack tried to give a little history of the case as he passed the slide to the professor, but Dr. Malovar lifted his hand to quiet him. Dr. Malovar was a true detective who didn’t want anyone else’s impressions to influence his own. The aged professor replaced the slide he’d been studying with Jack’s. Without a word, he scanned it for all of one minute.

Raising his head, Dr. Malovar put a drop of oil on the slide and switched to his oil-immersion lens for higher magnification. Once again, he examined the slide for only a matter of seconds.

Dr. Malovar looked up at Jack. “Interesting!” he said, which was a high compliment coming from him. Because of his hearing problem, he spoke loudly. “There’s a small granuloma of the liver as well as the cicatrix of another. Looking at the granuloma, I think I might be seeing some merozoites, but I can’t be sure.”

Jack nodded. He assumed that Dr. Malovar was referring to the tiny basophilic flecks Jack had seen in the core of the granuloma.

Dr. Malovar reached for his phone. He called a colleague and asked him to come over for a moment. Within minutes, a tall, thin, overly serious, African-American man in a long white coat appeared. Dr. Malovar introduced him as Dr. Colin Osgood, chief of parasitology.

“What’s your opinion, Colin?” Dr. Malovar asked as he gestured toward his microscope.

Dr. Osgood looked at the slide for a few seconds longer than Dr. Malovar had before responding. “Definitely parasitic,” he intoned with his eyes still glued to the eye pieces. “Those are merozoites, but I don’t recognize them. It’s either a new species or a parasite not seen in humans. I recommend that Dr. Lander Hammersmith view it and render his opinion.”

“Good idea,” Dr. Malovar said. He looked at Jack. “Would you mind leaving this overnight? I’ll have Dr. Hammersmith view it in the morning.”

“Who is Dr. Hammersmith?” Jack asked.

“He’s a veterinary pathologist,” Dr. Osgood said.

“Fine by me,” Jack said agreeably. Having the slide reviewed by a veterinary pathologist was something he’d not thought of.

After thanking both men, Jack went back out to the secretary and asked if he could use a phone. The secretary directed him to an empty desk and told him to push nine for an outside line. Jack called Lou at police headquarters.

“Hey, glad you called,” Lou said. “I think I’m getting some interesting stuff here. First of all, the plane is quite a plane. It’s a G4. Does that mean anything to you?”

“I don’t think so,” Jack said. From Lou’s tone it sounded as if it should have.

“It stands for Gulfstream 4,” Lou explained. “It’s what you would call the Rolls Royce of the corporate jet. It’s like twenty million bucks.”

“I’m impressed,” Jack said.

“You should be,” Lou said. “Okay, let’s see what else I learned. Ah, here it is: The plane is owned by Alpha Aviation out of Reno, Nevada. Ever hear of them?”

“Nope,” Jack said. “Have you?”

“Not me,” Lou said. “Must be a leasing organization. Let’s see, what else? Oh, yeah! This might be the most interesting. My friend from Immigration called his counterpart in France at his home, if you can believe it, and asked about Carlo Franconi’s recent French holiday. Apparently, this French bureaucrat can access the Immigration mainframe from his own PC, because guess what?”

“I’m on pins and needles,” Jack said.

“Franconi never visited France!” Lou said. “Not unless he had a fake passport and fake name. There’s no record of his entering or departing.”

“So what’s this about the plane incontrovertibly coming from Lyon, France?” Jack demanded.

“Hey, don’t get testy,” Lou said.

“I’m not,” Jack said. “I was only responding to your point that the flight plan and the Immigration information had to correlate.”

“They do!” Lou said. “Saying the plane came from Lyon, France, doesn’t mean anybody or everybody got out. It could have refueled for all I know.”

“Good point,” Jack said. “I didn’t think of that. How can we find out?”

“I suppose I can call my friend back at the FAA,” Lou said.

“Great,” Jack said. “I’m heading back to my office at the morgue. You want me to call you or you call me?”

“I’ll call you,” Lou said.

After Laurie had written down all that she could remember from her conversation with Marvin concerning how bodies were picked up by funeral homes, she’d put the paper aside and ignored it while she did some other busy work. A half hour later, she picked it back up.

With her mind clear, she tried to read it with fresh eyes. On the second read-through, something jumped out at her: namely, how many times the term “accession number” appeared. Of course, she wasn’t surprised. After all, the accession number was to a body what a Social Security number was to a living individual. It was a form of identification that allowed the morgue to keep track of the thousands of bodies and consequent paperwork that passed through its portals. Whenever a body arrived at the medical examiner’s office, the first thing that happened was that it was given an accession number. The second thing that happened was that a tag with the number was tied around the big toe.

Looking at the word “accession,” Laurie realized to her surprise that if asked she wouldn’t have been able to define it. It was a word she’d just accepted and used on a daily basis. Every laboratory slip and report, every X ray film, every investigator’s report, every document intramurally had the accession number. In many ways, it was more important than the victim’s name.

Taking her American Heritage dictionary from its shelf, Laurie looked up the word “accession.” As she began reading the definitions, none of them made any sense in the context of the word’s use at the morgue, until the next to last entry. There it was defined as “admittance.” In other words, the accession number was just another way of saying admittance number.

Laurie searched for the accession numbers and names of the bodies that had been picked up during the night shift of March fourth when Franconi’s body disappeared. She found the piece of scratch paper beneath a slide tray. On it was written: Dorothy Kline #101455 and Frank Gleason #100385.

Thanks to her musing about accession numbers, Laurie noticed something she’d not paid any attention to before. The fact that the accession numbers differed by over a thousand! That was strange because the numbers were given out sequentially. Knowing the approximate volume of bodies processed through the morgue, Laurie estimated that there must have been several weeks separation between the arrivals of these two individuals.