"I'm all ears," Jack said. He slipped out of his bomber jacket and sat down.
"I put in a call to my friend in Immigration, and he just phoned me back," Lou said. "When I asked him your question, he told me to hang on the line. I could even hear him entering the name into the computer. Two seconds later, he had the info. Carlo Franconi entered the country exactly thirty-seven days ago on January twenty-ninth at Teterboro in New Jersey." "I've never heard of Teterboro," Jack said. "It's a private airport," Lou said. "It's for general aviation, but there's lot's of fancy corporate jets out there because of the field's proximity to the city." "Was Carlo Franconi on a corporate jet?" Jack asked. "I don't know," Lou said. "All I got is the plane's call letters or numbers or whatever they call it. You know, the numbers and letters on the airplane's tail. Let's see, I got it right here. It was N69SU." "Was there any indication where the plane had come from?" Jack asked as he wrote down the alphanumeric characters and the date.
"Oh yeah," Lou said. "That's gotta be filed. The plane came from Lyon, France." "Nah, it couldn't have," Jack said.
"That's what's in the computer," Lou said. "Why don't you think it's correct?" "Because I talked with the French organ allocation organization early this morning," Jack said. "They had no record of an American with the name of Franconi, and they categorically denied they'd be transplanting an American since they have a long waiting list for French citizens." "The information that Immigration has must correlate with the flight plan filed with both the FAA and the European equivalent," Lou said. "At least that's how I understand it." "Do you think your friend in Immigration has a contact in France?" Jack asked. "It wouldn't surprise me," Lou said. "Those upper-echelon guys have to cooperate with each other. I can ask him. Why would you like to know?"
"If Franconi was in France I'd like to find out the day he arrived," Jack said. "And I'd like to know any other information the French might have on where he went in the country. They keep close tabs on most non-European foreigners through their hotels." "Okay, let me see what I can do," Lou said. "Let me call him, and I'll call you back." "One other thing," Jack said. "How can we find out who owns N69SU?" "That's easy," Lou said. "All you have to do is call the FAA Control Aviation Center in Oklahoma City. Anybody can do it, but I've got a friend there, too." "Jeez, you have friends in all the convenient places," Jack remarked.
"It comes with the territory," Lou said. "We do favors for each other all the time. If you have to wait for
everything to go through channels, nothing gets done." "It's certainly convenient for me to take advantage of your web of contacts," Jack said. "So you want me to call my friend at the FAA?" Lou asked. "I'll be much obliged," Jack said.
"Hey, it's my pleasure," Lou said. "I have a feeling that the more I help you the more I'm helping myself. I'd like nothing better than to have this case solved. It might save my job." "I'm leaving my office to run over to the University Hospital," Jack said. "What if I call you back in a half hour or so?"
"Perfect," Lou said before disconnecting. Jack shook his head. Like everything else with this case, the information he'd gotten from Lou was both surprising and confusing. France probably was the last country Jack suspected Franconi to have visited. 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.
The time differential was strange since bodies rarely stayed at the morgue more than a couple of days, so Laurie keyed Frank Gleason's accession number into her computer terminal. His was the body picked up by the Spoletto Funeral Home.
What popped up on the screen surprised her. "Good grief!" Laurie exclaimed.
Lou was having a great time. Contrary to the general public's romantic image of detective work, actual gumshoeing was an exhausting, thankless task. What Lou was doing now, namely sitting in the comfort of his office and making productive telephone calls, was both entertaining and fulfilling. It was also nice to say hello to old acquaintances.
"My word, Soldano!" Mark Servert commented. Mark was Lou's contact at the FAA in Oklahoma City. "I don't hear from you for a year and then twice in the same day. This must be some case." "It's a corker," Lou said. "And I have a follow-up question. We found out that the G4 plane I called you about earlier had flown from Lyon, France, to Teterboro, New Jersey, on January twenty-ninth. However, the guy we're interested in didn't pass through French Immigration. So, we're wondering if it's possible to find out where N69SU came from before it landed in Lyon." "Now that's a tricky question," Mark said. "I know the ICAO..." "Wait a second," Lou interrupted. "Keep the acronyms to a minimum. What's the ICAO?" "International Civil Aviation Organization," Mark said. "I know they file all flight plans in and out of Europe."
"Perfect," Lou said. "Anybody there you can call?" "There's someone I can call," Mark said. "But it wouldn't do you much good. The ICAO shreds all their files after fifteen days. It's not stored." "Wonderful," Lou commented sarcastically. "The same goes for the European Air Traffic Control Center in Brussels," Mark said. "There's just too much material, considering all the commercial flights." "So, there's no way," Lou remarked.
"I'm thinking," Mark said.
"You want to call me back?" Lou said. "I'll be here for another hour or so."
"Yeah, let me do that," Mark said.
Lou was about to hang up when he heard Mark yell his name. "I just thought of something else," Mark said. "There's an organization called Central Flow Management with offices in both Paris and Brussels. They're the ones who provide the slot times for takeoffs and landings. They handle all of Europe except for Austria and Slovenia. Who knows why those countries aren't involved? So, if N69SU came from anyplace other than Austria or Slovenia, their flight plan should be on file."
"Do you know anybody in that organization?" Lou asked. "No, but I know somebody who does," Mark said. "Let me see if I can find out for you." "Hey, I appreciate it," Lou said.
"No problem," Mark said.
Lou hung up the phone and then drummed his pencil on the surface of his scarred and battle-worn gray-metal desk. There were innumerable burn marks where he'd left smoldering cigarette butts. He was thinking about Alpha Aviation and wondering how to run down the organization. First, he tried telephone information in Reno. There was no listing for Alpha Aviation. Lou wasn't surprised. Next, he called the Reno police department. He explained who he was and asked to be connected to his equivalent, the head of Homicide. His name was Paul Hersey. After a few minutes of friendly banter, Lou gave Paul a thumbnail sketch of the Franconi case. Then he asked about Alpha Aviation.
"Never heard of them," Paul said.
"The FAA said it was out of Reno, Nevada," Lou said. "That's because Nevada's an easy state to incorporate in," Paul explained. "And here in Reno we've got a slew of high-priced law firms who spend their time doing nothing else." "What's your suggestion about getting the lowdown on the organization?" Lou asked. "Call the Office of the Nevada Secretary of State in Carson City," Paul said. "If Alpha Aviation is incorporated in Nevada, it will be on public record. Want us to call for you?" "I'll call," Lou said. "At this point, I'm not even sure what I want to know." "We can at least give you the number," Paul said. He went off the line for a moment, and Lou could hear him bark an order to an underling. A moment later, he was back and gave Lou the telephone number. Then he added: "They should be helpful, but if you have any trouble, call me back. And if you need any assistance in Carson City for whatever reason call Todd Arronson. He's head of Homicide down there, and he's a good guy."
A few minutes later Lou was on the line with the Office of the Nevada Secretary of State. An operator