Tampered

by Ross Pennie

  Colleen shrugged out of his embrace as he picked up the telephone. It was Bill Whitehead, a public health inspector on weekend call for the communicable-disease unit.

  “Sorry to trouble you at home, Dr. Szabo,” Bill said, “but I’ve got a Dr. Suszek on the line from Emergency at Caledonian Medical Centre. Says he’s reporting three cases of an unusual meningitis and sounds very concerned. I thought it best if he talked to you directly. Can I put him on?”

  “Sure.” Zol motioned to Max to keep beating the egg whites.

  “Thanks for taking my call, Dr. Szabo. It’s Jeff Suszek, Caledonian Emerg. I’m cool with one case of meningitis per shift. But three in one day, and at least two with the same weird bug, that’s too much. Know what I mean?”

  “What weird bug?”

  “Dunno exactly. Their spinal fluids were cloudy and the tech’s reporting Gram-positive rods. Not your run-of-the-mill cocci. I know what to do with little round bacteria. Blast them with penicillin. But bacteria shaped like rods, they’re more your department. Too far along in the textbook for me.”

  Zol closed his eyes. The coincidence was overwhelming. Gram-positive rods sounded like listeria.

  “Do all three patients come from the same family?”

  “No, but two are kinda related. They’re soldiers. Officers, if that makes a difference. A captain and a major, I think.”

  Army barracks used to be plagued by epidemic bacterial meningitis until they started immunizing military personnel against meningococcus, the prime culprit. Outbreaks seldom happened nowadays and had never been a problem among commissioned officers, only enlisted men in crowded dormitories.

  “You’re certain the lab is reporting Gram-positive rods, not negative cocci?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. I called the lab myself. Definitely not meningococcus.”

  “And the third case?”

  “A boy. Age about ten. Don’t have his lab results yet. But I can tell by eyeballing him, it’s meningitis all right. Just a sec.” There was the sound of shuffling papers at the other end of the line. “Got the name here, I knew you’d want it. Travis . . . Andersen.”

  The name hit Zol like a smack on the head. “His address?” He prayed it wasn’t around the corner on Scenic Drive.

  “It’s . . . Scenic Drive. I can’t read the number. It’s smudged.”

  Yes, it was Travis, Max’s buddy with the map-of-Norway birthmark on his face. Zol had last seen him ten days ago when he drove him home from indoor soccer. Come to think of it, Travis hadn’t shown up for the game the day before yesterday.

  “Does this sound like listeria to you, Dr. Szabo? I paged the infectious disease doc on call but it’s been almost two hours and she still hasn’t answered. Afraid she’s like that sometimes.”

  Zol steadied himself against the desk. “Certainly could be.”

  “The lab tech told me he wasn’t allowed to report the identity of the organism from the Gram stains. Supposed to wait a day or two for the final culture results. But he said it looked like listeria to him. The two adults, anyway.”

  “You know how to treat it?” Zol asked.

  “I can look it up. Ampicillin, I think.”

  “I’ll page Hamish Wakefield and get back to you. We’ll need his help with this.”

  Hamish wouldn’t be pleased. It was bad form to horn in on a colleague’s consultations when you weren’t on call. But what the hell. Travis felt like family. And meningitis wouldn’t wait for the on-call doc to finally deign to answer her page. This damn listeria business had spun out of control. The only chance they’d have to rein it in was to trace the movements of these new cases and track down their closest contacts as quickly as possible. Would any of them lead to Sarajevo where Natasha’s Internet footwork suggested Horvat’s listeria had originated?

  Zol ended the call and grabbed a glass from the cupboard. He filled it with cold water, chugged it, then looked around the kitchen. Had Travis eaten here lately? Had his hands been in the fridge? Zol swallowed hard. He knew he was overreacting but couldn’t help it.

  “Say, Max,” Zol said, doing his best to keep his voice sounding calm. “Do you know Travis’s last name?” Perhaps the kid in the hospital was a different Travis. After all, Scenic Drive was a long street, and Jeff Suszek couldn’t make out the number.

  “Why, Dad? Is Travis in the hospital? Is he sick?”

  “Max, I need to know his last name.”

  “Dad? What’s wrong with Travis?”

  “Please, Max.”

  Max had to think for a minute. “Andersen.”

  Zol dropped into a chair and drew his son into his arms. “Well . . . the truth is, yes, Travis is sick. He’s at the hospital. A couple of other people are there with the same sickness.”

  “His sister? Jessica?”

  “No. No one we know. But I gotta go and check them out.”

  “At the hospital?” Max pressed. “But you never go to the hospital.”

  “I know. This is different.”

  Colleen squeezed Zol’s arm. She had a way of sharing her strength by shining it at him. “You go, and I’ll page Hamish,” she said. “He’s probably at Camelot. Can’t go far without his car. I’ll tell him you’re collecting him there, then call you to confirm.”

  Zol stared at the half-made soufflé. All those eggs separated for nothing.

  “Don’t worry about the soufflé,” Colleen said. “Max and I will finish it. The tricky part’s already done, eh Max?”

  “We’re going to need Natasha. An all-out assault on this outbreak.” He pointed to the telephone desk. “Her number’s in the little red book. Tell her I need her to drop everything. I should be back in an hour. Tell her we’ll feed her.”

  He pulled Fannie Farmer from the cookbook shelf. “Page three- fifty-one. Wait till Natasha gets here before you put it in the oven. It won’t —”

  “I know. It won’t keep.” She handed him two bananas. “Eat these on the way. I’ll expect you when I see you. Except . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have an appointment at five o’clock.” She raised her eyebrows and glanced at Max. Her appointments were never suitable for tagalong nine-year-olds. “Please be back by four-thirty at the latest.”

  “No worries. This should take me ninety minutes, tops.”

  She threw him a look that said she knew all about doctors: ten minutes meant an hour, and ninety minutes could mean all afternoon.

  CHAPTER 34

  “You can wrap yourself in this if you insist,” Phyllis told Art, handing him a yellow gown from the cart outside Betty’s room. “I don’t need one.”

  Art slipped his arms into the gown and peered up and down the hallway. He hated Phyllis’s blatant disregard for the Contact Pre- cautions warning on Betty’s door. “Come on, Phyllis. Follow the rules. If Gloria sees you in there without a gown you’ll be confined to barracks for the next week.”

  “I have no intention of making contact with anything in there. We’re here for a quick confab with Betty, that’s all. I’m not about to make them waste hot water and laundry soap without a perfectly good reason.”

  “Then at least hand me a pair of gloves.”

  She tossed him two gloves, then strode into the room ahead of him. There was a dark smudge of crumbs and chocolate on her cheek from the Tim Hortons doughnut they’d shared on the way home from the library; in his own act of defiance, he didn’t point it out to her.

  “Hello, you two,” Betty said. Her face brightened as she noticed Phyllis in her street clothes and winter hat. “Am I out of isolation?” She’d combed her hair and put on a little lipstick. A magazine sat beside her on the bed.

  Phyllis raised her nose in defiance. “I’m not touching anything.” She settled into the chair beside the bed and straightened her skirt.

  Betty shot Art a knowing look and said, “Shut the door before anybody sees her. And for heaven’s sake, Phyllis, put on a pair of gloves. You don’t want to get what I’ve had, bel
ieve me.”

  “How are you feeling, my darling?” Art asked after pushing the door closed.

  Betty’s dimples winked on her cheeks. “At this point, chicken broth tastes as good as a rib-eye steak.” She extended both hands and squeezed Art’s palm through the slippery vinyl of his glove. A moment later her face turned serious as she looked from Art to Phyllis. “What’s wrong? I can see it in your faces. Bad news?” She drew back and held her hands against her chest. “Oh no, it’s Earl, isn’t it?”

  Phyllis flicked her hand dismissively, a slim Lady Bracknell, clutching vinyl rather than kid gloves. Her frown deepened. “They won’t tell us a thing about his condition. We barely know whether the poor fellow is still breathing.”

  “Dr. Wakefield says he’s in intensive care and getting the right treatment,” Art said, trying to sound hopeful.

  “Then why do you two look like a pair of undertakers crashing a wedding?”

  Phyllis glanced over her shoulder. “Major skullduggery,” she pronounced. “Right under our noses.”

  “Goodness,” Betty said.

  “Our conundrum,” Phyllis continued, “is the following: do we contact the Hamilton police, the Mounties, or the Canadian Army?”

  “The army?” Betty said. “Phyllis, you can’t be serious.”

  “We are serious,” Art assured her. “We didn’t want to bother you and scupper your recovery, except we decided you were the best one to point us in the right direction — you know, all those years coordinating protocol for the Prime Minister.”

  “And with everything else that’s been happening around here,” Phyllis said, “we decided we couldn’t dilly-dally. We had to carpe diem.”

  “What ‘everything else’?” said Betty. “I feel like Sleeping Beauty or Rip Van Winkle waking up in . . . I don’t know . . . Alice in Wonderland.”

  Art paused and looked for a nod from Phyllis. Where should they start? So much had happened while Betty had been cooped up in isolation these past few days. Six deaths at Camelot in the past fortnight. Earl’s collapse in Zol’s office. Horvat’s fake pills. Those big thugs grilling Zol at Raimunda’s funeral. Gus’s pilfered sandwiches and his French mustard under suspicion.

  Between them, Art and Phyllis poured out the facts. The more they said, the wider Betty’s eyes grew, especially when Art dug into his pocket and pulled out the photo they’d printed from the Internet — Corporal Jayson Dasilva, a.k.a. Joe Medeiros.

  “I’d leave Viktor Horvat and his bogus medicines to Zol and Dr. Wakefield,” Betty said, her cheeks flushed, “but the business about Joe — and by implication Gus and Gloria — good grief, that is a shocker. And dangerous for all of us.” She paused and stared through the window, as if looking for inspiration. She squeezed Art’s hand. “Such a situation needs handling by experts. You mustn’t put yourselves at risk any more than you have already. You need to speak to the CO of the Argylls. Present him with your observations. Let him take it from there.”

  Phyllis flapped her gloves, which she had yet to put on. Lady Bracknell’s confidence vanished from her face. She looked more like Miss Marple with a migraine. “You mean to say we just call up the head of the Argylls and say, Look my good man, we’ve found your missing corporal, he’s hiding out with a bunch of — of batty old folks in their retirement residence?”

  Art tried to stifle a cynical chuckle. “Yeah, you think he’s going to believe a retired Latin teacher and an ancient engineer who confront him out of the blue with what sounds like a cock-and-bull story? He’ll send in the guys with the straitjackets. We have no proof, no recent photo, nothing to show him.”

  “I may be a bold old dame,” Phyllis said, “but I’m not about to jam my camera in Joe’s face and say ‘Hello Sonny, give me a nice smile.’”

  “Well,” said Betty, “what about a drawing? Police often use sketches when hunting down suspects. Art, why don’t you draw a likeness of Joe, or Jayson, or whatever his real name is? Show him as he looks today — older face, longer hair, and that tattoo you spotted on his arm.”

  “But that doesn’t prove he’s here at Camelot,” Art said.

  “Quite,” said Phyllis. “We need to put him in context.” She walked to the window and pointed to the parking lot. “I know. I’ll snap him from my bedroom window. He goes out to Gloria’s vehicle for a smoke a dozen times a day. I’ll use my digital zoom. I told you the photography course I took last year was more than a dalliance.”

  Betty straightened herself in the bed and smoothed the covers. Her clear eyes and upturned lips conveyed benevolence and tenacity. Art could see the influence she must have wielded in the PMO. She cleared her throat with a well-practised little cough and told them, “Presented with Art’s close-up drawing of Jayson the way he looks now, with that distinctive tattoo on his arm, and a shot of him in our parking lot, the Argylls’ CO will be sufficiently impressed to take proper action.”

  “Do we phone first?” Art asked.

  “What day is it today? Goodness, I’ve lost all track.”

  “Sunday,” Art told her.

  “Early afternoon,” Phyllis added. “We’ve just had a quick lunch at Tim’s.”

  Betty smiled. “I can see that.” She caught Phyllis’s eye and touched her own cheek, but Phyllis didn’t get the hint. “Arrive — unannounced — at the CO’s office tomorrow morning with your evidence. I believe the Argylls are based at the Armouries on James Street North, near the cathedral. Mind you, don’t tell a soul what you’re up to until you speak to the CO. And be sure you insist he protects your anonymity. Who knows how Gus and Gloria are going to react.”

  Despite Betty’s inspiring tenacity, Art could feel second thoughts eroding his resolve. If Jayson went down, so would Gus and Gloria as accomplices to his deception. Then what would become of everyone at Camelot Lodge?

  Perhaps it would be better to let Jayson lie like a sleeping dog. The idea went against the grain, but Jayson would return to Portugal soon enough. His visits to Camelot were never very long.

  Art glanced at Phyllis, her back straight, her face taut. She’d always lived by the rules, led a life as disciplined as her Latin grammar. She wouldn’t sleep until she saw to it that Jayson got what he deserved.

  They’d be visiting the Argylls tomorrow, right after breakfast.

  CHAPTER 35

  Zol followed Hamish through the wide automatic doors and into Caledonian University Medical Centre’s emergency department waiting room.

  “You stay here,” Hamish told him. “No sense both of us traipsing all over the department. It’s a wild place and Jeff Suszek could be anywhere. I’ll find him and the three of us can talk.”

  The ten minutes it took Hamish to resurface felt like a week. The longer Zol stood in the alcove beside the chips-and-candy vending machine — doing his best to shield himself from the coughing, the retching, and the bleeding — the more he convinced himself that Travis was dead, or worse. Zol had never met the boy’s mother. An older sister always dropped him off at soccer, and no one ever came to the door when Zol drove Travis home. Two women huddled in the far corner of the waiting room, sobbing on the scuzzy vinyl couch. They could be Travis’s mother and a much older sister for all Zol knew, but he knew it wasn’t Jessica who drove the boy to soccer. He wanted to introduce himself, try to comfort them in some way, but couldn’t bring himself to risk an awkward moment with the wrong people.

  A skinny young man in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, who’d been marched in between two large-bellied police officers, vomited a stomach full of blood on the floor beside the reception window. Zol covered his nose against the stench and looked away. Public health dumped him in political shit often enough, but rarely brought him face to face with body fluids.

  Then Hamish came out through the door marked Authorized Personnel. With him was a taller man, early forties, wearing blue scrubs. He had a boyish round face. Both men were rubbing alcohol sanitizer into their hands. Hamish introduced Dr. Jeff Suszek, who scanned the waiting roo
m, smiled apologetically at Zol as if personally responsible for the semi-organized chaos, then led the way to a quiet corridor where they could talk in private.

  “How’s Travis?” Zol asked.

  “Meningitis, all right,” Hamish said. “Fever, stiff neck, cloudy spinal fluid. The full monty.”

  “Is he conscious?”

  “Be a stretch to call it consciousness,” Hamish said. He looked at Jeff for corroboration. “He’s responding to painful stimuli with moans and groans. His mother is in there with him, but he’s not awake enough to talk. ”

  “Is he going to make it?” Zol asked.

  “They’ll be taking him upstairs shortly. ICU,” Hamish said. “He’ll make it. But whether or not with his brain intact is another matter. Time will tell.” There it was again, the bloodless manner that came over Hamish whenever he was concentrating on a difficult case.

  “Does it look like listeria?” Zol asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Jeff said. He checked his watch. “The lab should be sending over the results any minute.”

  “And the two soldiers?” Zol said. “How are they?”

  Jeff scratched the back of his neck. “That’s the interesting wrinkle I was telling Hamish about.”

  Zol felt himself bracing. A wrinkle could be the tidbit of information that led to the listeria’s source, or a complication that made his job almost impossible. “Hit me. What is it?”

  Hamish looked at Zol and arched his eyebrows like a dog trainer dangling a bone. On the drive to the hospital, Hamish had been troubled that two robust young men had contracted invasive listeria. It didn’t make sense. Men strong enough for active military service didn’t get infected with listeria. The germ hurt only newborns, the frail, and the elderly.

  “Afghanistan,” said Jeff. “Both men served there together. A six-month tour, I believe. They’re with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, based here in Hamilton.”

  Zol had done a stint in a travel-health clinic as a resident. He’d learned that tropical viruses, parasites, and bacteria had predictable incubation periods, some short, others surprisingly long. Knowing a patient’s overseas return date was critical to making an accurate tropical diagnosis. These guys could be infected with something in addition to listeria, something they’d picked up on their travels, a microbe that made them unusually vulnerable to listeria. Or had they been exposed to a chemical weapon or an experimental vaccine that had wiped out their immune systems? If that was the case, the Canadian Forces wouldn’t divulge any details without a fight. “Tell me, when did they get back?”