by Ross Pennie
“Our guys finally agreed to see a psychiatrist,” Shirley said. “It took a lot of pushing to get them there.”
“Gavin and Pete, they thought they could, like, tough it out,” Loreen said. “Get better on their own.” She rolled her eyes. “Like that was ever going to happen.”
“The doctor called it PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder,” Shirley said. “He finally put them on fluoxetine. First he tried Paxil, then Zoloft. But neither worked.”
“Is the fluoxetine helping?” Zol asked.
Shirley considered her answer, then said, “I’d say so. A bit, eh, Loreen?”
Loreen shrugged and looked away.
“What pharmacy do they use?” Zol asked, his heart rate rising. He could feel it in his chest.
“It’s, like, across the street from their doctor’s office,” Loreen said.
“On Mohawk, at Magnolia,” Shirley clarified.
Hamish leaned forward, his face full of anticipation. “Do you remember the name of it?”
“Steeltown something,” Loreen said.
“Steeltown Apothecary,” Shirley said, then handed Zol the bottle containing her husband’s capsules.
Zol tightened his fist around the bottle until it nearly burst. “Do you have any friends or family living at Camelot Lodge? It’s a retirement residence.”
Both women shook their heads. Zol could see the truth in their eyes. They’d never heard of the place.
He checked his watch. Four twenty-five. He pictured Colleen in his front hallway, pacing in her coat and boots.
Oops.
CHAPTER 36
“You’re sure you’re up for this?” Colleen asked Natasha from behind the wheel of her Mercedes.
No, she was anything but sure about breaking into Viktor Horvat’s pharmacy. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her.
It was three minutes to five and they were parked opposite a pizza place two doors down from Steeltown Apothecary, which was going to close any minute. They’d driven separately from Dr. Zol’s in their own cars, and now they were both sitting in Colleen’s, trying not to look suspicious. Colleen said she’d chosen this spot in the strip mall because it gave a clear view of Steeltown’s front door without making it obvious they had the place under surveillance. She’d told Natasha to park her Honda at the far end of the mall outside the dry cleaner’s. No one would notice it there on a Sunday afternoon.
They’d barely made it here in time. Dr. Zol, red-faced and panting, had begged forgiveness for returning home late, missing their brainstorming session, and making Colleen late for her appointment. He told them he’d been chasing three new cases of listeria meningitis — two soldiers and a child, all linked to Viktor Horvat and his pharmacy. Clearly, this was not a community-wide outbreak. The new links to Steeltown kept the focus sharply on Mr. Horvat. Natasha had been desperate to stay and hear more details from Dr. Zol, but she’d committed herself to Colleen, and she knew they were about to do the right thing.
Of course, Dr. Zol had no idea what she and Colleen were up to. He thought Natasha was on her way to a Hindu family engagement and Colleen was on a surveillance job. Natasha had had a fine afternoon cooling her heels with Max and Colleen. The soufflé was delicious, and the wine made it even better. Max was an easy kid. Mature for his age and polite. But he sure was hooked on video games. His frenzied, senses-boggling world of online gaming was almost more than she could take.
Natasha found herself staring at Steeltown’s front door. She forced herself to look away. She didn’t have to stare. It would be easy to spot Mr. Horvat and his staff leaving after closing up. Colleen had said the best time to sneak into someone’s place was ten minutes after they left. That gave the target ten minutes to return for something they’d forgotten and gave the operative at least twenty minutes to snoop around without getting caught. Any errand was bound to keep Viktor Horvat away from his shop for at least thirty minutes; he might even be gone for several hours.
“You are sure you want to come in?” Colleen said again. “Zol made it crystal clear. He doesn’t want any of us sneaking inside Horvat’s operation.”
There was anxiety in Colleen’s voice that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. As soon as they’d arrived, Colleen had slipped into the pharmacy, stayed two minutes, and returned looking worried. She’d seen something inside that had frightened her.
“Zol would have a stroke if he knew I’d taken you poking inside Horvat’s lair.”
“But you said —”
“The situation is looking increasingly dangerous. Horvat’s as mad as a hyena. Something’s set him off. His face is bloated and I heard him swearing at his staff.”
“So, now what?”
“I should go in alone.”
“No way. If it’s too dangerous for me, the same goes for you.”
“I’m just a consultant. Zol can’t fire me for disobeying orders.”
“But what if Mr. Horvat —”
“You’ll be watching my back. If anyone goes near that front door, you’ll ring me on my mobile. I’ll slip out the back door and into the alley at the rear.”
Disappointment hit Natasha like a colossal wave. She was dying to see exactly how Viktor Horvat was infecting his clients with live listeria. “But I really wanted to have a look inside his operation.” She knew she looked too much like her mother when Mummyji put on one of her major pouts.
“Zol’s right,” Colleen said. “It’s no mere coincidence that Horvat and those two army officers were in Sarajevo at the same time. That place was a war zone for a long time. Bound to have left many unsettled scores.” She stared at the pharmacy, then pierced Natasha with a pensive gaze. “Something extraordinarily sinister is going on. We must be extremely careful.”
Colleen pulled a tiny camcorder from her handbag, hit Play, and peered at the video on the screen. She’d hidden the camera in the store yesterday — at the rear of the toothpaste display — and aimed it at the push-button combination lock securing the rear door. After casing the place over the past few days, she’d figured out that the locked inside door led to the converted garage abutting the rear of the pharmacy. She said the garage’s impromptu Jack the Printer sign wouldn’t fool anyone with half a brain. The one-storey building was an extension of the pharmacy and had to be the centre of Viktor Horvat’s counterfeit operation.
“So you’re going to call the police, let them handle it?” Natasha asked.
“They’d need a warrant to go snooping in that garage. But no judge would ever grant them one, especially on a Sunday, without a believable story and reasonable evidence to back it up. I have a feeling that Horvat’s activities are coming to a head — he could pull up stakes and cover his tracks at any moment.”
It bothered Natasha that none of this made sense. If Viktor Horvat was using listeria to settle old grudges from the ruins of Bosnia and Sarajevo, then why would he target old folks and a child? Nellie, Raimunda, Earl, Betty, and the others at Camelot had no links to Bosnia. She’d checked that out. Furthermore, they’d been retired for twenty or thirty years — long before Yugoslavia had dissolved into war. And what did army officers with listeria have to do with empty antibiotic capsules and counterfeit Zytopril, a blood-pressure medication?
“Aha,” Colleen said, lifting the camera. “Here’s a shot of Horvat unlocking that door. Yesterday. Ten twenty-seven p.m.” She played the scene several times in ultra slow motion before her eyes brightened. “Got it. A six-digit code. 2-0-0-3-0-8. You agree?”
Natasha studied the screen as Colleen replayed the segment. “I suppose.”
Colleen nodded at Steeltown’s front door. “Don’t look now, but here comes our man. With his technician and the cashier. He’s in a hurry.”
“Looks like he’s crying.”
Mr. Horvat fumbled with his keys then locked the pharmacy’s front door. He wiped his swollen face with the sleeve of his coat, then dashed toward his car with neither a wave nor a word to his staff. A second later he pulled his
cellphone from his pocket, scowled at the call display, and pawed at his wet cheeks. He barked three or four words into the phone, flipped it closed, then climbed into his vehicle. Natasha had no interest in cars but took note that it was a black Ford SUV with vanity licence plates: SJJ YHM.
The pharmacist roared past them, his wheels skidding on a patch of ice. Natasha had seen him gruff before, but now he looked like a grizzly gunning for revenge.
“That’s his ten minutes,” Colleen said. She glanced in the rear-view mirror then peered through the windows on both sides of the car. “Time to go, before he comes back. Are you coming?”
Natasha’s right hand hovered above the passenger door handle. She was desperate to see inside Viktor Horvat’s operation, but nothing in her training had prepared her for this cloak-and-dagger stuff. The practice of epidemiology, which she’d always seen as grounded on facts, logic, and mathematical formulae, had taken on an emotional dimension. And that emotion was sitting somewhere between fear and terror. The safest thing to do would be to listen to the cautious, rational left side of her brain and stay in the car.
“Cold feet, Cinderella?” Colleen said. “That’s okay. You don’t have to come to the ball.”
“No, no,” Natasha said, doing a poor job of hiding the truth.
Her left arm, controlled by her impulsive right brain, reached for the door and swung it open. A second later she found herself stepping into the brisk March wind.
Colleen led the way to Steeltown’s front door, walking with an unhurried purpose that attracted no attention. She produced a key from her coat pocket, took a quick but thorough look for prying eyes, then opened the door. She ushered Natasha inside and closed the door behind them. When Natasha had asked earlier how Colleen had obtained a key, Colleen had said there were certain trade secrets of no concern to the health unit.
Inside, Natasha felt her heart booming in her throat as she waited for the piercing shriek of the burglar alarm. She fisted her car keys and glanced back at the Honda.
The pharmacy stayed strangely quiet, lit only by the failing afternoon light filtering through the front windows. Natasha could barely make out the outline of the shampoo display she’d knocked over when she’d been dolled up in Anjum’s sari and wig.
“My sources were correct,” said Colleen. She pointed to a box mounted on the wall near the door. It was covered in alarm- company decals. “Horvat cancelled his contract with his security company six months ago. Doesn’t want the police sniffing around here on the heels of some burglar searching for narcotics.”
Natasha stared at the alarm box, certain it was going to blink and blare to life any second.
The box stayed quiet. Inert and harmless.
Colleen produced a flashlight and led the way past the mouthwash, dental floss, and toothbrushes to the rear of the store. She stopped and shone the beam at a heavy-looking steel door. It was more imposing in real life than on the video camera’s tiny screen.
Colleen studied the number panel below the doorknob and raised an eyebrow. “This is where we find out how often he changes his code. If he were smart, he’d change it every day.” She punched in the six digits they’d both memorized.
There was no siren, no snarling Doberman, just a simple click as Colleen pulled the door open and they stared into darkness.
A moment later, the sweep of Colleen’s flashlight caught a worktable, a refrigerator, LED lights blinking on a large glass-fronted box, and two dozen cardboard cartons at the back stacked beyond a side door to their right. The place looked like a cross between a windowless workshop and a storeroom. If there’d ever been a wide garage door at the rear, there was no sign of it now. Goosebumps pricked Natasha’s neck as Colleen eased the door closed behind them.
A dark shape shot from the shadows at lightning speed. It headed straight for Natasha. She froze, her heart leaping out of her throat. Her knees barely held her.
The thing pressed against her leg. She braced for bite. “What is it?” she whispered. “I can’t bear to look. Oh my God. Is it . . . is it a snake?”
Colleen flicked on the lights.
Natasha stared ahead, eyes on the side door. She couldn’t look down, not to see a snake winding around her legs.
“Meow,” said the object at her feet.
She threw her hands above her head. “I’m allergic to cats.”
The tabby looked up as if expecting a treat. It caressed her calf with its tail. Ugh.
“Asthma?” Colleen asked.
“Runny eyes. Sneezing. Shoo it away. Please.”
Colleen strode to the middle of the long, rectangular room and knelt down. She called the cat and a moment later it was purring beside her, waving its tail.
“I trust you can tolerate being here for a few minutes?” Colleen said.
“I’m usually okay for half an hour. As long as that thing doesn’t sit in my lap and expect me to pet it. I’ve got antihistamines in the car.”
Colleen stood up and pulled her camera from her coat pocket. “We won’t be here for any half an hour.” She pointed across the room. “Let’s start with that table.”
A long table was pushed against the side wall to the left. Scattered across its Formica surface were a propane torch, an ashtray littered with burnt matches, a pair of fine surgical forceps, and a short loop of thin wire attached to the end of a metal stick the size of a pencil. Natasha had seen a similar wire loop in Ellen Ballyk’s microbiology laboratory. She had no idea what it was for.
On one of two shelves above the table, a photograph in a black frame was propped next to a half-consumed votive candle. The sooty wick stood stark, almost angry against the white wax. The picture showed a youngish woman and three school-age children, two girls and a boy. They had big smiles and were standing in an open field, white-capped mountains rising behind them. Hanging from one corner of the picture frame was a string of translucent beads attached to an ornate silver cross. Natasha’s friend Maria once showed her something like this when they’d been listening to rap music in Maria’s bedroom after school. She’d called it a rosary and made Natasha wash her hands before she touched it. It had belonged to Maria’s grandmother to whom Maria prayed every night.
On the second shelf sat two large, white plastic medication bottles and a box of extra-large vinyl gloves. Natasha reached for the closer bottle, labelled only with a bold letter V in black marker.
Colleen caught her arm. “Don’t touch anything without gloves on.”
“Oh yeah, fingerprints.”
“Or worse. You never know what Horvat’s been doing in here.” Colleen pulled a handful of vinyl gloves from her coat pocket. “Here, put these on. More our size.”
They donned their gloves, and after a nod from Colleen, Natasha took hold of the bottle marked V.
“What have you got?” Colleen asked.
“Should I open it?”
Colleen adjusted her camera. “That’s what we’re here for.”
Natasha held the bottle at arm’s length and unscrewed the cap. No hiss, no bad smell. Nothing jumped out when she lifted the top. Still, the flimsiness of the vinyl gloves made her shudder at her lack of protection from anything really dangerous.
Inside, dozens of two-toned capsules, beige and blue, crowded the bottle.
“What are they?” Colleen said, snapping close-ups.
“They look like vancomycin capsules.” Todd had shown her several of the fake vancos he and Dr. Wakefield had found at Camelot.
“Real or dummies?”
“We’d have to open one.”
Colleen whipped a notebook from an inside pocket of her capacious coat and ripped out a blank page. She placed the page on the table like a placemat then picked up the forceps, lifted a capsule from the bottle, and set it on the paper. “You do the honours.”
“You mean . . . open it?”
“Go ahead.”
Natasha pulled at her gloves to smooth the wrinkles from her fingertips. She lifted the capsule and twisted it. The
two halves separated with no effort at all. No puff of powder. No smell. No sticky liquid. Nothing.
Colleen leaned in for a macro shot of the empty capsule, then jerked her head toward the other bottle on the shelf. “See what’s in that one.”
Natasha replaced the first bottle and carefully uncapped the second one, labelled X 100. It contained hundreds of bright pink capsules, smaller than the vancomycin dummies. Colleen took her close-up shots, then reached in with the forceps and held a capsule to the light. “Quite pretty,” she said. She dropped the pill into Natasha’s open palm. “I’ve always liked a touch of pink.”
Natasha rotated the capsule between her thumb and forefinger. “Says ‘X 100.’ That’s all.”
“Extraordinary colour. Looks more like candy than medication.”
Natasha had seen these before. There was no forgetting that colour, but where had she seen it? Her grandma didn’t take anything like these. Her mother’s lorazepams were white tablets, not pink capsules. And the Zytopril antihypertensives that Wayne Jarvie had sent to Montreal for analysis were robin’s-egg blue.
“What’s wrong?” Colleen said.
“I’ve seen these before, but . . .”
“Yes?”
A picture was coming to her. Rows of pink capsules . . . and other pills of assorted shapes and sizes. She closed her eyes, and the image sharpened. “Got it . . . the blister packs.”
“What?”
“The compliance packs Viktor Horvat prepares for the residents at Camelot and a bunch of other nursing homes. Each week’s pills in a blister card for easy dosing. Many of the residents had pills like these in their cards. I should have recognized that pink immediately.”
“What are they for?”
“If the X stands for Xanucox, then they’re an expensive medicine for arthritis.” She squeezed the capsule. It compressed like plastic between her fingers then regained its shape without shattering. “Among the Camelot residents with arthritis, there’s a strong correlation between taking Xanucox and acquiring a moderate to severe illness that satisfies our case definition of listeria monocytogenes febrile gastroenteritis.”
