The Lethal Helix

by Don Donaldson

  After he’d settled up, Richard went back to the table. “I have to go.”

  “Does it have anything to do with those deaths?” Jessie asked.

  “I want to talk to Skye Johannson’s brother.”

  “Mind if we go along?” She looked at Artie. “Or would you rather stay here and finish your lunch?”

  “After all that talk about prions, I’m not real hungry.”

  “I might not be able to find him,” Richard said.

  “We won’t hold it against you,” Jessie said.

  “Let’s go then. Everything’s paid for here.”

  CONSIDERING THAT IT was the middle of a school day, business was good at the Kaleidoscope, and the place was filled with the sound of ray guns, racing engines, and explosions. The clientele was exclusively male, most of them probably from the community college nearby.

  “Losers in the making,” Artie observed.

  “But we’ll soon be a country with great hand-eye coordination,” Jessie said.

  Richard spotted Dennis sitting at the wheel of a racing car simulator, trying to keep his virtual vehicle from hitting bouncing tires and the occasional pileup. “There he is.”

  Jessie and Artie followed Richard to where Dennis was concentrating so hard on the track in front of him, he wasn’t aware of their presence. Richard put a hand on Dennis’s shoulder. “Hello, Dennis.”

  Startled, Dennis flinched, sending his racecar into a wall. “Hi, Doctor Heflin. I didn’t know you liked video games.”

  “I came to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “Could we talk outside where it’s quieter?”

  “Sure.”

  On the sidewalk, Richard introduced Jessie and Artie. Undecided whether he should bow or shake hands, Dennis did both.

  “How have you been?” Richard asked.

  “I got a job deliverin’ papers. And afternoons I clean up around Floramania . . . that’s a flower shop.”

  “Are you still living at home?”

  “For now. Ronnie’s parents are still plannin’ to sell it, but there’s been some kind of delay. I don’t know why.”

  “Do you remember all the meat in the freezer at home?”

  “Yeah, Ronnie got that.”

  “Where?”

  “At the dairy.”

  “What were the circumstances?”

  Dennis looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Did he buy a cow from the dairy?”

  “Got it free.”

  “Why was it free?”

  “They didn’t want it anymore.”

  “Was it dead when Ronnie picked it up?”

  “That’s the only kind he carries in his truck.”

  Richard glanced at Jessie, grimly acknowledging that she’d apparently been right. “So it was supposed to go to the company where Ronnie worked?”

  “Ronnie said I shouldn’t tell anybody.”

  “It’s okay, Dennis. Nothing can happen to Ronnie if you tell me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”

  Dennis thought about this, then said, “The man at the dairy said it wasn’t givin’ enough milk to pay for feedin’ it. Ronnie figured it was too good for dog food, so he brought it home.”

  This didn’t sound to Richard like the cow was overtly ill. But its falloff in milk production could have meant that it was, and they’d simply killed it before more obvious symptoms appeared. “When did all this happen?”

  “Not too long ago.”

  “Do you remember what sports were on TV around the time he brought it home?”

  Again Dennis lapsed into thought. “Ronnie likes the Packers. So do I.”

  “Had the Packers played any games before he brought it home?”

  Dennis searched his thin mind. “Exhibition game against New Orleans. They won twenty to thirteen.”

  So the meat had come into the house around two months ago. “Dennis, do you remember Sandy Moore?”

  “Skye’s friend?”

  “Did she ever have a meal with all of you?”

  “I remember once.”

  “What did you have?”

  “Everybody else had steaks. But Skye made me spaghetti, on account of I don’t eat meat. It plugs me up.”

  It was all falling together. The cow Ronnie had picked up was the cause. “Is the rest of the meat from that cow still in the freezer at home?”

  “I didn’t eat any.”

  “Could we have a package to see if that’s what made Ronnie and Skye sick?”

  Dennis shrugged. “If you want.”

  “Do you mind coming with us now to get it?”

  “Will you bring me back here?”

  “Absolutely.”

  AFTER PICKING UP the package of meat, it occurred to Richard that Ronnie hadn’t butchered the animal himself. To Richard’s great surprise, Dennis knew the name of the man who had. Aware that prions cannot be inactivated by soap and water, Richard feared that the butcher’s equipment would contaminate everything else he worked on. They therefore, set out to find the man.

  Following Dennis’s directions, they went to three wrong locations. On the fourth try, with Richard’s patience nearly at an end, they found him. Thankfully, he was a retired butcher, who had kept all his equipment and only “put on the apron,” as he phrased it, when the odd job came his way. He verified that around the first of September, Ronnie had paid him forty dollars to butcher a “fairly small” cow. To Richard’s great relief, the equipment hadn’t been used since. Though the butcher didn’t fully understand what all the fuss was about, he agreed to let Richard show him how to disinfect everything.

  By this time, Richard was already ten minutes late for his one o’clock. As he let Dennis out of the car back at the Kaleidoscope, he felt his pager vibrating. Connie trying to find him.

  “Thanks, Dennis,” Richard said. “Good luck with your new jobs and remember, don’t do anything with that meat until you hear from me. If Ronnie’s parents want to take it or discard it or do anything with it, tell them to call me.”

  When the car door had shut behind Dennis, Jessie said, “I want to do it.”

  “Do what?” Richard asked, looking across the front seat at her.

  She patted the package of frozen beef in her lap. “The animal testing on this to prove it’s the source of the illnesses. We’ve got everything I need at the lab.” In response to his blank stare, she added, “That is the next step.”

  “But why do you want to get involved?”

  “Richard, you said yourself, there’s never been a prion disease as aggressive as what you’ve seen in these cases. If that’s what it is, this is huge. Why wouldn’t I want to work on it?”

  “Is it really your call?” Richard asked. “Don’t you have to clear this with someone at work if you’re going to be using their equipment and supplies?”

  “Of course.”

  “Suppose they refuse?”

  “I’ll get permission.”

  “Won’t it be dangerous?” Artie asked.

  “Prions aren’t like tropical viruses. A few sensible precautions, everything will be fine. These diseases really aren’t easy to transmit.”

  “What if it’s not a prion disease?” Richard said.

  “Dennis has lived in the house where it started and he’s fine. So is Sandy Moore’s husband. Whatever we’re dealing with isn’t airborne or infectious in the usual sense.”

  “If you’re sure this is what you want,” Richard said.

  “You bet it is.”

  IN A GLASS case under the big windows in Zane Bruxton’s office sat an “ancient” device for purification of nucleic acids. One of the first o
f its kind, it stretched ten feet from end to end: two miles of glass tubing bent into repetitious little coils that made it look impossibly complex. Across the room, a Civil War doctor’s kit was displayed in another glass case on a French pedestal. Scattered among the leather volumes on the shelves behind Bruxton was his collection of old microscopes. His desk itself was a display case, featuring a couple of original drawings of the circulation by William Harvey, its discoverer. As Jessie sat waiting for Bruxton to finish whatever he was writing, she found herself wondering if he might have a freeze-dried Nobel laureate or two in the closet. She’d been fortunate in getting to see him just hours after acquiring the suspect meat from the Johannsons’ freezer.

  “Now, Doctor Heflin,” Bruxton said, closing the file folder in front of him and putting his pen in the holder on his desk. “What can I do for you?”

  “Are you aware of the three people in town who, within the last two weeks, all died of the same illness?”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “There’s a good chance the source of their sickness was a cow carcass that should have gone to the dog food plant, but instead ended up on the dinner table of the victims.”

  “What was the origin of this cow?”

  “The Midland dairy. It was supposedly killed because it was no longer producing enough milk. But we think that might have just been the first symptoms of a serious illness.”

  “We?”

  “My brother Richard. You met him at the dedication of the MRI. He was wondering about the pricing of Vasostasin.”

  “I remember.”

  “The three people who died were his patients.”

  “So they were neurologic cases.”

  “That’s right. The neuropathologist who looked at the brains of the first two who died thinks there’s a chance they might have had a prion disease.”

  “Like Creutzfeldt-Jakob.”

  “Yes and no. Like it in the sense of being prion induced, but very much different in the speed with which death follows the first symptoms.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “I’d like to use the facilities here to test the meat from the cow in question.”

  “What kind of tests?”

  “I want to inject extracts of the meat into mice and see if they get the disease.”

  Bruxton frowned slightly. “Why would I agree to this?”

  “First, it would be a humanitarian gesture to the community in the same spirit that moved you to give the hospital that MRI.”

  “And?”

  “If this turns out to be a new prion disease, the world will forever know that it was discovered at Bruxton Pharmaceuticals.”

  “And such a discovery would no doubt enhance your résumé immensely.”

  Jessie smiled. “There would be benefits for both of us.”

  “Ambition is a fine thing, but it can be dangerous.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He waved at the volumes on his bookshelves. “History is replete with examples of scientists who thought they were the hunters but became the hunted.”

  “You mean they contracted the disease they were studying.”

  He nodded.

  “There’s not much danger of that here. Prions are tough to destroy, but they’re pretty safe to work with. I don’t think there’s a single instance of a scientist who’s worked on them contracting a prion disease.”

  Bruxton got out of his chair, went to the windows, and looked out while Jessie waited for his answer. He had a reputation for making quick decisions. It was said that he usually knew his position on an idea or proposal even before it had been fully presented. This delay seemed like a good sign.

  Finally, without turning to look at her, Bruxton said, “Use the empty lab down the hall from yours. The hood there has a HEPA filter. Involve no one else in the work and speak to no one about it. If knowledge of your project gets back to me from any source within the company, I’ll terminate it. That’s all.”

  As soon as Jessie was out the door, Bruxton doubled over in pain. He hadn’t turned toward her because he was afraid she’d see it on his face. He staggered to his desk and dropped into his chair, sweating profusely.

  His life now was a shadow, a spectral alias of what he’d been, but it was life and he clung to it. Jessie’s belief that his slow response to her request represented indecision was wrong. Nor was the delay related to his pain. He’d known from the instant he’d heard the details that the work had to be done here. But it wouldn’t have made sense for him to agree quickly.

  To make a fortune, and keep it, required intelligence and a relentless amount of hard work. Bruxton had never underestimated the additional role of luck in his success and had gradually come to view the inability of Vasostasin to control his type of cancer as movement toward a cosmic equilibrium. But now, with the situation Jessie had laid in front of him, whatever force was sending him to his grave and had lately been plaguing him with unexpected crises, wiped his brow and gave him succor.

  20

  JESSIE PICKED UP a Ketamine-anesthetized mouse and began taping it to the oak board she’d found in her garage.

  After her meeting yesterday with Bruxton, she’d told Richard the good news, then gone to her computer and combed the prion literature looking for papers that might contain some technical hints on how to obtain the quickest test results. She’d taken a list of promising papers to the company library and located the full articles. The best advice she’d found was rather obvious: inject the test material into the animal’s brain.

  She’d spent the morning rounding up the things she’d need and arranging them in the lab Bruxton had told her to use. Now, just twenty-four hours after this opportunity had presented itself, she was within minutes of making the first injection.

  She wished there were some alternative to the use of animals to obtain the information she needed. But exposing the extract to cells in culture wouldn’t tell her enough. She had to see what, if any, neurologic effects were produced by the extracts. Only if the human illness was reproduced in her test animals would she know whether she had found the infectious agent.

  The first strip of duct tape went across the animal’s snout. The second, she placed well behind its eyes so about half the head was exposed. She took the pinioned animal to the laminar flow hood and flicked off the UV light that had sterilized the work area. She placed the animal inside the hood on the stainless steel work surface, then went to the refrigerator and got the extracts she’d prepared from a small sample of the suspect meat and from a similar sample of meat she’d bought at a grocery.

  She placed both extracts in the hood next to the sterile Hamilton syringes she’d use for the injection. Mice are notably resistant to bacterial infection. Even so, Jessie had sterilized everything she’d use, including the extracts, which she’d passed through a bacterial exclusion filter.

  Her first objective was simply to prove that the meat was the source of the illness that had killed Richard’s patients. Once that was established, she could devise further experiments to clarify the nature of the causative agent. So in this first set of animals, she would inject six mice with an unmodified extract from the suspect meat, and six more with extract from the purchased meat.

  She surveyed the contents of the hood to make sure everything she’d need was inside. Satisfied, she sat down, donned a jeweler’s headset with magnifying lenses, and reached for a cotton swab, which she dipped in 95% alcohol. After disinfecting the fur on the top of the animal’s head with the swab, she made a midline scalpel incision in the skin and pulled the edges back with tiny retractors. It took less than twenty seconds to bore through the bone to the animal’s brain using a Dremel Moto Tool in a procedure so bloodless she didn’t even need the battery-operated cautery pen she’d had standing by.

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bsp; With a Hamilton syringe, she carefully injected a tenth of a microliter of extract into the mouse’s brain. She finished by pressing a dollop of bone wax into the skull hole, then removed the skin retractors and brought the edges of the cut tissue together. A little Crazy Glue along the incision and she was done.

  An hour later, as she put the last animal back in its box, the first one she’d operated on stirred to life. In a few seconds, it was mousing around as though nothing had happened. By the time she’d finished cleaning and putting things away, there were three more awake and moving.

  Now, it was up to them.

  WHEN HOLLY HAD returned from Wisconsin, she’d wanted nothing more to do with that part of the country. But her conversation with Susan Morrison had brought it all back, so that even by the next day it provided a subtext to everything she did, like a weather advisory crawling across the bottom of her perceptions. As a result, she remembered the pictures of the dairy cows in her phone. Figuring that since she’d gone to so much trouble to get the shots, she at least ought to make some prints, she drove straight home from the office at the end of the day and transferred the images to her computer.

  She’d known even before taking the pictures that whatever made those cows so special might not be obvious. It was also possible that if there was a clue on the photos, it would take a cow expert to see it. Nevertheless, when the last picture slid out of her printer she turned on the light over the kitchen table and sat down to see what she had.

  Her first reaction was surprise at the quality of the images, all of which were bright and clear. She would have preferred that the chain-link fence between the cows and the camera not be there, but she quickly learned to look past it.

  By the time she’d gone through the first dozen pictures, the only thing she’d seen of any interest was a cow that had a black spot on its flank that reminded her of the nucleus on a monocyte: a white blood cell whose nucleus is usually shaped like a kidney bean.

  A few minutes later, she saw another cow with a very similar pattern. Then, in the next to last photo, another one. She placed this third one on the table and sorted back through the pile to find the other two, which she put beside the third. In all three, the spot on the flank was an oval with its long axis running vertically and the kidney bean indentation facing the tail. But the margins of the spot and the depth of the indentation were slightly different on each animal. With the three pictures in front of her, she saw that the animals had other spots in common as well. In fact, all their spots were nearly identical.