Tainted

by Ross Pennie

  “Good going. You must have sounded very official.”

  Colleen’s eyes danced at the compliment. “As soon as I mentioned a strep outbreak at Shalom Acres, she opened right up. Told me three times that Rita had never been diagnosed with strep throat.”

  “Was she alarmed?”

  “No. I reassured her that strep has a two-week incubation period, so Rita’s last visit in August put them in the clear by twelve weeks. She seemed satisfied with that.”

  “Perfect. But did we learn anything?”

  “A good practice run before calling the dermatologist.”

  “Dr. Zupanzik?”

  “I’ll get to him later. Let me tell you about the naturopaths and chiropractors.”

  “You got through to them? Great.”

  Colleen shook her head. “Not so great. Joanna had six sessions with a Dr. Boonstra. I couldn’t get his office staff to tell me what herbs and medicines she’d been given, but the receptionist was quick to assure me that everything they prescribe is one hundred percent organic and natural.”

  “So is cyanide.”

  “Too true.” She held his gaze in a way that said she was with him completely, then continued. “Next was Tonya, who visited the acupuncturist for her migraines. Seven sessions. Ending last May.”

  “Were those the injections her father was talking about? Not that expensive migraine drug — sumatriptan?”

  “Acupuncture just involves needles, doesn’t it? They don’t inject anything.”

  “No drugs. Just the right sort of flick of the fingers,” he said, rubbing his thumb against his forefinger, “and a little electrical buzz on the needles.” He looked at his sheet. “Anything else?”

  “Only Joanna Vanderven’s weekly appointments with her massage therapist.”

  “You mean that’s it? Nothing more from all those alternative practitioners?” He shrugged out of his blazer and swung it over the back of his chair. “I need to get this straight,” he said, doing his best to diffuse his frustration by unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. “You called every alternative practitioner in the building, they all answered, and the only people they recognized from our list were Joanna Vanderven and Tonya Latkovic?”

  “Don’t put away your notepad. Dr. Zupanzik has a chatty receptionist — who, it turns out, is pregnant.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “She got very concerned about her baby as soon as I brought up the strep cases at Shalom Acres. When I mentioned flesh-eating disease — it was difficult to sneak that one in quietly — she peppered me with questions and fed me with answers left, right, and centre.”

  He shifted in the hard wooden chair and fingered his pen. “You struck gold?”

  “Not exactly. But I did confirm that Delia was getting Extendo-Tox injections from Dr. Zupanzik.”

  “I knew that already. Her husband didn’t approve. Thought it went against life’s natural order.”

  “But get this. Zupanzik was also injecting Joanna, Rita, and Danesh.”

  “Danesh Patel? With Extendo-Tox?”

  “Don’t look so surprised. Men are just as vain as women.”

  He waved his hands in apology. “Of course. You’re right.” He tapped his chin as he thought for a moment. “Natasha had a feeling Patel’s wife was hiding something. And we know the family was often short of cash despite Danesh earning top dollar at the dealership.”

  Colleen nodded. “Extendo-Tox isn’t cheap. Empties the bank account as quickly as it melts away the wrinkles. And it could explain Joanna’s nervousness before her appointments with the dermatologist. I’m guessing she didn’t like needles.”

  Zol drew his chair closer to the table. “Exactly when did these four start getting Extendo-Tox?”

  “Remember,” Colleen said, straightening her back, “I was just supposed to be interested in the Shalom Acres Streptococcus outbreak, asking if any people on my list had visited the office recently. I couldn’t get too nosy or I’d blow my cover.”

  “Sorry. It’s just that you seemed to be onto something.”

  “I can’t be sure, but it sounds like they all had at least two shots of it. The receptionist was some proud to tell me that with Extendo-Tox you only need to be injected about once a year — its effect lasts ten or twelve months.”

  Zol nodded. “It has a much longer duration of action than the original toxin.”

  “It was developed here in Hamilton, I gather.”

  “By a biotech outfit with ties to the university. A huge local success — scientifically and financially.”

  “Did you buy any shares?”

  “No. I should have, though. Rumour has it that Extendo-Tox made millionaires out of several investigators and their backers at Caledonian.”

  Colleen looked at her notes. “Delia was scheduled for a repeat injection last February but cancelled.”

  “Too sick by then to care about wrinkles.”

  “The receptionist was aware that Delia and Joanna had died. I had to use my most nurturing voice to reassure her their deaths had nothing to do with strep or flesh-eating disease.”

  “Is anyone going to make a fuss, call the health unit with a bunch of searching questions?”

  Colleen shook her head. The golden flecks glinted in her hazel irises. “It’s okay,” she said. “The receptionist settled right down when she realized it had been nineteen months since Delia Smart’s last visit to the office. Same for Joanna.”

  “I put you in a tight spot with this line about strep and Shalom Acres.”

  “Not to worry. I do tight spots for a living.”

  He gazed at the November sky, grey and dull as pewter. The trees across the street were so bare they looked dead. “If Delia’s third Extendo-Tox dose was to be last February, and there were ten or twelve months between doses, we can estimate when she got her first dose. There’s a calendar in my desk. Somewhere.” He pulled open several drawers then dug an agenda from the bottom one and brought it to the table. “If we count back twenty months from last February, we come to . . . June the previous year.”

  “Delia’s husband first noticed her forgetfulness a year ago — November the following year.”

  “That means,” Zol said, counting out the months on his fingers, “she received her first dose seventeen months before showing any symptoms. That’s a very short incubation period for CJD, but Hamish would say it fits our tight cluster.”

  Colleen uncrossed her ankles and leaned over the table. “We need to clarify a couple of things.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know enough about Owen Renway, Hugh McEwen, and Tonya Latkovic. Unless they were getting Extendo-Tox, maybe none of this matters.”

  “But it’s still a fantastic teaser for Trinnock. Four cases of CJD after contact with a new biological agent that has neurotoxic properties? It’s enough to get him to admit we’re on to something and extend our deadline past four o’clock this afternoon.” He saw the expectant look in Colleen’s face. His mother used to do that — raise her eyebrows and purse her lips whenever he forgot something important. “What?” he asked.

  “Is it scientifically possible for Extendo-Tox to contain prions?”

  He sensed the bubble about to burst. “We better look it up in the CPS. If Extendo-Tox is totally synthetic, maybe you’re right — it can’t contain prions.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m not the scientist. I just help string the evidence together. It’s up to you to decide whether we’ve strung pebbles or pearls.”

  He lifted the electric-blue Compendium of Pharmaceutical Specialties from the bookshelf and turned to the Canadian drug bible’s Extendo-Tox monograph. He read: “Synthetic Botulinum Toxin, modified to resist degradation, provides an ultra-long biological effect on the myoneural junction, free of animal and bacterial proteins.”

  He looked at the flawless skin around Colleen’s eyes and couldn’t imagine her ever needing Extendo-Tox. This investigation, on the other hand,
was in desperate need of a facelift. “So it’s synthetic,” he said. “Created entirely in the lab. Paralyzes muscles just like the natural toxin, but with a longer-lasting effect.”

  “Sounds ideal for the patients.”

  “But throws a wrench into our theory. Unless I’m missing something, synthetic and free of animal proteins means no prions. End of story.”

  Colleen riffled through her notepad and scribbled a set of hieroglyphics into its margins. When she’d finished, she tapped the back of Zol’s hand with her pen. Her face was a lantern of enthusiasm. “It’s still worth digging a little more,” she said. She lifted her arm to glance at her watch, and another wave of jasmine swirled through the air. “And there’s enough time before four o’clock today to find out whether Owen, Hugh, and Tonya ever had their wrinkles treated.”

  “But Tonya was only twenty-seven,” Zol said, closing the heavy pharmaceutical reference. “And Hugh was under forty, having too much trouble with his stomach and esophagus to worry about wrinkles. Looks like we’re going to get a string of pebbles out of this one.”

  “Don’t be too sure.”

  He made a mental note to call Dr. Margolis and cancel the Extendo-Tox injections for Max’s spastic arm. No matter how miraculous those treatments sounded for cerebral palsy, no one was going to give that stuff to his son until Zol was sure it was absolutely safe.

  CHAPTER 17

  It was lunchtime when Hamish found himself gazing at a sparkling new Accord in the showroom of the Honda dealership on Upper James Street.

  “I bet you wanna take one for a spin,” said a salesman who seemed to appear out of nowhere. Hell’s bells. He’d chosen this quiet corner so he could gather his thoughts, get the lay of the land before asking questions about Danesh Patel.

  It had taken him ages to fall asleep after Zol had ridiculed his test results. Hamish had made up his mind to drop the case and let Zol stew in his own misguided investigation. But the plight of the victims haunted him all night like an anxious ghost, keeping him awake until he pledged to pursue his investigation. He’d fallen asleep with a mental image of himself handing Zol the prions on a platter and Zol’s condescending sneer dissolving into boundless, sheepish gratitude.

  “It’s turned out to be an okay afternoon,” the salesman continued, undaunted by Hamish’s lack of response. “I’m Jim Robinson.” He extended his hand. “Glad to know you.”

  The man’s grip was rough and dry. His spectacles, askew on his beefy face, needed a good cleaning. Dandruff dusted his shoulders. His large belly, incompletely covered by a red plaid vest, looked wrapped for Christmas by amateur hands. “Roads are dry,” he said, “and that awful wind, eh? It finally died down.”

  Hamish peered at the sky through the showroom’s picture windows. The clouds pressed dark and heavy. Not a day to try out the sunroof featured on the Honda’s sticker. “A friend of mine said he was thinking of an Accord,” Hamish said, “so I thought I’d have a look at the new ones.”

  “Be my guest. But you can’t judge a car just by looking at it.” Jim tugged at the bottom of his vest, which didn’t budge. “You’ve gotta drive it, feel its spirit.”

  “Is it fully loaded?”

  “Sure is. Got ABS, side airbags, and a terrific new sound system.” Jim turned and coughed. “If your friend is interested in a fantastic deal, we still have a few of last year’s models on the lot.”

  “He’s really into sound,” Hamish found himself saying. If I’m going to tell a lie, I might as well embroider it. “He’s been waiting since last summer for the new model.”

  Hamish stepped to the rear of the vehicle and made a show of examining its tail lights while his predicament spun in his head. How could he bring the conversation seamlessly to the topic of Danesh Patel? Natasha had hinted about a secret life. Drugs? Prostitutes? The horses? If Danesh had been at the racetrack, secretly eating Krooner’s sausages laden with prions, that would show Zol whose ideas were ridiculous.

  He sipped from his water bottle, let out a quiet cough to clear his unpredictable voice box, and looked into the wide, toothy smile of the salesman. “My friend was speaking with Mr. Patel.”

  Jim’s face darkened, and he stared at his unpolished shoes. “Sadly, Dan is no longer with us.”

  “I know,” said Hamish. Then, without thinking, he added, “I was his doctor.”

  Jim looked up. His face, still solemn, was tinged with hope, as if Danesh’s doctor might finally explain why the man had wandered into four lanes of fast-moving traffic.

  “So you knew him?” asked the salesman, coughing again. “It was a terrible shock. I still can’t understand . . .” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then tugged again at his vest. His eyes brightened a little. “Dan was a great guy. Full of stories of when he was a boy in India. Did you know that his father was a train conductor? Dan used to ride with his dad, shining shoes and running errands for pocket money — his education fund.”

  “Sounds like Dan was more than a colleague.”

  “His wife had him on a tight leash, so we never went out after work. But we ate lunch together. Every day.” Jim leaned forward and cupped his hand next to his mouth. “Our lunches were his secret vice,” he said softly. “None of that veggie crap he got at home.” He patted his belly. “Good, honest Canadian food that sticks to your ribs.”

  “Oh?”

  The salesman stepped back. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling this to his doctor.”

  Hamish leaned forward. “It’s okay. I had a feeling he wasn’t a strict vegetarian.”

  Jim chuckled. “He told you about the meatball subs at Sub Haven?”

  “Not exactly. But he told me he occasionally ate meat at lunch.”

  “Occasionally! He was a good storyteller. He ate meat every day. Either ham or turkey from Sub Haven or those little meat pies from I and W across the road.”

  “Yes?”

  “The pies reminded him of when he lived in England. Funny name, but they taste great.” Jim’s wide face flared. “They have a letter K on top. Made out of pastry.” He looked away for a moment and cleared his throat. “Dan always peeled it off, dipped it in mustard, ate it first.”

  Delighted — and more than a little surprised — at the success of his subterfuge, Hamish excused himself with a promise to return for a test drive on a sunny day. He left his car in the lot and walked half a block to the traffic lights. Upper James seemed more like a highway than a city street. Even at noon, three lanes of cars and tractor-trailers whipped by in each direction. Danesh hadn’t had a chance in the middle of all this. Hamish stood well back from the curb and shuddered at the pathologist’s post-mortem description of the poor man’s shattered brain.

  Hamish looked up to catch the light turning green and spotted the butcher shop in the strip mall across the street. The sign above the window said Inverness and Westphalia: Purveyors of Fine Meats. A Scot and a German. The sparks would fly when those two disagreed.

  The rank smell of cold blood hit him in the face as he entered the shop, and the whine of an electric saw filled the room. A woman wearing white coveralls and a hard hat, her jaw set and her eyes focused, guided a carcass through the high-speed blade of a band saw.

  While the butcher concentrated on her noisy task, Hamish examined the refrigerated case beneath the counter. Steaks, chops, and chicken breasts lined the shelves at one end. In the middle, rashers of bacon in orderly rows, mounds of ground meat in neat trays, piles of sausages in earthenware dishes. At the far end, past the hams and salamis, commercial packages with bright logos: cheeses, pâtés, sausages, meat pies.

  Krooner’s red-and-white labels caught his attention, and he spotted the sausages and slabs of coarsely minced Escarpment Pride Head Cheese; it looked nothing like cheese, and he blushed to remember Zol’s laughter at his assumption that head cheese was a dairy product. The same logo was fixed to a half-dozen attractive little pies garnished with a pastry letter K. The label said “Krooner’s Melton Mowbray, 100%
Ontario Pork.” Yeah, sure.

  The whining stopped. The woman pulled off her hard hat and hung it on a hook near the back of the shop. As she approached the counter, Hamish noticed the delicacy of her features with surprise. Her soft curls were more ginger than auburn, and her nose and cheeks were sprinkled with freckles. A smile danced across her face.

  “It’s been a grand morning, so it has,” she said, wiping her fingers on a tea towel imprinted with a Saint Andrew’s cross. “What can I get you today?” She sounded like she’d never left Scotland.

  Hamish stared into the display case. “Um . . . I’m not sure.” Out of nowhere, he was seized by three sneezes in rapid succession.

  “One’s a wish, two’s a kiss, and three’s a disappointment,” the woman recited, still smiling. Seeing the puzzlement in Hamish’s face she added, “Well, that’s what we say back home.”

  “Oh,” he replied, wiping his nose and feeling no further ahead.

  “What do you have in mind? We’ve got butterfly pork chops on special offer.”

  He pocketed his tissue and pointed to Lanny Krooner’s Melton Mowbrays. “I think I’d like to try one of those meat pies. But can you tell me what’s in them?”

  “They’re a pork pie, sir. And right fine. Made locally here in Escarpment country. Near Campbellville. Very popular, they are.”

  “Do they need to be cooked?”

  “They’re fully baked, so you can eat them cold. But if you prefer,” she said, lifting a pie from the case, “you can warm them up. Pop them in the cooker — fifteen minutes at three-fifty.”

  “Do you sell a lot of them?”

  “Mr. Krooner makes them by hand, so he can only provide us with four dozen a week.” She returned the pie to the case and pointed toward the window. “Ach, he’s just been. You’ve missed him by a few minutes. He delivers about this time on a Monday, and his pies are always finished by a Thursday.”

  “I see he makes sausages and head cheese, as well.”

  “Ay. And again, everything is made by hand.”

  “Let me take a pie, a package of his sausages, and a small piece of head cheese.”