Tainted

by Ross Pennie

  At four thirty the following afternoon Zol returned to his office from Shalom Acres. He still had to tackle a long list of emails, which accumulated with disheartening speed. Though at this point, almost any diversion, even email, was better than fretting about CJD. He’d enjoyed the two hours he’d spent at the nursing home, staring down the nurses’ anger at his declaration — phrased as diplomatically as he could manage — that the staff had played a role in transmitting invasive strep from resident to resident. He’d been able to announce, with great relief, that the investigative team (Natasha, of course) had successfully tracked the deadly path the bacteria had carved through the facility. Its point of origin: the fingers of a personal support worker, a shy Somali refugee whose tender hands, raw with eczema and teeming with bacteria, had been shaving and bathing the elderly elite of her adopted country. He worried that dealing with her shame would be more difficult than eradicating her pathogens.

  He clicked Send on an email and answered Anne’s buzz — Trinnock wanted him in his office. Immediately.

  What did Trinnock want this late in the day? Zol had given Wyatt Burr all his notes. Was the man finally going to ask for his impressions of the case?

  “Come in and join us,” Trinnock said in reply to Zol’s knock. “Dr. Burr has completed his investigation. He’s going to give us a preview of his report.”

  Zol’s glow at the nursing-home success vaporized under Wyatt Burr’s dry-ice gaze. Surely, the man couldn’t have solved the case. Not already. There was so much data — he couldn’t have sifted through it all. He couldn’t single-handedly have found the prions after only two days. He was smart but not superhuman.

  Burr eyed Zol’s entrance with a blank stare then strode to the picture window. He rolled down his sleeves and buttoned his cuffs. Shielding his eyes, he peered through the glass as if straining to make sure the Toronto skyline still beckoned from the distance.

  The stench of Wyatt Burr’s lunchtime pizza — tortured tomato, burnt cheese, and soggy cardboard — filled the office. Zol knew how much Trinnock despised take-out pizza. The boss must hate the cloying smells oozing from the box defiling his Chippendale desk.

  Trinnock nodded like an obsequious waiter toward the honoured guest from Toronto. “Dr. Burr has worked efficiently. And taught us a thing or two about field epidemiology.”

  “It wasn’t all that difficult,” Burr said. He lifted his ballpoint from Trinnock’s desk and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “I’ve tackled worse.”

  “We’re grateful for your expertise,” said Trinnock.

  Burr held his pose as he drank in the praise. “Julian Banbury’s description of the amyloid plaques was the tipoff,” he said. “Those tulip formations in the brains — arranged in a pattern never seen before — meant you had to look for a source of seriously distorted prions.”

  “Good thinking,” Trinnock said, adjusting his spectacles. “But distorted how?”

  “Some sort of process that kept them infectious but changed them radically.”

  “Something more complicated, I presume,” Trinnock added, “than cutting steaks and filling sausages.”

  “Correct,” said Burr. He cut the air with a stroke of his hand. “This has nothing to do with meat. The prions are too misshapen. Besides, two of the victims were vegetarian.”

  Zol knew there were vegetarians among the British cases of variant CJD, but Burr was making it clear there was no room for discussion.

  Burr tapped his polished forehead. “Anyway, field epidemiology is all about finding the unexpected link that cracks the case.”

  Zol eased into a chair near the door and sat on his hands.

  Trinnock looked pointedly at Zol then turned to Burr and said, “So, Dr. Burr, what was it that my staff missed?”

  “The chocolates.”

  Before he could stop them, Zol’s hands were flapping like crows’ wings. “No,” he said. “We ruled them out.” Zol turned to Trinnock for support but saw only stone.

  Burr thumped his foot on the hardwood and folded his arms across his chest. His Adam’s apple bobbed above the eagle on his bolo tie as he glanced at Zol then held Trinnock’s gaze. “Are you people interested in the report I’ll be sending to the Ministry?”

  The tangled veins on Trinnock’s cheeks blazed like lasers. “Of course we’re interested in your report, Dr. Burr. Extremely. Please, have a seat.”

  Burr sat down and recrossed his arms, his eyes piercing like daggers.

  Zol tucked his hands under his thighs.

  “Every one of your cases,” Burr began, “is linked to a single brand of gourmet chocolates.” He stopped and looked at Trinnock then back at Zol, as if expecting to be interrupted. He sniffed, clearly pleased by the rapt silence of his audience. “They’ve got gelatin centres and they’re imported from Switzerland. The exact name is . . .” He lifted his pad from Trinnock’s desk. “Lorreaux Chocolate Fruit Explosions.” He paused, raised his eyebrows, then continued. “I called the head office in Geneva and verified they do contain gelatin from European sources.”

  Trinnock leaned forward in his chair. “And you say all our cases ate those chocolates?” He flashed a sideways scowl at Zol that conveyed a lecture full of anger and disappointment at Zol’s recklessness in missing the target.

  “Yeah.” Burr waited a moment before continuing. “Before I got here, your staff had linked them to five of the seven victims. It took a few phone calls for me to verify that the remaining two ate them as well.”

  Zol’s cheeks filled with heat. “But we —”

  Trinnock lifted a cautionary hand then turned to Burr and forced a smile. “And the gelatin in the chocolates comes from cows with BSE?”

  Burr smirked. “You got it. Boil up their bones and you get gelatin — laced with prions.”

  “The prions are distorted by such processing?” Trinnock asked.

  “Exactly.” Burr looked at Zol as if to say, At least your boss gets it.

  “Would that be British cows?” Trinnock asked.

  “Shouldn’t be,” Burr replied without hesitation. “Not these days. The Brits are very careful about what parts of the cow they eat. They stay well away from the bones. Incinerate them before they can get into the food chain. Other countries aren’t always so careful. There’s a fair bit of BSE amongst the herds in France and Switzerland.”

  “Where do we go from here?” said Trinnock.

  “I’ll call Elliott York right now and fax him my preliminary report. With something this big he’ll call a press conference this evening. He’ll issue a public warning and get those chocolates off the shelves. Immediately.”

  “And,” said Trinnock, polishing his spectacles, “we’ve got to stop people from eating any they’ve already purchased. Are you going to call Health Canada?”

  “Elliott knows how best to work with the feds. He’ll call Ottawa.” A smile lit his face for the first time. “Those desk-bound nerds at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are gonna drool all over themselves. This is their case of a lifetime. They’ll issue the official product recall and make sure it’s carried out across the country.”

  A minute later Zol slipped out of Trinnock’s office and shuffled to the rear of the building, to his office overlooking the garbage cans and Mr. Wang’s cluttered yard. He dropped into the chair and leaned his elbows on the desk, his head heavy in his hands.

  Wyatt Burr had to be mistaken about Danesh Patel and Delia Smart eating those Lorreaux chocolates. Natasha had spoken with Mrs. Patel again on Sunday. Danesh never ate chocolate. He hated it in any form. And Delia’s husband had been clear about her chocolate allergy.

  What line of questioning had Wyatt used to change their stories? He must have cross-examined them so roughly they’d buckled and given him everything he wanted to hear. Mrs. Patel would have been an easy target. Against an aggressive government official, a recently widowed immigrant wouldn’t stand a chance. She would agree with anything Burr said to keep herself on the right side of the law. />
  It defied credibility that Wyatt Burr could finger the chocolates so quickly. Only two days reviewing something as important, as complex as this file, and he was going public with his findings? Just like he’d done with Lassa fever. A superficial look and a snap decision. And while the authorities were stumbling down the wrong track — for who knows how long — the public was going to keep gobbling up those prions. Damn it to hell. How many more people were going to lose their minds thanks to Dr. Bolo Ties?

  Zol scratched at the stubble on his chin and stared at the gathering darkness outside the window. The only way to get back on track was to patch things up with Hamish.

  CHAPTER 19

  Later that Wednesday evening Zol swore at the screen as he watched the CBC ten o’clock news. Elliott York, Wyatt Burr, and the provincial minister of health were announcing the lethal danger of the Lorreaux Chocolate Fruit Explosions. From chairs aligned behind a broad table, the three officials told the country to head straight for their kitchens. Destroy everything that might contain gelatin: yogourts, puddings, sauces, jelly beans. Turn every refrigerator and cupboard inside out. But: do not panic.

  To make matters worse, Burr, who had obviously never made jam, confused fruit-derived pectin with animal-derived gelatin and told the entire country to throw out every jar of jam, jelly, and marmalade in their possession. He spouted that ridiculous “better safe than sorry” creed. When a reporter, his voice rising, asked Elliott York how best to dispose of these foods without contaminating the water supply, all three officials stared blankly at the camera. Zol could almost hear the minister of health counting the number of votes she was going to lose in the next election. Then Wyatt Burr chimed in with the assertion that grocery stores would take everything back. Zol pictured the chaos in the parking lot at Kelly’s SuperMart. He saw the artistic displays at Four Corners demolished by patrons jostling for attention, their arms loaded with boxes overflowing with syrups and sauces, chocolates and frostings, pumpkin pies and Turkish delights.

  The health minister, her hands gripping the table, promised that the chocolates would be checked for prions in a government laboratory in Winnipeg. It sounded like a sensible start until she declared that teams from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would spread across the country the next day, investigating the safety of all foods containing gelatin.

  Zol knew that was impossible. A small group of boffins couldn’t accomplish such a Herculean task. The public would realize that in a day or two when the minister couldn’t give their kitchen cupboards the all clear.

  Then a camera captured the Swiss embassy in Ottawa, dark and silent except for the front lobby, where a frightened-looking man with a five o’clock shadow waved a mop at a reporter and said, “No speak Engleesh.”

  No matter what Wyatt Burr had written in his report, Delia Smart and Danesh Patel had not contracted CJD from eating Lorreaux chocolates. Zol was certain they’d never eaten them. And if those confections were laced with prions, tulip CJD would be popping up in every country that sold them. No, Wyatt Burr had stumbled upon the chocolates, cooked up a solution, and forced the facts to fit. Scientific blindness had been around for centuries. Look how the Catholic Church had humiliated Galileo.

  Zol shook his fist then flipped a loonie through his fingers as the news faded to a commercial.

  A few minutes later, Hamish walked into the lobby of Heritage Towers. He leaned into the intercom and pressed a button on the front panel. “Hello, Kenyon,” he said as a light came on. “It’s Hamish Wakefield.”

  He was bursting to tell someone about his latest results on the samples from I and W Meats. There was no way he was going to risk another icy rebuff from Zol. And Julian Banbury gave him the creeps. The man’s bulging eyes, crooked teeth, and English accent reminded him too much of his old choirmaster. Sharing the results with Kenyon seemed the natural thing to do.

  “Hamish,” Kenyon called out in reply, “I’ve just been thinking of you.”

  Was there a catch in Kenyon’s voice or was it just the tinny speaker system? “Really?”

  “It’s been all over the TV news.”

  “What?”

  “Come on up. Seven-oh-two.”

  After the elevator let him out, Hamish rapped on the door of 702. A piano concerto, Rachmaninoff, faded slightly, and a moment later Kenyon stood in the doorway. Dark circles smudged his lower lids. He wore a black T-shirt and matching pyjama pants. He squeezed Hamish’s arm.

  It was clear they’d passed the formal nod and handshake stage. Hamish couldn’t quite believe his sense of pleasure — for the first time barely touched by anxiety or guilt — in the presence of a warm and handsome man. But why was Kenyon so upset?

  Ice cubes clinked in Kenyon’s glass as he stepped back from the threshold. “Did you see tonight’s news on TV?”

  “No. Been in my lab since five.”

  “Big announcement about your CJD thing. They’ve cracked the case. Didn’t take them long.”

  They couldn’t have, thought Hamish. Unless . . . Had Zol gone up to the Krooners’, discovered the sausage operation, taken samples, tested for prions — all in two days? Impossible. “They couldn’t have. Not that fast.”

  “They say it’s the gelatin in those chocolates.”

  “What chocolates?”

  Kenyon pointed to the box on the coffee table. A black-and-yellow bird stared from the cover. Kenyon drained his Scotch in two gulps. “Our favourites.”

  “No. We excluded them. Categorically. Two of the victims never ate them. Never ate any chocolate.”

  Kenyon rubbed the back of his neck. “Jesus, Hamish. I’m gonna lose my memory, my mind. Just like Owen.” He stared at the wall as if his eyes could see a future filled with horror.

  “No, you’re not. Kenyon, listen.”

  “Stop calling me Kenyon; only my mother calls me that. The name is Ken.”

  “Look — it’s not the chocolates. It can’t be. By now there’d be hundreds of CJD cases all over the world — wherever they get shipped.”

  “That’s not what they just said on the news.”

  Hamish swallowed to clear the tightness in his throat. His eyes swept the room. “Have you got any of that green tea?”

  “Sure. There’s some in the fridge. Okay if it’s iced?”

  A minute later, Hamish took the tall, frosty glass from Ken and settled into one of two armchairs in the living room. “Never mind the chocolates. I’ve discovered something. I think it’s important and I need your help.”

  “My help? I’m no good to anyone right now. Can barely bring myself to open my kitchen cupboards. They must be loaded with prions. Besides, I know nothing of the law covering scientific discovery and intellectual property.”

  Hamish flicked his hand. “I’m not looking for a lawyer. But I have to warn you. You’re going to need a strong stomach when you hear what I’ve got to say.”

  Ken took a swallow from a fresh measure of Scotch.

  Hamish placed his tumbler on a coaster and steepled his hands. “You know those Escarpment Pride sausages you buy from Four Corners?”

  “Yes, they’re made up near Campbellville. Pork, I think. Can’t place all the spices.” Ken’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me I can’t eat those.”

  “Well . . . some of that spicy flavour is cat meat.”

  Ken sputtered into his drink. “What?” An ice cube bounced from his glass onto the coffee table. It rolled off the edge and skittered across the hardwood into a far corner. “You’re not serious.”

  Hamish said nothing. He didn’t know how else to put it.

  Ken uncrossed his knees and yanked at the legs of his pyjamas. “You are serious,” he said. “You’re telling me I’ve been eating bits of pussycat?”

  “Only small amounts.”

  Ken screwed up his face. “Jesus. That’s positively revolting.” He dropped his shoulders and stared into his Scotch. After a moment he swigged his drink.

  “I might as well complete the story.”<
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  “Oh, shit.”

  “There’s also cat meat in the head cheese and pork pies from the same Campbellville butcher.”

  “Not the Melton Mowbrays!”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Jesus. How do you know?”

  Hamish explained how his research into antibiotic-triggered diarrhea had led him to the meat-testing kits and Lanny Krooner’s sausages. “And after I stumbled onto the cat meat in the sausages, I did a little shopping at I and W Meats.”

  Ken’s face was bone white. “Tell me the truth. Am I going to get CJD?”

  “I didn’t come here to frighten you. I don’t even know if there’s anything wrong with the cat meat.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “There is no answer. At least, not yet.”

  Ken ran his palm across his flat-top. “You sound like a lawyer.”

  Hamish’s academic puzzle had taken on a personal dimension he had never experienced. “I’m sorry, I really am.”

  They sat for a few minutes, motionless, listening to the melancholy tones of Rachmaninoff. When the music paused between movements, Ken spoke. “You said you needed my help?”

  “Maybe my tests are wrong. Maybe Lanny Krooner is a flawless sausage maker. We’ll never know unless we inspect his place.” Hamish lowered his voice; from the first sip, the iced green tea had made it strong and clear. “An unofficial inspection, that is.”

  “But don’t the authorities check his operation on a regular basis? You know, those official notices you see on the front doors of restaurants?”

  “I’m betting Krooner’s been pretty wily,” Hamish replied. “He could’ve covered things up the moment the inspectors arrived.”

  “We’ve been eating his pies and sausages for a good couple of years. He must have passed at least a few inspections.”

  “His farm’s not far. I think it’s on the Escarpment. Close to Rattlesnake Point.”