Tainted

by Ross Pennie

  “How do you know?”

  “His brother is a patient of mine. Has a mink farm on the same property. He’s in hospital with a bad infection — one of his mink chewed up his arm.”

  “And you think we can just saunter up there and see what’s cooking in their kitchen?”

  “Yes,” Hamish replied. He stared for a moment at the lint on his socks. “Dumb idea, eh?”

  Ken slowly stroked his chin. There wasn’t the harsh, raspy scrape Zol made when he scratched at his face. “Can you make it look like a house call?”

  “No. My patient will still be in the hospital.”

  “Well then, we’ll just have to take a hike toward Rattlesnake Point. On the Bruce Trail.” Ken looked toward the rolltop desk in the corner. “I’ve got a map. Walking on the trail was the one bit of exercise Owen didn’t balk at. Well, he used to balk but . . .”

  Hamish sensed Owen as an awkward presence in the room. He stared at his iced tea. As he opened his mouth to speak, Ken raised his hand pre-emptively. “Do you know exactly where the farm is? The trail can be pretty mucky this time of year.”

  “The address on the hospital chart is vague — only a rural route.”

  “That’s okay. Ontario’s land-registry records are available on the Internet. Real-estate lawyers check the database all the time. I’ll get the exact location.”

  “Do you think we can look like a couple of hikers who just happen to drop by?”

  “You got hiking boots?”

  “I suppose I could buy a pair.”

  “You’ll need them.” Ken’s eyes darkened. “I hope it doesn’t seem too much of a coincidence that you’re their doctor. Is the butcher the suspicious type?”

  Hamish pictured Lanny’s coyote face. But bolstered by his new-found spontaneity, he shrugged and raised his open palms. “Sort of.”

  “I suppose we could show up at the farmhouse and ask to refill our water bottles.”

  “Are you free tomorrow?”

  Ken laughed. “I wish. Another long day in court.” He paused and looked up, as if running through his schedule in his mind. “The judge is taking Friday off. You free then?”

  “Sounds good. Hospital visiting hours aren’t until the afternoon. Lanny should be at the farm in the morning. We’ll need him there to show us around. Can I meet you here at nine?”

  CHAPTER 20

  The next afternoon, Natasha’s favourite sandwich shop was deserted when she walked in to pick something up for lunch. Three bored-faced employees, fidgeting behind the counter, were folding waxed paper into frogs and airplanes. The place usually buzzed like a madhouse, but barely a soul in Hamilton was trusting restaurant food today.

  Natasha made her purchases, returned to the office, and dropped her lunch onto her desk, then typed her password into the computer. While the Internet browser started up, she removed the wrapper from a turkey sandwich. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, relieved to have a few quiet moments to herself.

  She lifted the sandwich and gave it a thoughtful squeeze. The warm bun gave off that wonderful yeasty smell of freshly baked bread. Inside, the shreds of lettuce appeared harmless enough, but the slices of turkey looked too perfectly oval to have come from an actual living creature. Low-fat garlic mayonnaise oozed from beneath a single slice of mozzarella cheese. That mayo was sure to be full of MSG and thickened with gelatin. Was she a fool to eat it?

  She took a deep breath, shrugged at the mayo, and bit through all the layers of the sandwich. She licked her lips at the zesty tang of the sauce. If it contained a little gelatin it didn’t matter. She was confident that Dr. Bolo Ties was all wrong about the gelatin in the Chocolate Fruit Explosions.

  This morning at eight o’clock she’d visited Four Corners at opening time. She’d spoken to the strained-faced manager, who looked like he hadn’t slept all night. He told her the store was only open to employees until the shelves had been inspected and cleared of everything containing gelatin. It could take days, he added. She explained that she was from the health unit and asked him to check his invoices for Lorreaux Ltd. He shuddered and led her to his office. His records showed that in the past two years the store had received six shipments of Lorreaux Chocolate Fruit Explosions — ten different lot numbers. She had gone back to the office and phoned Lorreaux’s head office in Geneva before it closed for the day. A prim-sounding woman, impressed that Natasha was calling from a government agency in Canada, verified that chocolates bearing those ten lot numbers had also been shipped to distributors in the United States, Japan, and five countries in the European Union.

  Natasha chewed a mouthful of sandwich and stared at a blank spot on the wall. Four Corners had received the same lots of Lorreaux chocolates as shops in countries all over the world. There was nothing unique about the shipments sent to Hamilton, yet tulip CJD had shown up here and nowhere else.

  The chocolates couldn’t be the problem. Not by themselves.

  She toyed with the crumbs on the wax-paper sandwich wrapper. She’d been over this a dozen times and still could see no other way to look at it: the prions causing this localized epidemic must be hiding in something prepared and consumed, perhaps injected, right here in Escarpment Country.

  Injected. Injected. She dropped the sandwich, licked sauce from her fingers, and opened her scribbler. She tapped on her keyboard and called up the database they’d constructed in Zol’s sunroom on Saturday night. She’d updated it by adding Colleen’s discovery that Rita, Delia, Joanna, and Danesh all had received Extendo-Tox anti-wrinkle treatments from Dr. Zupanzik. And her own discovery that Joanna, Rita, Owen, and perhaps Dr. McEwen had all eaten Escarpment Pride ground-meat products.

  She typed “injection” into the word-finding function of the database. The cursor jumped to the Extendo-Tox injections. She clicked the mouse, and the cursor jumped again, to Delia Smart — cortisone injections for arthritis in her knees. Next, it jumped to Tonya — injections for migraine. Natasha scanned the page. Listed farther down were medical details: Owen Renway — experimental treatment for Tourette’s; Dr. McEwen — esophageal manipulations for achalasia.

  Five of the seven victims had been injected for a variety of conditions before they’d shown signs of CJD. What if Owen and Dr. McEwen had also received injections? The Indian newspaper her aunt sent regularly from Delhi had run a story about unscrupulous companies repackaging discarded needles and syringes without sterilizing them. Had such a scam made its way to Hamilton?

  She called up Google on the computer and typed “injection,” “Tourette,” and “achalasia” into the search box. In less than a second, a list of links filled her monitor. Five titles almost jumped from the screen. Just what she’d suspected: injections were used in the treatment of both Tourette’s and achalasia. The injections used in both diseases almost hit her in the face. Synthetic botulinum toxin, otherwise known as Extendo-Tox.

  Her fingers trembled as she typed in three new search terms: “injection,” “migraine,” and “botulinum toxin.” She waited a milli -second for her answer: neurologists from Hamilton’s Caledonian University had reported the successful treatment of drug-resistant migraine with injections of Extendo-Tox.

  She peered at the screen and guided her eyes with her index finger to be sure she was reading every word correctly. She did the same with the previous screen. She double-checked the hand -written notes in her scribbler. Four of the CJD victims had received Extendo-Tox from Dr. Zupanzik. The remaining three — Tonya Latkovic, Owen Renway, and Dr. McEwen — had medical conditions that were sometimes treated with it. She reached for her cardigan and drew it over her shoulders.

  The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. Extendo-Tox, the pride and joy of Hamilton’s medical establishment, was teeming with prions. In her mind she heard that speech the mayor made at every opportunity: “Extendo-Tox is the triumph of an exceptional government-university-industry partnership, the envy of the world.”

  Her arms hugged her chest as
she shivered inside her sweater.

  The epidemic was only just beginning.

  When Zol returned to his office after a trip to the bank machine down the street, he was surprised to see Colleen seated at his desk. Her scent, a youthful blend of jasmine and tamarind, filled the room.

  “Have you seen the signs in the windows up and down Concession Street?” he said. “Our Products Do NOT Contain Gelatin. Even Marcus has one.”

  Colleen bobbed in agreement. “Whoever heard of gelatin in a latte, for heaven’s sake? That Dr. Burr has done a bang-up job. Extraordinary.”

  Zol stuffed gloves into pockets, then hooked his coat on the rack. “And there’s nothing I can do about it. First I have to sit back and let Wyatt Burr hijack our investigation. Then I have to sit and watch while he announces his ridiculous solution.” Zol’s mimed quotation marks with his fingers then searched his pocket for the comfort of a loonie. “You’d think Burr was Moses with the Ten Commandments, the way he’s got the ears of every official, even the federal minister of health.”

  “We’ll just have to keep plodding.”

  “Trinnock flatly forbids any pursuit of the Extendo-Tox angle. You should have seen him Monday afternoon when I started to tell him about it. Those veins on his cheeks nearly exploded.” He jabbed at his scribbler. “Anyway, it looks like Extendo-Tox is a bust. We can only link it to four of the cases, and it’s synthetic — can’t contain prions.”

  “You might change your tune when you hear my latest tidbit.”

  “It better be freeze-dried and vacuum-packed. Trinnock will have my cojones for soup if I ever mention Extendo-Tox again.”

  Colleen’s dimples winked. “You told me he was retiring.”

  “I don’t want to think what this week’s done for my chances at the Oval Office.” His hands gestured out the window at the parked cars, the battered garbage cans, the scattered mounds of cigarette butts. “I might be stuck looking at that for the next decade. Never mind. What’s your tidbit?”

  “Tonya Latkovic’s injections weren’t sumatriptan.”

  “No? What, then? Acupuncture?”

  She ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip. Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Extendo-Tox.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I spent the morning with her mother. Face-to-face, her English is pretty good. Better than my Croatian.”

  “So, she knew all along about the Extendo-Tox?”

  “No. Not a thing. We telephoned her neurologist together. From her kitchen. He was a real stickler — his nurse refused to give out any information over the phone. Wouldn’t even admit Tonya was his patient.”

  “Not like those receptionists you finagled in those offices at ninety-nine Concession Street.”

  Colleen rolled her eyes. “He made us come in person, bring Tonya’s death certificate, and sign a release.”

  “But he gave you the info?”

  “Squeezed us in between patients. I think his receptionist took pity on us. Mrs. Latkovic was quite a sight. A smidgeon shorter than me and eyes that looked like they hadn’t stopped crying since Tonya went missing on Halloween night.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Colleen paused. She stared at the wild loonie weaving through Zol’s fingers.

  Zol returned it to his pocket. “You were saying?”

  “Tonya had been getting Extendo-Tox for about eighteen months. Then she stopped turning up for her appointments.”

  “About the time her depression set in?”

  “Exactly. Her last Extendo-Tox was in May. She was due again in July but didn’t show up.”

  “And was dead before November.” He shifted his chair. “How many shots did she get?”

  “Quite a few.”

  “But I thought the whole idea is that Extendo-Tox only needs repeating once a year or so.”

  “Except with migraine. According to the neurologist, it’s trial and error. You don’t know exactly where to inject. Every case is different. Tonya had ten sessions, and the results were disappointing.”

  “No wonder her father complained about the cost.”

  “Yes. Seven hundred and fifty dollars per session. And not covered by drug plans.”

  “Hmm. Because it’s still considered experimental.”

  There was a knock at the door. Natasha peeked into the office.

  “Oh, sorry, Dr. Zol. Anne said it was okay. But I see you’re busy.”

  “Colleen dropped in with some interesting developments.”

  Red blotches coloured Natasha’s throat below her pinched face. “Should . . . should I come back later?”

  Zol beckoned her in. “Have a seat.” He lifted an empty chair from the far end of the room and placed it next to Colleen’s. Natasha didn’t budge from the doorway. He could see that her eyes had lost their lustre since her triumph yesterday afternoon at Shalom Acres. “What’s wrong?” he asked her. “Something happen?”

  Colleen reached down and grabbed her purse by its strap. “Perhaps I’d best slip out,” she said to Natasha. “Give you a moment with Dr. Szabo.”

  “I’m okay,” Natasha said. She clutched her opal pendant for a moment, then looked at Colleen. “I think you’d better stay. You’ll want to hear this as well.” She closed the door until it clicked, then cleared her throat and looked anxiously at Zol. “I was bothered by all the injections.”

  “What injections?” he said.

  “Tonya’s migraines, Delia’s knees, and all those Extendo-Tox sessions with Dr. Zupanzik. So I went online, did a little searching, and found out that Tourette’s, achalasia, and migraines are all treated with Extendo-Tox.”

  Colleen leaned forward in her chair and clapped her hands. “We’re with you there, Natasha. I was just telling Zol how I visited Tonya’s neurologist today. He injected her with Extendo-Tox. For a year and a half.”

  Natasha fidgeted with the collar of her cardigan. “That makes it five confirmed with Extendo-Tox exposure.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Colleen. Her broad smile said she was pleased with her morning’s contribution.

  “And you’re suggesting,” Zol said to Natasha, “the final two might have been treated with it as well.”

  “This is scary, Dr. Zol. There must be thousands out there getting Extendo-Tox.”

  “Thousands with wrinkle-free faces and brains on the verge of dissolution. I hate to have to tell you this, but Trinnock doesn’t want to hear anything more about Extendo-Tox. Or it’s my head on a platter. I can’t go to him, or anyone else, with this Extendo-Tox thing.”

  Natasha looked stricken. “But Dr. Zol —”

  “Not until we wrap it up tight. No holes. Every angle covered.”

  “Isn’t that how it should be, anyway?” Colleen asked.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Brainstorming is an essential part of our business. But we do it behind closed doors. If it leads to something highly suspicious — or even better, a firm conclusion — then we tell the public. We can’t go spouting wild theories the moment a problem lands on our doorstep.”

  Colleen closed her eyes, as if picturing theories running wild all over Escarpment Country. “One can only cry wolf so many times,” she said. A mischievous grin lit her face as she held Zol’s gaze for a moment. “Someone should have made that clear to Wyatt Burr.”

  Zol’s brief contentment evaporated. He patted his shirt pocket and lifted out his antique Parker. “You know what Dr. Osler used to say about pompous guys like Wyatt Burr?” he said, holding up the pen. “The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism.”

  “And if they’d had television in his day,” Colleen added, “he would have said something clever about the addictive power of the TV camera.”

  He uncapped the pen and turned to Natasha. “So, what do we do next?”

  “Are we allowed to explore the possibility that Owen Renway and Dr. McEwen got Extendo-Tox?” Natasha said.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “And Dr. Trinnock’s c
ommand?”

  “We work discreetly. We don’t mention Extendo-Tox outside this office until we’ve built a Trinnock-proof case. That has to be clear.” He looked at one woman and then the other, collecting a solemn nod from each.

  He wrote “Renway” and “McEwen” on either end of the top line of a blank page of his notepad and drew a vertical line between them. “These two are Hamish Wakefield’s cases but . . .” A tickle of shame lodged itself in his throat. He tried to clear it by coughing into his fist. “He must be away.” He coughed again. “I haven’t been able to get hold of him for four days. Any suggestions how we might approach the partners without it looking like a health unit inquiry?”

  Colleen picked up her ballpoint. “Mrs. McEwen should be easy enough to approach without arousing suspicion.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But she must have a lawyer by now, poised to sue Lorreaux Chocolates for millions. Her husband ate them by the truckload.”

  Colleen brushed a stray hair from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Better not involve either of you two, then. She’d tell her lawyer the health unit was interested in Extendo-Tox, and —”

  Zol thrummed a riff against his desktop. “It would get back to Trinnock faster than we could say synthetic botulinum toxin.”

  “So let me approach her,” Colleen said, “as Dr. Wakefield’s colleague.”

  “Which is true,” Natasha said with a quiver in her voice. She was clearly anxious about any hint of subterfuge. “And you could remind her of their university connection.”

  “Good idea,” Colleen said. She patted the sleeve of Natasha’s cardigan and cocked her head toward Zol. “Not to worry. I’m not going to get this guy into trouble.”

  “Owen Renway’s file is going to be a lot more difficult to crack,” he said. “He was never a patient at Caledonian Medical Centre, so his chart is bare except for the day he arrived by ambulance, vital signs absent. We’ll have to approach his family or his partner.”

  “Another lawyer,” Colleen said, rolling her eyes.

  “There was no mention of any family in the chart,” Natasha said. “Just his partner, Kenyon Cheung.”