Tainted

by Ross Pennie

  She shielded her eyes against the low winter sun. “One is licking the other. On the chest.”

  They stared transfixed by two hundred pounds of canine muscle.

  “The one on the ground isn’t moving,” Colleen said.

  A glistening darkness stained the earth in front of the downed animal’s thorax. “That’s blood,” Zol said. “It’s been shot.” He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

  Colleen pointed toward Zol’s side of the dashboard. “Open the glove compartment and hand me my mobile.” He did, and she flipped open her compact cellphone and peered at the icons on its screen. “Two bars. That’s fine.” She killed the engine. “If we need help, we can call for it.” From her purse she lifted a canister the size of an asthma inhaler.

  “What’s that?” Zol asked.

  “Pepper spray.”

  At the click of her door handle, the standing dog raised its head and stared.

  Zol’s face tightened. “What are you doing? Let me get out first.”

  Colleen positioned the canister in front of her chest. “Don’t argue.” She eased the door open and swung her feet carefully out of the car, keeping her right arm extended, her weapon fixed on the animal. Her shoes crunched against the gravel. The dog’s shoulders rippled. It aimed its gaze like a laser but kept its paws planted in the blood-stained earth. There was sadness, not hate, in the glow of its eyes.

  Colleen rounded the rear of the Mercedes and opened Zol’s door. The dog growled but didn’t move. “So far, so good,” she whispered. She led the way to the front door of the house, sidling between the Mercedes and the truck.

  “Normally, I’d look around the yard before knocking on the door,” Colleen said. “But we can’t push our luck with our friend over there.” She put a foot on the concrete stoop.

  Zol gripped her arm and whispered, “We’ve got to rethink this. Krooner has a gun and he’s obviously not shy about using it.”

  “He’s a businessman,” she said. “He’s not going to pull a weapon on a government official.”

  Animated music chimed through the partly open front door. The artless sound of television. A commercial or a game show.

  Colleen donned her leather winter gloves. She turned to Zol. “Put your gloves on. This could be a crime scene.” The door opened to the pressure of her fingers.

  Zol pulled on his gloves and followed her into a small vestibule. He crinkled his nose at the sickly tang of raw meat and warm blood. Was this where Krooner made his sausages? Or had he shot the dog in here and dragged it into the yard through a back door?

  Straight ahead, beyond an archway, Zol could see two legs of a dining-room table. And a china cabinet with glass doors. Even from this distance it looked like the glass needed a good shot of Windex. This was no sausage factory, at least not one that would ever have passed inspection.

  “We can’t just sneak in,” Zol whispered. “I can come unannounced, but I have to make myself known.”

  Colleen stepped to the archway, leaned forward, and peered around the corner to the right. “Living room,” she mouthed, pointing. “No one there. Just the TV.”

  Zol nodded. “The Price is Right.”

  Colleen rolled her eyes.

  Zol shot her an inquiring look and mimed a knock on the door frame.

  She nodded and motioned for him to go ahead.

  He stepped beside her, planted his feet on the hardwood floor, and knocked on the wall beside the archway. “Anyone home?” he called.

  No answer.

  He called again. “Mr. Krooner. Are you home? Your door was open.”

  From the dining room something substantial clunked as it shifted on the floor. Tools, maybe. A low voice muttered, then shouted, “Stay right where you are.”

  Heavy footsteps brought a man into view. Thirtysomething, amber eyes like the Rottweilers’. And a shotgun cradled in his arms. “Can’t you read?”

  Zol glanced at Colleen. Her features were strong, resolute, but not hostile. He aimed for the same attributes in his voice. “We’re with the health department.” He put out his hand. “I’m Dr. Szabo and this is my colleague, Mrs. Woolton.”

  The man waved Zol’s hand away with the gun. The sweat on his forehead glistened in the light streaming through the front-door window. “You’re too late. Mink season’s over. The pelts are all sold, and the carcasses . . . well, they’re in the compost.” His jugular veins bulged as he arched his neck to indicate the rear of the property. “All covered in dirt, just like they’re supposed to be.”

  Zol recalled the tall mounds of fresh dirt he’d noticed when he and Colleen arrived. Had all of the mink carcasses been buried there? Or had Lanny Krooner kept a supply of them frozen for other purposes?

  Blood smeared the man’s knuckles and his shirt. It was sickening to think he must have just shot that dog and left it lying in the dirt.

  Zol swallowed hard. “We’re not here about your mink, sir. We’d like to inspect Mr. Krooner’s meat-processing facility.”

  “Would you now?”

  “Are you Lanny Krooner?”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “If you’re selling food to the public, I’m authorized to inspect your premises without one. I’m sure you’ve been through this before.”

  “And always passed. Flying colours.”

  The overheated air pressed close. Zol yanked off his gloves and unzipped his winter coat. He forced himself to step forward and point over the man’s shoulder to the dining room and the rear of the house. “Do you make your sausages in —” The words stuck in his throat, his tongue fat and useless. He stepped back, but he knew that the look on his face had betrayed him. The man was fully aware of what Zol had just seen. That much blood on the dining-room carpet, a pair of feet that size. You’d have to be blind to miss it.

  The man raised his gun and hooked his finger on the trigger. His eyes glowed as fiercely as his dog’s. “Okay. So you’ve seen Morty. You shoulda read the keep out sign. Shit. Now what am I gonna do with you?”

  Krooner aimed his gun at Zol’s face. Zol wondered whether he would hear it when it went off. Or would he find death a silent passage into nothingness? He sensed the woozy onset of a faint. He clenched his fists and rocked on his heels to force the blood up his veins and into his heart. As his heartbeat quickened, his vision cleared, and he saw Colleen’s eyes seething with quiet anger.

  Krooner waved his gun from side to side while seeming to work out a scheme to get rid of his unwanted visitors. “What’s that you got in your hand, little lady?” he asked, pointing the shotgun at the cylinder cupped in Colleen’s hand.

  She didn’t answer.

  Krooner cocked his gun. “Throw it on the chesterfield.”

  She did.

  Krooner scowled when he realized what it was. “Bitch. What else you got in your pockets? Take off your coats. Both of you. Drop ’em behind you. Gloves, too.”

  They shrugged out of their winter things and let them fall behind them.

  “Now, put your hands up and turn around — nice and slow — so as I can get a good look at you.”

  They did.

  Krooner looked them up and down and noticed the ebonite cap of Dr. Osler’s fountain pen poking from Zol’s shirt pocket. “What the hell’s that?” he asked. “Another goddamn dose of pepper? Hand it over.”

  Zol lifted the Parker from his pocket and held it out so Krooner could see it. “It’s just a fountain pen,” he said, not wanting Krooner to paw it with his bloodied fingers. “I . . . I can show you the nib.”

  “Stop right there.” Krooner snatched the Parker and dropped it into the pocket of his shirt. “Know what?” he said. “We’re gonna play Simon Says. Each time I step backwards I’m gonna tell you to step forwards. But I’m not gonna bother with the Simon-says part. Understand?”

  Step by step, Krooner backed into the dining room, commanding them to follow on the point of his shotgun. When they reached the dining-room table, they could see t
he body lying on the floor. Astonishment filled Morty’s sightless eyes. He’d been a hulk of a man with wild hair and a dark bushy beard. Like the dog outside, Morty had the front of his chest blown away. The walls, the drapes, the glass doors of the china cabinet weren’t just old and soiled, they were sprayed with blood. Tipped on its side, next to the body, lay a can of barbecue lighter fluid.

  Krooner backed beyond the table and stopped at a swinging door. He looked around the room, training the gun between Zol and Colleen. He would know he couldn’t back through the door. He’d lose control. “Turn around. Both of you. Then you, little lady, step in front of your boyfriend. And keep your hands up.”

  As directed, they turned their backs to Krooner. Colleen stepped in front of Zol. He wished he could touch her, give her a sign of encouragement and get one from her. But he didn’t dare.

  “Okay. Doctor-guy, you listen good. Grab her wrists. One with each hand. Yup, like that. Now you’re gonna walk forward. Around the table and out through this swinging door. To the kitchen. But no funny business. If you need any reminding, just look at Morty. He found out what this gun can do.”

  The three of them marched around the table in a slow lockstep.

  Colleen halted at Morty’s body lying like a felled oak across her path.

  Krooner prodded Zol in the spine with his gun. “For Chrissake, keep moving.”

  Zol clenched his teeth against the pain of the barrel jabbing at his vertebrae. “But look — see what’s in the way.”

  “I said, keep moving.”

  “I have to help her over . . . him.”

  “Then hurry up. And no funny business.”

  “Colleen,” Zol said in a loud voice so Krooner wouldn’t think he was plotting in whispers. “I’ll lift you up.”

  “Right,” she said.

  He grabbed her by the arms and hoisted her over the massive corpse. Her shoes squished as she landed on the blood-saturated carpet.

  Krooner jabbed again at Zol’s spine. “Get going.”

  As they rounded the final corner of the table, Zol spotted an open safe, its shelves stacked with bundles of bills. A large suitcase lay on the floor, half filled with banknotes. Twenties and fifties. Compared to everything else in the room, the notes were pristine.

  “Just keep going,” Krooner growled.

  One pace before the door, Krooner told them to stop. He directed Zol to let go of Colleen’s arms and keep his own in the air. “Now, little lady, you push on that door, then turn around and hold it wide open with your ass.”

  Colleen kept her movements calm and steady, but not so slow as to make Krooner impatient. She held the door open exactly as Krooner had directed.

  Krooner moved to the side for a moment and barked at Colleen, “Put your hands on your head. And keep them there. If you move, the doc will get a taste of lead.” His gun trained on Zol, his fingers curled around the trigger, Krooner wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. “Okay, Doc,” he said, licking the sweat from his upper lip, “now you and me are going through. Nice and slow.” He prodded Zol again.

  Zol walked forward with his hands stretched high. As he passed under the doorway, he was tempted to grab the top of the door-frame, swing his legs backwards, and kick Krooner in the gut. But the steel barrel pressed so close to his spinal cord kept him from attempting anything so daring. Or so foolish.

  Once all three of them had manoeuvred into the kitchen, Krooner marched them out the rear door and into the sting of the sunlight. With Colleen in front and Krooner barking directions from the rear, they crossed the yard and eased into the flat-roofed utility bungalow near the mink sheds.

  Krooner flicked on the light as they entered what Zol recognized as an industrial kitchen. To the left, against the front wall, sat a large gas range and oven. Stainless steel counters, flanked by drawers, cupboards, and the two obligatory sinks, ran along the side wall. A work table and two metal chairs glimmered in the centre of the room. In a rear corner beckoned the emergency exit door, secured with a heavy bolt at eye level. A stainless steel double door at the rear bore the unmistakable handles of a walk-in refrigerator-freezer.

  Krooner closed the front door behind him and paused with his back to it. “Sit down in them chairs.” He waved his gun. “Pull up to the table. Like you was eating. And don’t move.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Natasha drummed her fingers on her office desk. Her mother had always been demanding. Exasperating. And a hypochondriac. But since her meningitis two years ago, she’d been more narcissistic, more histrionic than ever. And far more interfering. Natasha’s dad blamed it on the change of life, but Natasha thought it was more intense than that.

  Today, of all days, Mamaji had phoned at breakfast and claimed she was having a relapse of the viral meningitis that, as she put it, “nearly killed me.” Hoping to zip in and out of her parents’ house before meeting up with Zol and Colleen at eight fifteen, Natasha discovered her mother collapsed on the sofa, a wet cloth on her brow, her lips pale, her voice thin and shaky. No sign of Natasha’s father; she assumed he’d left earlier for work. Natasha was on the point of calling 911 when Mamaji sat up, fanned the scowl on her face, and launched into a tirade.

  A friend had telephoned to say she’d seen Natasha having dinner — an intimate dinner with candles and music — with a tall blond man. What was Natasha trying to do? Mortify her ailing mother in full view of her community? Soil the family’s reputation and ruin her younger sister’s chances for a respectable husband? Mamaji reminded Natasha she’d never liked the idea of her elder daughter moving into her own apartment. Look what it had led to. Intimacy with a man unknown to the family, of unknown pedigree.

  The slur on Bjorn’s pedigree had burned in Natasha’s ears as she’d grabbed her coat and bolted from the house. If the people at the health unit, like Zol and Anne and Marcia, didn’t notice the colour of the skin on her face and arms, why was her mother so aware of Bjorn’s? Why had her parents worked so hard to get to Canada, to raise their kids in a land they saw had boundless opportunity, if they were going to hold their children in the shackles of prejudice? And now she was going to miss the most exciting day an epidemiological investigator could ever ask for. And she’d look like a South Asian woman whose family entanglements meant she couldn’t be trusted in the final crunch.

  She strolled to the lunchroom and put on the kettle. A cup of peppermint tea might help her feel less restless. As she stared distractedly at the kettle, listening to the water stirring toward the boil, she still fumed. Missing the date with Zol and Colleen gnawed at her like a fistful of chilies. She pined to be with them, snooping in Lanny Krooner’s cupboards, finding the mink carcasses and pulling them from the back of the freezer in his sausage factory.

  She scuffed her heels against the carpet as she trudged back to her office. She lifted the pile of mail from the basket. One by one she slit the envelopes open and tossed them in a heap. She sipped her tea. It was too hot to drink, so she extracted the first letter from the pile and unfolded it with a snap of her wrist. The Ministry of Health in Toronto. Head office wanted more details about the hepatitis A contracted by the produce manager at Kelly’s SuperMart. She muttered under her breath. For heaven’s sake, that case occurred three months ago, and she’d been over it a dozen times. There couldn’t possibly be anything more they needed to know. The man had never become particularly ill, there were no secondary cases among his family or co-workers, no outbreak among Kelly’s customers. No harm done. Just one man who probably got his infection from iced margaritas on his vacation in Cancun.

  She dropped the letter and cradled her cup. She felt the soothing warmth seep into her fingers. Rita Spinelli’s husband had held his cup like this when she’d visited him in his kitchen on that blustery Saturday morning. Had it really been only a week and a half ago? He looked so odd: a greying former football player, his barrel chest straining his shirt buttons, his enormous hands engulfing a delicate porcelain teacup painted with violets. He’d desc
ribed how his wife came down with meningitis two years previously. It had hit her hard. Exhausted, she’d dragged about for weeks afterwards; for a couple of months she could only manage half days at her dress shop. And that was in November and December, the busiest months in retail. But she’d recovered and was fine for more than a year. Then came her depression and memory loss. Spinelli had always wondered if there was a relationship between his wife’s meningitis and her depression. But Rita’s family doctor had been emphatic — certainly not.

  The taste of peppermint suddenly bitter in her throat, Natasha set down her cup. Her mother and Rita had meningitis about the same time. About two years ago. Had they both been infected with the same virus? Her mother’s spinal fluid had grown Coxsackie virus. Her doctor had shown Natasha the report, figuring as a student of public health she’d be interested. As required by law, the result had been reported to the health unit, her mother’s name added to the list of cases clustered in Hamilton. Was Rita Spinelli on the same list, or was it just an office diagnosis without laboratory confirmation? And hadn’t Dr. Wakefield said that Owen Renway had meningitis in the year before the onset of his CJD symptoms?

  She reached for the binder with the notes of all the family interviews. Yes, there it was: Owen Renway had viral meningitis two Christmases before the onset of confusion and memory loss.

  What if all the victims had suffered meningitis from the same Coxsackie virus?

  She turned to her computer and clicked on the RDIS icon for Hamilton-Lakeshore. As databases went, the Reportable Disease Information System was slow and awkward. But it was better than the alternative from the old days — rummaging at the back of dusty cupboards for slips of paper crammed into boxes. The information she needed was only two years old, and RDIS would have it, one way or another.

  She typed in her password, waited for the program to accept it, then clicked on the search box. She entered the year her mother got sick, then viral meningitis. The cursor stopped blinking for a moment, but nothing else happened. She tried meningitis and virus. Still nothing. She typed meningitis aseptic, and pressed Enter again. The screen went blank, then flashed on, off, on, then went blank. The program was either hung up or deep in thought. She held her breath, her fingers motionless above the keyboard. Finally, the monitor sprang to life with a month-by-month listing under the heading: Aseptic Meningitis.