Tainted

by Ross Pennie

  The blade only skipped across the duct tape. He tried again. Same thing. He scanned the kitchen. Nothing sharper in sight. He had to make this work.

  He adjusted his grip so he could use the part of the blade closest to the handle where often a little sharpness remained on a dull knife — a chef ’s trick he’d never imagined might save his life. He pressed the blade against the duct tape and felt a short rent. More sawing action lengthened it. About halfway through, his fingers cramped into uselessness.

  A glance at Colleen showed she was still breathing. His gut clenched at the sight of her so helpless.

  He gripped the knife and struggled with the last bands of tape at his wrists. His head throbbed. He felt giddy, as if he’d just guzzled three glasses of merlot. He yanked his hands apart, hardly noticing that the tape wrenched the hair from his wrists.

  On his knees, his feet tucked under the chair, he couldn’t reach his ankles, couldn’t cut them free. He lumbered to the counter, grabbed it, and heaved into a sitting position. The effort left him breathless, but his nose was again well above the floor, away from the worst of the carbon dioxide.

  He had to get Colleen into the fresh air before she asphyxiated. The front door was no good to him. The deadbolt needed a key even from the inside. And he had to stand up to open the sliding bolt on the rear door. He had to cut himself free from the chair.

  It seemed to take ages to force the short, dull blade through the sticky layers of duct tape binding his ankles, his thighs, his chest. With the passing minutes, his fingers felt heavier and clumsier. His temples pounded with a killer of a headache.

  When he was finally free, he rubbed his knees, pushed himself to his feet, and limped on stiff legs to the rear exit. He reached for the bolt, slammed it back, and threw open the door. He gulped a few breaths of crisp December air and looked toward the farmhouse. No sign of Krooner. The Mercedes was gone.

  Zol ran to Colleen and rushed her outside — chair and all.

  He set her on the frigid concrete stoop and knelt beside her, then worked at her bindings with the nearly useless blade. He ripped her free and rolled her on her side. Her hands, white and cold as marble, dropped to the ground. He lifted her chin to open her airway and dipped his ear to her face. He felt the purr of her breathing. She didn’t need mouth-to-mouth, just plenty of fresh air. But Jesus — that purple-blue of cyanosis on her lips. He prayed the lack of oxygen wouldn’t mean brain damage.

  Shivering inside his cotton shirt, he arranged her ponytail like a scarf against her neck. He wished he had his coat to shield her from the icy gusts blowing from the Escarpment. Pressing his body close to hers, he maintained the forward pressure on her chin, breathed in her jasmine, and kissed her forehead.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Are you sure this is necessary?” Dr. Trinnock asked Natasha after Anne hustled her into his office. “All the information you need should be in those cabinets in the library.” He peered at his watch. “Dr. Szabo must be up in Campbellville right now, checking out — well, let’s say, a different line of inquiry.”

  Natasha stood her ground, hands clasped behind her back, hoping the slight smile on her face presented a picture of innocence. She was not going to let on she knew about the mink meat in the sausages. “I do think this is important, sir. As I said, with four of our victims —”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. You’ve uncovered yet another association. But viral meningitis is a mild disease. Doesn’t affect the brain, only the superficial membranes. And what you’re talking about was — what? — two years ago?”

  She nodded.

  He wrinkled his brow and closed his eyes, then pulled a crumpled hankie from his pocket and snorted into it. “Sounds like water under the bridge.” He wiped his eyes and looked up as if surprised to see Natasha still standing beside him. He sighed his displeasure. “I suppose you already have the form filled out?”

  “Right here, sir. All you need to do —”

  “I know what to do,” he said. He grabbed a pen and scribbled his name on the bottom of the paper. He waved a warning with the ballpoint. “Don’t overstep your bounds. We’re only entitled to the test results of people residing in our region. Don’t get us into trouble by asking for anything more than that. The Ministry is touchy about confidentiality.”

  As soon as she was out of Dr. Trinnock’s office, Natasha rushed to the fax machine, sent her fax, then phoned the public health laboratory in Toronto. The receptionist connected her with the technologist in charge of the virology division, who said the fax would be somewhere in her pile of mail, and she’d get to it later this week.

  “But Dr. Trinnock is counting on having the information this afternoon,” Natasha said. “All he’s asking is that you check your records from two years ago. July to December. See if you have virus-culture results on the three patients named on the form.”

  “This afternoon? You should have submitted the request last week if you needed the information today.”

  “I’m very sorry to trouble you like this. We — I mean, Dr. Trinnock only realized the potential significance of these results today.” Natasha had no idea how much she should tell the woman, how far she could push. “We’re investigating something pretty dramatic here and we would be so appreciative of the information.”

  “From what I’ve seen on TV, you people in Hamilton have had plenty of drama already.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well,” said the technologist, her tone softening, “if it’s only three names, and the time frame is really as narrow as you say, maybe I can have the results to you in an hour or so.”

  “Oh, thank you so much. Dr. Trinnock will be incredibly grateful that you went the extra mile.”

  Thirty minutes later, on Natasha’s third trip to the fax machine next to Anne’s desk, the device began to beep and whir. Her heart raced at the sight of the public health laboratory’s letterhead scrolling from the machine. Her hands trembled as she grabbed the sheet, her eyes almost afraid to scan it.

  The three names, Hugh McEwen, Delia Smart, and Joanna Vanderven, as familiar as long-time friends, jumped off the page.

  * * *

  McEwen, Hugh: No specimen submitted.

  Smart, Delia: November 29, Spinal Fluid, Coxsackie B5

  * * *

  She knew she needed to read the next line slowly, so her brain could digest it. She sat, then read the third line.

  * * *

  Vanderven, Joanna: December 3, Throat Swab, Coxsackie B5

  * * *

  Her fingers rode the galloping in her chest as they rubbed at her pendant. From the carpet near her foot glowered the wrinkled face of Father Time. She blinked and glowered back, and saw it was only a coffee stain on the industrial broadloom.

  She pictured Joanna Vanderven, her mascara smudged, her head pounding, her body sweating with fever as she refused the needle of a lumbar puncture but gave in to a throat swab. The swab hadn’t proved meningitis, but it did prove infection with a virus that could cause meningitis. The same virus, at the same time, as five other victims of CJD.

  Natasha closed her office door and took her phone off the hook. She called up Google on her computer and typed in Coxsackie and CJD. In a millisecond, up came a long list of Web documents. The first reported a case of CJD in a man who lived in a place called Coxsackie, New York. A detailed map showed the town to be south of Albany and east of both Climax and Surprise. She rolled her eyes then opened more than a dozen other links to find that they mentioned Coxsackie and CJD somewhere in the same document, but many pages apart, with no implied connection between the virus and CJD.

  She knew Google wasn’t the best tool to retrieve articles from sophisticated scientific journals. The gold standard was PubMed, the search engine of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. She called it up, typed in Coxsackie and CJD, hit enter. “No items found” flashed at the top of a blank frame.

  Had she found something new or just concocted a meaningless association between CJD
and a common virus? She tapped her nails on her desk and stared at the screen. What if she had discovered that a third factor was necessary to initiate tulip CJD? If it took three factors working simultaneously to cause the illness, maybe there would be no huge epidemic. And if Max never had meningitis . . .

  She had to share this with Dr. Zol. He’d be so relieved. Her hand gripped the knob of her office door, but she felt sheepish, almost ashamed to face her boss, to look into those penetrating eyes of his. He wouldn’t let on he was angry she’d been late this morning, but he wouldn’t be able to hide his disappointment. And that would be ten times worse.

  Anne looked up from the stack of reports on her desk as Natasha approached. “He’s still not back yet,” she said, and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Maybe they stopped for a bite on the way home. He likes that little place in Lowville.”

  The two women turned at the sound of heavy footsteps in the stairwell. The door burst open and crashed against the wall. Natasha braced for the snarl of yet another citizen ready to rant about contaminated gelatin imperilling his family.

  Hamish Wakefield let the door slam behind him and leaned against the wall, his chest heaving beneath his bulky coat. He ripped his scarf from his throat and stared at Natasha through wild blue eyes. “Where’s Zol?” he gasped. “Got to — talk to him.”

  Natasha pointed to a chair beside Anne’s desk. “Dr. Wakefield, you’d better sit down.”

  Anne extended her arms. “Here, let me take your coat.”

  “Just gotta talk to Zol.” Hamish extracted an inhaler from a pocket and sucked back two puffs.

  “Dr. Zol isn’t here right now,” Anne said as she helped Hamish out of his coat and placed it on the rack. “But we expect him soon.”

  “I’ll get you a glass of water,” Natasha said. “And when you’re ready, we can go to my office and wait for him there.”

  Hamish dropped onto the chair, his shoulders heaving with every breath.

  When Natasha returned from the water cooler, he was breathing more easily and clutching his briefcase as if it contained the Holy Grail. He looked around, as if embarrassed to be sitting on display. “Okay,” he said, pushing himself to his feet, “where’s your office?”

  She pointed. “Just down there,” she said and led the way. They entered her office, and she gestured to the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat, and I’ll try Dr. Szabo on his cell.”

  After one ring, a recorded voice said that the customer was currently unavailable. Natasha shook her head as she hung up. “He must be out of range.”

  “Where the heck is he?”

  “Still at the Krooner farm, I suppose. Or maybe he stopped for lunch. Is there something I can do?”

  He opened his mouth as if to reply, then drew his case to his chest and looked at the open door.

  She closed the door and raised her eyebrows.

  He nodded as if to say, Yes, that’s better and sipped from the glass. He licked his lips then unbuckled the two straps of his briefcase. He stopped short of opening the flap and frowned, his face uncertain. “Are you completely up to speed on all this?”

  “You mean, do I know about the mink meat in the pies and sausages?”

  “And the possibility of transmissible mink encephalopathy?”

  “Yes. Dr. Zol told me you’ve been waiting for news from the prion lab in Guelph. Don’t tell me you’ve heard.”

  “Just a few minutes ago,” Hamish said, lifting out a single printed page.

  Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

  “Here,” he said, handing her the sheet of paper, marked with the unmistakeable headers and footers of a fax. The letterhead, studded with an array of federal and provincial logos, said University of Guelph: Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety.

  She read through the message three times.

  Hamish extended his hand to retrieve the precious page. “Doesn’t leave much room for doubt, does it?”

  “And they can even tell they’re mink prions.”

  “Prion food science has become sophisticated in a big hurry.”

  She pointed to the fax. “Why didn’t the chocolates get sent to that same lab?”

  “They did,” he said, waving the sheet, “and these guys didn’t find a single prion in any of them.”

  “But the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Ministry are still chasing them. And the gelatin.”

  “These boys in Guelph are just food scientists,” said Hamish. He tsked and rolled his eyes. “Not far enough up the political food chain.”

  “Because they don’t directly investigate outbreaks of human disease?”

  He nodded and made a face.

  “So,” she said, “no prions doesn’t mean no prions until the testing’s been sanctioned by Winnipeg and Atlanta?”

  “You got it.”

  “And,” she added, “proving a negative is a lot more difficult than discovering a positive.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But now,” she said, feeling confidence returning, “we’ve got the positive.”

  “And as soon as Zol gets back, we’ll run with it.”

  A shiver gripped her shoulders. She pulled her cardigan tight. “Dr. Zol and Colleen should have been back ages ago. We’d better call the police.”

  “What?”

  “Technically, Lanny Krooner is a murderer. And by now he knows we’re on to him.” She jumped at the piercing trill of the phone on her desk. She punched the button for the speakerphone.

  “Natasha?” said Anne. “Dr. Zol is on the line.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’s at the hospital. In Emergency. Wants to talk to you.”

  There was a pause. Then: “That you, Natasha?” Zol’s voice was strained, exhausted.

  “Yes. And Dr. Wakefield.”

  Hamish leaned toward the phone. “Zol, what’s going on?”

  “I’m here with Colleen. Krooner tried to kill us. Gassed us with carbon dioxide, just like his mink. Colleen got the worst of it.”

  “Oh my God,” Natasha said. “How is she?”

  “Started coming around a bit in the ambulance.”

  Hamish raised a finger. “Good thing he didn’t use carbon monoxide. You’d both be dead by now. What happened to Krooner?”

  “He took Colleen’s car. He’s probably across the border by now.”

  Hamish asked, “What year is her Mercedes?”

  “Don’t know,” Zol replied. “They all look the same.”

  “Does it have GPS?” Hamish asked

  “Yeah,” Zol said.

  “Then it must have Driver’s Cocoon.”

  “What?”

  “All the best cars have it.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Hamish, what are you talking about?”

  “It’s a satellite communication system. You push a button in the car and get connected with an operator, no matter what’s wrong.”

  “But shit, we don’t have the car.”

  “You phone a toll-free number and give them your ID and a password. If Colleen has the platinum edition, they’ll pinpoint the location of her vehicle, shut down the engine, and lock the thief inside until the police arrive.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m having it put into my next Saab.”

  “Where am I going to get the ID number and the password? Colleen’s still pretty out of it.”

  “Check her purse. Look for a wallet card.”

  The speaker emitted an ear-splitting crash as Zol dropped the phone. Natasha and Hamish heard agitated voices; Zol must have phoned from a very public place. An ice age could have come and gone in the time it took him to come back on the line. “Still there, you guys?” he asked.

  “We’re here, Dr. Zol,” Natasha assured him.

  “Her purse must be in the car. But I found her wallet in her coat.” In the background, a child screamed and a deeper voice cursed. “This must be the card. “Driver’s Cocoon. Platinum edition.”

&
nbsp; Hamish beamed and sat back in his chair. “Perfect. Are the police still there?”

  “Yeah. And no end to their questions.”

  “Show them the card. Get them to make the call. They won’t need the password.”

  Natasha blurted into the speaker, “One more thing, Dr. Zol.”

  “Yeah?”

  She threw Hamish a knowing look. “Dr. Wakefield has something else to tell you.”

  Hamish sent a puzzled look her way. What? he mouthed. His face brightened a little as she pointed to the fax from Guelph. “Right now?” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded again and gestured toward the speaker.

  “I — I heard from Guelph, Zol,” Hamish said. “This morning. They found the prions. In everything I sent them. Krooner’s sausages, his pies. Even his head cheese.”

  Zol said nothing. Natasha pictured him head down, eyes closed, fingering a loonie. Should she tell him about the Coxsackie B? Buoyed by the exhilaration in the room, she blurted it out. “I’ve found what seems to be an obligatory third factor.”

  Both men shouted, “Third factor?”

  “At least six of the cases had aseptic meningitis. Two years ago. All caused by Coxsackie B5.”

  Hamish stared at the wall; he looked as if his mind was light-years away.

  Another distant wail echoed from the phone’s tinny speaker; gruff voices muttered, their impatience obvious.

  “I — I can’t take this in,” Zol stammered.

  Bit by bit, Hamish seemed to shake himself out of his trance. “Well, Zol,” he said, wagging his professorial finger, “aseptic meningitis with Coxsackie B5 isn’t all that common, and if six of the seven CJD victims were infected with it . . .” He ran a hand across his flat-top. “There has to be some significance there.” He paused and narrowed his eyes, then smacked the desk with his hand. “The inflammatory effects of the meningitis must have broken down the blood-brain barrier and allowed the Extendo-Tox and the prions to enter the brain.”