A Long December

by Donald Harstad

  “I think I can guess,” said Henry, “but where did he work?”

  “The packing plant. Should I notify them?”

  “Just let’s find out when he last worked, and who the workers are in close proximity to him. Anybody who cohabits with him. I don’t know if this is a poisoning, something toxic in their environment, or if it’s a rare sort of disease, or what. Regardless, they’ll have to be examined, too. Everybody in contact with him, or who works or lives in the same place.”

  I just stared at him for a second. “Uh, there might be a little problem with that….”

  While Henry poked and prodded us at the clinic, I finally got to use my cell phone to its fullest extent. My first call was to Ben Hurwitz, the manager of the packing plant. I told him it was extremely urgent that we find out when Jose Gonzales, aka Orejas had last worked. He was reluctant, but I told him it was either that or warranted search of his company records.

  “This is a joke, right?”

  “No, Ben. Not at all. And I think I can promise we’ll be there yet tonight, if we do the search warrant bit.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. What’s your number?”

  I gave him the number at Dispatch, and then called Harry over in Conception County. I got him at home.

  “This is gonna be good, isn’t it? “he asked.

  “‘Fraid so, Harry.” I told him that the search for the missing Hispanics was now just a whole lot more urgent than before, and then told him why.

  “You gotta be shittin’ me, Carl.”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you sayin’ they’re contagious? Like with a plague or like that?”

  “Could be that, or it could be something toxic at the plant. Maybe the chemicals they use to cool the place, or to disinfect, or something like that. All I know is I’m standing here at our clinic, getting checked out pretty damned thoroughly. Here, how about I let you talk to Doc Z? “I handed Henry my phone. I noticed he wiped it off with a sterilization wipe before using it. He was serious.

  A lab tech named Lois, who I knew all too well from my quarterly cholesterol tests, came in with the familiar tray of tubes. As she wrapped the ligature around my arm, I said, “Could we do my regular checkup now, too?” I expected a smile. Nothing. Deadly serious.

  “What are we looking for, Henry?” I asked Dr. Z.

  “His white count was astronomical,” said Henry. “Whatever this is, it gets the attention of your immune system in a big way. That’s what I’m looking for right now. Just to see if your white count is up.” His eyes twinkled. I knew right then I was in deep trouble. “And, according to my little manual here. let’s see, ‘Useful testing includes a complete blood count (which may reveal leukocytosis), electrolytes, BUN, creatinine, glucose, prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time, international normalized ratio, type and screen, fibrinogen, liver enzymes, amylase, and lipase. An arterial blood gas may reveal hypoxemia.’ Well, what do you know about that.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll bet that, even if we leave out the blood gasses, we’ll need at least…whatcha think, Lois? Five tubes?”

  “At least,” said Lois.

  “Five tubes? Hell, Henry, you’re gonna have to feed me for five tubes.”

  “Be brave,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “This will hurt you more than it does me.”

  “Right,” I muttered. “So, then, if it is, you treat me for the thing, right?”

  “If I knew what it was, and if there turned out to be a treatment for it, you bet.”

  That didn’t help much at all.

  “Not even a guess?” I asked, watching tube after tube fill from the needle embedded in my arm.

  “No. Remember when Alice and I went to Machu Picchu? How sick I got? Just some tropical kind of bug we’d picked up on the way. Still don’t know what it was.” He sort of cleared his throat. “Hell on wheels is what that bug was. But I still can’t name it.”

  “Ah.”

  “It could be some strain of something I’ve never heard of. Or it could be a chemical that’s toxic. Don’t worry,” he said. “With your cholesterol level, it might even be good for you.”

  Don’t worry, my butt. I took a deep breath. “Okay. So, how soon will you know?”

  “Shortly. If you don’t have an elevated white count, it’s a very good sign.”

  “I’m sure,” I muttered. The needle came out, and Lois pressed folded gauze over the puncture and pushed my arm up so I’d hold it in place until she got some tape. “I got lots going on, Henry,” I said. “I can still rule out foul play on this one, can’t I?”

  “There’s no sign of it,” he said. The way he said it left him a bit of room, though.

  Lois pressed a Buzz Lightyear bandage over the gauze pad inside my elbow.

  “Hey, thanks,” I said. I looked back over at Henry. “So it’s not likely? “I didn’t want two homicide investigations going at the same time, and the ME was the only one who could classify Gonzales as a possible murder case at this stage.

  “No. But if it’s something like a transmittable disease or a toxic contamination of the workplace…we could lose a bunch of people.”

  My cell phone rang. Lamar.

  “What in the hell is going on?”

  “You mean about the dog? “I asked, trying to lighten it up a bit.

  “Screw the dog. What’s with all the commotion with the medical stuff?”

  I told him. It’s very important to manage information that might mean an impending plague with at least some discretion. Since the anthrax-in-the-mail thing after 9/11, it was even more important. In a small, rural jurisdiction, where just about everybody is known to or related to just about everybody else, it’s absolutely vital.

  “What does Doc Z think?”

  Henry cleaned my cell phone off again before putting it to his ear. He told Lamar that the medical investigation was precautionary but absolutely necessary, and that the point of origin was probably not Jose Gonzales. “Gonzales is a victim, but I’d be surprised if he was the only one,” was what he said. Doc Z was right, but in a way that never would have occurred to any of us at the time.

  About fifteen minutes later I knew my white count was just fine, and so was Hester’s. That was a real relief, I think, because we’d both seen what Jose Gonzales, aka Orejas, had looked like. It couldn’t have been a pleasant way to go.

  Henry was now leaning toward some toxic substance that Jose Gonzales had been exposed to somewhere, and fairly recently.

  “How recent, Henry?” asked Hester.

  “I don’t even know that yet,” he said. “Since we don’t know what it is, we don’t know how fast a lethal dosage will take to advance. But within the last week, I’d say. When I examined him, I half expected to find some chemical burns in his throat or windpipe, or in his nasal passages…Nothing. Inflammation, though. But chemical burns would have given me a toxic chemical to work with. Nothing.” He was half talking to himself. “Chemicals would be faster acting, probably….”

  Part of this was settled by my next cell phone call. It was the office, who told me that Ben had returned my call. They had strict orders not to give my cell phone number to anybody. I called Ben Hurwitz back, and he told me that Jose Gonzales had been at work Monday. He’d done his normal shift, which was from 3 P.M. to 10:30 P.M. A seven-and-a-half-hour shift wouldn’t jeopardize his part-time status.

  “Where does he work?” I asked. “In the plant.”

  “Well, he’s logged in as doing his usual job. He carried meat into the refrigerated trucks.”

  “Semitrailer trucks? The kind where each trailer has its own refrigerant plant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would he be exposed to a refrigerant leak, or anything like that, maybe?” The checking had to start right now.

  “There weren’t any reported. We keep good records of that.”

  “We’ll need the serials of the trailers he might have helped fill that shift, too,” I told Ben.


  “Yes.”

  “He’d be lugging swinging meat, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Couple hundred pounds, on his shoulder, like quarters that dangle from hooks?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he’d have to feel at least okay, to do that, you think? “I was assuming that to do such heavy labor for a nearly eight-hour shift, he sure couldn’t have any serious respiratory problems.

  “I’d think so. Yes.”

  “Okay, Ben. I’ll need to talk to some of the people he worked with. As soon as you can contact any of them…”

  That was the problem. Everybody was still on that impromptu “coffee break.”

  “Can you tell me what this is about? “he asked.

  I thought about it for a second. Why not? He’d likely find out very soon anyway, and I thought it was better for the relations between his plant and our department if he heard it from me first. “Well, Jose Gonzales is dead. It looked like natural causes at first, but now it looks like it might have been some toxic substance, not necessarily a disease, that did him. We don’t know yet.”

  There was a profound silence on the other end. With either the toxic or the disease scenario, Ben knew he was now pretty likely to have the FDA pay a visit. Just to make sure that the product they shipped was not contaminated. OSHA would be equally fascinated, on the chance that the illness had been contracted at the plant by exposure to some substance or some unhealthy condition. Even though his plant routinely passed every inspection with flying colors, this would be a different sort of thing. An IRS audit would be mild in comparison. Also, any interviews with employees, assuming they could be found, could really complicate his life, and involve the INS paying a visit, as well.

  The Immigration and Naturalization Service was in a perpetual overload state and had been for years. But if FDA and OSHA both hit them with a report, they might well actually respond this time. The odds were at least even, anyway. The Immigration violations and fines, bad publicity, and all that went with it could really hurt the plant. I was glad it was Ben’s problem and not mine.

  “I’ll have our in-house inspection team on it as soon as possible,” said Ben.

  “That’d be great,” I said. “Somebody from our office should be there, then, too.”

  “Was he worried about OSHA or the FDA?” asked Henry.

  “I think so. Probably should be.”

  Henry chuckled. “Well, don’t tell him yet, but this is also going to be reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. CDC has even more clout than the others.”

  “That’s pretty heavy stuff,” I said. It was also fascinating. I’d never worked a case with CDC being involved. This could be neat.

  “The U of Iowa labs will refer it, if they haven’t already. Since the 9/11 business,” said Henry, “these things are moved along fast.”

  “Right.” The anthrax mailings had been quite a lesson, not to mention the attendant media frenzy.

  “I think our biggest concern will be the media—if they get this, and it gets blown out of proportion. I’d hope,” said Henry, “that we could conclude this quickly enough to avoid that.”

  I just looked at him. “Good luck.”

  Henry gave us each a sheet of paper with a list of things he’d like us to find out about the late Jose Gonzales, and questions to ask of any of his close friends, relatives, and coworkers. He also told us to report to him at the clinic at 08:00.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he said. “Therefore, I don’t know how long it takes from exposure to onset of symptoms. We get to stick you again tomorrow morning.” He grinned. “That’s the fun part of my job.”

  The list of things Henry wanted answered ran as follows:

  1. Did the victim(s) travel outside the U.S. in the last thirty days?

  2. List common denominators of victims:

  a. Race

  b. Socioeconomic status

  c. Sociopolitical groups

  d. Associations

  e. Locations

  f. Events

  g. Travel

  h. Religion

  3. What do the victims think made them ill?

  4. Do the victims know of anyone else who has become ill?

  5. Did they see any unusual activities or devices?

  6. Have they noticed any unusual odors or tastes?

  7. Have they noticed any sick or dead animals?

  “We’re gonna have a little problem with the items under question two here,” I said. “The ACLU would be all over us like stink if we started asking those sorts of questions.”

  “At least he doesn’t want questions asked regarding sexual preferences,” she said. “Did you check out number seven?”

  Actually, I’d been too busy talking. I looked at seven again, and we both had the same thoughts. First, our newly acquired mascot, Big Ears, had been found under the victim’s bed and was still alive and well a short time ago. Second, these guys were meatpacking plant workers, and they’d likely seen lots and lots of dead animals recently. We went back into the clinic and told Henry.

  “Where’s the dog now, and where will he be? I want the vet to examine him as soon as possible.”

  “We’ll keep him at the jail,” I said.

  “Okay…just don’t let the other personnel be exposed to him until we get him checked out.”

  Talk about way too late. “How about if we just don’t let the next shift be exposed,” I asked. “Little dogs attract lots of attention.”

  “Sure. That’s the little dog I petted, isn’t it?”

  “Yep, that was him. He belongs to Hester,” I said, and got a dirty look.

  CHAPTER 11

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2001 08:09

  HESTER AND l MET AT THE CLINIC TO HAVE OUR BLOOD TESTED. I wasn’t too worried, as I’d checked with Pam at Dispatch and discovered that Big Ears was still alive, well, and had peed on the floor. He’d been checked by the vet and pronounced healthy. Our personal canary, so to speak.

  We were in the little waiting room outside the lab, just starting to get organized, when a nurse stuck her head around the corner, looked at us, and then disappeared. I heard her say, “They’re right in there,” and then Judy Mercer, intrepid reporter for KNUG, came hustling around the corner, followed by a cameraman.

  I stood up and said, “No camera in here. Period.”

  “Sure, sure,” she said. “No problem, we’ll do an interview outside anyway. Better graphics. So, just what can you tell me about all this?”

  “All what?” Not exactly a brilliant response, but she’d come right out of nowhere.

  “The man who died from the toxic exposure. The sheriff said you were up here, and you’d talk to us about it.”

  “Just a sec,” I said, and pulled out my cell phone. Before dialing, I checked. Damn. The signal strength indicator wasn’t even visible. Well, of course not. I was probably five feet from the X-ray room. I closed the case and said, “Excuse me, but I need to move away from the lead shielding,” and pointed to the X-ray sign. I indicated Hester. “You can ask her about the dog we have in custody,” I said, indicating Hester, “while I call the office.”

  I hustled down the hall as I heard Judy Mercer said, “Dog? This can’t be a dog-bite case.”

  I had to stand inside the rest room, near the little window, before the cell phone worked. Lamar was gone already, Pam told me. Didn’t say where he was headed. But, yes, he’d told the media to talk to me. He really, really hates the media, but honest to God, he could have warned me.

  “Look, did he give you any idea what he wants me to say?”

  “Not really. He just said, ‘My investigator is at the clinic; you better talk to him,’ and left.” Pam was new. Sally would never let him get away with that.

  I sighed. “Okay. Hey, you should be off by now…”

  “Midnight to eight,” she said brightly. “Just finishing my logs.”

  “Lucky you. Well, give my best to Big Ears,
and I’ll see what I can do with the media crap.”

  “Okay,” she said, sounding altogether too happy. “It’s always great seeing you on the tube.”

  I looked at the rest room window. My only other way out, and I’d probably get stuck. The way Judy Mercer worked, I figured I’d still end up on the ten o’clock news, explaining how a man died from some toxic substance while I was protruding from a rest room window. Not quite the image I wanted to project. Reluctantly, I went back out into the hall and began to walk toward Hester and the TV pair. I heard the muted sound of at least two separate phones ringing. Just before I got to the waiting area, I heard Henry’s muffled but hearty hello from behind the closed door of the lab. Maybe I could palm this one off on him, if I could just get him out in the hall.

  Hester, as usual, had things firmly under control. “Why don’t you,” she said, as she saw me approaching, “tell Carl what you just told me. I’m sure he’d be interested.”

  There was no camera running, no recorder. The best way to talk to the media, as far as I’m concerned.

  “Well,” said Judy, “like I said, I got a phone call really early this morning. A friend who said that there was something really interesting over at the U of I med complex, and that I should check it out.” She shrugged. “Just chatting, really, over coffee. I found out that there were people suddenly donning protective gear, that there was a seal down in one of the labs…that they’d encountered a dangerous substance.” She looked at me in a kind of personal way, totally unlike the “reporter being sincere and caring” look we normally get. “My friend said it involved a cadaver that had been received from up here in Nation County. Yesterday. Is this your murder victim, the one found on the road?”

  Okay. In my mind, the words “dangerous” and “protective gear” just screamed contagious. That was my first concern.

  “Contagious?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. The personnel at the clinic have protocols they follow. Some of it is precautionary. But I’m assuming that it’s contagious.”

  “But nobody said so,” persisted Hester.

  “No. Nobody.”

  “Maybe not,” interjected her cameraman, “but you might tell ‘em about the hazmat gear in the back of our rig.”