by Robin Cook
Contents
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
TOXIN
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1998 by Robin Cook
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
For information address:
The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 978-1-1011-9189-7
A Berkley BOOK®
Berkeley Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
Berkley and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
First edition (electronic): August 2001
This Book Is Dedicated to
Those Families Who Have Suffered
from the Scourge of E. Coli 0157:H7
and Other Food-Borne Illnesses.
I would like to acknowledge:
Bruce Berman, for his suggestions at the outset of this project as well as his insightful critique of the outline for Toxin;
Nikki Fox, for sharing with me her extensive research on food-borne illness;
Ron Savenor, for helping me overcome a particular barrier in my own research;
and Jean Reeds, for her invaluable comments and suggestions on the work in progress.
PROLOGUE
January 9th
The sky was an immense, inverted bowl of gray clouds that arched from one flat horizon to the other. It was the kind of sky that hovered over the American Midwest. In the summer the ground would be awash in a sea of corn and soybeans. But now in the depths of winter it was a frozen stubble with patches of dirty snow and a few lonely, leafless, skeletonized trees.
The leaden clouds had excreted a lazy drizzle all day—more of a mist than a rain. But by two o’clock the precipitation had abated and the single functioning windshield wiper of the aged, recycled UPS delivery van was no longer necessary as the vehicle negotiated a rutted dirt road.
“What did old man Oakly say?” Bart Winslow asked. Bart was the driver of the van. He and his partner, Willy Brown, sitting in the passenger seat, were in their fifties and could have been mistaken for brothers. Their creased, leather faces bore witness to a lifetime of labor on the farm. Both were dressed in soiled and tattered overalls over layered sweatshirts and both were chewing tobacco.
“Benton Oakly didn’t say much,” Willy answered after wiping some spittle off his chin with the back of his hand. “Just said one of his cows woke up sick.”
“How sick?” Bart asked.
“I guess sick enough to be a downer,” Willy said. “Has the runs bad.”
Bart and Willy had evolved over the years from mere farmhands to become what the local farmers referred to as 4-D men. It was their job to go around and pick up dead, dying, diseased, and disabled farm animals, particularly cows, and take them to the rendering plant. It wasn’t a coveted job, but it suited Bart and Willy just fine.
The van turned at a rusted mailbox and followed a muddy road that ran between barbed-wire fences. A mile beyond the road opened up at a small farm. Bart drove the van up to the barn, made a three-point turn, and backed the vehicle to the open barn door. By the time Bart and Willy had climbed from the truck, Benton Oakly had appeared.
“Afternoon,” Benton said. He was as laconic as Bart and Willy. Something about the landscape made people not want to talk. Benton was a tall, thin man with bad teeth. He kept his distance from Bart and Willy as did his dog, Shep. Shep had been barking until Bart and Willy got out of the truck. With his nose twitching from the scent of death, Shep shrank back behind his master.
“In the barn,” Benton said. He motioned with his hand before leading his visitors into the depths of the dark barn. Stopping at a pen, he pointed over the rail.
Bart and Willy ventured to the edge of the pen and looked in. They wrinkled their noses. The area reeked of fresh manure.
Within the pen an obviously sick cow was lying in its own diarrhea. Raising its wobbly head, she gazed back at Bart and Willy. One of her pupils was the color of gray marble.
“What’s with the eye?” Willy asked.
“Been that way since she was a calf,” Benton said. “Got poked or something.”
“She only been sick since this morning?” Bart asked.
“That’s right,” Benton said. “But she’s been down on her milk for almost a month. I want her out’a here before my other cows get the runs.”
“We’ll take her, all right,” Bart said.
“Is it still twenty-five bucks to haul her to the renderer?” Benton asked.
“Yup,” Willy said. “But can we hose her off before putting her in the truck?”
“Be my guest,” Benton said. “There’s hose right over there against the wall.”
Willy went to get the hose while Bart opened the gate to the pen. Trying to be careful where he put his feet, Bart gave the cow a few swats on its rump. Reluctantly it rose to its feet and tottered.
Willy came back with the hose and squirted the cow until it looked relatively clean. Then he and Bart got behind the cow and coaxed it out of the pen. With added help from Benton they got the animal outside and into the van. Willy closed the truck’s back door.
“What’d ya got in there—about four head?” Benton asked.
“Yup,” Willy said. “All four dead this morning. There’s some kind of infection over at the Silverton Farm.”
“Criminy,” Benton said with alarm. He slapped a few wrinkled greenbacks into Bart’s palm. “Get them the hell off my spread.”
Bart and Willy both spat as they rounded their respective sides of the truck. The tired engine let out a belch of black smoke before propelling the vehicle out of the farm.
As was their habit Bart and Willy didn’t speak again until the truck reached the pavement of the county road. Bart accelerated and finally got the van into fourth gear.
“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Bart asked.
“I imagine,” Willy said. “That cow didn’t look half bad after we hosed her down. Hell, it looks a mite better’n that one we sold to the slaughterhouse last week.”
“And it can stand and even walk a little,” Bart said.
Willy glanced at his watch. “Just about the right time too.”
The 4-D men did not speak again until they pulled off the county road onto the track that ran around a low-slung, almost windowless, large commercial building. A billboard-sized sign said: HIGGINS AND HANCOCK. At the rear of the building was an empty stockyard that was a sea of trampled mud.
“You wait here,” Bart said, as he pulled to a stop near the chute that lead from the stockyard into the factory.
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Bart got out of the van and disappeared down the chute. Willy got out and leaned up against the van’s rear door. Five minutes later Bart reappeared with two burly men dressed in bloodstained long white coats, yellow plastic construction helmets, and yellow midcalf rubber boots. Both sported a name tag. The heavier man’s name tag said: JED STREET, SUPERVISOR. The other man’s said: SALVATORE MORANO, QUALITY CONTROL. Jed had a clipboard.
Bart gestured to Willy, and Willy unlatched the van’s rear door and opened it. Salvatore and Henry covered their noses and peered inside. The sick cow raised its head.
Jed turned to Bart. “Can the animal stand?”
“Sure can. She can even walk a little.”
Jed looked at Salvatore. “What do you think, Sal?”
“Where’s the SME inspector?” Salvatore asked.
“Where do you think?” Jed said. “He’s in the locker room, where he goes as soon as he thinks the last animal has come through.”
Salvatore lifted the tail of his white coat to get at a two-way radio attached to his belt. He switched it on and held it up to his lips. “Gary, did that last combo bin that’s going to Mercer Meats get filled?”
The answer came back accompanied by static: “Almost.”
“Okay,” Salvatore said into the radio. “We’re sending in one more animal. That will more than do it.”
Salvatore switched off his radio and looked at Jed. “Let’s do it.”
Jed nodded and turned to Bart. “Looks like you got a deal, but as I said, we’ll only pay fifty bucks.”
Bart nodded. “Fifty bucks is okay.”
While Bart and Willy climbed into the back of the van, Salvatore walked back down the chute. From his pocket he pulled out a couple of earplugs that he put in his ears. As he entered the slaughterhouse, his mind was no longer concerned about the sick cow. He was concerned about the myriad forms he still had to fill out before he could think of going home.
With his earplugs in place, Salvatore wasn’t troubled by the noise as he traversed the kill-floor area of the slaughterhouse. He approached Mark Watson, the line supervisor, and got his attention.
“We got one more animal coming through,” Salvatore yelled over the din. “But it’s only for boneless beef. There’ll be no carcass. Got it?”
Mark made a circle with his thumb and index finger to indicate he understood.
Salvatore then passed through the soundproof door that led into the administrative area of the building. Entering his office, he hung up his bloodied coat and construction helmet. He sat down at his desk and went back to his daily forms.
Concentrating as hard as he was, Salvatore wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Jed suddenly appeared at his door. “We got a slight problem,” Jed said.
“Now what?” Salvatore asked.
“The head of that downer cow fell off the rail.”
“Did any of the inspectors see it?” Salvatore asked.
“No,” Jed said. “They’re all in the locker room with the SME for their daily chitchat.”
“Then put the head back on the rail and hose it off.”
“Okay,” Jed said. “I thought you should know.”
“Absolutely,” Salvatore said. “To cover our asses I’ll even fill out a Process Deficiency Report. What’s the lot and head number of that animal?”
Jed looked down at his clipboard. “Lot thirty-six, head fifty-seven.”
“Got it,” Salvatore said.
Jed left Salvatore’s office and returned to the kill floor. He tapped José on the shoulder. José was a sweeper whose job it was to sweep all the filth from the floor into one of the many grates. José had not been working there very long. It was a chronic problem keeping sweepers because of the nature of the job.
José didn’t speak much English and Jed’s Spanish wasn’t much better, so he was reduced to communicating by crude gestures. Jed motioned that he wanted José to help Manuel, one of the skinners, to heft the skinned cow’s head from the floor onto one of the hooks on the moving overhead rail.
Eventually José caught on. Luckily José and Manuel could communicate without difficulty, because the job required two steps and significant effort. First they had to get the hundred-plus-pound head up onto the metal catwalk. Then, after climbing up there themselves, they had to hoist the head up high enough to secure it on one of the moving hooks.
Jed gave a thumbs-up sign to the two panting men, who at the last second had almost dropped their slippery burden. Jed then trained a jet of water on the soiled skinless head as it moved along on the rail. Even to the hardened Jed the appearance of the cataractous eye gave the skinned head a gruesome aura. But he was pleased with how much of the filth came off with the high-pressure water, and by the time the head passed through the aperture in the kill-floor wall on its way into the head-boning room, it looked relatively clean.
ONE
Friday, January 16th
The Sterling Place Mall was aglow with the marble, bright brass, and polished wood of its upscale shops. Tiffany competed with Cartier, Neiman-Marcus with Saks. Mozart’s piano concerto number 23 was piped in through hidden speakers. Beautiful people milled about on this late Friday afternoon in their Gucci shoes and Armani coats to survey the offerings of the post-Christmas sales.
Under normal circumstances Kelly Anderson wouldn’t have minded spending a part of the afternoon at the mall. As a TV journalist it was a far cry from the gritty beats she was usually assigned around the city while putting together in-depth pieces for the six or eleven o’clock news. But on this particular Friday, the mall had not provided Kelly with what she wanted.
“This is a joke,” Kelly said irritably. She looked up and down the expansive hall for a likely candidate to interview but no one looked promising.
“I think we’ve gotten enough,” Brian said. Brian Washington, a lanky, laid-back African-American, was Kelly’s cameraman of choice. In her mind he was the best WENE had to offer, and Kelly had maneuvered, cajoled, and even used threats to get the station to assign him to her.
Kelly puffed up her cheeks before blowing out her breath in an expression of exasperation. “Like hell we’ve got enough,” she said. “We’ve got diddly-squat.”
At thirty-four, Kelly Anderson was a no-nonsense, intelligent, aggressive woman hoping to break into national news. Most people thought she had a good chance if she could find a story that would catapult her into the spotlight. She looked the part with her sharp features and lively eyes framed by a helmet of tight, blond curls. To add to her professional image she dressed fashionably and tastefully, and groomed herself impeccably.
Kelly transferred her microphone to her right hand so that she could see her watch. “And to make matters worse, we’re running out of time. I’m going to have to pick up my daughter. Her skating lesson’s over.”
“That’s cool,” Brian said. He lowered his camcorder from his shoulder and unplugged the power source. “I should get my daughter from day care.”
Kelly bent down and stowed her microphone in her sizable shoulder bag, then helped Brian break down the equipment. Like a couple of experienced pack rats, they hoisted everything over their shoulders and started walking toward the center of the mall.
“What’s becoming obvious,” Kelly said, “is that people don’t give a damn about AmeriCare’s merger of the Samaritan Hospital and the University Med Center unless they’ve had to go to the hospital during the last six months.”
“It’s not an easy subject to get people fired up about,” Brian said. “It’s not criminal, sexy, or scandalous, and there are no celebrities involved.”
“They ought to be concerned,” Kelly said with disgust.
“Hey, what people ought to do and what they actually do has never been related,” Brian said. “You know that.”
“All I know is that I shouldn’t have scheduled this piece for tonight’s eleven o’clock news,” Kelly said. “I’m desperate. Tell me how to make it sexy.”
“If I k
new that, I’d be the talent rather than the cameraman,” Brian said with a laugh.
Emerging from one of the radiating corridors of the Sterling Place Mall, Kelly and Brian arrived at the spacious epicenter. In the middle of this vast area and beneath a three-story-high skylight was an oval skating rink. Its frosted surface glowed under the glare of klieg lights.
Dotted around the rink were a dozen or so children along with several adults. All were careening across the ice in various directions. The apparent chaos resulted from the recent conclusion of the intermediate lesson and the imminent commencement of the advanced lesson.
Seeing her daughter’s bright red outfit, Kelly waved and called out. Caroline Anderson waved back but took her time skating over. Caroline was very much her mother’s daughter. She was bright, athletic, and willful.
“Shake a leg, Chicken,” Kelly said when Caroline finally neared. “I gotta get you home. Mom’s got a deadline and a major problem.”
Caroline stepped out of the rink, and walking on the toes of her figure-skate blades, she moved to the bench and sat down. “I want to go to the Onion Ring for a burger. I’m starved.”
“That’s going to be up to your father, sweetie,” Kelly said. “Come on, chop, chop!”
Kelly bent down and got Caroline’s shoes out of her knapsack and put them on the bench next to her daughter.
“Now, there’s one hell of a skater,” Brian said.
Kelly straightened up and shielded her eyes with her hand from the bright lights. “Where?”
“In the center,” Brian said, pointing. “In the pink outfit.”
Kelly looked where Brian indicated, and it was immediately apparent whom he was referring to. A girl, around the same age as Caroline, was going through a warm-up exercise that had now caused some of the shoppers to pause and watch.
“Whoa,” Kelly said. “She is good. She looks almost professional.”
“She’s not that good,” Caroline said, as she gritted her teeth in an attempt to pull off one of her skates.