Tainted

by Ross Pennie

  “Are you new to head cheese?”

  “Um . . . well, yes. But a friend of mine has eaten a lot of it. Said yours was delicious.”

  “We don’t make our own. We just sell Mr. Krooner’s. Will you be taking a wee piece for your friend?”

  “Sadly, he passed away recently. He was a dentist. Maybe you remember him.”

  She paused. “Dr. McEwen?” A shadow passed across her face. “A great chap, to be sure. And one of our most regular customers. It was sad to be seeing the announcement of his death in the paper.”

  “Did he have any favourites besides the head cheese?”

  “I’m proud to say he particularly enjoyed our own British-style sausages. Sometimes he took home a package of Mr. Krooner’s Escarpment Pride Viennese sausages, but I think they were a wee bit spicy for him.”

  “Let me have six of your bangers, then,” Hamish said, proud at sounding familiar with the term.

  The woman nodded and grabbed the tongs from her work table. “You’ll be familiar with bangers, then. But mind, ours are a little different from what we used to make back home. My husband adds a little of his German flare to the recipe. There’s nothing quite like them.”

  Hamish pulled a twenty from his wallet and handed it to the woman, then slipped the change into his pocket. As he reached for the plastic shopping bag, his hands trembled. He paused and closed his fist. Krooner’s packets might be crawling with prions. He should have asked the woman to double-bag his order.

  Restless energy seeped from Zol’s pores all afternoon. He dialled Hamish’s number half a dozen times but was always greeted by the stilted voice of the answering machine. He paced the carpet, almost counted the seconds left before Trinnock’s deadline. Zol had nothing to give his boss. Trinnock was going to shake his head, fidget with his glasses, and call in some self-important expert from Toronto. Zol yearned to have his own team solve the case. Maybe that was small-minded of him, but he did have an excellent staff, and it would be such an affront to be eclipsed by Toronto, just for want of a bit more time to fit the puzzle together.

  Over and over he hoped to hear Colleen’s musical accent on the line, confirming that Owen, Hugh, and Tonya had received Extendo-Tox injections, just like the others. But each phone call brought only another complaint. Goose poop fouling the city’s parks. Stachybotrys fungus contaminating an elementary school. Soap missing (again) in the toilets of a Lebanese restaurant.

  He looked at the clock for the umpteenth time and wondered why Natasha hadn’t reported in. Was she in trouble, or on the brink of cracking the case? Perhaps she was just stuck in traffic.

  He needed some fresh air. He grabbed his coat and buzzed Anne, told her to hold all calls except those from Colleen, Natasha, and Hamish. Theirs he would take on his cellphone.

  He shivered at the thought of the resentment Hamish must be harbouring. Hamish hadn’t answered any of Zol’s messages, hadn’t even responded to his beeper, despite his obsession for answering pages within a seven-minute window. Losing his cool last night had cost Zol an ally at a crucial moment. Had it also cost him a friendship? Hamish was unnaturally tidy, clumsy at small talk, and too often tactless. But the way he listened with his eyes made Zol feel he was the sole focus of Hamish’s impressive intellect. He was interested in everything Zol said. Most guys cared more about themselves and their exploits than about their buddies.

  Zol nearly collided with Natasha as she rushed through the front entrance of the building.

  She looked exhausted, dwarfed by her bulky winter coat. Her hair hung limp, and her shoulders were hunched. “I don’t care if I never go grocery shopping again.”

  “Long day?”

  “I’ll say. I’ve been up and down every single aisle at Food Bargains, Bombay Market, Botticelli’s, and all four branches of Kelly’s SuperMart.”

  “What’d you find?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even a whiff?”

  She tugged at her long woolly scarf and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “I was hoping for a miracle. That you’d trip over a fantastic lead.”

  She stamped the slush from her boots. “I’m really sorry, Dr. Zol.”

  He touched the shoulder of her coat. “For heaven’s sake, Natasha. It was an impossible task.” He’d sent her searching for the one perfect golden thread that united the lives of all seven victims. As much a fantasy as the tale of Rumpelstiltzkin.

  Her eyes widened with desperation. “But all the cases have to share a common source. They just have to. Will Dr. Trinnock give us a little more time to find it?”

  “We’ll know in twenty minutes,” Zol said, and started toward the door.

  Natasha pulled off her mittens and bit her lower lip. Her demeanour changed from fatigue to apprehension. “There is one thing I’d better tell you. I was at I and W meats yesterday. It’s the butcher shop where Joanna Vanderven had a standing order. Owen Renway used to shop there as well.”

  “Go on.”

  “I had brunch there yesterday. In the café next door. They call it a tea shop, and it’s run by the same family.” She glanced at the clock above the elevator doors, frowned, and gave Zol a look that said, I’ll be quick, please hear me out. “The butchers don’t work on Sundays, but the woman in the café said the deli section was open and she could sell us any of the packaged meat from the display case. Well, I had a good look around and I saw the head cheese — the same brand as the sausages I found in the freezers at the Vandervens’ and the Spinellis’. You couldn’t miss that logo — a vicious-looking eagle on a red-and-white background.” Red blotches bloomed across her throat as she unwound her scarf. “We know Dr. McEwen liked to eat head cheese. If he bought that same brand of deli meats as Joanna Vanderven and Rita Spinelli and Owen Renway and . . . and . . .”

  Zol knew what was coming. “And who?”

  Her eyes got bigger as they brimmed with tears. “You and Max.”

  His stomach churned at the image of Max chomping through an Escarpment Pride sausage, his fingers smeared with ketchup and mustard. Zol couldn’t bring himself to tell her about Hamish’s cat-meat theory. It was too outrageous. And besides, it was more disgusting than dangerous; he’d never heard of cats getting infected with prions. Until he could speak with Hamish face-to-face, he was going to do his damnedest to put those Campbellville meats out of his mind. “Four Corners wouldn’t purchase anything from an unlicensed vendor,” he assured her. “Escarpment Pride meats must be fully government inspected. And Grade A.”

  CHAPTER 18

  At four o’clock, Zol stopped and took a breath outside Peter Trinnock’s office door. The folder of notes tucked under his arm gave him little comfort. He ran a hand through his hair, checked his fly, and straightened his belt buckle. His ears still ached from the arctic blasts that had bitten at him during his short walk along Concession Street. Colleen had phoned at five to four, and he’d ducked into a doorway, straining to hear her voice against the roar of wind and traffic. But he needn’t have bothered. She’d turned up nothing. Brenda McEwen had answered neither her phone nor her doorbell; Tonya Latkovic’s mother had never heard of Extendo-Tox; Owen Renway’s partner, Kenyon Cheung, had been incommunicado the entire day, secluded in a courtroom.

  “Come in,” Peter Trinnock called in response to Zol’s rap. His forehead glistened in the light of his desk lamp. His pale eyes, small and round, peered like prisoners from behind his glasses. “Have a seat.”

  Zol sat stiffly in the chair in front of Trinnock’s desk. He tugged at his collar, swallowed hard, and swept his thighs, silently cursing the moisture on his palms. He always found it so difficult talking to Trinnock: there was an extraterrestrial look to those pale grey eyes, set too close together and diminished by thick lenses.

  Zol rested his folder in his lap and began the synopsis he’d memorized. He started with Hamish’s call last Tuesday night. At first it had looked like three isolated cases of variant CJD. All three had lived in England and had
probably acquired the infection there many years previously — serious for them, but manageable from a public-health perspective in Ontario.

  So far so good.

  But when Zol got to Julian Banbury’s call reporting four more identical cases, Trinnock pierced him with his piggy-eyed gaze. The veins on his cheeks flared like a tangled nest of spiders. “You should have called me immediately.”

  Zol looked at his hands. “I did, but you were at your conference in Muskoka.”

  “I wasn’t stranded at the North Pole, for God’s sake. You could have found me if you’d actually tried.”

  “But I had so few facts to tell you. I wanted to —”

  “You wanted to prove you could solve a big case on your own.”

  Trinnock was right. “I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me what you’ve turned up so far. It better be good.”

  “It’s tricky. Two of the cases are strict vegetarians.”

  Trinnock narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “Impossible.”

  “The British have found the same thing. And they’ve never explained it. I think it means we have to look for prions in unexpected places.”

  “Like where?”

  “For a while, we suspected a certain brand of Swiss chocolate.”

  “Chocolate? Come on. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not entirely,” Zol said quietly but firmly. He was treading a fine line between continued humility and enough professional assertiveness for Trinnock to take him seriously. “Not if it’s made with gelatin.”

  “Gelatin? You mean boiled-up bones from infected cows?”

  “That was the idea. But we’ve ruled out the chocolate. We can’t link it to all the cases.”

  “Good thing. It sounds pretty far-fetched. And there’s no point in upsetting the Swiss without a bloody good reason.” Trinnock opened his hands. “So what else have you got?”

  “The most promising lead we have so far is taking us to Extendo-Tox, the anti-wrinkle —”

  “I know what it is.” Trinnock wiped a slick of sweat from his brow. “But . . .” He stopped and stared out the window, pondering some notion far beyond the naked trees lining the Escarpment. “But it can’t possibly have prions in it. It’s synthetic. I’ve read the prospectus from cover to cover.”

  Zol pictured the Porsche Trinnock had bought last summer. Only room enough in it for Trinnock’s golf shoes and a brand-new set of Callaways. He must have invested heavily in Extendo-Tox. He would be counting on another windfall when Extendo-Tox hit the American marketplace next year.

  “It is a neurotoxin,” Zol said, choosing his words carefully. “And relatively new on the market. Four of our cases got injected with it regularly.”

  “But it’s been given to thousands with excellent results. They use it all over Europe, in Australia, even Japan. It’ll be huge in the States once we finally get the FDA to approve it.”

  “Maybe we’re just seeing the leading edge of a huge wave of similar cases. After all, it was developed at Caledonian and marketed here a good few months before anywhere else.”

  Trinnock wagged a reprimanding finger. “I’m surprised at you, Szabo. You’re usually so level-headed. But now you’re talking about an apocalypse. Based on — how many cases?”

  “Four.”

  “That’s only half your victims.” Trinnock stabbed at Zol’s notes. “What about the others, the ones who never got Extendo-Tox? Hell, your investigation is pathetically incomplete. And your theory’s ridiculous.”

  Zol couldn’t speak. A vice of shame gripped his throat. He knew that Trinnock was right: his investigation was incomplete. Extendo-Tox had made for a tantalizing theory, but even the chocolate could be linked to more of the victims. If only he’d had more time.

  Trinnock pulled off his glasses. His fingers trembled as he polished the lenses with a handkerchief. He replaced the glasses and leaned back in his chair. “Well? You must have other leads by now.”

  Zol was too embarrassed to mention his unsubstantiated theory about Chilean vegetables tainted with prion-contaminated cow manure. And he couldn’t bring himself to tell Trinnock about Hamish’s cat-meat story. He knew that Trinnock would laugh him right out of the office. Besides, four of seven CJD victims consuming Larry Krooner’s products didn’t constitute any more credible a lead than the Extendo-Tox.

  “No,” Zol said, fingering one of the loonies in his blazer pocket. “That’s all we’ve got so far.”

  “Well then, I’ll have to call Toronto.” Trinnock peered at his watch. “It’s not four thirty yet. Someone will still be in Elliott York’s office. They’ll have to send us an investigator. A proper field epidemiologist. We just cannot be seen to be dragging our feet.”

  Zol moaned silently: here it came, a heavy hitter from Toronto who would play to the headlines and confuse the investigation by ignoring local knowledge, a big snout wired to the national television news, hogging a sensational story and making slop of the solution by jumping to outlandish conclusions. Zol again remembered the Lassa fever fiasco of two years ago: the glare of the spotlights, the whir of the cameras, the chaos in the wake of Dr. Wyatt Burr. Overnight, the man had transformed a simple case of malaria into international bedlam.

  At eight fifteen the next morning Wyatt Burr swaggered out of the elevator onto the fourth floor of the health unit. He was not sporting Levi’s or a ten-gallon Stetson, but he did wear a bolo tie and had just ridden in from Toronto on a Ford Mustang. Anne had the honour of greeting him. Without so much as a good morning, he demanded immediate access to a private office with a high-speed Internet connection, an uninterrupted supply of coffee, and the promise of a pepperoni pizza delivered at twelve thirty sharp. Anne ushered him through a door marked Maggie Baldwin RN, Vaccine Coordinator and flicked on the light; she invited him to make himself at home then quickly taped a Do Not Disturb sign to the door, feeling guilty at keeping Maggie out of her own office.

  A minute later Anne pushed Zol’s door open after a brief knock. He was hunched at his computer, lining up the day’s agenda, still undecided whether he felt relief or disappointment that Trinnock’s deadline had come and gone. In a way, he was glad Toronto was running the investigation. Let them take the heat.

  He looked up from the screen. Anne’s pinched face had more colour than usual, and there was a rare unruliness to the salt-and-pepper of her hair. She looked like she’d run three city blocks.

  “God has arrived,” she said with mock gravity. She fingered the cameo pendent nestled against her steel-blue twin-set. “And he doesn’t seem too pleased.”

  Damn. They’d sent Dr. Bolo Ties. The man had the confidence of Zeus and the subtlety of Cyclops. “What’s he unhappy about?”

  “Nothing in particular.”

  Burr never needed a reason for a scowl or an excuse for a slur, especially in front of an audience. “Where is he?”

  “I put him in Maggie’s office.” Anne glanced anxiously at the doorway, then checked her watch. “Oh dear, I better put on the coffee. Then it’s downstairs for a carton of half-and-half. He said to be sure he had a non-stop supply of double-cream-no-sugar.”

  Zol pulled a ten-dollar bill from his wallet. “Here. I’m happy to buy as many litres of half-and-half as it takes to keep him from barking too loudly.”

  Anne smiled and accepted the bill. “Keep your wallet handy.”

  He followed her down the hall to Maggie’s office where he found himself staring at the side of Wyatt Burr’s shaved head. Burr had commandeered a computer and was peering at the screen, cursing under his breath. Despite all those double creams, his facial bones jutted above hollow cheeks and a skinny neck.

  Zol extended his hand. “Good morning, Dr. Burr. I’m Zol Szabo, the associate MOH working on the CJD file. We met a couple of years ago.”

  Burr swivelled in Maggie’s chair and accepted the handshake. His eyes showed no glint of warmth or recognition. “Wyatt Burr. Toronto General.” He withdrew his hand and punched twelve digits into th
e phone. He growled into the receiver, “Shit, Gretta, you screwed up my schedule already and it’s not even eight thirty. I told you to move Skolnic and Bagley to Thursday, not Wednesday.” He slammed down the phone and scowled at Zol. “Holy crap, this is a hell of a time for you guys to drop the bomb of the century on me. I’m already up to my eyeballs.”

  Zol fidgeted with the loonie in his pocket. Burr’s face was almost a fixture on television, fronting for the Ministry, Health Canada, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It was nerve-racking to stand inches away from that face in the flesh, to feel the brunt of its energy. “Well,” Zol said, “we’re hoping another pair of eyes will see what we’ve missed.” He lifted Maggie’s papers from her desk and replaced them with the stack of files he’d carried from his office. “Here are the charts of the seven cases and the detailed notes of our fact-finding interviews with the families. We’ve created a reasonably comprehensive database. And we’ve come up with a few links between the cases. I’ll send them to you electronically in a couple of minutes.”

  Burr waved his hands dismissively. The beak of the eagle on his bolo tie gaped in the glare of the computer screen. “No,” he said. “Nothing but the medical charts and the raw details of the family interviews. I wanna find the links myself, draw my own conclusions.” He grabbed the top chart from the stack, his eyes narrowing as he absorbed the front sheet. In an automatic motion, he lifted Maggie Baldwin’s empty coffee mug to his lips. As he tilted back the lipstick-stained stoneware, his eyes widened. His arm froze. He glared at the cold mug and screwed up his face, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slammed the mug onto the desk.

  Zol heard nothing from Trinnock or Wyatt Burr for the rest of the day. The case had been torn from his hands, and they felt empty. He couldn’t even share his feelings with Hamish, who was obviously having one of his pouts. Two desperate phone calls from Shalom Acres quickly reminded him that there was lots to keep him busy at the beleaguered nursing home; their strep epidemic continued to blaze out of control. He sent Natasha to spend the day there, interviewing the staff and poking through the cupboards. They agreed to discuss her findings tomorrow and then make a joint expedition there after lunch.