by Ross Pennie
He ran through the list of viruses he’d looked for in the skin samples of the fifteen blister patients he’d seen in the past six weeks. No sign of herpes simplex, the cold sore virus; no varicella zoster, the chicken-pox and shingles virus; no adenovirus, the ear-nose-and-throat virus; no Coxsackie, the hand-foot-and-mouth virus; no Echovirus, the causes-almost-anything virus; and no human papilloma virus, the culprit in warts and cancers of the mouth, throat, and genitals. He’d even checked for orf, a blistering disease goat farmers sometimes contracted from their livestock. It wasn’t even syphilis, known through the ages as The Great Mimicker.
He’d asked for every test but electron microscopy. The local EM machine used for clinical samples was under repair, awaiting a part being manufactured to order. If he wanted EM results this side of Christmas, he’d have to send his samples to the federal microbiology laboratory in Winnipeg, half a continent away. Even then, the results would take ages. The kids at that school needed answers today.
A short bear lumbering along the corridor outside his doorway caught his eye. Striped suspenders held up the blue jeans hugging his ample hips. Despite his rounded, bent-over back, curly chest hair escaping through the collar of his red lumberjack shirt, and his booming baritone laugh, Wilf Dickinson was no grouchy grizzly. Not even a miniature one. He was more like a playful cub. Wilf had earned his Ph.D. in cell biology. As an undergrad he’d studied the oboe, which he continued to play in the university’s orchestra. Hamish had no idea how Wilf got his stumpy mitts around the slender woodwind without choking it.
Wilf had an electron microscope, funded purely as a research tool for his studies of Alzheimer’s disease. Could he be persuaded to run a few clinical samples that had nothing to do with brain disease? Probably not. Basic-science researchers never took kindly to invitations to go zebra-hunting, no matter how exotic and fascinating a diagnostic conundrum Hamish wanted to present them with. Non-clinical types weren’t used to getting their emotions entangled with direct patient care. They’d chosen the purity, the detachment, the safety of the ivory tower and they weren’t prepared to leave it. And, as Wilf often said, he wasn’t licensed to handle clinical specimens and could not possibly comment on anything his investigative tools might turn up.
Hamish pulled his specimens from the freezer and set them on a tray. It had to be worth a try, and from the way Wilf was whistling, he might be in an accommodating mood.
“Come on, Hamish,” Wilf told him a few minutes later, “you don’t actually expect me to see anything but junk in those specimens?”
“I froze them immediately. In sterile containers.”
“And what preservative did you use?
Hamish felt his cheeks flushing. The technical aspects of electron microscopy were alien territory. “Well . . . none.”
“I rest my case.”
Hamish lifted the small plastic jars containing the crusted blisters of two of his patients with lip and finger eruption. “See? The lesions are still intact.”
“Look like decapitated zits to me. What do you expect me to find?”
“A virus, maybe. Or a fungus? Remnants of atypical mycobacteria, perhaps?”
“Don’t tell me you’re hunting for leprosy.”
“I have an open mind.”
Wilf gestured to the clutter that filled his laboratory: books, academic journals, glassware, pipetting tools, coffee mugs, centrifuges, water baths, bottles of every shape and size and colour. Despite the mess, he was known for his enviable publishing record. “And my mind is not?”
Hamish pointed to his tray of specimens. “Not if you’re sure, without even looking, that every one of these is worthless.”
Wilf stroked his chin with two stocky digits. “Where are they from, again?”
“A group of kids dying from liver failure.” He was stretching the truth. As far has he knew, only two of the liver failure cases had exhibited the skin lesions. But that was enough. The two jaundiced kids brought to Simcoe Emerg this morning could easily have the lesions. He hadn’t examined them yet.
“Drug addicts?” Wilf said.
“High school students. At a Christian collegiate. Norfolk County.”
“Not that place on Highway 3, a few klicks shy of Simcoe?”
“You know it?”
Wilf’s face darkened. “That’s where they found Tammy’s body. In that vicinity, anyway.”
The air between them hung like an out-of-tune tuba. Dr. Tammy Holt, a research scientist working in the lab next to Wilf’s, had been young, single, and vivacious. Always ready with a humorous anecdote and a kind word, Tammy was an expert baker who took cake decoration to a high art. She combined taste and whimsy to spectacular effect. Without fail, she brought in elaborate, personalized cakes for the laboratory staff on their birthdays. For Hamish — the bug doctor — she’d brought in his favourite carrot cake festooned with grasshoppers and dragonflies. For Mr. Singh, the Punjabi janitor, she replicated the Golden Temple in Amritsar in lemon pound cake. A bit over the top, but that was Tammy. A plant expert with a doctorate in genetics, she always seemed to have plenty of grant money for her projects. While most researchers at Caledonian were fairly forthcoming about the basic nature of their work, Tammy was tight-lipped to the extreme. She would talk about anything except her work. “Plants and genetics” was all she would say. And though her results never got published in academic journals, they led to numerous patents probably worth a tidy sum. No one was certain which plant species she worked with. And no one spoke of the irony that her life had met its end in a field full of plants. Tobacco plants.
On a Monday morning in August last year, Tammy didn’t show up for work. The days went by. People thought she must have gone to a conference and had forgotten to tell anyone. When her family reported her missing, everyone started to worry. A few days later, a farmer in Norfolk County found her body dumped near Highway 3, about half an hour’s drive from Tammy’s home on Grand Basin Reserve. After the Ontario Provincial Police forensics team finished its cursory examination of her laboratory, a guy in a suit showed up with a couple of heavy lifters and two security guards. They stripped the workbenches clean and carted out everything but the curtains and floor tiles. And refused to talk to anyone.
The police wouldn’t release many details of Tammy’s death, but did admit she’d been sexually assaulted and suffered one or more gunshot wounds. There were rumours that it was an execution-style killing, and people speculated about Mohawk gangs and the Korean mafia operating on her reserve. In the research corridors at Caledonian University, the unresolved murder of a simpatico and accomplished colleague was still extremely painful. Staff birthdays felt awkward and tinged with sadness whenever a store-bought cake showed up instead of one of Tammy’s creations. The subtext that no one dared mention played again in Hamish’s mind: Tammy’s murder was yet another setback in the long struggle of First Nations people to achieve full status as valued professionals.
Wilf blew his nose with a striped handkerchief then eyed Hamish’s containers. “They’re skin lesions in there? Fingers and what else?”
“Lips.”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah.” Hamish forced a smile.
“And you got nothing on culture or DNA testing?”
Hamish shook his head.
“What about blood tests?”
“Nothing.”
“Have the pathologists had a look?”
“Didn’t see anything diagnostic. Even with special stains.”
Wilf’s gaze swept his laboratory. Though it was cluttered, it was quiet. Perhaps Hamish had come at a good time. Wilf pulled back his sleeve and checked his watch. He seemed satisfied with what he saw. “That mean we’re chasing another of your zebras?”
Hamish pushed the tray of specimens toward the smiling bear cub and allowed himself a restrained grin in return. “I knew you’d come through.”
During the three years since Hamish had arrived at Caledonian, he and Wilf had traded stories of their days as boy sopranos. Unlike Hamish, Wilf had enjoyed his church choir experience. Probably because he was a natural-born musician and too burly to elicit sexual advances from his choir master. Or maybe he’d just been lucky. “How many samples you got there?”
“Twelve. I had three others but —”
“A dozen? That’s an entire Serengeti full of zebras. Geez, Hamish, you can’t be serious.”
Hamish pulled his business card from his wallet. “Get me on my cell. Any time, day or night, soon as you’re done. This evening, maybe?”
“Don’t push it, Choir Boy. I’ve got orchestra practice at six-thirty.”
CHAPTER 9
It was the end of a long day at the office. They’d given him more space here in Simcoe, but the view through Zol’s window was an abomination. It confronted him with a string of obscenities scrawled onto a concrete wall behind a line of garbage bins. The town fathers and mothers had sandwiched their health unit between a muffler shop and a pizza joint at the back side of a strip mall. They’d awarded the prime riverside location downtown to the LCBO, the government-run liquor store. At least he knew the local priorities without having to ask.
All he needed to do now was gather the files he planned to review at home this evening with his single malt. Tonight, it would be a Balvenie, the Doublewood. In an hour, he’d be home with Max, who was usually at his best at the dinner table and a lively tonic against the workday’s curveballs and nasties. An enthusiastic talker and eater, Max knew more about the herbs and spices of international cuisine than was probably seemly for a ten-year-old. They shopped together at Four Corners Fine Foods, across Concession Street from his old office. The lady at the confections counter handed Max a different assortment of European chocolates at every visit. The boy was now an authority on the differences between Swiss, Dutch, Belgian, and German chocolate.
Max was certain to be attentive at supper, thanks to Zol’s no-electronics rule. As soon as the food hit the table, no cellphone, no computer tablet, no video games were allowed. Not for either of them. Nothing was permitted to inhibit the fine art of conversation. For tonight’s supper, Zol had asked Ermalinda to prepare spaghettini with clam sauce. She was a fantastic nanny and housekeeper, but not much of a cook. She did do a nice enough job with tinned clams, and Zol had taught her how to cook pasta al dente. All he’d have to do was pull salad greens from the fridge, add toasted almonds and dried cranberries, and zap the clam casserole in the microwave.
The desk phone started ringing beside him. Who the hell was calling at five-fifteen? Probably someone with a complaint best left to the answering machine. He waited six more rings, but couldn’t stand the noise any longer.
“Answering for Dr. Szabo,” he said. Anyone who didn’t yet know his voice would think they were dealing with an underling and might be persuaded to have their concerns addressed by the big cheese first thing tomorrow.
“Zol?”
That voice, even with some sort of commotion in the background at her end, was unmistakable. It had seared itself forever into his brain.
Shit. What did she want? Francine never called to chat. She’d never spoken to Max since she’d deserted the two of them nine years ago — with five minutes’ warning. Zol had been a surgical trainee at the time, standing gowned and gloved in the operating room. Francine paged him to say she was on her way out the door and leaving for good, and by the way, Max was asleep in his crib and would soon be wanting lunch. Zol raced home, and while Max flung canned spaghetti at the walls, Zol called his program director. They arranged his immediate transfer to a public-health traineeship, where the working hours might be more predictable. That wasn’t exactly the case, but he’d never looked back.
The last time she’d called was over a year ago, from an ashram in India, with a crazy plan to travel halfway across the planet to take Max away for a weekend. Of course she didn’t show up. Sometimes she wanted money via Western Union. Never very much. It was faster to send a couple of hundred bucks than to argue.
He cleared his throat. “Where are you?”
“Cambodia.”
Thank God. Half the world away. But what was she doing in a Buddhist country? Wasn’t she hooked on Hindu mysticism? Well, she didn’t stick at anything for long.
“Zol?”
“I’m still here.”
“I’m flying into Toronto. For a conference and retreat.”
Who was she trying to kid? Francine wasn’t the conference type, and any retreat she might attend would be stoked with so much weed she’d never remember what happened.
“I have my ticket. October twenty-sixth. It’s a Wednesday.”
He rolled his eyes. Just in time for Halloween. How appropriate. Was she coming in on a broom?
“And I’d like to see Max.”
His heart rate doubled. “Remember what the judge said.”
Any visit had to be supervised. “I understand, Zol. I’ll do whatever you say.”
He’d never heard her so compliant. In the two years they’d been married she’d never agreed with him. Not even once. What was she on?
“They have ashrams in Cambodia?”
“Monasteries. I’m a Buddhist nun and have learned a lot about myself and my place in this life and the next. And I’m ready to see Max. All of him. And hug him. And hold his . . . you know.”
Francine had freaked at the distortion of Max’s left arm caused by the stroke at the time of his birth. The doctors blamed her cocaine addiction for Max’s isolated brain injury. She’d never properly cuddled him, rarely changed his diapers, and flatly refused to touch his spastic left hand.
“Have you thought about where you’re going to stay?” It didn’t matter. Her plans were always half-baked.
“I’m not sure yet. Probably with Allie.”
She’d said that last time and nothing happened. “Tell Allie to call me.”
“You’ll let me see Max?”
He couldn’t stop her. But he wouldn’t tell Max about the visit until he was certain it was going to happen.
They ended the call, and he pulled two loonies from his blazer. He flipped the coins and took deliberate, even breaths until his heart rate began to slow. It was amazing how quickly that woman got under his skin.
He was still flipping the loonies when the phone rang again. The call display showed a Toronto area code. His gut tightened when he recognized the number: the Ministry of Health head office.
“Szabo,” said Dr. Elliott York. “I got a call from Jed Conroy. Reeve of Norfolk County. Holds Simcoe Health Unit’s purse strings. That means, after me, he’s your boss.”
Zol squirmed on his chair. A complaint already? But what was the reeve of Norfolk County doing talking to Zol’s boss in Toronto?
“Jed’s in my brother-in-law’s poker group,” Elliott York continued. “Apparently six or seven kids in his county have come down with liver failure. A couple of deaths. All at —”
“Yes, it’s six cases, all at one high school. Erie Christian Collegiate. Natasha Sharma, our best field epidemiologist, made a site visit there first thing this morning. We’ve got a big meeting planned with everyone concerned tomorrow, bright and early.”
“Jed wanted me to pass along a little friendly advice.” If Elliott York was impressed at Zol’s command of the details, his voice wasn’t showing it. “He says that school is in tiger territory.”
“I don’t think I understand, sir?”
“For heaven’s sake, man. Do I have to spell it out?”
“Dr. York?”
“Lots of Native kids there. From Grand Basin Reserve. With parents who know their rights. And know how to work the system.”
“And that makes a difference to our work?”
“I’m just saying . . . Be careful.”
“I think I always work carefully.”
“For God’s sake, Szabo. I’m not talking science.” York was now whispering into the phone. “You find anything implicating the shenanigans we all know go on at Grand Basin, you’d be wise to tread carefully. Very carefully.” Zol pictured Elliott York dwarfed by the enormous rosewood desk he somehow kept free of clutter. The desk was legendary, as was his thing for blown-glass kitsch, which he displayed in his office on every other possible surface. “Sometimes it’s better to turn a blind eye than to get the other one poked out.”
The chief MOH for the province of Ontario was telling him to turn a blind eye to what had killed two teenagers and might kill who knows how many more? “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”
“Jed doesn’t want another standoff with the Indians. And neither do I. Not another bust-up like that business at Dover Creek Estates. Or another Ipperwash. One more unarmed Indian killed by a cop and the current government won’t get re-elected for a generation.”
Zol was too stunned to answer. How could the man talk like that? It was one thing to be realistic about the troubles facing Native communities across the country, but quite another to hold such blatant hatred and express it to a subordinate.
Elliott York had no trouble filling the silence. “Between you and me, I think Jed’s twitchy after that explosion at the ROM. Those were Mohawk artifacts that got stolen. Jed Conroy seems to think they were repatriated to Grand Basin, a sign the Indians are restless. Not a good time for you to be doing a high-handed epidemiological investigation.”