Up in Smoke (10 page)

“I'll drive, if you like,” he said with a look of either warm concern or brash patronization for her obvious giddiness. She couldn't tell which, but figured it was probably the latter.

She didn't let anyone drive her car, not even Kostos. “No thanks, I —”

“What? You don't trust me?”

She was tired and had no energy for arguing. And there were dozens of details to be scribbled into her notebook. “I suppose.” She dug her keys from her purse and tossed them to him. “But please, no speeding.”

Al started the car and headed back the way they'd come. He looked pleased with himself. “I'd say that counts as a pretty good scoop.”

She hated to admit it, but once Al got the girls started, they hadn't shut up. Those few days in hospital with bright yellow skin had put quite a scare into them.

Al tugged at the collar of his linen jacket. “That dad was a straight shooter. A good guy. Made his girls feel safe about fessing up about the Rollies. And everything else.”

“I couldn't believe how you schmoozed over his Gothic revival handiwork.”

He shrugged and made no attempt to hide the smirk on his face.

“Honestly,” Natasha told him. “King posts and finials? You actually know that much about nineteenth-century Ontario architecture?”

“I'm a reporter. I know about a lot of things.”

“But those terms rolled off your tongue as if you used them every day. Don't tell me you're a closet designer.”

“Closets aren't my thing. Never have been. Now, Hamish, he's another matter. Locked inside for so long it stunted his growth. But I'm working on him.”

“You're changing the subject.”

Al was smirking again. “You don't want me to spoil the magic, do you?”

“I can take it.”

For a half a minute, Al's face was pensive as he drummed on her steering wheel. “If you must know,” he said finally, “a little background research never hurts.”

So much for his impromptu
we'll take the story as it comes approach
.

He made a sheepish face.

“And somehow, you discovered the Vanderhoefs lived in a newly restored vintage house painted Williamsburg blue?”

He let out a sigh in mock defeat. “Facebook. The girls bragged about the gingerbread reno on their house and posted photos of their paint job.”

And then, of course, Al had boned up on Gothic revival lingo: bargeboards, scrollwork, king posts, and finials. Clever.

“Mrs. Vanderhoef had no idea about the Rollies,” Natasha said. “Did you see her face when the girls admitted that two-thirds of the kids at their school smoke cigarettes from the rez?”

“I was waiting for her to cover up that huge Bible while the girls were talking about buying two hundred Rollies at a time from the schoolyard pusher.”

“She nearly fainted when the girls said they stashed their Rollies in the basement rumpus room behind the Encyclopedia Britannica.”

Al laughed and Natasha snuck a peek at the speedometer. Seven points over the limit.

“So far, how many kids at that school have come down with that liver thing?” he asked.

“Six.” The girls had said that every one of the Erie Christian Collegiate students who'd developed liver disease was a smoker. Sometimes Rollies, sometimes Hat-Tricks, all supplied from Grand Basin Reserve. Mostly, the kids smoked Rollies, because they were cheaper and the resealable plastic bags they came in were easy to hide. No incriminating packaging to dispose of.

“What about Hamish's lip and finger thing?” Al asked. “The girls weren't clear about the number of their peers affected.”

“I expect most are keeping their lesions hidden, or passing them off as zits or cold sores,” Natasha said. “Did you notice? Both twins had lesions that are probably Hamish's blister-rash thing. I wish we knew what was causing it.”

“I'd say Amelia had at least one scab on her thumb,” Al agreed. “And that was probably one on Annabel's lip.”

“Her makeup didn't do much to cover it up.”

Al set the cruise control and took his foot off the gas. She had to admit he was a smooth driver.

“Tell me, what was that about the twins not noticing the paint fumes?”

Al beamed. Like Hamish, he loved playing Sherlock. And showing it off. “That was my first clue that they'd been smoking Rollies. And had started sometime before last summer, when they'd painted the house.”

“How so?”

“Cigarettes that strong do a number on your sense of smell. Believe me, I know.” He dug into his jacket pocket and showed her a half-consumed pack of Nicorette gum.

But what else was rez tobacco doing to those kids?

CHAPTER
15

At three o'clock, Zol pulled open the front door of the Nitty Gritty Café across Concession Street from his old office. He was an hour late for the meeting and his hands wouldn't stop shaking. He could have been killed.

He waved to Marcus, the owner-baker-barista behind the bar, and headed to the back corner. Colleen, Natasha, and Hamish were sitting in their usual spot, which Hamish called their crisis centre. Hamish had been held up too, for some reason. His latte cup was half full. The women's cups were empty.

To be sure, the team did some of their best brainstorming here. He was anxious to learn if anything else had been gleaned from the Vanderhoefs. Natasha had called from her car to tell him how Al had charmed the twins into divulging the magnitude of the rez tobacco habit at Erie Christian Collegiate. So much for fundamentalist Christian values turning high school students into saints. But what did he care? Max would never be going to anything but a public school, and the tobacco lead was getting stronger and stronger.

“Sorry I'm late,” he told them as he threw his coat over the back of the empty chair and dropped onto the seat, his knees buckling. “A woman hit a deer. Right in front of me. A twelve-point buck. I didn't want to tell you on the phone.”

Colleen's hands flew to her mouth. “Oh my God! Where?”

“Highway
24
. On that stretch between Simcoe and Brantford.”

Hamish glanced at the window. “Not surprising. You've got to expect it on an overcast fall day like this. Dusk brings them out, you know.”

Zol rubbed the sweat from his forehead and looked away. He clamped his teeth into his tongue. Hamish could be so damned clinical in the face of a friend's distress.

Colleen leaned in to Zol, close enough for him to smell the jasmine on her skin. She knew it settled him. “Was anybody hurt?”

“I called
911
on my cell. The paramedics took her to Simcoe Emerg. Her nose was a mess. Not sure about the rest of her.” He'd wiped the blood off her face and held her hand until the ambulance arrived. He hadn't let her move in case she'd injured her neck.

“Did she have any passengers?” Natasha asked.

“Luckily, no. Her car's a write-off, though.”

Colleen squeezed his forearm. “What about you?”

“I'm fine.” He wiped his palms on her serviette and willed his heart rate to settle below a hundred. “And — and so's my minivan.” He still didn't know how he'd managed to swerve to a safe stop. He'd have to get his brakes checked. Did they get fried when you jammed on them that hard?

Colleen squeezed again. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” He sensed a quiet presence behind him waiting to take his order. “Oh man, I need a hit of your best caffeine,” he told Marcus. Actually, what he really needed was a Glenfarclas. But that would have to wait until he got home. You couldn't brainstorm with blunted senses. “Make it your largest latte with a double espresso on the side. Do I smell sticky buns?”

Marcus smiled through his ginger beard. “You bet. How about some extra maple glaze on that?”

“Sounds great.”

Natasha rattled her spoon inside her empty mug, the frothy milk long gone. He found himself remembering the time he overheard her telling a girlfriend she lived in mortal fear of getting a milk moustache in public. He didn't know why she worried. It would take a lot more than a bit of froth on her upper lip to diminish that face, crowned as it was by such vibrant, intelligent eyes. He hoped her Greek surgical-resident boyfriend appreciated what a catch she was. Not quite the gorgeous, seasoned package that Colleen offered, but . . .

“Dr. Zol?” Natasha was waving her spoon in front of him. “Do you need a moment to — you know — catch your breath?”

“I'm okay. Let's get started. Now we know those kids, and the first responders, are heavily into rez tobacco.” He turned to Natasha. “Good job, by the way. What else have you got?”

Natasha put down the spoon and opened her notebook. Yesterday's doleful embarrassment over her failed questionnaires had left her eyes. She was back on sound territory. “After our trip to Waterford and the Vanderhoefs, I spent a couple of hours in Simcoe Emerg. The first responders and their families were helpful.” She paused, then added, “In the end.”

Colleen was taking everything in, making her own set of notes. “Was there a problem?”

“Well . . . it took them a while to warm up to me. They're independent down there. Seem to enjoy their relative isolation. And . . .” Natasha paused and looked around, as if uncertain whether to speak frankly. “. . . and the only brown skin they're used to seeing is on migrant farmer workers with little education.”

Zol signalled his understanding with an apologetic shake of his head and pressed through the awkwardness. “What d'you find?”

Natasha related the details she'd collected in what must have been an emotional setting. She'd memorized almost everything and barely glanced at her notebook.

Between them, the six first responders owned five dogs and two cats, an iguana, a parrot, and two guinea pigs. Two hunted locally. One had a hobby farm and admitted to using pesticides. Five of the first responders lived in apartments or condos with no contact with farms or gardens. Four had travelled to Florida last winter, and two to Myrtle Beach. None had ever visited Asia, Africa, or South America. None had hobbies that employed liver-toxic chemicals and none lived next to a dry cleaners.

“Dry cleaners?” Colleen said.

Hamish leaned forward. He started to raise his right hand, but dropped it to his lap like a stone. By the flushed look on his face, Zol reckoned someone had told Hamish to ditch the nerdy professorial digit. It must have been Al Mesic. No one else would have been brave enough to risk the consequences — a major pout — by offering such feedback. “Solvents can be hepatotoxic,” Hamish said. He threw Colleen a patronizing lift of the eyebrows and added, “As in liver-damaging.” He turned to Zol. “But as you must know, the agents used these days are . . . well . . . safe.” He made a face. “Supposedly.”

Natasha caught Zol's eye and acknowledged Hamish's intrusion with a perfunctory nod, then tapped her pen against her notebook. “The firefighter with the lip and finger lesions is a hobby taxidermist.”

“Hmm,” Hamish said. “Does he hunt?”

“No, his wife was clear about that. He doesn't shoot anything himself.”

“What animals does he stuff?” Hamish asked.

“Mostly birds of prey.”

“Anything else?” Hamish pressed. “Sheep? Goats?”

Natasha made a face. “Does anyone stuff those?”

“How about rabbits, then? Or foxes? Raccoons?”

“Not for a couple of years.”

Hamish shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “No good. The timing's all wrong.”

A pall of disappointment hung over the table and sucked the energy out of the air.

Natasha had gleaned an astounding amount of detail, but when it came down to it, she'd found nothing exciting beyond the link with rez tobacco. Was that enough? It was difficult to see how it could be. The health effects of tobacco had been studied to death. No one had ever suggested that it caused either blistering skin lesions or galloping liver failure. Al's performance last night with an unlit cigarette had been quite convincing, but what did it mean?

Damn.

Hamish picked up his mug, glanced inside it, and seemed surprised that he'd already emptied it. He threw Zol an incongruous smile. “I heard from Winnipeg today. They were cagey with me at first, but I could tell the boffins could barely contain their excitement.”

“Sorry, Hamish,” Colleen asked, clearly puzzled by Hamish's sudden change in demeanour. “Who or what is in Winnipeg?”

“The National Microbiology Laboratory,” Hamish told her. He waved his empty mug in the air, flourishing it like a sceptre or a magic wand, dispelling the gloom. It seemed Oscar Wilde had entered the building. “The guys with the best toys in the country. Not bad on brains, either. Anyway, I got them to look at the photos Wilf Dickinson took of our blister specimens under his microscope. Ten cases in total.” He was focussing on Colleen, bestowing her with the patronizing attention he used on his junior students. His enunciation was infuriatingly pedantic, but you couldn't fault his clarity, or his devotion to the investigation. “Wilf took the images from his electron microscope and loaded them onto his website. Then I emailed the address to the guys in Winnipeg. Gotta love the Internet.” Hamish's pupils were now so wide his blue eyes looked almost black. “At first, they did some strategic stalling and warned me that this was an informal opinion they couldn't put in writing. For a proper opinion, they'd need the original specimens so they could do their own set of tests.”

“Come on, Hamish,” Zol told him. “The suspense is killing us.”

The guy was glowing. He'd been a child soloist at his church and thrived in the limelight. And always insisted on presenting last, for the most dramatic effect.

“Okay,” he said, putting down his mug. “I'm coming to the good part. But remember, this is only a preliminary opinion.” He swept the table with his gaze, making sure he had everyone's attention. “Based on our images, they say the matchstick particles in the skin lesions from my eight outpatients — and the two first responders with hepatitis — look like a rare and novel type of infectious particle. No getting around the e-word now, guys. We have ourselves an infectious epidemic. At least as far as the lip and finger blisters are concerned.”

Natasha bit on her lower lip and pulled on the curls at the back of her neck. “But . . . but what do they think they are?”

“Wait for it — Winnipeg says the particles have some of the hallmarks of a hybrid virus reported once before in the medical literature.” With every sentence, Hamish's tone was more triumphant. “The patient was a Mongolian sheep farmer and local political celebrity. And he got infected with something never seen before. An infectious particle that was part plant virus and part animal virus.”

Colleen looked like she could barely speak. “What happened to him?”

“Scabs and blisters spread all over his hands and face and drew a lot of local attention. He was convinced he had leprosy, locked himself in his home, and committed suicide.”

“Anybody else get sick?” Natasha asked.

“His wife and three kids. He killed them too. Then, no more cases.” Hamish shrugged. “If the family was shunned by the local community, the mini-outbreak — and the disease — would've died out on the spot.”

Natasha's cheeks were a pale contrast to the red blotches on her throat. “I'm almost afraid to ask,” she said. “But did they get hepatitis or liver failure?”

“Negatory. No mention of jaundice or liver involvement in the case report. Purely skin.”

Colleen, looking pensive, clasped her hands together, then dropped them in her lap. “How did it happen?” she said. “The plant-animal hybrid thing?”

Hamish was loving this. “Nobody knows for sure, but there's speculation that orf virus — which infects sheep, goats, and sometimes humans — and turnip mosaic virus — which infects Mongolian cabbage among other vegetable crops — somehow got together and produced mutant offspring contagious to humans.”

Colleen looked around to be sure no one at other tables could hear her, then lowered her voice. “And you think something like that has happened here?”

Hamish nodded. “We've got to face that possibility. Of course, Winnipeg may be overstating things a bit. I couriered a set of blister specimens to them this afternoon. Their formal opinion may take awhile. A few weeks, even. They're going to be more than methodical about testing anything this unusual.” He peered at Natasha's notebook open beside him. “Hey, does that say Donna Holt?”

Natasha stiffened. “Well, yes.”

“Hmm. Tammy Holt was a plant virologist,” he continued, oblivious to the pall his previous comments had cast over the table. “She worked down the hall from me at Caledonian. In the research wing. She was murdered last summer. Her case is still unsolved. Had a sister. I'm pretty sure her name was Donna. I do know she was a paramedic. Visited the lab a couple of times.” He turned to Natasha. “Is she Native, the Donna Holt on your list? Tammy's sister taught figure skating on the reserve. Had been Ontario provincial junior champion or runner up. Something like that. Got a medal, anyway. Tammy was very proud of that.”

Natasha tapped her notebook with her ballpoint. “This Donna Holt does live on the reserve. Works for the Norfolk County ambulance service. Her mother's a magistrate.”

Hamish snapped his fingers. “Must be her, then. How sick is she?”

“Dr. Hitchin says he's more worried about her than any of the others.”

Zol's chest was so tight he could hardly speak. “What . . . what did you tell Winnipeg? Is . . . is this mutant virus thing going to be all over our newspapers by the morning?”

Hamish still looked pleased with himself. “I told them they were from a family I encountered on a recent trip to the Namibian desert.”

“Namibia?” Colleen said. “What have you got against Namibia?”

“I figured the boys in Winnipeg would barely know where it was, and treat the images as an academic curiosity and not a front-page story.”

Zol's relief was almost as palpable as his panic had been. “Brilliant. Hamish, I could kiss you.”

“Zol, a little decorum, please.” Hamish's eyes were positively twinkling. “Save that for the Reluctant Lion. The guys who frequent that establishment are used to that sort of thing.”