TOXIN
ROBIN COOK
TOXIN
ROBIN COOK
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
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 Ban and Willy as did his dog, Shep. Shep had been barking until Ban 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?”