Chapter 47

Two days later, Kelloway was home from the hospital, but besides that, nothing was back to normal at the Powder home.
She felt stressed, all the time. The chemical had caused no apparent physical effect beyond the tight chest in the beginning, but the mental damage and emotional damage was surprisingly severe. Kelloway was alternatively depressed and frightened out of her mind.

Cst. Bearsto called that evening with news of the lab results. Rawle answered the phone and took notes.
“The mouthwash tested positive for a chemical. Didecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride,” the Kentville cop said, reading from a lab report over the phone. “Some other things too, but the one I said’s the main active ingredient in a concentrated germicidal disinfectant they use at the hospital, called Ultra Quat.”
“-Motherfuckers,” Rawle mumbled.
She read from a product label or something it sounded like, next: “Ultra Quat kills Herpes Simplex 1, Hepititus B and C… Listen to this: At a dilution of 4 ml per litre kills the Human Immunodeficiency Virus... Huh. It kills AIDS.”
Kelloway was watching Rawle’s face react from her safety zone on the couch, where she was covered in blankets and rubbing her nose with a tissue.
“What is it?” she said, sounding terrified.
“A housekeeping chemical. A disinfectant.”
Kelloway started to cry.
“I spoke to the manager of environmental services,” Cst. Bearsto continued, “and was informed that Ultra Quat is one of their more common products they use. There’s a jug of it, in concentrated form, in every housekeeping closet in the hospital. They use it in mop water, to clean rooms, equipment, beds, stretchers, everything. The hospital does have security cameras that may have some useful footage. I’m requesting them and I’ll be reviewing tapes of the time period. I already know unfortunately, there is no camera outside the ICU unit or near the break room where the poisoning happened.”
Hospital chemical, means hospital employee, Rawle thought. A co-worker did it.
The police constable went on to say that the disinfectant is green in colour and has a subdued odour, which made it disguise well in the mouthwash, until it was too late.
“What else is she saying?” Kelloway asked. “Will you ask her if she talked to Emily Gary from housekeeping?”
Rawle covered the receiver with his palm and tried to placate his nervous wife. “We just have to let her do her job.”


After the constable’s phone call, Kelloway said she wanted to quit the hospital. She couldn’t imagine ever going back, even if they caught the poisoner.
Every night since the poisoning, she’d gone upstairs to talk on the phone with her parents for two and three hours at a time, in the bedroom with the door shut, a muffled sobbing sound audible from downstairs.
“Where’s mooey?” Athan would ask.
“She’s resting, bud. She’s sleeping,” Rawle would say.
He couldn’t say this to anyone yet, but he was pretty sure Darroll Missions’ mother was responsible for the poisoning.
Somehow she’d found out where his wife worked and delivered payback. She had promised to teach him a lesson and the poisoning was the very next thing that happened.

Occasional harassing calls or lawsuit threats from politicians or petty crooks was one thing, Rawle could handle that. But here was an actual attack on his family, from someone unhinged… Someone who’s son was a minor figure in the drug trade, which meant some level of organized crime. It was frightening to think about.
He was going ballistic with the stress. There was no way he could sleep. Would they attack again? What did they want? A retraction? Money?
The next morning, he had the Gazette line removed from his home phone and attached to a cell phone instead, for all the good that might do.
He also changed his regular home number to an unlisted one, something he’d never felt the need to do in three years as a full-time reporter.
It wasn’t enough.