Tampered by Ross Pennie Page B

time. He and the ever-canny Gloria had some sort of exclusive arrangement to provide the prescriptions for everyone at Camelot. Vik was a broad-shouldered fellow with a large Slavic head. He never wore a hat, and Art reckoned that was probably because he couldn’t find one to fit. When Vik first started coming to the Lodge three years ago, shortly after Art moved in, he’d been jovial and charming, the steel cap on his front tooth flashing disarmingly when he smiled. Art hadn’t seen a smile on that face for months, and the steel-capped tooth now seemed like a crudely fashioned weapon lurking behind his lips.
    “He’s starting to put weight back on,” said Phyllis. “Lord knows, he needed to.” Vik had spent a few days in intensive care at Caledonian University Medical Centre at Christmastime. He’d had some sort of dangerous infection. But he’d stopped smiling long before taking sick.
    “He’s been through a lot, poor fellow,” said Betty.
    “His English is atrocious,” Phyllis said. “It’s a wonder he can read the names of your medicines with any sort of accuracy.”
    Phyllis was proud of the fact she didn’t need prescription medications and took only a baby aspirin once a day, which she purchased at Wal-Mart whenever she noticed the price was discounted.
    “He deserves our compassion,” Betty said. “Imagine losing almost your entire family to a hit-and-run driver and then starting your life over in a new country.”
    “It’s all very well for us to take in these Balkan refugees, but it’s another matter entirely to let them work at exacting jobs where . . .”
    Art had become adept at tuning Phyllis out when she got going on her soap box. Betty was right. Vik did deserve compassion. From the recent stories on the front page of the
Hamilton Spectator
, it was clear he’d been having a year filled with misery and irony. His son — the only survivor of the car crash that had killed Vik’s wife and daughters back in Yugoslavia — had been locked up for months in a Mexican prison, awaiting trial on drug charges. According to the
Spectator
, the young man claimed he was innocent, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the news stories left one wondering what a young fellow was doing in Juarez, a city known more for drug deals than the tourist trade. No one at Camelot, not even Phyllis, had dared ask Vik for clarification.
    No matter where the truth lay, Vik hadn’t been himself for a long time. Art hoped that hadn’t translated into any cock-ups with their medications. Except for Phyllis, almost everyone at Camelot took close to two dozen tablets a day, in a dizzying array of shapes, colours, and sizes. It was impossible to keep track of them all, especially when your eyesight wasn’t what it used to be.
    Art glanced around the room at his fellow residents, dozing and reading and chatting, trusting that people like Gus, Gloria, and Vik were taking care of them. He did his best to wave away a terrible thought by thumbing his notebook in search of a morale-rousing tune. But the thought kept coming back to him: if Vik, distracted by his son’s tribulations, put the wrong pills into their easy-open blister packs, they’d never know it.

CHAPTER 7
    At five p.m. on Thursday, Zol slid into his regular spot at the Nitty Gritty Café and caught the eyes of Colleen, Natasha, and Hamish, already sipping their lattes. It had been a long, painful wait — forty-eight hours — for the results of the Camelot samples they’d taken on Tuesday. Yesterday and today he’d thrown himself into the countless other matters stacked on his desk and in his email inbox, but found himself bracing at every knock at the door. He’d convinced himself the RCMP were on their way with orders from the Party’s faithful to give his investigation some muscle.
    “Thanks for coming, everyone,” he said. “I know you’ve all put in a long workday already. I’m pleased to say that Dr. Trinnock is still in full