Page 61 of Forgotten Path
“Please tell me you didn’t eat that.” These were the first words out of Mirabelle Owens’ mouth, as she pointed to the remaining bite of a sandwich and handful of potato chips on the plate in front of Bodhi.
“I didn’t eat that. I wouldn’t even without your warning—I don’t eat seafood. Judith Lowell and her grandson had lunch at this table, and the dishes haven’t been cleared yet. I believe they both ordered the whelk and clam salad po’ boy.”
“Idiots,” she murmured.
“Pardon?”
She cast a furtive look around the still-bustling diner and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t have definitive proof, but I’m pretty sure the seafood in this town is killing the residents.”
He blinked at her. “So thereisa sudden unexplained death cluster?”
“No,” she spoke rapidly, the words tumbling out on top of one another. “That’s the frustrating thing. There’s no SUD. The deaths are spread out, not temporally related. And the causes of death seem utterly unrelated. Squamous cell carcinoma of the lungs in a forty-year-old nonsmoker. A fatal asthma attack in a previously healthy teenager. A precipitous cognitive decline in a senior citizen who walks out into traffic and is hit by a car and killed instantly. Just a few examples.”
“And you tied these three deaths back to the seafood?”
She huffed out a loud breath. “No. I couldn’t. As I’m sure you know, there have been no confirmed cases of human mortality linked to neurotoxic shellfish poisoning. Neither consumption nor inhalation of NSP.”
“But?”
“But the deceased all lived in Oyster Point. So I started asking questions. I interviewed their family members to see if there was a common thread. And every last one of them ate a lot of locally harvested shellfish—clams, in particular.”
“Not oysters? I mean, itisOyster Point.”
She shook her head. “No, most of the oysters in this area come from commercial oyster farms.”
“So?”
“So, they’re expensive. And the regulated shellfish harvesting areas are subject to shutdown notices whenever there’s a red tide.”
“The state shuts down the farms?”
“Right. When there’s aKarenia brevisbloom, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services monitors the toxin levels. When the brevetoxins exceed a safe level, FDACS orders the regulated shellfish beds to be closed to both commercial and recreational harvesters. But there have been NSP outbreaks during such closures—usually tourists or residents who weren’t aware of the closures. Although, if you’ve ever smelled a red tide, they couldn’t have been oblivious to the toxin. But thisisthe Gulf Coast. The same people who ignore evacuation orders and try to ride out hurricanes certainly also pooh-pooh the no harvesting orders because they grew up eating shellfish during red tides and survived—maybe they had some gastrointestinal distress once or twice, but it was no big deal.” She shook her head.
“And these people you mentioned died during a shutdown?”
“No, they didn’t. I know, I sound unhinged.”
“You don’t,” he assured her. “You’re trying to work loose a knot that nobody else has even noticed is tangled yet. Keep talking.”
She gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks. Ifeelunhinged, like I’m divorced from reality. I just keep thinking, most people die, their death certificate lists natural causes, and there’s no autopsy. I think the reason there haven’t been any confirmed human deaths from NSP isn’t because nobody’s died from it. It’s because we’re not looking for it.”
They shared a moment of silence. Bodhi didn’t know what she was thinking about, but his mind was on the people who’d lived and died along the Forgotten Coast, their deaths unnoticed by anyone but their closest friends and families.
“So, let’s walk through this,” he said after a few beats. “You’ve seen at least a handful of deaths from Oyster Point that made you suspect brevetoxin may have been involved. And Joel noticed a pattern of ill health in his patients that made him wonder if there was a sub-acute level of brevetoxin or other marine toxin that could cause chronic health problems.”
“On the phone, you mentioned four categories of illness.”
“When I reviewed his patient charts, it seemed that the chronic complaints could be sorted broadly into skin conditions, like recurrent rashes and non-healing wounds; cognitive and memory issues; respiratory problems, mainly asthma, but also repeated pneumonia and bronchitis infections; and a surprising number of lung cancer cases.” He paused and recalled Judy Lowell’s persistent cough. “Maybe add a dry cough to the respiratory problems.”
“A wheezing, raspy cough?”
“That’s right.”
She shook her head. “Aside from the asthma cases, the respiratory issues could all be early symptoms of squamous cell carcinoma. The cancer cluster might be bigger than Joel realized.”
“Has lung cancer been tied to any marine toxin?”
He eyed her, and she continued, “I found a study—only one—that found aerosolized brevetoxin metabolites bonded with DNA to form adducts in rat lung cells. Which, as you know …”
