Before I Wake (37 page)

Nathan grinned. “I’ll be okay. I’m one of the few that knows what may be coming. I’ve been absorbing this for a few days now. I’m ready for whatever it is we get handed. But thanks for the offer. It was novel.”

She smiled. “Anything I can do, please, Nathan, ask. I prefer to be useful.”

“You know I will.”

He stepped out of her office to dump the trash and find Bruce.

* * *

When he wanted to kill a lady, he managed to miss. He stewed about that as he measured liquid into an oversized measuring cup. He’d wanted to kill the lady but also not give them enough of the drug to test after the fact to figure out what his formulation was. He’d guessed wrong on the amount to use. That was his mistake.

He added the liquid slowly to the kettle on the old stove, letting it mix into the warm water at a steady flow. He thought about trying again but decided he’d better pass on that idea. Three deaths and one attempt had occurred without even a close call for being discovered. A fifth might be pressing his luck.

The formula was right. They’d tried ten more samples across other area towns without any adverse reactions, just the pleasant euphoric high promised to their willing testers. Free drugs did find willing partakers, he reflected cynically. The only open question now was how many doses over what period of time made a user fully addicted to the product. If his assumptions were correct, it was so highly addictive that three to five uses would be enough to create a craving which could be filled in no other way. The money to be made was always in the addiction.

He looked at his watch and the date in the corner. The formula was figured out. Now he was just in a race against time to get enough prepared before his meeting with Devon to meet his backer’s expectations for enough to do an initial marketing trial. If Devon liked the feedback he got, they would be in business. The manufacturing would be small scale at first, and he’d handle that himself to ensure the quality control until the product was established on the street and the price was rising. After that—the formula itself would be worth a serious seven-figure purchase price, and Devon could own it outright. His backer was in a much better position to deal with the bulk manufacturing problems. He’d get out of this business a wealthy man, which was what he had always planned.

He listened to the kettle begin to boil inside and turned down the heat to no more than steam the core ingredients together. He turned to begin work on the second-stage powder.

He saw the kid working on the packaging reach for a brown bottle. “No! Not that one. The flask of yellow liquid next to it.” The forming agent wasn’t particularly dangerous unless you dumped in a flask with some hydrochloric acid, and then the angels took over and you got to explain why your body was in bits and pieces. “Why don’t you just not touch anything.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. You also said you’d had some chemistry courses.”

“If you had some of this labeled or in proper containers . . .” The young man let his words fade away.

How his partners had thought bringing in this kid to help with the packaging would be a help rather than a hindrance, he did not know. The extra hands out here were needed, and he understood why his partners were not free to help tonight given the alibis they had to maintain—but still, this was an unworkable reality. The kid might be their meth production helper, but it wasn’t the same as doing this kind of work.

He turned down the burner heat under the ten gallon soup pot. “Come over here and take this pot, set it outside in the snow to cool down.”

The young man picked up pot pads and carried the smelly pot outside.

He moved to the dried powder bench and began the laborious job of adding the suspension liquid so the drug would have enough volume it could be measured into controllable doses as it was formed.

By the time he measured components, heated them together, cooled it, dried it, pounded it to powder, and then resuspended the product in its suspension medium to be able to measure it into the final product, this job became so laborious that there was a reason few cooks could be found willing to do the work.

The young man didn’t return.

When shouts for him didn’t get an answer, he angrily tugged off his gloves and face mask and went toward the cabin door. The kid wasn’t going to try to walk miles home from here. He was probably out there pouting.

The young man had walked out of the cabin with the pot, managed to take about eight steps, collapsed to one knee and set down the pot, and then went down hard.

It chilled him for a moment to see the way the kid had just fallen, but then the anger came. Touching the body would just leave more evidence to find. He picked up the cooling pot, thankful it hadn’t tipped, and he moved it to a thicker snow drift to keep cooling.

The list of bad breaks on this job just kept growing. He’d told the kid to wear a mask for a reason.

He had enough components cooked that he could do the final forming and wrapping at his home. There was more than enough counter space there, and quiet. But he’d have to rush it, get the packaging done, and get himself out of this county entirely in twenty-four hours. Devon would understand the need for setting up at another location; as good as this one was, it had still lasted years longer than most labs ever had.

He stepped around the body and ignored the melting snow around it. He went back to finish his work for the night.

He could blow up the cabin easily enough, but that would just make its existence easier to discover, and there was no need to attract the attention. It would likely be days before the kid was reported missing and many more after that before someone happened onto this place. He’d be long gone by then. Long gone.

By the time the kettle was ready to pour he had his plans made for the night. The notebooks were outdated, and most of the chemicals stored here were unused since the millennium disaster. His prints were nowhere to be found for he never came here without gloves. If his partners’ prints were around to find—well, someone had to be connected to this place or the cops would keep looking. Their carelessness wasn’t his concern.

If they were caught—they knew well what would happen if they tried to exchange his name for a lesser deal with authorities. Devon would deal with that for him.

The cops would eventually match him to be Nella’s guest, for he hadn’t tried to remove the fact he had been at her home, but his alibi for the time of her death would withstand the scrutiny. He worried about his move away from the town being the red flag that gave him away as the man they hunted, but he’d been setting down markers for his departure for long enough now; he thought it would be accepted as the natural course of things.

He finished his work for the night. He loaded his truck. He took the cooled pot with him on the last trip. It felt odd carrying a pot of powder that would translate into more money than he had ever seen in his life. He’d been dreaming about this payday for years.

He started his truck and kicked up the heater. He studied the cabin in the light cast by the truck headlights. It looked like less now than when he had first seen it years before. But it still felt a bit sad parting with what he had built here. A season of his life was ending this next week.

He backed out on the long narrow road and headed home.

37

“You can’t play music aimed at the tile plant at that decibel, even as free speech,” Nathan stressed for the third time Thursday morning, trying to make his point to the grandson of Mark Yates. Families of the union members were on the strike line today, and the teenagers were getting creative.

“This is arbitrary harassment,” the teen protested. “So I can’t play it at twelve, then I’ll play it at seven.”

Nathan put his hand on the volume control. “You’ll play it at three, if you play it at all.” He had never felt less like a diplomat than he did today. “Give it a rest, Greg. You’ve made your point. As interesting a protest as this is, they can’t even hear it inside the tile plant when the mixers are running.”

More strikebreakers had been sent in today. The tile-plant guys were getting a few trucks in and out of the back gate, hauling finished shipments. Product was being made today, and product was being shipped. It was taking Nathan sixteen officers just to keep the two sides separated so the trucks were able to go out without slashed tires or smashed windows. He didn’t need this noise adding to the stress.

His pager went off.

“Leave it low, or I’ll be pulling the plug permanently. Understood?”

Greg didn’t answer him, but at least he didn’t flagrantly flip the volume dial back up as Nathan stepped away.

Nathan walked away from the union line, read off the number on the urgent page, and called back on a secure channel. “Go ahead, Will.”

He heard the sound that was someone throwing up.

“Will?”

“Sorry. Can’t believe what I just walked into. I was trailing a bleeding deer Taylor clipped on the highway and got more than I bargained for.”

He coughed again and then his voice came back stronger. “It looks like I found our clandestine drug lab, Nathan. There’s a kid out there, dead in the snow, about ten feet from the front door of the cabin.”

“Where?”

“Peterson’s former place, that hunting shack he built when he got out of the service. We’ll need the HazMat team out here. This kid made a mistake and got himself killed. No telling what is left half made inside.”

“A young kid—a meth lab or something more upscale?”

“I’m guessing he’s sixteen. But he’s probably not working this place alone. I’ve got lots of vehicle tracks in and out of here since the snow began to pack on the ground last month. A glance through the cabin door confirmed no more bodies, and that’s as far as I went. It’s a lot more than a hot plate inside. I’ve backed off.”

“I’m on the way. I’ll bring the guys we need to work the scene. Keep it quiet, Will. We need to use whatever we can find at that scene to our advantage before word gets out we found it.”

“Agreed.”

* * *

Nathan felt a bit sick at the turn this day had taken. He’d been waiting for a break in the case, but he had never wanted this. Not a dead kid. He watched the best trained HazMat person the county had suit up in protective gear. The former cop now worked full-time with the fire department.

“Let’s get a good half mile around this place cordoned off so we don’t get downwind deaths. Whatever this concoction is, we know it kills fast and easy,” Charles said.

“We’ve already got roads blocked,” Nathan assured him. “We’re calling it a gas truck accident scene on an icy road. That will work for a couple hours.”

“Good. You think this might be your designer drug guy’s place?”

“It’s probably just the meth lab the county task force has been hearing rumors about, but I want to know if it looks like more than that inside. If this is our guy, he was probably here when this accident happened, he’s already running, and we’ve got to get on his trail in the next couple hours if we are going to have any hope of catching him.”

“I can understand the need for speed.” Charles checked his breathing apparatus. He wouldn’t be breathing the air inside that cabin until he knew what was floating around.

“You and Will, get suited up. The van has more protective suits. If it looks safe enough I can point you where to stand and what to touch; I’ll get you a look inside before we start neutralizing the place.”

“Thank you.”

“How do you want to handle the body?”

Nathan hated this part of the job. “It doesn’t make sense to put guys in danger documenting the scene and preparing the body to be moved until the cabin is dealt with. If you can clear Will and I to come up to the cabin, we’ll bring a tarp with us to cover the body. If it’s not safe to move him until tomorrow, that’s the reality we live with. If we can find any ID on him or take his fingerprints, we’ll let that be enough for now.”

“As awful as that is on the deceased, it’s the right answer. The danger is going to come not only from what he was working with and left half created in there, but the cleanup we try to do. If we pick up the wrong bottle or make the wrong assumption about what is in a pot, the place could explode around us. I’d rather not have cops working a few feet from the cabin door if something like that goes wrong.”

“You don’t work a simple job.”

Charles gave a grimace. “Some of the stuff you find in these labs—it’s a wonder more don’t explode under their own fumes.”

He finished his preparations, put the digital camera he would use into his front pocket, and then tested his radio. “Find somewhere comfortable to sit. I’ll be a while.”

Nathan watched as the man began the long walk toward the cabin down the snowy path of a road, a solitary man in a gray body suit, the breathing mask being slid on a good fifty yards before he reached the cabin.

“This way, officers.” Charles’s chief assistant pointed them toward the van.

“Will, are you up for this?” Nathan asked.

“I’ve done my throwing up for this case. I’m good for this. Besides, who else do you want to volunteer for it?”

“True. Noland would say yes.”

“He needs some more real-life training in caution first. You get blown up as sheriff, I end up being promoted into your job. Given that thought, I’d rather be beside you when the tragedy happens.”

Nathan smiled but understood. “I appreciate you watching my back. I always have.”

“Someone’s got to. This is going to be our guy, Nathan. I can feel it in my bones.”

“I hope you’re right. We’re going to get the guy one way or another. Doing it today would be particularly sweet.”

The suit was hot and uncomfortable and Nathan figured out after the first quarter hour that the only comfortable way to survive in one was to lean against the van and let the weight of the suit sag into his boots. He patiently waited, hearing a few occasional words over the radio from Charles to his assistant about neutralizing agents he needed assembled from the stock in the van.

Several officers on the perimeter of this, more officers sitting on the tile plant, and Nathan knew he was now totally at capacity. The next shoe that dropped anywhere in Justice and he was calling Luke to send his officers and the state guys to send theirs. They were finally at the line it was no long something to consider, but something he would have to do.