Holly Martin Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Lou Allin
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enough. Though we drive our ponies now.”
“Cool. I have my own horse. Daisy’s fifteen.”
Many households with acreage kept horses, the benefits of a rural zone. Holly felt his enthusiasm blow through the detachment like a healthy breeze. Working with the community made a strong alliance. “Then you might like to try out for the Musical Ride.”
Ann’s face relaxed. With the distraction of the boy, Holly was enjoying the interaction. Had the tension been broken?
With talents like Ann’s, Holly could imagine the humiliation of a desk job. Was there another way she could contribute? The small team could start to build on its individual gifts.
“Pardon us for one more second, Sean. Official business.” While he put a finger on each of the Wanted posters on the bulletin board as he read the information, Holly pulled Ann aside. “This crystal meth connection. See what you can learn from your students.”
Ann reached for her jacket. Her large hand had strong, blunt nails. “Oh, come on. They’re too young.”
“So I hope, but they have brothers and sisters. And younger kids are always underfoot. They may have heard something.”
“That’s true.” Ann opened the door for Sean. “And for the best picture of drug use out here, call Sooke. Ask for Corporal Hoicks.”
Andrea Bonhomme passed her and settled into the front desk with a large thermos. She was tall and willowy, a retired loans officer. Her strawberry blonde hair was gathered in one gorgeous braid down her back. Like them, she wore traditional shirt and pants with a volunteer patch. Without people like Andrea to fill in the gaps, life would be much more difficult for the detachment.
As Holly learned when she called, Corporal Hoicks had worked with the Drug Unit in Victoria and had his finger on the pulse of the Capital Region. The man’s voice was ragged with concern. “Christ, yes, it’s a regular epidemic. And we haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet. Sorry for the lame joke. Meth is as bad as crack any day.” He explained that most people thought that the drug was limited to scabrous nether regions of urban areas. But even suburban housewives could become addicted. The unparalleled rush, hours of euphoria, the cheapness at ten dollars a “point,” or tenth of a gram, and the availability made a toxic and fatal combination.
“So it’s here after all. My case isn’t just an anomaly.” She felt an undercurrent shoot through her core, like turning over a mossy rock and finding a den of poisonous newts.
His laughter was grim and ironic. “It’s in Sooke, guaranteed. Didn’t take long to snake its way over from the street scene in Victoria. Their Specialized Youth Detox Centre has seen meth victims increase nearly six times in the last few years. Over seventy per cent of admissions are for meth. Average age, sixteen.”
“Average,” she said with a sigh. “That means...” Her voice trailed off as another thought entered her mind. “Could they be making it here? We’ve had our share of pot farms, private and otherwise.” B.C. bud, the legendary provincial product, made up a sizable percentage of the British Columbia economy. Taxing it might pay for health care.
“Brush up on your terminology. They ‘cook’ it. A whole new ball game for investigators. Get the guidelines report after that explosion in Vancouver? You gotta be careful as hell taking down a meth lab. Blew the house halfway to Whistler. Buddy of mine got second-degree burns busting down the door.”
“I was just posted here from way up north, Corporal. Pardon me for being naïve.”
He laughed in a friendly way. “We had a forum in Sooke last summer at the school. Showed that ‘Death by Jib’ video. Over fifty people came, parents mainly. Were their eyes ever opened. Should be a yearly experience, but if you overdo it, kids turn off.”
“I can understand that. Any other initiatives I should know about? Or is the ferry sailing away without me?”
“Our Staff Sergeant, Roger Plamondon, was instrumental in getting the Sooke Council to pass a bylaw to help authorities detect not only grow-ops but meth labs. Municipalities on the lower mainland anticipated us by a few years on that.”
“Good thing I asked. I assumed we’d be operating under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.” A sheen of sweat gathered on her brow. How close could she have come to looking like a fool?
“Getting search warrants under that relic could take weeks. The perps could be gone overnight.”
“Sounds like a great idea. Very proactive. I left here long before this drug scene. What’s your take on the area and its possibilities for ‘cooking’, as you put it?”
“I live in Saseenos, and I do volunteer work for the salmon hatcheries. It’s pretty wild country, despite the acreage in clear cuts. Five miles from town, all the better for an isolated lab. Abandoned farms, forests, ravines and twelve-foot brambles make a better deterrent than chainlink. All natural and very easy to camouflage from occasional helicopter flybys like the one that helped us find a cannabis patch on Farmer Road.”
“True. And out this way? Past Otter Point to Shirley and Jordan River?”
“In the interior, away from the coast road and tourist stuff, you might as well be in the northern bush. That’s the way they like it. Nothing can be seen from the road. Junkyard dogs. Keep a few chickens, goats or llamas to justify the fences. Maybe even call it an organic farm, the new rage. For a small place, high electrical use is a tip-off. But often they’re cheating and getting juice for free. That’s my next point. Fire’s one of the worst hazards with grow-ops. Bare wires going to the breaker box.”
His comprehensive e-mail attachment an hour later illustrated signs of a potential meth lab. She read it with interest, instantly suspicious. As opposed to the stereotypical, more staid citizens of Victoria, with their legendary Empress tea room and haggis on Robbie Burns’ day, people from the Western Communities were mavericks. Irate over creeping suburban bylaws regulating open burning, the average man would stand up in council and say, “It’s my damn land, and I’ll do what I want with it.” Her father had quipped that “Anything Goes” was the local anthem. Laid back, super casual in dress, a large proportion were hippies in their early sixties. They ate “slow food”, organic if possible, and knew their homeless by name. Many had artistic sidelines like woodworking, pottery, weaving and painting, which they advertised by the roadside along with jars of flowers for sale on the honour system. Holly didn’t see any of these gentle folk as possible lab rats, but that didn’t mean that someone evil couldn’t move in. The population doubled in the summer from tourists and had added a permanent two thousand in the last three years.
She thought of the trash angle of meth production. Recycling was free, and most property owners took advantage of the Blue Box program instead of trucking cans and bottles to the depot for nickels and dimes. Were the Capital Regional District trucks keeping an eye out for large quantities of discarded packaging, stained coffee filters, blister packs from cold remedy packages, lantern fuel containers, evidence of manufacturing? But what meth lab operator would locate on a well-travelled road? As for the other signs, strong odours similar to cat urine, ether and ammonia could be masked by burning wood as fall came on and fire warnings dropped to “green”. Windows blacked out with plastic or foil? If the place were unseen from the road, who would know?
Ann returned around three as school let out and the lone bus began ferrying home the children. “I hate to think any of those babies are doing drugs.” She sat down heavily, rubbing at her back. “Still, I guess twelve is the new twenty. Why do they want to grow up so fast? You’re only a kid once, then it’s game over. Pop stars are the exception to the rule.”
“I made copies of these for you and Chipper.” Holly handed Ann the meth info sheets. “Didn’t you say that Sean rides all over the area?”
“He has a paper route before school. Delivers by six, poor kid. But on weekends he loves to tour the back country on his mountain bike.”
“I know it sounds like