Blood Red Summer: A Thriller (Jess Keeler Thrillers) by Eryk Pruitt

Author:Eryk Pruitt [Pruitt, Eryk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2024-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

ENNIS WORTHY

1984

To listen to them, it was a scourge. It had overtaken the streets of the urban centers, the schools. It had started up in New York, or Baltimore, infecting first the inner cities, then spreading, like a cancer down the east coast. Up from Miami. Atlanta.

Lake Castor.

“They call it crack.” Deputy Michael Howard clicked the remote control, and the carousel continued to the next slide. An image of chalky white lines of cocaine appeared on the screen across the room. Several of the deputies grumbled in the dark. “Crack is the street name for synthesized cocaine, and it has overtaken the Black communities of our great nation.”

Deputy Ennis Worthy shifted in his seat and checked his watch. On a normal day, he’d be studying for his law degree at the desk in the jailhouse, breaking occasionally to check on whatever inmates the county was accommodating. However, Sheriff Bobby McCoy insisted that all his deputies—new and old—should be brought up to date on current affairs.

“This cocaine is synthesized by adding baking soda, ammonia, or a handful of highly toxic cleaning products to the narcotic,” Deputy Howard intoned, “then cooking it into a solid. Then it is broken into chunks, which are known as rocks.”

Deputy Howard clicked the remote again, and a new slide clanked into place. The new image on the wall was of rocks of crack cocaine.

“The end result is a product that is fifty times more addictive than any other drug known to man.”

The next slide showed a graph with text claiming that twenty-five million Americans had tried cocaine, one-third of all college students would try it, and five thousand Americans would try it each day.

“This new, synthesized cocaine is cheaper, more addictive, and easier to obtain.” Deputy Howard clicked to the next slide, which showed several junkies hovering over a pipe in a dark alleyway. “Users are often spotted due to their lack of hygiene, humanity, and fear of consequence.”

The next slide showed the famous actor Mr. T pointing at the camera, with bold and colorful text declaring that he “pities the fool who tries crack cocaine.”

Worthy sighed. He counted the heads of the other lawmen present in the room and realized that no one was on patrol. No one was manning the jailhouse. No one was at the front desk answering any calls that might come in. Sheriff McCoy had demanded all present and accounted for—including Deputy David Gentry, who had been on sick leave due to a rolled ankle during a traffic stop—because the voters of Deeton County had been forced to fear this unseen scourge threatening their children.

“It’s in Lake Castor and will come down to Deeton to take our babies away,” a woman had declared at a public-safety meeting two weeks earlier. She had been in hysterics because of a special report aired on Nightline, followed by an article in the Herald that provided stats and quotes supporting the scare.

“If it ain’t crack babies,” Sheriff McCoy had muttered at the time, “then it will be AIDS or the nuclear bomb.

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