Ghost of a Chance by Bill Crider

Author:Bill Crider [Crider, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780312208899
Google: yWg2mQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0373263961
Barnesnoble: 0373263961
Goodreads: 485041
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 1999-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

20

METHAMPHETAMINE HAD NEVER REALLY BEEN A PROBLEM in Blacklin County, but Rhodes knew about it, all right. For years, the drug had been made mostly in rural areas because the labs for its manufacture created a powerful smell that was a dead giveaway. Meth labs were easy to find in cities, but in the open country, it was a different matter. They were easy to find if you got close to them, but first you had to get close.

The smell wasn’t the only drawback. The manufacturing process also created large amounts of toxic waste. In a city it could be poured into the storm drains and sewers, but that could also lead to getting caught. In the country, you could put it in fifty-five-gallon drums and stack them in a barn.

The fumes that resulted from cooking the meth could be poisonous. More than one meth lab had been shut down not because it was discovered by the law but because the amateur chemists inside it had all died from inhaling their product. It was easier to get good ventilation in the country.

And besides the smell, the toxic waste, and the fumes, there was something else: the labs had a tendency to blow up. City cops noticed things like explosions, even if they occurred in a supposedly abandoned warehouse.

All in all, the country was the best place to run a meth lab, but nowhere was safe. Blacklin County hadn’t had any large-scale labs, but meth was getting easier to make, which was a problem for cities, and also for places like Clearview.

Enterprising drug entrepreneurs had rediscovered what was being called the “Nazi cook,” a method of making amphetamines that had originated shortly before the beginning of the Second World War, with German scientists who’d been looking for a stimulant that soldiers could cook up themselves while out in the field.

The Nazi cook didn’t produce nearly as much meth in one batch as the other method, but it wasn’t nearly as dangerous, either. You could find the recipe if you had the time to search the Internet, and you could buy all the ingredients at your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart. You could make up a small batch in coffee cups if you wanted to, and you could do it in a couple of hours. Less, if you knew what you were doing.

The old labs had required an organization, but they could turn out around a hundred and fifty pounds of the drug in one cooking.

The Nazi method required next to no organization at all. One person could do it. Two people like Rapper and Nellie could make a lot of money at it, even if they got only two pounds from a cooking. They could cut that two pounds to make it ten pounds and get ten thousand dollars for it. Maybe more, if they sold it in small lots.

Rhodes didn’t have any doubt at all that the two bikers were in Blacklin County to sell drugs, and he figured that their drug of choice this time was methamphetamine.

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