Freya pulled up alongside a battered Monte Carlo so that the driver’s side windows were next to each other, cop style. She was at a trailhead in Shawnee National Forest, twenty minutes outside Money Creek. The parking lot was empty. Not many people went hiking in twenty-degree weather. She drove her own Jeep Wrangler rather than an official state police vehicle.
“Tell me why this meth lab is different from any of the others,” she said without preamble to Jason, her confidential informant. Her clothes looked like those of a tactical officer rather than a detective—jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, down jacket, shit kicker boots, and a belt with handcuffs, radio, and her weapon.
“Because I think the guy cooking there knows something about the bigger players. His lab is totally upgraded from the one I first saw him operate in.” Jason was young, probably no more than twenty-one, unnaturally thin, his past love affair with crystal meth still etched into his scarred face and gnarly teeth.
Freya’s partner, Ben, leaned over from the passenger seat. “What’s the guy’s name?”
“He goes by Morgan. I don’t know if that’s his last name or what.”
“What does Morgan have to say about the change?”
Jason shrugged. “Not much. When I asked him about it he kind of blew me off and said it was time he cleaned things up. I think someone’s behind it. There’s another lab I’ve heard of that recently got upgraded.”
“We’ll follow up on that,” Freya said. “But for now, where’s Morgan’s lab?”
“It’s really hard to find. I committed it to memory the time I went out there, so I’ll have to take you there myself.”
She looked at Ben, who raised an eyebrow. She turned back to Jason. “It’s a risk having you with us. We don’t want anyone out there to see you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll stay in the car.”
An old Mazda 3 pulled into the parking lot with a couple of teenagers on board. They quickly left when they saw the cars in cop formation.
“How often is Morgan out there?” she said.
“A lot. He’s cooking a ton, which makes me think he has a big new customer.”
“We’ll go tonight. Meet us back here at eight.”
Being a detective with the Illinois State Police was Freya’s dream job, but it had lots of problems. She loved police work—the hunt for a perpetrator, the piecing together of evidence, the thrill of a good arrest. She didn’t like the long periods of time she spent away from home when the brass assigned her cases in other parts of the state. She missed her friends in Bloomington. She’d had to give away her cat because of her travel schedule. And worst of all, most girlfriends wouldn’t put up with it. But assignment to the state’s new drug task force was a plum. Drug traffic had grown sharply in the area surrounding Money Creek. They’d made little progress so far identifying anyone up the food chain in rural drug distribution, assuming there was any food chain to begin with. Anyone who’d managed to get through high school chemistry could pull instructions for making methamphetamine off the internet and start cooking. If they sold their own product there was no one they were reporting to, no higher-ups for the police to train their focus on. But Jason had heard talk about some men who were taking over the market and inching smaller players out of the game. That was her target.
Four hours later, with a search warrant in hand, Freya and Ben followed Jason’s directions to the meth lab, ten miles out of town. The route was labyrinthine, a series of increasingly smaller, unpaved roads through vast cornfields. They were followed closely by two sheriff’s cruisers and all had turned their lights off. A long dirt driveway led to a clearing with a tiny farmhouse and an RV on blocks next to it. The house was dark and looked uninhabited, but lights glowed from the RV’s windows.
They got quietly out of the car, though the music pumping from the trailer was so loud there was no risk of being heard. Four deputies piled out of the cruisers behind them. One leaned in to push Jason down in the back seat, out of sight. Freya motioned to two deputies to cover the back side, while the other two stood with them. One carried a battering ram.
“Ben and I will go in first, you two follow us. Be sharp. There may be multiple people inside and they’re probably armed.” She looked at Ben, who nodded and drew his weapon. Freya’s was already in her hand. She never would admit it, but she was always afraid of blind entries. Who wouldn’t be? So much could go wrong.
They moved to the trailer door. The deputy with the battering ram climbed the short staircase, Ben and then Freya right behind him. At Ben’s signal the deputy swung the ram at the flimsy door, which shattered on impact. He stepped out of the way and Ben stepped through the door and to his right. Freya went to the left, their guns trained on both ends of the trailer.
“Police!” Ben screamed, but he might as well have held his breath. The pulsating music was many times louder inside. Freya cleared her end and turned to Ben, who had his gun trained on a pudgy young man at the kitchen counter. The air smelled of chemicals. He sensed their presence and turned just as Freya shut off the boom box.
“What the fuck,” the man said, reaching behind his back as if to retrieve a weapon. Ben’s shot whizzed by his head a comfortable foot to the left of him. Uncomfortable if you’re the one being shot at. He screamed and dropped to his knees, his hands over his head.
“This is the Illinois State Police. Keep your hands where they are,” Freya shouted.
“Are you known as Morgan?” Ben said. He’d positioned himself so he was between Morgan and Freya.
“That’s my name.”
“You’re under arrest on drug manufacturing charges,” Freya said. She looked at a deputy. “You do the honors, okay?” The deputy stepped forward and cuffed him, reading him his rights. Then he hustled him out, leaving Ben and Freya alone in the RV. They would question him later at the sheriff’s department.
They looked around and saw a pristine space. The countertops in the small kitchen shone as if they were granite, though she couldn’t conceive of granite countertops in a meth lab. Carefully labeled containers of chemicals, glassware, and a box of latex gloves sat neatly on top. What looked like clean butchers’ aprons hung by a hook in the wall. Other supplies were neatly stacked at the far end of the trailer.
“It looks more like a chemistry class than the labs we’re used to,” she said. “Something’s going on. I don’t see this as self-initiated by the average cooker.” Most labs they found were explosions ready to happen.
They left the trailer in the hands of the deputies to process the scene. They’d bring in specialists in hazmat suits to manage the chemicals and dismantle the lab. When they got to Freya’s Jeep they saw one of the deputies leaning against it. Jason was plainly visible in the back seat.
“You’ve got a problem,” the deputy said. “Your genius CI was sitting in full view of the guy we marched out of here. I think his cover’s blown.”
Freya yanked open the back door and grabbed Jason by the collar. “What the fuck did you just do?”
Jason pulled Freya’s hand from his shirt. “I was getting cramps squished on the floor. I was going to lay down on the back seat when I saw who you were bringing out of there. It’s Morgan, man. And he saw me, no doubt.”
“I should make you walk back to town.” She turned in disgust and got into the Jeep. She wanted to kick something. Ben got in and looked at her warily. “Let’s go back to Money Creek and talk to Morgan. Maybe we’ll be lucky and get information worth losing a CI over.”
* * *
Early the next morning, Ben and Freya stared at each other across the two desks pushed together in their tiny office. They shared temporary quarters at the Timson County Sheriff’s Department, in cooperation with the state police.
“Should we debrief about last night?” Ben said.
“We can sum it up in three words—we fucked up.” Freya opened the coffee Ben had brought in from Bean There. He reached into a bag and passed her a bagel and cream cheese.
“We should have kept a deputy on Jason.” He took a huge bite out of his bagel.
She sometimes wearied of the Sisyphean task they had before them. For every bit of progress they made there was a problem that slowed it down. She put her boots on top of her desk and bit into her bagel as if it were hardtack, her mood sour.
“Let’s go to the jail and talk to Morgan again. We didn’t get much out of him last night.” She stuffed the rest of the bagel in her mouth and followed Ben out the door. They walked across the large open room that held desks for deputies to the front of the sheriff’s department. As they entered the hall, Freya saw Joanne Reid talking with a deputy at the reception desk. Her legs were firmly planted, her naturally athletic figure starting to take on body builder proportions. Freya knew her ambition was to be a competitive body builder, and she wasn’t far from it. She’d been dating Jo for a few months, but she didn’t want to talk to her while she was on the job. Now it was too late to escape. Jo turned her head and broke into a hundred-watt smile when she saw her. They’d had plans the night before that Freya canceled because of the raid. It was the third time in a row she’d canceled plans with her. Jo walked across the lobby to intercept them.
“How’d it go last night?” she said.
“Sorry I had to cancel dinner,” Freya said. “Can I call you later? We’re on our way to a thing here.”
Jo’s smile faded. “Sure. I’ll talk to you later.” Ben was amused, as if he were watching kittens play. They left Jo standing in the middle of the room and made their way to the jail entrance and through the door.
“I don’t know why she puts up with you,” Ben said.
“Because I’m worth it, of course,” she said, smiling brightly. “And she does what anyone dumb enough to date a cop always fails to do. She practices acceptance. What else can you do?”
“You can bitch a lot, which has been my experience.”
“Jo’s not like that.”
Ben stopped in the jail reception room. “How serious do you think this is with her?”
Freya looked up at him. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’d say I simply don’t know. The jury’s still out.”
They checked in at jail reception and went to talk to Morgan a second time, pushing the rock a little up the mountain one more time.