Cash nodded and left the office before he lost control. He felt like he had a bad case of the sniffles at the back of his sinuses. He sniffed hard. He didn’t think he could possibly sit in the auditorium to hear Austin read all of that in public. He’d embarrass the shit out of himself by crying. Aw hell, of course he would stay. For sure.
Without warning, kids poured out of classrooms and headed toward the auditorium.
Cash melded into the crowd. He’d wrangled his emotions to a subdued awe by the time he found the seat reserved for him in the front row, next to Shannon.
Ten minutes later, Principal Hunt called the assembly to order. He introduced Shannon and she walked up onto the stage.
“Hi, everyone. My name is Shannon Wilson and I’m a DEA Special Agent.”
After applause, she started her message.
“I’m going to address the parents here first.”
A lot of parents had turned out for the assembly. Plenty of fathers and lots of mothers in cowboy hats sat with their children. They reflected the broader community of ranchers around Ordinary, where the women were as likely to pull calves and help with the branding as wipe children’s noses and do laundry.
“There is a lot of temptation in society these days,” Shannon said. “Your children are bombarded by it, here at school, among their peers, and especially on the internet.”
She spoke with confidence despite the size of the crowd. Pride swelled in him.
“There’s one place, though, that can be very dangerous for teens. It’s a place that you can control. Your home.”
Murmurs spread through the audience.
“After marijuana, the most abused drugs are prescription drugs, and they are being used by teenagers aged twelve to seventeen. That’s right, I said as young as twelve.”
More murmurs.
“Check out your medicine cabinet. Is there Vicodin for pain? Valium for panic attacks? Cough syrup for colds and allergies? If you are not actively taking these and they are sitting available in your home, your child might already be sampling them. Once you are finished with a medication, flush any leftovers. Better yet, take them to your local pharmacy. They can dispose of them safely, so they don’t harm the environment.”
Shannon looked out across the audience. “Aerosol spray cans. Cleaning fluids. Paint cans in the garage. All of these are a potential hazard to any young child. I’m here to tell you they can also be a hazard to your teenager if he decides to experiment with getting high.”
Shannon kept the message serious. Cash turned and glimpsed a lot of nodding heads from the parents.
“Principal Hunt should have provided your children with a handout this morning. If you don’t receive it this evening when your child comes home from school, contact Mr. Hunt. This handout will help you to identify drug paraphernalia. You’ll be surprised that it isn’t all stuff picked up from drug dealers. A lot of it is available in a normal home.
“A felt-tip marker can be turned into a drug pipe. A lipstick container can be used as a drug pipe.”
“So, what are you saying?” a male voice called out from the fourth row. “We can’t use felt markers anymore for our schoolwork?”
“Yeah,” a female called out. “And I can’t use lipstick or lip gloss?”
“Of course you can use all of those. But there is a difference between how these harmless items look when being used as drug paraphernalia and how they look for their intended purposes.”
Cash heard a young voice make a snide remark, but didn’t catch the words.
Shannon let it all slide off her back.
“Students, I know you don’t like me at this moment for telling your parents to distrust you. For you, I’ve brought a slide show. Austin, dim the lights and start the show for me, okay?”
She’d enlisted Austin’s help? Good for her. A nice way to make him feel special.
The room went dark and a white screen descended from the ceiling to the stage.
For the next ten minutes, no one so much as stirred in their seat. Across the screen flashed photographs, two at a time. Each pair was a before and after photo. Under the first photo was the subject’s age before starting drugs. Under the other was the person’s current age.
The differences were astounding. In slide after slide, young vibrant men and women became haggard, prematurely old, homely. They looked like they’d given up on life.
The images were stark and effective.
Throughout it all, Shannon didn’t say a word. What was there to say? The photos said everything.
When it ended, Austin turned the lights back on.
“Before you think that these images were taken many years apart, I’d like to disabuse you of that idea. For most, this transformation took only a couple of years. In the last pair of slides, it took only one year to turn beautiful young Rachel into a ghost of herself.
“One last thing. My brother is in a hospital in Billings in coma.” She cleared her throat. “He suffered an overdose when he took crystal meth. He picked it up here in Ordinary. He isn’t expected to live.”
Gasps spread through the audience.
“If any of you hear even a whisper about this drug in this area, please contact Sheriff Kavenagh. We need to get this dangerous drug off your streets. Look at the people sitting around you, your parents, your schoolmates, your best friends and siblings. Any one of them could wind up like my brother Tom without your help.”
When she left the stage, she received a round of applause.
Cash’s heart swelled. She deserved it. She might have saved a young life or two today.
Next, the finalists in the writing contest read their work. Austin wore a pair of brand new dark jeans still creased from the store’s hanger and a long-sleeved T-shirt sporting fold marks.
Where had the money for new clothes come from?
Austin read the essay and Cash covered his mouth so he wouldn’t blubber like a baby in front of the audience. He should have sat in the back row.
He felt Shannon watching him but refused to look at her.
Austin won the contest—a $100 Barnes & Noble gift card.
The lunch bell rang through the school and the assembly ended.
He and Shannon walked down the aisle together, but before they reached the exit, she was surrounded by parents with questions.
A couple of students hovered nearby and Cash heard one ask, “How do you become a DEA agent?”
He left the auditorium. As he traversed the halls toward the front door and the parking lot, a screaming, crushing swarm surrounded him.
“Hey, Officer Kavenagh, you gonna arrest me? I forgot my homework today.” Raucous laughter followed Stephen Brewster’s remark.
“No, Steve, not today.”
Cash reveled in the attention and the camaraderie. Maybe he should have been a teacher. He shook his head. Naw. He was born to be a cop.
Fourteen-year-old Melody Arthurs brushed past him, too close for comfort, with the sensuality and maturity of a thirty-year-old. That girl was heading down a one-way street with no exit. Any day now, Cash expected her to crash into a brick wall called trouble. If she wasn’t pregnant by the time she turned sixteen, he’d be amazed. He’d already had a talk with her mother, but his warnings had fallen on deaf ears. In this case, the precocious apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.
Cash spotted Austin at the same moment Melody did. She sidled up to him with her too-short skirt peeking out from under the puffy pink ski jacket.
“Hey, Austin, wanna come to my house tonight?” she asked. When she leaned in close to finish the question, her breast touched Austin’s arm. He jerked away and mumbled, “No thanks.” Obviously, he hadn’t developed an interest in girls yet, but they clearly had an interest in him.
He was a good-looking kid.
“Go get some lunch, Melody,” Cash said, “and quit robbing the cradle.”
Melody huffed and flounced away. She latched onto tall, muscular Mike Forster, who was two years older than her. He’d failed a couple of grades. He handed her a cigarette, then rested one hand on her rump. Bingo. Melody was about to start her one-way slide. Thank God it wouldn’t be with Austin.
“Hey, Forster, you know better,” Cash called. “Take it off school property.” The cigarettes and the sex.
Forster squinted through a cloud of exhaled smoke, then shrugged and pulled Melody in the direction of Main Street and the diner. Cash caught sight of Austin in the parking lot.
“Come over here a minute,” he told Austin.
They walked to Cash’s cruiser, Austin silent, Cash still churning with the emotions Austin’s essay had stirred.
“Thanks for what you wrote,” Cash said, staring off into the distance.
Austin shrugged and looked off into the distance, too.
Cash turned to him. “It was great.”
Austin’s gaze shot to Cash’s face, with a brief flash of puppy adoration he quickly hid. “Yeah?” The boy’s tone was neutral, careful. He swallowed. “Did you like it?”
“What you said about me?” Cash said. “Yeah. I liked it. A lot.”
A thought occurred to him. “Where’s your mom?”
“She said she couldn’t come ’cause she wasn’t feeling well.”
“We need to get your mom to a doctor.”
“I know. I’m worried about her. I tried talking to her, but she won’t go.”
Cash squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll help you figure this out.”
Austin’s frown eased but he shivered in a thin fall coat. “Where’s the winter jacket I bought you?”
Austin shrugged and refused to return his look.
A second later, Cash remembered something he had seen earlier. Steve Brewster wearing the same jacket he had bought for Austin. He was pretty sure he’d picked up the only one in town.
“How come Steve has your jacket?”
Austin’s brows shot up. He tried to deke around Cash, but Cash gripped his sleeve and dragged him back.
“Answer me, Austin.” He shook him, lightly. “Talk to me.”
Austin stared at the ground.
“Did you sell it to him?” He watched a guilty flush climb Austin’s cheeks. “Cripes, Austin, if you need money so badly, come to me.”
Austin shrugged. “I wanted new clothes ’cause I had to stand up onstage today.”
“Oh.” Cash understood that.
He slipped a ten out of his wallet and slid it into Austin’s pocket. “Go get yourself some lunch.”
“’Kay. Thanks.” Austin hunched his shoulders and trudged away.
Cash waited until Shannon finished running the gauntlet of parents with questions.
Brad and Mary Lou McCloskey stopped to question Shannon. Their oldest boy went to this school.
Mary Lou didn’t look happy. Strange. She was usually so perky and sweet, but she wasn’t involved in the conversation at all. In fact, it looked like she was surreptitiously tugging Brad’s hand so she could leave.
Finally, Shannon joined him outside at the front of the school.
“Do you want to go for lunch?” he asked.
“Sure, then I need to head home to do some research.”
“What kind of research?”
She glanced around them then said in a quiet voice, “On Brad’s bank accounts. I want to see if there have been large amounts deposited lately.”
“Good thinking. He wouldn’t be likely to put it in the local bank, would he?”
“No, but I can look farther afield.”
“Good idea.”
Before heading to the restaurant, Cash searched out Steve Brewster, gave him the forty bucks he’d paid Austin for the jacket and threw it into his truck to give to Austin later.
* * *
MARY LOU DUMPED a bunch of containers and garbage onto the drug-making detritus already at the back of her parents’ land.
Her hands shook.
How could she have been so stupid that she started a drug manufacturing business? In her greed and her desire to get away from Brad with a sizable nest egg, she’d completely ignored how dangerous the drug was, what it did to people.
Brad had come home for lunch today and had wanted to have sex afterward, but she’d felt sick with guilt. She’d sent him back to work.
Yesterday’s school assembly had sickened her. The tuna salad sandwich she’d had for lunch today tried to come back up. She swallowed hard.
Tears threatened. She had to stop now. She’d already made good money and would be able to leave Brad soon.
She sank onto her knees and covered her face with her hands.
“I don’t want to leave Brad,” she wailed to the empty woods. She’d fallen back in love with him. She would have liked nothing better than to have gone up to their bedroom after lunch to love the daylights out of him.
She stalked back to the RV.
She had to close down the lab. If she had her way, she would obliterate it. But how? How did one get rid of a meth lab once it was already set up? These chemicals were so toxic.
She’d polluted the RV. Worse, she’d polluted this beautiful piece of land.
Even the fact that her parents had given it to Brad instead of to her no longer mattered.
She wanted her old life back, but with the new relationship with her husband. He would support her in a career. She knew it. Brad wanted what was best for her. She understood that now, felt it in her soul. He would encourage her while she went back to school to learn new skills. Maybe she could become a science teacher. That would be good and positive, not shameful like…like…drug manufacturing.
What had she been thinking? She’d been so insanely angry with Brad she’d done what she thought had to be done, but there had been alternatives. She just hadn’t seen them.
And now she had this awful mess to clean up.
For pity’s sake, when she’d figured out about Brad and Connie, when she’d been poisonously angry with her husband, why hadn’t she just had an affair with someone in the county rather than starting on this stupid, stupid caper of making drugs?
Yes, she’d made amazing money. Yes, she’d enjoyed having money. Yes, she could have independence if she wanted it.
She didn’t.
She wanted her home life and her new deeper relationship with her husband and a legitimate career.
She wanted this business to be done and gone.
People would take anything for a high and the stuff had sold so fast she’d made a fortune. The danger, the money, it had all been seductive.
But someone had nearly died, had overdosed, might still die. On her stuff, and so close to home. Janey Wilson’s brother. The guilt was killing her.
She’d never meant for anyone to get hurt, let alone die. She’d just wanted money of her own. And she’d thought she was being so clever.
She needed to go home to Brad and her sweet boys, and find a way to atone for what she’d done that was so, so wrong.
Disgusted with herself, she swiped her arm across the table, sending drugs and beakers and jars flying.
As she stepped through the door to drive home to her husband and children, the RV exploded.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“CASH, YOU gotta come over.” Austin sounded terrified.
Cash jumped out of his office chair and grabbed his coat. Whatever was going on with Austin, he needed help. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“I’m at home. I can’t get my mom to wake up. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
“I’ll be right there.”
>
On the way to his truck, he called an ambulance and directed them to Connie’s trailer.
Austin waited for him at the trailer’s front door.
“She’s on the sofa.” The kid was barely holding himself together, and Cash cursed the fates yet again that Austin had so much responsibility so early in life.
Cash knelt on the floor in front of Austin’s mother.
“Damn it, Connie,” he whispered, shaking her. Now that he was here and could see she was tripping really badly, his anger dissolved, replaced by pity.
She opened her eyes.
“Cash?” Austin stood behind him. “What’s wrong with her?”
Connie’s eyes were dilated and she was crying. “She isn’t sick, Austin. She’s stoned.”
She scratched at her skin, picked at her arms. “Get them out,” she slurred.
“What, Connie?”
“The bugs under my skin.” She scratched at skin that was already bleeding and Cash caught her hands to stop her. She whimpered, “They crawled inside me and I can’t get them out.”
The smell of sweat flowing from her was acrid. Her hair was dry. Her lips were dry.
“What did you take, Connie?” Cash asked.
“Nothing,” she yelled.
“Connie, come on. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
She cried again and whimpered, “Don’t hate me.”
Her mood changes… Worse than dealing with an alcoholic.
“I won’t, Connie.” He struggled to moderate his tone when all he felt was frustration with her. “Just tell me the truth.”
“Meth.”
His heart rate spiked. Yes! A solid lead. He’d make sure she got the help she needed, but damn if he wasn’t celebrating a bit at the information.
“Where did you get it?”
“Don’t want to tell you.”
“You have to.” He heard a commotion at the door and knew it was the paramedics.
She sniffled. “McCloskey.”
No Ordinary Sheriff Page 20