Free The End of the Dream by Ann Rule

popular and expensive street drug.
    It is, essentially, “speed.” The drug accelerates users’ metabolism, generates a feeling of well-being and power, and negatesat least for a time the need for sleep.
    Scott wouldn’t be producing the stuff solely for personal use or just for his friends. If he was going to distill purified speed and take the risks that came with the process, he would have to set up an efficient distribution system. Scott had met someone on the campus, a tall man with waist-length hair, who taught him everything he needed to know about extracting the methamphetamine from the prescribed chemicals.   Together, they worked on what Scott would always call his “experiments, “ pretending to be zealous students carrying out class projects. The money that would inevitably result from Scott’s hidden lab would pay for the thing he loved most, travel. Scott had always had itchy feet.
    Even while he was attending college at Evergreen, he took off as often as he could, determined to travel the world over. Kevin Meyers crisscrossed America and Canada often in his van. He had named it “Az land” for the magic lion full of energy and strength in the Chronicles of Narnia. He left Banff and headed for Washington State.
    He hadn’t seen Scott Scurlock for more than three years, but he knew he lived in Olympia and he had his address. Kevin arrived late one night and parked beside a Volkswagen outside the small gray house. He fell asleep in the van, waking the next morning to the sound of someone outside. Sliding the side window open, Kevin peered out and saw Scott.
    He was sitting on the bumper of the Volkswagen putting on a pair of Converse tennis shoes. Time had seemingly stood still. Scott was wearing the same cheap shoes he’d worn back in the days of gang tag when they were in junior high the same shoes he’d worn in The Shire days.
    Scott was unaware that Kevin was watching him he didn’t even know he was there, and he apparently hadn’t noticed the Virginia tags on Az land.   Kevin poked his head out and shouted, “You can’t . see the wizard today! “ a line from a long-standing joke between them.
    Scott looked up and grinned. “Bubba! “
    “The past was forgotten, “ Kevin recalled.. “All the bad stuff about the marijuana and losing The Shire. It had been years, but we were friends again. He was the same Scott I’d always known.” Or so Kevin hoped. Scott took Kevin to the Evergreen campus and showed him around. He ended the tour by taking Kevin to his private lab.
    He laughed as he pointed to the sign on the door, it was the international symbol that indicates the presence of radioactivity.
    He told his old friend that he kept it there to be sure he had privacy.
    In retrospect, Kevin realized that Scott was testing him when he took him into the lab. “He was watching me to see if I saw anything unusual about the place. I didn’t have any idea what you were supposed to have in a chemistry lab. It looked normal enough to me.” During Kevin’s visit, he would sit on a stool in the tiny lab and work on watercolors while Scott did whatever it was he needed to do on his “experiments.” He didn’t know that they were in a bootleg laboratory and that the radioactive sign was to keep anyone from checking it out, including the college janitors. Inside, Scott Scurlock was manufacturing a vital ingredient of crystal meth, using the facilities and the chemicals that belonged to Evergreen State College. “Scott made drugs right there under their noses, “ Kevin recalled. “Even all these years later, they’re probably going to freak when they find out. I found out later that he had his own set of keys to most of the rooms in the chemistry building.   He got everything he needed. The school taught him chemistry, and he used it.” If Scott needed something that was behind one of the few doors he didn’t have a key for, he used skills he’d learned back on the days of gang tag in Reston.