Free I Want Candy by Susan Donovan

she skillfully scampered down the tree and hit the ground running.
    “If I catch you up here again, I’ll kick your ass! Understand?”
    “Okay! Okay!”
    “Fuck.” After Gerrall checked to make sure nothing was missing, he took off his shoes and crawled into the already warm sleeping bag.
    He hated the idea that some lab loser’s kid had found his hideaway. He also felt sort of bad that the kid was now out in the woods alone. But hey … not his problem.

 
     
    Chapter 6
     
    Turner glanced around the small sheriff’s department conference room and prepared himself to referee the latest disagreement. He was used to it. Though the newspaper headlines stressed only cooperation, the truth was that power struggles were a daily affair in joint task force investigations. It had been that way for last year’s big cocaine bust in Waynesville and the Spivey case was turning out to be no different. Turner figured anytime there were multiple law enforcement agencies working together, strutting and territorial pissing would be part of the bargain.
    The group that had gathered that morning represented seven separate government agencies. The current argument was about who would ultimately foot the bill for cleaning up the meth “superlab” once the suspects were hauled off in handcuffs and enough evidence had been collected to tie them in with a Mexican drug cartel. They’d discovered that the makeshift methamphetamine lab in Bobby Ray Spivey’s old tobacco barn had recently received an infusion of organized-crime capital, which meant bigger and more sophisticated equipment for the chemical “cooking” process, dramatically increased output, and a whole lot more traffic coming and going through the rural Preston Valley region. It was now apparent that when it was all over, there would be a veritable toxic waste site to deal with.
    Of course, Turner and the head of the Cataloochee County Health Department had already made it clear the local government couldn’t pay for it. Seven years ago, the county busted four meth labs. Last year, the number was forty-seven, and twelve of them met the criteria of “superlabs.”
    “Can’t get blood out of a budget-mashed turnip,” his comrade in the health department had explained.
    How about the U.S. Marshal’s office? “We see ourselves in more of a supervisory role here. Besides, we’ve already exhausted our annual cleanup budget for the entire state and it’s barely the end of May.”
    The North Carolina National Guard? “We’ve always left that to the DEA. We’re really here to do the aerial and ground surveillance.”
    The FBI? “Hell, no.”
    Well, what about the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency?
    One of Kelly O’Connor’s perfect dark eyebrows rose high on her forehead. She folded her manicured hands on the table in front of her. Turner smiled to himself, already knowing that whatever she was about to say wouldn’t match the prissy way she held herself.
    “I will remind you that it’s my guy in there risking his ’nads every day with those hillbilly knuckleheads, and if he doesn’t get his ass blown up before we’re ready to go in, it’ll be a fuckin’ miracle.” She tapped her ink pen on the tabletop. “Somebody else can pay for the damn cleanup.”
    “I don’t think we have any choice at this point but to call in the state Environmental Protection Agency,” Turner offered. “We know from the aerial video that they’re pouring all kinds of toxic stuff in the creek behind the barn, right?”
    His health department coworker nodded. “Acetone, toluene, xylene, and corrosives like hydrochloric and sulfuric acids—and that’s only the stuff we’ve been able to identify so far. It’s going to be your basic cocktail of death if it leaches into the groundwater around here.”
    “Spivey’s property is starting to look like the Wal-Mart parking lot on a Saturday afternoon,” added the FBI agent in charge.
    “They’re cooking tens of thousands of doses a