Constellations wheel slowly overhead on a cold, moonless night. They step out of the truck into the inky blackness. Here, in the hovel’s tiny cramped kitchen, Rocky will work his own special form of alchemy. It’s dark by the time they reach the lab, located deep in the woods in a dilapidated shack at the end of a winding dirt road. Tonight, like moonshiners back in the day, they will head into the hills under the cover of darkness, where in a dimly lit makeshift laboratory at the end of a winding dirt road, they will cook up a fresh batch of pure crystal methamphetamine. Two sheriff’s cars whiz by heading down the hill, away from the lab.Īs far as Rocky, Ed and Moore (not their real names) are concerned, the cops are heading in the right direction. The sun is molten orange on the horizon as the truck begins the twisting ascent into the foothills. Or maybe he’s spun from the crystal they’ve been smoking all day. Perhaps it’s because he hasn’t been to prison yet. Cooking crank has provided a steady income-if you don’t count those years he’s spent in prison on drug-related offenses-but lately, he’s been wishing he’d mastered something else, preferably something not so illegal and insanely dangerous.Įd, wedged between Rocky and Moore, expresses no such misgivings about tonight’s appointed task. He may have failed high-school science, but during the past two decades, he’s mastered the process of making crystal methamphetamine. “I’m sick and tired of it.” Rocky is a clandestine chemist. “I hate it, too,” Rocky mutters from behind the wheel.
If the cops show up, it’ll be his third strike, and that means 25-to-life in most Northern California counties.
That’s why he’s not exactly enthusiastic about going to the crank lab tonight. Moore has been to a lot of bad places, prison being the worst, and he isn’t keen on returning. The big four-wheel drive chases its shadow across the Sacramento Valley floor, carrying Moore, Rocky and Ed east, toward the foothills. “I hate to be where we’re going tonight,” Moore says.
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