Every Deadly Suspicion

Chapter 49

CHAPTER 49

M URDERS AT B EECHER’S M INE C ABIN WAS a difficult book for Hanna to read for a lot of reasons. Marcus had a clunky way of writing, and he was very wordy.

The nineties were a time of excess—excess greed, excess rock and roll, excess partying, and excess drugs to fuel the parties. Joe Keyes was the chef du jour of the meth trade in Tuolumne County.

He went line by line through Joe’s early arrest record and talked about Blake and Sophia being his partners. Most of the descriptors he used for Joe were harsh: opportunistic, crafty, unscrupulous, corrupt, evil . According to Marcus, Joe was also very jealous, threatening any guy who looked at Paula in what he considered “the wrong way.”

Her mother was also mentioned a lot, and not in a great light. According to Marcus, Paula was a heavy drug user until she found out that she was pregnant. Besides that, he alleged that it was Paula who pushed Joe to cook meth because it was so lucrative.

Hanna found it hard to believe that about her mother. When Hanna was growing up, Paula was strict about a lot of things. One item she drilled into Hanna’s mind was how bad drugs were for everyone. She liked her alcoholic cocktails, but her mother was not into drugs. What Marcus wrote clarified for Hanna why Paula was so mad when the book came out. Marcus the Muckraker fit.

The nineties were a drug-crazed period; Hanna knew that from her own law enforcement training. Like Betty said, during the nineties meth or crack was the drug of choice, and many clandestine labs sprung up in a lot of rural areas. They were dangerous cesspools of hazardous materials.

The only pages of the book that really caught her attention was a chapter titled “The First Attempt.” There, Marcus alleged that Joe had tried to kill his partners Blake and Sophia six months before the incident at Beecher’s Mine cabin. It was the trailer incident. Marcus saw it as intentional. Joe blew it up on purpose and fled, leaving Blake and Sophia to die.

In the book, they survived because of Blake’s quick thinking, but Sophia was badly burned. Hanna sat back after she read the chapter. This was the incident Betty referred to.

Jared looked up. “What?” he whispered.

“Marcus asserts that Joe murdered Blake and Sophia in a premeditated fashion.” She pointed to her open page. “Supposedly he’d missed once, so he made sure of things at Beecher’s Mine cabin. I’d heard a version of the story before, and I saw the crime report in my father’s file about the meth lab fire. Blake, Sophia, and Chase were mentioned tangentially in that report.”

“Yeah?”

“But Joe didn’t kill Blake and Sophia. The way Marcus writes this account, the detail about the trailer, makes me think that he did have inside information. I can’t believe he got this from my mom.”

“Do you think he played a bigger part in the drug scene than anyone knows?”

“He had to, Jared. Betty said that he was friends with Blake. Even though Betty didn’t think so, druggies tend to hang with other druggies.”

“We have questions; let’s go to the source.”

Hanna sat up. “Yes, let’s. I just want to look at a little more of this.”

Jared nodded. “You got it.”

Hanna skimmed through the rest of the book. After about fifteen more minutes, she decided she’d read enough. She wanted to hear it clearly from Marcus.

While she’d never seen evidence that Marcus was a drug user, she did know that he had a record. Misdemeanor stuff like obstruction and one DUI a long time ago, nothing drug-related.

She closed the book, then she and Jared replaced them back on the shelf. It was time to talk to Marcus. She wasn’t on duty, she was driving her personal vehicle, and she was with Jared. When not out irritating law enforcement, Marcus worked out of his home. Hanna decided she’d pay him a surprise visit and turn the tables and interrupt his life this time.