"Plus you don't let it have sex."
Rafferty grinned. "No sex? Alice, that's cruel and unusual."
Alice pulled a bud off a nearby plant. Her attitude was very romantic as she spoke with Rafferty. They locked eyes.
"What you want are the virgins," she told him. "The young and frustrated, burning with-desire, horny-as-hell virgins. If the females get pollinated, they use their THC to produce seeds. If there's no pollination, she gets frustrated and frantic and taller and thicker, because she's looking for a male. She starts sweating resin in the buds."
The bud in her hand was oozing resin.
"Resin dripping out like maple syrup. The juice of a frustrated virgin. You just let them get hornier and hornier, and the hornier they get, the stronger the dope gets."
Alice pulled off a plastic baggie from a nearby plant.
"That's why these plants have plastic bags over their buds. Just in case there's some wild male plants in their neighborhood." She gave a nasty little smile. "Marijuana condoms."
Rafferty and Alice flirted with their eyes, as they rejoined Sheriff Hartman and Special Agent Draper who were now standing beside Lester Rahler's abandoned truck.
Sheriff Hartman held a twelve-gauge shotgun and was talking to one of his deputies. "Go with this to Honolulu. The state forensics lab. After the ballistics boys do their tests, call me immediately." He told Alice, "Alice, you're flying him." He then told Rafferty, "This truck's registered to Lester Rahler."
An hour later Sheriff Hartman and Rafferty watched the Rahlers’ marijuana go up in smoke at the city incinerator.
Hartman said, "Marijuana's the most dangerous thing ever to hit this island. Not counting the Quints, we've had thirteen dead this year. Not much maybe compared to the cocaine drug lords of Columbia, but our violent crime rate is up one-hundred-fifty percent. These growers are professional. They harvest in hundred pound lots and gross more than a hundred grand a year. Capitalists with guns under their aloha shirts and expensive Honolulu lawyers just a phone call away."
Rafferty said, "Capitalists who kill."
"That’s a good headline for you," the Sheriff said.
Sheriff Hartman and Rafferty drove into town, then left the Sheriff's parked car. They walked towards some law offices. Hartman said, "When you investigate someone in Washington, who's the first person you interview?"
Rafferty said, "His lawyer."
"Ed Finney was Jeremiah Quint's lawyer."
Inside the law offices Sheriff Hartman and Rafferty sat opposite Ed Finney, Attorney-at-Law.
"How can I help you, Sheriff?" Finney asked.
Hartman said, "I'm investigating the deaths of Jeremiah Quint and his family. You were his lawyer. When was the last time you saw him alive?"
"Two days ago," Finney said. "He was in my office most of the morning."
Rafferty said, "This was the day before he died?"
"Yes, Mister Rafferty," Finney said.
Rafferty told the Sheriff, "That was the day I got here." He then told Finney, "Are you sure he was here all day?"
Finney was amused. "I'm positive about that. He raised a big enough stink. In more ways than one."
Hartman said, "What was he seeing you about?"
Finney said, "Jeremiah came to town that day to buy some land."
"How much was the land?"
"Eight hundred thousand dollars," Finney said.
Hartman said, "Jeremiah Quint had fifteen dollars in his savings account and twenty-seven dollars in his checking. How was he going to pay for this land?"
"He had cash. I saw it."
"He had eight hundred thousand dollars in cash on him?"
"Oh yes," Finney said. "But somehow the signals got crossed. He waited all morning and when the seller didn't show, Jeremiah left in a huff."
Hartman was puzzled. "And that was the big stink?"
Finney was smiling. "Jeremiah stopped at a nursery before coming here. He had several sacks of manure in his truck. A pickup truck with wet manure sitting under a hot sun for hours! and of course my neighbors started complaining."
Hartman said, "What happened to the money?"
"I don't know," Finney said. "Jeremiah took it with him, and the bank was already closed by the time he left."
"And that was the last time you heard from him?"
"Not quite, Sheriff. When I came in yesterday morning, I found this message on my machine." Finney took a cassette from his desk and popped it into his desktop telephone answering machine and hit the PLAY button.
Jeremiah Quint’s voice came out of the answering machine: "Ed, this is Jeremiah Quint. I've probably been busted. Audrey will be in sometime this morning to help you get started with the paperwork. Aloha!"
Finney stopped the tape machine.
Sheriff Hartman and Rafferty were driving crosstown in the Sheriff’s car.
Rafferty said, "Why should I care what Jack Draper thinks?"
Hartman said, "He thinks you're the legendary Washington Connection. The go-between between the grass growers and Congress. And if you're not the Connection, you're protecting Jimmy Quint, who is."
"Oh, great. Does he have the entire DEA after me?"
Hartman shook his head. "Your Senate connection scares him. Maybe you have strings back in Washington that you can pull on and get him jerked around."
Rafferty grunted. "He needs more evidence."
When Nora Buchanan answered the doorbell of her apartment, Mad Dog and Lester forced their way inside. Nora ran for the gun she had hidden under a sofa pillow. Lester tried to head her off. Nora had the gun in her hand, but Lester caught her wrist and took the gun away from her. He knocked her to the carpet, and she pulled him down with her.
Nora fought furiously, wanting to kill him. She tried clawing his eyes out, kicking him, smacking him, biting him, and kneeing him. Lester tried strangling her, shoving apart her jaws, punched her head, tried twisting her arm off.