The Mission Is Never Over—God's Breath

A map of the Avalon Gardens HQ as the Agents have scouted it.

July 7 (con't)

A clerk at Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse set the team up in a conference room with the evidence in Radomir Reznik's now-shuttered case.

Wren and Rex took note of a handbag and wallet with a driver's license, credit cards, and member card for the Missouri state teachers union in the name of "Suzanna Carmichael." That lined up with a receipt from Demver Greens Dispensary. with the memo line "Suzy." for a vape pen and four cartons of juice. A call to Ms. Carmichael quickly satisfied Wren that she wasn't a person of interest she had been visiting Denver over the holiday and, though she wouldn't admit it, had clearly bought some weed to take back home. Reznik must have been waiting outside the store and snatched her bag, and she was more worried about her employer learning about her weed habit than having her ID and credit cards stolen.

Malachi took a closer look at the vape distillate. All four cartons were flavored "Guine-verve Cherry" from the brand Avalon Gardens, and while three were empty, one still had some juice left. Taking them to Rex's lab got him the genetic profile of the original plant, which he sent to the University of Mississippi's "M-Project," an ongoing study on marijuana dating back to the 1960s. He learned that Guine-verve Cherry was derived from a strain called "Yerba Loca," which had been sold on the black market from the 1990s to the early 2010s. It was known to provide a strong, energetic high ("like smoking a caffeinated cigar"), but the plant was rare enough it stayed expensive and limited to major cities. M-Project had obtained a sample in 2014 from a DEA agent named Olivia Morales.

Malachi also noticed an error in M-Project's report on Yerba Loca. The sample tested completely clean of pesticide contamination, but that should be impossible for plants grown in the 21st century. It would be like scooping a cup of water from the ocean and not finding microplastics in it; this kind of edenic purity simply could not exist. Malachi rolled his eyes at the university's bungling.

While Malachi followed up academic leads, Wren and Rex visited Denver Gardens. They posed as friends of "Suzy," asking about a particular strain she'd purchased. The budtender recognized their description of Suzanna Carmichael and her order and tried to dissuade them. He told them Avalon Gardens products were exceptionally strong for their price and, like he'd told their "friend," they really didn't recommend it to new smokers. That brand set tolerances so high that once somebody got started on it, they didn't want to use anything else. The Agents also learned Avalon Gardens only sold processed marijuana (vape distillate, food additives, etc); that it had its own dispensary and grow facility in nearby Greeley; and that it was run by Dakota Knight, a local multimillionaire nepo baby. Wren bought one of each Avalon Gardens product before leaving.

Back at the lab, Malachi had a quick call with Agent MARCUS to check whether Olivia Morales was with Delta Green (she wasn't), then called her about Yerba Loca. Morales told him about March 12, 2012, or "Ghost Monday," when a dozen high-ranking members of the Sinaloa drug cartel, all DEA informants, vanished off the face of the earth. She found the plant two years later in the apartment of a former mistress of a missing lieutenant. But M-Project took 18 months to get back with their findings on it, and by then the Guzman brothers had been forced out of leadership and the DEA had ended her investigation. She left Malachi with one suggestion: if Yerba Loca was back on the street, look for any connections that led to southeast Asia. The Sinaloa cartel had been working with a pan-Asian gang called Tong Shukoran, but their relationship had soured around the time of Ghost Monday. Tong Shukoran was way too small to attack the Sinaloas themselves, let alone make a dozen lieutenants disappear, but she'd always wondered if they could be involved somehow.

Afternoon turned to night at this point, and Rex invited the team back to his (ex-wife's) house for dinner. Wren and Malachi both offered to cook, but knowing Rex's standards of hygiene, and not expecting better from his friends, she ordered pizza.

July 8

The next day, Wren started making calls about a warrant to search Avalon Gardens's headquarters. What the judges and the court clerks told her was that her evidence was too flimsy, she'd need something definitive to implicate Avalon Gardens. What they meant, she realized, was the Knights had deep pockets and friends in high places, and no one wanted to move against them. Looking into them, she learned that Avalon Gardens had been cofounded by Dakota Knight and his father Bill. The elder Knight was CEO of Knight Chevrolet, which operated car dealerships in multiple locations around the state, as well as a board member of a political action committee that had donated millions of dollars to pro-business candidates; former governor and current Senator John Hickenlooper called Bill Knight a friend. Getting to the Knights through official channels would be tricky.

Rex joined Wren in research. He tried to find an Asian connection to Avalon Gardens, but only got sucked into Dakota Knight's infuriating online presence. Surrounded by bikini-clad women on yachts, posing in front of new sports cars, giving stock advice while lifting weights at the gym... Dakota was an exemplar of the hyper-masculine "this could be YOU" social media grift. And every post, on every platform, ended with the line, "Live like a king. Live #AvalonStrong." Yet Rex felt drawn to the screen, as if physically tugged towards it... which he was. He had lived with the tug long enough to know which direction Vermont was in, and it wasn't pulling in that direction anymore. Now it was pulling towards Greeley.

Pondering all of this, Rex came to a queasy realization: what made Reznik unique? Why had his lungs reacted so monstrously when nobody else who smoked Avalon Gardens had? The answer could only be... he wasn't. Thinking of Reznik as the only victim was missing the point; if Avalon Gardens had some kind of Unnatural contaminant in their marijuana, then he was really the first victim to cross that threshold.

Wren looked up some online reviews of Avalon Gardens products. A five-star review swore the company's Lilac Lancelot was the only product that could help with the writer's arthritis, plus it somehow tasted exactly like the cookies their grandmother used to bake. While a profanity-laden one-star review claimed the company used the same strain in every product, and the different artificial flavorings couldn't conceal the awful taste, "like smoking jet fuel."

Malachi, back in Rex's lab, studied the new Avalon Gardens products and realized the one-star reviewer was right. No matter what strain of marijuana was named on the package, Avalon Gardens was using Yerba Loca in everything they sold. This wasn't illegal: once marijuana passed inspection, it could be mixed with additives and packaged however the company liked. But Avalon Gardens had been inspected by a private firm called Minerva Labs, and he wanted to know what anomalies might have come up.

 

A visit to the Minerva Labs offices got him the report, which confirmed everything he'd seen in the lab, though the strain Avalon Gardens used in their products was actually called "Yerba al Cubo." The anomaly he'd been looking for was subtle: Avalon Gardens had only sought inspection once, but Dakota Knight came up in their system twice, and the previous inspection he'd applied for had failed. They wouldn't share the details of that failure, but it was simple enough to discreetly access their system through wifi.

 

Three years ago, Dakota was working as a consultant with the biotech firm Genetic Agricultural Products, trying to get them a license to sell marijuana in Colorado. Unfortunately, GAP's "Yerba al Cuadrado" was rejected on the grounds of "unacceptably high insect contamination." The numbers were so astonishing that Minerva Labs brought in two other labs to confirm their findings. GAP was denied a license because of this failure, leading them to pull out of the marijuana market and terminate Dakota's employment. Malachi did some googling on GAP: the multinational corporation was based out of Chicago, and its CEO was Cho Chu-Tsao, an Asian-American woman belonging to an ethnic minority called the Chauchua.

Wren and Rex drove ahead to scope out the Valley Dirtlands Cultivation Site, home of Avalon Gardens's growth center and "Round Table Dispensary." It had been a showroom for Knight Chevrolet at one point, and on the far side of the building was a motocross and extreme sports park. Observing from the outside, Wren identified three different guards on duty, with each one stepping out to spend their breaks vaping, then go back to work with no signs of intoxication at all.

Rex took the initiative to go up to the front door and, presenting himself as "Richard Simmons," a tourist from Ottawa, spoke to Danny, the guard. He didn't know anything about bugs, but he knew things about working out, as "Richard" noted how muscular he was, and about John Bellamy, his boss at the firm Instant Deterrent Security. John was an Iraq war veteran; not the first one, or the second, but the one against ISIS. He'd been fighting door to door in Mosul, and it had taken its toll; he'd "seen some shit," in Danny's words. But he was the real deal, a fighter. The conversation ended when Danny said he'd have to check "Richard's" "Canadian passport" to let him in, and gosh darn it, wouldn't you know he'd left it back at the hotel!

Wren and Malachi stepped up, letting Danny scan their IDs and take their pictures, scoping out the lobby and the dispensary. On their way out, Wren approached Danny to flirt a little and ask him out to lunch. Surprised in the right way, Danny didn't need much convincing.

And while he was distracted, Rex circled the building, noting the locations of the doors and cameras. And of two black Chevy Tahoes in a fenced-in lot around the back.