Minor in possession

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It was ten to eleven, almost time for lights-out. Mad as hell and far too wound up to sleep, I lay in the October chilled darkness of my authentically rustic cabin listening to a new squall of rain drum a wild tattoo on the noisy tin roof. Sunny Arizona my ass!

Sunny Arizona. That's what my attorney, Ralph Ames, had told me when he was extolling the virtues of Ironwood Ranch, a posh drug and alcohol rehab establishment that had risen from the ashes of a failed dude ranch outside a small, god-forsaken town called Wickenburg in the wilds of central Arizona.

I, Detective J. P. Beaumont, a Washington boy born and bred, had never set foot in the state of Arizona until the day I came to Ironwood Ranch. Driving north from Phoenix's urban sprawl in my rented Grand AM and passing through a forest of grotesque three-and five-armed cactus, I felt like the Alaska Airlines MD-80 had taken a wrong turn and dumped me on some alien planet. I was overwhelmed as much by the empty desolation of the desert as by my reason for being there. And that was before I got a look at Ironwood Ranch itself, before it had rained for three solid days and nights, and before I had met my roommate-Joseph (Joey) Rothman. The little shit.

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