Chapter 321

The video quality marked this as at least five years old—the slightly grainy texture and occasional digital artifacts typical of the department’s older recording system. Through the lens, the boy in the jacket fidgeted to life, despondent and slumped, off-set shoulders resembling Saint Sebastian, waiting for God to finally make his presence known and rapture him away from this place.

A man walked between the table and camera, the movement briefly disrupting the auto-focus. His gray slacks and white dress shirt caught the harsh overhead lighting, the occupied holster at his waist casting a sharp shadow against the fabric. The significance of having a gun in an interrogation room stood out immediately. Beyond the obvious, the presence of a firearm immediately cast the legitimacy of the interrogation into doubt, opening up the prosecution to coercion claims. But having watched this before, I knew it had very little to do with a court of law.

Miles—at least five years younger, though judging from the accumulated wrinkles and wealth of gray absent in this footage, it could have easily been twenty—bent over beside the boy, his face briefly passing through the fluorescent glare before vanishing from frame. The camera’s fixed angle caught only the rigid line of his back, hands planted on the table, a coiling tension visible even through his shirt.

The microphone caught his whispered words, though barely: “… okay?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The boy’s voice came through clearer, aimed more directly at the recording equipment.

“…Hungry, thirsty?”

“I’m fine, Miles.”

The emphasis on first name and avoidance of his familial title was the opening backhand. And from the way Miles stepped away, retreating from the initial niceties and slipping back into his professional presence, he’d received it that way. He took his place at the opposite side of the table, his face obscured from the camera’s view.

“State your full name for the record, please.” The room’s acoustics made his words bounce hollowly off the bare walls.

The boy rolled his eyes, the gesture exaggerated enough to be visible even under the poor lighting. “Do we really have to do this?”

“State your full name, Jim.”

“Dad—”

“It’d be in your best interest to stop acting like being picked up holding a backpack loaded to the zippers with a Schedule 1 substance is a mild inconvenience.” Miles cut in harshly, showing edge. The microphone peaked slightly at his raised volume. “It’s possession with intent to distribute. The sentencing guidelines scale up by quantity, and just from looking at it, you’d be out-at-fifty kinds of fucked. If a friend in the PD hadn’t caught wind and ran interference long enough for me to get here, this would be the beginning of a very different night. And let’s not pretend like this is the first time. State your name for the damn cameras.” He tossed a folder on the table where it landed with a slap that briefly distorted the audio.

“James… Regius… Dempsey.” The boy dragged out, glaring daggers as Miles passed through frame again.

“What kind of middle name is Regius?” Miles asked.

“Ask my dickhead father. Maybe you can stop by and hold a conversation with my mother while you’re at it.”

“Touche,” Miles’ reply carried a hint of mirth that immediately vanished when he spoke again. “I’m going to ask you a question, James.”

The boy cringed. “I’ve lost my legal right to Jim?”

“No. Your rights are fully intact. But this is my interrogation room, and on this hallowed ground, I’ll call you whatever I like.”

“Now we see the fascist attempt to establish his authority, using obvious methods to destabilize and goad the victim.” James said, taking on a sarcastic version of the narrator in a nature documentary.

“Oh, we’ll talk about victims. There’s plenty of time to get to that.” Miles paced to the other side of the room. “Should I go ahead, or do you wanna keep cracking wise?”

The mention of victims seemed to mollify James, whose jaw was set, skin slightly paler under the fluorescent lights. “I’m listening.”

“A perfectly reflective mirror is falling at relativistic speeds. What color would a red laser appear if reflected off the mirror’s surface, observed from a stationary position?” Miles asked, his voice casual against the room’s hollow acoustics.

James blinked slowly, the movement captured clearly as he leaned forward into the light. “Now you want to help me study?”

“Just answer—”

“It’s a shit question because the answer is relative. If the mirror falls perpendicular, the reflected laser would appear the same color.” James spat out with annoyance. “That changes if there’s motion. If the mirror is moving toward the observer, it’d be blue-shifted, if it’s moving away, it’d be red-shifted. It involves two Doppler shifts, one when the light hits the mirror, another when it’s reflected. Now do you want the formula for observed frequency, or are we fucking done here?”

“Quick.” Miles nodded as he paced, his shadow stretching across the wall with each pass. “Always were, even before you could walk. Top of your class in highschool, locked down one hell of a scholarship. The world is your oyster. Or at least, it should be.”

“Haven’t you heard? A degree isn’t worth shit anymore, regardless of what school it’s from.” James murmured, slumping down further in his chair, the dark fabric of his jacket nearly disappearing into the video’s poor contrast.

Miles made a not-quite gesture. “Depends on the job, depends on the school. I’ve said it before, the drug use? Not that much of a surprise. People with high IQs often partake recreationally, specifically around young adulthood. You’re smart, curious about the world around you, and open to new experiences. It’s a natural pipeline.” Miles leaned forward on the table again, his expression cold where it caught the light. “What I’d like an explanation for, is why your privileged, comfortably middle-class, self-righteous ass is slinging on campus for the most prolific repeated offender in the metroplex.”

“Come on.” James scoffed, the audio catching the slight tremor in his voice.

“It’s true.” Miles shook his head, crossing back through the frame. “Roderick’s the subject of an open RICO case. DPD wants him bad. Local office wants him more. When they come down on him—not if, but when—they will rain down hell on anyone and everyone in the crossfire. His entire chain of operations.”

“It’s not like I’m friends with the guy. He’s just a supplier. And a reliable one, at that.” James shrugged indifferently, though the camera caught the slight tensing of his shoulders.

The microphone picked up the subtle grind of Miles’ teeth as he pulled a plastic baggy from his pocket containing a brown vial. The fluorescent lights caught the glass, creating a brief lens flare as he held it up. “Recognize this?”

“Really?” James reached for it.

Miles pulled it back. “Hands off, sticky fingers. Describe it for me.”

“2C-L.” James sighed, pulling back his hood and scratching the back of his head vigorously, the movement jerky and agitated. “Designer drug, basically synthetic, high-potency psilocybin that sidesteps the tolerance issue of LSD and mushrooms.”

“Skip the ad read.” Miles growled, voice dropping low enough that the microphone barely caught it. “One-hundred times the potency of mushrooms, ten times the potency of LSD. ‘Solving’ the tolerance issue only opens it up for abuse. Instead of tripping and waiting a month for a similar experience, you can have the exact same experience the same day. There’s been countless instances of drug-induced psychosis stemming from this exact substance and its precursor.”

“Because of the motherfuckers who don’t listen. They think they’re tough shit and take the whole dropper instead of a drop. An overdose of practically anything is liable to fuck you up.” James leaned forward, his face catching the harsh overhead light, emphasizing the sweat now visible on his brow. “Do you want to know who my clients are? Who I sell this shit to?”

“I can get some paper and a pen, if you want to make a list.”

“Fuck you.” James growled, the words distorting slightly as they peaked the microphone. “They’re not hardened criminals. They’re just people. Most with severe depression or anxiety, who don’t interact well with pharmacological anti-depressants. People who can’t afford to go to therapy. Random-ass twenty-six-year-olds who just got kicked off their parents’ medical insurance. Grad students who are just now discovering that it’s hard enough to find a decent paying job, let alone one that actually covers everything.”

“The anti-depressants were that rough on you. Really?” Miles’ voice carried the derision of a tired parent, though the camera angle missed his expression.

“You want a list? Prozac made me feel like a zombie. Zoloft gave me the perpetual shits, Lexapro murdered my libido, and Wellbutrin made me so ridiculously angry it felt like I was going to explode. But the first time I took a drop of 2C-L, it was like the fog from all that other shit just… blew over. Like I was finally clear again.” James dabbed his forehead with the end of his sleeve. “So yeah, helping other people get the same clarity, for reasonable prices, seemed kind of humanitarian.”

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“Humanitarian.” Miles repeated. He stepped closer to the table, his shadow falling across James’ face. “You’re sweating.”

“It’s hot in here.”

“Why are you doing this, Jim?” Miles asked, then cut his son off before he could speak, his voice dropping to a level that barely registered on the recording. “If it’s just chemical, that’s okay, you don’t have to have a reason. Sometimes depression doesn’t make sense.” Vulnerability crept into his voice. “You were doing better before you moved out. A lot better. Things between your mother and I haven’t been great lately. Nothing official’s happened, though we’re living separately now. But if you’d feel more comfortable having at least one of us around, you’re always welcome–”

“It’s not moving out.” James grimaced, massaging his temples, his movements increasingly erratic. “It’s the world.”

“The whole world, huh?” Miles tried to sound sympathetic, the attempt falling flat against the room’s hollow acoustics.