Chapter 1

Ray’s arms extended forward, as if he were typing on a computer. His hands were cuffed to the table. His shoes and socks had been confiscated, on the grounds of safety, and so his feet were bare, sticky on the cold floor. Silently he sat brooding, struggling to slump into the bench’s backrest.

Orbiting Ray was Officer Apples.

Officer Apples was in a tizzy. His bloodshot eyes were widening, ready to jump off his face. The veins on his neck popped and cabled. The twin tufts of salt and pepper hair hugging his head moved and flopped like a flightless bird’s wings.

Clucks were sounding from the corners of the officer’s mouth. It was part of his procedural method, this morbid stridulation. And the sharpness of the air, the vacuity in Ray’s gaze only egged it on...

Officer Apples hammered at the bone-gray table with his nightstick, finding an almost tribal rhythm. The officer repeatedly rapping and whacking the table like he was after a mole. Despite the thickness of the A/C’s frigid blast, beads of perspiration dotted the officer’s furrowed brow and rivulets of sweat streamed over his ruddy skin; his cream-white dress shirt becoming mottled by damp spots.

Officer Apples jerked his neck from side to side, grinned, and then let his smile die, spasming with anger as he resumed shouting accusations, threats of long-term imprisonment and jailhouse justice, and with each blast of invective, he looked less like a cop and more like a drill sergeant drunk on rage.

Clank Clank Clank!!! The whaps at the table picked up steam. Beating closer ... Rising in volume, intensity...

“I’m telling you, I ain’t do nothing!” Ray pleaded, his panicked voice straining, upping an octave. Ray’s body was rigid as a rail, and he eyed the nightstick as if it were a poisonous snake and quickly began straightening his posture.

Officer Apples drummed at the table again.

Harder.

CLANK! ... CLANK! ... CLANK!...

Each blow coming closer and closer to Ray’s chained hands, which were quivering, rattling the steel rings.

Officer Apples relented. Stood back, observed the pitiful youth. Then he giggled, enjoyed a Jekyll and Hyde moment, and figured he’d allow the suspect a chance. Besides, Officer Orange wasn’t around today to play good cop. This meant Officer Apples had carte blanche to treat the suspect however he saw fit, but also meant he had to play the dual roles.

“Ray Ray, Ray Ray...” Officer Apples figured that no one called Ray “Ray Ray,” but he wanted to do it anyway, just to prickle the youth, goad him off guard. The cop went on, “You’re probably not a bad kid,” the officer said, in a syrupy tone, before pausing, and raising his voice, “but we have evidence,” and with that, Officer Apples reached across the table, and with the precision of a card dealer, the officer flipped over and slid Ray a black and white printout of a video frame.

The picture was a blurry image of a young man, in a department store, stuffing boxes of Yeezy shoes into a duffel bag.

Ray refused to lay eyes on the evidence, and just pursed his lips, trained his gaze on the wall, remained intransigent.

“Come on, Ray Ray,” Officer Apples continued, nodding at the picture, softening his tone again, “let’s make this easier. Just confess to your part in the flash mobs, give me a few names, and we can work out ... an arrangement ... something ... mutually beneficial.”

Ray craned his neck and sat in strained silence. His upper lip curling like a wave as he stared at the emptiness of the interrogation room’s walls. The walls whiter than the face of the moon.

Officer Apples scoffed, snorted at Ray, and the copper continued to be astounded by the arrogance, sheer ignorance of today’s kids. Didn’t they know the police can access Instagram and TikTok?

Nowadays, with so many cases, including this one, cops could sit in the comfort of an air-conditioned office, scrolling through gang members’ social media, and the cops could download all the kids’ incriminating pictures, the kids toting guns, throwing up gang signs, the young thugs using and selling drugs, fanning themselves with fistfuls of cash, preening and pointing at stolen booty.

Some of these miscreants even uploaded their own ridiculous rap songs and videos, confessing to and bragging about murders, crimes they committed.

Getting warrants had never been easier...