L goes to a methadone clinic.

My internship has brought me to some interesting places: facilities for the criminally insane, jails, STD treatment centers (some convicts seem to find it amusing for us to chase false leads there), hospitals, police stations, school houses, and Maryland.

The crime scene of one of our latest cases happens to be near a methadone clinic in North East. Methadone is used as replacement therapy for those addicted to opiods, often heroin. The crime scene is swarming with people who frequent the area for their medication, any of whom could have seen something. We made an operation out of it; we got a staff investigator (read: legit adult) to come so we'd have more manpower, and we milled around the area, asking questions.

Within a three mile radius, dozens of collegiates are asking passserbys of busy commerical areas questions like, "Are you an environmentalist?" "Registered to vote?" "Got a minute for Obama?"

And I had the pleasure of asking passerbys, "Know anything about that guy who got stuck?" ("Stuck," as irreverent and uneloquent as it sounds, means "fatally stabbed." In the present and future tense, it is a conjugation of "to stick," as in, "I'm gonna stick you.") Yes, my internship rocks.

But whatever strides the clinic is making inside, they are quickly erased only a few feet outside. A man with a heavy jacket approaches passerbys much in the same way we do, only he opens his jacket a little to reveal little plastic bags with white rock-like substances. And now and then, money is passed and a deal is made. I wish I could tell you I thought it was sugar. And I wish I could tell you that the clinic was changing lives and hearts.

Today's lesson: violence and narcotics are always intertwined.