Page 110 of The System

“Just hang in there, okay? I’ll put more money into your account and talk to Frank.”

“I’m okay on the money, but I could use your detective skills. Please, help me. I don’t know why this is happening, but I didn’t kill this girl, and they’ll want to charge me with that, too. I’ll never get out of here.”

It had hurt hearing her sister talk like that, but Kieran understood how serious the situation was right now. With three murders being tied to her, it was true: Marin wouldn’t ever get out. And if more things like this kept coming up, she’d get charged with even more.

???

“Frank, I’m serious,” she said as she sat across from him in his tiny office.

“That he made it up? So what? How do I prove that some guy made something like this up a couple of decades later?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Kieran sighed. “I’m not saying you need to prove that he made it up. I’m saying that he did make it up.”

Frank just stared at her, dumbfounded.

“You have to ask why,” she instructed. “If he made it up, why?”

“Okay… But where does that get us in court?”

“Nowhere, probably. But if he did make it up, I want to know what made him do that. Why would he get involved with Marin’s case all these years later?”

“The ADA found him, or some cop did.”

“Okay. So, somebody tracked him down and got a statement; let’s just assume that. He talks about cigarette burns, but Marin refutes those. No one tracked him down the next time; he just found Kevin himself and gave him another statement about this girl he was dating back then, saying he found Marin dropping bloody clothes into a dumpster. She says it’s not true.”

“Well, he says it is. It’s a he said, she said. It might not even get admitted in, anyway. I doubt they’ll charge her for that murder, too. There’s only his statement. No evidence.”

“Exactly. You’re telling me that this guy was dating a girl he liked so much that he turned down this sex he keeps saying Marin was offering; the girl gets killed, but he sees someone drop bloody clothes into a dumpster after acting strangely; and he cares so little for the girl he’s dating that he says nothing to anyone? He supposedly hated Marin because she was coming onto him and burning him with cigarettes while he wanted nothing to do with her. Why wouldn’t he just turn her in back then? He said they were living together, so he was scared, but if he had this evidence against her, along with the cigarette burning thing, which he did report, she would’ve been arrested. Then, he says they slept together. He had a girlfriend who just got killed by Marin, apparently, and now, it’s a few days later, and she’s asking for sex, so he just gives in to her? He resisted her for so long, but now he has sex with her? This just doesn’t make sense to me.”

“There’s not much else I can do, Kieran. They’ll try to get it admitted in or they’ll just charge her. I’ll argue against both.”

“Okay… But if he gets put on the stand, you need to find a way to get to him. I think it’s in the sex part.”

“The sex part?” Frank asked.

Kieran thought back to what Carina had said earlier at the diner.

“Yeah, if he’s got an ego, you attack it. If he’s got a temper, you make him angry. That kind of thing. You need to find a way to catch him in a lie.”

“Kieran, I know how to do my job. You may think I’m some young, idiot public defender, but–”

“I don’t think that,” she interrupted. “I was worried, yes, but if I still thought that, I’d be arguing for Marin to let me pay for a lawyer right now instead of sitting here with you.”

He glanced at his open laptop as if checking the time, but his eyes widened.

“Shit. It’s in,” he said.

“What’s in?”

“The video of the bus. The number twelve.”

“You have it?”

“Yeah. Finally,” Frank replied and turned his laptop around after clicking on a file. “This is the first file. There are several. Looks like this one is from seven to ten that night.” He looked at the screen. “I’ve got one from ten to midnight, one from midnight to three in the morning, and one from five to seven, so that should cover us.”

“Can you send them to me?” Kieran requested.

“No, this is evidence,” he said. “But you can watch it with me.”

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