Page 59 of The System

“What? You were the one who didn’t want me to take it,” Marin argued.

“I know. And you should at least listen to him. They have… more evidence since the last time we talked.”

“More? What more?”

“For starters, they have your DNA on the gun,” Frank pointed out.

“I know that already. But like I told Diego and Picket Fence here, it was my gun.”

“Sorry?” Frank said, looking up from the file to her. “Your gun? I don’t have that written here.”

“Yeah, I bought it to defend myself against Nick. He beat me. I just figured, one day, he was bound to take things too far, and I could show him the gun and maybe scare him off and get out of there.”

“You–” Frank turned to Kieran for a second before he turned back to Marin. “You bought the gun? You’ve admitted to this?”

“Yes. It’s in there somewhere. I haven’t lied yet, and I don’t plan to start now. Look, Frank, I bought it a few days before Nick died. I know that looks bad, but it’s the truth. I got it on the street for only a few hundred bucks. I was still planning on leaving Nick for good, but he’d been extra violent before I left, and like I said, I was worried he’d take things too far because he’d gotten messed up himself by his dealer for sampling too much of the product and not selling it. He took it out on me. I wanted the gun just in case it got worse.”

“Did you fire it?”

“Practicing, yes, but not with bullets inside.”

“So, you pulled the trigger?” Frank checked.

“Yes, but without bullets in it. I bought a box of them with the gun, but I didn’t load it until later. I aimed it at a brick wall in an alley and pulled it a few times. The guy I’d gotten it from obviously didn’t want me loading it with him standing right there, so I took everything home and hid it under my mattress after I loaded it. Took forever, too. They don’t tell you how hard those clip things are to load.” Marin laughed a little. “I meant to bring it when I left, but in my apparent concussion, I forgot about it when I ran. I didn’t anticipate him bringing a board inside the house and hitting me with it.”

“So, you’re admitting that you…” He wrote something down. “Okay… They’ve got that already, I guess. But they now have something that I don’t think they can get admitted in about what happened when you were in juvenile hall.”

“She wasn’t in juvenile hall,” Kieran said.

“What are you talking about?” Marin asked.

“You were arrested as a teenager,” Frank said, flipping pages, trying to catch up.

“Yeah, some kid said that I burned cigarettes on him, which I didn’t. I didn’t do time, though. They also said that would get wiped when I turned eighteen. How did you find it?”

“He didn’t,” Kieran answered for him. “The cops did. And so did Kenna, your favorite reporter.”

“But how? It went away.”

“Can you just tell me what happened?” Frank looked over at Kieran. “You should probably go for this.”

“No, it’s fine. There’s nothing to tell. I’ll repeat this to the other lawyer or in court anyway. I had a foster brother who was always trying to get with me.”

“Get with?”

“Yes, Frank.” Marin tilted her head at him, expressing her apparent annoyance. “Have sex with. You look young. Is that something you’ve not done yet?”

Kieran laughed a little at that.

“Go on,” Frank said.

“Anyway, I didn’t want to put out. He had a hard time taking no for an answer, so one night, when he slid into my bed after the foster parents went to sleep, and he was… ready for it, I pushed him away, and he got pissed at me. The next time he tried it, he asked for a blow job while we were standing outside the school, and he tried to get me against a wall when I said no again. I burned him with the cigarette I was smoking to get away. Next thing I knew, I was being called into the principal’s office, and then I was arrested. The asshole had burned himself four more times to make it look like I’d been burning him repeatedly. I tried to defend myself, but no one would listen. They just moved me to a different home. If you’re reading the file, it should have the same statement in there from me.”

“It doesn’t,” Frank replied. “I don’t know if part of the file is missing, but it’s just the arrest record, a picture of the burns, and your mug shot.”

“Great,” Marin said sarcastically. “They’re going to try to say that I do this shit a lot, huh? Hurt people?”

She was asking Kieran, but Kieran wasn’t listening. She was too busy thinking about her sister being put in those situations where brothers weren’t really brothers and sisters weren’t really sisters, and without adult supervision, things happened that caused Marin pain. She tried to picture herself in Marin’s shoes as the one who hadn’t been adopted by her kind, loving parents, and she wasn’t sure she would’ve been as strong as Marin had been to even make it out.

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