Tenth grade law class or no, ‘Jen’ had yet to actually ask for a lawyer. She’d stated she wouldn’t answer questions without one, but it was a distinction that mattered.

Nic watched the ongoing back and forth. Frustrated, she stood up straight, no longer standing with her back to the doorframe. “Boss just waved me down. Back in a sec, D.”

“You need me to take notes or anything?” Doug asked.

“Keep an eye on the stepmom. Look for shiftiness, bullshit.”

“Any first thoughts?”

“Munchausens?”

Doug gave her an affirmative grunt.

Even though it was for good ends, the implications sat uneasy with her. ‘The stepmom’, the implications that the woman in the other room was in the wrong. The focus on that woman, while Jen was situated in that uncomfortable metal chair, feeling the pressure without any active pressure being applied.

The heel of her hand rubbed against the corner of her jaw. That uneasiness and the tension of the long day were wearing on her. She’d been gritting her teeth and now her jaw hurt, and it would hurt into tomorrow morning, if past experience was any indication.

She hadn’t been hailed or waved down. Her destination was the locker room. She had some evidence baggies inside a larger resealable baggie in her coat pocket. She pulled them out, setting them down on the small shelf.

The pills she put into the first bag were her own pills, as was the pill bottle—she’d peeled away the label a long time ago. The stepmom had said something about the kid being on medication. She felt it was important, so she would use that.

Flipping open her phone, she brought up images she’d snapped while visiting the kid’s house. Jen’s half brother. Pages of lined paper with the chicken-scratch writing running through the lines, the words written large and along the longest edge of the papers. It had caught her attention when she’d first seen it. A little puzzle she’d answered later in the night, when Jen had talked about disabilities.

Owen had a syndrome, the full name was in her notes, but in addition to the obvious facial and neck issues evident in his photographs, his fingers were shorter, the joints at the base of each finger malformed and gathered together. He had similar issues with wrist and elbow. Writing was hard, so he wrote in a way that let him use more of the page.

She copied out his unique handwriting, slowly at first, then with more confidence. As she wrote more, she could let herself be sloppier, always with a mind for the limitations of his hand and arm.

The pages went into another bag. Sealed away, the contents recognizable but partially obscured by the label pre-printed onto the bag’s exterior.