Chapter 16: Liability

The county called it a Gate Fatality Review.

It was held on Monday, November 9, in a conference room with folding chairs and a coffee urn.

The county had written the form on Sunday night, because nobody had needed one before.

It had a box for the name of the deceased, a box for the cause, and a box for the name of the person responsible.

The box for the person responsible had never been filled in for any of the fourteen deaths on Gun Day.

Every one of those had been a round that came from somewhere and belonged to no one.

I sat in the second row with my glasses in my hand, because I could not stand how clean the lenses were.

My window had been open since the Anchor fell, and the first line did not change.

[Authority today: 105 of 140. Docked 25 percent until Restitution.]

The deputy medical examiner read the findings in a voice that had read a lot of them.

The sergeant had died at 7:44 on Sunday morning of a single rifle round to the chest.

The round had struck the salt floor first.

The State Attorney's investigator said the force was lawful under the state's defense-of-others statute.

He said that no charges were contemplated.

He said a Gate Watch member had fired to protect another person from a Class II creature, and the death was unfortunate.

He did not say which Gate Watch member, because the record did not say.

The round was a .223, and in Florida a .223 round has no owner.

Nobody in that room could say whose it was, except me.

The Registry printed the record in my head in the middle of the review, and it was addressed to me and no one else.

[Record of Liability.]

[Deputy: Quesada, Lázaro. Round: signed, 7:44 a.m., Sunday.]

[Struck: person, not a monster. Cause: ricochet, ring-salt floor.]

[Authority dock: 25 percent for 7 days, or until Restitution.]

[Appeal: available. An appeal states that the round was not signed.]

I read it four times.

Somebody at the Registry had thought about the thing I was afraid of and written it down, and I could not argue with it.

An appeal was a request to say it was not mine.

I stood up in the second row, and a man in a county lanyard asked me to sit down.

"The round was mine," I said.

The room went quiet.

"It was signed. It has my name on it. The Registry has it in a record, and I'm the only one who can read it."

"Mr. Quesada, the Attorney's office has already made its finding," said the investigator, gently. "You aren't charged. You don't need to do this."

"I know," I said. "That's what I'm saying."

I put my glasses back on and looked at the folding chairs.

"Everyone else in this county who ever fired a round in a gate got the same finding," I said. "Nobody ever had to stand up."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Florida Won Gun Day, So Nobody Believes the Only Kid Who Can Level Up from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.