<USS Avalon> "Getting Down to Business"

"Getting Down to Business"
By: Ensn. Melanie Redgrave
 
The room was filled with a tense sort of buzz as people from medical did  they
’re thing, while Skyler hovered until the ops. officer showed to take over  
the hovering, and as Melanie pulled out the equipment she needed to comb over  
the scene. She knew most comb troughs were done in pairs, but she also knew 
that  they were losing time that the sooner they started the more chances of 
finding  something. She’d just have to make a note and ask Daros to have the 
room 
combed  a second time. 
 
First she called up the lay out of the office on a padd and then placed a  
search grid over it. She attached the padd to her belt so she could track her  
movements, make her search efficient, and log the location of anything she 
might  find. She put on her gloves and placed the small reordering device in 
her 
ear  and then adjusted the slim sliver mic so it would pick up her voice as she 
make  verbal notes of the scene. Then she removed the camera from her kit and 
began to  take photos and holographic images of the room and everything it 
in. The photos  and images would come in handy later if they needed to recreate 
anything. She  took pictures of the floor, the walls, the chairs and tables, 
the padds all over  the room, and the desk. Finally she asked Doctor Idrys and 
his team if they’d  step aside so she could take pictures of the body. 
 
Melanie was careful not to touch the body until she had enough pictures to  
show the way it had landed on the desk. She then asked the doctor to help her  
lift him up in the chair so she could take more pictures. The last of the  
pictures she took were again of the body after it had been placed on a  
anti-grave stretcher.  
 
“The subject has several burn marks across his chest area in a close  
circular pattern. The  material of the subjects clothing and the skin  beneath 
it  
are blacked and shriveled,” Melanie reached into her kit and  retrieved a 
small 
black light which she turned on and passed over the burns.  “there are 
fragments of crystallized plasma which would indicate the burns are  from a 
plasma 
based weapon.” Melanie said aloud as she swapped the light for the  large 
camera 
to clicked up close photos of the deadly wounds. 
 
After making a few more notes on what the body looked like and how it was  
found Melanie asked the doctor if he would take the body to the DNA lab in  
forensics. The rest of her comb over would be easier if there were fewer 
people.  
Once it was only Melanie and the handsome officer posted at the door, Melanie  
began to really get down to business. Melanie was grateful for the work.  
Scanning the room, UVing the surfaces, taking samples, none of that required 
her  
to think about what had happened with Skyler. How could she have been so 
stupid  as to have let Skyler read her thoughts? 
 
Melanie sighed and shook her head as she opened her tri-corder and began  
scanning the room. Work. That‘s all she wanted on her mind right now. Melanie 
 
stood in the center of the ready room and slowly moved in a clockwise circle.  
She wanted to minimize the amount of movement in the room. “Tri-corder 
readings 
 indicate the presence of several humanoids over the past hour. This is not  
unexpected with the amount of traffic in the room since the discovery of the  
subject. The scan samples will be analyzed in the lab.” 
 
After the room was scanned with the tri-corder and the resulted logged,  
Melanie traded in the tri-corder for a pair of Ultraviolet goggles,  an ALS  
light, a smaller camera, and a small gray box full of sample collection tools.  
She 
added them to her belt along with the gird padd and smiled briefly. When she  
geared up to collect evidence like this she always had a sense of, ‘This must 
be  what Batman felt like.’
 
“I’m turning the lighting off.” She warned the officer standing near the  
door as she put the goggles on. “Computer turn off all lighting and  
illumination.” 
 
Once the room was pitch dark Melanie turned on the hand held ALS light and  
began to pass it over the table and desk surfaces, the chairs and padds, the  
walls and finally the floors. The captain’s desk chair had traces of fabric 
most  likely from his uniform but Melanie took a picture of the area and then 
bagged  it anyway. The desk surface had dead skin cells, she took pictures and 
samples  of that. The most interesting thing however was a very small bit of 
what  appeared to be a rubbery fragment. 
 
“There is a small, perhaps a half of a cm in size, piece of what appears to  
be rubber 2 meters to the right of the captain’s desk.” Melanie noted as 
she  
took a picture of where the rubber bit was and then placed it in a sample 
bag. 
 
Melanie then began taking notes of each and every foot imprint that was  
indented in the standard issue carpet. Melanie reached into her kit and pulled  
out an evidence marker and placed it where she found a foot print. 
 
“There are possibly nine, no, eleven foot print indentations in the carpet.  
Again this is not unexpected with the amount of foot traffic. What is not  
expected is that it would appear that possibly two sets of the prints do not  
appear to have walked anywhere else in the room. From the position of the  
indentions and the depth of which they are pressed into the carpet it would  
appear 
the persons were standing still. There are about 17 cm between the  
impressions. Set one are larger then set two.” Melanie walked over and knelt  
down in 
front of the two sets of foot impressions. “The fragment sample  5-A  was 
found 
relatively 22 cm down the largest of the impressions in what  would appear to 
be the arch of the right foot.”
 
Melanie took ultraviolet pictures of the impressions and then turned the  
lights back on. She walked over to her kit and labeled all the samples she’d  
taken, added their label numbers to their pin holds on her padd, and then gave  
the room another once over to make sure she’d covered every inch.  She  
nodded 
when she was sure she’d finished and then closed up her case. 
 
“You should still expect Ensign Daros sometime soon. This room needs to be  
sealed as a crime scene now and only she and the Commander can do that. I also  
have a feeling we’ll be back as we put the pieces of the puzzle together.” 
 
The Ops. officer Melanie was talking to nodded his understanding and then  
she left the ready room. There was a lot to go over. Melanie smiled as the 
turbo 
 lift doors closed. ‘God I love this job.’ She thought as she called out. 
“
Deck 7  Forensics.

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