Stoking The Fire

Chapter Eleven

It takes several minutes to get order restored, then she walks over and holds her hand out to me. I squeeze Nick's fingers briefly, and Greg's shoulder as I pass, then I walk up to her.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the court, may I present Ms. Kari Hanson, Ms. Gibson's daughter, the voice you heard in that brief snippet of a much longer recording, and expert witness in this case for the prosecution. Ms. Hanson, if you would please take the stand?"

I nod and let them swear me in, taking the seat with a projected pose of composure I definitely don't feel inside. After I'm settled she smiles at me, then walks back over to our table.

"You mentioned 'anything she could get her hands on'. Like this?" she asks, before she hits play again and I hear myself describe being hit in the head with the can of cooking spray, and mentioning that it needed stitches, though I didn't remember how many.

"It was six, by the way." A click of the button, and a report pops up on the screen detailing that visit to the emergency room. Silence for a moment, then scumbag pops up again.

"Objection! Report clearly states the child told the nurse that she tripped into a box of canned food she was packing up while she was in the kitchen!"

"Overruled. Unlike you Mr. Samuels, I am well aware of the 'I ran into a door' defense. Please continue."

"Mr. Samuels does have a valid point, weirder accidents have happened. However, we have all kinds of interesting toys in Forensics now, such as computer programs that have the capability to extrapolate the circumference of a can, based on the curve of a scar. A scar, I might mention, that can still very clearly be seen on our witness's forehead. If you will excuse me, Kari?" I nod, and she walks over to me with a flashlight that has a camera attached to it.

The picture of my scar shows up on the screen, and the jurors stare at it, muttering to themselves. "Thank you, Kari." she says, before walking back to the computer. She then proceeds to bring up a program that takes the picture of my scar, enters the trajectory of the curve, and uses all kinds of nifty animations to compare and contrast can circumference size. After taking questions from the jury, she does it a few more times, with reference pictures that had been taken in the crime lab of several different types of cans, until they all nod in indication that they understand.

"As they like to say as CSI's, the evidence doesn't lie." she looks down at her hands, then looks back up at me. "That makes me curious, Kari. Why did you join the crime lab?"

I shrug a little. "I needed a job."

"Right, you had just been laid off from the company that you moved out here for. Third layoff in three years for you at that time, that definitely was a rough time for all of us. Which, that reminds me - you had several job offers you could have taken at the time you were hired in. Some of them were offering more pay, which I'm sure financial security would have been paramount to you at that time. So, again, why the lab?"

"That's true, some did pay more, like the job that had just laid me off, but pay isn't everything. At least for a couple of them, I didn't feel like the position might have the long-term stability I was looking for at the time. To me, cases were always going to generate paperwork. Also, I've always kind of wanted to be a CSI."

"I'm sorry, could you run that last bit by me again?"

"I, well. There's many things I've wanted to become over the years, but one of them has always been to be a CSI."

"And why is that?"

"Why did, or do, I want to become a CSI?" she nods. "Well, I mean, I grew up watching Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most Wanted and 48 hours and Forensic Files. To me, solving a crime is like solving a giant puzzle, and I love puzzles." I smile briefly. "Also, I remembered all the tales of abuse I had heard about, within my own family and others, and I remember feeling that sense of anger and injustice that people could do these things to someone else, and just get away with it. These victims were too scared to speak for themselves, and they had no one to speak up for them. They had no one to be their voice, and get their justice for them. I wanted to do that, if I could."