haolehothead | (no subject)

Danny is only acting as backup when it comes to this exercise. He's grateful to Chris for doing the requested damage, but there's still a part of him that cringes when he sees the way they've trashed the huts. He sighs and closes the door behind him, signalling to Nick and Kate that this is the one that's set-up the best for their exercise. He's the detective and if he's learned anything from his years on the job, it's that he ought to shut up when the lab shows up because he doesn't know half of what they do.

"Today," he advises to Kate as catches up to them, walking the last little distance, "Nick's your guy. You have a question, you ask him. If it's about the procedure of what happens after, that's me, but what I want you to do is take everything you've read and all that we talked about and go into this scene with an open mind. I want you to pick out the important pieces that might lead you to a suspect or give you a lead. Sound good?"

And maybe he can politely request that someone who owes community service hours can help tidy up the clusterfuck that's become of the huts.

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Nick laughed, because it was an accurate description. "That's pretty much the gist of it, yep," he said. "It's not very glamorous, and can sometimes be pretty gross, but sifting through crap is pretty much the essence of the job."

He turned back to the kit, sifting through it before pulling out a digital camera. "Since documentation is important, one other thing we want to make sure to do is take photos of the crime scene as it is, so in the event of some sort of hearing, we'd be able to show people exactly what happened, what was left behind, instead of just relying on your word or my word. People really like pictures, is what it boils down to."

Kate grins at Danny's comment, because a lot of this shit is complicated, but she likes Danny. And she likes that she can make him laugh like that.

"Before we touch anything, we take pictures," she says, nodding. "Gotcha. Do we take pictures of stuff after, too? Like, say I take a picture of that area," she says, pointing to where a drawer is lying upside down. "But then I find something important under the drawer. Do I take a picture of that, too, once it's moved?"

"Think of pictures like the memory you're never going to have, unless you're one of those freakish photographic memory people. I mean, let's be honest, is anyone going to yell at you for wasting time and money? Maybe. Is it better to be safe than sorry? Definitely. I'd err on the side of too much over too little."

"Absolutely," Nick said. "I would definitely recommend being more thorough and maybe taking a little longer to process a scene than to want to cut corners to save time. You might not realize that something would have been important until it's too late, especially if whatever you're investigating happened somewhere that you need to get it all processed and cleaned up ASAP. You don't want to have to try to reconstruct something from memory later, all because we had to clean up the scene so people could have their hut or their rec room back or whatever."

Listening, Kate nodded to the both of them, though she knew that was the type of thing she'd probably have trouble with. She'd never really been the patient type, but there was a lot of stuff that she was going to have to work on if she really wanted to get this sort of job in the long term.

"Okay. Take my time, take lots of pictures, be careful not to touch much until one of you guys get here," she said, reciting everything she thought was important to remember. "Was there anything else?"

"I don't know," Danny says evenly, playing dumb. It's not that hard to do, given that he's not the CSI expert, but Nick is. And really, this is just one additional reason that he's grateful to have met the man. "Tell me what your instincts say," he coaxes.

Nick nodded his head towards Danny, agreeing with his question. "Always hated it when people pulled that on me, but he's right. You're doing real good so far, Kate. You've got this stuff down already, practically. Think there's any steps you missed?"

"I guess don't take anything for granted," she says, lifting one shoulder in a thoughtful shrug. "I mean, even if something looks totally innocuous, that doesn't mean it's not still something important."

She grins and adds, "And don't fuck anything else. Because the lab guys won't like that."

"Look at her, she's all grown up," he dryly comments, wiping away a fake tear as he grins at Kate. "Well, if you two are happy to keep working on this, I'm gonna head to the Compound and find someone who owes about two hundred community hours to clean this up."

"Thanks, Danny," Nick said, surveying the mess one more time. "That reminds me, Kate -- the best part of the job, I almost forgot." It was, sometimes, his favorite part of his work -- aside from solving crimes and helping give closure to grieving families. "You don't have to clean a single part of this up. You come in, you investigate, you collect your evidence, and then you go home. Sure, maybe here on the island we'd probably be a little more helpful about it, I don't know, it doesn't really happen that often. But back where I'm from, at least, traditionally, law enforcement leaves the clean-up to other people."

"Thank god," Kate says, rolling her eyes up toward the ceiling as she laughs. "I'm pretty much the messiest person ever, so asking me to clean this up would've been the worst idea ever."

Which is to say, it wouldn't have gotten clean if that was the idea. Marshall would have been better at it, although he probably wouldn't have liked it very much.

"Well, then, let's hope we do things that way here, too," Nick said, with a smile on his face. He took a few steps back so he was closer to the edges of the mock crime scene.

"I'm gonna stand back and let you get to work, don't want to get in your way. Any questions, just shout them out, hopefully I'll know the answer."