Leave Request and Fun with Fingerprints

Posted on Tue 16th May, 2017 @ 2:09pm by Lieutenant JG Kellian Michaels & Lieutenant Commander Solan Jekkar

1,600 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night
Location: Chief of Security's Office

Kellian sat frowning at the most recent latent fingerprint match he'd received from the FFIS search. The result he'd just gotten still spun in his head. He saved a back-up of it to a flash drive, which he locked away in evidence storage, and then made a secured online copy.

This case just keeps getting better and better, he thought.

He had suspected that the lowly fingerprint might be a useful means of identifying guilty parties during his initial observation of the state of the 49-Alpha lab. It was not a sterile facility or a clean room. Its staff probably had worn rubber gloves often while inside it, but they had not worn gloves all the time. The result was that there were a lot of fingerprints in the place--on plastic sheeting, on biobeds, on furniture and walls, left without thought, just as the entire lab and its tormented occupants had been left without thought.

He sighed and rubbed at a crick in his neck. His computer chimed softly, informing him that he'd received an email. Kellian glanced at his screen and saw that it was from Solan Jekkar. It reminded him that he wanted to see Jekkar for another reason. He responded to the email and added a request to see the Security Chief. Jekkar responded a minute or two later with an invitation to come by. Kellian secured his computer and walked into Jekkar's office.

"Thanks for seeing me, sir," he said. "I know you've got to be very busy."

Jekkar offered him the vacant seat opposite his Desk. "I've always got time for my Staff." He said with a nod and smile as he poured himself a fresh cuof tea and offered some to Kellian. "So what's up? If it's about those Fingerprints I wouldn't worry too much it can wait."

Kellian thanked Jekkar for the tea and snorted. "I'm worried about the fingerprints because I got alarming results just now--once again from the Starfleet database." He transferred information from his PADD to Jekkar's screen. "There are some partial prints that I'm still running through FFIS. It gave me a result that I have a hard time believing...and yet, it makes sense. If I'm right, it's someone very high up. I need to have as many points of comparison as possible for this to be believed in court."

"That's an interesting dilemma." Jekkar commented. "Hopefully we can get to the bottom."

"I do have another reason for asking to speak with you, sir. I wanted to request a couple of weeks' leave, once this case cools down a bit."

Jekkar nodded. "I'll take a look at the roster and see if I can get Chief Grakesh to put off his leave for an extra week." The Commander scrolled through the interactive interface. "If you need to leave sooner I'm sure we can get somebody else to handle your case load."

Kellian's eyes widened. "No, please...I don't want anyone to have to delay their own leave for me. Mine can wait. We're still short staffed. Just...I would like to get it on the radar."

"Is it a family matter?" The Andorian asked as he got straight to the point.

Kellian paused to think. "Only peripherally, in that it's reminding me of a past situation that involved my family. It's reawakening a lot of unresolved emotions. The longer I work this case, the more disgusted and sickened I am by what was done--both from the current case and from my family's past. I could ask to be taken off the case, but I'm not the only one disturbed by it, and I don't consider myself special. I really want to see it through, and because of the case's sensitive nature, it's not something that could be casually handed off to someone else in my department. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, sir."

Solan nodded. "I fully understand your point of view Lieutenant." The Commander pulled up his terminal. It was a very sensitive subject indeed. "Alright I've got another Investigations Officer on his way, plus an additional 22 Security Officers that afternoon....." The Andorian input a few Commands. "We each have a Case that impacts our psyche to the extent we feel as though we cannot shake it but a good Detective knows that by doing right to ourselves we do right to the victims and their families." He smiled at Kellian. "You are on leave as of this current moment in time."

Kellian blinked. "Right now? But we're right in the middle of--" Kellian paused and shook his head. "I mean, ah, thank you, sir. You took me by surprise. I would like to brief the new person, if you'd allow that? And then I will make plans to visit Earth for two weeks." He let out a breath. "Thank you for understanding."

"Not at all." Jekkar said with a smile. "Family always comes first and that must never change." The Andorian nodded. "Transfer all low priority or minor level cases to the CaseNet. I can have them divided out between myself, Saeed, Summerby and Harper."

"Will do," Kellian said. "Mostly it's just a burglary ring that's working the Promenade and remote levels. Oh--one bright spot to the day--this." He sent to Jekkar's PADD a lit image of a multitude of clear fingerprints running along the top of a doorway. "I happened across this while planning a training and decided to mess with a few petty officers' minds. Care to take a guess as to what this could be? It had me completely stumped, at first."

The PADD showed three fingertips of someone's right hand moving along the top of the doorway in a pattern that repeated itself ten or twelve times. Kellian swiped the screen to show the other side of the bulkhead panel, which showed a single thumbprint, also in a repeating pattern, as well as a horizontal smear that ran over the thumbprints. Kellian enlarged the screen display to show Jekkar a close-up view of a single thumbprint. Oddly, the print did not show the usual loops, whorls, and arches normally seen in a humanoid fingerprint. Instead, a pattern resembling tiny teardrops curled in around themselves covered the pad of this thumb as well as the pads of the fingerprints on the other side of the doorway.

"Isn't that the darnedest thing you've ever seen?" Kellian said.

Jekkar took hold of the PADD and gave it a once over. The Commander was very intrigued. "Go on Lieutenant let's put those Investigative skills of yours to the test, full explanation and your modus operandi."

"I warn you, your tax credits were at play," Kellian muttered. "I had never seen anything like this before, so I came back to the office looking to see if any particularly tall aliens had been guests of Vanguard within the past six months. The prints looked recent, which was a relief, since I didn't want to have to plow through all of the FCDA records.

"I checked everywhere I could think of for fingerprint comparisons. These aren't Betelgeusian or Skorr, obviously, nor have we had any members of those races visit Vanguard. We've had a tall Klingon or two, but Klingon fingerprints don't look like these. I was stumped...until I started thinking about the thumbprints and what that smear might mean."

Kellian held up his pad. "Now, if I were a tall person running my fingers over the wall above a doorway, I'd sort of gallop my fingers over the wall like this." He demonstrated, with his thumb on one side of the PADD and his four fingers rippling across on the other side. "But what the prints actually show is this--the pinkie and the thumb are used to help grip, while the middle three fingers help propel the hand forward, held to the wall by the pinkie and third fingers. This grip is overall much tighter than the casual movement I just did. The sliding of the pinkie smears the thumbprint, but all of the prints show pressure being applied. While the thumb moves forward, the pinkie and remaining fingers grip the wall; otherwise, gravity would go into effect."

"That's a very interesting set of deductions." Jekkar commented as he pondered it for a moment or two. "So what are you telling me Kellian? Somebody on this Station knows how to cover their tracks when it comes to prints?" He asked curiously.

Kellian shot Jekkar a mischievous look. "Have you met our Chief Medical Officer yet? She's an odd bird, and she has an even odder taste in pets."

"I have yes." Jekkar commented. "A spider shaped like a hand......." Then Jekkar looked to him. "Hang on a second, am I thinking what you were thinking?"

"Apparently Thing likes to climb walls," Kellian said. "But I admit, I didn't even think about Thing until I saw it while talking to Dr. Addams about the 49-Alpha case. So I asked her if I could see its fingertips and had a good laugh when I magnified the screen display. I'm thinking I'll leave it as a test for the investigations trainees while I'm gone. If anyone figures it out, I'll buy them a beer."

"You need a better hobby you know that?" Jekkar chuckled.

Kellian snickered. "I just believe in having fun with my job, sir, especially when it provides so generously!" He turned off his PADD. "I guess that's it for now, sir. I'll see you in two weeks. Thank you again."

Lt. Commander Solan Jekkar
Chief of Security

Lt(jg) Kellian Michaels
Security Investigations Officer

 

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