Page 9 of Lethal in Pink

The lecture hall is half-full, which makes sense for a Friday that technically doesn’t count for anything.

Dr. Ellison arrives two minutes early. He’s wearing the same tweed jacket he wears every day, the one with the elbow patches that have been repaired so many times they’ve achieved their own kind of structural integrity. His glasses are perched on the end of his nose and he is carrying a PowerPoint remote in his left hand.

“Good morning, everyone,” he says, “Today we’ll be wrapping up our discussion on chain of custody protocols before moving into a brief review session for those of you who have elected to take the—”

He stops. Looks down at his notes. Looks back up.

“Well. For those of you who are still here.”

A polite chuckle ripples through the room. I do not participate. My notes are already open, my pink pen uncapped and resting between my index and middle finger, and my brain is operating at about seventy percent capacity, which is still approximately thirty percent more than most of the people in this room on their best day.

Dr. Ellison clicks through his slides. Twenty minutes in, he lands on a slide titled “Chain of Custody: Practical Applications.”

“Now,” he says, adjusting his glasses with one finger, “while the theoretical framework we’ve discussed earlier in the semester is complex, the actual practice of maintaining chain of custody is fairly straightforward in most jurisdictions. Documentation, signatures, timestamps—it’s essentially a paperwork exercise.”

My pen stops moving.

The words hang in the air for approximately two point three seconds, which is exactly how long it takes for my brain to run the calculation: he is wrong, I know he is wrong, and I have the receipts to prove it.

My hand goes up.

Dr. Ellison’s eyes find me. His expression shifts to the kind of look of a professor who recognizes the student who always has the answer and is not entirely thrilled about it.

“Yes, Ms. Lane?”

I smile.

The smile is warm, genuine even. It's the kind of smile of a girl who is about to dismantle your entire argument and would like you to know she bears you no ill will in the process.

“I think there might be some nuance worth exploring there,” I say, “Chain of custody failures, while rare, occur more than some like to acknowledge. Particularly in cases where the evidence is central to the prosecution’s theory.”

I pause. Let the room settle.

“For example, in State vs Pulley, the state’s entire theory of guilt came down to a single package of drugs pulled from the scene. At some point, an officer set it on the hood of a patrol vehicle. At some later point, another investigator had it. What happened in between? No documentation. No testimony. Nothing. The South Carolina Supreme Court looked at that gap and reversed the conviction outright—said that tracing the evidence from that car hood to the laboratory required too much ‘conjecture’ on the jury’s part to hold up.”

Dr. Ellison blinks. Once. Slowly.

I continue.

“Then there’s Jones v. Riot Hospitality Group LLC where the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit as a sanction for spoliation of evidence after a plaintiff intentionally deleted text messages and swapped devices, thus, breaking the digital chain of custody. Although forensic experts utilized advanced tracking technology, the human tampering rendered the data unreliable, leading to the case’s termination under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e).”

A student two rows back whispers something to their neighbor.

I ignore it.

Dr. Ellison looks down at his notes. Looks back up at me. His nod is small, deliberate, and costs him something—pride, probably, though he masks it well beneath the veneer of academic graciousness.

“Those are excellent points, Ms. Lane. I stand corrected.”

The student to my right—a boy with a faded band t-shirt and hollow-eyes that look like maybe he hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours—turns to me, his mouth forming the words oh my god with naked admiration.

I give him a small, polite smile and return to my notes. My pen resumes its steady track across the page, capturing the next bullet point on Dr. Ellison’s slide as if the last three minutes never happened.

Because for me, they haven’t.

Not really. The correction joins the others in the back of my mind—catalogued, closed, done. Being right has never required an audience. The best victories are the ones you don’t perform.

The rest of the morning goes by without incident. I gather my things, sliding my binder back in its place inside my tote, and shoving my pen in the small inside pocket of the bag and sling it over my shoulder.