"Detective."  He knew better than to call her by her first name, it wasn't something that she ever responded kindly to.  He made that mistake every day for a week straight when they first met, all the while expecting her to warm up to him, but she never did.  Things only got worse when he started finding mistakes in the assumptions she made.  Most of the officers on the force were amazed by her ability to formulate a storyline from the littlest of details, and even he had to admit that she was creative.  Her predictions seemed clairvoyant to the superstitious brains of her coworkers, but he knew better, "Good to see you again.  We need to talk -- I suggest you shut the door."<br/><br/>She did so reluctantly and stared at him with a familiar look of scorn, "Good, now... As you know, we've had some heated discussions lately about some of the tests you wanted me to run..."  Marion always came to him with demands, knowing exactly what it was that she wanted him to discover, never allowing the scientific method to actually run its course so that he could act without bias.  Any trace of impartiality or true investigation was absent from her heavy-handed style of inquiry, even if her behavior did make her a model TV cop.  "I did as you asked with the Preston case and ran all of the tests you stipulated... The DNA swabs, checked the partial prints, and<em>nada</em>.  Every last angle you had me check came up inconclusive, it was all a complete waste of time just like I told you it was going to be."<br/><br/>Before she could object he raised his finger quickly, and his typically jovial expression became sharper than she'd ever seen.  His patience was beginning to wear thin, being a lab geek wasn't anything like Miami Vice led him to believe at the tender young age of fifteen, "<strong>Stop.</strong><strong>You're</strong>going to listen to<strong>me</strong><em>for once.</em>I have something to tell you that you'll definitely want to hear."  For once Eric had the upper hand, a rare turnabout given how the officers usually treated him and his fellow technicians, "And I have a feeling you'll be glad that you shut the door."<br/><br/>"This..."  He grasped a pile of papers from the desktop and held them out to her so that she could glance them, "Are expense reports I had commissioned on some cases over the past couple of years -- your cases, to be exact.  I was getting tired of running tests that were a waste based on wild hunches until finally I found the needle in the haystack and got to watch as you took all the credit for cracking the case.  I was wondering:  how much money was spent running these tests which turned up negative?  As you're aware, the department's been looking for ways to trim the fat.  Last year they cut Forensics in half, thinking that letting some people go would curb costs.  It didn't."<br/><br/>"You've run up quite a tab, fortunately for you, the Captain hasn't made the connection between overzealous investigation and skyrocketing lab costs.  The results were more amazing than even I imagined:  sixty thousand dollars in lab kits, DNA tests, slides, maintaining equipment, and well... That just covers the tests you had us run that were completely useless.  I could very easily forward a digital copy of that to our supervisor, thereby showing him a creative, simplistic solution to balancing the department's budget.  That could put a slight dent in your career plans.  Or..."<br/><br/>"You could get on your knees and do exactly as I say."