From time to time I will see an image and not be able to get it out of my head. The image will haunt me. Last night I saw something that still claws at my heart. You look at another CSI's computer at your own risk. There's a lot of gore on a CSI computer. Gore never bothers me. Expressions bother me, the face of an abused child in the Emergency Room, the stunned wife covered in her husband's blood. But last night, it was a dog.
This was an old case and he'd kept the photos because they touched him like they touched me. We were looking for something else when we stumbled upon them, and they were both the most beautiful, and yet, the saddest photos I've ever seen. The dog's master lay dead. I didn't ask about the details. If he was there, the man had been murdered. That's all I know. That's all I want to know. A small brown dog lay beside the body. His eyes told it all - eyes filled with fear, confusion, and yet, he patiently waited beside his master. Murder scenes take a long time to process. In shot after shot, the little dog was there, waiting. He stood beside the medical examiner's stretcher, overseeing the examination of the body. He peered into the body bag as they zipped his master up.
And the photo that touched me the most, and still brings tears to my eyes, was the image of a little brown dog, curled up on a white sheet - the white sheet that had just been removed from the body of his master.
When Senator George Graham Vest was arguing a court case over the death of a dog, he said, "The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his DOG. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he can be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wing and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast into the cold, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard him against danger, and to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws and his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.
Senator George Graham Vest, 1870
