Chapter 24 #2
“Oh! Chief Mayet?” Officer Clay bounds away from my office door, a cardboard file box gripped between his hands. “Sorry, Chief. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Not particularly.” I slow halfway between the elevator and my office, then I tilt my head toward Pres. “Officer Clay, this is Preston Danes. He’s been giving me a tour of our new computer system. Preston Danes, Officer Clay.” I glance down at the box between us. “And you’ve brought me… paperwork?”
“A knife, Chief. And a hat.”
Pres’ eyes pop wide.
“You found the murder weapon?” I flip the lid up and search each individual plastic evidence baggie inside.
Snatching up the knife, still bloody and sticky from the life it took, I study the glittering reflection of the overhead lights bouncing off the long steel blade.
“Three and a half inches.” I turn the bag over and scan the hand grip. “Just like I said it would be.”
“Left hand grip,” Pres murmurs, leaning close enough that the side of his head almost touches mine. “You got yourself a left-handed killer, Chief?”
“The detectives believe our killer is actually ambidextrous,” Clay inserts, straightening his spine and broadening his shoulders. “They believe we’re close to tying it all up.”
“Ambidextrous?” Pres’ brows bunch together in thought. “But still left-hand dominant?”
“Ambidexterity is, at its core, a person who can use both sides equally,” I insert. “There is no dominance.”
“Sure there is. My best friend in the whole world, my ride or die, savior in the apocalypse, coolest dude on the planet—”
“Expired while waiting for you to reach your point?”
He barks out a playful laugh that draws Fletch’s curious stare from the lunchroom.
I figured he’d be nearby.
He wanders out with a fresh cup of coffee and an inquisitive tilt of his head, firming his lips as he finds his uniformed officer sharing a box of evidence with a civilian. “This looks cozy. Chief Mayet.” He looks to Pres. “Civilian.”
Called it.
“I think Preston was about to tell us something mildly interesting, Detective Fletcher.” I look his way. “Possibly incorrect, since science is science. But if you have something useful to add…?”
He snorts. “I’m just saying. My bestie is a professional fighter, right?”
Is he? Cool.
“He’s a right hand dominant kinda guy. In fact, almost everyone inside his gym is right-hand dominant, but Cole—my buddy—he busted up his shoulder about a year back.
Ripped those muscles to shreds, but he’s a scrapper from the wrong side of the tracks, and he wasn’t ready to quit yet, so he talked to his coaches about switching to southpaw for a bit. ”
I set the knife back in Clay’s box and fold my arms. “Training his left hand to be stronger does not make him ambidextrous. Not in the context we mean.”
“No. It doesn’t. But it’s hard as hell switching these things up, right?
After twenty years of wiring our brains to do it one way, we have this perfectly good other hand just kinda hanging limp like a big dumb noodle.
He was determined, though. This gym he trains out of is fancy, one of those kinds that consistently produces champions, and since champions make money, they had some Benjamins to flash around.
That means they brought in a famous ambidextrous fighter to work with Cole.
The dude spent months inside that gym sparring with my buddy, which kinda turned into sparring with everyone, since they saw value in utilizing the dumb side as well. ”
“But—”
“This guy was a true ambidextrous person. He could fight on either side and was totally chill about it. He could drive or write or pull his…” He trails off and clears his throat. “Either hand. But just because he could, doesn’t mean he did.”
Intrigued, Fletch folds one arm across his chest and sips his coffee. “Explain.”
“He could write with both hands, but he deferred to his right more often than not. He had this girlfriend, pretty as a peach, and he had a thing for playing with her hair. He usually deferred to his right hand for that, too. He’d sit at the dining table and pick up his knife and fork like how the rest of us normies used a knife and fork, and when he’d text, he often tapped using the right side. ”
“So he was right-handed?” I press.
“No! He was ambidextrous. Like, clinically proven, has been his whole life. But just because we can do something doesn’t mean we always do.
The other fighters sometimes made a big deal about it, which kinda made him overthink it, which messed up my data.
But when he was just doing his thing, when he was left alone to work on the hanging bags, or when he was teaching a class, he was able to revert back to who he was.
I noticed gross motor actions had him either ambi or favoring his left side.
He fought southpaw most of the time, because that’s where he was comfortable.
When he was doing the smaller tasks, the fine motor stuff, he preferred using the right-hand side.
It was interesting as hell to me, because while all the meatheads were obsessed with his left-handed stance, I was obsessed with the other stuff. ”
Fletch’s lips twitch with a teasing smile. “The big bad fighter know you had a crush on him, Preston?”
He rolls his eyes. “I like data. I like understanding things.” He points to the box.
“Your knife has a left-handed grip, which means your killer is left hand dominant… probably. Slicing a person open requires precision. It requires strength. And it’s a high-stress situation.
” Again, he adds, “Probably. In high-stress situations, your killer will use what comes most naturally to them. Maybe he can hit a bag or catch a ball or throw a jab, all with his right hand. But at the end of the day, he’s picking up a pen with his left.
” He meets my eyes and grins. “It’s science. Probably.”
“Ah…” Officer Clay clears his throat, carefully placing the lid back on his evidence box.
“Be that as it may, Detectives Malone and Banks have asked us to bring these to your lab. There’s a ton of DNA in here, Chief, so they wanted you to try the rapid tests to see what you see.
” His cheeks flame bright red. “Science.”
“Probably.” Preston turns on his heels and wanders back the way we came, his soft chuckle floating on the air in his absence.
“I’m going back to the fifteenth floor to help them finish up.
We should be out of your hair by the end of shift.
” He taps the call button, and while he waits, he takes out his phone.
A mere few seconds after pressing the device to his ear, his face splits with a giant grin.
“Cole! Hey. You remember that time Old Man Felch accused you of lifting his wallet, so you pretended your arm was broken, like naw, man, wasn’t me, I’m a cripple?
” He throws his head back and laughs, stepping into the elevator and turning to face us.
“The prick wasn’t having it, so we made a cast at school and strapped you up, but we didn’t think it through so good, ‘cos we wrapped your right hand, and you didn’t know how to wipe your ass with your left yet. ”
“Charming guy.” Humor glitters in Fletch’s eyes. “Can we get those rapid tests underway? Arch wants to bring the Prims in for a chat today, and life would be a hell of a lot easier if we had some DNA results to slap them with.”
“Sure.” Shaking my head, I move toward the elevator and watch the numbers above rise. I tap the call button so it’ll stop here when it’s done dropping Pres off with his team, then I settle in and wait, Raquel’s last texts flashing in the back of my mind.
I’m a terrible patient.
“I guess I was headed to the lab today anyway, so I suppose I could show you the way. Bully her into prioritizing your tests. Did the hat come with hair, by any chance? That would make this a hell of a lot easier.”
Wandering closer, Clay grins wide. He’s like a big ol’ puppy dog, thrilled at an opportunity to please the humans.
“We sure did, Chief. And though Detective Banks warns me to never jump ahead of confirmed evidence…” He glances warily to the left, then the right.
Finally, he brings his eyes back to me. “It’s all starting to look a little complicated. ”