Day 695: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: kitchen knife

“Wow … we ought to send Lee on vacation every quarter – his cold case division solved three in a week, and he cleaned up three more in 24 hours!”

Mrs. Magdalena Thornton chuckled when she heard that from her boss, Commissioner Scott of Big Loft, VA's police force. The commissioner was utilitarian, but flexible in his use of his human resources.

Mrs. Thornton had come into the police force as clerical support and had been one of the late Commissioner Thomas's three secretaries, and by no means a favorite. He thought of her as too simple, not sophisticated enough to understand the real work he was about – but that work was exposed and he was dead, along with two others with him and two others in jail. She only of his secretaries had not left, and had survived to see an honest man become her boss.

Flexible schedules were nearly unheard of, but Commissioner Scott was so desperate to keep good people he was using them … so he wasn't kidding about giving Captain H.F. Lee more time off, and thus giving his secretary that chuckle about the man she loved.

Still, Captain Lee's solution to the Borgia case was no laughing matter. Headquarters was abuzz when he came back in at 3:30 with a bandage on the palm of his left hand.

“You should see the other guy,” he said, and he wasn't kidding.

The news reports told the story. The 20-year old case had hinged on the murder weapon not ever being found. Turned out that it had been a kitchen knife – the murderer of Mr. Borgia had immense strength, and had simply pushed the knife through where another man would have needed a sharper, thicker knife. He had then returned the knife to his kitchen, and had used it there for 20 more years!

Captain Lee had reviewed the autopsy, and, with the special knowledge that came from his years in the Army's Special Forces, he had worked it out by process of elimination – blunt knife, suspect in the case of immense strength with a strange habit... was known to carve all kinds of food with his favorite kitchen knife, and just eat them off his knife, as if savoring an added flavor...

Captain Lee and Lieutenants Lightfoot and Carter had gone to do the apprehension. Wouldn't you know it – the suspect lashed out with his favorite knife!

The two lieutenants forgot to shoot, they were so amazed by Captain Lee's reaction – he caught the blade of the kitchen knife, and pushed back. Suddenly there was a sickening crunch. Captain Lee had driven the blunt end of that very same knife through the thinnest part of the murderer's sternum, thus driving the bone fragments into the murderer's heart! Not fatally so, but enough to turn the strongest man into a heap of agony, as Captain Lee wrapped a napkin around his hands and read the man his rights as if they had shook hands in a friendly way a moment earlier.

Mrs. Magdalena Thornton just shook her head when she heard the whole tale.

“Folks playing games with a man who could probably kill them with a paper cut if he wasn't so sweet at heart … they ought to just put up their hands the minute Harry arrives and just confess … it would be so much easier for everyone that way.”