Chapter 8: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

It was Samantha and Brian's anniversary and they were at a fancy Italian restaurant to celebrate the occasion.

"It's nice to be able to do things like this every now and then isn't it?" Samantha said as she took a drink from her wine glass. "The food all looks so lovely."

"Yeah, it's all wonderful." Brian replied as he shifted his gaze to the uninvited guest at the table shoveling food into his mouth. "So remind me again. Why is Peter here?" He said clearly on the verge of losing his temper.

"Well, your old lady over there said that you were paying for dinner so I decided to tag along." Peter said plainly and he continued to eat. "Hey, garçon! More pasta! And more of everything else too!" He said as he motioned towards the nearest waiter.

"Um, well that's not exactly how our conversation went." Samantha said.

"Obviously I'm only paying for my GIRLFRIEND on my ANNIVERSARY DINNER! Why would I pay for you too?" Brian asked as his anger started to slip.

"Oh I don't know, maybe because I literally saved your life. Also you guys haven't been paying me, so I can't even afford to eat. So what's the deal anyway?"

"That's because we only pay you for cases you consult on. Cases that require a martial arts consultant don't come around often, there's nothing we can do about that."

"Then let me help on a regular case then. I mean a man's got to eat." Peter said polishing off yet another plate of food and adding it to a massive tower of plates in front of him.

The sight of the pile of plates gave Brian aches in his wallet. "Fine, you can work our next case with us. But only because you're paying me back for this later." Brian said, aggravated.

"You got it, just put it on my tab." Peter said slapping him on the shoulder as he got up and left.

"I guess he finally got his fill." Brian said.

"Well, just look at it this way. We finally have some time for ourselves." Samantha said as she held Brian's hand.

"Yeah you're right-" Brian was about to say before receiving a phone call telling him to return to the office to look over a case.

When they returned to the office, they were briefed on the details of the case. Apparently several victims had been discovered with similar slashing wounds over the past several months. The problem was that nobody could identify the weapon used in the murders.

"The wounds don't match any weapon in our database, and it didn't look like an animal. We just can't figure out what can make a wound like that."

Peter examined the pictures for a while and then said, "Yeah, I know what did this."

"Oh, really?" Brian asked skeptically. "Well please do tell us then." He added with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

"I mean obviously these wounds were made by someone using their hands to rip them open."

"That's ridiculous. It's not possible for a person to make a wound like that with their bare hands."

"I can."

"Well prove it then."

They then went to the crime lab and prepared a ballistic dummy. Peter then swung his arm and ripped open the chest of the dummy, and the wound was incredibly similar to the wounds on the victims.

"Wha- How did you do that?" Samantha asked, flabbergasted.

"It's pretty simple it's just my special technique. It's called Razors Edge." Peter said dismissively. "I saw it in an anime one time."

"How does it work?" Samantha asked.

"I basically just pinch with my fingers and rip my opponents right open. It's really just a matter of grip strength."

"Well, I'll admit that you proved me wrong, but now you're our number one suspect. Considering that you're the only person in the world that we know can do that." Brian said.

"Obviously, it wasn't him. We were with him the time the last murder occurred." Samantha retorted.

"Yeah, that's true, but maybe you taught your technique to someone else? Or maybe you made some sort of notes about your technique that someone could have used to learn it?" Brian questioned.

"Do I look like the type of guy to take notes?" Peter asked to which Brian gave an expression that seemed to agree with Peter. "Plus it's not really a technique that you can teach. It's all about the person's grip strength."

"Yeah that's a good point." Brian said almost disappointed that he couldn't pin a crime on Peter. "So what? Are we back to square one? Just because we know a person can make these wounds, doesn't mean it helps us actually figure out who it is."

"That's not exactly true. Like I said this technique is based on grip strength. We can narrow down the list of suspects based on people who have strong grips; like strongmen, Rick climbers, and gymnasts. It's not much, but it's a start at least."

The FBI agents ran through the names on their database, but they didn't get any information from it that helped the case. The team went home that night, unfortunately they hadn't been able to make any progress.

When they arrived back the next morning they were met by a surprising visit from the State's Attorney General.