Chapter 3: The Rooftop Deduction

I wake up looking up at someone who stands over me. I can't tell who it is at first because I fell asleep with my contacts and glasses on. I blink and stand up, brushing myself off.

"Hello!" he says.

"Hello, Cecil Baldwin," I say.

He looks confused. "How did you-"

"Know your name? And that you live on 8122 Rattlesnake Drive? How do I also know that you're a single, twenty-six year old radio broadcaster, living in a home that had a power out so your alarm clock didn't go off, so you took a shortcut to your job here off the town streets? That you had a rushed coffee and a bagel for breakfast?" Oh, how I've missed the dumbstruck looks of people after my deductions.

"How could you have possibly known that? Are you from the sheriff's secret police?" he asks, frightened.

I don't answer. I like suspense, and I love being mysterious. "Do you really want to know, Cecil?" I ask.

"Please tell me!" he sounds nervous and suspicious, but entertained at the same time. I smile to myself.

"Okay, fine. Your alarm clock didn't go off because of a power out at your house. So you had a very rushed morning. Crumbs on your shirt say your breakfast was rushed. Your nearly half unbuttoned shirt and crooked glasses say in a rush. Sand on your shoes and the bottoms of your jeans say you ran through the desert, kicking up dust because you were rushing. So why would you be running through the desert? It's a shortcut. You were hurrying to get to work. You must work here, because why would you climb up the stairs of a random building if you needed to get to work? Your jeans are wrinkled in a way that you wear them all the time, mostly sitting down. Your jaw line is set so you could start talking any time. So you sit and talk and work in a radio broadcast building? Must be a radio broadcaster."

He looks at me blankly, but smiling. He says, "How did you know I'm single?"

"Please," I start, "your shirt is extremely wrinkled and no wife in her right mind would let you leave the house without ironing your shirt. She would've waken up early too, to make you breakfast, and you wouldn't have been late. You don't have a ring on or an imprint or tan from one either, so you didn't just divorce."

"But how do you know my address and-"

I roll my eyes. "Seriously? Your ID fell out of your back pocket and is on the ground behind you. "

He looks embarrassed as he picks up the ID and asks, "You got all of that just by looking at me?"

"Yes," I say. "I have a tendency of trying to know everything about everyone."

"Are you a detective?"

"A scientist. My name is Carlos."

"Carlos," he says. He smiles like the name tastes sweet. "Why are you at the top of this building, anyway? You don't work here…I've never seen you before."

That's actually a really good question. I think. "I was watching the sun set. I want to know what time it sets every day. Some people think it's a waste of time, but I suspect there's something wrong with the clocks here." What the hell kind of a lie was that?

But Cecil buys it. He says, "Neat! But you don't live here, right?"

"Oh, no. I'm renting that lab next to Big Rico's Pizza."

"Alright then. Guess you didn't have breakfast, then. Do you want coffee or something?"

"No, sorry. Better get back to the lab." I smile, then climb down the fire escape and go back to the lab. The whole time I feel him looking at me.

Molly Hooper, meet Cecil Baldwin. You'll be the best of friends.