White Painted Pebbles

2

They found him in the forest with nothing but socks on his feet. It was gruesome. Nothing like anything I had seen before. His head was twisted in untwistable ways. His arms were stretched in unstretchable lengths. His face. It was indescribable. Horrific. The smell drifted to my nose, making me nauseas and weak. I dropped to my knees in disgust. But as I dropped, I felt something on my knee. A white pebble. It looked like it had been painted white. Its smooth surface looked like a bald head. This made laugh which was why everyone turned to look at me.

"Anything that you find amusing, Detective Palmer?" said that stuck up, long nosed freak, Simon Sowell.

"She's just nervous. Don't blame here. This is different to every other case she's dealt with," Detective David Lynch was my saviour at that moment. I nodded a "thanks" at him which he smiled at straight away. I walked up to Simon and showed him the stone.

"Look. Its the third one. But this time someone died," I said as I waited for a reaction. I could tell that he was trying not to react, but it didn't work. I could tell by the beads of sweat squeezing out of his forehead that he was under so much pressure to solve this serial killer. Well, this was the first person he had killed. He had warned us. The killer. He warned us that he will kill someone and we couldn't do anything about it. So we didn't. That was the mistake. We should've done something, we should've tried but we just couldn't be bothered. I mean, in Stanmore, the smallest town that has ever existed, there has never been any type of serial crimes or criminals threatening to kill people.

"Oii, Palmer, I've found the missing part of the body!"

Missing part? What missing part? David walked over to me looking puzzled and confused. "What's up?"

"Oh nothing, just my mind wondering again, like always!" I laughed a little to sound like I genuinely was daydreaming but the laugh sounded fake and unconvincing.

"Ok then..." He looked at me with the worried face he had when he saw the body, "the missing part, the heart. It's been replaced with a white stone." He pulled a bloody white painted stone out of a clear plastic bag. It looked like the one I had picked up but his was soaked with blood. I reached into my pocket and took out the stone.

"I found this too."

David gazed at it and looked at his stone, then at my stone.

"Mine's real. Yours is painted."

"Good observation skills, David!"

"Shut up, Laura!" he laughed as he put the stone back in the bag. He walked over to Simon and gave him the evidence bag. I looked at the stone and wondered. Why was it painted? I secretly put it back in my pocket. Jesus, what was I doing? This is illegal. I wanted to put it back but something pulled me towards it. Telling me to keep it.