The River's Edge

Chapter 2- Guilty

    Chapter two

    Olive looked at her hands. You can tell a lot by people's hands. If they are dry, and the knuckles are cracked, maybe they do not drink enough water, or it is winter. If they are covered in paint or ink, or led, perhaps they are a writer or drawer. Maybe your fingers are long, and you are talented with music, such as piano. But to Olive, her hands were deadly, forever stained red. She looked at them shaking, and saw red sticky under her fingernails. Blood. It pulled at a memory that she intended to forget.

    Amanda's face was contorted with desperation and pain, her mouth open in one, blood curdling scream. And there they were. Olive's hands. Gripping the sharp weapon that left no trace, her knuckles white. The next part was the worst. Her hands were now covered in red, and she was slumped over a limp body.

    Sitting on the cold floor of the dim room, Olive was desperate to get away. One single tear slipped down her face before she wiped it away and stood.

   It was time to get away from this wretched place.

                                                                                                                ***

    Brielle woke early the next morning to visit her sister's grave. She stopped in town to get some flowers and that day's newspaper. When she arrived (it did not take long because of the town's small size) she was heavy hearted. She placed the flowers at the base of the square shaped stone. She then sat beside the grave and cried. She had not yet cried for her sister, wanting to suppress her emotions in front of her mother. When she was finished, she wiped her tears and sat there. She then picked up the newspaper and began to read.

    When they reviewed the autopsy, they couldn't figure out what weapon was used for the murder. The marks left looked like a stab wound, but it also could have been a tear. However, there was a pocket knife left beside the body with three different fingerprints on it. The killing wound was too short to be the knife's blade, but it still could have belonged to the murderer. Within the next 72 hours (three day for each, because that is the maximum amount of time the police are allowed to keep suspects) the three people that the fingerprints belonged to would be interrogated. The body was confirmed to have died fourteen days before the body was found, exactly two weeks.

    Brielle did not know what to think of this. She then inspected the clearest footprint she could find. It was right near her sister's grave, in apatch of moist, fresh dirt. She did not want to go into the forest again. It was average sized, maybe size eight. It held no significance. They could have worn different shoes to cover their trail. And this may not have even been the murderers' footprints at all. How was anyone able to tell if someone was a killer just by average sized footprints? Many things troubled her mind, but even so, she could still tell a few things.

If these truly belonged to the killer, it was a woman. It was easy to tell that by the way the shoe was so dainty, and it narrowed more in the middle.

The shoes were converse shoes (the footprint had the converse all star symbol imprinted in it).

They were likely tall, or at least had long legs. She could tell this because their strides were long.

    Brielle dug through her jean pocket in search of a pencil. She found one of the short golf pencils and some lint. She quickly scrawled down what she had discovered on the newspaper. Then she tucked it away and went home.

                                                                                                     ***

    When Brielle looked out her window, it looked to be about midday. She had fallen asleep. She then heard a knock at the front door, for she had left her bedroom door open. She walked down the hall and into the kitchen on her right. Her mother was getting up from the table to answer the door. Her mother turned the handle and swung it open. Two officers stood in the doorway. They both looked up, their faces guarded.

    "Karen Serventell. You are under arrest for the murder of Amanda Woodburn. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say and do will be used against you..."

    Brielle stumbled back a few steps. She did not get the chance to hear the rest of what he was saying as they turned around her mother and clicked handcuffs into place. They dragged her away, looking confused and terrified, and slammed the door shut.