Mr. Stone 

By Zachary Furr 

Take the slab of marble and treat it as gentle as a mother coddling a baby. Set it upon a felt blanket as if you are about to lay it to rest. Be oh so careful with the chisel, the name is already in the stone, it is just waiting to be set. Treat the slab with respect and keep your cool, it is a masterpiece for the fallen’s family. 

Report starts: 

July 15, 1982 

Location: Waco, Texas 

Mrs. Polaski was sent into the missing person report three days ago. Mr. Polaski filed the report after his wife failed to appear after a “Girls Trip” was supposed to be over. Mrs. Polaski and her next-door neighbors were supposed to go to a country spa to spend a few days relaxing. Local police searched the resident and the summer home. Found no trace of her in the past 72 hours.  

A Mr. Smith of a local accounting firm dropped by the summer home in Waco while two local cops were investigating the house. It seemed that Mrs. Polaski had bought a penthouse in a Dallas skyscraper. And the accountant was dropping off the final proof of ownership. 

Local Dallas police investigated the penthouse and immediately called the FBI upon entering the house. 

The house stank of blood, the pure white carpets were tinged red and the tinted windows were red on the inside. A first glance suggests that it is all blood but closer inspection shows that three red latex paint cans are in the kitchen. The kitchen, bathroom and second bedroom are spotless and show no damage. 

 The master bedroom and the living room are covered in red and hurt the eyes to stare at it. Mostly because of the smell of blood and paint that fills the home.  

Mrs. Polaski is found in the Master bedroom adjoining the living area. Blood trails connect the two across the carpet. The victim is stripped and eviscerated laying on the bed. 

The first slash was across the throat, expertly slicing the jugular on both sides of the neck. Next was a carved “E” in the chest post-mortem, With the top line across the left shoulder connecting to the long line that ran the length of the chest and abdomen, between the breasts. With the middle line below the left breast and the last line across the beltline. No bruising along the arms or legs, no defensive wounds, meaning that she knew whoever it was that murdered her. 

The Bedroom was relatively neat, no mess except for where the incident occurred. The kitchen had a stock of half a gallon of milk and some breakfast cereal.  

No fingerprints were found except for Mrs. Polaski’s.  

Officers asked the front desk if anyone was seen coming in with Mrs. Pulaski. The front desk said that no one came with her on that day, but that she had had different men come up periodically within a two-week period of time. 

She bought favors from men for the simple pleasures that they provided. 

A pile of white dust was found next to the victim’s phone on the coffee table and was sent to the lab to be inspected.  

Mike Freeman was the local detective that teamed up with a federal investigator, Pam Ralter, to try and uncover the truth of the heinous crime that had occurred. 

Mike lit one more cigarette as he drove down the road toward the fuel station where the Missus was last seen. It was a habit that he had been meaning to quit, but he had just never seemed to get around to it. He took a long drag of his Lucky Strike. A brand that had made a resurgence after a brushfire war between France and Germany.  

Mike exhaled smoke as he exited his dark red pickup, he took a look at his surroundings, decided that it was too hot and entered the store to talk to the clerk on duty. The air conditioning was like that of a sweet kiss of a past lover.  

Mike observed the usual items and advertisements of any gas station that was trying to sell more than just fuel. Cigarettes, cigars, flip lighters, chewing tobacco, candy bars, chewing gum, soda pops, beers, and various other small snacks.  

Mike grabbed a pair of beef jerky sticks, canned coffee and a large bottle of water, then he approached the counter where a rather large, black woman stood. She had on a red polo shirt and the name tag read “Becky”. She also wore a vacant expression on her face that showed that not much was going on upstairs.  

“Can I help you, Sir?” Her voice was annoyingly high pitched and twangy and did not match her profile. Her eyes still stared straight, almost cross-eyed. 

“I just take these and two packs of Lucky Strikes.” Mike said, he coughed once and took a swig of water. “I don’t suppose you remember a woman that came through here three days ago?” 

“Sir, we get a lot of strange people that come in here. I can’t remember every person that comes through here.” She pressed a few buttons on the register. “That’ll be seventeen dollars and fifty-seven cents.” 

Mike gave her a twenty, received his change and went back out to the furnace outside. He entered his truck and heard his radio squawk. It was a CB radio and his local channel is one that all his friends at the police station knew and a select other few knew as well, Pam included. 

“Deer-Dinger, this Ground-Hugger, come in, over.” Mike placed his snacks in the passenger seat and picked up his handset and responded.  

“Ground-Hugger, this is Deer-Dinger. This is Mike, is that you Pam?” 

“Roger, that Mike. How was the lead at the gas station?”  

“Cold as ice. Funny in this weather.”  

“Well, I am sorry about that, but these things happen to the best of us. The lab sent back the results of the powder found next to the phone. Not a drug of any sort. turned out to be the dust of a rock.” 

“What do you mean rock? Like granite or something?” 

“Yeah. It is white marble.” 

Mike thought about it for a moment. What kind of killer sprinkles white dust near the body of his victim? Why white marble specifically?  

“Deer-Dinger, Mike you alright?” 

“Yeah, just lost in thought.”  

“Well I am going to a local masonry to see if they can help identify the dust. Want to join me?”  

“Yeah, what’s the address?” 

“415 west farm road 610. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” 

The radio went silent. Mike cracked one of the bottles of water and drank half of it. He put the truck and gear and started his way to the masonry.  

Traffic was typical of Dallas. Too many cars and not enough road. I-5 had been under construction for the past twenty years and never seemed to get any closer to getting completed. Cars, trucks, motorcycles all crammed together in the tire-melting heat. 

Dale Shawl’s stone works. A tin barn with rocks and stones all over the place, each separated by type. A blue Cadillac was already parked in front of the tin shed. Pam was already here. 

The furnace outside only seemed to get hotter as the day went on. Mike grabbed the bottle of water and walked into the shed. There was no AC in this building, no sweet nectar of cool kisses. Pam was talking to a man by the counter who Mike supposed was the owner. 

“Look, I am trying to find out what sort of stone this is.” Pam was hard at work. The man at the counter seemed oblivious to her charms. Of course, he was. The heat inside was only slightly lower than the outside. The man was covered in dust and seemed to be in no particular mood for answering questions posed by a federal agent. 

Mike walked up to the and made sure that his badge was on full display on his belt and his .44 magnum holstered on his side. He slid the bottle of water across the counter toward Dale.  

“Mister Shawl, can you please answer my associate’s question?” Mike asked with as tender a voice as his gruffness would allow. 

Shawl took the cool water and drank half the bottle. He then looked at the baggie. “Officer, as I told this lovely lady, I cannot account for every scrap of dust in Texas. But me and my vast amount of experience with rocks, I guess that it is some marble. Not much. The pure whiteness and softness is something that I do not encounter often. Check with an art dealer, Marble is more their sort of thing. Other than that, I got nothing. If you will excuse me, I got some acres of a quarry to roast in.” Shawl escorted the officers outside to the parking lot and then turned to his golf cart and took off down the dirt path and into the quarry. 

“Well, Miss Pam, I’d say that our investigation is as cold as the corpse.  Mrs. Pulaski didn’t strike me as an art dealer.” Mike said as he nonchalantly walked her back to her car. 

“She may not have been a collector or even a dealer, but she had high tastes. Who knows, maybe an artist took offense to an overheard word. Killed her for the insult? It is not outside of the realm of possibility.” She reached for her door handle and pulled back quickly. At 10 A.M. The sun had already cooked the door handle hot enough to fry an egg.  

Mike pulled out a red handkerchief and opened her car door. “You ought to be careful and carry one of these with you while you are here. This summer heat is only going to get worse the longer you stay in Texas.” 

Pam received the handkerchief and moved over to the side as the superheated air vented out. “So what is your next move, detective? As you say, the case is pretty cold.” 

“Well, I plan to follow up on some nearby art galleries and take up Shawl’s advice. Maybe there is some devilish artist out there that dislikes constructive criticism. Then again, they might be willing to drop another clue, or at least another person to go talk to. Can you go back to the office and see if the good Missus had any rivals or if her husband had any sort of people that wanted to do him harm? It would be good for you to get away from this heat even for a while.”