The Pink Pencil | Teen Ink

The Pink Pencil

December 18, 2023
By alisonrobison BRONZE, Wentzville, Missouri
alisonrobison BRONZE, Wentzville, Missouri
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

The hottest day of the year had arrived and the town of Oakville was flustered. For weeks everyone had been preparing for his hot and humid summer. Pools were flooded and ice cream shops had lines wrapping the building. Oaksville, unlike other towns, hadn't seen a summer like this in years. The police station was getting calls left and right about problems happening due to the heat. The heat wave caused a rift between many people because the people preparing were overdoing it immensely. Specifically one person. Randy Heckenmen. Randy was a middle aged single couch lump. All he does is work as a desk man at the police station sorting old files, and he lives alone in an apartment across town. Randy had heard all about the calls from this heat wave and all of the arguments that got spit out. Working for the police station for the past 14 years was something he found comforting. He knew his way around and no one could do his job like him. The morning was young and Randy had just gotten to work. As he swipes his broken down card across the check in system it reads a warning. The building was on lockdown and there was cases left and right. Overnight one of the temporary inmates had been killed. No one knew if it was someone who broke in, or somebody who was already in. Randy quickly got his stuff and went straight to his desk. This hasn't happened since his fifth year working for the force. He heard whispers and doors being closed to talk behind. The head investigator had been out of town for weeks. Coming home to this was a nice surprise I'm sure. As the sheriff and detective are talking Randy decides to peak his way into the conversation to get some entail. This had all gone down between the hours of 2 and 345 am. Those were the last and first time stamps the cameras were on. The search began. The inmate who had been killed was by himself, no roommate. Randy had left work about 11:30pm and the only person he remembered seeing still in office was Shary. Shary Williams. A hard working woman who had been in the police department for over 30 years. Day in and day out Randy aspires to do her justice and work as hard as she does, Shary was interrogated as she was the only person here. She explains she was up working on an old file case that she had been trying to solve on her own time. Shary finds joy in looking at unsolved cases to see if something was missed. She claims she left only about 10 minutes after Randy. Thankfully the cameras were still working and all of this checked out. AFter sitting through hours of interrogation and watching the members of this department get questioned one by one, Randy came with a question. The detective was using a Pink pencil to write down all of the answers in her book. Randy normally would not think anything of it but he overheard the Sheriff say the only thing left at the scene was a ripped piece of pink plastic. Randy began to question. Although he had his conspiracies he did not bring it to any attention. He had wondered how it could be anyone but the sheriff, the sheriff has a master key that opens any door to the building. Leaving room for being able to go into the power room and cut the cameras. The sheriff also left quite early last night. Giving time for an alibi. Detective Bronk was always kind of guarded and hidden but never this dark. The inmates body had no sign of fingerprints and it looked like a staged suicide. Whoever did this must had been planning for months. Randy quickly brings all of this to the attention of the sheriff and Sheriff Costa's eyes pop out of his head. The sheriff explained he was here but he was not in Building A which was the inmate building. Instead he was in Building C. Randy was confused because Building C was only for deskman. He questioned why he was in building C and the sheriff's face caught a bright red shade. He did not ever really give an answer. The sheriff explained he would look into Detective Bronk and get back to him. As Randy was carrying himself back to his normal building he came across cut barb wire. The cut looked like it could have been done by a pocket knife. The sheriff and the detective both had the same pocket knife from the department. Randy had no idea what was to be the truth behind this case. So many suspects, not enough answers. Randy took it upon himself to look at the scene. As soon as he got to the scene he knew. There was a shoe print left in the dust of the inmates cell. This shoe was none other than his deskmates shoe. There was even a size stamp and that size met his desk neighbors to a tee. Randy rushes to go explain this to the sheriff, but as he walked up to his office he was to find the sheriff dead. The building was empty and the sheriff was lying in his chair unresponsive. Randy ran. He knew he could catch his neighbor. As he ran to the left wind stairs here he was. Jonathan. Jonathan Wartlow was the one who did all of this. Randy told him to explain what he had done or he was going to shoot him with the sheriff's gun taken off his desk. Jonathan explains he was so sick of hearing about the heat non stop, and that he wanted to spice it up around this town. Jonathan explained that he did not expect them to notice or even care if some inmate that had life in prison was murdered. He told Randy he would of gotten away with it if the old janitor was not there to see it all go down. That is why the floors were uncleaned and the footprint was left. He said one day as he was talking to the detective he noticed the pink pencil and used that to pin it on Bronk, Randy did not care to hear this story, but little did Jonathan know before running out of the sheriff's office he clicked the emergency button hidden under the desk. The real authorities came and took Jonathan away. The department could not thank Randy Moore and he was offered the Sheriff's job, to honor Sheriff Costa.


The author's comments:

This is written for my english class as a form of mystery writing. Enjoy!


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