The Detective and The Lake

     After a fair bit of deliberating, and a long stare at the now-beating heart, I decided that I should probably call the police. It was clear to me that this was way out of my league, and "tell no one" was going to get me into trouble. I called 911, and the receptionist spent a lot of time coming to grips with what I was telling her. I didn't blame her, but I was getting panicky. Finally, she told me that there was someone on the way, and to stay inside my house. The only person I should talk to was a detective Ingram.

     I sat and worried for awhile, thinking about the morning's events, the heart throbbing on my dining room table. Then, about twenty minutes after the 911 operator hung up, there was a knock on my door. I looked through my peephole and saw a smallish black-haired man looking up at me, waving an ID. I opened the door, and he identified himself as Wilson Ingram, we shook hands and he began to question me about the heart. Where had it come from, what was my involvement, who did I know who might know anything about it, then he got a little... off track.

      He began sifting through some of the papers on the table, my bills, magazine subscriptions. I asked him what he was doing, but he didn't seem to notice. After a moment of looking at a bank statement from may, he looked over the top of the page and asked, very calmly, "who else have you told about this?". I told him that he was the first person I had called, and he said, "good."

     The next few seconds took place in an adrenaline blur.

He dropped the paper and drew a pistol from inside his coat.

I Leapt at him, pinning the gun to his chest before he could get it pointed at me.

We Struggled on the ground, an old-fashioned rumble. Eventually, I managed to knock the gun away, and pin him by the throat with my forearm. I was in a fury, not thinking straight, so rather than ask him the questions I now know I should have asked, I kept pushing down, hard. After a moment, he passed out, and i got up. I grabbed some rope from the garage, and tied him to a chair. I knew it wouldn't hold him long after he woke up, but it would have to do. Then I Packed as quickly as I could. I shoved a few days worth of clothes, and most of my hiking gear into my backpack. I used to do a lot of ultralight backpacking, so I was pretty well equipped. Then, I grabbed the heart, jumped in my car, and drove.

GFiSaT.35.140647-117.128071

I turned it over in my head. It didn't take long to figure out that it was a GPS coordinate, so I plugged it into my phone, and got underway.

    Three hours later, I pulled my car off of the County Road. I misread it at first, and thought it was called "country road", which would have been funny, if my only company hadn't been a disembodied beating heart. I drove for awhile across a bunch of dirt, into a ravine, and toward a patch of pale clay in the middle of a small valley, a dried out lake. I parked my car at the edge of the clay, and hoofed it the rest of the way, carrying my backpack. I could see something in the middle of the lake, but it was hard to make out at a distance. When I finally made it to the object, I realized nervously that it was a shovel standing in the dirt.