Dan Coleman had a great idea about a writing exercise using three sentences to describe a scene. So let's give it a try! (but expand it a little bit.)
Below are the 'items' found at a crime scene. Use all, or as many as you can, to both describe the scene and the environment it was found in. Compress it into five or less sentences to set up the scene

Items::
A watch that has stopped at 3:15--a body-- a crumpled piece paper--a discarded, empty wallet--lipstick--a set of discarded car keys.

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Getting called out on a rainy night to the docks at 4:30 on a Monday morning because a body was found caught up in some pilings was not a good sign of how my week was going to go. The guy, if that's what the body had been, had obviously been beaten all to hell before he was dumped in the river. It had been recent too, if the broken watch he was wearing was any indication since it had stopped at 3:15. A set of car keys and an empty wallet with a crumpled piece of blank paper stuffed inside were bagged, but my gut told me they weren't going to give us much. My gut did believe, however, that whoever the dame was who dropped her tube of blood red lipstick on the edge of the pier knew plenty--now, I just have to find her.
I stood looking down at the discarded wallet of the dead man. It had been ripped and slashed open like pillaging Vikings would do raiding a English nunnery and then thrown rudely onto the bloody chest of the man lying at my feet. Frowning, one glance at the body told me it wasn't going to be an easy case. Someone had stuffed the victim's watch into the victim's mouth--a digital watch that had stopped at 3:15 in the morning. In the stiff's right hand was his car keys--in the left hand a tube of lipstick. It was 5:30 in the morning--birds were beginning to chirp--traffic on the next street was beginning to rumble--and the color Chartruse seemed to be an odd color for lipstick so early in the morning.
O'Halloran frowned. "All this crap lying around next to the dead guy--empty wallet, lipstick, keys, stopped watch, piece of paper--it's like something out of a freaking detective novel."

"Always the skeptic," Curtis said. She took O'Halloran's picture with the department's digital camera: the flash was blinding. "Say cheese."
Jon--

Another couple of hundred words and you'd have a good page written! And how long did it take you?
Maybe five minutes, with editing. I kind of like O'Halloran and Curtis already... and another edit--so six minutes.
The watch had stopped at 3:15; the body checked out much earlier. The crumpled piece of paper might have come from the empty wallet a few feet away. Either, neither, or both could be the victim's. Same with the car keys. It was the lipstick that interested Jenkins most.
The arthritic knee bit was my favorite of all the examples. The human element.
Agreed.
I'm not even Japanese, and I'm bowing. You're all amazing!
I like this one.
Standing over the body on the slab, Sgt. West looked over the contents extracted from the perp's stomach during the autopsy, cleansed of fluids but eerily glistening, nestled in the cling of the plastic pouch. There was an onyx tube of lipstick and a watch, stopped so that its hands covered the date window, obscuring this potentially vital fact. He shook the bag, watching the items slide and collide as he pondered why they'd been swallowed, and whether it had been a willing exercise. But the frantic phone call had brought him here, and now the medical examiner had vanished, leaving only her empty wallet, car keys, and a scrap of paper behind, its edges ripped in a desperate pattern of struggle, the paper's fibers stressed from the conflict. Jonas was still out there, it was clear.
The trail started with a discarded empty wallet where the yellow crime tape flapped across the end of the pier. The Gulf breeze blew a salty gust and rolled a crumpled piece of paper across the uneven surface until it was stopped by the next item, a clump of keys. The trail ended where the body, face down arms extended, left hand clutching what looked like a lipstick, lay spread eagle next to a kneeling patrolman. "Three fifteen, watch was broken," the patrolman said as another brine flavored blast of wind pushed his hat back.

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