1
Once upon a time, a woman was walking down the street. Why is not known. Perhaps she was exploring the world by experiencing it. Perhaps she was on the way to meet someone. Perhaps she did not have a purpose - and that not having a purpose was a holy thing in her culture.
What is known is what happened next. She came upon a small child standing on the sidewalk. She bent down to talk to the child - what exactly, the details are unclear on. Then, according to an ATM camera and a traffic camera and an onlooker curious about these alleged 'gems', a cop shot the woman from the left side under her ear, twice under her armpit, in the elbow, and the child thus emptying his revolver. Where the child was hit is unclear because even though the woman vanished into thin air leaving a large emerald to drop suddenly to the pavement, the child staggered into traffic and was hit by a car.
The police then assured the officer that shot the two that there was nothing else he could have done, and that they would calm him down, and that they should go over the facts - also caught on the cameras and the by stander's phone's microphone as well as the ATM's microphone. Medical assistance did not arrive for 23 minutes, having been notified by the by-stander (according to him) ten minutes later once he realized the cops were not going to call for an ambulance.
At a press conference three days later, the police assured the public that such an accident was a warranted police involved shooting. They carefully reminded the assembled reporters and television cameras of the woman's skin color, and that it was different and rare. They reminded that the woman had been not so much mentally unstable due to injury but 'corrupted' because she was 'on the battlefield'. The described the body language of the woman as 'threatening' and 'dangerous'. And while they sympathized with all the surviving relatives of the child, there would not be charges brought against the officer who was currently suspended from duty with pay.
2
The child's parents could not afford any lawyer that would take a civil case against the police department. All the local lawyers had declined on the basis of 'hurting their relationship with the people they had to work with'. Fortunately for the couple, they weren't atheists: they attended a church whose congregation donated enough for a private investigator to at least investigate the woman.
A few days of back tracking the gem's path, he found a grove of trees. He also found himself surrounded by women holding various melee weapons. He assured them of three things. The first was that he was no there to harm them. The second was that he was investigating on behalf of the family of the deceased child. And finally, the stone that the 'suspect' had with her when she disappeared had been taken into police custody as evidence.
And would remain in a sealed container until the suspect was caught. To be used as evidence against the suspect in her trial. And then destroyed. In the mean time, it would be periodically removed from the container and pieces of it would be scraped off in order for forensics lab tests to be done.
They told him his biggest clue yet. They could not help this human family. But they would go to someone who might. Pink Diamond.