THE LETTERS

THE LETTERS
Aiden's POV

The flat is warm.
It’s not the comforting kind of warm that you feel in a well-used home, but a sweltering, stale heat that adheres to my body like plastic wrap. 3:27 am. The only illumination is from the green digit glare of the oven clock and the solitary sodium-yellow streetlamp that projects through my window blinds. The least I could do was keep the quiet panic scratch-scratch-scratch of my pen, the old refrigerator's hum and the crashing in my head company.

I’m alone. And I’m relentless.
The floor of my apartment is a graveyard. Eight faces leap at me in glossy 8x10s. eight lives, eight dossiers, eight barbarous, ritualistic exits. And when they take apart a puzzle, they leave eight pieces behind—one behind each ear.
I look down at the list scrawled on a legal pad for the hundredth time, the edges of the ink slightly blurred from a drop of sweat landed on my temple.

Veronica Cheng: T
Amira Klein: E
Greta Johnson: S
Marjorie Philips: A
Tessa Monroe: EE
Andrea Holt: 89
Chacha Remirez: TT
Paige Lang: SR

My brain is a meat grinder, gnawing on the information until there is nothing left. I have tried everything. Anagrams. Ciphers. I’ve tried matching the letters to their names.
Nothing. I’ve tried sorting them by the date of the kill. Nothing.
I rub my eyes, the irritant beneath my lids as coarse as sand. I need to see the pattern.

I took the first four photos. Veronica, Amira, Greta, Marjorie. E, S, T, A. I place the photos on the floor and fan them out, as if they were tarot cards.
E.S.T.A.
S. E. T. A.
T. E. A. S.
E. A. S. T.
A jolt, hot and electric, goes straight up my spine. EAST.
My breath catches. "East," I whisper. The word sounds alien in the silence. A direction. A part of the city. It’s a start. T’s something.

My hands are shaking now. I look at the rest of the clues. R. 89. EE. TT.
What about the rest? I pick up Tessa Monroe’s photo. I add it to the pile. E, A, S, T, R. STARE. RATES. TEARS. No. "East" feels right. "East" feels solid.
I push the 'R' aside and look at the last three clues, the ones that have been taunting me.

I focus on the letters. R, EE, TT. What about the S and T from before? My pen flies across the page, a frantic scrawl that looks like it was written from the inside of a spiderweb.
S - T - R - EE - TT
The pen stops. I stare at the word.
STREET. My heart is a fist, hammering against the inside of my chest. East. Street. I say it out loud. "East Street." I scramble for my laptop, fingers fumbling on the keys. I type it into the city map database.

There you go. A stub, a cul-de-sac within the old factory district.
It works. It must fit.
But my elation crashes as quickly as it came. The cold, nauseating question wash over me. "If the answer is ‘East Street’ then why the double letters? Why "EE"? Why "TT"? Why not just two more victims, one with an 'E' and one with a 'T'? This killer has standards. He doesn’t do “extra.” Every slice, every victim, means something. Or maybe he was in a hurry or something.

And then... 89.
Andrea Holt’s face stares up at me. The number 89. There is one game piece that just doesn't fold anywhere. It’s the broken tooth in the gears. "East Street" ignores it. It’s a number. A goddamn number. What does it mean? 89th victim? No, she wasn't. An age? No, she was 38.

The apartment was so hot, I thought I was going to pass out. I’m sweating through my shirt. The case files smell like dust and death. I am missing it. I’m missing the key. The why is everything.
Why are some victims different?
The others are just one letter. E. S. T. A. R. Except Chacha gets two. Paige gets two. And Andrea... Andrea gets a number.

I need an anchor. I need a voice that’s not the one in my head.
I grab my phone. My thumb hovers over Dana’s name. It’s... 3:41 AM. She’ll kill me.
I press the call button.

It goes off four times, each a charge. Another, gravelly, sleep-congested mumbling.
"Ai...iden? Wh... what’s on fire?"
"Nothing. Nobody’s dead. Not yet."
"Then you are," she groans. "Aiden, it’s..."
"I know what time it is, Dana. I need your brain. The letters. I’m looking at them. I think I have something."

"Talk," she says. A rustle of sheets.
I say, stroking the phone between shoulder and ear as I pace. "It’s a real place. But the clues... sometimes the clues... some are double. EE. TT. And then there is just '89'. It doesn't fit. Why?"
I can hear her yawning, a long, loud crackle over the speaker.

"The victims," I say, pressing, desperate to keep her on the line. "They're all lawyers, right? All child cases. Every single one of them allowed the offender go unpunished."
"Mmmhmm. Yeah. Go on," she murmurs.
"But why the clues different? E, S, T, A... they’re simple. Then EE, TT, 89. They’re... more."
Dana is quiet for a second. I hear her sigh, a person who has to make their brain work.

“Aiden…” she says, her voice thick. “Lawyers… child cases… maybe… maybe some of their sins… were far… far worse than the others?” she exhales. “Maybe, I'm not sure.”

worse than the others
The words hang in the air. Worse. More. Bigger.
I stop pacing. I stop pacing.
The floorboards creak.
The noise of the refrigerator grows louder and feels like 'it's filling my head with heat' because I went to bed in the heat.

They're the same. they're not “more.” They're just... little bits.”
"Aiden?" Dana's voice is small. “You still there?”
Something splits apart in my head. A mad idea. A brilliant yet frightening and simple idea. I’m not supposed to be making words. I’m supposed to be making an address."
I'm staring at the board.

I'm looking at the names.
“Aiden, talk to me. You're freaking me out.”
I drop the phone. It rattles to the ground, Dana’s petite cries squawking “Aiden?! Aiden! ”.
I don't care. I'm on my knees. My hands are flying on the ground, covering and uncovering the photos in spaces, not in rows, but in clusters."
Set 1: The Direction.

Veronica Cheng: T
Amira Klein: E
Greta Johnson: S
Marjorie Philips: A

I line them up. E A S T .
Set 2: The Number.
I grab Andrea Holt’s photo. 89. I put it immediately following the first group.
Set 3: The second set of letters .

Tessa Monroe: EE
Andrea Holt: 89
Chacha Remirez: TT
Paige Lang: SR

I grab the rest.
I lay them out, my heart exploding in my chest. He linked them. He needed their letters for both words. S-T-R-EE-TT.
My eyes run down the entire row of photographs that lies on the floorboards that are so dirty inside my apartment. It just isn’t a riddle. It’s not a cipher.
It’s a sentence.
EAST 89TH STREET.
"Damn."
Word is a breath of air. It’s the place. The killer’s hideout. The place it all began. The place where the first child was failed by the first lawyer.

I’m already on the go before I’ve even fully formed the thought. I’ve got my jacket. My keys. I grab my service weapon from the lockbox on the shelf, the cold steel a startling, weighty comfort in my trembling hand.
I fling the apartment door wide, leave the phone to fall to the floor, leave Dana shouting my name in the empt
iness.
I'm in the hall. I'm at the elevator, hitting the button.
I know what the letters really mean. And now, I'm going there.