Detective Loran Gamble entered the master bedroom of the enormous mansion. On the floor, in the middle of the bedroom, was the body of a plump man. The man lay in a position that no living body could, and the inside of his neck was exposed, welcoming death in like the host of a party would welcome visitors. Detective Loran walked up to Bryan, an officer who was the first on the scene and her second in command, and asked, “Who do we have?”
“A Mr. John Smith. He was High class.” Loran rolled her eyes as she faced the dead man again. After WW3, the three classes, high, middle and low class, broke into two classes because of the job cuts- High and Low class. She was Low class. Bryan continued, “He was killed early this morning, considering he was still warm when I got here.”
Loran considered this for a minute then asked, “Who made the call in?”
“The housekeeper.”
“Did Mr. John Smith have any criminal records?”
Bryan gave a funny look, “Well not really.”
“Do you have an idea who killed him or why he was killed,” Loran considered, “I know it is still really early but,” she turned from the body to Bryan, “You know what I’m asking.”
“Yeah I get what you are asking, and by the look of the crime’s traits I’d say yes; it was the Ghost.”
Loran smiled, “I thought so. And I’m guessing by traits you mean money missing, clean murder, and gone without a trace.”
“Yep. Spot on; however, you did forget,” Bryan dug a piece of paper from his pocket handing it to Loran, “Ghost’s signature secret message. It was written on the kitchen wall; it looks hard so I give you my luck,” Bryan swung his arms in Loran’s direction as if he was passing an invisible object to her.
“Thanks Bryan.”
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That night, after discussing the details of the murder with her team, Loran stumbled to her bed as her eyes became heavy. She flopped on her bed and sadly remembered with a sigh that her work was not done. She pulled a piece of paper out of her jacket pocket; the paper was riddled with soft and sharp creases, forgotten. The note’s author was a serial killer who some call a vigilante, who she calls a monster. The case of the murders is a very interesting one that her team named “The Ghost” case. The case was initiated by the murder of a High class, but that is not where the killer started. Ghost started a year earlier and not with murders but with cyber attacks.
Ghost was a very educated individual, almost inhuman. He committed cyber attacks on High class banks for a year and the police had no idea. Ghost’s feat was incredible for the reason that America was now the second highest ranked in cyber security and technology- China was ranked first. After that year, Ghost lowered his bar to killing, and that is when the police noticed the cyber attacks, which were unfortunately untraceable- just like his slaughter scenes. When Loran became the new head detective, Ghost started to leave her encrypted notes. The notes contained useless information about himself, but Loran was intrigued- she felt like she was getting into the killer’s mind, and therefore getting closer to catching him. Throughout the year that Loran has been reading Ghost’s messages, she’s gotten a feel for his personality; Ghost, the introvert who was assertive, extremely smart and playful (this was the profile Loran had developed). Even though the messages had never specified it, Loran couldn’t help this feeling the Ghost was suffering from something but she wasn’t sure; in fact she didn’t care. She wanted no reason to sympathize with a person who kills.
Loran continued to blankly stare at the new code. She read it out loud hoping that something would come to mind, “abaaaabB- abaaBbBb- abaBbaAB- ABAaBbbB- abAbabAB- aBaAbabb- ABAAbbba- aBaabBbB- ABABabBB- ABAABBAB- ABAABBBB- ABABAABA- ABABAABB- ABAABAB” Loran thought and thought and thought. She taped the note to the wall and took a step back to examine the note once again, “Ghost you have outdone yourself this time.” Loran noticed some of the letters were capitalized while some were lowercase, but by the tenth interval they stayed uppercase. Loran, again, studied the code, this time only focusing on the a’s and b’s.
After about five minutes of staring, Loran’s heart skipped a beat. She lunged in closer to the paper and smiled. She opened her laptop and typed in these two words: Binary code. Loran constantly switched her eyes from her laptop to the paper- her laptop then paper- laptop to paper, until she finally got a bunch of letters: “DOYOUKNOWMORSE”. She stared a bit then finished it: “DO YOU KNOW MORSE?"