"T.J.!" Aaron cried out for his son as loud as he could. He groped around in the murky water, but it was no use. His son was gone. Aaron was left staring blankly at the sea. He started to cry...
His phone rang. Aaron Masterson sat up in his bed abruptly. He assured himself that it had only been a dream. But why the same dream again?
Composing himself, he picked up the phone. "Hello?" he answered. He heard static on the other end.
"Hello?" Aaron was starting to get slightly annoyed. Finally, he heard a voice through the static on the other end.
"Yes, it arrived." he said, taking out a piece of paper. He read it through one more time. This won't bring my son back...
The autopsy report for Noah Clay sat in front of him. Noah Clay, his old schoolmate. He and Noah were the most intelligent in school and graduated at the top of their class. Noah and Aaron often liked to play code games. He recalled one ever so well...
"Look, Aaron, why don't you give up?"
"Just a second. I can solve this."
He had sat there for what seemed like hours to him, finally solving Noah's clues.
"Got it! Now to line up the key letters..."
"And?" Noah had said, smirking.
Aaron wrote the words Dead End on the paper.
"Noah..." he said out loud, remembering where he was.
He suited up and stepped up to the operating table. He stated what was known about the cause of death.
"Noah Clay. Male. 32 Years old. No external injuries. No engorgement. No evidence of suffication." A Sudden Death... he thought to himself.
Continuing further into the autopsy, he found what appeared to be cardiac infarction, which had been caused by occlusion of the left artery. There was something peculiar about this...
An ulcer was also found in the body.
Finishing up the autopsy, Aaron made to walk away, but something caught his eye. Hair, long; black hair, was slipping from under the sheet that they had covered Noah with. As he looked on, a bloody arm arose from the sheet. Aaron yelled.
"What's wrong, doctor?" said the nurse next to him. He spun around to look at Noah's body, but all he saw was a sheet. No arm. No black hair. He looked at Noah's right hand, noticing it was clamped very tightly around something. He unfurled Noah's fingers and wrestled the paper away. Looking at it, he saw the numbers 178136.
Another code game, Noah? He thought.
Aaron walked out of the operating room and found himself face-to-face with a stern looking man.
"How do you do? I'm detective Moriarty, an assistant police investigator," said the man.
"I'm Dr. Masterson. Can I help you?"
"Found any suspicious causes of death?"
Aaron looked up at Moriarty slowly. "Speaking of death..." he said, "It's amazing that the time f death is so accurate."
The detective chuckled and said, "That's just a coincidence."
"A coincidence?" Aaron said it with a shadow of doubt in his voice. Nothing, not even coincidence could have made the time of death be this close.
"If you'd like, you can talk to Beth Trollers directly. She first discovered the body. She's a student of Noah Clay, a girl friend, so to speak." As he said this, he led Aaron into the hospital waiting room. Sitting there, with her back to him, was a young girl with long, silky black hair, wearing a denim shirt and listening to her headphones.
"Beth!" said the detective. The girl stood up and turned around. She was very pretty, but her eyes...they looked so sad.
"This is Beth Trollers, she's the one who discovered the body." He then turned to address Beth. "Beth, this is Dr. Masterson, who was in charge of the autopsy."
She silently nodded and turned to face Aaron.
"I'm Aaron." he said awkwardly. "I was Noah's friend from school..."
"I know..." she said.
"What?" Aaron was surprised about this.
"Noah often spoke about you...about the code games you used to play in school..." she paused, and put her head down, hiding her eyes. When she spoke next, the sobs in her voice became apparent. "He said you were the only one who could solve his code."
Aaron breathed a sigh of relief. "That was a coincidence," he said, trying to convince not only her, but himself as well.
"Beth, would you tell us where you first found the body again?"
"I received a page to come over around half past nine, I believe. I check my watch often, so I can usually tell who is paging me by the time of day...I thought it might have been a prank call...but as I entered the building I heard a scream...it sounded like Noah. It bothered me, so I called him..." she started sobbing again. "But...the line was...busy...so I used my spare key to get in...but when I got in..." Beth once again saw the vision of herself opening the door and finding Noah on the floor, the phone still in his hand...she started to cry hysterically.
Aaron and the detective looked at each other.
"So it was you who called 911 then?" she nodded in response, still crying loudly.
"Did Noah ever complain about health problems?" Aaron said, trying to keep a synpathetic tone in his voice. "Chest pains, or sluggishness..."
"No..." she said, starting to compose herself.
"Hmm." he said. "Is that so."
Aaron sat at his desk and pulled out the piece of paper he had wrestled out of Noah's hand. 178136.
Let's see. A-Q. Apply the alphabet...the code now read BHIROG.
Separate them into one and two digits...if it's the alphabet, there won't be 2 digit numbers beyond 26... he thought.
17 8 1 3 6
R I B D G
1 7 8 13 6
B H I N G
17 8 13 6
R I N G
Aaron was now utterly befuddled. "Ring?"
yay! i finished my first chapter. i'll finish when i can ;-)
