Case Reference: 14-C

To the individual who has contacted this department under the name “Northbound,”

I am writing because you indicated in your last communication that you would continue to correspond only with a single officer. I have been assigned that role.

This letter is not an admission of cooperation or concession. It is an acknowledgement of receipt.

You claim to possess information regarding the locations of unidentified human remains connected to the missing persons cases currently catalogued under regional cold files 611 through 618. If that claim is false, this correspondence ends here. If it is true, I am requesting that you provide verifiable details sufficient to permit recovery.

You wrote that names are irrelevant. I disagree. But I will accept dates, landmarks, soil conditions, or distinguishing features not available to the public.

For clarity: no terms have been agreed to. No assurances have been made. This communication does not alter your legal status.

If your intention is attention, this will disappoint you. If your intention is leverage, understand that leverage cuts both ways.

If your intention is to be understood, you have chosen a poor method.

Write again only if you are prepared to be precise.

Detective Elias Morren

Major Crimes Unit

North District

To Northbound,

Your reply was received at 03:12. I will address only what is useful.

The coordinates you provided were incomplete but directionally accurate. Search teams recovered partial remains two meters east of the culvert you described, beneath a stand of alder. The jacket you referenced was present. The interior pocket contained a transit token minted in 2009. That detail was not released publicly.

You wrote: “I told you the ground would be soft.”

It was. The frost line had not yet set. Recovery was uncomplicated.

You asked whether I said their name aloud.

I did not. Identification has not yet been confirmed.

You also asked whether I am “the kind who looks.”

I don’t know what that means, and I won’t speculate.

If you have further information, provide it. Do not editorialise. Do not frame this as an exchange or a favour. If your goal is retrieval, you will be direct.

If you are testing whether I will continue to write, this letter answers that.

E.M.

Northbound,

I am not correcting you for the sake of argument. I am correcting you because precision matters.

You wrote that the second body was “placed near water.” That description applies to most of this county. The revision you sent afterwards — “not near, but where water remembers itself” — is unhelpful.

However, the phrase “where the bridge sings when trucks pass” narrowed the search sufficiently.

The remains were located beneath the western abutment. The river was higher than average. Recovery took longer. One of the divers refused a second descent. Another took his place without comment.

You asked whether the hands were still together.

They were not.

You also wrote: “You should stop calling them bodies.”

We call them remains because language affects the process. Process affects outcome.

You asked how many officers attended the recovery.

Seven.

You asked whether I stayed.

I did.

You asked why.

Because leaving would have been easier.

If there is another location, provide it. If there is a pattern you believe I have missed, state it plainly.

Do not mistake my continued correspondence for alignment. I am writing because some people remain unaccounted for.

— Detective Morren

Northbound,

Your last letter was delayed by three days. That delay mattered.

You wrote that the third was “harder to give up.” You wrote that the site was “not kind to weather” and that “time does what it wants there.”

Those phrases are not evidence. They are indulgent.

Nevertheless, the reference to the switchback road above Calder Ridge was sufficient. Search teams located disturbed earth approximately forty meters downslope, partially concealed by shale. The incline complicated the retrieval. One of the younger officers slipped—no serious injury.

The remains were incomplete.

I am telling you this because you asked whether we “got all of them.”

We did not.

You asked whether that bothers me.

Yes.

You asked whether I think about them afterwards.

Yes.

You asked whether I dream.

That question is irrelevant.

You also wrote something new in this letter. You wrote: “You are careful. That is why I chose you.”

I am not interested in being chosen. I am interested in concluding this.

You stated that there are “two left.” If that is accurate, you will provide the following location without commentary.

If you do not, this correspondence will be reclassified, and other measures will be taken.

This is not a negotiation.

E.M.

Northbound,

I am writing sooner than protocol recommends.

You sent a map fragment torn from a road atlas, marked only with a circle and a single word: “wait.” I do not know whether this was intended as instruction or provocation.

Search teams have not yet been deployed. That decision was mine.

I am telling you this because, in your last line, you asked whether I could “sit with it.”

I can.

But understand what you are asking me to do.

Every day a location is withheld, the ground changes. Animals interfere. Evidence degrades. Families wait in a way that is not passive, no matter how it looks from the outside.

You wrote earlier that names are irrelevant. That is not true. Names anchor responsibility. They prevent abstraction.

I am breaking form now to tell you something you did not ask.

The first recovered individual has been identified. Her name was Lila Moreno. She was twenty-seven. She worked nights at a packaging facility. Her mother believed she had moved east. She had not.

I said her name aloud.

I am not offering this as leverage. I am offering it because you seem to believe that withholding is power.

It is not.

Power would be ending this.

If you intend to do that, do it now.

Detective Morren

Northbound,

This will be the last letter I send in this sequence.

Your final location was precise. Too precise.

The ash tree you described was struck by lightning three years ago. It split along the trunk exactly as you said it would. The soil beneath was shallow. The remains were found less than a meter down.

You wrote that this one “wasn’t supposed to be alone.”

I do not know what you meant by that, and I am not asking.

The second set of remains was located five meters west, as an afterthought. That phrasing is yours, not mine.

Both have been recovered.

You asked whether that changes anything.

It does.

You asked whether I will continue to write.

I will not.

You asked whether I understand you now.

I understand that you required a witness more than you required silence. You chose me because I would respond. You counted on restraint and called it curiosity.

You were wrong about one thing.

I did not delay the search because I was listening to you.

I delayed it because I needed to confirm something that couldn't be done by correspondence.

You were correct that the bridge sings. You were correct about the switchback. You were correct about the ash tree.

You were incorrect in assuming that only you could walk those sites without leaving a trace.

You asked, in your first letter, whether I am “the kind who looks.” I am.

And because I am, I recognised the pattern in the access points, the timing, the distances that favoured someone with departmental familiarity and an unremarkable presence.

This letter will be entered into evidence.

By the time you read it, you will already know that.

If there is anything left you wish to say, say it to someone who is not required to answer.

Detective Elias Morren

No signature followed the final letter in the file copy.

There was no reply.