Isaac 005

Isaac Case 005: The Murderer

Celest St. Claire's Notes

Hey,

As I mentioned in my note, I’m sure that my conclusions will match Sullivan’s. That being the case, if you’ve already asked him about these clues, you probably won’t learn anything new here.

If you do choose to use this site, you’ll still need to email Sullivan about the laptop’s location. You’ll also need to email him the case’s Solution once you’ve figured out who murdered Keri.

If you haven’t emailed Sullivan yet, you can visit SleuthKings.com/Isaac-005 to send him your first email. When you want to address either of the issues above, just include the appropriate underlined word from above in the body of your email.

If you want to see my thoughts on any of the clues in your case file, just click the corresponding button below.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out the pattern Keri was using in her letter. All of the italicized words end with either an “L” or a “W.” If we pay attention to the note that says “Success comes in sets of three” and only look at the last letter of each italicized word, as well as the number immediately after it, we get:

L1 W2 L4
L6 W1 L2
L7 W2 L1
L3 W2 L3
L9 W2 L7
L3 W3 L6

That’s got to be telling us something – I’m sure of it. My best guess is that it’s pointing us toward individual letters within Keri’s letter itself.

I’ve got it. The first “L” refers to lines in the letter. The “W” tells us which word to read in the designated line. The second “L” shows us which letter to read in the specified word.

With that in mind, when you go through each of the L#W#L# sets, we get the letters “L,” “O,” “C,” “K,” “E,” and “R.”

Looking at the Package Pickup slip, that means the laptop must be somewhere inside of a locker that’s numbered #253.

I’ve figured out the trick to looking at the matchbox correctly, although, I haven’t found the word we’re looking for yet.

When you hold the matchbox upright, a few of the symbols look like letters, but most of them don’t look like anything. When you turn the matchbox, however, some of the other symbols suddenly look like letters.

What we’ve got to do is figure out which way to turn the matchbox so that all of the symbols look like letters. Even when we’ve oriented it correctly, finding the word might not be easy because I doubt it will be read from left to right.

Good news – I figured out the correct way to turn the matchbox. First, you’ll want to start with it so that it’s upright and the folded part is at the top – like a regular matchbox. Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to turn it clockwise once so that the symbols originally on the left side are at the top. After you’ve done that, you should see:

A E U
D N R
V T E

It took me a minute to see it, but I was right – reading the letters from left to right doesn’t make a word. Instead, we have to read the columns from left to right to see the word “adventure.”

If you look at the Package Pickup slip that Keri sent Sullivan, that means you’ll want to replace the word “Matches” with “Adventure.”

After looking at this and thinking about how we decoded the other messages Keri sent, I’m pretty sure that each city name will only give us one letter of the word we’re looking for. If that’s the case, I’m willing to bet that the letters will be in the order the cities are presented on the sheet, too, starting with Madrid and ending with Munich.

If we can figure out which letter to look at in each city, we should be able to find the word we’re looking for pretty quickly. I’m going to try reading Keri’s message at the top again to see if she left us any hints – I’d recommend you take a look at it, too.

I noticed that Keri uses the word “first” three times in the four sentences at the top of the list. When I realized that, I decided to try using the first letter from each city name to spell out a word.

It worked – using the first letter from each city name spells the word “Museum.”

If you take a look at the Package Pickup slip, you should be able to replace the word “Cities” with “Museum.”

When you’ve been able to replace each of the underlined words on the Package Pickup slip, it should tell you where Keri hid the laptop. Once you’ve figured out its location, you’ll want to let Sullivan know where it is.

If you haven’t already, you can send Sullivan your first email from www.SleuthKings.com/Isaac-005. When you want to tell him where the laptop is, be sure to include the word “location” in the body of your email.

In order to figure out where Keri hid the laptop, you’ll need to replace the three underlined words on the Package Pickup slip with the words you find in Clues 1-3. That means the slip should look like this once you’re done:

[Clue 1’s Answer] #253 [Clue 2’s Answer] [Clue 3’s Answer]

As far as I can tell, each clue should give us a single word to use as a piece of the location.

I’ve got it. I know where the laptop is.

The pattern in Keri’s letter told us to look at specific letters, right? When we did that, we got the word “Iocker.”

When we rotated the matchbox clockwise once and read the columns from left to right, it gave us the word “adventure.”

Finally, when we read the first letter of each city’s name in Clue 3, it spelled “museum.”

When we put it all together using the Package Pickup slip, we get: Locker 253 Adventure Museum.

That’s a children’s museum – no wonder nobody thought to look there. It’s the last place I would have hidden the laptop for multiple reasons.

You’ve got to let Sullivan know that the laptop is in Locker 253 at the Adventure Museum. I’d go check on it myself, but the last thing I want to do is complicate things by taking the one thing everyone else is searching for.