The Shutter’s Second Note
The morgue smelled of bleach and cold metal. I stood over the second victim’s body, my Leica hanging from my neck, the strap damp against my collarbone. The rain had followed me inside, dripping from my coat onto the tile floor in small, dark pools.
Dr. Lena Park pulled back the sheet with a practiced hand. The woman’s throat was a dark gash, the edges clean and precise. Same as the first. Same angle, same depth. The killer had a signature, and he stuck to it like a painter who only used one brush.
“Time of death?” I asked.
“Approximately two AM.” Lena pointed to the lividity settling in the woman’s back. “She was moved post-mortem. The blood pattern on her clothes doesn’t match the alley’s drainage. He killed her somewhere else and dumped her.”
I leaned closer. The woman’s face was peaceful, almost serene. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. She looked like she was sleeping. That was the worst part. The Shutter didn’t just kill them. He posed them. Arranged them like mannequins in a store window.
“Her name?” I said.
“Maya Chen. Twenty-six. Worked as a freelance graphic designer.” Lena handed me a folder. “No known enemies. No criminal record. She was last seen leaving a coffee shop on Hawthorne around midnight.”
I flipped through the pages. Maya Chen’s life reduced to a stack of paper. Birth certificate, driver’s license, credit card statements. A woman who paid her bills on time and liked Thai food. A woman who was now lying on a stainless steel table with her throat cut open.
“Did you find anything on her body?” I said.
Lena hesitated. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a small piece of paper, folded into a square. It was dry, untouched by the rain.
“It was tucked into her bra,” Lena said. “The killer left it there. The patrol officers almost missed it.”
I took the bag. Through the plastic, I could see handwriting. Black ink, sharp and angular. The letters were precise, like they’d been drawn with a ruler.
I held it up to the light. The note read: *You see what I see, Iris. Find me.*
My blood went cold. The first victim had no note. This was new. This was for me.
“Have you shown this to anyone else?” I said.
“Just you and Detective Holt. He’s waiting in the hallway.”
I slipped the bag into my pocket. The paper felt heavy against my thigh, like a weight I couldn’t shake. I took one last look at Maya Chen’s face. Her peacefulness bothered me. It was wrong. People who died violently didn’t look peaceful. They looked surprised, or angry, or terrified. But Maya Chen looked like she’d accepted her fate.
I walked out of the morgue and found Holt leaning against the wall, a cup of coffee in his hand. His tie was loose, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“You read it?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“He knows your name, Iris. That’s not good.”
I pulled the note out of my pocket and held it up. “He wants me to find him. That’s the game.”
Holt took a long sip of his coffee. “What kind of killer leaves a note for a forensic photographer?”
“The kind who wants an audience.” I tucked the note away. “I need to develop the film from the scene. There might be something in the replay.”
Holt’s jaw tightened. He still didn’t fully believe me. I could see it in the way he looked at my camera, like it was a prop in a magic show. But he’d seen the first photo. He’d seen the ghostly figure in the mirror-mask. He couldn’t explain it, and that scared him more than any bullet.
“I’ll drive you to the station,” he said.
The darkroom was my sanctuary. A small room in the basement of the police station, lit only by a red safelight. The walls were lined with shelves of chemicals and paper. The air smelled of acetic acid and developer. It was the only place where the world made sense.
I locked the door and loaded the film into the developing tank. The reel clicked as I wound it, a sound I’d heard a thousand times. I poured in the developer and started the timer. Fourteen minutes. I sat on the stool and waited.
The replay always came when the film was wet. The first time, I’d thought it was a trick of the light, a double exposure from a faulty camera. But now I knew better. The Leica didn’t just capture light. It captured memory. The last sixty seconds of a life, burned into the silver halides like a brand.
The timer beeped. I poured out the developer and added the stop bath. Then the fixer. The film cleared, and I held it up to the safelight.
The negatives were sharp. Maya Chen’s body, the alley, the rain. But there was something else. A faint overlay, like a ghost image bleeding through the emulsion.
I hung the film to dry and waited. The minutes crawled by. My hands were steady, but my heart was pounding. I wanted to see. I needed to see.
When the film was dry, I cut the strips and loaded them into the enlarger. The first few frames were standard crime scene photos. The alley, the body, the blood. But the last frame was different.
I focused the image and turned on the enlarger lamp. The paper sat in the developer tray, blank at first. Then the image began to emerge.
Maya Chen was alive in the photo. She was standing in a room I didn’t recognize, her back against a wall. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open in a scream I couldn’t hear. In front of her stood a figure in a mirror-mask, the glass shards catching the light like broken stars.
The Shutter held a knife in his right hand. His left hand was raised, palm out, as if he was telling her to stop. To wait. To accept.
The replay began.
Maya Chen’s voice echoed in my head, tinny and distant. “Please. I have a daughter. She’s seven years old. Please don’t do this.”
The Shutter didn’t speak. He just stood there, the mask reflecting her terror back at her. The knife glinted.
“Why?” Maya said. “Why me?”
The Shutter tilted his head. The mask shifted, and for a moment, I saw something behind it. A flash of skin, a hint of a scar. Then he spoke. His voice was low and distorted, like it was coming through a broken speaker.
“Because you are imperfect.”
Maya sobbed. “What does that mean?”
The Shutter stepped closer. The knife rose. “You have a mole on your left cheek. A flaw. Your sister had the same one. I corrected her. Now I will correct you.”
Maya’s scream was cut short as the blade moved across her throat. Blood sprayed, dark and arterial. She fell to her knees, then onto her side. Her eyes went blank.
The Shutter stood over her, watching. Then he reached down and closed her eyes with his gloved fingers. He arranged her body, smoothing her hair, straightening her collar. He treated her like a photograph he was composing.
The replay ended. The image froze on Maya Chen’s peaceful face.
I pulled the print out of the developer and dropped it into the stop bath. My hands were shaking now. The Shutter had said “your sister.” Maya Chen had a sister. And he’d killed her too.
I grabbed my notebook and flipped to the first victim’s file. Sarah Kim. Twenty-four. No siblings listed. But that didn’t mean anything. The Shutter could have been lying. Or he could have been telling the truth.
I needed to find out.
I left the darkroom and found Holt in his office, staring at a map of Portland. Pushpins marked the two crime scenes. They were three miles apart, but the pattern was clear. The Shutter was working his way east, toward the river.
“I found something,” I said.
Holt looked up. “What?”
“The Shutter knew Maya Chen. He said she had a sister. He killed her too.”
Holt’s eyes narrowed. “A sister? There’s no mention of a sister in her file.”
“That’s because she’s not a victim yet. Or she is, but no one’s found her body.” I set the print on his desk. “Look at the background. The wall behind Maya. There’s a watermark on the brick. A logo.”
Holt leaned in. The watermark was faint, but it was there. A circle with a stylized letter “P” inside.
“That’s the old Portland Photographic Supply logo,” he said. “They went out of business ten years ago.”
“Where was their warehouse?”
Holt pulled up a map on his computer. “Industrial district, near the river. It’s been abandoned for years.”
“That’s where he’s taking them. That’s where he kills them.”
Holt grabbed his coat. “Let’s go.”
The warehouse was a skeleton of rusted steel and broken glass. The roof had collapsed in places, letting in shafts of gray light. The floor was littered with debris—old film canisters, shattered light bulbs, pages from photography magazines yellowed with age.
I stepped inside, my Leica raised. The air was thick with dust and the smell of decay. Somewhere above, a bird fluttered in the rafters.
“This place is a tomb,” Holt said.
We moved through the main floor, past rows of empty shelves and broken equipment. In the back, we found a door. It was metal, painted black, with a heavy padlock. The lock was new. It gleamed in the dim light.
“He’s been here recently,” I said.
Holt pulled out his lock picks. “Give me a minute.”
I watched the shadows while he worked. The warehouse was quiet, but I felt like we were being watched. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I turned, but there was nothing there.
The lock clicked open. Holt pushed the door, and it swung inward on silent hinges.
The room beyond was a darkroom. A large one, with sinks and enlargers and drying racks. The walls were covered in photographs. Hundreds of them. All women. All with their throats cut.
I stepped inside, my breath catching in my throat. The photos were arranged in a grid, like a gallery. Each one showed a woman in her final moments. Their faces were frozen in fear, their eyes wide, their mouths open.
In the center of the room was a table. On it sat a single photograph, propped up against a bottle of developer.
I walked over and picked it up.
It was my sister.
Lena Vane, seven years younger, her hair longer, her smile brighter. She was standing in front of a mirror, her Leica raised. The mirror reflected a man behind her. His face was scratched out, but I could see his hand on her shoulder. A hand with a scar on the thumb.
I turned the photo over. On the back, in the same sharp handwriting, was a message:
*She saw what I do. She tried to stop me. Now you will finish her work.*
*—The Shutter*
Dr. Lena Park pulled back the sheet with a practiced hand. The woman’s throat was a dark gash, the edges clean and precise. Same as the first. Same angle, same depth. The killer had a signature, and he stuck to it like a painter who only used one brush.
“Time of death?” I asked.
“Approximately two AM.” Lena pointed to the lividity settling in the woman’s back. “She was moved post-mortem. The blood pattern on her clothes doesn’t match the alley’s drainage. He killed her somewhere else and dumped her.”
I leaned closer. The woman’s face was peaceful, almost serene. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. She looked like she was sleeping. That was the worst part. The Shutter didn’t just kill them. He posed them. Arranged them like mannequins in a store window.
“Her name?” I said.
“Maya Chen. Twenty-six. Worked as a freelance graphic designer.” Lena handed me a folder. “No known enemies. No criminal record. She was last seen leaving a coffee shop on Hawthorne around midnight.”
I flipped through the pages. Maya Chen’s life reduced to a stack of paper. Birth certificate, driver’s license, credit card statements. A woman who paid her bills on time and liked Thai food. A woman who was now lying on a stainless steel table with her throat cut open.
“Did you find anything on her body?” I said.
Lena hesitated. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a small piece of paper, folded into a square. It was dry, untouched by the rain.
“It was tucked into her bra,” Lena said. “The killer left it there. The patrol officers almost missed it.”
I took the bag. Through the plastic, I could see handwriting. Black ink, sharp and angular. The letters were precise, like they’d been drawn with a ruler.
I held it up to the light. The note read: *You see what I see, Iris. Find me.*
My blood went cold. The first victim had no note. This was new. This was for me.
“Have you shown this to anyone else?” I said.
“Just you and Detective Holt. He’s waiting in the hallway.”
I slipped the bag into my pocket. The paper felt heavy against my thigh, like a weight I couldn’t shake. I took one last look at Maya Chen’s face. Her peacefulness bothered me. It was wrong. People who died violently didn’t look peaceful. They looked surprised, or angry, or terrified. But Maya Chen looked like she’d accepted her fate.
I walked out of the morgue and found Holt leaning against the wall, a cup of coffee in his hand. His tie was loose, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“You read it?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“He knows your name, Iris. That’s not good.”
I pulled the note out of my pocket and held it up. “He wants me to find him. That’s the game.”
Holt took a long sip of his coffee. “What kind of killer leaves a note for a forensic photographer?”
“The kind who wants an audience.” I tucked the note away. “I need to develop the film from the scene. There might be something in the replay.”
Holt’s jaw tightened. He still didn’t fully believe me. I could see it in the way he looked at my camera, like it was a prop in a magic show. But he’d seen the first photo. He’d seen the ghostly figure in the mirror-mask. He couldn’t explain it, and that scared him more than any bullet.
“I’ll drive you to the station,” he said.
The darkroom was my sanctuary. A small room in the basement of the police station, lit only by a red safelight. The walls were lined with shelves of chemicals and paper. The air smelled of acetic acid and developer. It was the only place where the world made sense.
I locked the door and loaded the film into the developing tank. The reel clicked as I wound it, a sound I’d heard a thousand times. I poured in the developer and started the timer. Fourteen minutes. I sat on the stool and waited.
The replay always came when the film was wet. The first time, I’d thought it was a trick of the light, a double exposure from a faulty camera. But now I knew better. The Leica didn’t just capture light. It captured memory. The last sixty seconds of a life, burned into the silver halides like a brand.
The timer beeped. I poured out the developer and added the stop bath. Then the fixer. The film cleared, and I held it up to the safelight.
The negatives were sharp. Maya Chen’s body, the alley, the rain. But there was something else. A faint overlay, like a ghost image bleeding through the emulsion.
I hung the film to dry and waited. The minutes crawled by. My hands were steady, but my heart was pounding. I wanted to see. I needed to see.
When the film was dry, I cut the strips and loaded them into the enlarger. The first few frames were standard crime scene photos. The alley, the body, the blood. But the last frame was different.
I focused the image and turned on the enlarger lamp. The paper sat in the developer tray, blank at first. Then the image began to emerge.
Maya Chen was alive in the photo. She was standing in a room I didn’t recognize, her back against a wall. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open in a scream I couldn’t hear. In front of her stood a figure in a mirror-mask, the glass shards catching the light like broken stars.
The Shutter held a knife in his right hand. His left hand was raised, palm out, as if he was telling her to stop. To wait. To accept.
The replay began.
Maya Chen’s voice echoed in my head, tinny and distant. “Please. I have a daughter. She’s seven years old. Please don’t do this.”
The Shutter didn’t speak. He just stood there, the mask reflecting her terror back at her. The knife glinted.
“Why?” Maya said. “Why me?”
The Shutter tilted his head. The mask shifted, and for a moment, I saw something behind it. A flash of skin, a hint of a scar. Then he spoke. His voice was low and distorted, like it was coming through a broken speaker.
“Because you are imperfect.”
Maya sobbed. “What does that mean?”
The Shutter stepped closer. The knife rose. “You have a mole on your left cheek. A flaw. Your sister had the same one. I corrected her. Now I will correct you.”
Maya’s scream was cut short as the blade moved across her throat. Blood sprayed, dark and arterial. She fell to her knees, then onto her side. Her eyes went blank.
The Shutter stood over her, watching. Then he reached down and closed her eyes with his gloved fingers. He arranged her body, smoothing her hair, straightening her collar. He treated her like a photograph he was composing.
The replay ended. The image froze on Maya Chen’s peaceful face.
I pulled the print out of the developer and dropped it into the stop bath. My hands were shaking now. The Shutter had said “your sister.” Maya Chen had a sister. And he’d killed her too.
I grabbed my notebook and flipped to the first victim’s file. Sarah Kim. Twenty-four. No siblings listed. But that didn’t mean anything. The Shutter could have been lying. Or he could have been telling the truth.
I needed to find out.
I left the darkroom and found Holt in his office, staring at a map of Portland. Pushpins marked the two crime scenes. They were three miles apart, but the pattern was clear. The Shutter was working his way east, toward the river.
“I found something,” I said.
Holt looked up. “What?”
“The Shutter knew Maya Chen. He said she had a sister. He killed her too.”
Holt’s eyes narrowed. “A sister? There’s no mention of a sister in her file.”
“That’s because she’s not a victim yet. Or she is, but no one’s found her body.” I set the print on his desk. “Look at the background. The wall behind Maya. There’s a watermark on the brick. A logo.”
Holt leaned in. The watermark was faint, but it was there. A circle with a stylized letter “P” inside.
“That’s the old Portland Photographic Supply logo,” he said. “They went out of business ten years ago.”
“Where was their warehouse?”
Holt pulled up a map on his computer. “Industrial district, near the river. It’s been abandoned for years.”
“That’s where he’s taking them. That’s where he kills them.”
Holt grabbed his coat. “Let’s go.”
The warehouse was a skeleton of rusted steel and broken glass. The roof had collapsed in places, letting in shafts of gray light. The floor was littered with debris—old film canisters, shattered light bulbs, pages from photography magazines yellowed with age.
I stepped inside, my Leica raised. The air was thick with dust and the smell of decay. Somewhere above, a bird fluttered in the rafters.
“This place is a tomb,” Holt said.
We moved through the main floor, past rows of empty shelves and broken equipment. In the back, we found a door. It was metal, painted black, with a heavy padlock. The lock was new. It gleamed in the dim light.
“He’s been here recently,” I said.
Holt pulled out his lock picks. “Give me a minute.”
I watched the shadows while he worked. The warehouse was quiet, but I felt like we were being watched. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I turned, but there was nothing there.
The lock clicked open. Holt pushed the door, and it swung inward on silent hinges.
The room beyond was a darkroom. A large one, with sinks and enlargers and drying racks. The walls were covered in photographs. Hundreds of them. All women. All with their throats cut.
I stepped inside, my breath catching in my throat. The photos were arranged in a grid, like a gallery. Each one showed a woman in her final moments. Their faces were frozen in fear, their eyes wide, their mouths open.
In the center of the room was a table. On it sat a single photograph, propped up against a bottle of developer.
I walked over and picked it up.
It was my sister.
Lena Vane, seven years younger, her hair longer, her smile brighter. She was standing in front of a mirror, her Leica raised. The mirror reflected a man behind her. His face was scratched out, but I could see his hand on her shoulder. A hand with a scar on the thumb.
I turned the photo over. On the back, in the same sharp handwriting, was a message:
*She saw what I do. She tried to stop me. Now you will finish her work.*
*—The Shutter*