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Note: Story does not contain any clues

You are a detective trying to find out the whereabouts of a very dangerous criminal. You have captured his accomplice, who refuses to give you any information. Luckily, you have found three different notes from the criminal that the accomplice had with him.

First note:

First

Express yourself

Tell your friends and family how much they mean to you,

Tell them...before it's too late.

Under the ground, a being stirs

Bringer of death, he strikes

Reaps your soul

Under the ground you go

Terror strikes

End.

Second Note:

Second

All life must die

Ukuleles play the song of life

Am I alive or dead?

Funny how I don't know

By Arizona

Apache people live

Apache understand life and death like no other

Third note:

wba

hvsp

rshsh

qhwt

jsgg

ohhh

wqz

Hint #1:

Each note gives clues about how to solve the next one

After about 18 hours if this is not solved I will give another hint.

Partial (correct) answers will earn an upvote, person who contributed the most to the solution (or solved by themselves) will get accepted answer. Good luck.

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    $\begingroup$ I would not worry about too much of my puzzle not being solved in 18 hours. $\endgroup$
    – Matsmath
    Commented Oct 20, 2016 at 6:23
  • $\begingroup$ Please read this about giving hints. $\endgroup$
    – ABcDexter
    Commented Oct 20, 2016 at 7:36

2 Answers 2

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Answer:

In your own attic.

Note 1:

The word "first" tells us to take the first letter of each sentence. These say ETTUBRUTE which indicates a Caesar cipher. (Thanks to @Rubio for solving this part.)

Note 2:

The second letter of each sentence is lkmuypp which with a Caesar shift of 16 becomes backoff.

Note 3:

Dropping the last letter of each line (taking the "back off") gives wbhvsrshsqhwjsgohhwq which rot-12s to inthedetectivesattic.

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  • $\begingroup$ Nice job, you got it! $\endgroup$
    – suomynonA
    Commented Oct 20, 2016 at 15:54
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Partial Answer
Note 1:

reading down the first letters (excluding the "First" line) gives
ETTBRUTE
which seems sufficiently similar to Et tu, Brute - the line attributed to Caesar - to not be a coincidence. Is there a "U" line missing?

In any case, this hints at a Caesar cipher for Note 2. While I'm not able to find anything in Note 2 that caesars to anything useful, I thought I'd toss this out there and see if it stirs anyone else's thinking.

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  • $\begingroup$ Yes, you figured out the first note, I fixed the typo also. $\endgroup$
    – suomynonA
    Commented Oct 20, 2016 at 13:09

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