On a lonely rural road in the Midwest, a restrained individual drags himself forward toward a distant postal box. With great effort, he manages to insert a bloody, desperate cry for aid into the slot just as a panicked pursuer closes in on him. The message is eventually discovered at the local post office and ends up on the desk of Jasper, an experienced and adept investigator specializing in "dead letter" cases—those involving misdelivered or lost mail.