My name is Ice-T. I work as a detective at the Special Letters Unit. My job is to find and catch criminal letters of the alphabet and bring them to justice. Today was just an ordinary day at the office until a terrified woman named Tabitha came into the office.

"Detective, help! I need to report a thief!" she said.

"Please calm down and tell me what the thief looked like," I replied.

"It had one long horizontal line on top," said Tabitha.

I got out my notebook. "A horizontal line is a line that goes from side to side, like this." I then drew a horizontal line. "What else can you tell me about the thief?"

"Below the horizontal line," said Tabitha, "was one long vertical line."

"A vertical line is one that goes up and down," I said while drawing the second line. I then showed my drawing to Tabitha. "Ma'am, is this your thief?"

She gasped. "Yes! That's it! That's the thief!"

I nodded my head. "I should have known. Behind every thief is the letter 'T.'"

She seemed confused. "Doesn't the letter 'T' make a 'T' sound? This thief didn't make any sound at all."

"Well then," I said, "it seems we're on the trail of a silent 'T.'"

I immediately set off in search of this terrible letter "T" along with Officer Trisha. We decided to start looking for clues at the scene of the crime: a local television store.

"Thank goodness you're here," said the store's owner. "Somebody stole one of my televisions!" I suspected as much, since "television" starts with the letter "T."

I started asking the owner questions, but I was interrupted by Officer Trisha. "Detective Ice-T, I think I found the thief!" Trisha was standing with a letter "T."

"Where did you find it?" I asked her.

"It was at the end of the word 'innocent,'" she replied.

"Let it go," I ordered. "The 'T' in 'innocent' makes a 'T' sound. We're looking for a silent 'T.' One that doesn't make any sound at all."

Just then, there was a loud crashing noise from outside. It sounded like trouble with a capital "T." We hurried to investigate.

Outside, we found the word "trash" stuffed inside a trash can. "What's with all the noise?" I asked.

"A silent 'T' just ran by and stuffed us inside this trash can!" yelled the "T" in the word "trash." "It went that way! You have to stop it!"

We ran off, but while chasing the culprit, we ran into a dead end. All we found was the word "whistle" standing around whistling in front of a brick wall.

"Hey, you!" yelled Officer Trisha. "Do any of you letters know where we can find a silent 'T'?"

"No, we don't know anything about a silent 'T,'" said one of the letters. "Just go away and leave us alone," said another. They continued standing around whistling.

"Darn," said Officer Trisha. "It looks like the silent 'T' got away from us."

"Not so fast," I said. "The word 'whistle' has a silent 'T.' It doesn't make any sound at all. There's your thief, right there."

"Letter 'T,' you're under arrest," said Officer Trisha. "You have the right to remain silent."

The end.