CHAPTER FIVE
Isla had been dreaming of the lake—of black water rising up through frozen ground, of hands reaching from beneath the ice—when her phone shattered the darkness with its shrill demand.
She answered before she was fully awake, her voice rough with sleep, her mind already spinning up to operational speed.
"Rivers."
"We've got a body." James's voice was flat, professional, carrying the particular weight that came from delivering news he knew she didn't want to hear. "Hawk Ridge, up by the scenic overlook. Hiker called it in about twenty minutes ago."
Isla was already moving, throwing back the covers, her bare feet hitting the cold hardwood floor of her apartment. Through her window, Lake Superior stretched gray and sullen beneath an overcast sky. "LSK?"
A pause. Too long.
"I don't think so. MO's different. But you should see this."
"Text me the coordinates. I'll be there in thirty."
She made it in twenty-five.
The drive up to Hawk Ridge wound through forest that hadn't yet gotten the message about spring.
The trees stood skeletal against the pale morning light, their branches still winter-bare, patches of dirty snow clinging to the shadows where the sun couldn't reach.
Isla's hands were steady on the wheel, but her mind was racing, cataloging and discarding possibilities with each mile that passed beneath her tires.
Different MO. That could mean anything. Could mean a copycat who'd gotten the details wrong. Could mean Brune was evolving, adapting his methods the way he'd adapted when he killed Mitch Connelly. Could mean—
Stop it, she told herself. You don't know anything yet. Wait for the evidence.
It was good advice. She'd given it to herself a thousand times. She rarely managed to follow it.
The parking area at the Hawk Ridge overlook was already crowded when she arrived—two Duluth PD cruisers, an unmarked FBI vehicle, the medical examiner's van with its back doors standing open.
Yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the morning wind, marking a perimeter that stretched from the lot up a narrow trail that disappeared into the trees.
A uniformed officer stood guard at the trailhead, his breath fogging in the cold, his expression carrying the particular blankness of someone who'd seen something he wished he hadn't.
Isla badged him and ducked under the tape, her sensible boots finding purchase on the frozen ground as she started up the trail.
The path was steep, winding through bare birch and pine toward the overlook she'd visited once before, during her first months in Duluth when she'd still been playing tourist on her days off.
Beautiful views, she remembered. The kind of place that showed up on postcards and tourism websites, the kind of place that made people fall in love with the North Shore.
The kind of place where someone had just died.
She found James at the top of the trail, standing at the edge of a rocky outcropping that jutted out over the city below. He was wearing the navy parka—the one with the duct-taped seam—and his face was set in that careful neutral expression she'd learned to read as barely contained unease.
"Thanks for coming," he said as she reached him. "I know Kate told you to rest."
"Kate can tell me a lot of things. Doesn't mean I listen."
Something flickered in his eyes—concern, maybe, or resignation—but he didn't push. Instead, he gestured toward the overlook, toward the cluster of technicians working around something she couldn't quite see.
"His name was Derek Paulson. Forty-three, local resident. He was a photographer—came up here to catch the sunrise, from the look of it. Hiker found him about an hour ago."
Isla moved closer, picking her way across the frozen rock toward where the technicians were working. The wind was sharper up here, cutting through her blazer and thermal undershirt with casual cruelty. She really needed to start wearing the heavy gear. She probably never would.
And then she saw him.
Derek Paulson sat behind a camera mounted on a professional tripod, his body positioned as if he'd frozen mid-shot.
His hands rested on his thighs, fingers curled loosely inward.
His face was turned toward the viewfinder, angled slightly, like he'd been composing the perfect frame when time had simply stopped.
Except time hadn't stopped. Someone had stopped it for him.
"Jesus," Isla breathed.
The blood was mostly hidden—a dark stain beneath his head that had frozen into the rock like spilled wine—but she could see the wound at the base of his skull, the telltale depression that spoke of blunt force trauma.
His skin had taken on the waxy, blue-tinged pallor of someone who'd been exposed to freezing temperatures for hours.
Frost crystals glittered in his beard, his eyelashes, the folds of his fleece jacket.
He looked peaceful. That was the worst part. Whoever had done this had taken the time to arrange him, to position his body just so, to create a tableau that was almost artistic in its careful construction.
"Who found him?" Isla asked.
"Morning jogger. Regular on this trail, apparently.
She saw him from the path and thought he was just a dedicated photographer, waiting for the perfect light.
It wasn't until she got closer and saw the blood that she realized something was wrong.
" James consulted his notes. "She's pretty shaken up.
Patrol took her statement and let her go home. "
Isla crouched beside the body, studying the scene with the clinical detachment she'd spent a decade cultivating.
The tripod was expensive—carbon fiber, professional grade—and the camera mounted on it was a high-end Canon that probably cost more than her monthly rent.
The lens was pointed toward the lake, toward a composition that captured both the harbor below and the vast expanse of Superior stretching toward the horizon.
"Has anyone looked at the camera?" she asked.
"Crime scene tech checked it a few minutes ago. There's a photo on the memory card—taken at sunrise this morning, based on the timestamp. Perfectly exposed, perfectly composed. Professional quality work."
Isla felt something cold settle in her stomach that had nothing to do with the temperature. "He was already dead at sunrise."
"That's what it looks like. Someone killed him, positioned the body, set up the shot, and then used his camera to capture the moment." James's voice was carefully controlled, but she could hear the disgust underneath it. "It's like they turned his murder into a photograph."
She stood, her knees protesting against the cold, and turned to look at the scene with fresh eyes.
The positioning of the body. The angle of the camera.
The way Paulson's hands had been arranged, his head tilted toward the viewfinder as if he were still alive, still working, still chasing that perfect shot.
It was theatrical. Deliberate. The work of someone who wanted to make a statement, who cared about presentation and composition and the aesthetics of death.
It was nothing like Robert Brune.
"This isn't LSK," Isla said.
James nodded slowly. "That's what I thought. Brune's kills are efficient. Practical. He hits them, dumps them, lets the lake do the rest. This is..." He gestured at the scene, searching for the right word.
"Performance," Isla finished. "This is a performance."
Dr. Patricia Henley approached, stripping off a pair of latex gloves. The medical examiner looked tired—everyone looked tired these days—but her eyes were sharp as she studied the body.
"Preliminary findings," Henley said, not waiting for Isla to ask.
"Single blow to the occiput, similar placement to our LSK cases.
But the wound pattern is different—narrower, more focused.
Could be a different weapon, or a different angle of attack.
Won't know for sure until I get him on the table. "
"Time of death?"
"Tricky, given the cold exposure. Body temperature is essentially ambient at this point. But based on lividity and the state of rigor, I'd estimate he died sometime in the early morning hours—between five and six AM, give or take. Before sunrise, certainly."
Before sunrise. Which meant someone had killed Derek Paulson, arranged his body, set up his camera, and then waited in the freezing dark for the sun to rise so they could take the perfect photo.
What kind of person did that?
"Any signs of a struggle?" Isla asked.
Henley shook her head. "Nothing obvious. If he fought back, it didn't leave marks I can see. My guess is he never knew what was coming—the blow came from behind, hit him before he had a chance to react. Quick, clean, probably fatal within seconds."
Quick, clean, fatal. Like LSK's kills—but also not. The method was similar, but the execution was entirely different. Brune killed for the lake, for the whispers in his head, for reasons that made sense only to his fractured psyche. This killer had killed for the image. For the art of it.
Two different killers. Two different cases.
And Isla was now working both of them.
"I want everything," she said to James. "Phone records, financial history, social media—the full workup. Someone knew he'd be here this morning, knew his routines well enough to ambush him in the dark. That suggests planning. Surveillance. A personal connection."
"Already on it. I've got techs pulling his digital footprint as we speak."
Isla nodded, her mind already racing ahead to the next steps, the next leads, the next thread to pull.
Behind her, the crime scene technicians continued their careful work, photographing and measuring and cataloging every detail of Derek Paulson's final morning.
The camera stood silent on its tripod, its lens still pointed toward a lake that kept its secrets.
Somewhere out there, Robert Brune was hiding. Waiting. Planning his next move.
And now there was another monster to catch.
***