CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The police scanner crackled with the news he'd been expecting.
Ethan Benson sat in his car outside the storage unit, listening to the dispatch calls that confirmed what he'd known was coming ever since he'd seen the unmarked sedan parked outside his building that morning. Federal agents. His apartment. A search warrant being processed.
They'd found him. After all his careful planning, all his patience, all the years of preparation—they'd finally connected the dots.
Probably the old professor, he thought. Thomas Kramer and his endless blog posts about stolen vision, his obsession with the same grievances that had consumed Ethan for half a decade.
The FBI would have tracked the philosophy back to its source, and Kramer would have given them Harold's name.
The rest would have been simple arithmetic.
He should feel something, he supposed. Fear, maybe. Desperation. The particular panic that came from watching your life collapse around you.
But all he felt was a strange, cold clarity.
His apartment was compromised. His vehicle—the gray Honda registered in his name—would be flagged in every law enforcement database within the hour.
His face would be on the news by nightfall, another monster for the public to hate and fear and forget once the next tragedy replaced him in the endless cycle of American violence.
But he wasn't done yet.
Ethan climbed out of the Honda and walked to the storage unit at the end of the row—a ten-by-twenty space he'd rented under his father's name almost two years ago, paid in cash, the kind of anonymous arrangement that small-town storage facilities rarely questioned.
The lock clicked open beneath his practiced fingers, and he rolled up the metal door to reveal what waited inside.
His father's old truck sat in the darkness like a faithful dog waiting for its owner to return.
A 1987 Ford F-150, its blue paint faded to gray in patches, its engine maintained with the same meticulous care Ethan had learned watching Harold work on cameras.
The registration was still in his father's name—he'd never bothered to transfer it, had told himself he was keeping it for sentimental reasons.
Now that sentiment would serve a different purpose.
Beside the truck, arranged on metal shelving with museum-like precision, sat the equipment he would need.
His camera—a Nikon D850 that had cost him three months' salary, but was worth every penny for the quality of the images it captured.
The tripod his father had used for decades, its aluminum legs worn smooth by years of handling. A heavy-duty flashlight. A crowbar.
And the hammer.
Ethan picked up the tool, feeling its familiar weight in his palm.
It was an ordinary framing hammer, the kind you could buy at any hardware store for fifteen dollars.
He'd chosen it specifically for its ordinariness—no custom weapon that could be traced, no exotic blade that might leave distinctive marks.
Just a simple tool that could have belonged to anyone.
A tool that had already served its purpose three times.
He loaded the equipment into the truck's bed with careful efficiency, his movements carrying the particular calm of someone who had rehearsed this moment a thousand times in his mind.
The police would be looking for his Honda.
They would be watching his apartment, his workplace, the locations where he'd already created his father's postcards.
They would expect him to run, to hide, to try to escape the closing net.
They wouldn't expect him to finish what he'd started.
The engine turned over on the first try—good girl, he thought, patting the dashboard with something approaching affection.
His father had loved this truck. Had driven it to countless shooting locations over the decades, had used it to carry equipment that created images that changed how people saw this region.
Now Ethan would use it one more time.
He pulled out of the storage unit, leaving the Honda behind like a shed skin. The police would find it eventually—tomorrow, maybe, or the day after—and they would know he'd slipped through their fingers. By then, it wouldn't matter. By then, his work would be complete.
Enger Tower rose in his mind like a beacon, its stone observation deck overlooking everything his father had loved about this city.
Harold's most famous photograph had been taken from that spot—the image that had graced the cover of National Geographic, that had defined Duluth's identity for an entire generation, that had been copied and imitated and stolen by every hack photographer who'd come after.
It was time to create the final postcard.
Ethan guided the truck toward the highway, toward the tower that waited on its hillside like a monument to everything his father had accomplished and everything he'd been denied.
The radio played country music from a station that probably hadn't updated its playlist since Harold was still alive, and Ethan hummed along, letting the familiar melodies carry him toward his destination.
He didn't have a specific victim in mind.
The photographers on his list were probably under protection by now, warned away from their favorite locations, hiding in their homes while the police searched for the monster in their midst. That was fine.
If it came to it, he could find someone else.
A tourist with a smartphone. A nature enthusiast with a point-and-shoot.
Anyone who had ever looked at one of Harold's compositions and thought, I could do that.
The important thing was the location. The composition. The final statement that would show the world what his father had created, with a thief incorporated into the landscape as a permanent fixture.
They called him a killer. They would hunt him, capture him, probably kill him before this was over.
But when historians looked back at what he'd done, they would understand.
They would see the artistry in his work, the devotion behind his violence.
They would finally give Harold Benson the recognition he deserved.
Ethan Benson drove toward Enger Tower, toward the photograph that would complete his father's legacy.
And if they killed him there, among the stones where his father had created his masterpiece, he could think of worse places to die.