CHAPTER THREE
The crime scene tape stretched across the entrance of Bella Ristorante like a yellow warning against curiosity.
Isla ducked under it, James following close behind, their breath fogging in the cold February air.
The restaurant's facade looked almost cheerful in the morning light—red brick, green awning, hand-painted sign depicting a rolling Tuscan hillside—but the uniformed officer at the door and the forensics van parked at the curb told a different story.
"Agents Rivers and James?" A young detective met them just inside the entrance, hand already extended. He had sandy hair cropped close to his skull and the kind of earnest face that suggested he still believed in the job. "Detective Harry Fritz, Duluth PD. Thanks for coming out so quickly."
Isla shook his hand. "Walk us through it."
Fritz led them through the dining room. The place had the eerie quality of a snapshot; frozen at the moment the health department had shut it down. Isla noticed the dust gathering on the chair backs, the faint smell of decay that no amount of abandoned grandeur could mask.
"Health inspector found her this morning," Fritz said as they walked. "Guy named Kyle Henderson. He was here to do a reinspection—the place got shut down for salmonella about a week ago. Fourteen confirmed cases, three hospitalizations. The owner's been pushing hard to reopen."
"Where's Henderson now?" James asked.
"Gave his statement, then we sent him home.
He was pretty shaken up. Found her in the walk-in freezer.
" Fritz paused at the swinging door that led to the kitchen.
"I'll be honest with you—when the call first came in, we figured it was an accident.
Some employee got locked in after hours, something like that. Tragic, but not criminal."
"But?" Isla prompted.
"But then we saw the body." Fritz pushed through the door into the kitchen. "She's still in there. ME hasn't moved her yet—wanted you to see her first."
The kitchen was a mess. Isla catalogued it all automatically, her mind filing away details even as her focus remained on what waited ahead.
The walk-in freezer stood at the back of the kitchen, its heavy steel door propped open. A technician in a white suit was photographing something inside. As Isla approached, the cold rolled out to meet her, sharp and biting, carrying with it a smell that was somehow both antiseptic and wrong.
She stepped inside.
The woman lay on the freezer floor, positioned almost carefully between shelves of frozen produce and vacuum-sealed meat.
She was on her back, arms folded across her chest, legs straight, head tilted slightly to one side as if she'd fallen asleep and simply never woken up.
Her blonde hair was frozen in brittle strands around a face that had gone the color of old wax, blue-white and frost-kissed. Her eyes were closed.
Isla felt the wrongness of it immediately.
"This doesn't look like an accident," James said from beside her, his voice low.
"No." Isla crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb anything. "Someone posed her like this. Folded her hands. Closed her eyes."
"There's something almost... peaceful about it," Fritz said, and Isla could hear the discomfort in his voice. "Like whoever did this wanted her to look comfortable."
Peaceful wasn't the word Isla would have chosen. Deliberate, maybe. Staged. The pose had a quality of performance to it, as if the killer had arranged her for an audience. But there was something else, too—a tenderness in the positioning that made the hair on the back of Isla's neck stand up.
"Do we have an ID?" she asked.
Fritz nodded, pulling out a small notebook. "Monica Hayes, thirty-four. We found her purse in the dining room, tucked under one of the tables. Driver's license, credit cards, about sixty bucks in cash—nothing taken as far as we can tell."
"So not a robbery." James was studying the shelves, the placement of the body relative to the door. "Any connection to the restaurant?"
"Still working that angle. Nothing obvious so far—she doesn't appear on any employee records, and her address puts her on the other side of town. No one reported her missing.”
The sound of footsteps in the kitchen announced a new arrival.
Isla looked up to see Dr. Patricia Henley making her way toward the freezer, medical bag in hand, her gray-streaked hair pulled back in its usual practical bun.
The medical examiner's face was set in the neutral expression of someone who had seen too much death to let any single instance rattle her.
"Agent Rivers," Henley said by way of greeting. "Agent Sullivan. Detective Fritz." She stepped into the freezer and surveyed the scene with practiced eyes. "Well. This is something."
Isla and James stepped back to give her room to work. For several minutes, there was only the sound of Henley's examination—the snap of latex gloves, the quiet murmur of observations into her recorder, the careful manipulation of frozen limbs and clothing.
"Initial assessment," Henley said finally, straightening up. "She didn't die in here."
"You're certain?" Isla asked.
"As certain as I can be before the full autopsy.
" Henley pointed to the woman's neck, where bruising had begun to darken the skin.
"See these marks? Consistent with manual strangulation.
And the rigor mortis pattern is off—the way she's positioned, the way the muscles have frozen.
.. she was killed somewhere else and moved here afterward.
Probably placed within an hour or two of death, based on what I'm seeing. "
"Strangled," James said. "Then brought here and arranged."
"That's my preliminary finding, yes." Henley's mouth pressed into a thin line. "The positioning confirms it wasn't an accident. Someone took considerable care with her after death. Closed her eyes. Arranged her hands. Almost like they were putting her to bed."
Isla felt that crawling sensation on her neck again. Whoever had done this had wanted Monica Hayes to look at peace. The question was why. Guilt? Ritual? Some twisted form of affection?
"Time of death?" she asked.
"The freezing complicates things but based on lividity patterns and what I can assess of decomposition before the cold arrested it..." Henley considered. "At least forty-eight hours. Probably closer to seventy-two."
"So, she's been in here since Friday, maybe Thursday," James said.
Fritz stepped forward. "That matches with what we know about the security system.
The restaurant's cameras are on a forty-eight-hour loop—footage resets automatically unless someone manually saves it.
Nobody's been in the building since the shutdown, so whatever was recorded has been written over. We've got nothing."
"Convenient," Isla said.
"Very." Fritz's jaw tightened. "Look, I'll level with you—we've had a lot going on in Duluth lately.
The LSK manhunt, that whole mess with Thomas Garrett, plus the usual winter crime spike.
When this came across the wire, my captain thought it might be better to loop you in early rather than wait until we were already drowning. "
Isla appreciated the honesty. Some local cops resented federal involvement; others recognized when they needed help. Fritz seemed like the latter.
"We're happy to take it," she said. "What else can you tell us about the restaurant? The owner?"
"Marco DiMatteo. Fifty-two, been running Bella Ristorante for about fifteen years.
Has connections—city council, Chamber of Commerce, that sort of thing.
He's been all over our office since the shutdown, demanding they clear him to reopen.
" Fritz flipped through his notebook. "The health inspector—Kyle Henderson—mentioned something interesting when we talked to him this morning.
Apparently, DiMatteo was adamant that the salmonella couldn't have come from his kitchen.
Really insisted on it. Got pretty heated about it, from what Henderson said. "
"Defensive," James observed.
"Could be nothing. A lot of restaurant owners don't want to admit their kitchen made people sick. But given the circumstances..." Fritz shrugged.
Isla took one last look at Monica Hayes—the peaceful pose, the closed eyes, the hands folded like a woman in a coffin. Whoever had killed her hadn't dumped the body. They'd placed her. Cared for her, in their own twisted way.
"We'll need everything you have on DiMatteo," she said. "And on the victim. Employment records, social media, known associates—the works."
"Already started pulling it together. I'll send what we have to your office."
"Good." Isla stepped out of the freezer, grateful for the relative warmth of the kitchen. "James and I will head back, see what we can dig up on the restaurant and its owner before we bring him in for questioning."
James fell into step beside her as they made their way back through the dining room. The cheerful Tuscan hillside on the sign seemed almost mocking now, a promise of warmth and comfort that had curdled into something dark.
"Different MO from the LSK," James said quietly, reading her thoughts.
"Completely." Isla pushed through the front door into the cold February air. "Brune's kills are meant to look like accidents. This..." She shook her head. "This is something else entirely. Someone wanted her found. Wanted us to see her like that."
"A message?"
"Maybe. Or a signature." She ducked under the crime scene tape and headed for their car. "Either way, it's not Brune. Wrong victim profile, wrong method, wrong everything."
James unlocked the sedan. "You sound almost relieved."
Isla paused before getting in, letting the cold wind off the lake cut through her blazer.
She should have felt guilty about it—a woman was dead, after all, and here she was treating it like a welcome distraction.
But the truth was, she was relieved. Eight weeks of staring at Robert Brune's face on her corkboard, eight weeks of waiting for the next body to wash up on shore, eight weeks of feeling helpless and frustrated and haunted by a killer she'd identified but couldn't catch.
This was different. This was solvable. A body in a freezer, a restaurant with shady connections, an owner with something to hide. This was a puzzle with pieces she could actually find.
"Let's find out everything we can about Marco DiMatteo," she said, climbing into the passenger seat. "And about Monica Hayes. Somewhere in the space between those two lives, there's a killer."
James started the engine. "Office first?"
"Office first. Then we talk to the man who's so sure the salmonella didn't come from his kitchen."
As they pulled away from Bella Ristorante, Isla caught one last glimpse of the hand-painted sign in the rearview mirror. A Tuscan hillside, rolling and golden, promising warmth and good food and simple pleasures.
In the freezer behind those cheerful walls, Monica Hayes lay with her hands folded and her eyes closed, waiting for someone to tell her story.
Isla intended to be that someone.