CHAPTER TEN #2
James stood and walked to the window, looking out at the gray February morning. "Public spaces. Grocery stores, gyms, shopping centers—anywhere women in their thirties with light hair might go."
"That's half the city."
"I know." He turned back to face her. "But we can narrow it down. Cross-reference their routines. Find out where Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce both spent time, even if they never met. If there's a common location, that might be where he spotted them."
Isla nodded, already reaching for her keyboard. "I'll pull Monica's credit card records, see where she was in the weeks before her death. Fritz can do the same for Amanda. We're looking for overlap—any overlap."
"And the closed restaurants." James returned to his chair. "Have we gotten that list yet?"
"Fritz is working on it. Should have something by noon." Isla paused, a new thought forming. "He knows which restaurants are closed. He knows which ones have functioning freezers. That's not casual knowledge—that takes research, or insider access."
"Someone in the restaurant industry?"
"Maybe. Or someone in food service inspection. Or commercial refrigeration repair." She pulled up a new search window. "Anyone whose job would give them regular access to restaurant kitchens and knowledge of which establishments are temporarily closed."
The possibilities multiplied in her mind, branching like frost patterns on glass.
A health inspector, like Kyle Henderson.
A delivery driver who worked with multiple restaurants.
A maintenance worker. A city employee with access to closure records.
The list of people who might have the specific knowledge this killer demonstrated was longer than she'd hoped, but shorter than the general population.
It was something. A thread to pull.
"There's something else," James said, his voice pulling her back from the spiral of investigation. "Something that's been bothering me since we found Amanda."
Isla looked up. "What?"
"The timing." He leaned forward, elbows on knees.
"Monica Hayes was killed sometime between Thursday and Saturday.
We found her Monday morning. Less than forty-eight hours later, Amanda Pierce is dead, too.
" His blue eyes met hers. "That's not a normal escalation pattern.
That's someone who's been planning this for a while and finally started executing. "
"Or someone who's decompensating. Losing control."
"Maybe. But the posing is too careful for someone out of control. The location selection is too deliberate. Everything about these killings says patience and planning—except the timeline."
Isla considered this. James was right; the rapid succession of victims didn't match the meticulous nature of the crimes themselves.
Killers who took this much care with their victims usually savored the intervals between.
They liked to relive the experience, to stretch out the satisfaction.
Two kills in less than a week suggested urgency, pressure, some external force pushing the killer to move faster than he normally would.
"Something triggered him," she said. "Something recent. Maybe—" She stopped, another thought surfacing. "Valentine's Day."
James's expression shifted. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow." Isla pulled up a calendar, though she didn't need it—the date had been lurking at the edge of her awareness since she'd woken up. "Two women killed in the days leading up to Valentine's Day. Both posed with care, with tenderness. Both left in places where they'd be found."
"He's giving them to someone."
The thought sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the February cold seeping through the office windows. Gifts. These women were gifts, offered up to some absent recipient on the most romantic day of the year.
"Or taking them from someone," Isla said quietly. "Punishing the world for something he's lost. Something that happened around Valentine's Day."
"We need to look at significant dates. Both victims' backgrounds—were there any major events in their lives connected to February? Anniversaries, deaths, anything that might connect them to the killer's timeline."
"I'll add it to the list." Isla's voice came out steadier than she felt. "Fritz is pulling everything he can on both women. We should have comprehensive backgrounds by this afternoon."
James nodded and stood, reaching for his coat. "I'm going to head over to Lincoln Elementary. Talk to Amanda's colleagues, see if anyone noticed anything unusual in the days before she died. Someone watching her, a new face in the pickup line, anything."
"Take the Teacher of the Year angle, too. That kind of public recognition puts her face out there. If our killer is hunting women who fit a certain profile, an award ceremony with press coverage would be an easy way to spot potential victims."
"Good thinking." James paused at the edge of her desk, something shifting in his expression. "Rivers."
She looked up.
"When's the last time you slept?"
The question caught her off guard. She had to think about it—actually think, counting back through the blur of hours since the case had started. The answer wasn't flattering.
"I'll sleep when we catch him."
James's jaw tightened, but he didn't push.
They'd had this conversation before, in various forms, over the nearly three years they'd worked together.
He knew better than anyone that she couldn't turn it off, couldn't step back, couldn't stop thinking about the victims and the killer and the terrible geometry of violence that connected them.
But there was something else in his expression now—something that had been there more often lately, in the quiet moments between crises. A concern that went beyond professional courtesy.
"At least eat something," he said. "Real food. Not vending machine garbage."
"You're starting to sound like my mother."
"I'm starting to sound like someone who doesn't want to scrape you off the floor when you collapse." He softened the words with something that was almost a smile. "The Claddagh does lunch. I'll pick something up on my way back from the school."
"Sullivan—"
"That wasn't a request, Rivers."
He was out the door before she could argue, leaving her alone with the hum of fluorescent lights and the faces of two dead women staring out from her monitor.
Isla turned back to the screen, to Maria Carlisle and Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce arranged in a row. Three women who might have been sisters, or at least cousins. Three women who shared some quality the killer found irresistible.
Light hair. Mid-thirties. Slender builds. The kind of women you might pass a hundred times without noticing.
But the killer had noticed. Had chosen two of them, hunted them, posed them with a care that suggested something deeper than simple violence.
What do you see when you look at them? Isla asked the absent killer. What do they mean to you?
The office was filling up now—agents drifting in, phones beginning to ring, the ordinary rhythm of a Tuesday morning asserting itself against the darkness at the edges.
Detective Fritz called with an update on the yoga studio canvass; no one had seen anything unusual, but they'd gotten a partial plate from a security camera at a business three blocks away.
A gray sedan, possibly a Honda or Toyota, parked on the street with a view of the studio's lot.
The image was grainy, the plate unreadable, but it was something.
Another thread to pull.
Isla added it to the growing web of connections on her whiteboard—victims in the center, locations radiating outward, potential links marked in red.
The pattern was there, she could feel it, hiding just beneath the surface of the evidence.
The killer wasn't random. He wasn't impulsive.
Every choice he made—the victims, the locations, the posing—meant something.
She just had to learn to read his language.
The lake whispered to Robert Brune. Something else was whispering to this killer—something about women with light hair and gentle faces, about cold storage and careful arrangement, about Valentine's Day approaching like a deadline.
Somewhere in Duluth, Isla was certain, another woman was going about her morning with no idea that she'd been chosen. That she fit the profile. That she was being watched by someone who saw her not as a person but as a candidate.
A gift. An offering. A sacrifice.
The thought drove Isla back to her keyboard, back to the records and reports and digital breadcrumbs that might lead her to the killer before he found his next victim. Two bodies in less than a week. Valentine's Day tomorrow.
He wasn't done. She was certain of that now.
The only question was whether she could stop him in time.