CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The whiteboard had become a monument to futility.
Isla stood before it at six-thirty in the evening, dry-erase marker uncapped in her hand, staring at the web of connections she'd drawn over the past ten hours.
The photographs of Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce still anchored the center—two women smiling out from professional headshots, frozen in moments of ordinary life that had become unbearably poignant.
Around them spread a constellation of names and places and questions, lines drawn in red and black and blue, all of them leading precisely nowhere.
Behind her, the field office hummed with the particular exhaustion of a day that had promised much and delivered nothing.
Phones that had rung constantly that morning had gone quiet.
The coffee pot had been refilled and emptied four times.
Agents who had been bustling with purpose at eight AM now moved with the slow deliberation of people running on fumes and determination.
James sat at his desk nearby, his laptop open to what must have been the hundredth search of the day.
His flannel shirt was rumpled, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and the gray at his temples seemed more pronounced in the harsh fluorescent light.
He hadn't complained once—hadn't done anything but work steadily beside her, following every lead, making every call, checking every angle—but Isla could see the weariness in the set of his shoulders.
"Yoga studio members," she said, reading from the list they'd compiled.
"Forty-seven women matching the general victim profile have attended Serenity Yoga in the past six months.
We've contacted thirty-two of them. None reported being followed, approached by strangers, or experiencing anything unusual. "
"The other fifteen?" James asked without looking up.
"Voicemail. We'll try again tomorrow." Isla moved to the next section of the board. "Restaurant staff. Bella Ristorante employed twelve people before the shutdown. We've interviewed all of them. No connection to either victim, no suspicious behavior, no one who fits the profile of our killer."
"The renovation site?"
"The Shoreline Diner renovation is being handled by Lakeside Construction. Crew of eight men, all with solid alibis for both nights in question." Isla capped the marker and tossed it onto the table. "The foreman has worked with most of them for years. Says they're like family."
James finally looked up from his screen. "What about the overlap angle? Any connection between the victims beyond the yoga studio?"
"Nothing." The word came out flat, hard, carrying the weight of a day spent chasing shadows.
"Monica Hayes owned a hair salon. Amanda Pierce taught special education.
They lived on opposite sides of town, banked at different institutions, and shopped at different grocery stores.
Their social media accounts show no mutual friends, no shared events, no evidence they ever met. "
"Except for Serenity Yoga."
"Except for Serenity Yoga." Isla walked to the window and stared out at the parking lot, at the gray February sky pressing down like a lid.
"Which might mean everything or nothing.
Half the women in their demographic take yoga somewhere.
It could be the hunting ground, or it could be a coincidence. "
"Your instinct says hunting ground."
"My instinct says hunting ground," she agreed. "But instinct isn't evidence.”
James closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair, the springs creaking softly under his weight. "Fritz verified Cross’s alibi for Monday night. Gas station footage shows him at the Mobil on Central Avenue at 9:47 PM. His car's GPS confirms he went straight home after that."
"So he's clear for Amanda Pierce."
"He's clear for Amanda Pierce. Monica Hayes is harder to pin down—we still don't have a precise time of death—but if he was teaching a class when she was killed..." James spread his hands. "The timeline doesn't work."
Isla turned from the window, her arms crossed against the chill that seemed to seep through the glass despite the building's heating.
"So we're back to the mystery man. The one Cross described seeing in the parking lot—late thirties, average build, baseball cap.
The one who was watching the women leave class. "
"A description that matches approximately half the male population of Minnesota."
"I know." She walked back to the whiteboard and stared at the section labeled UNKNOWN SUBJECT.
The space beneath it was nearly empty—just a few lines about the gray sedan, the baseball cap, the unremarkable features that made him impossible to identify.
"He's careful. He doesn't leave evidence, doesn't establish connections that can be traced.
He spots his victims somewhere—maybe the yoga studio, maybe somewhere else—and then he watches them.
Learns their patterns. Waits for the perfect moment. "
"And the freezers?" James asked. "Why the freezers?"
It was the question that had been gnawing at Isla all day.
The posing she understood—or thought she understood.
The careful arrangement of the bodies, the folded hands and closed eyes, suggested someone who cared about how his victims looked in death.
Someone who wanted them to appear peaceful. At rest.
But the freezers were different. The freezers were deliberate in a way that felt almost clinical.
"Preservation," she said slowly, thinking out loud. "The cold keeps them... intact. Stops decomposition. If he cares about how they look—"
"Then he wouldn't want them to decay."
"Exactly. But it's more than that." Isla picked up the marker again, uncapping it, using the motion to focus her thoughts. "He knows which restaurants are closed. He knows which ones have working freezers. That's not casual knowledge—that takes research, or access."
"We've been looking at health inspectors, restaurant supply companies, and commercial refrigeration services.
" James pulled up a file on his laptop. Twenty-three names that had access to information about both locations.
We've cleared eighteen of them—solid alibis, no connection to the victims, wrong demographic entirely. "
"And the other five?"
"Still working on them. But so far, nothing that jumps out." He scrolled through the list. "Two are women over sixty. One is a twenty-two-year-old college student working part-time for a delivery service. One is currently in Florida visiting his grandchildren—we verified with the airline."
"And the fifth?"
"Steve Jones. Forty-one, works for a commercial refrigeration company. He's done service calls at both Bella Ristorante and the Shoreline Diner in the past year." James's voice carried a note of cautious interest. "He's got no alibi for Monday night—says he was home alone, watching television."
Isla felt a flicker of something that might have been hope. "Physical description?"
"Average height, brown hair, medium build." James looked up at her. "He fits the general description Cross gave us."
"So does everyone else we've looked at." But Isla was already moving toward her desk, reaching for her coat. "Still, it's the first real lead we've had all day. Can you pull his employment history, see if there's any connection to the yoga studio or to either victim?"
"Already on it." James's fingers were flying across his keyboard. "Rivers, if this is our guy—"
The phone on Isla's desk rang.
She froze, one arm in her coat, her eyes meeting James's across the office. Calls at this hour, on a day like this, rarely brought good news. The last time her phone had rung after six PM, it had been to tell her about Amanda Pierce's body in the diner freezer.
The phone rang again.
Isla picked it up. "Rivers."
"Agent Rivers." Kate Channing's voice was clipped, taut, carrying none of the measured calm that usually characterized the SAC's communications. "My office. Now. Both of you."
The line went dead.
Isla and James exchanged a look—his concerned, hers already hardening into the particular focus that came when she sensed something was very wrong. Without a word, they headed for Kate's office at the end of the hall.
The SAC was standing behind her desk when they entered, her silver-gray hair catching the light from her desk lamp, her angular face set in lines that Isla had learned to read over almost three years of working under her command.
Kate Channing was not a woman who showed emotion easily—twenty-five years in the Bureau had trained that out of her—but something in her expression now made Isla's stomach clench.
"Close the door," Kate said.
James did. The click of the latch seemed unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.
"There's been another one." Kate's words were flat, delivered without preamble or softening. "Twenty minutes ago, Duluth PD responded to a call at Harrington's Steakhouse on West Superior Street. The place has been closed for renovations since December."
Isla felt the floor shift beneath her feet. Three victims. Three bodies in three days. Whatever had triggered this killer, whatever deadline he was working toward, they were running out of time to stop him.
"Same MO?" James asked, his voice steady despite what Isla could see in his eyes.
"Body in the walk-in freezer. Female, appears to be in her thirties." Kate paused, and something in her expression shifted—a flicker of something that might have been uncertainty, or alarm. "But there's something different about this one."
"Different how?" Isla asked.
"The responding officers say the body isn't frozen." Kate's gray-blue eyes met Isla's, and in them Isla saw the same terrible calculation she was making herself. "It's still warm. The ME on scene estimates she's been dead less than two hours."
Less than two hours.
The words hit Isla like a physical blow.
Less than two hours meant the killer had been there, in that restaurant, while she and James had been sitting in this office staring at a whiteboard full of dead ends.
Less than two hours meant there might be evidence—real evidence, fresh evidence, the kind that hadn't been obscured by cold and time and decomposition.
Less than two hours meant the killer might still be close.
"We need to get there," Isla said, already moving toward the door. "Now. Before—"
"I know." Kate reached for her own coat, her movements sharp with urgency. "Duluth PD is securing the scene, but I've told them to wait for you before they process anything. This is still your case."
James was already at the door, his keys in his hand. "Harrington's Steakhouse. I know the place—it's maybe fifteen minutes from here."
"Make it ten," Kate said.
They made it in eight.
James drove with the controlled urgency of someone who'd been a cop before he was an agent, navigating the darkening streets of Duluth with a certainty that left Isla free to think.
Her mind was racing, processing what Kate had told them, fitting this new development into the pattern they'd been trying to build all day.
Three victims in three days. All were found in closed restaurants. All are posed in freezers. All—if the pattern held—women in their thirties with light hair and gentle features.
But this one was different. This one was fresh.
The thought sent ice through her veins that had nothing to do with the February cold.