CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Harrington's Steakhouse looked like it was trying to forget its own existence.
The building sat on a corner lot on West Superior Street, its brick facade darkened by soot, its windows boarded over with plywood that had already begun to warp from the winter weather.
Yellow caution tape stretched across the front entrance—not crime scene tape, but the kind left behind by fire inspectors and insurance adjusters.
The steakhouse had been closed since December, James had told her on the drive over.
Kitchen fire. Extensive damage. The owner was still fighting with the insurance company over whether to rebuild or sell.
Now it had a different kind of yellow tape strung across its entrance. The kind that said someone had died here.
Isla climbed out of the sedan before James had fully stopped, her boots hitting the icy pavement hard enough to send shocks up through her legs.
The cold air bit into her face—sharper now that the sun had set, the temperature dropping toward single digits.
Around her, the scene was already taking shape: three Duluth PD cruisers, their lights painting the darkened street in strobing red and blue; Detective Fritz's unmarked sedan; and an ambulance that would have nothing to transport except a body bag.
Fritz met them at the perimeter, his young face drawn tight with something that looked like barely controlled anger. Or maybe fear. With a case moving this fast, the two often felt the same.
"Third one," he said without preamble. "Same MO as the others. The female victim, strangled, was posed in the walk-in freezer. But—"
"But she's fresh," Isla finished. "SAC Channing told us. How fresh?"
"The MEs are inside with her now, but his preliminary estimate is less than two hours.
Maybe ninety minutes." Fritz pulled out his notebook, his breath fogging in the cold.
"The owner—guy named Paul Harrington—came by around six to pick up some paperwork from his office.
He saw a man leaving through the back entrance.
Called out to him, but the guy took off at a jog. "
Isla felt something spike in her chest—not quite hope, but close. "Did he get a good look?"
"Average height, average build, dark jacket. Baseball cap pulled low." Fritz's jaw tightened. "Harrington said he thought it was weird—the place has been closed for two months, no one should have been in there—but by the time he realized something was actually wrong, the guy was gone."
"Which direction?"
"East on Superior, then he cut between buildings. Harrington lost sight of him." Fritz gestured toward the building. "He went inside to make sure no one had vandalized the place, found the freezer door propped open, and—well. You can imagine the rest."
Isla could. She'd seen it twice already in the past forty-eight hours—the careful posing, the folded hands, the closed eyes. The terrible tenderness with which this killer treated his victims. She just didn’t understand why.
"We need to talk to Harrington," James said. "Get a detailed description, see if—"
"He's in my car." Fritz nodded toward his sedan. "Shaken up but coherent. I figured you'd want first crack at him."
"In a minute." Isla turned toward the steakhouse. "I want to see the victim first. The scene's still fresh—there might be something we can use."
Fritz led them around to the back of the building, where a service entrance stood propped open with a cinder block. Two uniformed officers stood guard, their faces carefully neutral in the way that meant they'd already seen what waited inside and were working hard not to think about it.
The smell hit Isla the moment she stepped through the door—not the antiseptic cold of a working freezer, but something earthier.
Char and old grease and the particular mustiness of a building that had been closed too long.
The kitchen was a disaster of soot-stained walls and equipment shrouded in plastic.
The fire had clearly started near the stove, spreading across the ceiling before being contained, leaving behind a layer of ash and damage that would cost hundreds of thousands to repair.
Through the ruined kitchen, past prep stations still cluttered with the detritus of that last service in December, to a walk-in freezer at the back that hummed softly in the silence. Apparently, they’d never turned it off.
The door stood open. Light spilled out from inside—harsh and white and unforgiving.
Isla stepped into the freezer.
Dr. Patricia Henley was crouched beside the body, her gray-streaked hair pulled back in its usual practical bun, her face set in the neutral expression of someone who had seen too much death to let any single instance rattle her.
She looked up as Isla entered, and something in her eyes made Isla's stomach clench.
"Agent Rivers." Henley's voice was quiet, carrying none of its usual clinical detachment. "I was hoping you'd get here quickly."
The victim lay on the freezer floor between shelves that were mostly empty—just a few boxes of frozen steaks, some vegetables that had survived the fire.
She was on her back, arms folded across her chest, legs straight, head tilted slightly to one side.
The same pose Isla had seen twice before.
The same terrible care was taken with her arrangement.
But Henley was right. This one was different.
She wasn't frozen. Her skin was pale but still held the color of life—not the waxy blue-white of Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce.
Her light blonde hair wasn't stiff with frost but fell in soft waves around a face that could have been sleeping.
Her eyes were closed, her expression peaceful, and if it weren't for the darkening bruises around her throat—
"She's still warm," Henley said quietly. "Body temperature's dropped some, but not much. I'd estimate time of death at between ninety minutes and two hours ago. No more than that."
Ninety minutes. While Isla had been standing in the field office staring at a whiteboard, this woman had been dying. While she'd been chasing leads that went nowhere, following connections that dissolved under scrutiny, the killer had been here, strangling another victim, posing her with care.
"Same cause of death?" James asked from the doorway. He'd positioned himself so he could see both the body and the entrance—an old cop's habit that had never left him.
"Pending the full autopsy, yes. Manual strangulation. Same hand positioning as the others—you can see the marks here." Henley indicated the bruising with a gloved finger. "He's consistent. Knows exactly what he's doing."
Isla forced herself to look past the horror of what she was seeing, to catalogue the details that might matter.
The victim was blonde—lighter than Amanda Pierce, darker than Monica Hayes.
Mid-thirties, maybe late thirties. Slender build.
She was wearing professional clothes—a charcoal blazer over a cream blouse, black slacks, low heels.
Business attire. Not yoga clothes like Amanda.
Not the casual wear Monica had been found in.
"Do we have an ID?" Isla asked.
Fritz consulted his notebook. "Purse was found in her car outside—a blue Toyota Camry parked in the lot around the corner. Sarah Ramsey, thirty-six. According to her driver's license and the business cards in her wallet, she's a CPA. Runs her own accounting practice downtown."
Sarah Ramsey. The name meant nothing to Isla, but that didn't surprise her. The victims had no apparent connection beyond their physical appearance and the yoga studio—and even that connection was tenuous.
"Was she a member at Serenity Yoga?" James asked.
"Checking that now," Fritz said. "But her car—that's the interesting part. It's parked on the street, engine still running, driver's door open. Like she got in and was grabbed immediately."
Isla felt ice crystallize in her veins. "Grabbed? From her car?"
"That's what it looks like. Her laptop bag is in the passenger seat, her keys are still in the ignition. Harrington noticed it when he came back out after finding the body—said it hadn't been there when he arrived."
"So, the killer brought her here." James's voice was tight. "Grabbed her from her car somewhere else, drove her to this location."
Isla stood, her knees protesting after crouching in the cold.
"Either way, he's getting bolder. The first two victims were killed elsewhere and brought to the restaurants after dark.
This one—" She gestured toward Sarah Ramsey's still body.
"He grabbed her in broad daylight. Brought her here while there was still enough light to be seen. "
"Harrington said the man he saw was leaving around six," Fritz confirmed. "Sunset was at 5:47 today. There would have been some twilight left, but not much."
"He's accelerating." Isla stepped out of the freezer, needing space to think, to process what this escalation meant. "That's not normal. That's someone under pressure, someone working toward a deadline."
"Valentine's Day," James said quietly.
"Valentine's Day," Isla agreed. "Tomorrow. All of this—" She gestured toward the freezer, toward Sarah Ramsey waiting inside. "All of this is building toward something. Some moment that matters to him. Maybe it has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, but I can’t help but feel like the timing matters.”
Henley emerged from the freezer, stripping off her gloves. "I'll do the autopsy first thing in the morning, but I can tell you right now—this is the same killer. Same strangulation technique, same positioning. He's not deviating from his pattern."
"Except in timing," Isla said. "The first victim was probably dead for days before we found her. This one—he killed her and left her within hours. Why?"
No one had an answer. The question hung in the cold air of the ruined kitchen, unanswered and perhaps unanswerable.
"I need to talk to Harrington," Isla said finally. "Get whatever description he can give us. And Fritz—I want every piece of security footage within a six-block radius. Traffic cameras, business cameras, anything that might have caught this guy leaving the scene."
"Already on it."
Isla followed Fritz back outside, grateful for the relative warmth of the February night after the freezer's cold.
Paul Harrington sat in the back of Fritz's sedan, a blanket draped around his shoulders despite the car's heater running full blast. He was in his fifties, Isla guessed—a heavy-set man with thinning hair and the particular pallor of someone who'd just seen something they'd never forget.
She slid into the seat beside him, keeping her movements slow and unthreatening. "Mr. Harrington? I'm Special Agent Rivers. I know you've already talked to Detective Fritz, but I need to ask you some questions about the man you saw."
Harrington nodded, his hands clutching the blanket. "I didn't—I didn't know. If I'd known someone was hurt in there, I would have—" His voice cracked. "I would have done something."
"You couldn't have known," Isla said, her voice gentle despite the urgency thrumming through her veins. "But right now, you might be the only person who's seen our suspect. I need you to tell me everything you remember about him. Start from the moment you arrived."
Harrington swallowed hard and nodded. "I got here around six. Maybe a few minutes before. I came to pick up some insurance paperwork from my office—nothing I couldn't have gotten tomorrow, but I was in the neighborhood and figured I'd save myself a trip."
"And you saw the man when?"
"Right away. He was coming out the back entrance—the service door.
I thought maybe it was one of the contractors checking on something, but then I realized we don't have any contractors scheduled right now.
Everything's on hold until the insurance comes through.
" Harrington's breathing was coming faster now, the memory bringing back the fear.
"So, I called out to him. Asked what he was doing there. "
"What did he do?"
"He looked at me for just a second. Then he took off. Not running exactly, but fast. Like he was in a hurry but didn't want to draw attention."
"Can you describe him? Height, build, clothing?"
Harrington closed his eyes, clearly trying to pull the memory into focus.
"Average height. Five-ten, maybe? Hard to tell from a distance.
Average build—not heavy, not thin. He was wearing a dark jacket—black or navy, I couldn't tell in the light.
And a baseball cap. Pulled down low so I couldn't see his face. "
"Hair color? Age?"
"I didn't see his hair. The cap covered it." Harrington opened his eyes, frustration evident in his expression. "I'm sorry. I know that's not helpful. If I'd gotten closer, if I'd realized—"
"Mr. Harrington, you did everything right," Isla said, even as disappointment settled in her chest like a stone.
Average height, average build, dark jacket, baseball cap.
The same non-description they'd gotten from Nathan Cross, the same profile that matched half the men in Duluth.
"The direction he went—you said east on Superior? "
"Yeah. He cut between the buildings—there's an alley there that leads to the next street over. By the time I realized something was wrong and went inside, he was long gone."
Isla thanked him and stepped back out into the cold. James was waiting by their sedan, his phone pressed to his ear, his expression grim. He ended the call as she approached.
"That was Kate," he said. “She’s worried there'll be another one. Tomorrow. Maybe even again tonight, at this rate.”
"Unfortunately, she’s right," Isla agreed. “This guy clearly has no intention of stopping.”
Not until they got him.