CHAPTER NINETEEN
The smell of old coffee and desperation woke her.
Isla's eyes opened to fluorescent lights and the blurred edge of her laptop screen, her cheek pressed against the conference room table in a position that would make her neck scream for the rest of the day.
For a disorienting moment, she didn't know where she was—the conference room looked wrong from this angle, all ceiling tiles and the underside of the whiteboard—and then memory came flooding back.
The crime scene. Sarah Ramsey's still-warm body.
The hours that followed, chasing leads that dissolved like morning fog.
Across the table, James Sullivan was stirring to life with the same confused, bleary expression she probably wore.
His flannel shirt was creased beyond repair, his dark blonde hair standing up on one side where he'd used his arm as a pillow.
Files surrounded him in a scattered halo, and his laptop screen had gone dark, the battery drained sometime in the night.
"We fell asleep," he said, his voice rough with disuse.
"Apparently." Isla stretched her arms over her head, wincing as her shoulders protested. "What time did we finally crash?"
"I don't—" James squinted at his watch. "Last thing I remember, it was around four. I was running background checks on the commercial refrigeration angle."
Four AM. Which meant they'd gotten maybe three hours of sleep, if you could call passing out from exhaustion at a conference table sleep.
Isla's body felt like it had been wrung out and hung up to dry, but beneath the exhaustion, her mind was already spinning up again, reaching for the threads she'd been pulling before unconsciousness had claimed her.
James pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly. "Coffee. We need coffee. And food. When did either of us last eat?"
Isla tried to remember and came up blank. There had been vending machine crackers at some point, she thought. Maybe around midnight. Or maybe that had been the night before, at the diner crime scene. The hours had blurred together into one long tunnel of evidence and dead ends.
"I'll grab us something from the break room," James said, already moving toward the door. "The bagels should be out by now. Try not to solve the case while I'm gone."
The door clicked shut behind him, and Isla was alone with the wreckage of their all-night session.
Files covered the table—victim backgrounds, restaurant records, lists of names they'd compiled and crossed off one by one.
The whiteboard on the wall had grown dense with connections, a spider's web of red and black lines that still refused to point toward a center.
She turned back to her laptop and pressed the power button, waiting for it to boot up while she rubbed the grit from her eyes.
Outside the conference room windows, the FBI field office was beginning to stir.
She could hear voices in the hallway, the distant ping of the elevator, the particular energy of a building coming to life.
Soon this space would fill with other agents, other cases, the ordinary business of law enforcement that didn't stop just because three women had been murdered in three days.
Three women. Three freezers. Three closed restaurants.
The laptop screen flickered to life, and Isla navigated back to where she'd left off.
She'd been pursuing a theory—still half-formed, more instinct than evidence—about the freezers themselves.
The killer knew which restaurants were closed.
Knew which ones had working freezers. That kind of knowledge suggested either obsessive research or professional access.
She'd already run down the obvious angles. Health inspectors who might have insider knowledge of closures. Restaurant supply companies that tracked inventory. Commercial refrigeration services that maintained equipment. The lists had been long, the overlap with her victims nonexistent.
But there was another angle she hadn't fully explored. The freezers at the crime scenes weren't just working—they were maintained, kept running even though the restaurants themselves were shuttered. Someone was paying the electric bills. Someone was making sure the equipment stayed operational.
Isla pulled up the property records for Bella Ristorante, scrolling through the utility information she'd requested the day before.
The power was still on, paid through an escrow account while the health department closure worked its way through the system.
Standard practice for a temporary shutdown.
She did the same for the Shoreline Diner. Same story—utilities maintained through the renovation period, the freezer kept running because the construction crew was using it to store their lunches.
But Harrington's Steakhouse was different.
The restaurant had been closed since December, following a kitchen fire. Insurance dispute ongoing. The owner, Paul Harrington, had told Fritz he'd been fighting with the adjusters for two months, everything in limbo while they argued about liability. And yet—
Isla leaned closer to the screen, her fatigue momentarily forgotten.
The power was still on. The walk-in freezer was still running. But according to the utility records, Paul Harrington wasn't the one paying for it.
The account showed payments from a company called Murphy's Restaurant Equipment Salvage.
Isla's fingers moved across the keyboard, pulling up everything she could find on the business.
Murphy's Restaurant Equipment Salvage, established 2018.
Owner and sole proprietor: Daniel Murphy, age forty-two.
The company specialized in buying used kitchen equipment from closed restaurants—ovens, prep tables, refrigeration units—and reselling them to new establishments or shipping them to buyers across the Midwest.
Including freezers. Industrial walk-in freezers, exactly like the ones at all three crime scenes.
She cross-referenced the business records, her heart beginning to pound as the connections emerged.
Murphy's had purchased equipment from Bella Ristorante six months ago, during a kitchen renovation that predated the salmonella shutdown.
They'd bought the old freezer unit from the Shoreline Diner when the new owners gutted the place.
And according to a purchase order dated January 15th, Murphy's had been in negotiations with Paul Harrington's insurance company to buy the fire-damaged equipment from Harrington's Steakhouse—including the walk-in freezer.
Three crime scenes. One company connected to all of them.
Isla pulled up Daniel Murphy's driver's license photo and felt her breath catch.
He was average height. Average build. Brown hair.
The kind of face you'd pass a thousand times without noticing—unremarkable features, forgettable in almost every way.
Exactly the type of man Nathan Cross had described seeing at the yoga studio.
Exactly the type Paul Harrington had described fleeing the scene of Sarah Ramsey's murder.
She dug deeper into Murphy's business records, her exhaustion completely forgotten now.
The company maintained a warehouse on the industrial outskirts of Duluth—a facility that, according to the property records, contained dozens of industrial freezers in various states of repair.
Murphy regularly visited closed restaurants to assess equipment for purchase, which would explain how he knew which locations were shuttered and accessible.
And his company had been maintaining utilities at several properties under the pretense of equipment testing—keeping the freezers running so potential buyers could verify they still worked.
Including the freezer at Harrington's Steakhouse. Including the freezer where Sarah Ramsey had been found, still warm, less than twelve hours ago.
The conference room door opened, and James walked in carrying two cups of coffee and a paper bag that smelled like everything bagels. He took one look at her face and stopped.
"You found something."
"Daniel Murphy." Isla turned her laptop so he could see the screen. "Owns a restaurant equipment salvage company. He's purchased freezers from all three crime scene locations."
James set the coffee and bagels on the table and leaned in, his eyes scanning the records she'd pulled up.
She watched his expression shift as he made the same connections she had—the equipment purchases, the utility payments, the access that Murphy's business would give him to closed restaurants across the city.
"He'd know which places were shuttered," James said slowly. "He'd know which ones had working freezers. Hell, he'd have keys to some of them if he was there assessing equipment."
"And his warehouse." Isla pulled up the property records. "Contains dozens of industrial freezers. If we're looking for someone with a... special interest in cold storage, a salvage dealer who collects them professionally would certainly qualify."
"Does he fit the physical description?"
Isla brought up the driver's license photo again. James studied it, his jaw tightening.
"Average height. Average build. Brown hair." He looked at her. "Could be the guy Cross saw at the yoga studio. Could be the guy Harrington saw leaving the steakhouse."
"Could be." Isla reached for one of the coffees, wrapping her hands around the warmth. "It's not definitive. We still don't have physical evidence connecting him to any of the victims. But the connection to all three crime scenes—"
"Is enough for a warrant."
The door opened again, and Kate Channing strode in, her silver-gray hair immaculate despite the early hour, her expression carrying the particular intensity of someone who'd been woken by a case that refused to let her sleep.
"I heard you two never went home," she said, her gray-blue eyes taking in the scattered files, the empty coffee cups from the night before, the general air of controlled chaos. "Please tell me it was worth it."
Isla filled her in quickly—the equipment salvage company, the connections to all three crime scenes, the physical description that matched their limited witness accounts.
Kate listened without interrupting, her expression giving nothing away, but Isla could see her processing the information, weighing it against what they needed to move forward.
"His warehouse," Kate said when Isla finished. "You said it contains industrial freezers?"
"Dozens of them, according to the business records. He buys them from closed restaurants and resells them. The place would be—" Isla paused, thinking about what they might find. "It would be full of the exact equipment he's been using to store his victims."
"And you're certain about the connection to all three locations?"
"Business records confirm it. Murphy's company purchased equipment from Bella Ristorante and the Shoreline Diner.
They were in negotiations for Harrington's Steakhouse equipment at the time of the murder.
And his company has been maintaining utilities at several closed restaurants—including Harrington's—under the pretense of equipment testing. "
Kate was quiet for a moment, her eyes moving to the whiteboard with its web of connections. When she spoke again, her voice carried the decisive edge that meant she'd made a calculation and found it acceptable.
"That's enough for a warrant. I'll call Judge Martinez—she's been following the case; she'll understand the urgency.
" Kate checked her watch. "I can have it done within the hour.
In the meantime, I want you two to pull everything you can on Daniel Murphy.
Employment history, known associates, any prior contact with law enforcement.
If he's our guy, I want to know everything about him before we walk into that warehouse. "
"What about surveillance?" James asked. "If Murphy realizes we're onto him—"
"I'll have a unit on his warehouse within thirty minutes. Unmarked car, eyes only. If he tries to run, we'll know." Kate moved toward the door, then paused and looked back at them. "And get something to eat. Both of you. You look like hell, and I need you sharp when that warrant comes through."
She was gone before either of them could respond.
Isla stared at the door for a moment, feeling the exhaustion of the past three days pressing against her skull like a physical weight.
"You think it's him?" James asked quietly.
Isla thought about Daniel Murphy's driver's license photo.
That unremarkable face, those forgettable features.
The kind of man who could walk into a yoga studio and watch women without anyone remembering he'd been there.
The kind of man who could maintain freezers in closed restaurants and no one would think to question why.
"I think he's connected," she said carefully. "Whether that connection is criminal or coincidental—that's what the warrant will tell us."
James handed her one of the bagels, and she took it without really tasting it, her mind already racing ahead to what they might find in Murphy's warehouse. Freezers. Dozens of freezers, standing silent in the dark, waiting for someone to open their doors and discover what waited inside.
And somewhere in that warehouse—or in Murphy's home, or his vehicle, or one of the countless places a careful killer might hide evidence—there might be something that would tell them definitively whether Daniel Murphy was the man who had strangled three women and posed them with such terrible tenderness.
The clock on the conference room wall read 7:34 AM.
In less than an hour, they'd have their warrant.
In less than an hour, they'd know.