CHAPTER NINE #2
Chen consulted his tablet, though Isla suspected he didn't need to—the haunted look in his eyes suggested these details were seared into his memory.
"Vessel was drifting approximately twelve miles east-northeast of here, no power, no crew.
We found significant bloodstains on deck, concentrated near the wheelhouse and trailing toward the port side.
Personal effects scattered throughout—wallets, phones, a half-eaten meal in the galley. No bodies."
"Any sign of what the crew was carrying?" James asked.
Chen hesitated, glancing around as if to ensure they weren't being overheard. "We found something in the hold. Hidden compartment beneath the fish storage. It's... you should see for yourselves."
Isla followed the lieutenant aboard, her boots finding purchase on the weathered deck planks.
The Storm Runner creaked gently against her mooring lines, the sound mixing with the lap of waves against the hull in a rhythm that should have been peaceful but instead felt ominous.
The blood was darker up close, congealed and sticky despite the cool April air.
She could smell it now—that copper tang that never quite left your memory once you'd encountered it at a crime scene.
The wheelhouse told a story of sudden violence.
Navigation charts were scattered across the floor, a coffee mug shattered against the bulkhead, radio equipment showing signs of recent use but now silent.
Through the window, Isla could see the vast gray expanse of Lake Superior stretching toward the horizon—empty and indifferent to the violence that had occurred on this small vessel.
"Down here," Chen said, leading them through a narrow hatch and down a ladder into the boat's cramped hold.
The smell hit Isla first—not blood this time, but something chemical, acrid, familiar in a way that made her stomach clench. The hold was lined with fish storage bins, their contents still partially frozen, but one section of the deck plating had been removed to reveal a hidden compartment beneath.
Empty now, but not entirely. Scattered across the bottom of the compartment were small plastic bags, their contents a crystalline white that caught the beam of Chen's flashlight. Residue clung to the compartment's walls, and Isla didn't need a field test to know what she was looking at.
"Methamphetamine," she said, crouching to examine the compartment more closely. "Looks like they were running a substantial quantity. This compartment could hold—what, fifty, sixty pounds?"
"More," James said, studying the dimensions. "If they packed it tight, maybe a hundred. Street value of several million dollars."
Isla stood, her mind racing through the implications.
The Northern Dawn had been carrying weapons—military-grade hardware worth a fortune on the black market.
But the Storm Runner was a completely different operation.
A smaller vessel, a smaller crew, running drugs instead of guns.
Different cargo, different scale, different criminal network.
But the same result. Crew missing, probably dead. Vessel left to drift as a ghost ship. Evidence of violence without witnesses.
"This doesn't make sense," she said, climbing back up the ladder to the main deck.
The fresh air—even carrying the smell of fish and harbor—was a relief after the chemical stench of the hold.
"The Northern Dawn was connected to Callahan's operation.
Professional arms smugglers with international connections.
These guys—" she gestured at the modest fishing boat around them "—these are small-time drug runners.
Local operation, probably selling to distributors in Duluth or the Iron Range. "
James followed her topside, his brow furrowed as he processed the same contradictions. "No connection between the operations?"
"I doubt it. Callahan's people move weapons, not drugs. Different markets, different customers, different risks." Isla moved to the port rail, studying the blood trail that led toward the water. "But our killer doesn't seem to care about the distinction."
"What do you mean?"
"Think about it." Isla turned to face James, her amber eyes bright with the intensity that came when pieces of a puzzle started clicking into place.
"The Northern Dawn was carrying weapons.
The Storm Runner was carrying drugs. Callahan mentioned other vessels—the Margaret Rose, boats near Marquette, and Sault Ste.
Marie. Different operations, different cargo, but all hit the same way.
Crews killed or disappeared, vessels left to drift, contraband partially taken. "
"So it's not about the cargo," James said, following her reasoning. "It's not a rival operation trying to corner a specific market."
"No." Isla's voice was firm, certain. "It's about the targets themselves.
Someone is systematically hunting criminal operations on Lake Superior.
Not for the drugs or the weapons or whatever else these boats are carrying—or at least, not primarily.
They're hunting the smugglers. The criminals.
The people who operate in the shadows and won't report attacks to authorities. "
The wind picked up off the lake, cutting through her inadequate jacket and making the crime scene tape snap and flutter. Isla barely noticed. Her mind was fully engaged now, building a profile of someone she was only beginning to understand.
"A vigilante?" James asked, though his tone suggested he didn't quite believe it.
"Maybe. Or someone who's using vigilante justification to take whatever they want from people who can't complain.
" Isla moved back toward the wheelhouse, examining the blood patterns with fresh eyes.
"Either way, they've been at this for months.
They know the waterfront, they know how to find illegal operations, and they know exactly how to make people disappear on a lake that's already claimed thousands of lives. "
The crime scene technicians were arriving now, their van pulling up to the dock with equipment that would process every inch of the Storm Runner for evidence.
Isla knew from experience that they would find little—fingerprints smudged or wiped clean, DNA degraded by lake water and time, witnesses nonexistent because everyone who might have seen something was either dead or too scared to talk.
Ghost ships. The phrase echoed in her mind as she watched the technicians begin their work.
That's what this killer was creating—vessels stripped of their crews, left to drift on Superior's vast waters as monuments to violence that no one would officially investigate.
Callahan's people had tried to handle it internally, too afraid of law enforcement to report attacks on their smuggling operations.
How many other criminal networks had made the same calculation?
"The Storm Runner's crew," she said to Lieutenant Chen, who had been standing nearby, looking increasingly uncomfortable. "What do we know about them?"
Chen consulted his tablet again. "Captain Wayne Trudeau, age fifty-one.
Been fishing these waters for thirty years, according to locals.
Crew consisted of his son, Derek Trudeau, age twenty-eight, and two other men—Michael Okonkwo and James Larsen.
All local, all with clean records as far as we know. "
"Clean records but running enough meth to supply half of northern Minnesota," James observed dryly.
"The fishing industry's been hard hit for years," Chen said, a note of something like sympathy in his voice. "Lot of guys supplement their income with... side businesses. Doesn't make them bad people necessarily. Just desperate."
Isla thought of the scattered personal effects she'd seen in the wheelhouse, the half-eaten meal in the galley.
A father and son, working together on a boat that had probably been in the family for generations, making a living any way they could in an economy that had left them behind.
They'd made bad choices, certainly. Criminal choices.
But they hadn't deserved to end up as blood stains on a drifting vessel.
"I want everything you can find on the Storm Runner's operations," she said to James. "Where they fished, where they docked, who they associated with. If there's a pattern to how our killer is identifying targets, we need to find it."
"And Callahan?"
"Keep working him. He knows more than he's told us—he has to.
If he's been operating on these waters for years, he's heard things, seen things, knows people who know people.
" Isla looked back at the Storm Runner, at the blood that was already being photographed and catalogued by the crime scene team.
"Someone is turning Lake Superior into their personal hunting ground, James.
And until we figure out who they are, every criminal operation on these waters is a potential target. "
"And if they run out of criminals?" James asked quietly.
The question hung in the air between them, unanswered because Isla didn't have an answer she was willing to voice. Predators who developed a taste for hunting didn't simply stop when their preferred prey became scarce. They adapted. They evolved. They found new victims.
She thought again of the Lake Superior Killer—the invisible predator she'd been tracking for almost two years.
That killer had made his work look like accidents, had operated so subtly that decades might have passed without anyone noticing the pattern.
This new threat was different—more violent, more public, more brazen—but there was something about the methodology that nagged at her.
The patience. The knowledge of the waterfront.
The ability to move through an environment full of potential witnesses without being seen.
Two predators on the same waters. Or was there something else she was missing?
"Let's get back to the office," she said finally, pulling off her latex gloves with sharp, frustrated movements.
"We need to cross-reference everything—the Northern Dawn, the Storm Runner, every suspicious incident Callahan mentioned, every drowning that might have been staged.
If there's a connection, we're going to find it. "
James fell into step beside her as they walked back toward their SUV, the wind at their backs carrying the smell of the lake and the faint, lingering copper scent of violence.
The Storm Runner grew smaller behind them, a battered fishing boat that had become a crime scene, a tomb for men whose bodies might never be found.
Isla didn't look back. There would be time for that later, when the evidence was processed, and the families notified, and the investigation expanded to include yet another incident in what was becoming a terrifying pattern.
For now, she needed to focus on the hunt—on the predator who had turned the largest freshwater lake in the world into his personal killing ground.
Ghost ships, she thought again as they pulled away from the marina. Someone was creating an armada of them, one violent attack at a time. And until she found them, the bodies would keep disappearing into Superior's cold, dark depths.
The hunt was far from over. It was only beginning to reveal its true scope.