CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
Holloway pulled out his phone, scrolling through what looked like a calendar app.
"Tuesday night, I was home with my wife and kids.
We watched a movie—some animated thing the kids picked out—, and I was in bed by eleven.
Wednesday night, same thing. Family dinner, helped with homework, asleep by midnight. My wife can confirm all of this."
"And this morning, between 5:30 and 6:30 AM?"
"Home. Getting ready for work. I left the house at 7:15, stopped for coffee at the place on Fourth Street—they'll have me on their security cameras.
Got to the office around 7:45." He met Isla's eyes directly.
"I'm guessing that's when the third victim was killed?
The doctor they're talking about on the news? "
Isla nodded slowly, her certainty already crumbling. Gary Holloway had alibis, easily verifiable ones involving family and public places with security cameras. More than that, his entire demeanor suggested someone who genuinely didn't understand why he'd be under suspicion.
"Mr. Holloway," she said, shifting her approach. "We understand your sister Grace died in the tunnels eight years ago. I'm very sorry for your loss."
His expression changed immediately, pain flickering across his features before he schooled them back to neutrality.
"Grace struggled with a lot of demons. Her death was.
.. it was a tragedy, but it wasn't the tunnels' fault.
She chose that location because she knew I worked down there, knew I'd understand she'd found some kind of peace in the darkness. At least that's what her note said."
"That must have been incredibly difficult," James said quietly.
"It was. It is." Holloway removed his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"But Agent Rivers, if you're thinking her death would make me want to kill people in those tunnels—that's not how grief works.
I don't blame the infrastructure for my sister's choices.
I don't have some vendetta against public servants who work in the system.
I'm just trying to do my job and make sure nobody else gets hurt down there. "
The quiet dignity in his voice made Isla feel like she was grasping at straws—which, she realized with uncomfortable clarity, she was. Gary Holloway wasn't their killer. He was just another person touched by the tunnels' darkness, trying to make sense of loss while doing work that mattered.
"I apologize for the intrusion," Isla said, standing. "But we do need your help with something else. The city's maps of the tunnel system are apparently incomplete. Your supervisor mentioned that documentation hasn't kept pace with decades of modifications and expansions."
"That's putting it mildly," Holloway said, some of his earlier warmth returning now that he understood he wasn't actually a suspect.
"The official maps are a mess—missing entire sections, showing passages that don't exist anymore, failing to document the decommissioned areas that are still physically present.
I've been lobbying for years to get a comprehensive mapping project funded, but budget priorities. .." He shrugged.
"Is there anyone who would have better knowledge of the complete system?" Isla asked, feeling like she was finally asking the right question. "Someone who's spent enough time down there to know not just what's on the maps, but what actually exists?"
Holloway didn't hesitate. "Thomas Garrett.
He's a veteran steam tunnel maintenance engineer, been with the city for over twenty years.
Tom's spent more time underground than anyone I know—he's mapped passages that officially don't exist, documented abandoned sections that were never properly recorded.
If anyone knows the complete layout of that system, it's him. "
Isla felt something click into place, though she couldn't articulate exactly what. Thomas Garrett—a name that hadn't appeared in any of their previous investigations, someone who apparently possessed exactly the kind of intimate knowledge their killer had demonstrated.
"Where can we find Mr. Garrett?" she asked, already pulling out her phone to take notes.
"You're in luck," Holloway said, glancing at his watch. "He's on shift today. Should be somewhere in this building—probably either in the maintenance office on the first floor or down in the tunnel access point in the basement. Want me to page him for you?"
Isla exchanged a glance with James, seeing her own cautious optimism reflected in his expression.
They'd been pursuing suspects and theories that kept dissolving into nothing, but maybe they'd been asking the wrong questions.
Maybe instead of looking for someone with a motive to kill, they needed to find someone who could actually teach them about the tunnels themselves.
"Yes," Isla said. "Please tell him we'd like to speak with him about the tunnel system. We need his expertise."
As Holloway picked up the conference room phone to make the page, Isla felt the familiar tension of investigation shifting.
They weren't pursuing Thomas Garrett as a suspect—not yet, anyway.
They were seeking him as a resource, someone who might finally help them understand the underground world where three people had died.
But even as she thought it, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered: What if the person with the most knowledge is exactly the person you should fear most?
The overhead speaker crackled to life: "Thomas Garrett to Conference Room 3B. Thomas Garrett to Conference Room 3B."
Isla straightened her blazer, checked that her weapon was secure in its holster—force of habit, probably unnecessary—and waited to meet the man who knew Duluth's hidden depths better than anyone else in the city.