Another witness, an elderly man in a heavy parka, was describing David's efforts to anyone who would listen."Never seen anything like it in sixty years on this lake.That man's a hero, plain and simple."
As they prepared to leave David to the paramedics who were insisting on checking his hands, Isla felt that familiar itch of something not quite fitting together.The rescue worker's grief seemed genuine enough, and his physical injuries certainly supported his story of desperate efforts to break through the ice.But there was something about the scene that felt...orchestrated wasn't the right word.Performed, maybe.
"You okay?"Sullivan asked as they walked back toward the crime scene tape.
"Just processing," Isla replied, though her mind was already moving beyond David Kucharski to the bigger picture.Another body in Lake Superior.Another death that would probably be ruled accidental.Another potential victim of the killer she was hunting.
But as they approached the site where Sarah Quinn had been pulled from the water, Isla couldn't shake the image of David's face when she'd called him courageous.For just a moment, beneath the grief and exhaustion, she'd seen something that looked almost like gratification.
Heroes, she reflected grimly, often needed victims to save.
The thought followed her as she knelt, studying the scene where another young life had been claimed by Lake Superior's relentless hunger.Somewhere in the maze of footprints and emergency equipment scattered around the extraction site, there might be clues that would tell her whether Sarah Quinn had simply been unlucky, or whether she'd been chosen.
CHAPTER SIX
The forensics team had cordoned off a section of ice roughly fifty yards from where Sarah Quinn's body had been extracted, their equipment creating an incongruous high-tech tableau against the primitive backdrop of frozen lake.Isla approached the lead technician, a thin woman named Carol Stevens who she'd worked with on two previous cases.
"What have you got, Carol?"
"Entry point's over here," Stevens replied, leading them to a roughly circular hole in the ice, perhaps three feet in diameter.The edges were already beginning to refreeze in the bitter morning air, but the opening was still clearly visible."Based on the body's position when recovered and the current patterns, this is definitely where she went through."
Isla knelt beside the hole, studying the formation of the ice around its perimeter.Even to her untrained eye, something looked wrong.The edges were too smooth, too uniform for a natural break.
"Sullivan," she called, gesturing for her partner to join her."What do you think?"
Sullivan approached and crouched beside the opening, his experienced eye taking in details that would have escaped most observers.As a lifelong resident of Duluth, he'd seen countless ice conditions, understood the difference between natural formations and artificial alterations.
"Son of a bitch," he muttered after a long moment of examination.
"What?"
"Look at the edge pattern here," he said, pointing to a section where the ice curved inward in an almost perfect arc."See how clean that line is?Natural ice breaks are jagged, irregular.This looks like it was cut."
Stevens nodded, her expression grim."That's what we're thinking, too.We found what appear to be tool marks along the perimeter—very fine cuts, made with something sharp enough to slice through eight-inch ice without creating the fracture patterns you'd see from impact."
Isla felt her pulse accelerate."A saw?"
"Most likely.Something with a very fine blade—probably a wire saw or a specialized ice cutting tool.Someone who knew what they were doing could weaken this section enough that it would give way under even minimal weight, but still look solid from the surface."
The implications hit Isla like a physical blow.Not an accident.Not even a case of someone taking foolish risks on unstable ice.This was murder, planned and executed with the kind of technical knowledge that suggested experience.
"How long would it have taken?"Sullivan asked.
"To make cuts like this?Maybe twenty, thirty minutes if they knew what they were doing.Could have been done the night before—the ice would refreeze enough to hide the worst of the tool marks, but still be fatally compromised."
Isla stood slowly, her mind already connecting this evidence to the case that had brought her to the lake in the first place.Alex Novak, found dead in an ice fishing hole with suspicious circumstances.Sarah Quinn, killed by artificially weakened ice designed to look like a tragic accident.The pattern she'd been tracking for months was becoming impossible to ignore.
"This isn't random," she said to Sullivan as they walked back toward their car."Someone's using the lake as a weapon, making murders look like accidents."
"You think this is connected to the shipyard case?"
"I think we're looking at the same killer."The certainty in her voice surprised her, but the conviction felt solid."Someone who understands ice conditions, who knows how to manipulate them, who can plan these attacks weeks in advance."
The drive back to the FBI field office took them through downtown Duluth, past the frozen harbor where massive freighters sat locked in ice like prehistoric beasts.Isla stared out at the scene, seeing it now not as a winter wonderland but as a hunting ground.Somewhere in this community, someone was using the lake's deadly reputation to hide multiple murders.
By the time they reached the federal building, she'd made her decision.It was time to get Kate's authorization to officially pursue Sarah Quinn's death as part of her ongoing investigation.
Kate's office occupied a corner of the third floor, its windows offering a commanding view of the harbor and the lake beyond.When Isla and Sullivan entered, they found her reviewing case files with the methodical attention that had made her reputation as one of the Bureau's most effective managers.
