Isla grabbed her heavy coat from the passenger seat—the one James had convinced her to buy, the one she'd needed yesterday in the superheated tunnels. She had a feeling she'd need it again today, though for different reasons. December in Duluth meant the kind of cold that seeped into your bones and stayed there, and underground spaces had a way of amplifying the chill.
Morrison saw her approaching and broke away from his conversation with James, his weathered face drawn with exhaustion. He looked like he'd been up all night, which heprobably had—homicide detectives didn't keep regular hours any more than FBI agents did.
"Agent Rivers." Morrison's voice was rougher than usual, like he'd been breathing in too much dust or shouting orders. "Appreciate you getting here so fast."
"What do we have?" Isla pulled out her phone, ready to take notes. The familiar ritual of investigation was grounding, pushing back against the disorientation of too little sleep and too much coffee.
"Victim is Linda Graves, age fifty-one, social worker with Duluth County Family Services." Morrison consulted his own notes, though Isla suspected he had the details memorized. "Her daughter Rachel called in a welfare check around 3 AM when her mother didn't respond to texts or calls. Rachel's away at college in Minneapolis, but she'd gotten a text from her mother around 11 PM saying she was meeting a client downtown."
Isla absorbed this, her investigator's mind already cataloging questions. A social worker meeting a client at 11 PM wasn't unusual—crisis work didn't respect business hours. But meeting them in the industrial district, near abandoned steam tunnel access points?
"How did you find her?" Isla asked.
"Rachel gave us the last text message from her mother, including the location: Harbor Drive maintenance complex, steam tunnel access point four." Morrison gestured vaguely toward the east, though Isla couldn't see the harbor from here. "That's about half a mile from here. We searched that entrance first, found it secured and no signs of forced entry. Then we expanded the search to adjacent access points, and..." He trailed off, his expression grim. "This entrance was unlocked. Fresh scuff marks on the stairs. We found her body about two hundred yards in."
James appeared at Isla's elbow, holding an extra flashlight that he pressed into her hand. His blue eyes were shadowed with lack of sleep, his usual neat appearance slightly disheveled—shirt collar wrinkled, tie loosened, the faint shadow of stubble on his jaw. They matched, Isla realized. Two exhausted investigators running on coffee and determination.
"Scene is cleared and secured," James said quietly. "Dr. Henley is already down there. She said to tell you this one's different from Langford."
Different. The word carried weight, implication, the suggestion that their understanding of the case was about to shift again. Isla had been hoping for similarities, for patterns that would solidify their profile of the killer. Different meant more complexity, more variables, more chances to miss crucial connections.
"Let's see it," Isla said.
Morrison led them through the steel door, which stood propped open by a wooden wedge someone had kicked into place. The air that rolled out was cold and damp rather than hot and humid—already a stark contrast to yesterday's scene. Isla clicked on her flashlight as they descended concrete stairs that were older and more worn than the ones at Access Point 7, the edges rounded by decades of use.
The tunnel at the bottom was narrower than the sections Isla had seen yesterday, with lower ceilings that made James hunch slightly to avoid scraping his head on overhead pipes. But these pipes were different—cold to the touch, covered in decades of rust and mineral deposits. Some had been wrapped in deteriorating insulation that hung in tatters, while others were bare metal that wept condensation onto the concrete floor.
"This section was decommissioned fifteen years ago," Morrison explained, his voice echoing off the damp walls. "When they upgraded the central heating plant, they reroutedmost of the steam through newer tunnels. This area hasn't been in active use since 2010, though maintenance crews come through occasionally for inspections."
Isla played her flashlight beam across the walls, noting the water damage and deterioration that came from abandonment. Small puddles had formed in depressions in the concrete floor, and she could hear the distant sound of dripping water—a steady, rhythmic plinking that created an unsettling soundtrack to their descent.
"Why would Linda Graves come down here to meet a client?" Isla asked. Nothing about this location suggested it would be anyone's first choice for a meeting, crisis or otherwise.
"That's the question," James said from behind her. "Rachel said her mother was professional about safety protocols. Never met clients in isolated locations without telling someone, always kept her phone charged, always had an exit plan."
"But she came here anyway," Isla said. "Which means either she was coerced, or she believed the situation was urgent enough to override her protocols."
They rounded a corner, and the tunnel opened into a wider chamber similar to the one where they'd found David Langford. But where yesterday's scene had been all heat and harsh light and the mechanical hum of active systems, this space was cold and dark and silent except for the drip of water and the shuffle of footsteps from the dozen people already processing the scene.
Portable work lights had been set up, their harsh glare creating deep shadows in the corners. Crime scene technicians moved with practiced efficiency, photographing, measuring, collecting samples. And there, slumped against the far wall beneath a cluster of rusted, inactive pipes, was Linda Graves.
Dr. Patricia Henley crouched beside the body, her examination kit spread out on a plastic sheet to protect it from the damp floor. She looked up as Isla approached, her middle-aged features drawn with the same exhaustion everyone seemed to be carrying today.
"Agent Rivers. I was hoping you'd be the one they called." Henley stood, pulling off her gloves with practiced efficiency. "This one's giving me trouble."
Isla moved closer, forcing herself to look at what had once been a person—a social worker, a mother, someone who'd spent her life helping others and had ended it here in this cold, abandoned tunnel. Linda Graves wore a winter coat and practical boots, dressed for December weather. Her purse lay a few feet away, its contents scattered across the concrete—wallet, phone, keys, pepper spray that had never been used.
But it was the body itself that made Isla stop, her breath catching in her throat.
No burn marks.
Linda Graves's exposed skin—face, neck, the hands visible beneath her coat sleeves—was pale and unmarked, showing none of the deliberate, patterned burns that had covered David Langford. The tissue was slightly mottled from lividity and the damp cold, but otherwise intact.
"Cause of death?" Isla asked, though she had a sinking feeling she already knew the answer.
"Blunt force trauma to the back of the skull, followed by drowning." Henley gestured toward a shallow pool of water about six feet from the body. "Based on the position and the water in her lungs, I believe she was struck from behind, knocked unconscious or semi-conscious, then held face-down in that water until she died."
Drowning. In a decommissioned steam tunnel, two hundred yards underground, in water that shouldn't have been deep enough to drown someone unless they were deliberately held under.
