"So where does that leave us?"
Isla thought about the whiteboard back at the field office, covered in connections that led nowhere.Thought about Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce and Sarah Ramsey, three women who shared a physical type but apparently nothing else.Thought about the killer who had posed them with such terrible tenderness, who had chosen closed restaurants with working freezers, who had accelerated his timeline in the days leading up to Valentine's Day.
Which was today.The killings had only increased.Would there be even more today, of all days?
"It leaves us with a profile," she said slowly."Someone who targets women with light hair in their thirties.Someone who has access to information about closed restaurants—maybe through legitimate means, like Murphy, or maybe through something else entirely.”She turned away from the warehouse and headed for the sedan."We've been focusing on the crime scenes, trying to trace the killer through the locations.Maybe we need to focus on the victims instead.Find out what drew him to them specifically.What they have in common beyond the way they look."
"The yoga studio connection didn't pan out."
"No, it didn't.But there has to be something.Three women don't just get selected at random by someone this organized, this careful."Isla climbed into the passenger seat and waited for James to start the engine."We're missing a piece of the puzzle.Something that links Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce and Sarah Ramsey in a way we haven't discovered yet."
James pulled the sedan out of the parking lot, pointing them back toward the field office.The February sky stretched above them, gray and flat and offering no answers.
"We'll find it," he said.
Isla wished she shared his certainty.
Eventually, they would catch him.But how many more women would need to die first?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The clock on the conference room wall read 10:17 AM when Isla finally accepted what she'd known for the past hour.
Daniel Murphy wasn't their killer.
The confirmation had come through twenty minutes ago—a cascade of emails and phone calls that dismantled their best lead with brutal efficiency.The Palmer House in Chicago had verified Murphy's check-in on Monday afternoon.The National Restaurant Equipment Expo had records of his booth setup, his exhibitor badge scans, and his attendance at a Tuesday morning panel on sustainable kitchen practices.Three separate colleagues had provided statements placing him at the convention center during the exact window when Sarah Ramsey was being strangled and posed in a freezer four hundred miles away.
Isla stood at the window of the conference room, staring out at the gray February sky without really seeing it.Behind her, the whiteboard still displayed its web of connections—photographs of three dead women, red lines linking them to crime scenes, black arrows pointing toward theories that had collapsed one by one.The whole thing looked like a conspiracy theorist's fever dream, and it had gotten them exactly nowhere.
Valentine's Day.The thought sat in her chest like a stone.February 14th, and somewhere in Duluth, a killer was still free.Still hunting, maybe.Still watching women who fit his type without knowing they'd been marked.
"Murphy's alibi is airtight."James's voice came from behind her, steady and matter-of-fact despite the disappointment she knew he must be feeling.She heard him set something down on the conference table—probably another stack of verification documents, more proof that they'd wasted precious hours chasing a man whose only crime was caring too much about old restaurant equipment."Six independent witnesses, credit card receipts, security footage from the convention center.He wasn't anywhere near Duluth when Sarah Ramsey was killed."
"I know."Isla turned from the window, forcing herself to face the wreckage of their investigation.The exhaustion from their sleepless night pressed against her skull like a vise, but beneath it her mind was already churning, trying to find a new angle, a fresh approach."His connection to all three crime scenes was real, but it was exactly what he claimed—professional interest in the equipment, nothing more."
"A coincidence."
"A coincidence that cost us half a day."She walked back to the conference table and dropped into her chair, the leather creaking beneath her.The files they'd compiled on Murphy were spread across the surface—business records, property documents, the meticulous spreadsheets that had seemed so damning twelve hours ago.Now they were just paper.Evidence of nothing except her own desperate need to find a pattern that made sense.
James settled into the chair across from her, his blue eyes carrying that particular expression she'd come to recognize over their years working together—the one that meant he was thinking through a problem, turning it over in his mind like a stone he was examining for flaws.
"Maybe we've been looking at this wrong," he said.
"How so?"
"The restaurants."He gestured toward the whiteboard, toward the photographs of Bella Ristorante and the Shoreline Diner and Harrington's Steakhouse."We've been treating them like they're significant—like the killer chose them for a reason connected to the locations themselves.Carlisle's connection to Bella Ristorante sent us down one rabbit hole.Murphy's connection to all three sent us down another."
"You're saying the restaurants don't matter?"
"I'm saying they might only matter as opportunities."James leaned forward, his elbows on the table."Think about it.All three locations share the same basic characteristics: closed to the public, accessible without obvious forced entry, and equipped with functioning freezers.The killer needed those three things—privacy, access, and cold storage.Which specific restaurants provided them might be irrelevant."
Isla considered this, feeling the shape of the argument settle into place.It made sense—more sense, perhaps, than the theories they'd been chasing.The killer wasn't choosing restaurants because of their history or their owners or their connections to anyone.He was choosing them because they met his practical requirements.
"So the restaurants are just containers," she said slowly."The real question isn't why he chose those specific locations—it's why he needed freezers at all."
"Exactly."James's expression shifted, something darker moving behind his eyes."The posing suggests he cares about how the victims look when they're found.The freezers—" He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully."The freezers might be about preservation."
The word hung between them, cold and clinical.Preservation.Isla thought about Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce, their bodies frozen in poses of artificial peace.She thought about Sarah Ramsey, still warm when she was found, but placed with the same care in the same kind of location.
