The dispatcher was saying something, asking questions, but Kyle couldn't focus on the words.He was shaking now, great shuddering tremors that had nothing to do with the cold.Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that he was probably going into shock, that he needed to breathe, needed to calm down, needed to—
She was reaching for the door.
The thought cut through everything else.That extended arm, those frozen fingers, stretched toward the handle she would never reach.
She had been alive when someone put her in there.
Kyle Henderson, health inspector, father of two, man who had never seen anything worse than a rat infestation, bent over in the dirty snow of a restaurant alley and threw up his breakfast.
The dispatcher's voice continued in his ear, tinny and distant."Sir?Sir, units are on the way.Can you stay on the line?"
He could.He would.He'd stay on this line forever if it meant never having to go back inside that kitchen, back to that freezer, back to those eyes that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
"Yes," he managed, his voice barely a whisper."I'm here.I'm not going anywhere."
In the distance, he heard the first wail of sirens cutting through the February morning.Help was coming.Police, paramedics, people who dealt with things like this, who would know what to do, who would take this horror out of his hands and—
And none of it would change the fact that somewhere inside that restaurant, a woman had frozen to death in the dark, reaching for a door that never opened.
Kyle closed his eyes and waited, the sirens growing closer, the cold seeping through his clothes, and tried not to think about how long she must have screamed before the cold took her voice away.
CHAPTER THREE
The crime scene tape stretched across the entrance of Bella Ristorante like a yellow warning against curiosity.Isla ducked under it, James following close behind, their breath fogging in the cold February air.The restaurant's facade looked almost cheerful in the morning light—red brick, green awning, hand-painted sign depicting a rolling Tuscan hillside—but the uniformed officer at the door and the forensics van parked at the curb told a different story.
"Agents Rivers and James?"A young detective met them just inside the entrance, hand already extended.He had sandy hair cropped close to his skull and the kind of earnest face that suggested he still believed in the job."Detective Harry Fritz, Duluth PD.Thanks for coming out so quickly."
Isla shook his hand."Walk us through it."
Fritz led them through the dining room.The place had the eerie quality of a snapshot; frozen at the moment the health department had shut it down.Isla noticed the dust gathering on the chair backs, the faint smell of decay that no amount of abandoned grandeur could mask.
"Health inspector found her this morning," Fritz said as they walked."Guy named Kyle Henderson.He was here to do a reinspection—the place got shut down for salmonella about a week ago.Fourteen confirmed cases, three hospitalizations.The owner's been pushing hard to reopen."
"Where's Henderson now?"James asked.
"Gave his statement, then we sent him home.He was pretty shaken up.Found her in the walk-in freezer."Fritz paused at the swinging door that led to the kitchen."I'll be honest with you—when the call first came in, we figured it was an accident.Some employee got locked in after hours, something like that.Tragic, but not criminal."
"But?"Isla prompted.
"But then we saw the body."Fritz pushed through the door into the kitchen."She's still in there.ME hasn't moved her yet—wanted you to see her first."
The kitchen was a mess.Isla catalogued it all automatically, her mind filing away details even as her focus remained on what waited ahead.
The walk-in freezer stood at the back of the kitchen, its heavy steel door propped open.A technician in a white suit was photographing something inside.As Isla approached, the cold rolled out to meet her, sharp and biting, carrying with it a smell that was somehow both antiseptic and wrong.
She stepped inside.
The woman lay on the freezer floor, positioned almost carefully between shelves of frozen produce and vacuum-sealed meat.She was on her back, arms folded across her chest, legs straight, head tilted slightly to one side as if she'd fallen asleep and simply never woken up.Her blonde hair was frozen in brittle strands around a face that had gone the color of old wax, blue-white and frost-kissed.Her eyes were closed.
Isla felt the wrongness of it immediately.
"This doesn't look like an accident," James said from beside her, his voice low.
"No."Isla crouched beside the body, careful not to disturb anything."Someone posed her like this.Folded her hands.Closed her eyes."
"There's something almost...peaceful about it," Fritz said, and Isla could hear the discomfort in his voice."Like whoever did this wanted her to look comfortable."
Peaceful wasn't the word Isla would have chosen.Deliberate, maybe.Staged.The pose had a quality of performance to it, as if the killer had arranged her for an audience.But there was something else, too—a tenderness in the positioning that made the hair on the back of Isla's neck stand up.
