"Completely."Isla pushed through the front door into the cold February air."Brune's kills are meant to look like accidents.This..."She shook her head."This is something else entirely.Someone wanted her found.Wanted us to see her like that."
"A message?"
"Maybe.Or a signature."She ducked under the crime scene tape and headed for their car."Either way, it's not Brune.Wrong victim profile, wrong method, wrong everything."
James unlocked the sedan."You sound almost relieved."
Isla paused before getting in, letting the cold wind off the lake cut through her blazer.She should have felt guilty about it—a woman was dead, after all, and here she was treating it like a welcome distraction.But the truth was, she was relieved.Eight weeks of staring at Robert Brune's face on her corkboard, eight weeks of waiting for the next body to wash up on shore, eight weeks of feeling helpless and frustrated and haunted by a killer she'd identified but couldn't catch.
This was different.This was solvable.A body in a freezer, a restaurant with shady connections, an owner with something to hide.This was a puzzle with pieces she could actually find.
"Let's find out everything we can about Marco DiMatteo," she said, climbing into the passenger seat."And about Monica Hayes.Somewhere in the space between those two lives, there's a killer."
James started the engine."Office first?"
"Office first.Then we talk to the man who's so sure the salmonella didn't come from his kitchen."
As they pulled away from Bella Ristorante, Isla caught one last glimpse of the hand-painted sign in the rearview mirror.A Tuscan hillside, rolling and golden, promising warmth and good food and simple pleasures.
In the freezer behind those cheerful walls, Monica Hayes lay with her hands folded and her eyes closed, waiting for someone to tell her story.
Isla intended to be that someone.
CHAPTER FOUR
The FBI field office hummed with the low-grade energy of a Monday morning—keyboards clicking, phones ringing in distant cubicles, the smell of burnt coffee drifting from the break room.Isla sat at her desk with her blazer draped over the back of her chair, scrolling through search results while James hunted down fresh coffee that hadn't been sitting on a burner since dawn.
Bella Ristorante.The name returned thousands of hits, most of them Yelp reviews and foodie blog posts from before the shutdown.Authentic Italian cuisine in the heart of Duluth.Family recipes passed down through generations.A hidden gem on Lake Avenue.
Isla clicked past the glowing reviews, searching for something more substantial.The salmonella outbreak had made local news, of course—fourteen confirmed cases, three hospitalizations, an investigation that had shuttered the restaurant a week ago.Marco DiMatteo, the owner, had been quoted expressing his "deep concern for the affected families" while simultaneously insisting that his kitchen maintained the highest standards of cleanliness.
Standard PR damage control.Nothing that explained why a woman had ended up frozen in his walk-in.
She refined her search, adding keywords, filtering by date.The results shifted, older articles surfacing from the digital sediment.And there it was—a headline from eighteen months ago that made her pause.
LOCAL RESTAURANT OWNER SELLS BUSINESS FOLLOWING FAMILY TRAGEDY
Isla clicked through to the article, her coffee growing cold beside her keyboard.The story unfolded in the dry, matter-of-fact tone of local journalism.Vincent Carlisle, owner of Bella Ristorante for twelve years, had sold the establishment to Marco DiMatteo following the deaths of his wife Maria and their seven-year-old daughter Lily in a car accident.A semi-truck had crossed the median on I-35, according to the report.The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel.Maria and Lily had died on impact.
Isla stared at the screen, at the photo embedded in the article.It showed the Carlisle family at some kind of community event—Vincent with his arm around his wife, their daughter grinning at the camera with a gap-toothed smile.Maria Carlisle had been beautiful in an understated way, with shoulder-length blonde hair and a warm expression that suggested kindness came naturally to her.
Blonde hair.Shoulder-length.
Isla pulled up the preliminary crime scene photos on her second monitor—the ones Fritz had sent over an hour ago.Monica Hayes lay in the freezer, her features obscured by frost, but certain details remained visible.The shape of her face.The length of her hair.The general impression of a woman in her early thirties.
She opened a new tab and searched for Monica Hayes, finding a LinkedIn profile, a sparse Facebook page, a staff photo from the real estate firm where she'd worked.The picture showed a professional headshot—Monica smiling against a neutral background, blonde hair styled in soft waves around her face.
Isla placed the images side by side.Maria Carlisle and Monica Hayes.Different women, different lives, different ages even—Maria had been forty-one when she died, Monica only thirty-four.But the resemblance was there, impossible to ignore.The same coloring.The same bone structure.The same general shape to their smiles.
"Rivers."
She looked up to find James approaching with two cups of coffee, his expression caught somewhere between curiosity and concern.
"You've got that look," he said, handing her one of the cups.
"What look?"
"The one that says you found something uncomfortable."He settled into his chair across the aisle, blue eyes taking in her dual monitors."What did the restaurant turn up?"
