"Lang's building has underground parking," she said, reaching for the possibility out of habit."The doorbell faces the street-level lot."
"Kowalski checked.Lang's lease assigns him the street-level spot.He doesn't have underground access.If he left his apartment at any point between eleven PM and six AM, he either walked or took a cab.And we both know Paulson's overlook is twenty minutes north of the city."
Isla said nothing.She watched the gray skyline through the windshield, Lake Superior somewhere behind the cloud cover, invisible but immense.
The uncomfortable arithmetic was doing itself without her permission.Lang's car hadn't moved all night.He'd been surrounded by twelve paying witnesses by ten in the morning.Deputy Walsh had eyes on every exit.And now there was a second body cooling at an overlook eight miles north of the city, staged with the same deliberate, patient hand as the first.
Either Marcus Lang had absolutely nothing to do with any of this—
Or he'd orchestrated two murders, twice, from inside a sealed room, without leaving a single thread for them to pull.
"He's not our guy," she said quietly.
It wasn't a question this time.James didn't bother to argue.
She stared at the screenshots for another moment, then tucked the phone back into the car’s cupholder.The sandstone walls of Lang's narrative—the motive, the contempt, the coincidence of the locations—hadn't changed.But the architecture underneath them had been quietly, methodically hollowed out, and now the whole structure was nothing but a facade propped against empty air.
"We should keep the surveillance anyway," she said."Until we're certain."
"Of course.The feud was real," James said."The hatred, the history.Lang wanted Paulson destroyed.That wasn't an act."
"Lang couldn't have done it.Not personally."She dropped her hands and forced herself to think clearly, to set aside the frustration and focus on what the evidence was actually telling them."But that doesn't mean he's not involved.He could have a partner.Someone is doing the actual killing while he establishes alibis."
"That's a stretch.Serial killers don't usually work in teams."
"These aren't serial killings.Not in the traditional sense."Isla turned to face him, her mind racing through the implications."Traditional serials have cooling-off periods.Days, weeks, months between kills.This is two victims in less than twenty-four hours.That's not compulsion—that's mission-oriented.Someone with an agenda and a timeline."
James was quiet for a moment, navigating around a delivery truck that had double-parked on Superior Street."You think they're sending a message."
"I think they're making a statement.The staging, the photography angle, the scenic locations—it's all deliberate.Theatrical.Like they want us to see something specific."
"See what?"
"I don't know yet.But I'm going to find out."
***
The drive to the Lester River overlook took twenty-five minutes—twenty-five minutes of silence punctuated only by the occasional crackle of the police scanner and the steady rhythm of James's hands on the wheel.Isla spent the time reviewing what little they knew, turning the facts over in her mind like stones in a tumbler.
Derek Paulson.Forty-three.Award-winning landscape photographer.Killed at Hawk Ridge, positioned behind his own camera as if capturing the sunrise.
And now another victim.Another scenic location.Another photographer, presumably, if the pattern held.
Two photographers.Two overlooks.
Whatever message the killer was sending, they were sending it fast.
The overlook near the Lester River was smaller than Hawk Ridge, more intimate—a rocky outcropping that jutted over a frozen meadow, surrounded by dense stands of pine and birch.Two Duluth PD cruisers blocked the access road, their lights casting red and blue shadows across the snow.An ambulance idled nearby, its crew standing in a loose cluster with the particular posture of people waiting for permission to do their jobs.
Isla badged the officer at the perimeter and ducked under the crime scene tape, her boots crunching on frozen gravel.The trail to the overlook wound through skeletal birches, their white bark stark against the gray sky.She could hear voices up ahead—the low murmur of crime scene technicians, the occasional click of a camera shutter.
Dr.Patricia Henley met her at the edge of the clearing.
The medical examiner looked tired—more tired than usual, the lines around her eyes deeper than they'd been yesterday morning.She'd probably been called straight from Derek Paulson's autopsy, summoned to another scene before she'd even finished documenting the first.
"Agent Rivers," Henley said."Déjà vu doesn't begin to cover it."
"Time of death?"