Why didn’t she just throw him in the river…?

He had spoken too soon.

Rai stood at the edge of the water. Ice shards clawed at the pebbled shoreline below. Behind him, against one of the huge supports for the train tracks above, a white and red striped tarp was set up like a tent, and under it the vigorous trade of pills and gums and colored cartridges was still going strong. The police were preoccupied with more serious matters.

The snow had stopped, but a sharpness lingered in the air. The sun wasn’t up yet. The cold would come rushing back at any moment, cutting winds and all. He could feel the cold biting at him from the metal railings, even through his gloves.

When he descended the slippery stairs to the meeting point, Rai saw Omy ducking under the candycane tarp. True to his word, the kid really did have a night owl constitution when his drinks weren’t being spiked. Omy had been one of the first to call in, at around 3 in the morning, when the body came drifting down the river. The water had started to harden and it came in slowly, stopping right in the middle of the frozen waterway. Like it wanted to be found.

From a distance, the body resembled a thin iceberg or the figurehead of a sinking ship sticking out from the ice at a 45 degree angle, shining with water and frost. And from the plastic wrap, they would find upon closer inspection.

The ice that held the statue was also making it tough for police to retrieve it. The frozen layer wasn’t strong enough to step on, and plowing through might cause a crack that would let the shape sink underneath and be swept out to sea. Eventually, a pulley system was wired to the bridge above and two rescuers were lowered to chip the body free.

When they were finished, ropes were tied around the black shape and they all began their dripping ascent back up to the bridge, the snow began to fall again. The black hole left behind refilled and refroze before they reached the top. When he couldn’t distinguish the dip Triad had left in the ice from the rest of the white landscape, Rai returned to the stairs to join the party on the bridge.

To see what remained. The lump of cold wasted meat.

A train passing overhead shook the air, and when he pressed himself against the pillar the rattling seemed to warm up his senses. He was left feeling sweaty and irritated.

His footsteps pinged up the metal stairs as he picked up speed. There had been a lot more of a body leftover than he was expecting.

—

“So it really was Triad in the water?”

“No doubt about it. The hospital’s doing tests to make sure, of course, but with that height, coloration, clothing…” Rai let the rest drift away.

Sao, his face unmasked and scars shadowed almost black in the dimmed lobby lighting, set down two cups of coffee and looked out over their view of the hotel parking lot. The scattered cars looked like they had been tucked under white covers. It was still hours before sunrise, but the sky was so thick with snow it glowed a light cottony gray.

What a town. Dark in the day and white in the night.

Rai forced himself to wait ten seconds before grabbing his cup. Any effort to look civilized was wiped out by the two fishlike gulps it took to wash it all down. He held onto the cup a while as he took in the hotel’s furnishings. Beige on beige on beige; every surface slightly dinged up, but functional. The late-night receptionist was taking a break so there was no awkward staring to deal with, and he couldn’t complain about an endless supply of self-serve coffee. “Nice place.”

“It does look better on the inside, doesn’t it?” Sao turned, still blowing on the surface of his own drink. He was wearing a hotel robe in place of his coat, looking like the gentleman of some archaic manor. “So as I understand, Triad was found essentially in one piece?”

“Not exactly. He was missing an arm - the left forearm, to be exact. The cut was relatively smooth, so that was probably where our knife was used. There were a bunch of cuts around the left shoulder, and the neck, but they didn’t go through. His attacker didn’t even try taking off a leg.” Rai put his cup down. “There’s the… unfortunate condition of his head.”

Sao recited the preliminary report as if he had already committed it to memory. “Jaw broken and spine dislocated with a heavy spiked implement. Cranium removed.” He didn’t drink his coffee, just held it.

“Yup. Skull likely smashed and everything above the teeth: gone.”

Sao swirled the cup. “Perhaps it was when he was sent out the window. He wouldn’t have been conscious for anything after, I hope.”

“If he was still moving and fighting, I don’t think she could have smuggled him all the way to the Atrium.” The coffee in his stomach gave him some confidence in that assertion. The memory of the windowsill impacting his back after a toss from Triad did too. Although, immobilized did not always mean unconscious - and the condition of the rest of Triad’s body didn’t suggest the fall had killed him - he left that unsaid. “The stab wounds Jin talked about were clearly visible on his torso, so he would have been weakened or maybe dead already. His body was dumped much further upriver, probably around this time yesterday. The cops found a big strip of plastic wrap that tore off when he hit a weir around there; he was wrapped in that stuff. The riverway’s pretty bumpy, they’re constructing a bridge in between. We were thinking he hit another wall and that took his head off.”

“I see - if it was already fragile. If it wasn’t gone already.” Sao shuddered. “By the spiked object. The meat tenderizer. I… Shall I get you some more coffee?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Rai waited in silence as the water heater hummed.

“I do feel some relief that he wasn't eaten - not entirely,” Sao said, moving slowly with the two nearly-full cups. “For him and his family and… those coerced into the cannibalism.”

“Yeah. Just the arm, at most.” Rai frowned. “Not much usable meat in the upper half of a head.”

Sao finally sat down. The hotel sofas were as beige as the floors and ceilings. Except for the stains. There were mercifully few. “Mutilating the head might have simply been done in a fit of rage.”

“I can believe it. Ayer and Jin were after revenge with their overcomplicated schemes. We don’t know how much Saki was told, but we know Triad had a low opinion of female students. And although he helped us catch Ayer, he had no interest in actually helping Tinsel or anyone else who suffered like her.” Rai took a sizable sip of his coffee. “I’m still a little afraid of what Saki might do next. Feeding even a little bit of Triad to people is something way crueler than Jin or Tinsel probably asked for. Smashing the head could have been a spur of the moment.”

“Or to hide something. I suppose only Saki would know.” Sao’s voice went low, almost hidden in the cup. “In spite of what she’s done, I hope she isn’t out in this weather.”

“She seems too smart for that. Irving says she took her car. She’s probably…” Rai kicked himself; he had no good guesses to make, or he’d be out now acting on them. She could have been laughing her way down a highway out of town, or crashed in a ditch. “She’s probably planning something. She’ll turn up.” Or a glaciated zombie, having stepped out for air at the wrong time. “One way or another.”

“Well.” Sao put his empty cup down with a hollow tap and let himself be drawn back to the broad front window. “Look at the flurry under that lamppost. It’s almost hypnotic. You like snow, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m not about to go out into that.”

Sao only continued to smile blankly at the whizzing flakes in the distance. It took a moment, but Rai remembered he was talking to a man whose mind was probably fuzzed up with a cold.

“I get it from my mom,” Rai said, softer. “She’s from above the arctic circle. The Life Fountains from that far north can practically only function when it’s below freezing.”

“I’d like to visit there someday.”

“I don’t know if I’d recommend it. The blizzards there make Murnau’s worst look like a light dusting.”

Did that smile just widen?

“Let’s not try to put Murnau in the rearview just yet.” Rai got up to look out from a different window.

The snow was now being whipped into mini tornadoes. Sao was right, it was hard to look away. The wind picked up, and beat against the glass like invisible fists.

Apparently asleep standing up, Sao was resting his head against the shivering glass. Rai had some perception that when a person caught a cold, their head got hot. He had never actually caught a cold himself (and he wasn't too fond of the word 'catch' in that context) but he had seen people touch their foreheads, or their kid’s or partner’s, usually with the back of their hands for some reason, to see if they were burning up with fever. He had been so fascinated by this act in second grade; when one of the parents at the end of the day reached down to test their red-cheeked sniffling kid; that he pretended to feel sick the next day. But Grandpa Cadmus was a doctor and favored the accuracy of an ear thermometer.

Rai didn’t have an ear thermometer, and his hands definitely weren’t allowed anywhere near that face, anytime soon. So instead, he wondered at the condition of Triad’s head in his final moments. How much could he see in the dark, how much had registered? Maybe - perhaps - by chance - hopefully, Sao would say - the painkillers muffled the sensations of whatever had finally taken him out.

Sao opened his eyes and shifted back from the window to watch the snow whirling around.

“How does your head feel?” Rai asked.

“Cold.” Sao smiled. “But fine.”