Intense Cold

大寒 [9] / [13]

He felt sick again. That night was critical to him as his body battled the toxins in his system. He couldn’t even believe that he had escaped from that scene. How could she do that to a grown man? She wasn’t especially strong nor had she the technique to kill someone much stronger than herself. Is she a maniac?

That can’t be possible. He could remember the conversation with her before the night went blank. The way she talked was quite ordinary. Did she target me for murder? He stopped to think while wrapping his head with his hands. A nasty headache overwhelmed him. He heard the door open. It was Cynthia.

“How do you feel?”

she asked.

“Not very great,”

he grumbled.

“John was here while you were sleeping,”

she said.

“Did you come back after talking to him?”

“I brought him outside of the room, we didn’t want you to be disturbed,”

she explained.

“John went to the girl's apartment with the team, but she was nowhere to be seen, so they did a preliminary search of the premises. They found stores of potassium cyanide, stolen either from a lab or a medical facility. The forensics guys are going through the place now, so we're playing the waiting game. They're working on trying to identify the male body we found in the bedroom, but they’ve run into problems there."

"What sort of problems?" Alexander asked,

“Did they try running his prints through the missing person's database, or searching the archives for a facial recognition match?"

"Yes, but it seems before she fled, she cut off his hands and feet, pulled out most of his teeth, probably with pliers, and used acid to mutilate his face. He's unrecognizable. And to make matters worse, the ID she used when she rented the apartment: it's fake. They don't even know her real name. I'm afraid that, for now, they're at a bit of a dead end."

Alexander gulped, uncomfortably,

“What about her fingerprints? There must be all over the house."

"They collected fingerprints from every room in the house, but there's no match in our database."

"What about that shop? I first met her in a jewelry shop. If an employer hires somebody, he or she does a background check, right? If she is the owner of the shop, she needed to register with local authorities . . . ”