Chapter 21: The Murderer's Logic, Reconstructed

The forty-ninth floor common room had a view that Thor, in his first week at the tower, had described as adequate. By Asgardian standards, I gathered, it was. By mine — the forty-third floor faced a water tower and the back wall of a parking structure — it was extraordinary: the full spread of the city in mid-morning light, the river catching the sun in long, broken strips, the bridges sitting patient and gray above it all. Thor had arranged two cups on the low table between the sofas without being asked, which he always did when he expected company, and which I had learned to take as a form of affection from a man for whom hospitality was essentially theological.

I had asked him, through FRIDAY, whether he had a few minutes. He had replied, also through FRIDAY, that he had as many minutes as the investigation required, and that he had acquired a second cask of the mead he'd offered last time, in case it proved useful. I'd told him coffee was fine.

He had prepared mead anyway.