The Fire Witness

119

The sky is dark, but neon signs and streetlights illuminate the maze of the industrial area. Almost all work has ended for the day, but on a cross street deep in the maze, a crane is lifting a blue container. The machine is making a grating, scraping noise.

Joona drives past a dirty building with a bent sign advertising steaks and is coming up to some green sheet-metal buildings next to a turnaround. The steel gates are closed.

They drive past a yellow-brick building with a loading dock and rusty containers and turn at the meat center.

They haven’t seen a single person.

They pass a less well-lit street. Garbage cans, old trucks, and large blower ducts fill the space. By the parking lot under a billboard that reads HAVE OUR HOT DOGS! there’s a van with a pornographic picture painted on the side. There’s loud grinding as they drive over a well grid. Joona turns to the left around a crooked railing. A few seagulls fly up from a stack of wooden pallets.

“There! There’s his car!” Vicky yells. “It is definitely his! I recognize the building. I bet they’re inside!”

A black van with a Confederate flag pasted in its back window is parked in front of a large building as brown as liver. On the other side of the road, four cars are parked in a row along the sidewalk.

Joona drives past the building, turns left, and parks in front of a brick building. Three vertical flag signs are flapping in the wind.

Joona says nothing, but he takes his key and unlocks Vicky’s right hand. He fastens the free handcuff to the steering wheel before he leaves the vehicle. Her dark eyes land on him, but she does not protest.

She watches him run back, his figure illuminated by a streetlight. Sand and dust whirl around him. He turns right and disappears.

Between the closed buildings, there’s a small alley with loading docks, iron staircases, and containers for slaughterhouse waste. Joona approaches the door Vicky pointed out. He looks back for a moment and takes in the deserted location. Far away, there’s a forklift moving around inside a huge building with an open front wall, like an airplane hangar.

He walks up a metal staircase, opens the door, and enters a hall with cracked vinyl flooring. He walks silently past three offices with thin walls. One has a plastic lemon tree inserted into a white pot filled with LECA balls. There are traces of Christmas glitter on its branches. Behind it on the wall there’s a framed slaughterhouse license from 1943, issued by the Crisis Committee of Stockholm.

There’s a steel door at the end of the hallway and on it is a laminated poster showing the rules and regulations of slaughterhouse hygiene. Someone has scribbled “Rules for Care of Cocks” over the top. Joona pushes the door open a few centimeters to listen. He hears voices in the distance.

He pushes the door farther open so he can look in. He sees a large machine hall for slaughter lines and automated hog splitting. The yellow tiled floor has a slight shine. The stainless-steel counters glisten. A bloodied plastic apron hangs over the edge of a garbage can.

Joona pulls out his gun and his heart leaps when he smells the gun grease.