The Fire Witness

19

Joona crosses the yard again, meeting Daniel going in the opposite direction, lugging the vacuum. He nods at the technicians and heads up the steps back into the main house. It’s dark now. The floodlights have been switched off. The protective mats glisten like wet stones.

One girl is missing, Joona thinks. Nobody’s seen her. Maybe she ran away in all the chaos. But maybe the other girls are letting her hide.

Joona shudders at the thought that the missing girl might have seen something. Perhaps she sought refuge in her room and is too frightened to come out.

He walks down the hall toward the girls’ bedrooms. The crime scene investigation has just begun so the rooms have not yet been searched. The entire area will be gone over with a fine-tooth comb, but there hasn’t yet been time for that with all the commotion. The girls are frightened and stressed. The Emergency Services for Victims of Violent Crime has still not arrived. The police need more officers, more technicians, more resources.

The timber walls creak, but otherwise the house is silent. In the alcove, the door that’s missing its handle is slightly open. Inside, the dead girl is still lying on the bed, her hands over her eyes.

Joona remembers noting earlier three horizontal lines of blood on the corner of the alcove, the bloody marks of three fingers but no fingerprints. The first time he saw them, he had been concentrating on signs that led away from the crime scene. He hadn’t realized that the streaks lead in the other direction, not toward the front door but farther down the hall. The person with blood on his or her hands was headed for one of the other bedrooms.

No more dead, Joona whispers to himself.

He pulls on latex gloves as he walks toward the last room in the hall. He hears a rustling sound as he opens the door. He stops and tries to see what’s inside the dim room. The sound stops. Joona carefully feels for the light switch.

He hears rustling again as well as the clank of metal.

“Vicky?” he calls gently.

He flips the switch and light fills the small cell-like room with a yellow glow. There’s another bang, and a moment later the window swings open toward the trees and Lake Himmelsjö. The rustling noises are coming from the corner. Joona sees a birdcage on its side on the floor. Inside, a yellow canary flaps its wings and climbs around.

There’s a strong smell of blood in the room: iron and sweetness mixed together.

Joona fetches some protective mats for the floor before he enters.

There are flecks of blood next to the window fasteners. Bloody handprints mark how someone climbed on the windowsill, held onto the frame for a moment, and then jumped out, landing on the lawn below.

Joona walks over to the bed. He feels ice-cold as he pulls away the blanket. The sheets are smeared with dried blood, but the person who was sleeping here was not the one who bled. Whoever was in the bed was covered with someone else’s blood.

Joona stands still and reads the traces of movement left by the bloodstains.

She was actually sleeping here, he thinks.

He tries to lift the pillow, but it feels stuck. Joona pulls it loose. Beneath the pillow is a hammer covered in blood. He can also see strands of brown hair. Most of the blood has been absorbed by the pillow and sheets, but the head of the hammer still gleams, shining wet.