The Fire Witness

47

Joona Linna is driving along a beautiful stretch of road between lush meadows and glittering lakes, wondering why there are no witnesses. No one seems to know anything about Vicky Bennet, and no one saw a thing. There are no witnesses. He puzzles over this until he arrives at a white stone house. There’s a lemon tree in a huge pot on the veranda. He rings the doorbell, waits a moment, and then walks around to the back.

Nathan Pollock is sitting at a table beneath an apple tree. He has a cast on one leg.

“Nathan?”

The thin man twists around, shading his eyes with a hand, and smiles in surprise.

“Joona Linna, as I live and breathe!”

Nathan’s a member of the National Criminal Investigation Department, a group of six experts who help both the national and the county police with difficult homicide cases. He has long silver hair that is tied in a thin ponytail and hangs over one shoulder, and he’s dressed in black pants and a loosely knitted sweater.

“Joona, I’m really sorry about the internal investigation. I shouldn’t have tried to stop you from seeing the Brigade.”

“It was my decision to handle it the way I did,” Joona says. He sits down.

Nathan shakes his head slowly. “I had a real fight with Carlos over it. They were clearly making an example of you, and I said so.”

“Is that how you broke your leg?”

“No, this came from an angry mamma bear that rushed into our yard.” Nathan grins so that his gold tooth shows.

“Or perhaps the truth of the matter is that he fell off the ladder when he was picking apples,” a bright voice says behind them.

“Hello, Mathilda,” Joona says.

He gets up from his chair to give the freckled woman with thick reddish-brown hair a big hug.

“Hello, Detective Inspector,” Mathilda says as she sits down beside Nathan. “I hope that you have some work for my beloved husband to do for you. Otherwise he’s going to have to learn how to do sudoku.”

“Yes, I might have something,” Joona says. “The murders at Birgittagården.”

“Really?” Nathan looks up from scratching beneath his cast.

“I’ve gone to the crime scenes and I’ve examined the bodies, but they won’t let me look at the reports or the results from the tests.”

“Because of this internal investigation business?”

“It’s not my preliminary investigation,” Joona says. “But I would like to hear your thoughts.”

“You’ve made my Nathan a happy man,” says Mathilda as she leans over to pat her husband on the cheek.

“Nice that you’re thinking of little old me,” Pollock says.

“You’re the best investigator I know,” Joona says.

Nathan is particularly good at psychological profiling-extrapolating from the evidence what kind of person most likely committed the crime. So far, he’s been right every time.

Joona sits back down and begins to report everything he knows about the case. After a while, Mathilda heads indoors, but Pollock listens intently, occasionally interrupting with a question. A gray tabby cat winds itself around Nathan’s legs, and warblers sing in the apple tree while Joona describes the position of the bodies, the pattern of the blood spatter, where the blood pooled, where it dripped, where it was smeared, the tracks of bloody footprints, where there were traces of liquid and crusted blood. Nathan closes his eyes and listens as Joona tells him about the hammer beneath the pillow, the blood-soaked blanket, and the open window.

“Let’s see,” Nathan starts. “The killer was extremely violent, but there are no bites, no hacking or dismembering…”

Joona says nothing and watches Nathan’s lips move as he thinks things through. At times, he whispers something to himself or he pulls his ponytail absentmindedly. After a few minutes, he starts to talk.

“All right, I can see the bodies in my mind and I see how the blood spattered as it did. You already know this, of course, but most murders are committed in a moment of frenzy. Then the killer is panicked by all the blood and chaos. That’s when they’ll grab a sander and a garbage bag or skid around in the blood with a scrub brush and leave evidence everywhere.”

“Not here.”

“This killer did not attempt to hide a thing.”

“I agree.”

“The violence was severe and methodical. It’s not punishment that’s gone too far. In both cases, the intent was to kill and nothing more. Both victims were in small rooms. They couldn’t escape. The violence is not passionate. It’s more like an execution or a slaughter.”

“We think the murderer is a girl,” Joona says.

“A girl?”

Joona meets Nathan’s surprised look and hands him a photograph of Vicky Bennet.

Nathan laughs. “Sorry, but, really, I don’t buy it.”

Mathilda reappears with a tea service and jam cookies on a tray. She sits down at the table and Nathan pours the tea into three cups.

“So you don’t believe a girl is capable of this?” Joona asks.

“Never had a case like that,” Nathan says.

“Not all girls are nice girls,” Mathilda points out.

Nathan jabs a finger at the photograph. “Is she known to be violent?”

“No, the opposite.”

“Then you’re looking for the wrong person.”

“We’re certain she kidnapped a child yesterday.”

“But she hasn’t beaten the child to death?”

“Not as far as we know,” Joona says as he helps himself to a cookie.

Nathan leans back in his chair.

“If the girl is not known for violence, if she hasn’t been punished for being violent, if she hasn’t ever been suspected of a similar kind of violence, she’s not the one you’re looking for,” Nathan says, and looks at Joona sharply.

“What if it is her in spite of that?” Joona asks.

Nathan shakes his head and blows on his tea.

“Can’t be,” he says. “I’ve just been reading a paper by David Canter. He says what I’ve always thought, that during the commission of the crime, the suspect assigns the victim the role of an opposing player in an interior drama.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Joona says.

“According to his hypothesis, a covered face means that the killer wants to remove the victim’s face and make her into nothing more than an object. Men in this category often use exaggerated violence.”

“What if they were just playing hide-and-seek?” Joona asks.

“Where are you going with that?”

“The victim covers her eyes and counts to one hundred while the killer hides.”

Nathan lets this thought sink in.

“Then I believe the killer intends for you to do the seeking.”

“But where?”

“All I can tell you is to go back and seek the answer in the old places,” Pollock says. “The past always reveals the future.”