The Fire Witness

84

Joona feels deep down that Vicky Bennet and the little boy are still alive. He can’t give up on them now.

A girl who once slashed two people in the face with a broken bottle has taken a tiny boy from his mother and is hiding somewhere with him. The police have concluded that they are dead. No one is looking for them.

Joona thinks about where he is in the investigation now he’s seen Vicky and the boy on the security camera video. He knows that Vicky has taken Eutrexa, and he’s checked on the side effects of this medicine with The Needle’s wife, who works as a psychiatrist.

There’s too much that’s still not known, Joona thinks. It is possible that Vicky was suffering from an overdose of Eutrexa. Caroline had told him that the medicine starts to work when a person still has the pill in his or her mouth, inducing restlessness and anger.

Joona closes his eyes and tries to imagine Vicky demanding the keys from Elisabet. She threatens Elisabet with a hammer. Elisabet flees across the yard to the old brewery. Vicky follows and flies into a rage and hits Elisabet again and again. Then she takes the keys from the dead woman, crosses the yard still carrying the hammer, picks up a rock, and opens the door to the isolation room. Miranda is sitting on a chair with a blanket around her. Vicky smashes her head repeatedly with the rock. She carries Miranda’s body to her bed and puts her hands over her face. Then her rage dies down.

Vicky must have become confused, Joona thinks. She took the bloody blanket with her and hid it beneath her bed as the drug’s calming effect began to work. She probably felt unbelievably tired. All she did after that was kick off the boots into the closet, put the hammer under her pillow, and fall sleep. She woke up a few hours later, realized what she’d done, and became frightened. She fled through the window and headed straight into the forest.

The side effects of the medicine could explain her rage as well as the bloody sheets.

But what did she do with the rock? Had there really been a rock?

Joona feels the tug of doubt-for the second time in his life, he wonders if The Needle could be wrong.