JESSICA AND YUSUF climb out of the car in front of the Koponens’ house. The cordon has contracted, and there’s only one patrol directing residents entering or leaving the area. The apocalyptic chaos of the previous night is nothing but a faded memory.
Jessica inhales the cool air and microscopic water droplets permeating it and looks around: slushy tire tracks running along an unplowed street, tall pines bravely bearing the growing burden of wet snow. She raises her gaze toward the wooden house on the hill, the upper-story window from where they looked down at the words stamped onto the roof: Malleus Maleficarum.
They slip on shoe protectors, even though the house was inspected from floor to ceiling during the night. As they step into the house, Jessica suddenly remembers the music that was playing when the patrol showed up: John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The song has found its way into her dreams. Jessica sees the large mirror in the entryway and has a compulsive urge to pass it without looking at it. As if doing so would reveal something not hoped for. Even so, she registers her reflection out of the corner of her eye. The figure looks like her, but everything is backward: emotions, motives, intentions. What flashes past in the mirror is a shell, an expertly fashioned wax doll. It’s you. Jessica feels a stabbing pain in her neck. She presses her fingertips into it and forces herself to concentrate.
It’s cold inside the house. And it’s no wonder: the front door was open all night and into the wee hours of the morning. But somehow the raw air suits the ambience; the impression the house gives of being a huge icebox is reinforced by its color scale and cold decor.
Hands in her pockets, Jessica steps across the hallway into the living room and looks at the now-unoccupied dining table. But the sight of the glamorously dressed, eerily smiling woman has been so deeply ingrained into her consciousness that the body could just as easily still be there.
“Did you hear me?” Yusuf says. Jessica closes her mouth and gulps. Her eyes froze for just a little too long, just long enough that Yusuf felt the need to wake her up. “How did he access the roof?”
“Maintenance ladder. Side of the house,” Jessica says. She then turns toward her younger colleague.
Yusuf has pulled a stack of photographs out of his coat pocket, one of which was taken from the old woman’s window. Spotlights and streetlamps illuminate the words written on the roof. “Not a single superfluous shoe print. The words were formed by stomping into the snow. By placing one foot in front of the other,” Yusuf says. “The text is evenly spaced across the full width of the roof. All the letters are the same height.”
“Neatly done, I have to admit. Did you have a point in there somewhere?”
“If I got drunk and decided to write ‘shit’ or ‘dick’ in a field or the roof of my sauna,” Yusuf begins, looking satisfied that he has elicited a little smile from Jessica, “then I’d be happy if it were even semilegible to some hang glider.”
“What are you getting at? That the perp wasn’t drunk off his ass? Or that as an artist you don’t have much to say?”
“No. Either that a hell of a lot of time went in to creating this work of art—which isn’t really possible, considering the chain of events—or someone practiced it beforehand. And that someone knew the exact width and length of the Koponens’ roof,” Yusuf says, handing the photograph to Jessica.
“I never though it was improvised. I’m sure everything was planned in advance.”
“What if the words were stamped into the snow earlier? When there were no time constraints—”
“No. It was done last night. Tech looked into the precipitation levels and snow strata for the past few days.” Jessica steps toward the dining table, which for some reason or other looks longer now that no one is sitting at it.
“Fine. But it doesn’t matter. Because if someone practiced making them, we’ll find the same text somewhere else.”
Jessica raises her chin and crosses her arms.
“In exactly the same size,” Yusuf continues, looking a touch relieved.
Jessica frowns and eyes Yusuf. Maybe it’s worth looking into. Not that it makes a lick of sense. But neither does anything else right now. And if they want to solve this insane crime spree, they might have to rely on more creative and crazier ideas.
“What do you suggest?” Jessica asks, and sees her colleague’s beautiful eyes burn with enthusiasm. Yusuf has always been cute, but she has strictly relegated him to the friend / little brother zone. Maybe because Yusuf was already dating his fiancée, Anna, when Jessica met him. The two of them have always seemed so innocently in love that knocking on the window of their idyll would be a true mortal sin. As long as Anna and Yusuf are together, there’s hope for all of them.
Yusuf gathers his thoughts, hands on his hips. “I think Erne should have a copter comb the area. Or maybe send up some drones. Worst case, the chopper wastes a few hours flying over fields for no reason. But the weather forecasts are predicting more snow for tomorrow. So if we want to do some looking before dark, we’d better hustle.”
Yusuf shrugs; Jessica sighs deeply. At the same time, her phone rings.
“Hi, Micke.”
“Are you ready to shit your pants?”
“Nice opening. I’m surprised you got fired from your telemarketing job.”
“Because there’s something really fucking weird going on. Nina and I reviewed the files from the CCTV cameras. And I think we found the guy we’re looking for.”
“Is it possible to identify him from the footage?”
“It sure is. And that’s what’s so damn creepy,” Mikael says, then coughs.
“Well?” Jessica says as Yusuf takes a step closer, an inquisitive look on his face.
“The guy is . . . He’s like a carbon copy of Roger Koponen.”
“What?”
“And if the DNA testing hadn’t proved he burned to a crisp in the woods outside Juva last night, we’d even swear it’s him.”