Snow Woman Read Online Free Page A

had me in its grip. My head kept nodding and the sofa on the other side of the room seemed to mock me.
    Maybe it was because of Christmas. It was December 27, the day after Boxing Day. Antti and I had spent the holidays mostly lounging around reading in our new home in Henttaa, a neighborhood near Espoo Central Park. Working between Christmas and New Year’s had seemed like a good idea. It gave us a good excuse not to travel to Antti’s parents’ place in Inkoo or to my parents’ in Northern Karelia. But now I wished I’d taken a few more days off so I could keep sitting in front of the fireplace, Einstein curled in my lap, reading Agatha Christie’s A Holiday for Murder and eating chocolate.
    No, no chocolate. Yuck. Suddenly the thought of anything sweet made my stomach turn. I must have eaten too much over Christmas.
    With a sigh, I opened a new document on my computer and started typing a report about the interview I’d just completed. Plenty of people in Espoo hadn’t enjoyed nearly as peaceful a Christmas as Antti and I had. As usual, the holidays had increased the incidence of domestic violence. Returning from my vacation, I found several assaults and one fatal stabbing waiting for me at the station. No wonder so many of my colleagues took a cynical view of family life and marriage. Half the cops in our unit were divorced; Palo was on marriage number three.
    What the hell was making me so tired? I hadn’t been doing anything special. Due to the cold snap, our daily cross-country ski outings had been short and relaxed.
    Antti and I were living in a run-down little house that had been owned by Antti’s coworker’s late brother. The family was having a hard time selling the house because it was located right along the future route of the Ring II beltway. The windows offered a view of fallow fields where rabbits jumped and moles rooted, but when the road was done, the landscape would be just asphalt and noise. Strangely, the impermanence of our abode didn’t bother me. Maybe I needed the possibility of change now that I had a permanent job and a husband. Before this I’d had a hard time staying happy in a job, so temporary gigs and substitute postings had fit me just fine. Even dating Antti for two and a half years had been quite an accomplishment for me. I wondered whether I’d only found the courage to get married because divorce was so easy nowadays.
    Antti, on the other hand, had become attached to the bucolic scene outside our windows and mourned its impending loss. He’d even joined the No to Ring II opposition group, but the fight seemed hopeless; although no one else seemed to see any need for a new road, whatever the Public Roads Administration and Espoo bureaucrats got into their heads seemed inevitable. Antti was already despondent over the West Highway expansion destroying so many of the places he remembered from his childhood in Tapiola. He blamed the change in that landscape for his parents’ decision to finally sell their home and move permanently to their summer cabin in Inkoo.
    In fact, Antti had become so anti-road and environmentally conscious that I half-seriously thought he’d run for local council on the Green ticket in the next elections.
    “Actually, you should infiltrate the Social Democrats or National Coalition. They’re the most enthusiastic road builders,” I’d jokingly suggested.
    Antti clearly needed something new to do other than work. I, on the other hand, was content jogging, hitting the gym, and visiting the department firing range. I’d been forced to use my weapon for the first time in my career the summer before and had found that my marksmanship needed a lot of work. Since then I’d been visiting the range regularly. My technique was getting better, but I truly hoped I’d never have to use that skill in the field again.
    My phone rang. On the other end of the line was Dispatch, who notified me of an incoming call from Aira Rosberg. It took me a moment to