6
The spring evening glowed an inviting blue, so we went out for a bike ride to Central Park. Iida shouted at the dogs jogging by, and I laughed for the first time all day.
“You aren’t going to make it out to Inkoo this weekend to work on the boat, are you?” Antti said when we stopped on the side of the path to hunt for liverwort.
“No. You should go without me,” I said. I didn’t even bother recording my overtime since I would never be able to take enough time off to make up for it. Koivu had at least a week of banked time too, which he was trying to add to his summer vacation. Going to Inkoo would have been a nice break. We had been planning to clean Antti’s parents’ sailboat, whose upkeep had increasingly fallen to Antti’s sister’s family and us in recent years. I would have liked to watch the ice recede and listen to the migrating birds, but instead I would be sitting at the police station. Just thinking about working through the weekend made me tired.
I felt like I was always exhausted nowadays. Even when I slept, it was a fragmented sleep full of terrible nightmares. Although a year and a half had passed since Ström’s death, at least once a week I still had visions of his brains splattered across his painfully tidy living room amid the smell of blood and gunpowder. I still wondered whether I could have done anything to prevent his suicide. Listening to Tommi Laitinen reminisce had reminded me of Ström. Ström, whom I had mostly detested while he was alive but now missed.
That fall a year and a half ago, I had returned from maternity leave to take over as unit commander for the Espoo Police Violent Crime Unit. That time had been the most trying of my life. Ström’s suicide had been one in a whole series of things that made me want to avoid thinking too much. That first winter as unit commander I had worked harder than I had my entire life, and the second year wasn’t bringing much relief, although I was becoming more confident in my decisions. Leaving work behind during my free time had become increasingly difficult. Even when I was jogging, an activity that used to help quiet my mind, I now tended to think about open cases. I could only find relief when we were sailing or I was playing with Iida.
Iida’s rubber boots squelched in the damp forest meadow where tiny green leaves were already pushing through the brown of the previous year’s vegetation. The brightness of the purple liverwort flowers was surreal against the gray of the forest. I let Iida pick a few. The rest of the flowers we left to delight the others who took the trouble to slog off the trail.
Iida decided that a fallen tree was a horse and its branches were reins. Antti and I watched her riding practice, and sometimes I could almost see the bay pony my daughter was imagining. I sat down on a stump to watch. Antti sat on the ground in front of me and rested his head in my lap.
“The first edition seems to be a success. What would a sequel look like?”
“You feel like trying again?” I asked gently, trying to temper my anxiety over not being ready to make this decision. Would I later regret it if Iida remained an only child?
That night I read Iida a Pettson and Findus story, The Fox Hunt, and laughed for the second time that day. Usually Antti was the melancholy one in the family, the one who spent evenings staring at the wall with a glass of red wine in his hand. This spring I had joined him more often, although my glass usually had whiskey instead of wine. Now I settled for chamomile tea, because first thing Friday morning I was going to have to go back to the drawing board on the Ilveskivi case.
Even though I went to bed at eleven, I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to wake my husband, who snored softly beside me. I looked at his sharp profile, his black eyebrows, his Roman nose, his lips slightly twitching in some dream rhythm. Snuggling in as close as I could, I’d just started to relax when Tommi Laitinen popped into my mind. He probably couldn’t sleep either. That thought kept me awake until almost three.
In the morning I blessed the chamomile tea bag that I had accidentally left on the counter. Iida seemed confused as she regarded me drinking my morning coffee with a tea bag pressed against one eye. Antti looked worried when I told him that I hadn’t slept and made me promise to wake him next time.
“I feel terrible leaving you alone here. At least go to a movie with somebody if that would cheer you up,” Antti said and then mussed my hair with a kiss.
“Well, we’ll see. Maybe I can come out tomorrow night,” I said. “Maybe this morning there will be good news about the Ilveskivi case.”
My hopes were quickly dashed, because it turned out that half of the leads we were following had gone nowhere. We’d already determined that Jani Väinölä was innocent, and we didn’t have any other serious suspects. The police sketch artist had put together a picture of the motorcyclist based on the eyewitness reports, but it was exceptionally vague.
“When will the DNA analysis of that cigarette butt from the crime scene come back?” I asked Koivu.
“They promised it by Tuesday. Three different hair types showed up on Ilveskivi’s coat too, and we sent them in for DNA testing. It’ll be expensive, but there isn’t any choice.”
“You’re right. Has anything new come out of the interviews with the person who found the body or any of the other witnesses who showed up before the paramedics?”
Puupponen shook his head.
“The person who found him was able to give a detailed description of Ilveskivi’s position, though, and we have a drawing. We’ll compare that to the ME’s statement.”
The only line of investigation that showed even the slightest promise came from Puustjärvi’s discovery that six of the repeat offenders on his list had motorcycles, and all but one were Harley-Davidsons. I asked him and Lehtovuori to figure out where they had been Tuesday evening.
Puupponen hung back in the break room after the meeting, shooting the breeze about the upcoming hockey world championships, which I didn’t have the energy to be interested in. Only when the last person poured their coffee and left did he turn to me with feigned nonchalance.
“Hey, Kallio, is it true that a man’s butt is the first thing a woman looks at? And having a ‘tight butt’ is a good thing, right?”
“Who said you have a tight butt? Not that there’s anything wrong with your butt,” I said playfully. Puupponen turned almost as red as his hair, and the freckles on his narrow cheeks nearly disappeared in the flush. I realized that if one of my male bosses made a similar comment to me, I would be offended.
For a second I thought with horror that I had been tricked into committing sexual harassment. But Puupponen persisted.
“I’m not talking about my ass. But is it true that women—”
“That’s probably just as much a cliché as saying that men always look at a woman’s tits first.”
“So what do you look at first?” Puupponen asked, his face still red.
“Hmm . . . well, facial expressions probably. Why do you ask?”
“Well it’s just . . . I was thinking of this one woman. About whether she could think, ‘Wow, that guy sure has a great butt.’”
I stared at Puupponen with amused confusion. What was going on here?
“Yes, of course. Any woman might think that about a man. And yes, if you heard someone say that, she could easily have meant you.”
“We’re not talking about me!” Puupponen snapped and rushed out of the room, his face looking like a strawberry. I stared after him. Puupponen had an average build, slim, without anything particularly special about it one way or the other. His freckled face was pleasant in a boyish sort of way, and his broad grin always made it seem like he was about to make a joke. Was Puupponen worried about his success with the ladies, or was something else bothering him?
I forgot about Puuponen’s freak-out as soon as I got back to my desk and saw the Petri Ilveskivi autopsy report. Blood from the knife wounds definitely would have splattered on the assailant. It wouldn’t be obvious on black riding leathers, but someone should have at least seen something. Half an hour later my phone rang, and it was Puupponen on the line, ca
lling to beg me not to mention our “butt conversation,” as he called it. He said he would explain later.
This left me even more confused, but I promised to keep my mouth shut. Because Puupponen was one of the quickest wits in the building and enjoyed his reputation as a comedian, other people were constantly looking for ways to one-up his wisecracks. Of course I would keep quiet.
For once I had time to sit down for lunch with Taskinen. Going somewhere outside the police station so we could talk in peace would have been nice, but the half hour we had wasn’t enough for that. You couldn’t talk about anything terribly personal in the cafeteria, so we settled for going over open cases and discussing his daughter Silja’s whiplash.
“Next week is that Safe City 2000 seminar,” Taskinen said by way of reminder. “It would be good if the Ilveskivi case was solved before then.”
“Yes, that certainly would be a great way to put on a good face for the mayor’s office. I just had to go and promise to be a speaker! I was planning to focus more on things no one likes to talk about, like domestic violence, even though I know the audience is just going to want to hear about how upstanding citizens can survive among drug dealers and Satanists.”
Taskinen snorted. He said that because of Silja’s accident, he felt like talking about declining standards in traffic safety, but it was no surprise that the organizers wanted him to talk about preventing drug crime and improving security for businesses instead.
“You could discuss how the city is segregated when it comes to security issues. The rich folks on the shoreline have the money to buy security systems for their mansions and Mercedes, but there are other neighborhoods where an old lady doesn’t feel safe going to the ATM to withdraw her tiny pension because she’s afraid of drug dealers.”
“And of course you think protecting that old lady’s pension is more important than protecting yachts in Westend,” Taskinen said, his smile growing even warmer. “It’s nice that you still have a bit of punk spirit left in you. Recently you’ve been sounding awfully cynical. I’ve been worried about you.”
Meeting Taskinen’s gaze was difficult, because I was also worried about how so little could bring me joy these days. As if to reassure both him and myself, I continued to joke about the city government. Taskinen’s wife, Terttu, was a day-care administrator, and he couldn’t help letting slip the occasional bitter comment about attempts to privatize municipal day-care centers and to guilt trip unemployed parents who kept their kids in day care in case a job came up on short notice.
Taskinen rarely joined in my criticism of the powers that be or my schemes to save the world, but today we both let loose and laughed loudly enough for Laine from Organized Crime to peer around one of the potted plants, his eyebrows raised.
“What is it that my esteemed colleagues find so amusing? Is it the terrorist attack on the Ring II construction site? Was that your husband’s doing?” he asked, his tone meant to convey that he was only half joking.
Some environmentalists had spray-painted “tree killers” on one of the front-end loaders. The scene of the crime was less than half a mile from our house. Of course Antti didn’t have anything to do with it, but Laine still held a grudge, ever since seeing Antti at an anticar demonstration. He was certain my husband was an eco-terrorist, and whenever he got the chance he ribbed me about it. Even though he always couched it as a joke, real indignation smoldered underneath. For the time being, I had managed to rise above.
Laine came over and sat down at our table without asking. Taskinen immediately adopted a serious expression and started talking more decorously. I ate the rest of my veggie lasagna and left to work on my files.
Puustjärvi knocked on my office door at one o’clock, and from his expression I knew that something had changed.
“Hey, Kallio, something strange just happened,” he said excitedly. “I called this one guy from my list, Marko Seppälä. A kid answered, about seven years old or so, and said that his dad hasn’t been around for a few days. Apparently he came home all bloody on Tuesday and then left again, and his motorcycle is gone too. When I asked how he knew that it was Tuesday, the kid said because Tuesday is when Tiny Two is on, and also Country Mouse and City Mouse Adventures, which his stupid sister likes to watch.”
“That’s right. Iida watches that too. What did the kid’s mother say?”
“She wasn’t home.”
“OK, tell me about Seppälä.”
Puustjärvi handed me a rap sheet. Marko Tapani Seppälä was born in 1971 and was first convicted for a series of car break-ins at seventeen. At eighteen he had already graduated to armed robbery, which led to a couple of years in the Kerava Youth Detention Facility. During the early nineties, Seppälä did regular short stints inside for various assaults and property crimes. As an adult, he had given up cars so that he could focus on fencing stolen goods. He didn’t have any drug convictions, but I noted that he’d been in the same prison at the same time as Jani Väinölä and the drug kingpin Niko Salo, and that one of the other fences he worked with had been a mule for Salo.
“This guy’s spent more time in jail than at home. At what point did he manage to get married and have three kids?” I asked, trying to hide my disgust and doing a poor job of it. Seppälä did fit our profile. But could he also be Jani Väinölä’s friend? And what if Väinölä sent Seppälä to attack Petri Ilveskivi?
“Seppälä has a Kawasaki GPz750, and one of the witnesses swore that the chain on the bike he saw clicked like his own old Kawasaki does. And he seemed like the most reliable of the witnesses. Anyway, the kid who answered Seppälä’s phone said his mom would be home at three. Should we go have a chat with her?”
“Yes, but first we need to question Väinölä,” I said as I dialed the number for Holding.
“This is Kallio from the VCU. Do you still have Väinölä?”
“I don’t know. He might be gone already. Kettunen came and signed him out two minutes ago.
“Goddamn it!” I shouted and sprang out of my chair. “Puustjärvi, come on! We need to catch Väinölä!”
Puustjärvi was slower, and I was already on the stairs before he’d left my office. The holding cells were in the basement, and Violent Crime was on the fourth floor. Charging down to the lobby, I almost ran right into the department mascot, a giant stuffed octopus. I missed it by inches.
Jani Väinölä was nowhere to be seen. I ran to the front desk.
“Have you seen a guy in a bomber jacket with a swastika tattoo on his head?”
“He just left. Maybe a minute ago. Lit his cigarette before he was out just to give us the finger,” said the duty officer, who I knew had quit smoking recently.
Rushing outside, I looked past the parking lot and saw Väinölä out there, a few hundred yards away. I could feel the ground through the thin soles of my flats as I ran out to catch up with him.
“So you think I’m so sexy that you just have to run after me?” Väinölä said, sneering unpleasantly as I stopped, panting, in front of him. I could see that Puustjärvi was coming, but he didn’t bother running. The sunshine was suddenly as hot as though it were July, and I wasn’t cold, even though I was only wearing a thin shirt.
“No. I came to ask you to return to the station.”
“Why? They just let me go. There are witnesses who confirmed that I wasn’t anywhere near that fag when he got stuck.”
“We still have some questions for you.”
Väinölä looked down at me. In the shoes I was wearing, I was barely five foot three, and although Väinölä was only four inches taller than me, he was still milking the height difference for all it was worth. He lit another cigarette and blew the smoke in my face. Väinölä played the tough guy role so perfectly that it almost amused me.
“Are you going to arrest me again, baby?”
“I will if necessary. I want to have a little chat with you about your circle of friends.”
Puustjärvi finally reached us. A bead of sweat ran down his nose, and
he pulled a blue checked handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped it away.
“Do the narcs think I’m going to rat out one of my buddies? Yeah, right.”
“I’m not interested in that. Tell me about Marko Seppälä.”
I couldn’t interpret the expression that flashed across Väinölä’s face. Was it only relief?
“Who? I don’t know anyone by that name.” Väinölä started walking again, taking quick, short steps, his thick thighs rubbing against each other. Keeping up with him was not a problem.
“Oh, so you don’t remember. Let me remind you then: you spent six months with him in Sörnäinen Prison.”
“That’s a big place. I didn’t know everyone.”
“Even though you were in the same cell block?” I said. I was just taking a guess, since I had no idea where either of them had been housed.
“Is he sort of a thin guy with a face like a rat and a stupid long mullet? Sells stolen bikes and other chickenshit stuff like that? Yeah, I know about him, but I don’t know him. I don’t hang around with clowns like that,” Väinölä said.
I considered what he’d said for a moment. Whether Väinölä was telling the truth or not was irrelevant, because the most important thing at this stage was to catch Marko Seppälä.
“If any fond memories of Seppälä come back to you, give me a call. You can reach me at the police station,” I said, as if I were flirting, and then turned back the way I had come. Puustjärvi took ten seconds before he realized that he should follow me.
“What was that?” he asked indignantly after he’d caught up to me at the front door of the station.
“A test. I wanted to see how Väinölä would react. We have a travel ban on him, so if he goes anywhere we can bring him back in. Will you go with Lehtovuori to question Seppälä’s wife?”
“Yeah, I can go, but Lehtovuori went to the dentist and won’t be back this afternoon. He’s getting a wisdom tooth taken out, and he’s been wound up about it all day. He can look at other people’s blood no problem, but he can’t stand his own.”
Before I Go Page 7
