Wolves and Angels

by Jokinen, Seppo

  “Yes. The ones who can get around on their own can come and go as they wish.”

  “Could Timonen?”

  “Sort of. He had trouble going out at night, though.”

  “Why?”

  “He had difficulties dressing by himself.”

  Koskinen remembered the pictures taken of Timonen. In their first meeting, they had wondered why the corpse was barefoot and didn’t have a coat.

  “How did he get the front doors open?”

  “All of the doors have electric locks that open by pushing a button on the inside or with a remote control. The quadriplegics are able to use an assistive device they hold between their lips.”

  “Was Timonen a quadriplegic?”

  “Not technically.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “During the first years after his injury he was classified as one. But thanks to physical therapy he had regained some use of his arms.”

  “Back to the locks,” Koskinen said, rewinding their discussion. “How did they work the other way round? Could someone enter in the middle of the night?”

  “The front doors are locked at six every night and unlocked again at seven in the morning. At other times you have to use a keycard.”

  “Who has those?”

  “All of the residents, or at least the ones who are able to use them.”

  “Does anyone else?”

  “No,” Kalenius said, shaking her head. She straightened up in her chair. “Except of course for the staff.”

  Koskinen let his eyes wander around the room. The nurse who was assisting with eating had finished with the man sitting in the wheelchair and quickly moved to the next in line.

  “How many patie...residents are there here?”

  Kalenius smiled at Koskinen’s slip. “Twenty-four.”

  Koskinen sat thinking and looking at Kalenius. He guessed she was a few years younger than himself. Her neck was long and muscular, her cheekbones were high, and her eyes were a little spread apart from each other. Together it all made her face beautiful in a unique sort of way.

  She fluffed up her hair impatiently, and the beams of sunlight filtering in through the window made it sparkle.

  “I am in a bit of a hurry. A lot of people still haven’t eaten their breakfast, and it’s already after eight.”

  “Go ahead,” Koskinen said. “I’m sure I can find you around here if I have more questions…”

  “Certainly,” she said and stood up from the table. “At least until three thirty.”

  Koskinen dug his phone out of his backpack and called the station. He hadn’t heard such an irritated voice in ages.

  “Detective Sergeant Pekki.”

  Koskinen got right to the point. “Wolf House is the right place. One of the nurses immediately recognized our vic.”

  “Good,” Pekki grunted, but there wasn’t one iota of relief in his voice. “Who is he?”

  “Raimo Timonen, nickname Raymond. Only known relative is a sister living in Lempäälä. The rest you can find in the big book.”

  “Thanks for calling. I was just heading to Ikuri with Kaatio and Eskola.”

  “What if you go alone?”

  “Alone?”

  “There are twenty-four residents here, along with seven employees. That’s over thirty people, and we have to interview every one of them. That makes more than fifteen heads apiece for two men.”

  “Okay,” Pekki said begrudgingly. “I’ll send Eskola over to keep you company.”

  “I don’t need any company. I don’t have the slightest intention of staying here any longer than I absolutely have to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not my job. My desk is already overflowing with work and—”

  “But you got that new assistant yesterday.”

  Pekki’s wisecrack just provoked Koskinen.

  “Assistant, right! That girl’s going to create more work for me than she’s worth.”

  “Fine. I’ll send Kaatio and Eskola over,” Pekki said, resigned. But then he immediately started blustering again. “And the big men down in Helsinki think they’re going to start outsourcing police services. Mr. Hot Shot Minister of the Interior Ville Itälä should come on up here sometime so I can give him a piece of my mind! I’d tell him to take this little Ikuri job and outsource it to some amateur private eye or Cub Scout troop. Then we’d see how smart he really is. Here we are running out of cops and—”

  Koskinen interrupted Pekki’s outburst. “And send someone from Forensics over here too. We need to inspect Timonen’s room and take fingerprints from the staff.”

  He wasn’t sure whether Pekki was even listening.

  “Now I have to go out to Ikuri myself. Won’t it be fun walking from house to house the whole day like some raffle salesman asking who knows what about their neighbors’ business…of course it had to be today that Ulla had to get her hoohah looked at.”

  The stress that had been weighing on Koskinen all morning boiled over: “Don’t bitch to me about it!”

  Heads turned in the dining room and Lea Kalenius straightened her back in astonishment—she had already started helping an elderly woman with her food.

  “Who then?” Pekki yelled back. “Should I call the mental health hotline?”

  Koskinen took a deep breath and tried to get his feelings under control.

  “Borrow someone from Meisalmi’s crew…”

  “I’ll try,” Pekki groaned. “Although it might be difficult. He’s still on that case about the consultant from Turku who was raped in the Hotel Ilves elevator.”

  “Tell him it’s on my orders.”

  “Well…in that case I got nothing to worry about.”

  Pekki hung up, and Koskinen was left wondering how he should interpret that last sentence, as a sigh of relief or just more nattering.

  He stood up and walked over to Kalenius. She was just wiping the chin of the elderly woman, who was strapped into her wheelchair. The woman’s head was bent back in what looked like a painful position, and her hands hung like two shriveled wing stumps.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Koskinen said. “But I still need to ask one more thing.”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” Kalenius said with a smile, “if you can do it right here.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Koskinen replied hesitantly. He didn’t really like asking questions related to criminal investigations when outsiders could hear, but the clock was ticking.

  He lowered his voice. “Who was it who remembered that Timonen had ordered the taxi that night?”

  Kalenius had to think for a moment. The woman in the wheelchair tried to say something, but Koskinen couldn’t understand anything of her awkward, muddled speech. Kalenius obviously couldn’t either. She stroked the woman’s cheek tenderly as if in answer and then stood up. She turned and yelled to the other side of the room.

  “Anniina! Would you come over here for a moment?”

  A large woman with a bouffant hairdo started toward them. She was dressed in the same light green scrub outfit as Kalenius. Koskinen guessed her age at about thirty-five and her height at about five foot ten.

  “This is Anniina Salonen.”

  Koskinen shook the woman’s hand, and Kalenius told her the news about Raimo Timonen.

  “Oh, no!” Salonen groaned, covering her face with both hands. “Oh, poor Raymond.”

  Koskinen let the women take their time hugging and comforting each other. Both had tears running down their cheeks, and Koskinen didn’t doubt the genuineness of their sorrow for a moment.

  Finally he cleared his throat. “Yes, about that handicap taxi.”

  Salonen turned to Koskinen with a question in her eyes and he clarified: “Apparently someone knew that Timonen had ordered a taxi late Monday night.”

  “Yes, someone did say that,” Anniina said, nodding. “It was Taisto Toivakka.”

  “Did he see it first hand?”

  “Yes.” Salonen nodded. “Taisto had climbed up out
of his bed and just saw the rear lights of Laine’s van as it was leaving the parking lot.”

  “How did he know that Laine picked up Timonen and not someone else?”

  “He had just heard Timonen’s door creak.”

  “That sounds like a pretty shaky observation.”

  The old woman sitting between them tried to convey something again in her croaking voice. Kalenius rubbed her shoulders calmingly while addressing Koskinen.

  “It isn’t a shaky observation at all. Just from the sound of a door our residents can tell who’s out and about. People who are confined learn to differentiate sounds significantly better than us so-called healthy people. It’s hard for us to understand because we live in such a cacophony of sounds that we can’t tell a chainsaw from a moped.”

  Koskinen thought he understood.

  “Was this…Taisto Toivakka…able to say when Timonen was picked up?”

  “At ten forty-five. He has lighted hands on his wall clock.”

  Koskinen wrote down the time. Someone should go check the accuracy of Toivakka’s clock.

  “A couple of my colleagues from the Violent Crimes Unit will be here shortly. They are going to interview all of the residents, as well as the staff.”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” Kalenius said and patted the woman sitting in the wheelchair on the shoulders. “Although there are a few people here with serious speech impairments. Like our beautiful Ms. Rauha here.”

  “They can answer in writing.”

  Kalenius smiled at Koskinen sadly. “That would be even worse.”

  “Could one of you nurses assist with the more challenging ones?”

  The women nodded in unison. Koskinen put his notebook in his pocket.

  “I would still like to take a glance in Timonen’s apartment.”

  Kalenius turned to her colleague. “Could you show him?”

  Without a word Salonen set off, and Koskinen followed. She turned to the left-side hallway and walked down to the second-to-last door.

  “This is Raymond’s room.”

  Koskinen looked around. There was a tall window at the end of the hall making the hallway bright. He stepped closer and looked at the window frame. It was tightly sealed, and the window was probably difficult to open—no one had gone through there. But Forensics would be able confirm that.

  “Where does the guy with the sharp ears live? The one who saw the taxi and heard Timonen’s door creaking?”

  Salonen pointed toward the lobby. “Taisto’s door is the very first one over there.”

  Koskinen looked in the direction. The room was on the street side, and it was probably easy to see any cars coming by.

  “Let’s take a peek in Timonen’s room.”

  Salonen took a keycard from her pocket and swiped it. The bolt clicked open, and she let Koskinen enter in front of her.

  The lieutenant stopped in the doorway.

  “We’re not going any farther in,” he said over his shoulder.

  He made a quick survey of the room.

  “Has anyone been in here since Monday night?”

  “Yes, of course,” Salonen said. “We had agreed with Raymond that we’d clean his apartment every morning, whether he was here or not.”

  Koskinen felt like swearing out loud. “How thorough is the cleaning?”

  “We’re very vigilant when it comes to hygiene. The sanitary areas, the restroom and shower, get scrubbed, and the floors in the whole apartment are mopped.”

  “I guess there’s no reason to worry about footprints then,” Koskinen said and stepped in. “But don’t touch anything.”

  The room was surprisingly spacious, but that just made it all the more austere. On one wall there was a bed, on the other a table without any chairs. In front of the window stood a relatively new TV and on top of it a vase of silk flowers. In the corner nearest the door was a small kitchenette. Everything in it said it hadn’t been used in ages. There wasn’t a single dish on the stove top, in the sink, or in the open drying cabinet. The only thing that might have been used on a daily basis was a wood-handled bottle opener hanging from a hook on the wall.

  Koskinen peeked into the bathroom. It too was spacious, and clinically clean. Sturdy handrails were on both sides of the toilet, and a metal frame, evidently for sitting, had been installed under the shower.

  “We have different degrees of disability among our residents,” Salonen said. “Some are able to use the toilet or take a shower on their own, even in the middle of the night.”

  “And those who can’t?”

  “They either get a diaper or a urine bottle, and a nurse cleans them in the morning.”

  Koskinen quickly turned back into the room. At the head of the bed was a pull-up bar suspended from the ceiling by two chains to allow Timonen to get out of the bed with arm strength alone. On a low nightstand, right next to the bed, was something that looked like a telephone with no handset and a large curl-grained wood picture frame.

  Koskinen bent in to get a better look at the photograph—it definitely did not depict any of Raimo Timonen’s family or close relatives. In the picture a squat man with thick legs was running after a ball; his blue-and-white striped jersey bore a black number ten. The name Diego Maradona had been scrawled over the picture. Koskinen wondered whether the autograph was genuine.

  The pictures of motorcycles taped to the walls were also striking—three large posters and a half dozen centerfolds. The makes varied from Triumph and Norton to Harley-Davidson. One of the posters had been pasted to a cardboard backing. It sported a 350cc Royal Enfield. The chrome fuel tank and fishtail exhaust gleamed, and its seat was the wide tractor model. Koskinen remembered the bike well from the old days. Royal Enfield had once been an elite bike, even though they had carried the nickname Royal Oilfield because of how much they leaked.

  Anniina Salonen sensed Koskinen’s interest. “Raymond was a motorcycle freak. He loved them more than anything.”

  Suddenly she burst into hysterical laughter. “Sometimes he pretended his wheelchair was a motorcycle. He would buzz from one end of the hallway to the other making engine sounds with his mouth.”

  Koskinen turned to look at Salonen—her broad shoulders were shaking with laughter. She would have made a good discus thrower. Her body was well-muscled and full-bosomed, but she still didn’t look a single pound overweight. Her honey yellow hair had a 1960s-style perm.

  Salonen noticed Koskinen’s sharp gaze and her laugh cut off. She wiped the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

  A post-traumatic stress reaction, Koskinen thought. He had run into it often enough in his twenty-plus years of service.

  The talk of Timonen’s motorcycle games reminded Koskinen of the missing wheelchair. He had forgotten about the issue that had bothered him so much the previous evening, and decided to throw additional resources at it as soon as he got back to the station. At this point finding the wheelchair might be the best—if not only—way forward.

  Salonen looked at Koskinen’s fallen face.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked timidly.

  “I was just thinking about where Timonen’s wheelchair could be.”

  Salonen’s mouth dropped open in shock. She covered it with her hand.

  “You haven’t found it?” she said, almost unintelligibly.

  “No.” Koskinen shook his head. “Could you describe it?”

  “An electric Meyra. Raymond’s arms were weak; he wasn’t able to roll on his own.”

  Koskinen looked around. “How long did he live here?”

  “He was here ten years ago when I started work.”

  “Are residents just left to their own devices at night, since there’s no staff on site?”

  “No, of course not. Everyone has a medical alert phone.”

  “How does it work?”

  Salonen pointed toward the nightstand. “That thingie over there opens a two-way connection to a security company. If no one responds from this
end, they send someone to see what’s wrong.”

  Koskinen looked at the telephone device next to Maradona’s picture. It didn’t have a handset or any buttons. The mic and speaker were built in, and two small indicator lights were blinking on the front.

  “What if someone falls in the bathroom, for example, and can’t drag themselves to the phone?”

  “They wear bracelets that open the connection. The speaker phone works from pretty far out.”

  Koskinen remembered the photographs taken at the crime scene—Timonen wasn’t wearing any sort of bracelet, and none of the reports had mentioned one either. He opened the nightstand drawer. There it was, a chunk of plastic with a button connected to a wide strap. Koskinen dug a pen out of his breast pocket, used it to turn over the bracelet, and noticed that the strap was torn. The sequence of events was easy to imagine: the killer had ripped the alarm from Timonen’s wrist, thrust it into the nightstand drawer, and then pressed the pillow over his face.

  Salonen looked at the device over Koskinen’s shoulder, devastated. At a loss, she fluffed her hair.

  “Do you know yet what the killer did to Raymond... How he died?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  Koskinen was just about to appeal to the fact that the investigation was still ongoing when a corpulent woman dressed in a white cook’s outfit appeared at the door.

  “Is there a Lieutenant Koskela here?”

  “Koskinen. That’s me.”

  The woman pointed behind her with a thumb. “Three men are out there in the lobby. They’re asking for you.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Koskinen said and then quickly swept his eyes around the room. He had a strong feeling that they weren’t going to find much in here. They would have to look somewhere else to find the killer’s trail.

  Salonen closed the door. No one would walk through it until Forensics arrived. The lock would be sealed, and blue-and-white plastic tape would be stretched across the door.

  They set off toward the lobby. Koskinen felt strange to walk next to a woman who was only four inches shorter than himself—it made him feel almost small. However, the sweet smell of her hairspray made even such a large person as Salonen seem feminine.

  Kaatio and Eskola were standing in the lobby waiting, with Risto P. Jalonen from Forensics behind them sitting on his metal case. He looked exhausted. No wonder, since his shift had started early the previous night.