Wolves and Angels

by Jokinen, Seppo

  Life had mistreated Riitta Makkonen quite enough already.

  Koskinen walked down the hallway, absorbed deep in his gloomy thoughts. A distressed scream, and someone ran from one room to another behind him. Misery and sobbing were part of a hospital’s daily rhythm, as was struggle against death in the ICU. Suddenly Koskinen felt like going running. Had he been in his cycling gear, he would have done it too. The Kauppi Park trails started right next to the hospital.

  “Hey, Sakari, are you leaving?”

  Koskinen snapped out of his reverie and looked behind him. Pauliina was pushing an IV stand that rolled on wheels. It looked like a metal rack with various bags and tubes hanging from it instead of hats. She left the stand in the hall and walked over to Koskinen.

  “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing,” Koskinen shook his head. “Nothing significant.”

  Pauliina was a tall, slim woman. She didn’t have to bend her neck back to look Koskinen in the eye.

  “I heard that Mika Makkonen ran away from the police.”

  “So he did.”

  “I didn’t think you investigated things like that.”

  “Generally I don’t.”

  Pauliina took another step closer, making Koskinen wonder at how seductive the smell of disinfectant soap could be. She lowered her voice. “Was he mixed up in something illegal?”

  “That’s what we’ve been investigating night and day.”

  “Night and day?” Pauliina cocked her head. “So, all you still do is work?”

  The question chafed Koskinen. He thought about the mother who had just been weeping on her son’s arm, the overworked staff at Wolf House, and all of the residents shocked by Timonen’s violent death.

  None of them would question his time management.

  “What should I be doing instead? Tupperware parties?”

  An embarrassed flush rose on Pauliina’s cheeks, and she began talking quickly as if to repair her blunder. It just made things worse. “I just meant that a person has to have other things in their life besides work, right? Sometimes people forget their priorities and...”

  Koskinen didn’t stay for another word, instead turning and hastily walking out. In the elevator he started wondering what on earth Emilia had been saying about him to her girlfriends. Nothing good at least. The thought of his personal priorities being questioned made his indignation nearly boil over.

  There was no parking ticket on the window of the Toyota. It would have gone flying through the air in shreds anyway. Koskinen swung the car around the horseshoe-shaped driveway of the hospital back toward the city. Tires squealed and puddles splashed. The drizzle had intensified into a downpour again.

  He drove with mechanical movements and stared with narrowed eyes at the metronoming wipers. The mystery of Mika Makkonen wouldn’t leave him alone. Why had he run away, and right where the police had seen the wheelchair? An electric wheelchair couldn’t be folded up, so it would be impossible to transport it with a motorcycle. And that thought seemed farfetched anyway. It was more likely that Mika was involved some other way. What if Raimo Timonen had been robbed by a gang that Mika ran with? If they only knew whether Timonen had had money in his pockets that night. At least according to the rumors he had had a habit of carrying large amounts of cash with him.

  Koskinen thought this over all the way to Peltolammi. He was familiar with the area, and he easily found the correct address. He parked in front of a little pizza place and walked over to look at the two large shipping containers. They had been left at the edge of the parking lot next to a stand of tall pine trees with reddish trunks. The containers were the same kind you saw being loaded onto ships in harbors. The two green metal containers had H-A LINE painted on their sides in white letters. Each would have had room for the contents of a medium-sized house.

  Koskinen tried to remember the pictures he had received from Forensics on Tuesday morning. The body had been lying between the containers. The space was a little more than three feet wide and probably pitch black at night. It was a good place to dump a body. The neighboring building housed a plumbing supply store and maintenance shop.

  The body had been probably dropped off at around eleven o’clock. The plumbing supply shop had certainly been closed at that hour, as had the pizzeria at the far end of the strip mall. The entrance to the Peltolammi Saloon was on the other side, so no fear of eyewitnesses from that direction either.

  Säästäjän Street 5 was a three-story, dirty gray building. As Koskinen walked to the entrance, he wondered whether it actually would have been smarter to have Pirkko-Liisa Rinne brought to the station for questioning. She could be anywhere, and Koskinen might be wasting his time driving around town for nothing.

  But his fears were unwarranted. Koskinen had barely lifted his finger from the doorbell when he heard movement in the apartment. A few seconds later, the door opened and a cheerful female face poked out. She had probably been expecting a close friend. The smile vanished from her face like the wind had blown it away.

  “Who are you?”

  “Lieutenant Koskinen, Violent Crimes Unit.”

  Koskinen didn’t miss the shock on her face. She took a step back and tried to close the door. Koskinen nevertheless held it open.

  “Are you Pirkko-Liisa Rinne?”

  “Yes, I guess.” She looked at Koskinen, eyes wide, and then giggled nervously. “I mean, yes, of course I am. But you can call me Pike.”

  Koskinen nodded a feeble thanks. He got the feeling that Pike was trying to cover her sudden nervousness by being so friendly.

  “Until this summer you were working at an assisted living center called Wolf House.”

  “I was.”

  “And you knew the residents of the facility?”

  “Of course.”

  “Including Raimo Timonen?”

  “Yes.”

  After the third terse reply, Koskinen looked at her appraisingly. He had pulled up her personal information earlier. Pirkko-Liisa Rinne was twenty-eight years old and single. No criminal record, just a couple of citations for public intoxication a decade ago.

  Koskinen decided to get straight to the point. “Have you heard what happened to Timonen?”

  “Yes.”

  “From where?”

  “From where?” She repeated the question and then thought for a suspiciously long time. “Someone from Wolf House told me.”

  “Who?”

  “Tapani Harjus.”

  Pike’s jet-black hair was cut short. Both earlobes sported a line of shining gold studs, and there was also one on her left nostril. The shortness of her hair emphasized the angularity of her face, and her mouth looked especially wide. Her full lower lip protruded in a pout.

  “I didn’t kill him…”

  Koskinen raised his hand to calm her, but she still continued angrily. “Fuck! Of course the police would suspect me, since Raymond’s body was found so close to here.”

  “No one suspects you,” Koskinen said calmly. “These things are never that straightforward.”

  “So why did you come here?”

  “I just want some information about Timonen and the other residents at Wolf House.”

  Rinne was dressed in a black satin robe. Now she pulled it tighter around herself.

  “Weren’t those bitches able to tell you?” she snapped.

  “Who?”

  “Lea and Anniina.”

  “Of course… They told us a lot, in fact,” Koskinen replied patiently. “But in cases like this we try to hear from as many involved parties as possible.”

  “Involved parties,” she repeated in a mocking tone. “How the fuck am I an involved party when they shit-canned me months ago?”

  “But you knew Timonen, Harjus, and Ketterä?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I did! I already said that!”

  “I was told that you got along with them extremely well.”

  “That isn’t anyone’s fucking business. It isn’t like that’s a crim
e or anything.”

  Koskinen’s patience was finite. He knew that better than anyone, and so he said, with as much composure as possible: “It would be best for us to continue this conversation at the police station. Put something on and let’s go.”

  It was a genuine laugh—her attitude was swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other. “I can answer your questions just as well here. I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “Okay,” Koskinen nodded. “Let’s do that.”

  She gave him an uncertain look and pulled the front of her dressing gown even tighter.

  “I don’t have to let you in, do I?”

  “No.” Koskinen shook his head, bored. “Put something on, and let’s go outside to chat. Bring an umbrella. It’s raining.”

  Pike closed the door, and Koskinen was left alone in the stairwell to think about what might be in the apartment that she didn’t want him to see. On the other hand, he thought, sneering at his own perpetual suspicion; it was no wonder that a young woman didn’t let a perfect stranger into her home? He didn’t invite in every salesman and pollster who came around either.

  Less than two minutes passed before Pike came out. She wore an ankle-length wool coat, soot black. She gestured to Koskinen at the front door of the building to follow and ran ahead to a log-framed shelter in the yard. It was some sort of combined space for children to play and adults to relax—a good place for them to talk. The rain had chased everyone else inside, and no one would be able to hear their conversation, even from the nearest windows.

  “Let’s get straight to the point,” Koskinen began. “Who hated Timonen enough to want him dead?”

  Pike didn’t answer immediately. She dug a pouch of tobacco out of her pocket and rolled a cigarette with deft fingers. Surprisingly, she offered the pouch to Koskinen as well, but he shook his head.

  “Everyone hated Raymond,” she said and lit her cigarette. “Everyone but me.”

  She inhaled twice, lustily.

  “Everyone at Wolf House hated him, for all kinds of reasons. The staff mostly because he was so aggressive and fought all the time. They’re so fucking stupid…they don’t have any idea what it feels like to be crippled. They probably think Raymond should have just smiled gratefully and kept his bitterness bottled up inside. And those goddamn cows think they’re experts in caring for the disabled.”

  This caustic outburst stunned Koskinen. However, he didn’t want to interrupt it; he just let her get it all out.

  “They can’t imagine in their pea-sized brains what it’d be like not to be able to move your hands or feet properly, especially for a man like Raymond. When he was young he loved to do anything active, anything where he moved…especially soccer and motorcycles. That’d make anyone bitter. But those old hags couldn’t get it.”

  “Did all of the nurses have the same attitude toward their patients?”

  “Not all of them,” Pike said, blowing smoke out of her nose. “There was this one two-hundred-pound Marilyn straight from the cover of the Milkmaid Times.”

  Koskinen remembered the woman. “Anniina Salonen?”

  “Yeah, her. I got along fine with Anniina. Raymond and his pals liked her too. Anniina always forgave them for their pranks and didn’t make a fuss even if they did pinch her a little every now and then. She had so many soft places. Kalenius on the other hand was a tight-ass who got bitchy about even the smallest things. Once she went on sick leave for three months because she had a nervous breakdown.”

  Koskinen remembered the temp named Kaarina saying something the night before about Lea Kalenius’ sick leave. But still he wanted more specifics.

  “Did Raymond cause the breakdown?”

  “Yeah,” she answered and flipped the cigarette butt into the rain. “Lea told me about it herself. She threatened to the doctor that she was gonna kill Raymond one day, if she didn’t get away for a while.”

  That gave Koskinen pause. He remembered the friendly, slender nurse at Wolf House and wondered if her job could really wind her spring that tight.

  “I think I can understand their attitude, at least to some extent,” he said in a leisurely manner. “But why did the other residents hate him?”

  “Raymond was an asshole to everyone. Sometimes he made noise all night and especially almost drove the older female residents nuts.”

  “And Harjus and Ketterä?”

  She started to roll a new cigarette, and Koskinen thought he noticed a small smile creep onto her rust-brown lacquered lips.

  “They hated Raymond too, but for completely different reasons.”

  “Like what?”

  “Jealously.”

  “Of what?”

  Pike dangled her cigarette paper on her lip and shook her head. Koskinen waited patiently until an appropriately-sized mound of tobacco had taken shape in her fingers and she could continue.

  “They were jealous about me.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. I just said a minute ago that I was the only one who didn’t hate Raymond. I understood him better than the others. Much better in a lot of ways.”

  Pike thought while she sucked smoke from her new cigarette, and blew it back out in rings.

  “Not very many people think things through enough…and they don’t realize that a man’s feelings and desires don’t disappear even though some parts of his body have stopped working. He still lusts for a woman just as much. And that’s the worst thing. You dudes with healthy pricks can’t even imagine it.”

  Koskinen found himself shocked by the frankness of her statement.

  “It can’t be that...”

  “Sex is just as important for a disabled man as for a healthy one, if not more so. A lot of them have tools that work better than porn stars’, but others can’t get it up at all. But even for them a woman’s touch and bare skin can ease their torment at least a little. The social worker types just can’t believe it or don’t want to believe it since they can’t get any either. They don’t even want to hear anything about the city hiring people specifically to handle the sexual tension of the disabled. Everything you spent on it you could take right off the mental health department’s budget.”

  Koskinen considered the idea. The rain drummed on the roof of the shelter with is rhythmic pattering, and the bitter smell of the cigarette mixed with the scent of wet grass.

  “Do you mean that social services should pay for sex workers for disabled people?” he asked. “That would be tantamount to prostitution. Finnish law doesn’t exactly allow that.”

  Pike shook the ash from her cigarette with a contemptuous gesture. “Say what you like.”

  “I heard that Raymond was loaded,” Koskinen said, switching to another subject. “Did he pay you for anything?” he asked rashly.

  Pike exploded. “Fuck you! You’re just as big a fucking shithead as all the rest. I’m not a whore! Can’t you understand that I really liked Raymond!”

  Koskinen swore to himself over his blunder and quickly tried to explain. “I didn’t mean anything personal by that question. I’m sorry if I offended you. But criminal investigations are just like this…I have to ask all kinds of questions.”

  “Whatever,” she snorted, but was appeased. “Raymond didn’t pay me directly, but sometimes he’d give me some cash, like as a present, for buying clothes and stuff. But I wasn’t with him because of that. I liked him…and besides, he was the best looking guy I’ve ever seen.”

  Koskinen thought back to the photographs he’d seen of Timonen, and wondered once again what it was about men that made them handsome in women’s eyes. But instead, he asked about something else entirely.

  “And that was why Ketterä and Harjus hated Timonen? They were jealous about you?”

  “Yeah, they were,” she said, throwing another half-burned stub onto the grass. “They were constantly threatening each other…with poison and bombs and all sorts of things. At least they didn’t lack imagination. Harjus and Ketterä would scream at Raymond, ‘What right do yo
u have to keep Pike all for yourself,’ and Raymond would shout back, ‘Don’t give me that shit, at least your hands work.’”

  Koskinen shook his head. “Was that why you got fired from Wolf House?”

  “For whoring you mean?” she said, getting angry again. “Just admit that’s what you meant!”

  Koskinen didn’t bother defending himself anymore. He didn’t say anything. Pike sat on the bench with a cold, sulky expression, resting her face on her folded arms on the table. Her short-cropped hair left her neck bare. Her neck was thin and had a deeper notch than normal. Finally she calmed down enough to continue.

  “I wasn’t fired because of that. They didn’t know how close we were. They were just pissed that I spent my free time there and sometimes even spent the night. But the official reason for my termination was that I brought them booze and women.”

  “Women?”

  “Right. Nothing wrong with your hearing at least! I know some girls from Helsinki, and once I asked them to come up to visit. We had a nice party and everybody had a good time. The gals would come and visit Tappi and Hannu every once in a while.”

  “Did they help release that sexual tension you were just talking about?” Koskinen asked, even at the risk of offending her again.

  Pike didn’t take offense, although her words were dripping with disdain. “Right again. That’s exactly what they did. Tappi and Hannu saved what little money they had to pay for the girls’ taxis and tips, when in reality those were exactly the expenses that should have been paid by Social Security.”

  The patter of the rain had let up, and between two apartment buildings they could see the dark cloud mass was starting to break up over the city. It would be good running weather tonight, Koskinen thought. On the way home he should pick up a Gatorade and a couple beers for afterward.

  Pike interrupted his train of thought with a shivery voice. “I’m freezing out here. Do you have anything more you want to ask?”

  “No, not really,” Koskinen said, but then he remembered one more thing. “Where did Raymond get all the money everyone talks about?”