Death Spiral

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I had to get out of here! The easiest way would be through the concessions door. Luoto wouldn’t be able to keep up on the concrete steps with bare skates.

  Bolting up the stairs into the stands, I succeeded once again in awkwardly rolling myself over the railing between the D and C sections as I sobbed. Now I just had to get down the stairs and I would be at the door. It had to open from the inside.

  I didn’t hear Luoto’s steps behind me. I don’t know what I’d thought. Either that he would put the guards back on or take his skates off entirely. But instead, he jumped on the ice, sped across it, and attacked me again just as I grabbed the glass door. It didn’t open.

  Luoto’s foot came up for a kick, and I dove to the floor. The dressing room doors were my only hope—maybe they would be open. I wriggled under the railing to the stairs for section F like an overfed snake. With his skates Luoto was slower than me, and I made it all the way up to the guest box where I’d sat with the Taskinens during the performance of Snow White before he caught up with me again.

  Dodging the furious right kick that came at me, I ran into a chair and staggered. I was sandwiched between the railing and Rami Luoto.

  The drop to the ice wasn’t huge, maybe ten feet. In a normal situation I would have tried to jump even at the danger of breaking a leg. Now the risk was too great. I could kill myself and the Creature. I lifted my hands to protect my belly and waited for the next kick. I had to get him off balance. I heard my own panting, felt how my breath steamed even as I smelled Rami Luoto’s sweat.

  But the kick didn’t come. When I lifted my eyes from Luoto’s skates, I saw his face quivering.

  “I . . . I can’t . . .” he groaned and dissolved into tears.

  At first I couldn’t believe the danger had passed. When Rami Luoto collapsed in the nearest chair and hid his face in his hands, I realized he didn’t have it in him to kill me and the Creature. Then I must have broken down too, because a few minutes passed before either of us said anything.

  “It just happened,” Luoto finally said, coughing and blowing his nose on the sleeve of his coat. “I drove to the parking lot at the elementary school and tried to talk sense into Noora. I promised her I wouldn’t touch Irina or anyone else ever again. Noora just kept cursing, calling me a pervert, and then she spat in my face. She had her bag open in her lap, and she was fidgeting with the laces of her skates. So I grabbed a skate and hit her. Noora opened the car door, and I hit her again, and she fell and hit her head on a rock . . . I can’t even remember it all.”

  Rami’s story was confused, as if by forgetting what had happened, he’d hoped to undo what he’d done. Noora lay in the rain at the edge of the parking lot, and Rami tried to wipe the blood from her face. Then he thought he should try to cover her. He opened the trunk of the car where there was usually a blanket and found a black garbage bag. He crammed Noora’s body into it, apparently thinking the girl was one hundred and ten pounds of household waste. Then he stuffed the garbage bag in the trunk of the car.

  “I don’t know why I went to that parking garage. I guess at first I thought I’d abandon the car and say it was stolen. Then I wanted to get rid of the body. When that woman came in her Mercedes, I realized she’d left her trunk open. I just carried the bag over and slipped Noora out of it into the other car. I don’t think I really thought about what I was doing.”

  With his face red from crying, Rami Luoto didn’t look like a Ken doll, but it was easy to see why Jussi Järvenperä had made the connection. Luoto’s haircut and the shape of his face were just like an aging Ken. As it turned out, that had been one of the important clues in identifying the murderer. But this hadn’t been a carefully planned, complex crime. Luoto had just had amazingly good luck. His sister had been on vacation, so he’d had plenty of time to take the car to the nearest gas station to clean it after throwing Noora’s equipment bag into the forest. The skate guards were still in the car, so Luoto had taken them to the construction site near the bus stop a couple of days later.

  “The whole time I was waiting to be caught. And I tried to tell. I wanted to . . . but I couldn’t do it. Not even when Hanna killed Teräsvuori.”

  I listened to Luoto’s story and his intermittent sobbing in a daze. I couldn’t feel anger anymore, or even disgust. Actually Luoto was irrelevant to me now. I wasn’t even thinking about Noora.

  My Creature and I had survived, even though I’d acted like an idiot and endangered both of our lives. The time for idiocy was over now, at least for a few months. I really wasn’t responsible only for my own life anymore. If something had happened to the Creature, I would’ve been no better than Rami Luoto.

  I stood up, and this time Luoto didn’t stop me. After taking my time climbing back over the railings, I found my bag and phone, which I used to call the nearest patrol car to pick up Rami. He was still sobbing. Maybe there was also a hint of relief in it. He said he wanted to make amends for Noora’s death, and he followed me around the arena asking for my forgiveness too.

  We sat in section D to wait for the police patrol. I wasn’t climbing over any more railings—I was lucky I could stay in my seat. Then a clattering came from the concessions area, and the door opened. I expected to see two uniformed officers, but instead Janne Kivi walked in. His expression turned to one of surprise when he noticed me and Luoto, who was still crying.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he yelled from the door. Easily bounding over the boards and onto the ice, he ran toward us. In the middle of the rink his steps slowed and he stopped in the center of the Gothic German s of the Sisu Salmiakki advertisement.

  “Rami?” Janne said in alarm, and his face turned desolate when he realized what was happening. “Rami? No, Rami!” His voice was shrill like that of a frightened child, and I thought for a second he would start crying too.

  But no. He started running toward us again, and before I could do anything, he had attacked Rami Luoto. Janne pulled Luoto up off the bench and hit him in the face, causing blood to spurt from his already battered nose.

  “You fucking piece of shit, I knew it was you!” Janne screamed and hit him again, this time in the jaw. Luoto flew between the benches from the force of the blow.

  “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to fucking kill you!”

  “Janne, stop!” I screamed, but because he was deaf to everything but his own rage, I had to pull him away from Luoto. It was almost amusing that I was now saving the person who fifteen minutes before had been ready to kill me and my child. I didn’t dare throw myself completely into the fray, so I just tried to get a grip on Janne’s arms as he pummeled Luoto. He started pushing me out of the way but then realized who I was and let his arms drop. Luoto, whose face was covered in blood, tried to crawl away. When Janne moved toward Luoto again, I grabbed his shoulder.

  “No, Janne. He isn’t worth it. No matter how hard you hit him, it won’t help anything. You’ll just make things worse!”

  Janne stopped for a second and then kicked the nearest plastic bench so violently that it bent, and then he collapsed with his head between his hands. His knuckles were bloody. Just then the janitor walked in with the patrol officers, Jukka Airaksinen and Mira Saastamoinen. I briefly explained the situation and ordered them to arrest Luoto. As they escorted him away, he left a dark-red trail on the ice, which the janitor stared at in astonishment.

  I thought I should call Antti. I needed to pay a visit to the maternity ward to have them check on the Creature.

  “Let’s go, Janne,” I said.

  Stubbornly refusing to raise his head and look at his coach as he disappeared, from between his hands Janne asked, “Are you going to take me to jail again?”

  “No.” I sat down next to him. “You said you had guessed Rami killed Noora. How much did you know?”

  Janne stood up and walked down a few steps, and then leaned his head against the Plexiglas of the goal judge’s box.

  “I guess I sensed that something had happened that shouldn’t have way b
ack at that camp. I was the one who got Noora drunk, because I was stupid. Such a fucking idiot! And Noora indirectly tried to tell me what had happened. But I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to hear anything bad about Rami!” Janne slapped the Plexiglas with his hand, making it vibrate so loudly that the janitor looked at us in concern.

  I walked down to the ice, but crossing it frightened me. I felt like I would fall instantly and hurt my baby. My legs were shaking and I was starving.

  “Let’s go, Janne. We need to clean your hand. We can talk about this later.”

  Janne turned to look at me. His green eyes were misty, and his face looked so young and afraid.

  “Can you get across alone?” he suddenly asked. Without waiting for a response, he took my arm and started escorting me to the other side of the ice. It felt good to lean on someone. I sensed Janne felt the same way because he didn’t let go of my arm when we reached the boards, walking me to the parking lot where only the janitor’s van and my little Fiat remained.

  “Don’t you have your car?” I asked Janne.

  “I haven’t dared drive since I got arrested for speeding. For some reason I just keep pressing on the gas, and every oncoming truck looks like an invitation. It would be so easy.”

  I nodded, but then I asked Janne to drive me to the hospital. I promised to pay for a taxi to get him home. I didn’t want to drive anywhere tonight. I barely had the strength to dial our home number and ask Antti to meet me. Of course he was worried, even though I tried to calm him down. There wasn’t any pain, and the Creature had just started kicking.

  “I should have told the police right away,” Janne said as he drove. “But I wasn’t sure. When you arrested me . . . if I’d blamed Rami then, you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.”

  “Maybe we would have, maybe we wouldn’t have. There’s no sense blaming yourself, Janne. It won’t change anything.”

  “But Noora’s mom might not have shot Teräsvuori if I had talked.”

  “Welcome to the club,” I said bitterly.

  Janne glanced at me in surprise. I told him how many people already felt guilty for Teräsvuori’s death and why. Janne didn’t answer. He just wiped his cheeks now and then. He probably wasn’t in any better condition to drive than I was.

  Antti was nowhere to be seen in the parking lot at the hospital where we had agreed to meet. I looked in my bag for money for Janne’s taxi and thought that in some other world and maybe at a slightly different age, I really would have fallen for him.

  “It stays—the guilt. You don’t get past it,” I told Janne. “You just have to live with it, even though there’ll be mornings when you can’t look yourself in the mirror.”

  I wished I could say something more encouraging, but there weren’t words. So instead I hugged him tight, and the Creature participated in the ceremony with a few swift kicks.

  EPILOGUE

  The ruddy brown trunks of the pine trees visible through the window sparkled in the morning sun. Roses bloomed on the grounds of the Tammisaari Hospital, and the temperature outside was at least eighty-two degrees.

  The delivery room was cooler. I leaned against the beanbag chair, waiting for the next contraction. They were coming at three-minute intervals. The Creature was unlikely to make its appearance for several more hours.

  I had woken up around five that morning in a puddle of amniotic fluid. Collecting our bags, we set off in the quiet of the morning as the late summer birdsong was just beginning. It was finally happening. The Creature was coming into the world.

  I’d spent the past few weeks lounging in lakes and seawater. A heatwave had hit in late July, sprinkling my face with new freckles and raising my blood pressure to worrying levels. Still, I had been present at the trial when Hanna Nieminen was found not guilty of Teräsvuori’s murder by reason of insanity. She’d been ordered to undergo hospital treatment. I’d heard Teräsvuori’s brother intended to contest the verdict.

  The trial for Noora Nieminen’s murder would begin in September. Rami Luoto had confessed, and charges had been filed for second-degree murder and statutory rape. I’d managed to complete the preliminary investigation before maternity leave. Throughout the interrogations, Rami had begged for forgiveness. It was as if knowing he was going to prison was a relief. He was probably lucky he didn’t fully understand what prison would mean for him. Even though Noora hadn’t been very young when she was killed, child rapists and killers were the lowest of the low in the prison pecking order. Someone like Rami would never be able to defend himself. Even though I hated what he had done, I pitied him.

  I had brought along the complete works of Jane Austen as hospital reading, but trying to concentrate between contractions wasn’t working. They were already strong enough to block out any other thoughts. I rocked my hips back and forth until the pain subsided again.

  Janne, Silja, Irina, and Elena Grigorieva had left for training camp in Canada just after Midsummer. Ulrika had followed a couple of weeks later. They were all relieved to escape the publicity circus that had followed Noora’s murder investigation. A coach turning out to be a pedophile was a juicy story, just the kind of thing people loved to read—especially when the bad guy had already been caught.

  Not surprisingly, there hadn’t been anything wrong with Silja’s ankle. A week before her trip, Koivu had finally worked up the courage to ask her out, and she had agreed to dinner and a movie. They had seen each other a time or two after Silja’s return from Canada, but it wasn’t what you could call dating. Apparently the ten-year age gap did mean something to Silja. Poor Koivu was still infatuated, though.

  In the end Janne decided to go to Canada too, probably at Ulrika’s urging. Every summer, skaters gathered there from all over the world, and the Espoo Figure-Skating Association had every intention of finding Janne a new partner there. There was no one else on the horizon in Finland. One American girl had already expressed interest, and she would be visiting Finland in September to see the facility in Espoo and get a feel for the country. I had received a postcard from Silja and Janne from Canada. Silja talked about all the sights they’d seen. Janne only wrote one line. Still alive. Sometimes I can look in the mirror, thanks to you. Reading that had helped me through a few sleepless nights.

  Another contraction hit, and it felt as if my entire spine were compressing. Strange that I felt the pain more in my back than my belly. I tried to pick at the yogurt they had brought for breakfast. I knew I was going to need the energy, but I couldn’t eat. The midwife came in to hook me up to the CTG machine. The Creature’s heart beat in a steady rhythm, faster than my own. It sounded like it was trying to keep time with the Scarlatti playing on the delivery room stereo.

  I’d been really worried about the baby after the confrontation with Rami. However, the ultrasound and heart monitor at the hospital had showed that nothing was wrong. Of course Antti had been furious about it, and for once I admitted he was right.

  The midwife disconnected me from the machine and checked my cervix. Five centimeters already.

  “We can’t put you in a bath because your water already broke, but I recommend a warm shower. That should help some with the pain,” she said encouragingly. I decide to try it if the pain got really bad. I wanted to try to get through this without drugs, even though I’d had nightmares in which I begged them to give me anything, even just aspirin for the pain.

  Elena had thrown Tomi out on the street, and a divorce was already in the works. Ulrika was pressuring the Ministry of the Interior to award Elena and Irina Finnish citizenship as soon as possible. She must have been afraid of losing Elena to America, where not everyone would know the unfortunate details of her two marriages. The Russian militia didn’t intend to charge Tomi for Anton Grigoriev’s accidental death, but there were other possible charges rattling around.

  Another contraction, sharp and intense. Now they were coming every two minutes. I tried to think of them as friends that were bringing the Creature closer to me and Antti.


  “Time for the shower?” Antti asked as he saw my face contort in pain. I tried to stay relaxed, but it wasn’t easy when I felt as if my abdomen was being crushed in a steel vice.

  “Soon. Put on some more music,” I said, and continued my rocking walk back and forth across the room. The world around was quiet, just the random rustling of the summer breeze in the trees and the call of a bird flying by above the tops of the pines.

  I had filed my official application for the lieutenant spot. No one else in the department besides Ström and I had applied, and a couple of weeks ago I’d been selected. Of course Ström had filed a complaint, and that was still under review, but I was relatively certain I would be returning from my maternity leave as unit commander.

  “Let’s try that shower now, but first I have to throw up,” I told Antti when the pain got too bad to bear alone. Stripping down naked, we climbed into the cramped stall. I felt as if I’d entered a different world, one ruled by pain and waiting.

  There was no longer any reality beyond the three-by-three-foot space, its white walls and the rushing of the water. There was only my body, which vomited and defecated as if trying to push everything out of itself. Only Antti’s soothing words and tanned, naked body. Only the pain, each time tightening the corset around my belly and the small of my back, pain like a mountain I had to climb one step at a time: one, two, three . . . At twenty-five I arrived at the top, and on the downhill side the pain eased until fifty when it was gone, but for such a short time that the only option was to wait for its return. Sometimes I screamed, sometimes I only whimpered. Making noises helped.

  I don’t know how long I’d been in the shower. Afterward Antti said it was almost two hours before I started to feel the urge to push. The pain in my cervix was so intense. Antti called the midwife, who declared that the Creature and I were ready; my cervix was completely open. I sat naked in the birthing chair, and Antti sat behind me with his arms wrapped around me so I could lean on him. The midwife closed the blinds and brought a mirror so I could see the baby come out. The burning pain surged, and I pushed as my baby and I opened a path from one world to the next.