Snow angels ikv-1

by James Thompson

Next I try Eero and Martta. They aren’t home and if true to form are out walking.

  Christmas candles burn in a front window. Tiina and Raila invite me in, but I know better than to accept. Tiina is forty-two years old and anorexic. All her teeth have fallen out as a result, and she can’t afford dentures, but she’s learned to smile in such a way that you can’t tell. She walks around the village pushing a baby stroller with a doll inside it, and has since she was a teenager.

  Raila, Tiina’s mother, is an alcoholic. She was sober for twenty years, until her fortieth birthday party, when she decided to have just one drink. For the past thirty years, she’s lived in a nightmare of alcohol psychosis coupled with religious fervor. When I was a kid, she would stand outside our house, point in the front window and shriek. Mom would tell me to pay no attention and pretend like it wasn’t happening. I ask if they’ve seen unfamiliar cars today.

  “This is a day of desolation,” Raila says. “My life is a vale of tears.”

  Tiina smiles her funny smile. “We’ve been watching TV all day.”

  I save my parents for last. Their house is the same as it was twenty-five years ago, except for the addition of indoor plumbing. No more freezing trips to the outhouse in the morning. No more cold showers in an underheated outbuilding shared with the neighbors. Mom and Dad fought about it for years. He refused because of the expense, although he always had booze money, but she finally wore him down.

  As a little kid, because it was so cold in the outbuilding, I would go two weeks without washing if they let me, and sometimes I accidentally peed on myself because opening my pants in the freezing outhouse hurt so much that I would hold it for too long.

  There must be fifteen clocks hanging on the walls. I don’t know why my parents are so concerned with marking the time. The syncopated drumming of all those second hands makes me crazy. They haven’t put up any Christmas decorations yet. They always wait until the last minute. We sit in the kitchen, and I explain about the murder.

  “Mom, did you see or hear anything unusual today?” I ask.

  Mom doesn’t work, Dad never would let her. She still calls me by my pet name from childhood. “Ei Pikkuinen” -No, Little One-he says.

  “What the hell did you expect your mother to hear?” Dad asks.

  “I didn’t expect anything. This is a normal part of a murder investigation.”

  Dad isn’t bad when he’s sober, but when he’s drunk, he goes one of two ways, either euphoric or mean. “You think your mother has nothing better to do all day than sit by the window and watch what goes on outside?”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “So you think your mother killed a nigger woman on Aslak’s farm?”

  I wonder if he’s going to take off his belt, like when I was a boy. “No, I don’t think that either.”

  Dad pulls out one of his favorite expressions. “Haista vittu,” sniff cunt. A colorful way of telling me to go fuck myself. His sodden mind veers off in another direction. “You heard from your brothers?”

  My three brothers all moved away as soon as they were old enough. “Not for a while.”

  “You’d think they’d at least call, after all we went through raising them. And you.”

  Dad the martyr. “Christmas is coming, you’ll hear from them.”

  Mom asks me if I’d like something to eat, and I realize I’m famished. She warms up leftover laskisoosi, fat sauce, a childhood favorite made from pork strips like bacon but less salty, and ladles it over boiled potatoes.

  While I eat, Mom gossips about the neighbors and chatters about how well my brother Timo is doing. Timo served seven months in prison for bootlegging when he was young, and ever since, Mom has overcompensated by talking about him like he’s a saint.

  Dad nurses a water glass half full of vodka in silence. I remember that my sister died thirty-two years ago today, that’s why he’s being such a prick.

  The cold came late that year, but when it did, it hit hard. I was nine and Suvi was eight. Mom was a regular brood mare, five children in seven years. Dad wanted to go ice fishing. Suvi and I asked if we could come along and skate. Mom warned Dad that the ice was still too thin, but he hushed her up. “Kari will look after Suvi,” he said.

  A lot of snow had fallen, but it was dry powder. The wind had blown it off the lake, and the ice was as slick and clean as glass. The afternoon was starry, and out on the ice we could see almost as if we had daylight. Dad drilled a hole in the ice and sat on a crate, fishing and warming himself with a bottle of Three Lions whiskey.

  I tried to take care of Suvi. We were skating fast, toward the middle of the lake, but I was holding her hand. I heard a sharp crack, felt a jerk on my arm, and she was gone. It took me a second to understand what had happened, and then I was scared the ice would break under me too. I crawled to where Suvi fell through, but she was already slipping away. The last I saw of Suvi alive was her little fists thrashing, beating at the ice.

  I was too scared to go in after her, and Dad was too drunk, so we did nothing. He sat there crying, and I ran for help. They drilled holes in the ice and dredged under it with fishing nets. It didn’t take long, she hadn’t drifted far. When they pulled her out, she had a look of surprise more than pain frozen on her face.

  I’ve always suspected that Dad blames me for Suvi’s death. Maybe that’s why he was so quick to use his belt on me. I suspect that I blame him too. Maybe Mom blames us both. I eat the last bite of laskisoosi and set my knife and fork down on the plate. Mom is silent now, they both look lost in thought. I tell her it was delicious and hug her good-bye. I give Dad’s shoulder a squeeze and tell him I’ll see him soon.

  On the way back to my car, I see Eero and Martta returning from their evening stroll, bundled up against the bitter cold. Eero is over seventy, well dressed, dapper and schizophrenic. He lived with his mother until she died twenty years ago, and then he hired Martta as his housekeeper. Whether their relationship is sexual in nature remains a mystery, as does where he gets the money to have a housekeeper.

  By outward appearance, Eero is homosexual. Martta is dwarfish, gray-haired and squat. I meet them at the top of the road, across from Aslak’s drive. They’re walking their dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Sulo. Sulo is dressed in a blue-and-red sweater and tiny felt boots. I ask them about today.

  “I was talking to a friend on the phone this afternoon and saw a car pull out of Aslak’s place,” Eero says.

  There’s a phone booth by the side of the road. The phone is disconnected and has been for years. Eero spends hours standing in the cold, talking to imaginary friends, sometimes for so long that his breath forms a sheet of ice over the mouthpiece. Martta kept cutting the cord in the hopes that Eero would quit pumping coins into it. The phone company finally gave up repairing it, but left it there so Eero could talk into it.

  “What kind of car?” I ask.

  “BMW, BMW, BMW.”

  He repeats things sometimes. I’m not quite believing. “What model BMW?”

  “A new sedan, 3 Series, 3 Series.”

  “You know BMWs that well?”

  “I like cars.”

  Eero always had a memory like no one else I’ve ever met. I check to make sure it’s still true. “Eero, can you remember May sixteenth, 1974?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing special. It was a Thursday, warm. Two catalogues came in the mail. Your father got drunk and wrecked his bicycle.”

  I remember that. I’m impressed. “What color was the BMW?”

  “I was talking, not paying attention. Dark-colored.”

  “And it was new?”

  “Pretty new anyway.”

  “Did you see who was driving?”

  “Too dark. Didn’t see, didn’t see.”

  “Okay. Thank you very much.” I reach down and give Sulo a pet. “Do you mind if I come back to ask you about it again?”

  “Not at all,” Eero says, “glad for the company.”
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br />   Martta takes his hand. “You’re always welcome in our home.”

  It’s a good lead. I tramp off down the icy lane, shaking my head, picturing Eero taking the stand.

  4

  I haven’t shoveled my driveway for a few days, and when I get home I have to shove the car door hard through the snow to get it open. I pop open the hood of the Saab and take out the battery. If I don’t, the car won’t start in the morning. I go inside, set the battery on the floor of the foyer, then shut the door behind me and lock out the world.

  Like every good Finn, I take off my shoes before doing anything else. Kate still sometimes forgets to take hers off when she comes in, and I have to ask her. Wearing shoes in the home is a habit that I find barbaric. Christmas tree lights blink at me from across the room. Most Finns trim the tree closer to Christmas Eve, but Kate wanted to do things the American way, so ours is already up. I have to admit it’s cheery.

  I was married once before. After my divorce, I was single for thirteen years, made pretty good money and had nothing to spend it on, so I bought this house and surrounded myself with nice things. Expensive Danish blond-wood furniture, a thirty-two-inch flat-screen television I hardly ever watch, loads of books and CDs, the new Saab out in the driveway. I thought I was happy, but I was only content. I didn’t know what happiness meant until I met Kate. Or maybe I’d forgotten. After seeing Sufia Elmi’s slaughtered corpse, my happiness seems wrong.

  I peel off my coveralls, dump my pistol and wallet on the coffee table, get a beer out of the fridge and flop down on the couch. Kate pads down the stairs in panties and an oversized T-shirt. She’s almost as tall as me and a sinewy one hundred and twenty pounds. She’s twenty-nine years old and despite her limp moves with grace and elegance. I’m forty, going gray at the temples and built like the hockey player I used to be. I feel bearish by comparison.

  “Did I wake you?” I ask.

  “I wasn’t sleeping. I wanted to wait up for you.”

  She sits down next to me, gives me a kiss, grasps my stubby fingers with her slender ones. Her eyes are red and swollen.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “I’ve been reading.”

  I don’t press it. Kaamos is hard on everyone. We all get depressed this time of year. Plus, she’s pregnant and the hormonal change can’t help.

  “What about you?” she asks.

  I don’t know where to begin. “Sufia Elmi-the Somali girl in those bad movies-was murdered.”

  “You don’t look good,” she says.

  I rub my face, try to smooth away the tension. “Somebody mutilated her, carved ‘nigger whore’ in her stomach.”

  She pulls her legs up under her and puts an arm around me. “I’ve seen her in Hullu Poro. She was so beautiful.” Kate’s pronunciation of Finnish words is soft and strange, as if a sparrow tried to caw like a crow.

  “I’ve seen murders before, bad car wrecks, nothing like this.”

  “Do you have any idea who or why?”

  I take a swallow of beer. “Sex crime, race crime, maybe both. It’s hard to say yet.”

  She looks at me, reads my pain. I don’t want her to see it but don’t know how to hide it. “I just don’t get how one human being could do something like that to another.”

  She snuggles up closer. “Want to talk about it?”

  We sit in silence for a minute.

  “Was it really where we met?” she asks.

  “It was in the snowfield about a hundred yards in front of Aslak’s house, across from Marjakyla. After we processed the crime scene, I had to canvass my parents’ neighborhood. That was a fucking thrill. Dad acted like I accused Mom of murder.”

  “He’s always so polite when I’m around.”

  “You’re a foreigner. He’s afraid of what he doesn’t understand. You intimidate him, and when you’re around he stays on his best behavior to hide it.”

  She takes this in. “Something about him scares me too. How drunk was he?”

  “Pretty drunk.”

  She looks pissed off on my behalf. Kate’s father is dead now, but he was a drunk, so I don’t need to say more. Kate had a tough childhood. She grew up in Aspen, Colorado. Her mother died of cancer when Kate was thirteen. Her brother and sister were seven and eight at the time.

  The death broke her father’s spirit, and although he wasn’t mean like my dad, he wasn’t home much, spent his evenings in bars. Kate had to raise her brother and sister, cook, clean, beg her father for grocery money to keep them fed.

  Her father managed to do one good thing for her. He was a mechanic, worked at a ski resort maintaining the lifts, and he got her free skiing lessons and lift passes. She became a fantastic downhill skier. She won several key events over the years and dreamed of competing in the Olympics.

  When she was seventeen, she was in a race and going nearly a hundred miles an hour. She took a fall, broke her hip and spent weeks in traction. End of dream. She couldn’t compete anymore and lost the only thing she loved. Still, she toughed it out, got a scholarship and an education, made herself into a successful career woman in the ski resort management industry.

  Thinking about Kate’s family makes me remember Suvi again. I’ve never told Kate about her. Maybe I’m afraid she’ll blame me for Suvi’s death too.

  “Want me to make you something to eat?” Kate asks.

  “Mom fed me.”

  She wraps her arms around me, kisses my eyes. “Let’s go upstairs then.”

  Kate takes my hand and guides me to the bed. She crawls naked on top of me. Long white limbs tangle around me, long red hair hangs in my face. Despite today, I can’t help but want her. I always want her. Maybe witnessing the aftermath of Sufia’s death makes me want to celebrate life.

  Kate’s not showing yet, but kissing her belly reminds me of our child growing inside her. She presses her mouth to mine, runs her tongue along my lips. I feel myself stiffen and hear her breath go ragged.

  We make love, and I fall asleep. The next thing I know Kate is shaking me awake. “You were having a bad dream.”

  The image is still lingering behind my eyes. I was nine years old, in the bedroom I shared with my brother. Sufia Elmi sat in a chair by my bed. My sister Suvi stood beside her. My father pulled my pants down and beat me with a belt. Sufia and Suvi held hands and looked on. Sufia, naked and mangled, mouthed words I couldn’t understand.

  “What were you dreaming?” Kate asks.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I was having the most wonderful dream,” she says. “I was sixteen, before I broke my hip. I was in a ski competition. It felt like I was flying.”

  I dread waking up in the morning and look at the clock. It’s two A.M. I pull Kate close and try to get whatever sleep I can.

  5

  Thealarm clock goes off at five thirty. Kate doesn’t stir. I have a slice of rye bread with sausage and cheese and wait for the coffee. I haven’t slept enough, but the investigation has to get rolling.

  I pull on wool socks and a robe, go out on the back porch and look at the stars while I have a cigarette and drink coffee. The smoke doesn’t bother me, but the freezing air takes my breath and makes me cough. The thermometer on the porch wall reads minus thirty-two. It’s warming up.

  I go back inside and get dressed. I usually wear jeans and a sweater, but today I might need to look official, so I put on a suit and drive to work through deserted, ice-laden streets.

  It’s a typical small-town police station. Six drunk tanks and two holding pens, my office and a room for the dispatcher, a common room with a couple desks and computers for whomever is on duty. I want the crime report done before the morning briefing.

  I sit at my desk and write it, then set it aside until later. If I wait a few hours before entering it into the Finnish crime incident database, it will be too late for newspapers to pick up on it, and I can delay the media storm for another day. I want Sufia’s parents to be notified before releasing the report.

  Cell phone
s are a difficulty in this regard. When people witness crime scenes, or learn of crimes and their details, they often call tabloids and sell information for a nominal reward. When canvassing Marjakyla, I didn’t mention the name of the murder victim. Only the investigating officers, Kate, Aslak, Esko and my parents know Sufia was killed. I’ve told them all to keep quiet about it and managed to stanch the problem.

  I download the crime-scene photos from the digital camera into the computer system, so we can look at them during the briefing, then start setting the investigation in motion.

  Technically, I should go through the chain of command and call the regional police commander, but I don’t like him and opt not to. The national chief of police and I have a history, so I call him instead. He’s not in yet, so I ask for his cell phone number and call him at home.

  He answers. “Ivalo.”

  “This is Kari Vaara, in Kittila. Sorry to call so early.”

  “I’m shaving.”

  “It can’t wait, I’ve got a situation you need to be aware of.”

  Silence.

  “We have a murder investigation in progress. A young woman named Sufia Elmi was abducted and killed around two P.M. yesterday. She’s a Somali refugee and she’s also a minor movie star, the kind that’s in the tabloids all the time.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah, but it gets worse. The murder has the characteristics of a sex crime, but also of a race crime. It could be both. The girl was butchered. The killer carved the words ‘nigger whore’ on her stomach.”

  “Media frenzy.”

  “That’s why I called.”

  “Got a suspect?”

  I hear rushing water. He’s taking a piss while we talk. “I have tire tracks and a lot of forensics.”

  “I can send a homicide unit from Helsinki or Rovaniemi. You know how it is around Christmas. I have to check who’s available.”

  I’m not getting it yet. “You don’t need to, I’ve got a good start.”

  “No doubt you have, but still, maybe you could use some help.”

  I’m surprised. No one has ever called my professional capability into question before. “Thanks, but I don’t need it.”