Snow angels ikv-1

by James Thompson

  In my mind’s eye, I see Kate every moment of the day. Her cinnamon hair, dove-gray eyes so light they’re almost without color. Since we met, our relationship has been something self-contained, both a beginning and an end, like I picture death must be. I thought nothing could ever come between us. I get the same feeling I had when Seppo threatened her. My heart pounds, my ears ring, my vision goes blurry.

  “In the States,” she says, “I never met anyone who committed suicide, never even knew anyone who had a suicide in their family. In this little country, it seems like someone does it every day. Finns are like lemmings rushing off a cliff.”

  It’s true. Most years, Finland has the world’s highest suicide rate. Last year, it was twenty-seven out of a hundred thousand citizens. If I lost Kate and the twins, I would feel like joining the statistics.

  Kate looks at me and reads the panic in my face. “Oh God. Kari, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I want you to come with me. I would never leave you.”

  I start to calm down. She puts her arms around me and kisses me. “We could leave here,” she says. “You speak and write almost perfect English. You’re educated and a decorated officer. Any police department in the U.S. would be privileged to have you on its force.”

  Her opinion of me is higher than my own. “Why do you want to leave?” I ask.

  The sadness in her face tells me she’s going to speak from the heart. “When I first arrived here, my picture of Finland was different. Nature and the environment seemed wild and beautiful, life seemed orderly. I thought people were happy.”

  “You were mostly right,” I say.

  “No, I was wrong. This is an ugly place. The silence, the misery, the months of darkness. It’s too extreme, like living in a desert made of snow instead of sand.”

  Sometimes I think this too.

  “When I talk to people,” she says, “they hardly ever laugh or even smile unless they’re drunk. Finns are inscrutable. I have no idea what they’re thinking or feeling. Sometimes I feel like people hate me for being a foreigner, like the nurses at the hospital when I broke my leg. I’m uncomfortable. Worse, I’m terrified because I’m pregnant. I’m at the mercy of people I don’t and can’t understand.”

  I didn’t know how deep her cultural alienation had become. I try to explain. “What you perceive as silence, we view as peaceful solitude. Most of us aren’t miserable, but our approach toward life is serious, maybe because of our extreme environment. People don’t hate you, they respect you because you’re successful. Finns are afraid of making mistakes. If we can’t do something perfectly, it’s hard for us to try to do it at all. The people that work for you speak fluent English and are proud of it, but a lot of people are too scared to try.”

  “That’s no excuse for the way they treated me at the hospital.”

  “You were in pain. Sometimes, people here ignore suffering so the sufferers can maintain their dignity. When you give birth, your medical care will be excellent, for the same reason the nurses wouldn’t speak to you. Health care professionals expect themselves to excel at their work. Our educational system is one of the best in the world. There’s no better place for our children to grow up.”

  I’ve given a speech that sounds like an advertisement selling the Finnish way of life. Hearing the words come out of my mouth, even I don’t buy it.

  She looks frustrated. “Are we living in the same country? We just watched a teenage boy, probably turned psychotic murderer, be carted off to the morgue after hanging himself. I run places that sell booze. Do you think I don’t see how rampant alcoholism is here? People are drunk because they’re depressed. They get so depressed that they become mentally ill and kill themselves. You say this place is safe? You want our kids to grow up in this environment?”

  Almost everyone in Finland knows a suicide. The normal way of dealing with it is to allow ourselves to grieve, to speculate about why and talk about our love for the departed. Then we bury the dead and seldom mention them afterward. I don’t know if it’s because of our pain at their loss, or because of guilt, the feeling that we didn’t give them the help they needed to stay alive. Suicides get only a tiny obituary in the newspaper, a minimalization of our loss, a form of denial. The minuscule death notices speak of our shame.

  “There’s a lot of truth in what you say. I can’t defend life in the north against its flaws, and there are many, but this is my home and I love it. If you stay here long enough and learn the language so you can understand the culture, you may come to love Finland for some of the reasons you hate it now-the silence, the solitude, even the melancholy-like I do.”

  She’s getting angry. “The language! I don’t speak Finnish, but I know enough about it to see that it’s a reflection of the culture. In colloquial speech, you refer to other people as ‘it.’ That tells me a lot.”

  “Kate, I’m a cop in early middle age with a bad leg. I don’t know if I could get a job in the U.S. or not, but I’m pretty sure that even if I did, I wouldn’t be any good at it. I speak English, but I don’t understand your culture. I can’t catch crooks if I don’t know how they think. Those few months I spent in the States working on my master’s thesis, I felt like a fish out of water, just like you do now.”

  “My income is six figures. It doesn’t matter if you work or not.”

  “It matters to me. Besides, after the twins are born, you’ll be on maternity leave. We could figure it out then.”

  “What difference does my maternity leave make?”

  “It’s a hundred and five workdays, that’s a long time.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not going on maternity leave for months.”

  “Why not? Everyone does.”

  “Does that mean I’m required to?”

  As much as I love Kate, sometimes the cultural differences between us mystify me. “I guess not, I just never heard of anyone not wanting to before. What do American mothers do?”

  “We take a few weeks, get child care and go back to our careers, and that’s what I’m going to do. Are you saying no to moving? Won’t you even think about it?”

  My automatic reaction, when someone tries to make me do something, is to do the opposite. I try to stay reasonable. “This feels like an ultimatum.”

  “Kari, it’s not an ultimatum. I would never leave you, I just want to know if you’ll consider it or not.”

  I don’t want to say it, but Kate’s happiness is more important to me than my own. “I’ll consider it.”

  We drop the subject and get ready for bed. Kate always goes to sleep with her head on my shoulder, our arms wrapped around one another. We do the same now, but I can still feel the tension between us, like magnets forcing each other apart instead of pulling each other together. I’ve never felt that way with Kate before, and it worries me.

  23

  My phone rings at nine A.M. “Where are you and Valtteri?” Jussi asks.

  I tell him about Heikki’s suicide, the note and my suspicions.

  “Fuck,” he says.

  “He and Maria are torn to pieces.”

  “Do you really think the suicide note was a confession?” he asks.

  “Maybe. Probably.”

  “Why would he do it?”

  “It doesn’t pay to speculate. Let’s wait and see if DNA places him at the crime scene. What have you and Antti turned up?”

  “Antti processed Eklund’s car and found blood and semen. He sent them to Helsinki for testing. Eklund’s alibi checks out, but I’m not convinced. If he slipped out of Hullu Poro for a little while, killed Sufia and then came back, I’m not sure anybody would have noticed.”

  The case is entering day five and I haven’t had a decent night’s rest since it started. “Listen, I’ve only slept for two hours. We’re all tired. Let’s take the morning off and get together this evening, after the DNA reports come back.”

  “Should I check on Valtteri and Maria? I don’t know what to say to them.”

  He means it’
s hard to console your boss about his son’s suicide, especially when the boy may have killed himself in the aftermath of a sick murder.

  “No. I’ll stop by and check on them later.”

  We hang up. Heikki’s suicide and my conversation with Kate take turns whirling through my head. It’s hard to get back to sleep, but the next time I look at the clock, it’s three P.M. Kate is propped up on the bed beside me, reading a book. “I made coffee,” she says.

  I go to the kitchen, get a cup for myself and sit on the bed beside her. She puts a hand on my knee. “I’m sorry I made you feel bad,” she says.

  “This is a hard time for both of us. The whole world seems turned upside down.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  I put my coffee down on the floor and hug her. “I want you to be happy.”

  “I’m happy with you,” she says.

  “Just let me get this case finished, then we can figure out what we can do to make things better for you.”

  She nods and kisses me.

  In the far corner of the room, I’ve got a little table set up with my home computer. I connect my monitor to Heikki’s computer and power it up.

  When I was a kid, there was a myth that Laestadians aren’t allowed to own washing machines with windows in the doors, because you can see underwear through it while it’s spinning. Strict Laestadianism forbids dancing and music, movies, television and video games, sports, most of the entertainment content average users clutter up their computers with. Plus, Heikki had no Internet connection at home, so I’m guessing going through his machine won’t take long.

  It’s an old computer loaded with only a few basic programs and no encryption software. I sift through the folders and files, mostly school stuff. I open a folder titled BIBLE INTERPRETATION. There are four files in it-the first is labeled SONG.

  Heikki has typed out the Song of Solomon, all one hundred and seventeen verses of it. I can tell by the spelling mistakes that he didn’t copy and paste it from somewhere. Another file is called MY SONG. He’s rearranged fragments of lines from the Song of Solomon to make a poem of his own: upon the mountains of Bether the young stag feeds among the lilies the scent of your perfumes spreads its fragrance your lips drip with honey your breasts are like towers lovesick, my hand is by the latch set about with lilies my head is covered with dew I have drunk of the honey and milk under your tongue Do not stir nor awaken love until it pleases

  The poem is a curious mixture of religious fervor and sexual desire. To have written it, Heikki must have been a very sensitive young man-and very much in love with someone. The next file is titled THE ACCURSED. It reads: Must we hear now that you too are doing all this terrible wickedness and are being unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women? Nehemiah 13:26-27 For we have disregarded the commands you gave when you said: The land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the corruption of these peoples. Their detestable practices have filled it with their impurity. Therefore do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Ezra 9:10-12 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan. Genesis 9:21-25 Ham=nigger Jumala vihaa neekereita, God hates niggers. Niggers should die.

  My stomach churns, and I consider again if Valtteri knew how disturbed Heikki was. Valtteri will be destroyed when I tell him what Heikki thought, what he did. He’ll blame himself, maybe even blame God. Maybe he already does. Part of me wants to delete the folder, let the case go unsolved. I ask myself if exposing the truth will serve any purpose, if it will bring Sufia justice. The answer is yes, and it makes me sick. I open the last file, called BABYLON: And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. Revelation 17:5 If she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. Leviticus 21:9 The men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house, thus you shall purge the evil from among you. Deuteronomy 22:21 Jumala vihaa huoria, God hates whores. Whores should die.

  The words shock me. My mind is a blur of questions. Where did he get these ideas? He expressed love in his poem. Who did he focus it on? He expressed hatred. Why, other than the color of her skin, did he focus it on Sufia? How could he have known about her promiscuity? Given the quotations in the BABYLON file, it seems he would have chosen burning or stoning as the method of Sufia’s execution. Why did he murder her in the manner that he did? I browse through the computer and look for answers.

  I find a downloaded folder from a true-crime website titled “The Black Dahlia: the True Story of the Murder of Elizabeth Short.” I don’t know a lot about the case beyond what Jaakko mentioned, so I read through it. It’s a thorough treatment, offers theories about the murder and discusses the crime in great detail.

  I hook my own computer back up and visit the website. It’s massive, with articles on dozens of serial killers and notorious murders, but I focus on just the Black Dahlia case. Sufia’s murder seems to be a clumsy attempt at a copycat crime with some personalizations.

  Short was killed, cut in half and her body washed before the killer dumped it. Sufia was killed on-site, and it appears that an inept effort to cut her in half failed. Short had three-inch gashes cut into both corners of her mouth, giving her a death smile reminiscent of a demented clown. Sufia didn’t, but her eyes were gouged out. Seppo talked about her gorgeous eyes to both me and a friend. This seems an improbable coincidence.

  Short and Sufia were left in the same positions after their murders: arms raised at forty-five-degree angles and legs spread. Both had a superficial section of skin removed from the right breast. It remains an unsubstantiated rumor that Short had the letters “BK” carved into her torso and that grass had been inserted into her vagina. Sufia had “nigger whore” carved into her torso and a broken bottle inserted into her vagina.

  Most striking to me, as Jaakko pointed out, is that both Elizabeth Short and Sufia had genital deformities. In order for Heikki to have known about Sufia’s genital mutilation, either he’d seen her vagina himself or someone told him about it. The latter is about a thousand times more likely.

  Heikki could have chosen to emulate Albert DeSalvo, Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, someone famous. The Elizabeth Short murder was never solved, and the number of vicious details makes it unwieldy and complicated in comparison to a normal homicide. I can think of no other reason to copy it, other than being inspired by their common genital abnormalities.

  Heikki had no Internet access at home. How could he have imported the Web files into his computer? He either downloaded them using someone else’s computer or someone gave them to him. I go through his floppy discs and CD-ROMs. They don’t contain any true-crime files.

  My cell phone rings. The display reads DAD. He never calls unless he’s in a drunken rage or Mom is sick. I’m afraid it’s the latter, so I answer. “Hi Dad.”

  “Hello son. I think you’d better come over here.”

  “Is something wrong with Mom?”

  “No. It looks like Pirkko Virtanen just couldn’t take it anymore. She’s killed Urpo.”

  I can’t picture it and don’t trust him. “Are you drunk?”

  “I wish I was.”

  I hang up. A crime-scene photo of Elizabeth Short shows on the monitor. I remember Sufia in the dark snowfield, then think of Heikki crying, splashing tears on her face. Pirkko can’t speak, can barely get out of her chair. How could she kill Urpo? There must be something in the water. Our whole community has gone insane.

  24

  I drive between high, looming snowbanks, down the narrow lane into Marjakyla. The sixteen houses that comprise the village sit on plots identical in size and shape: longer than they are wide, big enough for a house, an outbuilding or two and a sizeable garden. The homes are all wooden A-frames painted barn-red.
They were built on land given to war veterans made homeless by the Germans.

  Near the end of World War II, the Germans adopted a scorched-earth policy as they retreated through Lapland. They burned down Kittila almost entirely, only the church was left standing. Our grandparents cleared away the charred remains and rubble, dug into frozen earth and granite, rebuilt the town.

  The houses line a single dirt road, eight to a side. My parents occupy the last house on the right. The mother and daughter, alcoholic Raila and anorexic Tiina, live across from them. Big Paavo lives next to my parents, and the Virtanens live on the other side.

  Big Paavo is the neighborhood entrepreneur. He owns five of the houses in Marjakyla, including my parents’ place. He converted the house across the road from him into a general store, which his wife runs. He also owns the bar downtown that Dad works in.

  A crowd of about twenty has gathered outside the Virtanen house. I catch Eero in my headlights. He’s dapper as always, holding his dog Sulo, wearing a coat with a fur collar. A silk dressing gown sticks out beneath the coat, and below that, long thermal underwear pants are tucked into unlaced boots.

  I park in my folks’ driveway. Big Paavo is in his shed with Dad. They’re leaning against a worktable, smoking cigarettes.

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “I was out here working,” Big Paavo says. He motions toward a bicycle frame leaning against the table and a few piles of sprockets and gear parts. “Urpo was yelling at her so loud, I could hear him all the way out here. He wanted her to get up and make him dinner. He kept on for a long time, then he kind of shrieked and went quiet. I figured I’d better go check on them.”

  Big Paavo is also the Virtanens’ landlord. “I knocked and nobody answered, so I went inside. He’s dead on the floor. She stabbed him in the neck. I went over to your dad’s place and told him to call you.”

  For us, the Christmas season isn’t just dark because of the lack of daylight. It’s also the dark time in regards to domestic violence. If I hadn’t grown up a couple doors down from Urpo and Pirkko, I would be almost glad to investigate this killing. After the bizarre events of late, it would seem like a normal December workday.