Snow angels ikv-1

by James Thompson

  Seppo stammers. “I didn’t kill anybody. I barely knew your son. Please don’t shoot me, I’m not guilty of anything.”

  I try to talk Valtteri down. “This isn’t the way and you know it. Give me your gun before you do something you can’t take back.”

  He screams at me. “This is the way! This stupid bastard didn’t kill anybody, but they’re all dead because of his lechery, his selfishness and stupidity. His affair with Sufia Elmi, his sins, set all this in motion. His sins resulted in all this death and misery.”

  “Valtteri, what you say is true, but setting a series of events in motion isn’t the same as being guilty of murder.”

  I step toward him and hold out my hand. “Please give it to me.”

  He looks indecisive, then frantic, and swings the pistol toward me, I guess trying to keep me away from him.

  I start to speak. “Give me the…”

  The pistol goes off. My head recoils. I feel a burning in my face, put my hand to my right cheek. Something is very wrong. When I pull my hand away, it’s bloody. I roll my tongue around. There are hard things in my mouth. I spit out chunks of teeth.

  I can talk, but it’s hard. “Valtteri, what have you done?”

  He looks at me and goes to pieces, screaming and crying and saying he’s sorry and he raised Heikki wrong and now he’s hurt me and everything is his fault. He goes on and on and I want to console him but I’m dizzy and pain is starting to spread through my head. I roll my tongue around some more and come to the realization that I opened my mouth to speak and he accidentally fired the pistol. The bullet passed through my mouth, blew out my back teeth and exited through my cheek. I think I’m going to vomit.

  Valtteri keeps talking, rambling something incomprehensible and saying he’s sorry, waving the gun around. He’s so upset I’m afraid he’ll shoot me by mistake again. Seppo stands up and starts apologizing to Valtteri for his part in events. I manage to punch him in the face to shut him up, knock him off his feet onto the ice.

  All of a sudden, Valtteri lowers the pistol to his side. His face sags and he goes calm. “It was me,” he says.

  Gunshot trauma has caused endorphin release, and my body’s natural painkillers are protecting me for the moment, but the agony will start soon. I’ve got to get Valtteri under control before it begins. “What do you mean?”

  “I killed Heli.”

  This is more than I can take in. “What?”

  “That night, after Heli and Heikki killed Sufia, he came to me and told me what they had done. It was just like you thought. Heli seduced him and made him fall in love with her. She told him the girl was a sinner, not even a human being, and she had to die. She said it was God’s will, like missionary work, and told him what to do. He said she talked about it all the time, and after a while, he thought it wouldn’t be any harder than gutting a deer. Heli sat in the car and watched while he murdered Sufia. He said when he did it, at first it didn’t seem real, like a dream. When he was cutting her belly she woke up and screamed. It scared him so he cut her throat and it was like he woke up. When he understood he’d killed another human being for no reason, he started to cry. He told Heli they’d done wrong and she laughed and told him she never wanted to see him again.”

  Valtteri starts to sob. “Heikki cried and cried and begged me to forgive him. He wanted to confess, for me to arrest him. I wouldn’t let him and told him I would protect him. He was a good boy who made a mistake. He promised to never do it again.”

  “For God’s sake Valtteri.”

  “It’s your fault. You’re the detective. You were supposed to fix everything and prove Seppo innocent. The murder could go unsolved. No one else would be hurt and Heikki could pretend like it never happened. But you didn’t. And then Heikki hanged himself. He died because of that bitch Heli, and she was going to get away with it. She was going to go on with her life and be rich and happy. I couldn’t let that happen. Could you have? My boy is burning in hell and she needed to burn in hell too. Heikki suffered the torments of hell before he died, out of guilt. I wanted her to taste the flames of hell on earth before she spent eternity there, so I burned her alive. It was justice as the Bible teaches. ‘If she profanes herself by harlotry, she shall be burned with fire.’ ”

  The words Heikki wrote in his computer. Now that I know most of the truth, I want all of it. “Where did you get the idea to use a burning tire?”

  “I read about it years ago in a magazine. Aristide’s death squads did it in Haiti, and they used to do it in South Africa and Rwanda and Somalia. The article had pictures and they reminded me of hell. Then because Sufia was a Somali, I remembered the story. It seemed fitting and just, like God’s wrath. I didn’t do it to frame Sufia’s father. I never thought you’d make the connection.”

  “What about the lake? Why did you pick this place?”

  “I knew about your sister and did it to hurt you, because you didn’t fix everything like you were supposed to. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Where are Sufia’s clothes and the murder weapon?”

  “Heikki gave her clothes to me. I burned them, and the clothes he had on too.”

  He takes a knife out of his pocket and hands it to me. It’s a folding survival knife with a rounded serrated blade.

  “I gave him this for his twelfth birthday,” he says. “He used it to do what you saw to that girl, unspeakable things. I thought my pocket would be the last place you would look for the murder weapon.”

  He was right.

  “I kept it so I would have a constant reminder of my failure as a father and my sin of pride. I couldn’t bear to see my son go to prison. His shame would have fallen on the whole family. If I had let Heikki confess, to go to prison and atone for his sin, he would still be alive. He couldn’t bear the guilt and killed himself because of me, because I wouldn’t let him. I killed him.”

  “That’s not true, he killed himself.”

  “We all killed him.” He looks at Seppo. “That worthless bastard there. Me. You. That bitch Heli. We’re all going to hell.” He points at Abdi’s still-flaming body. “I almost let him kill you. To save myself, because I’m weak. I’m going to be with my boy now.”

  He puts the gun to his temple. “I’m sorry.”

  “Please Valtteri, don’t do this.”

  He says the prayer that every Laestadian child says before going to sleep. “Jeesuksen nimessa ja veressa kaikki synnit anteeksi.” In the name and blood of Jesus forgive us all our sins.

  I try to stop him, to grab his hand, but my knee won’t work and I’m sick and too slow.

  Valtteri pulls the trigger. His blood and brains spray across the ice. The shot echoes around the lake. He looks at me with dead eyes for a second, then he falls.

  I slump down beside him on my hands and knees. I pull off his wool cap and run my fingers through his bloody gray hair. I hear myself moan and say, “Oh God, oh God Valtteri. Get up, get up.”

  I realize I’m going into traumatic shock from my wound. I look around. Abdi is still burning. Even with cold dampening my sense of smell, the stench of gasoline and his scorched flesh is sickening. I threatened him and brought him here and he died for nothing. Valtteri is dead beside me. His blood stains the pearl-gray ice and looks black in the murky light. Seppo sits on his haunches, stares at me, hands still cuffed in front of him.

  “Come here,” I say. He crawls over, looks like he’s about to go into shock himself. I give him the keys to the handcuffs and my car. “Unlock yourself and open my trunk. There’s an emergency first-aid kit. It has morphine in it and I need it.”

  While he’s gone, I call Antti, tell him where I am and that I’m shot, that there are two dead bodies here. I tell him to get me help. He tries to ask questions, but I hang up and drop the phone on the ice.

  Seppo brings me the kit and I inject myself. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I never meant for all this to happen.”

  “Valtteri was right,” I say. “Your affair with Sufia started a
ll this. You used her and brought all this misery on us with your selfishness, your childishness. If he’d killed you, it might not have been justice, but not far from it. If you weren’t the worthless piece of shit that you are, all these people would still be alive.”

  Then I don’t see Seppo anymore. I see Suvi. The ice is three feet thick, but I look through it like a window and see her swimming beneath me. She’s been there all these years, alive under the surface, waiting for me to find her.

  Then I feel Kate behind me, her arms around me. I feel her pregnant belly, big and round, pressed against my back. Suvi isn’t under the ice anymore, she’s here with me. I hold her hand and we skate through the darkness across the lake. We stop and Mom and Dad join us. They’re young again and happy. Dad’s not drunk and they’re having one of their good days.

  Abdi gets up, pats out the flames and stops smoldering. He stands tall and proud in a dress police uniform, medals on his chest. He has his arm around his daughter. Sufia, gorgeous as always, in a cocktail dress, looks up at her dad and smiles. I notice Heli is here. She’s thirteen, laughing like she did when she was a kid, and I know she’s okay too. I feel warm and safe. Valtteri looks up at me and winks. I lie down on the ice, use his body for a pillow and go to sleep.

  35

  “I kept my promise. I’m home on Christmas Eve.”

  Kate shakes her head, laughs a little. “Yes you did. And I’ll keep mine and help you put yourself back together again.”

  By some miracle, the bullet passed through my mouth without breaking my jaw. It shattered the next to last two teeth on the upper right side and passed out through my cheek without further damage. I asked the doctor how bad the scar will be.

  “You’ll look like a tough guy.”

  “People already say I look like a tough guy.”

  He laughed. “Well, now you’ll look like a tough guy who got shot in the face.”

  “That’s great,” I said, “just what I need.”

  Kate called Dad. When she explained what happened, Mom offered to come over and help make Christmas dinner. Dad said he’d come if I put the sauna on. Christmas isn’t Christmas without sauna, he said. It’s sweet that Mom is cooking. She’s doing it for Kate. I can’t eat solid food and will be living on soup for a few weeks.

  I start building a fire for the sauna. I can’t go with the bandages on my face. It disappoints me almost as much as not being able to eat Christmas dinner. The phone rings. Even with heavy painkillers, my face and broken teeth hurt like hell. It’s the national chief of police and I want to find out if I’m fired, so I answer anyway.

  “How’s your face?” he asks.

  “Hurts.”

  “Fair enough, it’s been hurting the rest of us for a long time.” He laughs at his own joke. “You’re a jackass,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know whether to prosecute you or promote you.”

  “Me neither.”

  “When your officers processed the scene, they found the video camera and tape recorder. The whole thing is documented.”

  I didn’t know Valtteri left them running and captured his own suicide. “It was a tragedy. I wish it could be forgotten.”

  “It can’t. I’m putting it on the evening news. To save your ass.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I’m a man of my word and a deal’s a deal,” he says. “You solved both murders. What job do you want?”

  “You serious?”

  “What do you think?”

  I tell him to wait a second and start to ask Kate what she wants to do, then think better of it. She’s been under enough pressure lately. It can wait until after Christmas.

  “Can you give me some time to consider it?” I ask.

  “I’ll give you a week,” he says. “You’re a jackass, but I guess I’m going to have to decorate you for bravery again anyway, to put the right spin on things. What the hell, it will get me some face time on television.” He hangs up.

  I tell Kate what he said.

  “You were right about the case,” she says. “Maybe you’re right about staying here too. Then again, Helsinki sounds nice. Let’s take some time and think about it.”

  I wasn’t right about everything, and wish I’d been wrong about the rest of it.

  Mom and Dad arrive. Mom hugs me, looks like she’s going to cry. “You okay son?” Dad asks.

  “Yeah.”

  He hands me two wrapped gifts. One is obviously a bottle. “Open them,” he says.

  The bottle is Koskenkorva vodka. The other package contains two plastic straws. “They’re symbolic,” he says. “We’re gonna drink it together.”

  “I shouldn’t drink on top of the painkillers,” I say.

  Mom doesn’t speak any English, but Dad’s is passable. He looks at Kate. “Do you mind if your husband gets drunk with his father?”

  “A little,” she says. She looks at me-I shrug. She gives Dad a Christmas hug. “But go ahead anyway.”

  He looks happy, cracks the top off the bottle, takes a drink and hands it to me. I take a sip.

  The doorbell rings again. I’m surprised to find Seppo on my front porch. “Merry Christmas,” he says.

  He’s the last person on earth I want to see. “What do you want?”

  He looks sheepish. “If I had done what you told me, left here and never come back, Heli would still be alive. Now I’m leaving for good and I want you to have this.”

  He hands me a manila envelope. “What is it?” I ask.

  “The deed to my winter cottage. I don’t want it anymore. I thought it might make up for things a little bit.”

  Five people are dead and he thinks he can just buy goodwill, fix everything with an expensive gift. I hand it back. “I don’t want it.”

  He doesn’t take it. “It’s worth eight hundred thousand euros.”

  I grab his hand and press the envelope into it. “I still don’t want it. Go away.”

  He looks like a sad little kid. “Sorry I bothered you.”

  Then I realize. “Wait,” I say. “Give it to me.”

  He hands it back. “Why the change of heart?”

  “Valtteri left a widow and a bunch of kids, and Sufia’s mother is alone now. I’m not sure if she’s capable of providing for herself. Selling your winter dacha can take care of them all for a long time.”

  “Good,” he says, “I’m glad.”

  I shut the door, and for the first time I realize how much better off we all were when Heli left me for him. She got what she wanted-a stupid rich man she could manipulate. He had a woman who stayed with him despite the fact that he’s a philandering drunk, and besides, I think he really loved her. Heli wasn’t who I thought she was when I married her. Maybe, like Sufia, no one really knew her. I was allowed to go on with my life and find someone I could make happy, someone who makes me happy.

  Dad asks me who was at the door. I tell him it was nobody.

  Mom takes Kate to the kitchen to teach her the fine art of making rosolli. The way they manage to communicate despite not having a common language, mostly with hand gestures, amuses me. People always seem to find a way.

  Dad and I sit in front of the television, pass the bottle back and forth. The combination of drugs and alcohol allows me to screw up my nerve and ask the unspoken question. “Dad, do you ever think about Suvi?”

  He leans over, arms on his knees, and stares at the floor. It takes him a long time to answer, but when he does, he looks me in the eye. “Every day of my life.”

  “Should we talk about it?”

  “Some things you can never make right. There’s nothing to say.”

  A few silent minutes tick by. “The sauna almost ready?” he asks.

  “Almost.”

  More time passes. “It was a good-looking ham you bought,” he says.

  “Yep,” I say, “a good-looking ham.”

  Kate comes in from the kitchen. “How are you two doing?”

  Dad holds up the vo
dka bottle. “Couldn’t be better. You know Kate, the sun is going to rise tomorrow. Just for a few minutes, but kaamos is almost over.”

  Kate comes up behind me, reaches over the couch and puts her arms around me. “Hyvaa Joulua,” Merry Christmas, she says.

  Merry for whom? Sufia Elmi, a refugee who defied the odds and succeeded in a xenophobic country, felt so hopeless inside that she let herself be abused by men who cared nothing for her. My first instinct was right. Her charm and beauty inspired hatred, and because of them, she was butchered like an animal. I don’t know what her father was guilty of, but he had put his past behind him, come to our country and built a new life for himself. I dredged up his past and he died, because of me, for nothing.

  My ex-wife, a woman I once loved and believed I would spend the rest of my life with, turned out to be a sociopath and a killer. She manipulated a boy who had led such a sheltered life that he was nearly defenseless. She drove him to murder and suicide, destroyed him, so I believe, with no more thought than she would have given to squashing a bug. Maybe Heli, burned to death on the ice, got what she deserved. I don’t know.

  Valtteri was a good man who believed his faith would protect him and his family. What God failed to do, he tried to do himself, and he covered up a murder to protect his son. His shattered faith and his own failure drove him to murder Heli, an atrocity that, a week earlier, would have been beyond his comprehension. His widow and seven remaining children are spending Christmas mourning his loss and Heikki’s, doubtless mystified, drowning in sorrow, shock and disbelief. Abdi’s wife, Hudow, must be doing the same.

  I neglected my wife, risked my marriage, nearly left my children fatherless for what I believed was the pursuit of justice. Instead of justice, I got the truth, and it was a poor substitute. Now I don’t know what I was looking for. I feel like I failed them all, like I failed myself. I saved no one. And yet, I’m going to be decorated for bravery, labeled a hero, given a promotion if I want it. Maybe there is no justice.