Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I stood up, and Väinölä flinched involuntarily as if he thought I might attack him. That was one mistake I’d never made, though I had felt like it more than once. Instead I walked to the darkest corner of the room, as far away from Väinölä as possible. We would have a search warrant by tomorrow, and for all I cared Väinölä could languish behind bars for the full forty-eight hours the law allowed before we had to file formal charges.

  I looked at Väinölä’s hands. They were small with short fingers.

  His knuckles showed no signs of bruising, but that didn’t prove anything. The attacker had probably worn leather gloves. We didn’t have to ask Väinölä whether he smoked, because he and his apartment stank of tobacco.

  “What were you up to yesterday between five and six?” Koivu asked with impressive composure.

  “Yesterday . . . Probably watching Tiny Two with the kids while the missus cooked dinner, you stupid fuck. Let me think. I don’t wear a watch. Was I at the gym . . . ?”

  “What gym?”

  “No, I was in the city. Shopping.”

  “At what stores?”

  “I don’t remember all of them.” Väinölä wiped his shaved head with his hand. He was starting to sweat. Maybe it was just because of the lamp.

  “Did you buy anything?” I asked.

  “A pack of condoms and a bottle of vodka,” Väinölä said.

  “Do you have receipts?”

  “Who saves receipts?”

  “Maybe you should. They could have helped you prove that you were in the city,” Koivu said, still sounding friendly, and then continued quizzing Väinölä about his shopping trip. Väinölä sounded convincing enough, but he had had almost a full day to think about what he would say in this interview. Strange that he hadn’t asked any of his pals to confirm his alibi.

  “The store detective at Stockmann would remember me. The skinny one with the mustache. He followed me from men’s socks down to the music department.”

  That was also possible to check, as was the state liquor store Väinölä claimed to have visited. The swastika on his head was conspicuous enough so that it wouldn’t be too hard to find people who, if he was telling the truth, could verify his story.

  “Why did you and your friends attack Petri Ilveskivi and Tommi Laitinen three years ago?”

  Väinölä turned toward me.

  “Can’t you read, bitch? Everything is in the case files and court ruling.”

  “Why are you afraid of seeing two men kissing? Does it make you want to do it too?”

  “I should have known only a goddamn lesbian would want to be a cop!” Väinölä shouted, and then he refused to answer any more questions. So we sent him back to his cell.

  “He doesn’t have a motorcycle. I checked this morning,” Koivu said as we were walking back to our unit. “But he could borrow or steal one. I’ll have Anu and Puupponen check out his alibi and talk to his friends.”

  “Väinölä is one line of investigation, but we also have Ilveskivi’s circle. Have you talked to Tommi Laitinen today?”

  “Just briefly. He was still pretty messed up. We’ll have to interview him tomorrow.”

  “I have some friends in common with Ilveskivi. I’ll drop by their place today.”

  “More work in your free time,” Koivu said with a smirk, even though he was just like me. Work had to come before everything else sometimes. But this was an easy opportunity to mix business and pleasure: our mutual friends the Jensens had four children, so I could take Iida along.

  I was just getting ready to go home when the phone rang. It was the same tabloid crime reporter from the press conference, wanting confirmation on a tip about an arrest in the Ilveskivi case. Where on earth could he have heard that?

  “What if I said that we currently have an individual at the police station who is assisting our investigation?” I said evasively.

  “Jani Väinölä? The same man who attacked Ilveskivi and his boyfriend a few years ago?”

  “Making any names public at this point could hinder our investigation.”

  We continued to argue. The reporter was tenacious, but so was I. Finally, apparently I’d put him off enough and he hung up.

  On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store, along with what felt like half of Espoo. Fortunately the delicatessen sold premade samosas, which were a handy solution to the dilemma of what to feed the adults. Iida could eat last week’s meat loaf that was still in the freezer.

  Sometimes planning menus for the family was a nice break from work, but right now I didn’t feel like I would be able to remember what we were out of. At least I knew we needed cat food, so I bought ten cans of Einstein’s favorite. As he aged he had become fussier and now turned up his nose at leftover liver casserole.

  Because of the Ring II beltway construction, driving home was an adventure. The landscape changed almost daily. The coltsfoot, which were doing their best to beautify the torn-up shoulders of the road, made me long for the way things used to be.

  After dinner I called the Jensens and asked if we could come by for a visit. They said yes, so I installed Iida’s seat on my bike, dressed her warmly, and together we set off. Antti stayed home, even though the Jensens had been his friends originally. Kirsti Jensen had been his officemate at the university. I was closer to her wife, Eva Jensen, who worked as a psychiatrist. The family’s youngest, Talvikki, was six months older than Iida, and the girls got along well.

  I rang the doorbell on Eva and Kirsti’s half of the house, even though the person I really needed to talk to was Lauri Jensen. He was an architect, and I was pretty sure he knew Petri Ilveskivi from his work. All in all, the Jensen family had four parents and four children. Sometimes Antti and I were jealous that it was easier for both couples to go out, since they could take turns watching the kids. When we said that out loud, the Jensens offered to take Iida into the herd whenever we wanted.

  Two golden retrievers rushed to greet us, and Iida started cavorting with them. I exchanged news with the women, and Iida slipped off to play with the older children. We were lucky she wasn’t usually shy of new things and new people. After a few minutes, Lauri Jensen appeared from the dining room. He looked as though he’d been crying.

  “Oh, Maria,” he said and came in for a hug, which made the tears start again.

  “I’m sure you know what happened,” Kirsti said. “One of Lauri’s good friends just died.”

  I blushed. “That was one of my reasons for coming.” I felt like I was taking advantage of a friend in a time of grief. “I remembered that you knew Petri Ilveskivi, Lauri. I’m sorry for what happened.”

  “Are you in charge of the investigation?” Lauri asked as he dried his eyes.

  “Yes. Would you feel up to talking about it?”

  “All night if it would help. Is it true that Petri was beaten to death?”

  I told them everything that had been covered in the press conference. They didn’t ask any questions, since they knew that I had to maintain confidentiality. Then Eva went to tamp down the commotion coming from the children’s room, and Kirsti went to make tea. I stayed alone with Lauri.

  “I mostly got to know Petri at work, even though we ran into each other at LGBTI Rights Finland. Petri was active in the gay-rights movement, and he was a member of the LGBTI Rights board for years, but then local politics took over. At one point Petri worked in our architecture firm, but then he moved over to furniture design. He specialized in couches, and he designed pieces for Asko and Skanno. He was really talented, but he never wanted to tie himself to one single thing. He was always doing a lot of freelance work, contracts for interior-design magazines and stuff like that. Petri designed that couch you’re sitting on right now. Nice, isn’t it?”

  Lauri continued, explaining that he and Petri had met about once a month and exchanged e-mails almost daily. Lately he had thought that Petri seemed restless, but he didn’t know why.

  “Maybe he was working too much. He had to earn a living, and
then there were the elections. And the City Planning Commission is swamped right now because of all the new construction in the city. But I think there was something else too. Petri was depressed because there wasn’t any headway being made on adoption rights. Petri and Tommi really wanted a child. They even asked Eva and Kirsti if one of them would make them a baby, but . . .”

  “We both want to live with the children we have,” Kirsti said from the door. “And we can’t just keep expanding this little commune. Petri was angry at us, and I think Tommi was even more upset.” Kirsti sighed. “But I’ve already done all the birthing I’m going to do. I’m over forty, and I don’t think I could handle another pregnancy.”

  Even though I should have been thinking of Petri Ilveskivi’s baby worries instead of my own, this stung. I had turned thirty-five recently, and Iida was two and a half now. If we wanted any siblings for her, we would need to get to work. But I just didn’t know if that’s what I wanted.

  “Petri and Tommi were looking for a woman who would be willing to share custody. And we do know people who’ve done that. But so far they hadn’t found anyone, and now . . .” Lauri wiped another tear from his cheek.

  “Was Petri a predictable person? Did he follow the same routines?”

  “Yes. He thought a freelancer needed to be systematic about everything if he was going to stay employed. He joked that because he worked in an arts-related profession and was also gay that everyone assumed he was reckless, even though in reality he was incredibly meticulous. Tommi is the same, and their place is so clean I can barely stand being there.”

  “They couldn’t handle it here with all this chaos,” Kirsti interjected.

  “Did Petri always travel the same routes? Was he generally punctual?”

  “He was always early. And he repeated the same patterns to a fault. Every morning he ate the same breakfast: coffee, bread, juice, and yogurt. Once we stayed together at a hotel in Turku that didn’t serve yogurt for breakfast. Petri had to go to the store to buy some.” A smile momentarily lit up Lauri’s brown eyes.

  “He would have been a good dad. Little kids love routine,” Kirsti said with a laugh.

  Eva returned and reported that the children had started a beauty salon. Apparently Iida was getting a princess makeover. Then Eva went to finish making the tea Kirsti had started.

  “Petri was the quintessential devoted father type, and he happened to love men,” Lauri continued. “He and Tommi were very happy. A child was the only thing missing. And the child didn’t have to be their own. They were starting to get desperate, beginning to hatch crazy plans.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as finding some junkie girl who was pregnant and wouldn’t be able to take care of her baby. Petri said he was afraid sometimes that Tommi would go and start a relationship with a woman under false pretenses just to get a kid.”

  “Wow. Interesting. So who is Eila Honkavuori?”

  “Eila is Petri’s friend. She’s on the City Planning Commission too. I’ve only met her at parties. She’s quite a phenomenon.”

  “I could totally fall for her if I wasn’t happily married and if Eila wasn’t straight,” Kirsti said. “Kind of a Mother Earth type.”

  We moved to the table for tea, and Lauri continued his reminiscing. Eva seemed strangely quiet, mostly focusing on monitoring the children and serving them their bedtime snack. As I rode home with Iida dozing off behind me, I thought about everything I had heard. Lauri thought that Ilveskivi would have fought back furiously if attacked, and so the attacker’s leathers would likely show signs of a struggle. I had requested the search warrant for Jani Väinölä’s apartment and would probably have it by morning.

  I realized that I wanted to be there for the search and also to question Tommi Laitinen myself. Even though I was ambitious and enjoyed my position as unit commander, I was most in my element in the field and conducting interrogations. I didn’t want to admit to myself how important my work was to me, how much I wanted to be good at it. In those occasional moments of clarity, I could admit to myself that I was a police officer first, then a mother, and a wife last of all, but then the shame would hit, and I’d push the thought out of my mind.

  In the morning I took Iida to day care before eight and then stopped for coffee on the sixth floor, where the police leadership met to share news. I asked the lieutenant over in Narcotics whether Jani Väinölä was ever suspected of connections to the drug trade. According to him, Väinölä had been under occasional surveillance, but they’d never found anything.

  “The City Council chairwoman sends her regards,” Assistant Chief of Police Kaartamo said. “She hopes that Councilman Ilveskivi’s killer will be caught soon.”

  “We’re trying,” I replied. “In the meantime, tell your politician friends to authorize some hiring.”

  I awaited the tabloids with terror. Hopefully some former beauty queen would announce a divorce or say she’d been born again and push the Ilveskivi case out of the headlines. Thankfully, the morning paper had taken a relatively restrained approach to reporting Ilveskivi’s death.

  Our morning briefing in the Violent Crime Unit was mostly routine, since most of the other cases we were working were routine. I reviewed the main lines of investigation for the Ilveskivi case and made assignments. The meeting was wrapping up when our trainee, Mikko Mela, decided to open his mouth.

  “What if this was revenge? Maybe Ilveskivi had AIDS and gave it to someone.”

  Lähde and Puupponen guffawed. I only sighed. Mela was an enthusiastic kid who hadn’t learned yet when to keep his mouth shut.

  “Any diseases will turn up in the autopsy,” I replied. Revenge was a common motive for assault, even though Mela’s theory seemed absurd.

  Koivu was headed for the autopsy. His eyebrows went up a bit when I said I would be accompanying Wang and Puustjärvi on the search of Väinölä’s apartment. The Forensics team would be ready at ten. I was just rushing down to my car when my phone rang.

  “Hello, this is Reijo Rahnasto.” I recognized the dry, low-pitched voice. “How is the Petri Ilveskivi murder investigation going?”

  Irritation rose in my throat. What made Rahnasto think he had a right to ask about the investigation?

  “We’re making progress.”

  “The newspaper said that the police are looking for information about a motorcycle rider.”

  “Yes. Do you have information about that?” I asked.

  “No, but . . . so you don’t know who was on the motorcycle?”

  “Excuse me, but I have to go. Thank you for your call,” I said coolly. Rahnasto just had time to tell me to call if anything new came up before I hung up.

  We looked like winter soldiers in our white protective suits. Narcotics had sent one of their dogs along with the Forensics team. His name was Jerry, and he caught a scent right at the door. His ears perked up, and he made for the bathroom. The handler, Kettunen, and two men from Narcotics followed behind the dog, and they took up all the room in the small bathroom, so I was happy not to go in. Instead I stepped into the studio apartment’s only real room to examine the neo-Nazi posters covering the walls.

  “You take the kitchen. Puustjärvi and I will take this side and the bathroom once Jerry and Kettunen let us in,” I said to Wang.

  Such a small space was easy to search. The kitchenette had the standard furnishings: refrigerator, cooktop, battered laminate cabinets, small table, and two chairs. Väinölä’s bed was in an alcove, along with a couch and a bookcase holding a few books, video cassettes, and other random junk, plus a TV and VCR. In one corner were a couple of cardboard boxes.

  As an old punk I felt a strong distaste for neo-Nazism, but I tried to view the posters with a professional eye. Väinölä was no different from some of the people sitting in Parliament or trying to get there, although they tended to express their xenophobia less explicitly. But at the moment I wasn’t interested in racist material; I was looking for confirmation that Väinölä still held a gr
udge against Ilveskivi.

  Kettunen and the Narcotics team were banging around in the bathroom. Based on the noise, I figured that they were trying to remove some tiles. Puustjärvi went through the clothes closet. Wang searched for knives and would collect any possible murder weapons she found. Although Väinölä probably would have had the sense to get rid of the knife.

  I started browsing the books on the bookshelf. Hitler’s Mein Kampf appeared to be unread. However, the Commando comic books about World War II were full of dog-eared pages, even though in the end the Finns drove the Nazis out of Lapland. The video shelf was full of hardcore porn and war movies. Väinölä’s apartment seemed almost too faithful to the role he was playing.

  Something fell in the bathroom, and I heard Jerry’s tail banging against the toilet. Kettunen whistled, and Jerry appeared in the living room with a ball in his mouth. He thought he was looking for his toy, not drugs. Kettunen poked his head out of the bathroom, smiling big with a foil packet wrapped in plastic in his hand.

  “Based on Jerry’s reaction, this is something more than Väinölä’s parents’ wedding rings.” Kettunen took the packet to the kitchenette, set it on the table, and opened it with tweezers. Inside were hundreds of small white tablets. Ecstasy.

  “Well, would you look at that! Väinölä seems to have a new line of work. And what do we have in this one?” Kettunen undid a smaller foil packet, which contained a brown, mealy lump about two inches thick. “Heroin. For smoking. Väinölä isn’t quite the Boy Scout we thought he was.”

  “Not by a long shot,” Puustjärvi added, holding up a Colt .45. “I found this wrapped in a rag inside a pillow. I’m guessing he doesn’t have a permit.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You questioned Väinölä, Kallio. Did he have any needle tracks?” Kettunen asked.

  “I didn’t notice any, but the tattoos could have hidden them. Maybe he just takes Ecstasy. You should take a look, though, since you have a better eye.”

  After I’d finished with the books, I started rummaging through the cardboard boxes. The first one was full of random junk, so I dumped it out on the dirty gray rug. In the jumble I noticed a familiar-looking copy of Z Magazine, the one that had the interview with Petri Ilveskivi and Tommi Laitinen. The magazine fell open to that very article when I picked it up. There were smudges on the pages, as though they had been flipped through several times.