Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I opened my eyes and stared at Mikke across the table. There was no way he could’ve made this up. The puzzle kept falling on the floor and smashing, and I wished I could stop finding new pieces. Taking out my phone, I called Koivu.

  “Hi, it’s Maria. I’m still going to be here at the dentist for a minute, but there is one thing I need you to do. Send Patrol out to pick up Jani Väinölä right now. You have an arrest warrant. I want him as a witness for the bombing at my house. Yes, I’ll let Agent Muukkonen know. Get a move on. I want this guy now! Don’t call. I’m actually not supposed to be using my cell phone here.”

  Mikke leaned back in his chair with a curious expression on his face.

  “At the dentist?” Mikke asked.

  I grunted in irritation and hung up the phone.

  “So you know Väinölä?”

  “We’ve already questioned him a couple of times for cases we’re working, and apparently he was telling the truth before. He really wasn’t involved until he blew up my mailbox. My God, if this is all true! What a case . . .”

  I stood up and walked to the window. It was so high that all I could see was a strip of aquamarine sky and an airplane gliding into the distance.

  “On the phone you said you didn’t want to get caught snitching. But you just may have become the key witness in the biggest case we’ve had all year.”

  I leaned against the wall, hoping it would hold me up.

  “If we can get Väinölä to confess, we won’t have to bother you anymore. I don’t have to reveal my sources, not even to Agent Muukkonen and the NBI. But if not, would you be willing to testify? I can’t promise you protection from Salo and his cronies yet.”

  “I’ll just be happy if I can help somehow,” Mikke said, sounding tired, and I remembered how he had looked on the deck of his boat right before he’d intended to blow it up, with him still on it. “There isn’t anything noble about this for me. I’m just trying to buy forgiveness.”

  I tried to get my thoughts into some kind of order, but they bounded around wildly like sheep spooked by a bear. How could Rahnasto have known last week that I suspected him of being the instigator of all this? Who had leaked to him? Who did I dare trust now? I had to talk to someone, because alone I was never going to be able to put something together that would be coherent enough to nab anyone beyond Väinölä.

  “Maria,” Mikke said. “Are you alright?”

  “Almost. And you? How are you holding up?” I asked, sitting back down at the table.

  “These walls get to you eventually,” Mikke said. “Drugs help for a while, but getting hooked isn’t worth it. Kalle visits pretty often, and that keeps my head above water. I never could have survived the first few months without him. Maybe I’m starting to get used to prison, but every day I wish I would have gone to the police right after Harri died instead of taking the law into my own hands. Sometimes I play mind games with myself. If I killed Salo, he couldn’t threaten you anymore . . .”

  “That’s childish,” I said sharply.

  “I know. Every day in here I see that violence just leads to more violence. No matter how you try to keep your ears shut, you can’t help hearing it. I’m probably the only guy in our cell block who wasn’t beaten or raped as a child. My mother had the sense to get a divorce and take me away, but my dad beat my half brother. I don’t even have a history of violence as excuse for what I did.”

  Mikke’s voice was hoarse, but there wasn’t any self-pity in it. The grill on the window drew a crosshatch on the pale-green concrete wall, and the dull bang of a steel door echoed from somewhere in the building.

  Mikke had rolled up his shirtsleeves, and his veins were clearly visible on his lean, muscular forearms. There were no needle marks on them.

  “You asked me once if I’ve ever killed anyone. I said no, although what I should have said is that I’ve endangered my own life a few times and even the life of my unborn child. That was unforgivable. If Antti and Iida died because of my work, I don’t know if I could go on . . .”

  My voice failed. Continuing this conversation wasn’t going to do anyone any good. All it was doing was ripping the scab off an old wound.

  “I have to go question Väinölä. Thank you for calling me.”

  “Thank you for coming,” Mikke replied.

  I called the guard to take him.

  “Hang in there,” he said as he set off walking down the empty, echoing corridor. I should have been the one to say that to him. I would be fine. I was able to walk out the front gate, get in my car, and drive off into the lunchtime rush hour with all the other free people. On Aleksis Kivi Street I turned on the radio, and of course it was playing Ultra Bra’s “You Went Away.” Whoever was designing the soundtrack for my life had one hell of a sense of humor. I turned the radio up, even though my eyes were getting misty to the point that I could barely make out the license plate number of the car driving in front of me. When I stopped at the stoplight at Mannerheim Street, I took out my cell phone and activated the hands-free function. Then I called Agent Muukkonen. I said I had received an anonymous tip that Väinölä set the bomb at my house and that I had already issued an arrest warrant for him because it was well known that he had a grudge against me.

  “I’m a little busy, so I wouldn’t have time to question him today.” Agent Muukkonen said, which worked out perfectly because as far as I knew Väinölä hadn’t been arrested yet. Talking about the details of work like this helped calm me down. Muukkonen reported the explosive analysts’ latest results. The bomb had been a simple device with a pressure trigger, and the builder couldn’t have known in advance exactly how powerful it would be. Some of the gunpowder had failed to ignite, and the explosive analysts thought that whoever built it was either an amateur, an idiot, or someone who hadn’t quite decided how much damage he wanted to inflict. According to his criminal record, Väinölä didn’t have any experience with explosives.

  “Let me know when you collar Väinölä,” Muukkonen continued. “I’ll be able to interrogate him tomorrow, first thing in the morning. I’ve been wondering why all of Salo’s connections have been so quiet. We’ve been going after the wrong guy. I’ll request a search warrant. If we find any explosives in Väinölä’s apartment, so much the better.”

  I didn’t say anything to Agent Muukkonen about Reijo Rahnasto, because all of that was still theoretical. At the station I marched over to Koivu’s office with a half-eaten roll in my mouth and asked him and Wang to come see me. I had to trust them at least.

  When I told them about my visit to the prison and what I had found out there, Koivu’s face went white with rage. Wang listened more passively, although her eyebrows went up when I mentioned Jani Väinölä’s name.

  “So you believe Sjöberg’s story?” Koivu asked once I was done.

  “There isn’t any reason not to believe him.”

  Koivu shrugged and started scribbling something on a piece of paper. It was a simple cause-and-effect diagram. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Then my desk phone rang and we learned that Jani Väinölä had been arrested and was on his way to the police station.

  “Put him in a cell. The NBI will be here in the morning to question him. Please notify Agent Muukkonen.”

  “I imagine you’d like to be there for that interrogation,” Wang said, a smile spreading on her face.

  “Yes, I would, but I think I’ve played Lone Ranger enough for one day,” I grumbled and then moved on to our other cases. Koivu continued to seem irritated, but Wang was surprisingly relaxed and happy. We talked about changing up partners again, and I tried without success to inquire about the progress of Koivu and Wang’s potential new living arrangements. I imagined they would tell me when there was something to tell.

  At two they left for an interrogation. I didn’t really want to be alone, because solitude created space to think, and I didn’t want to think, at least not about Mikke. Reijo Rahnasto’s photograph still stared at me from my desk, and I grimaced at h
im. The newspaper clippings Eija Hirvonen had collected told about Rahnasto’s habit of leaving proposals off the agenda when he disagreed with other members of the City Planning Commission. Of course a business leader would want to steer the city in way similar to how he might steer a company, but democracy didn’t have much in common with that leadership style. But the city residents who identified with that sort of ruthless pursuit of success gave their blessing to Rahnasto’s methods.

  Rahnasto was a strangely faceless man. He was the son of a small businessman in Kokkola, the first in his family to go to college. He’d married his first wife while he was still a student. Based on the wedding date and Eriikka’s birthday, it was obviously a shotgun affair. After graduation, he had worked in the arms industry and at a lock factory. In 1985 he founded Rahnasto Industrial Security Service. At first the company had been a small-time operation with only a few people importing security equipment. Now it had separate departments for personal and corporate security and handled accounts for nearly all of the major high-tech firms in Espoo. Even the city bought security services from Rahnasto’s firm.

  Rahnasto’s political career had started in 1988. After landing a local council seat on his first try, the next election saw him move up to the City Council. Rahnasto’s policy positions had a hard edge: dismantling social services, outsourcing city functions, privatization, building more big-box stores and highways. His slogan in the previous parliamentary elections had been “Passing on the Right.” That hadn’t propelled him to Parliament quite yet.

  Not much personal information about Reijo Rahnasto the man was available. A profile in his alma mater’s database mentioned hunting, gun collecting, snooker playing, and malt whiskey drinking as hobbies. I would have been an aficionado of that last one too, if I had the money.

  When Lehtovuori came in to get advice on how to handle a domestic violence case, I put Rahnasto’s file aside. Lehtovuori seemed astonishingly ill prepared, even though the whole time I had been unit commander I had encouraged my subordinates to step up their game in this area. I spent more than half an hour explaining the basics, trying not to show my impatience. Then Puustjärvi came in to talk about the possibility of his enrolling in a programming class. An e-mail reminded me that the department’s third summer vacation coordination meeting would be on Friday morning.

  Iida smiled from the bookshelf. The picture had been taken a few months ago, after getting out of the sauna. She was wearing a white nightshirt and a pink bathrobe, her wet hair curly and tangled, her cheeks red. Suddenly I needed to be with her, to hold her in my arms, to make sure nothing was wrong in her world. One of the other families at the day care was expecting a baby, and just the night before Iida had been grilling me about when she was getting a little sister or brother. I tried to change the subject, but it didn’t work. Of course I was the one who had taught my daughter to be so headstrong. She demanded a bedtime story about how babies grow and are born, and once again I considered whether I wanted a baby, whether I would be able to give up work for even a couple of years. Would getting pregnant be a betrayal of the people who had chosen me to lead the Violent Crime Unit?

  It was three o’clock. I took Rahnasto’s picture and put it in my briefcase. If I was pushed out of my job because I was investigating a key figure in the city government, I would find another one. The prospect of changing jobs was feeling like a real possibility for the first time. On my way out, I stopped at a kiosk and bought a big bag of candy. A police officer was about to bribe the children of a witness.

  Suvi Seppälä was at home and had already brought Diana back from day care. The smell of frying ground beef and boiled macaroni hung in the apartment, and Suvi was whipping eggs and milk to finish the casserole. Marko Seppälä would be buried on Saturday. On the kitchen table was a sewing machine next to a heap of black velvet and some white lace. Apparently Suvi was sewing funeral clothing for the children.

  “Are you still investigating Marko’s death?” Suvi asked bitterly as she shoved the macaroni casserole in the oven. “I thought you’d forgotten all about it. You think it’s good that someone killed Marko so you can save money on trials and prison. So what do you want?”

  I took out Rahnasto’s picture and showed it to Suvi.

  “Is there anything familiar about this man?”

  “You could fit thirteen guys like that in a dozen. Why would I ever pay attention to someone like him? Who is he?”

  “Think carefully.”

  “Mom, I need to poop!” three-year-old Diana shouted as she rushed into the kitchen. Suvi moved to undo the girl’s overall shorts and went to help her onto the potty. Janita was helping Tony with his writing homework. School would be over soon. When Suvi returned, I asked her what she was going to do for childcare over the summer.

  “My brother is watching the kids for a week, and then my class will be done. I’m just glad I have them. Otherwise I would have hung myself by now. But Marko talks to me every day, telling me to take care of our babies. He’s promised to be their guardian angel,” Suvi said and then started threading the sewing machine. The velvet dresses were almost ready. Suvi was attaching the final frills to the sleeve of the smaller dress when Diana called for her.

  “I remembered one thing,” she said after she returned. “About the cell phone. It rang a couple of nights before Marko . . . before everything. Marko was with Janita at the laundry, so I answered. It was this guy who seemed really grumpy. He didn’t give his name. He told me to tell Marko to call and said he would know what it was about. Apparently he was pretty pissed that I answered and cussed Marko out when he called. Marko promised never to let anyone else answer the phone again.”

  “What kind of voice did he have?”

  “Unpleasant, hoarse, rude. Used to giving orders.”

  “Would you be able to recognize his voice now?”

  “Maybe. Sorry I didn’t say anything before. I really didn’t remember,” Suvi said and started the sewing machine.

  “I’m glad you’re telling me now. Does the name Reijo Rahnasto mean anything to you?” I shouted over the noise of the machine.

  “No. Who’s he?”

  “The man in this picture.”

  “Some rich guy?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Did he kill Marko?”

  Of course I couldn’t answer. Suvi had finished the frill on one dress and was quickly working on the next. I hadn’t sewn anything more complicated than a bath towel for Iida, since I never had time. Suvi could whip up whatever princess fantasy dresses she pleased. I wondered if she took custom orders.

  “I need a smoke break,” Suvi said and pulled a pack from her purse. She flicked her disposable lighter a couple times. It sparked but didn’t produce a flame.

  “Where the hell are all my matches? Janita, are there any matches in the bedroom?”

  “Yeah, I’ll bring them!” the girl yelled in reply. Janita bore a striking resemblance to her father, minus the police-lineup look of apathy in Marko Seppälä’s eyes. Suvi lifted the box of matches to strike one, and then I saw the logo: RISS, white letters on a blue background.

  “Suvi, where did you get that matchbox?” I asked, barely restraining my desire to grab her wrist.

  “This? No clue. Marko was always picking up matches all over the place.”

  “Do you have more like this?”

  “I don’t know. Janita, will you see if we have any more of these?”

  It turned out to be the only one. I told Suvi that it might be an important piece of evidence and went to the car to get a pair of gloves and a plastic bag out of my investigation kit. The matchbox probably only had the Seppäläs’ fingerprints on it, but we always had to try. No one had thought to pay any attention to a common matchbox when they executed the search warrant.

  The smell of the macaroni casserole was growing stronger. I was hungry too. I helped Suvi move the sewing off the dining table, and we continued chatting. I kept trying to come back to Rahnasto, but Suv
i didn’t know anything.

  “I keep telling you I never got involved in Marko’s business. I want to help you. I want to see whoever shot Marko rot in prison. Just tell me what I can do.”

  “We may need you to identify a voice.”

  “I’ll do whatever. Not for me, but for the kids. Marko was what he was, but he loved his children. We would have had another three. Children are better off when they learn to take care of themselves. You only have one, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are you? Thirty-five isn’t too old yet. My aunt was forty-four when she had her eighth, and he was totally healthy. They aren’t religious or anything; they just like kids. Like me and Marko.”

  “I actually need to go to pick up mine from day care. Call if anything new comes to mind or you just want to talk.”

  I stopped by the station to send the matchbox to the lab, then went for Iida. After dinner we visited the animal hospital to see Einstein, who was already perking up. After Iida fell asleep, Antti and I compared the loan offers we had from the various banks. Luckily I had a personal mathematician for whom interest rates were child’s play.

  “We can’t really handle a mortgage and maternity leave,” I said thoughtfully. “But interest rates won’t stay this low forever.”

  “My grandma always said that a baby brings bread with it,” Antti said with a laugh.

  I laughed. “Huh, so did mine. Well then maybe we should practice a little if we’re going to start thinking like our grandmothers . . .”

  Sex was fun again, simultaneously intense and safe. With someone I knew so well it was easy to try new things, and even after so long there were still things to learn. I kept my eyes open the whole time, because I wanted to see who I was with, whose lips were nibbling my neck and breasts, who pushed me over the edge into the vortex of orgasm.