Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Detective Lieutenant Kallio arrived at nine fifteen. Shall we start at the beginning, Väinölä? You wanted to tell us what you were doing a week ago Friday, the night of May fourteenth.”

  Väinölä sat quietly for about a minute. When Agent Muukkonen repeated his question the third time, Väinölä finally answered.

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I went to set a bomb at a house in Hentta.”

  “Can you give us the exact address?”

  Väinölä repeated my address and then gave a slow, detailed account of setting the bomb.

  “I was told the bomb wasn’t supposed to kill. And it wouldn’t have done much harm to an adult. The idea was just to mess up Kallio’s arms. I was told that she always goes out to get the mail.”

  “Who told you this?” Agent Muukkonen asked just before I burst out:

  “And what if a child had gotten the mail? What would have happened then? Would she have just been blinded, or would she have died?” I leaned forward in my chair, and Väinölä’s dull-skinned face was only a foot from my own. “I’m sure you know how much guards and prisoners like child killers.”

  “He didn’t tell me you have a kid.”

  “Who didn’t tell you?”

  “I don’t know the dude’s name,” Väinölä said and glared at me defensively. Hairy hands ripped a piece of paper into quarter-inch shreds.

  “Where did you meet him? Describe him,” Muukkonen demanded. Several seconds passed before Väinölä spoke.

  He had received a call the previous Tuesday. The call had come from a pay phone, which Väinölä knew because he heard coins being added.

  “He knew I’d been interrogated for that fag’s murder, even though I didn’t do it, and that you’ve been messing with my business,” Väinölä muttered. He had been speaking directly to me the whole time, even though Agent Muukkonen was asking most of the questions. “He suggested I do a gig that would be good for both of us. I would get revenge on you and make some cash, and he would get you to stop breathing down his neck.”

  “Is that what he said? What was his voice like?” I asked, and Agent Muukkonen glanced at me in confusion.

  “His voice? Hoarse. Like he had a sore throat or something.”

  Väinölä wiped the sweat from his brow. There was no water in the room, but he clearly needed some. I went and filled a pitcher in the nearest bathroom and then poured a glass for Väinölä, who grabbed it greedily. Would we need to send him for detox after questioning?

  Väinölä had arranged to meet his client last Wednesday night. The man had suggested meeting in the Suvela Elementary School parking lot. He had been waiting in the shadows when Väinölä came. The man already had a bomb constructed, pictures of the house, and a diagram of the lot, along with keys for a car rented for three days in Väinölä’s name and a ten-thousand-mark down payment. He had promised to send Väinölä the remaining forty thousand by express mail once the job was done.

  “What company was the rental from?”

  “The Hertz at the airport. I took it back on Friday. Everything was paid for in advance. On Friday afternoon the rest of the money arrived at my house.”

  “Where is the money now?” I asked and thought of the bill Suvi Seppälä had given me. Would the serial numbers give us a clue this time?

  “I’ve been having a lot of fun the last few days. I have old debts, and Jarkola has been breathing down my neck. Is he the one who snitched on me to you and Salo?”

  “No,” I answered quickly. So Väinölä had heard that Salo was looking for him. When Väinölä had been arrested on Wednesday, he had been at home asleep, still drunk from the night before. The search of his house had also turned up three Ecstasy tablets.

  Agent Muukkonen tried to squeeze more information out of Väinölä, but he wasn’t willing to say much more. He did say that his client was average height, in his fifties, and had been wearing a long, expensive-looking coat that was inappropriate for the weather. A dark, wide-brimmed hat covered his hair, and dark glasses concealed his eyes. He didn’t have a beard or mustache, and a scarf had partially covered his jaw. The description fit Rahnasto, but I wondered if any judge would believe an identification made by Jani Väinölä. Rahnasto’s picture was still in my office, but I didn’t get it. Väinölä would have to pick him out of a lineup. After a positive ID, remanding Rahnasto for trial would be easy.

  To my surprise, Muukkonen focused on asking where and with whom Väinölä had wasted his bounty money. Trying to remember anything from five straight days of drinking and drugs made Väinölä sweat. He was a patriotic guy: instead of taking a last-minute flight to the Canaries or Rhodes, he supported domestic bars and entrepreneurial local women. He bragged about being with three women at the same time, and as he thought about that, his expression brightened a little.

  Agent Muukkonen motioned for me to follow him out into the hall. He wanted to talk.

  “Apparently we’re dealing with the famous Unidentified Man again. Who would have been prepared to pay to set off that bomb at your house?”

  I told Agent Muukkonen about my suspicions and the reception I’d received in the department, and his expression darkened.

  “We’ll question Väinölä’s drinking buddies. We have an APB out on Jarkola. Hopefully someone will be able to confirm that the money was payment for setting a bomb, not from selling drugs. We did find the express-mail envelope in Väinölä’s apartment. The sender was listed as Jari Virtanen, and the return address was the same as Väinölä’s. There were several sets of prints, but they were probably just from the postal workers. Guy’s got to be pretty coolheaded to send forty thousand in the mail!” Muukkonen shook his head. “Of course we’ll pay Hertz a visit too. They ask for ID. The person who bought the rental must have had a fake driver’s license with Jani Väinölä’s name.”

  “Getting that wouldn’t be hard. I suggest putting Väinölä back in a cell and letting him spend the weekend squirming. I’ll see what I can get out of the girls down on Aleksis Kivi Street. Probably not much.”

  I went back into the interrogation room, where Hakala was finishing up the interview record. Väinölä was lying half on the table with his face on his arms. His body twitched occasionally, and beads of sweat ran down the folds of his neck.

  “Should we send a doctor to see you? You could get something for the shakes,” I said to Väinölä, who lifted his head a little. A suspicious expression filled his bloodshot eyes.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “No.”

  “What are you, some kind of Mother Teresa?”

  “No, just a decent person,” I replied. “You probably haven’t met very many in your life. And you wouldn’t now either if you had hit my daughter. But you aren’t going to learn, even if you spend the rest of your life hung over, so it’s just as well.”

  “I didn’t know you have a kid!” Väinölä shouted and pounded his fists on the table so hard that Hakala jumped up from behind his computer, ready to intervene. “He only talked about your husband, some kind of fucking long-haired hippie draft-dodger type, but nothing about kids. Cute little chick, by the way. Thanks for the picture. I saw her dead in my dreams, last night I mean. I guess that’s what your minions wanted!” Väinölä buried his face again in the dirty sleeves of his aviator’s jacket and whimpered like a hungry greyhound.

  “Then we had the same dream,” I said quietly and left. I asked the duty officer to have the department physician drop in on Väinölä.

  I ate lunch with Puustjärvi and Puupponen. The latter was practically bubbling over with bad jokes. A couple of nights ago, he was at a bar and a woman had said she was an energy healer, and that the next day she was going to have a colleague look at her astral body and diagnose the cause of her neck pain.

  “So I said, ‘If I told you you had a beautiful astral body, would you hold it against me?’ But she didn’t even smile. She just walked away!” Puupponen said with
a grin. I tried not to choke on my chicken lasagna.

  I ran into Wang and Koivu in our unit hallway.

  “Hey, Anu, what on earth did you and Liisa say to Väinölä yesterday?”

  Wang grinned slyly.

  “We just threatened him a bit. We told him that Salo was furious and there would be a welcoming committee awaiting him at Sörnäinen. Apparently Salo’s buddy Jarkola had told Väinölä the same thing. He went totally white. Exactly the color of the Finnish flag,” Wang said with a laugh.

  “Sounds like you enjoyed yourself,” I said, still astonished.

  “Guess how many times guys like that have called me a slant-eyed whore? I should get to have a little fun with them once in a while. Liisa told Väinölä that if he cooperated, the judge might agree to send him to Häme or Kakola instead of Sörnäinen. And Väinölä believed us.”

  “And the picture of Iida? What did you do with that?”

  “We showed it to Väinölä and told him that she goes out to get the morning paper sometimes too. He doesn’t have any bodies on his rap sheet yet. I didn’t know what effect the picture would have, but apparently it worked.”

  “I owe both of you for this,” I said, laughing. “Next Thursday, after soccer. Ice cream, beer, or both.”

  Wang, who never drank more than a glass, said she wanted both.

  I still couldn’t be completely happy about Väinölä’s confession. It was a shame that making threats was the only method that worked on people like him, but we were just encouraging the cycle of violence by using it. Was there any other way?

  “I’m tired of dealing with these types. Always the same story: no father, mother left for Sweden, shipped off to an orphanage, then a couple of foster homes, and then to a youth detention center. When they turn to crime, who are we supposed to blame? In this country we’re supposed to have the freedom to choose. At least that’s what the cell phone commercials claim.”

  “Some people do,” Wang said, and then Koivu pulled her away.

  Some expert in workplace psychology had decided that the department’s summer vacation-coordination meeting should be held on Friday afternoon. I would have preferred to be anywhere but in another endless meeting. And, to top it off, some of the key players were gone. Robbery and Narcotics was at the Police Expo holding workshops about their specialties. When I arrived upstairs, Taskinen and Deputy Chief Kaartamo were already waiting. Kaartamo was responsible for department human resources and budgeting, so he was in charge.

  “Well, Maria, what’s new?” Taskinen asked, and stood to pull out the chair next to him. I sat down and told him that Väinölä confessed. I suggested that we pull Rahnasto in for a lineup. Kaartamo instantly turned salmon pink.

  “We can’t mix Rahnasto up in this just because some small-time crook is trying to save his own skin. And what were you doing at that interrogation?”

  “Väinölä demanded that I be there. He said he would only talk if I was present.”

  Kaartamo shook his head, but he didn’t say anything more, since the others were arriving. At the end of the meeting, Kaartamo brought up merging Organized Crime with Narcotics, and Laine looked flustered. The head of Narcotics was one of the country’s leading experts, so there was no way he would leave the department. So Laine would end up in the number-two spot, which clearly irritated him. I verified that the staff-sharing system I had tentatively arranged with Narcotics would still work, so even during the summer our caseload wouldn’t get too terribly backed up.

  “The rape unit is going to be busy once miniskirt season starts,” Laine said. “This morning I almost ran into a tree when I saw this chick at the bus stop in a belly shirt and a skirt about the width of my hand. And don’t try to say she was just dressing for herself, Kallio.”

  Determined not to rise to Laine’s bait, I just shrugged and let it go. After the meeting ended, Kaartamo looked at me with an expression that said he had something for me, but I escaped into the elevator with the head of Patrol. I picked up Iida, whose cheeks had started to show their first freckles. We met up with Antti and went to retrieve Einstein. Over the past week he had lost at least three pounds, leaving the skin around his stomach hanging like an empty sack between his legs.

  When I picked him up, he felt strangely light. I remembered how small Iida had felt right after she was born compared to this thirteen-pound cat. Einstein hated his Elizabethan collar, which he had to wear for another ten days. By then the stitches would dissolve.

  Back at home, the poor cat ate a handful of shrimp but didn’t have the energy to do more than wave a paw at the toy mouse on a string Iida tried to offer him. Soon he curled up on a chair warmed by the evening sun and fell asleep.

  Inside I felt a familiar, dull pain: my period was starting. The pill made life easy—I could predict everything to within a couple of hours. My grandmother had frowned on people interfering with nature, although she had spared me her lecture about the will of God. “Now don’t you start now,” she had said to me during my first winter at the police academy, when I’d felt like maybe I wasn’t going to be able to adjust to all the rules. “Don’t you quit. You’ll regret it later. No one regrets the things they do as much as the thing they leave undone. Believe me. I’m an old lady.” I’d studied the network of wrinkles on my grandmother’s face, her oxidized-copper-green eyes, which were almost blind without her glasses, and her best gray dress, which she wore when entertaining visitors. Would she have said, “Now don’t you start now,” if I had told her about my fear about pushing the investigation of Rahnasto? Or would she have told me to trust myself and keep going?

  As if I had to ask. And I wasn’t alone in my suspicions. I called my lawyer friend Leena and told her the whole story. She didn’t think I was paranoid either.

  On Saturday morning I went to the Police Expo. I would be working a booth where children could draw pictures of the police. For the first time in a long time I was wearing a uniform, which made me stand taller and keep me shoulders squared.

  Iida thought I looked silly, almost like a man. She and Antti had promised to come to the fair around noon, when the police boats would be putting on a show.

  The day passed quickly. Playing with the kids was fun, even though I’d never thought of myself as much of a babysitter. Iida tried every possible toy, from a police motorcycle to a snowmobile specially outfitted for use in Lapland. How she managed to turn on the siren I don’t know. I had promised to stay to rip tickets for the concert in the evening, because I was interested in seeing how cops and punk rockers managed to share a stage. When the police choir and a rainbow-haired band named Kalle P. did the Clash’s “Police and Thieves” together, I almost teared up.

  “This never would have worked twenty years ago,” I said to Koivu who was right there dancing next to me. “Neither side would have agreed to it. It’s nice to see things getting better in some ways.”

  “Times they are a-changin’, Maria,” Koivu said solemnly. “I’ve been meaning to tell you . . . we’re moving in two weeks. Will you help us?”

  Koivu blushed, his expression like a little boy caught with his fingers in the cookie jar.

  “Moving? Of course I’ll be there,” I replied. We’d have to handle the partner reassignment first thing Monday.

  I admired the green of late spring covering the shore as I biked home. A flock of ducks took flight from the reeds on Laajalahti Bay and started to head out to sea but then decided to land near Hanasaari Island instead. On Karhusaari Island there were men in tuxedos smoking on a terrace and a wedding couple posing for pictures near the dock. Sailboats glided along the horizon, reminding me that Iida and Antti had gone out to Inkoo to launch our family’s boat.

  I would be at the expo tomorrow as well to speak to early-childhood educators about preventing violence in day cares. All I really had to say was that allowing violent games to be played or glamorizing hitting was not acceptable. That should go without saying, but the toy manufacturers were always pushing the opposite.


  Silence awaited me at home, but Einstein was thrilled to see me. I thought I might indulge myself in one of the pearls from our video collection, but I didn’t even manage to get Priest rewound before the phone rang.

  “Is this Detective Kallio?” an agitated female voice asked.

  “Speaking. Is that you, Suvi?”

  “Yes. Listen, I called that Rahnasto guy. Marko was buried today, and I was feeling so bad . . . I wanted to show that bastard whose father he took away. I called him and said that I had found something of his in Marko’s pocket, but I hadn’t given it to the police, and that we could do a trade.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t have anything, or actually I do, and he promised to come here. At first I thought it’d be OK because the children are here too, and so he wouldn’t do anything crazy. But I’m starting to get scared. What if the same thing that happened to Marko happens to me?”

  21

  “Calm down, Suvi! You were smart to call me.” I tried to sound composed. More worry wasn’t going to help. “What did you arrange with Rahnasto?”

  “He’s coming here at ten thirty. I wanted the children to be asleep.”

  It was already ten past ten. Fortunately I hadn’t opened my beer yet, so I could drive.

  “I’ll be right there, and I’m sending a patrol car. When the doorbell rings, call me again and leave the line open. Can you put the phone out of sight?”

  “I can put it up on the hat shelf.”

  “Good. Don’t let Rahnasto inside!”

  “Why not? He wouldn’t have agreed to meet me if he didn’t have something to hide. He killed Marko, and now he’s going to pay for it!”

  “Do you have some kind of evidence you didn’t give me?” I asked angrily, but Suvi didn’t answer. “Don’t let Rahnasto know that you think he shot Marko. Be careful. Let me inside. I’ll ring the doorbell three times.”