Copper Heart

by Leena Lehtolainen

  A tall, blonde figure opened the door. After sniffing the sweaty air for a second, she looked around for something heavy and propped open the door. Small doses of fresh air smelling of rain flowed in.

  Kaisa was clearly accustomed to dealing with the unpleasant weight room. Why on earth did she accept such miserable conditions? Even though she detested the media clamor, she was a determined woman, not some shrinking violet. There were rumors that Kivinen was building her a winter practice facility in the Old Mine’s ore-milling building. Maybe that would also include a decent gym.

  Kaisa said hi as she marched past toward the leg machines. Her face was already sweaty, her shirt plastered to her beautifully shaped back. Her frizzy hair was pulled back in a ponytail at her neck. I wanted to chat with her about the details of how she had found Jaska’s body. She seemed calm. Apparently she had pulled herself together since the shock of the morning. But the focused way she started her workout made me decide she probably wanted to be left alone.

  While I worked on the leg press, I admired Kaisa’s flawless technique. She probably would have done nicely in competitive weight-lifting too. Her loads were twice as heavy as mine. That was one damn strong woman. Dropping 110 pounds of Meritta off the Tower would have been a piece of cake. Jaska wouldn’t have stood a chance either.

  The more heavily perfumed of the two aerobics women went and exchanged a few words with Kaisa before disappearing with the other aerobics woman into the dressing room, leaving us alone. Even though we were working on opposite sides of the room, some energy field seemed to run between us. We each seemed to be waiting for the other to break the silence.

  When I went to get a drink from the fountain, which was almost right next to her, Kaisa lifted her eyes from her toes.

  “You lift pretty regular, don’t you?”

  “No pain, no gain, right? Congratulations on your win, by the way. You must have really good concentration to stay focused with everything that’s been going on.”

  Kaisa smiled modestly and wiped the sweat from her neck. “I’ll admit I was relieved to get away from home for a while and think about something besides Meritta. Not that the reporters let me forget. And then this morning…Look, I gotta finish my workout. I can’t afford to compromise my training now. If you ain’t in a hurry, come to my place after we’re done. I got something I need to talk about.”

  Of course that was fine with me since I had questions for Kaisa too. Maybe she would know about Meritta’s key and the mystery of the mine paintings. And I guess I would have to ask about Meritta and Johnny too, even though I remembered Kaisa’s pained expression last Friday night at the opening gala. And where the hell had Johnny disappeared to? If he was trying to escape a murder conviction, he would be running for the rest of his life. But did Johnny have it in him to commit a double murder? Would he really have beaten an old friend’s brains in, in cold blood?

  Kaisa finished her workout with a full half hour of careful stretching. After watching for a second, I started mimicking her movements. It helped. That plus a hot shower afterward left me feeling relatively relaxed.

  Even though the trip was only a few hundred yards, we went to Kaisa’s place together in my car. Kaisa lived in a fairly new row house smack dab between the sports field and the swimming pool. The first thing she did after walking into the house was dump the entire contents of her large gym bag into the washing machine. Then, from a pitcher in the refrigerator, she poured us glasses of a green sports drink that tasted like salty sweat.

  “Are you hungry? I usually don’t eat until after my workout and I have an extra steak in the fridge. It was supposed to be for Johnny, but he decided to go home.”

  “Was Johnny here today!”

  Kaisa’s surprised look made me realize I was shouting.

  “Yeah. Last night sometime around one he came knocking on the window, wet to the bone. He said he didn’t have nowhere to go.”

  Kaisa sprinkled pink peppercorns and garlic powder on the beef tenderloins.

  “Where is he now?”

  “He left while I was out running. The note said he would be back in the afternoon, but I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Why couldn’t he go to his parents’ house?”

  “His dad accused him of murdering Meritta.” Kaisa dropped the steaks into a glowing-hot pan, poured a little olive oil over them and switched on the range hood fan. “They had a fight. And Johnny couldn’t go to Tuija’s house for obvious reasons.”

  “So you and Johnny are pretty close?”

  Kaisa put some whole-wheat pasta on to boil and started mixing a salad. As she sliced tomatoes, she continued. “I don’t have any siblings. Johnny is the youngest in his family, and I guess he thinks of me as his little sister.”

  Adding chopped chives to the tomato and lettuce salad, Kaisa began to set the table. Somehow talking before dinner about finding a dead body seemed tactless, but tact had never been one of my strong points.

  “How are you holding up, Kaisa? I’d think you’ve probably had enough pressure already without getting mixed up in two murders.”

  “You’re telling me. The European Championships are in four weeks. I know everyone is expecting me to win a gold medal. I’m expecting it too. There ain’t no point trying to hide it. That’s why I want all this to get resolved as fast as possible. I just didn’t know how to talk to Detective Antikainen. He tried to be friendly, but it was like he wasn’t treating me like a person or something.”

  “Giving you a ride was probably the high point of Antikainen’s summer. What did you want to talk about?”

  “Those are going to take a little while to cook, so let’s start the salad. Mineral water?”

  With that, Kaisa piled a large heap of salad onto my plate, and I suddenly realized how hungry I was. Lunch had been scanty, and I hadn’t really eaten any of my ice cream with Ella. Kaisa ate as intently as she threw a javelin. Apparently eating right was an essential part of the training program for winning gold medals.

  Over the steak and pasta we talked about cooking and sports. I let Kaisa set the pace of the conversation, since this wasn’t a formal interrogation. For dessert, Kaisa produced a sack of early strawberries from the pantry and suggested that we go sit in the living room.

  The room appeared normal. Table, sofa set, TV, houseplants. Then my eyes landed on a birch cabinet on the right full of trophies, vases, and medals. In the middle of it all hung Kaisa’s World Championships silver and next to it a picture taken at the podium. Kaisa was hugging the winner, Trine Hattestad, and smiling widely.

  Folding her long legs under her on the sofa, Kaisa poured the contents of the bag of strawberries into an Alvar Aalto vase she had grabbed from the shelf and started to talk.

  “I ain’t never seen a dead person before. For the past few days I’ve been wondering what Meritta looked like. Was she still like herself? The strangest thing this morning was that the thing lying by the pond was obviously Jaska Korhonen and also just a body, like he was no one. Did that happen with Meritta too?”

  A drop of red strawberry juice ran down the corner of Kaisa’s mouth toward her neck.

  She continued without waiting for an answer. “At first I thought I was seeing things, that I’d been thinking too much about Meritta. But I had to go see what was wrong with him. Fifteen feet away I realized he must be dead. I saw blood in his hair and started looking where he could have fallen from and hurt himself. But there ain’t anywhere in the Sump with rocks big enough to trip on and hit your head that bad. It’s all sand. Then I forced myself to check his pulse. And then I ran. I didn’t really come to my senses until I was in the health center and they were starting to stick me with something. I don’t dare take anything without talking with the Olympic team’s doctor so I don’t get accused of doping.” She paused. “So how did Jaska die?”

  “We’re still waiting for Forensics and Pathology to finish their investigations. But I think Jaska knew who killed Meritta and was trying to blackmail h
im.”

  I also folded my feet under me on my chair and gazed out the window. A fat grayish-brown cat was stalking a wagtail sitting in a tree in the yard. Suddenly the bird made a kamikaze dive straight at the cat and then wheeled back to the tree chirping exultantly. The cat was furious. I missed Einstein, who was just as helpless in the face of wagtail cunning.

  “You said Johnny was soaking wet when he came here last night. Did he tell you where he had been?”

  I could see from Kaisa’s expression she understood what I was really asking.

  “No. But he was obviously upset. And there was…sand. On his clothes. Yellow sand. Like up the hill at the mine…and in the Sump.”

  I knew Kaisa would have preferred not to say those words. We were in the same boat: she didn’t want to give evidence against Johnny, and I didn’t want to arrest Johnny. But neither of us was going to protect a murderer either.

  “You asked at the Old Mine party whether Meritta and Johnny were in a relationship. Did you know then that Johnny lied to you when he said no?”

  “I guessed.”

  “Were you jealous of Meritta and Johnny’s relationship? You are in love with Johnny, aren’t you, Kaisa?” I said it as calmly and gently as the best psychologist-detective would have.

  Rising from the couch, Kaisa turned toward the trophy case, away from me. Her tank top revealed stunning upper back musculature, which her loose blonde locks tumbled toward.

  “Yes, I was jealous,” she said quietly. “But not of Johnny. Meritta was the one I was in love with.”

  I felt like a complete idiot. Even though I was infatuated with Johnny, did I have to assume everyone else was too?

  “Did Meritta know?”

  “Oh, did I tell her that I’m a lesbo?” Kaisa said even more quietly. She turned back to look at me, as if searching for disgust in my expression.

  “So what, Kaisa? Is that something you’re supposed to hide?”

  “Maybe not in Helsinki. But think about here…”

  I did. As far as sexual mores went, my hometown seemed still to be living in the 1950s. Not one single openly gay person lived in the city. And the only guy who had ever brought his boyfriend home to meet his parents received a beating in the Copper Cup. Presumably our Christian member of Parliament, who had wished every homosexual in the world a pleasant journey to hell, wouldn’t be too thrilled about taking her picture with Kaisa after her sexual orientation became public.

  “And that’s not all. I’m an athlete. Chasing an Olympic medal. You’ve read the newspapers…You know how they write about me. You know the kinds of words the announcers use on TV. Shot-putters are ‘robust girls’ and stuff like that. What would they say about a lesbian javelin thrower? And you’ve seen my sponsor’s advertising campaign. All that stuff about my javelin speeding through the air like a call to my one true love. I don’t think they’d like it all that much if my one true love was a woman. I ain’t the only queer athlete though. But no one wants to see us.”

  “But it shouldn’t be that way!”

  “Well, yeah. But am I supposed to change it?” Kaisa sat back on the couch and shoved five strawberries into her mouth at once. “Meritta said exactly the same thing. She thought me coming out of the closet would be great. That’s what she said.”

  “What did Meritta say when you told her you were in love with her?”

  Tears welled up in Kaisa’s eyes and she wiped her cheek with her hand, leaving a strawberry streak.

  “Well, she—she wasn’t no more shocked than you. She said she liked me a lot and that she had never thought about being with a woman, but that she didn’t find me unattractive either. She had a rule of only one lover at a time. She had to finish one relationship before she even started planning the next, and she was already taken because she was dating Johnny. She didn’t tell me it was him, but I was pretty sure.”

  I nodded. Mårten Flöjt had said the same thing. But could Meritta have considered making an exception in Kaisa’s case? Could she have been telling Johnny on the Tower Friday night?

  “And so I was just waiting for Johnny and Meritta to get tired of each other,” Kaisa said bitterly. “I hoped Meritta would finally allow me to be my real self. I ain’t even ever dated anyone. Not really. The boys around here always treated me so weird. They might have liked me but they always had to put me down. Maybe a woman throwing javelin is so frightening they had to keep me in my place by feeling me up and calling me a whore,” Kaisa said, grimacing.

  I grimaced back. “Yeah, I know the type.”

  I was happy she was still confiding in me even though I had been so dense as to assume she was infatuated with her cousin.

  “I don’t even know no other women like me,” Kaisa continued. “Last summer there was this one Estonian hurdler, but she’s in Estonia.”

  “I know other lesbians. And gay men and bisexuals. You’re not the only one in the world, even if it might feel that way in Arpikylä. When I lived here I thought I was the only girl in the world who didn’t want to squeeze herself into the traditional woman’s role.”

  Next to Kaisa, I almost felt old.

  “Sometimes I wish I was as bold as Meritta. Then I could just tell the nosy reporters that there ain’t never going to be no boyfriend. Girlfriend, maybe.” Kaisa tried to laugh.

  I didn’t believe that Kaisa killed Meritta, even though I knew that plenty of people would think she had the strongest motive. I wondered whether I would bother telling even Koivu about our conversation, despite the fact that he wasn’t the gossiping type. Kaisa had the right to decide for herself how much other people knew about her love life.

  The rain, which had let up momentarily, began pattering against the window again, and I realized it was about time to go home and say hello to Mikko. As I left, I hugged Kaisa. She was just as warm and firm as her cousin.

  “Kaisa, promise me one thing,” I said at the door.

  “What?”

  “When the reporters ask what your goal is in competitions, don’t say you’re going to try your best and see if that’s good enough.”

  Kaisa grinned and promised she wouldn’t.

  With that, I started to drive back toward the farm. The roads were slick and visibility was poor. The gas pedal on the department Saab was much more sensitive than the Lada’s, and I inadvertently found myself going forty-five in a thirty-five zone. So I was a little astonished when someone careened past me going almost twice as fast. Most people tended to let the needle climb a little on the straightaway near the railway bridge, but the dark-red Volvo speeding ahead of me was going entirely too fast and swaying alarmingly from lane to lane.

  Just then the voice of the county dispatcher came over the radio: “Arpikylä patrol, what’s your twenty?”

  Timonen’s voice crackled in reply, reporting he was on the other side of town.

  “We have a report of a drunk driver. He left the Copper Cup in a dark-red Volvo heading toward Joensuu. The bar confirms he had three stouts with dinner and then five shots of brandy for the road.”

  “License number?” Timonen asked.

  I quickly accelerated to catch up with the Volvo.

  “Sheriff Kallio here. I think he’s right in front of me. I’ll try to pull him over,” I said into the radio.

  “It’s Veikko Holopainen. He’s probably on his way home,” Timonen said, adding that he was also heading home.

  Switching on my siren, I swore when I realized I was going too fast to get my light out on top of the car.

  At the next intersection I made up for lost ground, shortening the distance between us. From the top of a hill, I saw an eastbound car nearly broadside the Volvo. Damn, I had to get him stopped before he caused an accident!

  On the straight stretch following the intersection, I sped up even more, pushing eighty miles per hour. Thankfully the Saab purred nicely; Uncle Pena’s Lada wouldn’t have stood a chance. As I caught up to the Volvo, I saw there was only the driver inside. The car continued veering bac
k and forth, nearly going into the ditch before swinging back across the center line. Trying to pass would be risky. Flashing my headlights, I turned on the emergency blinkers as well. Nothing helped. The Volvo just kept zigzagging its way toward Joensuu.

  I was endangering my own life right now too. Should I just let the Volvo go? I decided to try one more time. On the next long straightaway, I pulled up alongside and laid on the horn. The driver, a pudgy middle-aged man, shook his fist at me through the window. That gesture cost him though, because the car then veered toward the edge of the road and began sliding in the gravel on the shoulder.

  In my rearview mirror I saw it come to rest in the ditch. I slammed on the brakes, furious and scared, hoping the goddamn idiot wasn’t a bloody pulp. Not seeing any other traffic on the road, I made a U-turn.

  The driver was lucky: his car’s brakes worked well and the rain-soaked gravel had softened the impact. He sat buckled in his seatbelt with a bump on his head and cursing a blue streak. When I opened the driver’s-side door, the stench of cheap cognac rolled out.

  “What do you mean driving like that, you stupid bitch!”

  “I’m a police officer, sir. Didn’t you hear the siren? You seem to be intoxicated.”

  “The fuck you’re a cop!” he yelled angrily, eyeing my messy hair, tennis shoes, and jeans.

  Suddenly his right fist approached my face, but he was so drunk I was able to lightly brush it aside. I guessed he was at about twice the legal limit. Flashing my badge silenced him temporarily. I still wished the boys would show up though.

  A white Mazda stopped, and the man driving asked if we needed any help. Curious little eyes peered at us from his backseat. He seemed a little disappointed to hear that a patrol car was already on its way.

  After the Mazda left, my reckless driver was suddenly in a talkative mood.

  “I do recognize you. I was just fooling. You’re Toivo Kallio’s oldest daughter. I’m Veikko Holopainen. Your uncle is on the city council with me. He’s a good man, even if he is in the wrong party. Listen, don’t…I was just celebrating a little, but I would’ve gotten home just fine if you wouldn’t have come along distracting me with your siren.”