Copper Heart

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “We’ll see what the breath test says.”

  “I don’t have time to sit around here waiting for some stupid breath test!”

  With that, Holopainen tried to restart his car, but no matter how hard he pressed on the gas trying to rock the car loose, the Volvo wasn’t budging.

  “Listen, girlie. I’ll give you a thousand marks if you help me out of this. You come drive and I’ll push.”

  With impeccable timing, the cruiser pulled up, this time without needlessly running its siren. Timonen and Hopponen, who was having another long day, handled the field sobriety test. The Breathalyzer showed 0.16 percent.

  “A blood test it is then. Looks like Holopainen’s license is going on ice again,” Timonen said after they were done.

  “Come on, boys. This bitch forced me off the road. Nothing bad would’ve happened if it weren’t for her. I could drive home with my eyes closed. I am on the city council, you know.” And then, in a more threatening tone, he said, “Your badges are going on ice if you lay a finger on me.”

  And so on. Bluster and threats. I always hated don’t-you-know-who-I-am types, so this only made me feel increasingly bitter toward him.

  While Officer Hopponen attempted to get His Eminence into the back of the police cruiser amicably, I gave Timonen an account of the chase.

  As I talked, he alternately grinned and shook his head.

  “When we had his license last summer, he demanded that the city pay him for taxi rides to council meetings because he supposedly didn’t dare drive with his wife. That next intersection is where you turn to get to his place. It’s a pretty big spread, and they milk about a hundred head. He has a bit of a bad habit of trying to use his money to get out of stuff like this.”

  “I noticed. He offered me a thousand marks if I’d help him out of that ditch.”

  Holopainen screamed from the backseat of the patrol car. “Stop making up stories, you fucking whore! You don’t have any witnesses!”

  That’s when Hopponen raised his hand to strike him down.

  “Don’t! He isn’t worth it, pard,” Timonen said, which was enough to stop Hopponen’s fist.

  “We’ll just add that to the report and you can have a charge of attempting to bribe an officer of the law to deal with too,” Hopponen grumbled.

  I was almost amused. Maybe I was finally part of the club now.

  As I was leaving for home, I heard Holopainen complaining about his car, worried that the Russkies would come during the night to pinch it.

  After driving half a mile, I realized I was shaking. This was what I had imagined I was coming here to do, chase drunk farmers, which apparently also involved risking my life. My hands were shaking so much I had to stop at the edge of a field to calm down. It felt so strange to still be alive when Jaska was dead. Getting out of the car, I let the rain wash over me. I wished I didn’t have to spend the night at home alone. What I wanted was to make love to Antti. Could anything else make me feel that alive?

  When I finally arrived at the farm, Mikko was standing at the door waiting for me. Taking him in my arms, I rubbed my face against his warm coat, and he started to purr.

  Although it was only Thursday, I opened Uncle Pena’s liquor cabinet and poured myself a triple shot of whiskey in a teacup. Mikko didn’t like the smell and slipped out of my arms. After drinking half, I went into the bedroom. The face that looked back at me in the mirror on the dresser was dark and lined, and the three gray hairs at my temple were more prominent than usual. Pouring myself a little more whiskey, I dug Antti’s old letters out of the dresser drawer and curled up on the bed to reread them. After a minute, Mikko, bless his feline heart, jumped on the bed too and curled up at my feet. Once I had read through all the letters, I shoved them under my pillow and dragged Mikko under my arm like a teddy bear. But that only helped a little.

  13

  My head ached. We were gathered in the police station break room with Detective Sergeant Järvisalo, who was explaining his theory about Jaska’s and Meritta’s murders. There wasn’t much to explain because Järvisalo still didn’t have any solid evidence regarding who was behind the killings. Even so, he suspected Kivinen or Johnny. At least Officer Järvi had known about Meritta and Kivinen’s relationship and mentioned there were whispers about it circulating around town. I still wondered how much Barbro Kivinen had known. Sergeant Järvisalo said he was going to go talk to Kivinen himself.

  “I really hope it isn’t him,” Antikainen said. “What would happen to the Old Mine if it was?” He seemed genuinely concerned.

  “I don’t think any jobs depend on him. His old lady will just take the reins if we have to lock him up. My understanding is that at least half of the shares of the company are in her name anyway,” Sergeant Järvisalo said. “Should we talk to the wife too then? Maybe she did know about her husband’s affair with Flöjt.” I noticed the detective sergeant’s eyes turn imploringly to me again. “Maria, could you and Koivu interview his wife?”

  “I do have some other…Oh, well, let’s call and see if she’s around.” I hated having Järvisalo boss me around, but my curiosity won out.

  Kivinen’s secretary informed us that Mrs. Kivinen would be returning on the afternoon flight from Helsinki, so I asked her to arrange a meeting for us at one thirty.

  Then Koivu left with Järvisalo to interview Seppo Kivinen and I dove into my pile of paperwork again. Then as if I didn’t have enough on my plate, our clerk dropped another heap of identity cards and drivers’ licenses on my desk to be signed. These new licenses weren’t nearly as easy to forge as the ones we had when I was growing up.

  During our freshman year of high school, Jaska and I and a couple of other kids cooked ourselves up some fake IDs by using the discarded IDs of older friends who had just received their drivers’ licenses and so didn’t have a use for their old ones anymore. Slicing their pictures out with razor blades, we glued ours in. No one was going to take a close look at the stamp on the picture. In place of the sheriff’s official seal we used a hand stamp with the Arpikylä A’s logo usually employed for marking who had paid to get into a game. After adding some self-laminating plastic, we were able to use them to breeze into any tavern in Joensuu or Kuopio.

  I didn’t know until I enrolled in the police academy that we had committed felony forgery that could have cost me not only my spot in the academy but also my right to act as a judge or attorney after law school. That night I ran home and burned that memento from my younger years. That isn’t the only law I’ve ever broken in my life though. Speeding, smoking weed, providing alcohol to a minor, and riding a bicycle at night without proper illumination come to mind. But my terrible criminal past came in handy now that it was my turn to check identity documents. Since I knew all the other common tricks too, I paid special attention to the IDs of anyone who looked suspiciously underage.

  I called the Joensuu Central Hospital again to ask about Uncle Pena’s prognosis. The doctor who came to the phone was a young guy I had talked to a few times before. He was a big cat lover and was always happy to pass along my reports about Mikko’s adventures. He told me that Pena’s condition was stable again and that he had even been able to eat a little with his healthy hand.

  “We’ve been noticing around the ward that he always seems to have his attacks when local talk radio is on. The last time they were saying something about an artist who got murdered out your way.”

  “Oh, no! Yeah, he knew the woman who was murdered really well. Her name was Meritta Flöjt. And what about the time before that?”

  “The nurse had turned the radio on because she knew they would be talking about the opening ceremonies for the Old Mine. We all knew your uncle was instrumental in getting that whole thing started.”

  “Keep the radio off for a couple days. There was another murder here yesterday.”

  Of course it was natural for Uncle Pena to be shaken up hearing about the opening of the mine attractions and Meritta’s murder. He definitely would have w
anted to be present at the gala, and according to what everyone said, he had known Meritta quite well. But could there be something else to it too? What had caused his first stroke?

  I was expecting to eat with Koivu, but there was no sign of him or Detective Sergeant Järvisalo. Perhaps Kivinen had been equally as hospitable to them as he was to me and treated them to lunch. The hunger that usually hit me after drinking too much whiskey was starting to get in the way of work. I didn’t feel like calling Ella, so I tramped off toward the city building cafeteria to eat by myself.

  At the cafeteria, I lucked out: they were serving a greasy hash of the week’s leftovers. To each her own. I piled a small mountain of it onto my plate, along with some salad. I grabbed two glasses of nonalcoholic home brew and looked for a spot with some HP brown sauce on a table. Then I noticed Tuija Miettinen with a bowl of soup at the corner table by the window. Raising her head, she saw me and waved me over. Since her table did have a bottle of chili sauce, I decided to join her.

  “Have you heard anything from Johnny?” she asked before I had even sat down.

  “Not for several days. Why?”

  “He had a fight with his dad Wednesday night and ended up knocking out two of his teeth.” Tuija’s gray eyes looked almost black, and the fourth finger of her left hand had the same flattened, white strip of skin as Koivu’s.

  “That sounds like a matter for the police. Tell Mr. Miettinen to file a report.”

  As far as I knew, Johnny had been at Kaisa’s house Wednesday night. After that we didn’t have any more sightings of him.

  “What were they fighting about?” I asked, curious to hear if the story was the same one Johnny had fed to Kaisa.

  “Oh, I can fix his teeth. Johnny can pay for it. And they’ve always fought. Johnny may have been getting rougher lately though.” Tuija’s voice was expressionless, but if she kept squeezing her soupspoon the way she was, it was going to start bending.

  “I don’t want to tell my children that their father is a murderer,” she suddenly hissed.

  “So you believe Johnny did it?”

  Slamming her spoon down, she leaned over the table closer to me so that her straight, dark hair almost touched my half-empty plate of hash. “I wasn’t even really asleep when Johnny came to get his bike,” she croaked. “I wondered what he could be up to. We have a pretty good set of binoculars, so I grabbed them and watched what he was doing. Sometimes he disappeared into the trees, but I always found him again. His dark-red jacket was easy to spot against the yellow sand. He was riding the bike up the back way to the Old Mine at three thirty on the night of the murder.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I shouted, and half the cafeteria turned to look at us.

  “He’s the father of my children!” Tuija said, keeping her voice low. “And he wasn’t the only one I saw. A little before him, Ella Virtanen came down the hill from the direction of the Old Mine. I don’t think she and Johnny noticed each other though.”

  So here we were. The best thing would be to send Tuija to talk to Detective Sergeant Järvisalo, who would certainly put out a warrant for Johnny’s arrest on the spot. Johnny and Ella had both lied. But was Tuija telling the whole truth?

  “And what about you? Did you go back to sleep? Or did you go up the hill too?”

  “Of course that’s what you want, isn’t it?” Tuija’s voice was still quiet but full of rage. “I’m sorry, Maria, but I did go to sleep. I don’t care nearly enough about that man anymore to go to the trouble of killing someone over him.”

  Tuija stood up, grabbing her tray.

  “You have to tell this to Sergeant Järvisalo too!” I yelled after her.

  Absentmindedly, I bolted down the last of my hash, which I had doused with far too much chili sauce. So here I was. Back in my old hometown to arrest my teenage crush for two murders, one of which I might have been able to prevent.

  I almost marched straight over to the state liquor store for a new bottle of whiskey. I didn’t do it though and instead went back to the police station, where I found Koivu sitting in the break room eating something he claimed was microwave pizza.

  “Didn’t Kivinen feed you guys?”

  “He was pissed because we’ve been hanging his dirty laundry around town. He claims the relationship with Flöjt ended out of mutual consent and without any bitterness. His wife doesn’t know anything about it. Or so he says. But he doesn’t have an alibi for either night of the murders. They sleep in different rooms, and his wife was already asleep last Friday when Kivinen came home from the Old Mine. They were both supposedly sleeping on Wednesday night too. It was pretty hard getting anything out of him. Järvisalo was being kind of a pushover. Stars in his eyes.”

  “Järvisalo’s the bootlicker type?”

  “Not compared to our old boss down in the city. But yeah, he’s afraid of anyone he thinks is bigger than him. I guess the governor told him to tread lightly on the whole Somali thing too. Plenty of people want the whole refugee center moved out of Joensuu. They aren’t so much afraid of Somalis though. It’s more that the place will fill up with Russian mafiosi who’ll do worse things than stab people.”

  “I’ve already forgotten how people around here near the border are so afraid of Russians. And are we supposed to handle Kivinen with kid gloves for some reason too?”

  “Seppo Kivinen is practically a national hero, even for Järvisalo. The Great Bringer of Jobs.” I wasn’t used to the bitterness I was again hearing in Koivu’s voice. Where had he spent last night?

  “You didn’t tell Kivinen we’re on our way to interview Barbro, did you?”

  “We don’t need a husband’s permission to question his wife these days, do we?” Koivu snapped. “Damn it, this isn’t even food!” he said, dumping the pizza in the trash.

  Just then Järvisalo put his head in the door and said he was going back to Joensuu. That man seemed to spend half of every working day in his comfortable police car. Hopefully he liked driving. Before he could leave, I told him Tuija’s entire story, of which he seemed to grasp only the part about Johnny. And, as predicted, he was ready to issue an arrest warrant right then and there. My legs started to shake when he said the words. Then the trembling moved to my hands, but my voice remained steady as we discussed the inconclusive forensic findings from both killings.

  After ordering Koivu to write up a report on the hospital-knifing by the end of the night, Järvisalo cleared out. I could tell from his face that the assignment rubbed Koivu the wrong way.

  “I stayed at the Sokos last night. I thought that if I had to go to a hotel anyway, I might as well go to the fanciest one around. I was going to suck their minibar dry, but after seeing the prices, I didn’t bother. Forty marks for a tiny bottle of whiskey. Can you believe that?”

  “And what about tonight?”

  “I’ll stay at home. Anita has the night shift. I already started looking in The Karelian for apartment listings.”

  “It feels like that?”

  “I guess I should try to talk to her first, but…in the beginning I liked how focused she was. I’ve never liked women who just go along with everything. But now Anita seems to want me to be like that too.”

  “Yes, I think you should talk to her. Maybe she’s already over it and doesn’t want to split up after all. But if you have problems on Saturday night, come out to the farm again. I’m going to need a dinner date.” I told him about the Copper Cup Bar & Grill’s stripper situation and my promise to the restaurant manager to go see if everything was legit. I wanted to bring a companion so no one would think I was on the prowl for a man.

  “I’m always up for going to see a stripper,” Koivu said with a grin. For that comment he got my paper cup thrown at him, which Detective Antikainen managed to dodge as he entered the room.

  The Kivinens lived on a rise behind the mine in a house that had once served as the official residence of the director of the mining company. The city had been forced to take the property along wit
h the mine area and, according to hearsay, was leasing it to Kivinen for a scant three thousand marks a month. The house stood alone surrounded by birch trees, on the crest of its own little hill. On one side was a panoramic view of the Sump and on the other stood the Old Mine. Kivinen had to stroll only a few minutes through the forest if he wanted to walk to work.

  I had never been inside the house before, even though the mining company CEO’s son had been in my sister Eeva’s class, and had thrown a few class parties there. Based on Eeva’s descriptions, the house had been a veritable castle without the towers, three stories of luxury. In that same spirit, we set out in the department’s Saab instead of my Lada, since it seemed more suitable for Kivinen’s driveway.

  A colonnade decorated the main entrance, on the Sump side. When I rang the doorbell, I was certain a butler would answer. To my disappointment, Mrs. Kivinen herself came to the door dressed in a blue silk housecoat. I introduced Koivu, who was staring wide-eyed at the lion statues guarding the entrance hall.

  “You probably came to ask about that other murder. It did happen practically under our drawing room window. I’m afraid we were asleep then though. Aren’t these lions atrocious? Apparently they were an acquisition of the first director of the mining company. For some reason, Seppo wanted to save them. This house came largely furnished, you know. We still have very little here of our own.”

  Mrs. Kivinen was talking to us as if we were reporters rather than police officers. Maybe she expected Koivu to start snapping photographs.

  “Perhaps we could sit in the library,” Barbro Kivinen said, leading us from the entry into the room of my dreams. Stuffed bookcases stretched from floor to ceiling on every wall. The first two things that caught my eye as I glanced quickly around were a leather-bound set of English classics in the original language and at least a hundred volumes of Strindberg in both Finnish and Swedish. Was The Son of a Servant one of Kivinen’s favorite reads?