Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “We still don’t have the drug panels or the nicotine concentrations in his blood or internal organs. But maybe we’re just dealing with a measurement error. These initial results aren’t always very good,” I said, trying to comfort myself.

  “Yes, or maybe the killer thought a small dose of nicotine would do for Jutta Särkikoski, since she’s so slight.”

  “But Jutta Särkikoski didn’t eat the sandwich, and Pentti Vainikainen wasn’t a small woman! Damn it to hell. And Vainikainen didn’t even smoke, so that can’t explain the nicotine either. And his wife didn’t mention any sensitivity to nicotine.”

  “We just need to be patient and wait for the full results,” Koivu said. “Ready to go? There’s a bus coming, and the driver isn’t going to be happy with us taking up the stop.”

  As we continued driving, I noticed boats still out in the bay enjoying the sunny, windy weather. We needed to get the family boat into dry dock for the winter, but Antti could probably handle that with his nephews. Right now, I should have been shivering in the ice arena watching Iida’s practice. Although the thought of the cold ice rink wasn’t the most appealing thing in the world. At least the car was warm.

  Outside Töölö Hospital, I paused to breathe the autumn air for a moment, but Koivu marched right inside so that he could call Toni Väärä again without having to deal with the noise of the wind. Did the kid have a girlfriend in the Helsinki area that Koskelo didn’t know about? There was hardly any information online about the Smith’s Friends. There were only about three hundred members of the sect in Finland, mostly in Kirkkonummi and Inkoo. Smith’s Friends were supposed to marry within the religion, and that meant few options. Many seemed to go looking for spouses in northern Norway, where there were more of their brothers and sisters. The Smith’s Friends had no priests, and anyone could speak in their meetings, even the small children. That part at least sounded charming, since in that respect it promoted equality. But overall, their doctrine emphasized that men were in charge.

  The duty nurse said that Jutta had called her parents in the morning. Was that alright? She didn’t know whether Jutta had revealed her location to them. The guard at Jutta’s door had changed, and the new one also carefully checked our badges before letting us in.

  Jutta was propped up in a partial sitting position, and she already looked spryer than she had the previous evening. Koivu had brought a tape recorder, since this would be an official interview.

  “How are you doing?” I asked as I sat down in the chair I’d pulled over to the bed while Koivu attached the cords and tested the minicassette. I understood that some of our colleagues were recording interviews directly onto the computer, but I hadn’t learned that new system yet. Learning to use the Dragnet was already enough to keep me busy.

  “Hi. Is there really a guard outside all the time?” Jutta asked in a scratchy voice and then sipped some water from her cup. She must not have spoken much today.

  “Yes, and the police aren’t telling anyone where you are. I didn’t tell Leena, even though she’s worried and keeps demanding to see you. You didn’t tell your parents where you’re being treated, did you? I heard you called them.”

  “I did . . . I really need to see them. Can’t they come visit?”

  The paranoid police officer in me thought that Jutta’s parents could be followed, but I didn’t share that thought. Even if someone did follow them, it wasn’t that easy to barge into a hospital. Whether the reporters might be able to wheedle Jutta’s location out of them was another matter. Jutta assured us she’d asked her parents not to tell.

  “They aren’t stupid. They understand the seriousness of the situation. This is the third time someone’s tried to kill me. Maybe in this case the fourth time will be the charm.” Jutta tried to sound jaunty, but there was fear in her eyes that she couldn’t conceal.

  “There won’t be a fourth time. I’m sorry we didn’t assign you a security detail after Pentti Vainikainen’s death. We won’t take any more risks. Would you be willing to let us apply for a wiretap warrant on your phone?”

  “Absolutely! I’m never going to answer that number again. But can we even trust these nurses? People are always talking about how small their salaries are, and then there were those cases of nurses poisoning mentally handicapped people. A lot of the handicapped athletes that Adaptive Sports works with were really upset by those incidents. What if someone bribes one of my nurses? I’m afraid to even go to sleep.”

  “Testing, testing, one, two, three,” Koivu said into the microphone and then listed the names and titles of everyone present, along with the date and time. We were interviewing Jutta as a witness, so I reminded her that she was bound by law to tell the truth.

  “Why on earth would I lie? I want all of this to be over.”

  I didn’t immediately press her for the name of the source that exposed Salo and Terävä. I’d work up to that.

  “Did your car work as usual when you came to the Espoo police station on Thursday?”

  Jutta said that nothing had been wrong with her car on Thursday. From the police station she’d driven home and left it in her assigned spot in the apartment complex parking lot. Later in the day she visited the corner store, but that was only a few hundred yards away, so she’d walked. She didn’t start her car again until Friday. Jutta lived in a row house in a model housing development built during the recent 2006 housing fair. The streets were open and well trafficked, so she hadn’t been afraid of someone attacking her out there in the middle of the day. The car had been in her parking space until she left to meet Tapani Ristiluoma at the Sports Building, at his invitation. Jutta had last filled up the gas tank on Tuesday before she drove to the fitness campaign launch.

  “My car has—had—an alarm. I don’t understand how someone could have tampered with it. It was really sensitive, and sometimes the neighbors complained that they didn’t dare walk near it for fear of setting it off. They wondered why I was so worried about a regular car that was fully insured. But I wasn’t so much concerned about the car itself as I was about those who might try to break in.”

  “I understand. And I also understand that now is the time for you to name your source. Salo and Terävä claim they know who ratted them out. Who was it?”

  Jutta opened her mouth but then closed it again.

  I repeated my question, and two large tears began running down her right cheek. Strangely she only cried with one eye. The other stayed dry.

  “I promised. No, I swore with my hand on the Bible and on my honor as a journalist. You police officers have your own set of professional ethics, don’t you? Why are you demanding that I betray mine?”

  I stood up from my chair by the bed, and the movement made Jutta flinch. I walked to the window. The room had a view of the central courtyard. Maple leaves were blowing in the wind. One came loose from a branch and began to float higher and higher until an opposing current of air ended its flight. It slowly glided down toward the ground. I took a couple of deep breaths to keep myself from yelling, which wouldn’t help in this situation. I turned back to Jutta and tried to keep my voice calm. Koivu still sat at the table, watching the tape recorder next to him, his expression inscrutable.

  “We aren’t talking about your professional ethics; we’re talking about the fact that someone is trying to kill you. You may not see your source as a threat, but the situation may have changed. Your source is obviously someone with connections to drug dealers. If Salo and Terävä know who this person is, then we can be sure that the big players in the steroid racket know too. Are you sure you didn’t accidentally step on some toes and make yourself part of something larger than you’d intended? Or are you still secretly working on a story that’s so important you’re willing to sacrifice your own life to publish it? No one asked Vainikainen or Ristiluoma whether they wanted to be martyrs for free speech. You have to answer me. Who are you protecting?”

  Jutta continued crying quietly, and now tears ran freely from her left eye too
. “You have to believe me! My source would never want to hurt me in a million years and isn’t involved in the drug trade. The information was obtained by chance.”

  “You didn’t just make the whole story up like some in the sports press claim, did you?”

  “No! Do I have to listen to this? My head feels like it’s going to explode. I think I have a migraine coming on . . .”

  I didn’t know whether Jutta was just acting, but I interrupted the interview momentarily so she could calm down. Koivu gestured to ask whether I wanted him to step out, but I shook my head. I wanted everything Jutta said to be in the official record. I did have ways of being persuasive, like threatening to arrest her for concealing information, but what good would that do? I had to go back to square one.

  “Interview continuing at 1:36. Lieutenant Maria Kallio and Sergeant Pekka Koivu still present, interviewing Jutta Särkikoski, location Töölö Hospital. Ms. Särkikoski, did your source indicate that Pentti Vainikainen encourages athletes to dope? You might as well tell us—the dead can’t sue you for slander.”

  “Pentti . . .” Jutta sounded contemplative. “I don’t believe that Pentti would have directly encouraged anyone to dope. I guess he might have done it in a roundabout way. As far as I know, Pentti had nothing to do with what Salo and Terävä were up to, since they were barely good enough to qualify for domestic events, let alone international competitions. Pentti knew who to invest in. For example, Toni Väärä.”

  Väärä had claimed he didn’t tell anyone about Vainikainen’s offer, not even his trainer.

  “Is that why you were interested in interviewing Väärä? Did you believe he was doping?”

  “I wasn’t the only person surprised by the sudden improvement in his results. And Väärä would have been a perfect guinea pig for the so-called biomedical training they’ve been marketing to the sponsors. Fancy code name for doping, eh?” Jutta’s voice became brighter, and she visibly perked up as she began to talk about something less personally relevant. “The 800 meter is a demanding event. Steroids help with sprinting, and that’s what the BALCO lab developed for the American runners and anyone else who could pay. But in the 800, extra muscle mass becomes a liability, and you need endurance in addition to speed. There also haven’t been any international superstars in the 800 lately, unlike some in the shorter and longer distances, so it hasn’t been nearly as lucrative. And there isn’t as much money in the throwing sports as in running, but in throwing you can better use growth hormones to improve. In the 800, you’d benefit more from EPO. That’s what our national ski team got caught using. So now they need new drugs that won’t show up in the tests, but skiers are watched too closely to try it on them. One more bust, and competitive Nordic skiing will be done for in Finland, at least in the eyes of the public and the sponsors. So the doping labs need new guinea pigs. And who better than someone like Toni Väärä, someone who is clearly gifted and wants to improve but isn’t yet the kind of superstar who would be constantly tested?”

  “So . . .” I interrupted Jutta’s monologue.

  “So if I was a sports boss who wanted to test new drugs, I’d go looking for someone like him. And that’s why my alarm bells went off when Pentti Vainikainen went to such great lengths to keep me from meeting Toni. His coach practically hung off the bumper of my car to stop Toni from riding with me to Helsinki. What did they have to hide?”

  Jutta paused and took a sip from her cup. Koivu pulled a pack of gum out of his pocket and offered me a piece. I declined. Outside, the wind was blowing harder, and I heard a cry in the hallway, followed by quick footsteps. A little color had returned to the Jutta’s cheeks, and after taking a third sip, she continued.

  “The other people involved are still alive, so I can’t mention their names, but I will tell you that Pentti Vainikainen was working with some of the sponsors to develop this new biomedical training thing. The sponsors are happy to contribute when it’s pitched to them the right way. Having your logo on the jersey of an Olympic champion sure is great. And no one is going to question the victory as long as no one gets caught.”

  “Was Toni Väärä Olympic medalist material?” I asked, to buy time. Jutta didn’t know that Väärä had told me more or less the same thing, and I didn’t want to reveal that, at least not as long as she continued to conceal her source.

  “Of course not, at least not without some serious chemical help! He might be up for a European championship, although the continent is getting so many runners with African heritage that whites with their slow genes are mostly out of luck.”

  A knock came at the door, and a nurse entered. “I know you have visitors, but it’s time for your medication, and I need to change that bandage on your face. We want to leave as little work as possible for the plastic surgeon.” The nurse’s tone was firm, so I said we could wait in the corridor while she did her work. I’d decided to drag Jutta’s source out of her even if I had to sit in her room until Sunday morning.

  Koivu used the opportunity to go get us some coffee. The guard asked Koivu to get him one too and left me to watch the door while he used the restroom. I wondered if the job requirements for a security guard included a bladder that could go eight hours without being emptied. I was just sending Iida a text message asking how her skating practice had gone when Ursula’s name began flashing on the phone display. I picked up.

  “Hi, Ursula.”

  “All that time with Terävä yesterday was a waste,” she said bitterly, cutting to the chase. “I didn’t have to sweet-talk him much before he agreed to meet me at the coffee shop in the Tikkurila ice arena. I’m just coming from there. The name we were looking for is Petri ‘Pete’ Heiskanen. He’s an old school friend of Jutta Särkikoski’s. They were in the same class. Heiskanen has a suspended sentence for drug dealing, and he goes to the same gym as Terävä and Salo, the gym where they got their steroids. I got the impression from Terävä that he thought doping was somehow more honorable if you supplied your competition too. Because then everyone has the same chances of winning.”

  “So, Petri Heiskanen. Find out what you can about him. Koivu and I are taking a break at Töölö Hospital, but I’ll drop that name to Särkikoski once we get back in with her. Good work, Ursula!”

  “That guy would have told me anything. All I had to do was leave my bra at home. It never ceases to amaze me what worms men are.”

  “I think the worm is in their pants,” I said, and Ursula laughed. Apparently if I wanted to build some kind of rapport, I had to meet her at her level.

  Now the guard and Koivu were talking about what was happening in hockey. The guard said that he’d been a juniors player for the Blues, but he’d had to quit due to chronic groin injuries. I only half listened; I thought Jutta’s wound cleaning was taking a long time. Ten minutes had passed. I poked my head through the door, and the nurse angrily shooed me away. When she finally allowed us back in, she said that the patient’s blood pressure was alarmingly high, and that Jutta was complaining of a migraine. We wouldn’t be able to stay long. Once the door shut, I got straight to the point.

  “Pete Heiskanen. What does that name mean to you?”

  Jutta looked me straight in the eye. “He’s an old school friend. We lived in the same neighborhood. What does Pete have to do with this? I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “He’s been in trouble for selling drugs. Salo and Terävä got steroids from him.”

  I wasn’t prepared for Jutta’s reaction: she burst out laughing. The lines on the monitors measuring her vital signs began to fluctuate, and her bed shook. Gradually the laughter turned to a coughing fit, which made her eyes water.

  “Did you call Salo and Terävä while you were in the hall? And they claimed Pete Heiskanen was my source, because of course I would protect Pete at all costs. I can understand those meatheads thinking that, but I thought detectives were smarter . . . seriously, Pete Heiskanen! If he ever tried building a simple nail bomb he’d end up with no fingers, and the poor thing would
never get mixed up in intravenous drugs! He always fainted in school when it was time for shots. My God, Pete Heiskanen!”

  So either Terävä only thought he knew Jutta’s source or Jutta was such a good actor that I should suspect her of being mentally unstable, as Detective Perävaara had suggested. But gradually Jutta calmed down, and the lines on the monitors stopped jumping around. Soon she was speaking in a normal voice again.

  “In theory Pete Heiskanen could have made threatening phone calls to me after Salo and Terävä were caught. The police told me that some calls came from a pay phone at the Nurmijärvi bus station, and Pete used to hang out in the bar there. I can see him thinking pranking me would be a good idea after a few beers. But Pete isn’t my source.”

  The nurse had moved my chair back to the wall, so I sat on the edge of Jutta’s bed, careful not to touch her body, which was covered in bruises. Jutta avoided my gaze and began staring out the window, even though the sky was empty.

  “You’re right. Police detectives do have professional ethics,” I said. “But the reality is there have been three attempts on your life. How can we find the guilty party if you won’t work with us? If you’d told me your source the first time we met, Pentti Vainikainen and Tapani Ristiluoma would still be alive. It’s time for you to talk.”

  Jutta was silent for a long time. Finally, she spoke, almost in a whisper. “I’m protecting my source because they committed a crime by reading an e-mail intended for someone else. They were shocked by the contents and forwarded it to me. I checked the accuracy of the information with another source. Salo and Terävä were so clumsy that half the world knew their secret, probably even Pete Heiskanen. If I hadn’t written about it, someone else would have eventually.”

  I took a moment to digest Jutta’s words. “So you really had two sources: the one who sent you the e-mail intended for someone else, and the one who confirmed Salo and Terävä’s doping.”