Wolves and Angels

by Jokinen, Seppo

  Koskinen walked to the side of the bed. Closer up he could see a bloody contusion on his jaw, and his lower lip was a clotted blue mess. Harjus suddenly opened his eyes, and Koskinen jumped. Even though the doctor had just told him a moment ago that the patient was doing well under the circumstances.

  It felt like Harjus was waking from the dead.

  Harjus looked at the man standing next to him. “Did you come by bike?” he asked with some effort. His memory seemed to be working well.

  “Naah,” Koskinen said, shaking his head. “I brought a company car.”

  “I came by ambulance.”

  “I know,” Koskinen said. “How are you doing?”

  “Can’t complain. Feel like an angel, just with broken wings and blood on my robe. I could use a stiff drink though. Got anything on you?”

  Koskinen shook his head.

  “On TV the cops always have a flask in their pocket,” he said, slurring through swollen lips.

  “They haven’t made a TV series about me yet,” Koskinen replied and then decided to get down to business. He bent in closer to Harjus. “Who pushed you down the stairs?” he asked with tension in his voice.

  Harjus closed his eyes and whispered, “The devil himself.”

  Koskinen considered what that might mean. He could see a mass of compresses under the gauze on his head. Some of them had soaked through with blood, and Koskinen surmised that the wound on the crown of his head was deep. Whoever did the stitches had had an easy job—his head was already shaved, as appropriate for a real biker.

  “Who do you mean by the devil?”

  Harjus snapped his eyes open. “Myself.”

  Koskinen was dumbfounded. “You don’t mean…”

  “Exactly! No one pushed me. I got a rolling start from the end of the hallway and aimed my chair right at the stairs. I tried to dive head first at the concrete wall of the weight room.” His grimace revealed bumpy gums. “But I can’t do anything right.”

  Koskinen was both relieved and disappointed. The residents of Wolf House could breathe a sigh of relief, at least for a moment. The investigators, though, were still looking at the same amorphous unknown. Koskinen hid his emotions, asking instead, “Why?”

  Harjus breathed heavily for a moment and then replied with a question: “Would you rather be suffocated with a pillow?”

  “So you were afraid?”

  “Raymond and Hannu are both gone, and I’m the only Fallen Angel left.”

  “Do you know what happened to Hannu?”

  “It ain’t hard to guess.”

  “Where can we find him?”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything more about his fate than you do.”

  Koskinen wasn’t convinced. Harjus’ face was contorted and sweat ran down both sides of his thick eyebrows. He was in a lot of pain, and Koskinen knew that any questioning he did under these conditions was more than a little dubious.

  He continued anyway. “But why Rauha Salmi? She wasn’t part of your gang.”

  “Poor Rauha,” Harjus groaned. “She had to die so he could show what an animal he is.”

  “He who?”

  “The killer.”

  Koskinen sat and thought about Harjus’ answer—he had never thought about it from that perspective. Was the killer’s sick narcissism the reason for Salmi’s death? Did he decide to commit one murder just to deviate from the pattern? If that was true, they were up against an even more dangerous psychopath than they had imagined.

  Koskinen bent even closer to Harjus’ ear and whispered, “You know who it is, don’t you?”

  “No.” Harjus tried to shake his head, but all he managed was an agonizing moan. Apparently he had pulled his neck muscles in the fall.

  Koskinen forged on. “You were so afraid that you tried to kill yourself before anyone else could beat you to it?”

  “Yes,” Harjus groaned. “And I botched it again. What a loser, right?”

  Koskinen didn’t voice his opinion, instead asking with feigned nonchalance, “Why did you attempt suicide nine years ago?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

  Harjus stared at the ceiling with blank eyes. “I totaled my car drunk driving.”

  Koskinen looked at him in disbelief. Surely no one would try to end his life over something like that.

  “You probably think I’m lying,” Harjus said, his eyes narrowing. “It wasn’t just any car. It was a ’64 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, literally the finest specimen in all of Finland. It had a V-8 and a top speed of 120. The seats were upholstered with blue leather, and all of the metal parts down to the dashboard were chrome. I had been restoring it for five years and the valves were tuned more precise than my grandpa’s pacemaker.”

  Koskinen listened in astonishment. Harjus spoke about his car tenderly and with the sort of love generally reserved for the woman you adore.

  “Ville was a gas hog, eleven miles per gallon, but on the other hand he also did a good job paying for his oats. Sometimes I made pretty good money with him. One Midsummer I had this wedding gig. I drove the bridal couple in my Caddy from the church to the reception center near Lake Lavajärvi. It was a real swank wedding, and obviously neither family was short on cash. I even billed ’em for the tin cans behind the car. There was sahti by the keg. They half forced it on me, and nobody asked if I was still driving.”

  Speaking was difficult with his sore mouth, but he still soldiered on. “I headed back after midnight with the pedal to the metal. I didn’t even make ten miles before I lost control. Ville was totaled all to shit down to the oil drain bolt.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing. Drunk’s luck I guess.”

  Harjus licked his swollen lower lip and grimaced with pain. “Then I lost my job. See, I was a church youth leader. And when my girlfriend returned her engagement ring by second-class mail, that was about all I could take.”

  “So you climbed up on the roof of the Olympia?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t jump from high enough and lived. The doctors said I was lucky. Only my fourth vertebra broke. Just think about it—those bastards were congratulating me!”

  Koskinen wasn’t surprised at Harjus’ bitterness anymore. Of course he was responsible for his own fate, but he had also had bucket-loads of bad luck. And one misfortune had followed another: disappointment in the Paralympic tryouts, the HGH bust, and then losing his second car a year ago to cover his debts. No wonder it all had just strengthened his self-destructive tendencies.

  As if he had read Koskinen’s thoughts and wanted to disprove them, Harjus said. “If I make it through this, I’m going to walk again someday.”

  Harjus wasn’t able to move his lower lip anymore and his speech was growing more and more unclear. “Some French doctors have gotten some paraplegics to walk. They install microchip implants in the spinal cord and use that to make the nervous system work. As soon as I get the money, I’m moving there.”

  Koskinen couldn’t understand why a man who had tried to commit suicide two hours earlier was suddenly full of hope for the future. He placed his hand on the edge of the bed and asked, “What money are you talking about?”

  Harjus replied with a barely noticeable shake of his head. Koskinen didn’t get a chance to repeat the question—two large male nurses entered the room, their white coattails flapping.

  “We’re taking Tapani Harjus for his CT scan now.”

  They grabbed both sides of the bed and pushed it out of the room. Koskinen walked a little way alongside Harjus, and before they made it to the end of the hallway, he bent over and asked one more time, “Who killed Raymond and Rauha?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know…”

  The whisper was lost in a painful intake of breath, and Koskinen could see that Harjus was deathly afraid.

  The nurses disappeared with the wheeled bed into the next ward, and Koskinen was left staring at the closed glass doors.
Something told him Harjus wasn’t telling the truth. He knew more than he dared to say.

  But how could anyone be so afraid that he’d rather smash his skull into a concrete wall than reveal the basis of his fear to the police?

  Koskinen walked out into the courtyard, lost in thought. Someone was vomiting just outside the doors. A young woman was running from the bus stop with a bundle in her arms wrapped in a thick wool blanket. Another ambulance was approaching from the direction of downtown. It was Saturday, and the hospital had a busy night ahead.

  A decent-sized crowd of weekend revelers had already assembled on Hämeen Street. The rain had let up, and the evening was warm. The sidewalks were bustling merrily as Koskinen cut through the city center on his way to Wolf House. The farther away he got from downtown, the quieter the roads became, and by the time he was on Susi Street, there was no one around.

  In front of Wolf House stood a Saab patrol car, the Forensics’ VW van, and Pekki’s old Corolla. A small, red Fiat was parked right in front of the entrance. Koskinen wondered if that was the car of the officer who had been left on guard duty, and for some reason the thought irritated him. He glanced into the Fiat as he passed. The back seat was laid flat, and the car was full of stuff, two cloth bags stuffed full, a case of beer, and a yellow propane tank. Probably not a police officer’s car. Koskinen started wondering what he was doing—was he really looking to vent his anger on the car of the cop who had failed at his guard job?

  Lea Kalenius opened the door immediately after his first ring of the bell.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said familiarly. “This is just terrible!”

  Her pale face was as white as chalk, and the dark bags under her eyes emphasized the height of her cheekbones. It looked like she hadn’t slept in ages. She let Koskinen in ahead of her and then asked from behind, “Are you going to stay the night?”

  “Why?”

  Koskinen turned and Kalenius ran into his side. They looked at each other, embarrassed for a moment, until she explained, “We’re too afraid to stay here. Now that someone tried to kill Tapani too.”

  Koskinen understood the woman’s fear. They still didn’t know what had really happened, that Harjus’ fall down the stairs hadn’t in fact been an attempt on his life. He chose not to explain it all to Kalenius right then and there. Instead he looked for Pekki and the other detectives. Apparently they were still inspecting Ketterä and Harjus’ rooms. The only person in the lobby was a uniformed officer sitting on the sofa group.

  Kalenius guessed what Koskinen was looking for. “If you’re wondering where your colleagues are, at least one of them is down at the bottom of the stairs doing something. He’s a sort of tall young man, and he told us that no one could go down there.”

  Koskinen asked Kalenius to assemble her staff in the lobby and also to ask all of the police officers to come. He would be holding a short briefing in a moment.

  Kalenius obeyed his instructions without a word, and Koskinen turned to the other side of the lobby. He started down the stairs and saw a man in a white protective suit at the bottom.

  “Howdy,” Mäkitalo said, raising his head. “There was nothing here. Except a smashed wheelchair. I put it in the van, and I’ll take prints down at the station.”

  “No need.”

  Mäkitalo looked at Koskinen in surprise, and he explained the situation. They didn’t need to look for a guilty party anymore. Tapani Harjus himself was behind what had happened.

  “Okay then,” Mäkitalo said calmly and started collecting his tools back into his metal-sheathed case. He snapped the latch shut and then pointed at the wall. “That’s where he hit.”

  Koskinen looked at the place Mäkitalo was indicating. On the white concrete wall there was a brown blood stain, and the floor held a larger puddle of dried blood.

  “He was lucky,” Mäkitalo said. “Not many people would have made it through that alive.”

  They started up the stairs, and Koskinen remembered what Harjus had just said at the hospital about his good luck.

  Lea Kalenius had already managed to round everyone up. Pekki and Kaatio were looking at Koskinen with expecting eyes. The two other nurses, Anniina Salonen and Kaarina Kauppila, stood next to Kalenius. Koskinen could also see a group of residents through the open door of the dayroom. They were sitting motionless in their wheelchairs like half-finished statuary.

  Koskinen cleared his throat and then reported on his visit to the hospital. He described Harjus’ relatively good condition and ordered the police to cease the investigation of the incident. The residents could set their minds at ease, and go to sleep. This time there hadn’t been any foul play involved.

  He beckoned Pekki and Kaatio off to the side with a finger and made a quick summary of his visits to Ketterä’s parents and ex-wife.

  “Childhood friends?” Pekki was dumbfounded. “And Ketterä stole Timonen’s girl? It’s a regular love triangle.”

  “But does that move the case forward at all?” Kaatio rubbed his neck. “If Ketterä would’ve died first, I’d get it, but this way around it doesn’t make any sense.”

  Koskinen agreed. They stared at each other for a moment with furrowed brows until Koskinen remembered to ask, “Have you found Pirkko-Liisa Rinne?”

  Pekki shook his head. “Nope, not a single trace of the broad.”

  “That seems strange.”

  “Strange?” Pekki snorted. “I’d say it stinks to high heaven.”

  “Of what?”

  “She’s on the run.”

  “But from what? The killer or her own guilt?”

  “Whichever…in any case, she’s mixed up in this somehow.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Just suppose that she lied about losing her key and started plotting something during the summer. She palmed the key for later use.”

  Could that be right? Koskinen thought. “In that case we have to find her as soon as possible.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. I put Ulla in charge of the search.”

  Koskinen moved on to another topic. “And Ketterä’s room? Have you searched it?”

  “Every nook and cranny. Nothing of any use.”

  “I’ll still take a look.”

  Pekki walked in front of Koskinen. Ketterä’s room was exactly like those of the other two victims. The only striking feature was the piano standing against the wall. It took up much of the room, and, not counting the bed and table, there wasn’t much space for any other furniture. Not even a piano stool—Ketterä had supplied that himself.

  Koskinen looked for any pictures of the children. He was curious to see if Ketterä had any mementos of his family, maybe just a drawing from one of the kids. But he found nothing, which made the framed picture of his dog, Lucky, sitting on the nightstand look downright grotesque.

  “Let’s go. But first seal the door.”

  “What if Ketterä comes home?” Pekki asked. “We still haven’t found a body.”

  “Then he can break the seal.”

  They returned to the lobby. The patrol officers had already left. All except one. One man, barely twenty years old, sat on the couch. Koskinen realized from his uniform that he was a trainee from the police academy, doing his field training.

  “You were the guard here?”

  He jumped up. “Yes, sir. It was me.”

  Koskinen made a wide arc with his finger around the lobby all the way to the stairway leading down to the lower level.

  “Where were you at the moment when one of the residents of this facility went racing through here, rolled his wheelchair across the lobby as fast as he could and dove down those stairs?”

  The young cadet’s large Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “In the kitchen.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “One of the nurses invited me for a coffee.”

  “Kaarina?”

  The cadet nodded, Koskinen took a sudden step forward. “From this moment on you stay right here! You
don’t go anywhere even if a flock of naked Playboy models try to seduce you.”

  “Yes, sir,” he squeaked. “I won’t go anywhere.”

  “When is your relief coming?”

  “At ten.”

  “And is he going to be another cadet?”

  “Yeah. We’re getting hours for our field training from this.”

  Koskinen didn’t have the energy to be angry anymore, instead directing his frustrations in a different direction. He yanked his cell phone out of his pocket and walked to the other side of the lobby.

  Patrol Sergeant Lepola was just warming up his sauna at home. Maybe he had even already popped the cap on a cold one, because his voice was more jovial than normal. “How’s it hanging, Haile?”

  Even though Koskinen had just decided to present his displeasure very matter-of-factly only a few seconds earlier, Lepola’s ribbing wrecked his good intentions right out of the gate. Koskinen railed at him. He had asked for a police guard at Wolf House and instead he had gotten a pimple-faced kid. How could they send a police academy trainee on such an important assignment? Luckily this time the result had only been a concussion and some bruises, but it just as easily could have been a corpse.

  When Lepola finally got a chance to speak, his voice was no longer relaxed. “We’ve used cadets for these jobs before. Don’t you dare try to shift the blame to Patrol for every little thing that goes wrong!”

  Koskinen could guess what Lepola meant: Monday night, Patrol 341, and the wheelchair left unchecked in the bushes. Koskinen didn’t say anything, and Lepola continued even more fractiously. “We don’t have enough men to be guarding one single building night after night. It’s one less pair of boots on the street. The public already complains that they never see any police presence anywhere, even with knives and tire irons swinging on every other street corner.”

  “I know, I know,” Koskinen said with a resigned sigh.

  Lepola’s voice came down a notch too: “I’ll arrange a patrol there for the night. I still think some of that outsourcing shit could actually work in these situations, though. Even now we could have hired a guard from a security firm to sit there at that nursing home.”