Copper Heart (15 page)

“Stay where you are. Lock the doors to the downstairs if you can. Don’t even try to go see who is there.” I dialed our patrol car’s number on the rotary phone, but no one answered. After ten rings, the call transferred to county dispatch. As I pulled on a shirt without a bra—there wasn’t time—I explained the situation. The on-call officer at the county promised to keep trying to reach the patrol car.

I grabbed the crowbar I had been using as a dumbbell, threw it in the back of the Lada and put the pedal to the metal. The summer night was at its darkest, the birds momentarily silent. I reached the center of town in six minutes, taking another minute to navigate to Aniliina’s street. Only a lone wino staggering down the sidewalk witnessed my reckless dash. The whole drive I berated myself for not changing the locks at the house even though we knew Meritta’s keys were missing. If something happened to Aniliina, it would be my fault.

When I arrived, I didn’t see the patrol car or any other vehicles. The house was dark and eerily quiet. I left the iron bar in the car but inside my pocket I squeezed the small knife that I always carried. Slowly I crept toward the front door, which was open. With my ears straining like a cat’s listening for a mouse, I stepped into the entryway.

From the studio came quiet sounds of movement and a strange, muffled metal rattling as if someone were trying to open a lock. In the darkness I could just make out a vaguely human
shape crouched in front of the cabinet where Meritta stored her paint. I crept from the door toward the stacks of paintings.

Then we both froze when we heard the siren of an approaching police cruiser. Suddenly I was blinded by a flashlight and left momentarily helpless as the figure rushed past and out the door. Although he had only a two-second head start, by the time my eyes readjusted to the dark, he had already disappeared into the small grove of trees behind the house that lead to the Sump.

The sound of the siren grew louder, and then the patrol car careened into the yard with lights flashing. Just as it stopped, I heard the sound of another car engine starting in the Sump.

I screamed at Järvi and Timonen as they vaulted out of the car. “Are your dipshit brains really so small that you don’t know not to run your sirens at full blast when you’re chasing a burglar! And the lights? Really?”

“But the county said the Flöjt girl might be in danger…We just thought we’d let the burglar know the police were on their way and he’d better clear out,” Timonen said in their defense.

Aniliina! For a moment I had completely forgotten about her. Running back inside, I threw myself down the stairs and found the door to the sauna suite locked.

“Aniliina! It’s me, Maria. Are you OK?”

When the girl opened the door, she was visibly shaking.

“It’s alright. He’s gone. And I’m staying with you the rest of the night. Now what happened?” I asked.

Aniliina said she hadn’t been able to sleep, so she decided to take a bath. She had just finished drawing the water when she heard something upstairs. She explained she had turned off all the lights in the house except for in the bathroom, which was windowless. The intruder might have thought she was sleeping or away from home.

Even though I promised to stay with her and assured her that the police would come by regularly to check on the house, Aniliina didn’t want to stay. And she wouldn’t listen to a word about going to her grandmother’s house.

Finally I said, “I have a free sofa at my place. You can stay with me if you’re not allergic to cats.”

She agreed and went to get her stuff. While I waited, Detective Järvi appeared in the studio carrying an orange suede bag.

“He brought this back,” he said excitedly. “It was the murderer, wasn’t it?”

“Yep. If you would’ve just kept your goddamn siren off!”

I tried to sketch the dark, hunched figure in my mind, but all I could recall was a vague shape doing its best to conceal its features. He—or she, since there wasn’t really any way to know—had been wearing a ski mask that concealed his face and hair. He had been a little taller than me—I was sure of that judging from the sound of his panting as he rushed past me. And his smell…Was there something familiar about it?

“Will you grab some gloves from the car?” I asked Detective Järvi. “Let’s take a look in that purse. Then you can give it to county forensics when they come tomorrow to dust for prints.”

Carefully I picked up Meritta’s purse by the handles. A faint hint of perfume still clung to the suede, mixed with the stronger, stuffy aroma of tobacco smoke. Strange. Meritta didn’t smoke. On the side of the handbag was a dark stain, and I remembered the punch Aniliina had spilled at the party.

Aniliina couldn’t take her eyes off the purse, as if the orange gemstone fastened to its lock were the mesmerizing eye of a cobra. Was she thinking of her final encounter with her mother, that terrible fight? When Detective Järvi returned, I moved over
to the smoking table and put on disposable gloves before opening the bag.

Nothing out of the ordinary inside, just birth control pills, a wallet, and makeup. Powder, mascara, an orange-and-gold-toned eye shadow palette, an eyeliner pencil, and vermilion lipstick. The wallet contained a Visa debit card, a library card, a few member cards, a picture of a round-cheeked Aniliina at about age six, and a little cash. But no keys.

“Is anything missing but the keys?” I asked Aniliina, who was still staring.

“Her sketchbook,” she finally said. “Mom always had it with her, even though she didn’t use it much for sketching. She wrote grocery lists and phone numbers in it mostly. But I think that’s all…”

“What keys did your mom carry?”

“Besides our house key, she had ones for the art school and the Old Mine. I guess she probably had some little keys too, for her suitcase, the padlock on the woodshed, and stuff like that.”

Aniliina looked so exhausted that I decided to finish asking questions in the morning. Before leaving for my uncle’s house, I forced her to take a sleeping pill. Since she barely weighed ninety pounds, it made her pass out on the couch almost as soon as we arrived. Mikko curled up protectively beside her. As for myself, I took a big shot of whiskey to help settle my rage, but it didn’t work.

What had the intruder been looking for in Meritta’s house? Why had he brought back the purse? And his smell…Why did it seem so familiar?

8

The next morning I awoke to the sweet smell of coffee and the sound of someone clattering around in the main room. A second passed before I remembered what had happened the previous night.

Looking a little shy, Aniliina smiled when I stepped into the room.

“Fresh coffee first thing in the morning? I’m in heaven,” I said and then proceeded to make myself a sandwich and spoon yogurt into a bowl. To my astonishment, Aniliina also ate an orange and a cup of yogurt, even though it wasn’t nonfat.

“That cat is really nice. He slept by my feet the whole night. I want a cat too, but Mom’s allergic.” When Aniliina realized what she had said, her eyes welled up. “Well, now I can get a cat,” she muttered. “Mom did like cats though. She felt bad that we couldn’t…Maybe I won’t because of…”

Aniliina didn’t resist as I pulled her into my arms. I could feel her spine and collarbone through the violet fabric of her winter pajamas. The muscles around her vertebrae felt like little more than dry tendons, her close-cropped hair like hemp fiber bristles, as if I were holding a desiccated plant in my arms. Aniliina cried a little and then, after calming down, announced that she wanted to go home.

“I won’t be afraid during the day, and those policemen will stop and check on me sometimes. And I’m sure Dad will be here tonight. He said he would be.”

When I dropped her off, I came in to have another look at Meritta’s paintings and asked Aniliina if I could take a few with me to the police station, feeling like they might be important.

After digging the mine paintings out of the stack, I stared at Johnny’s portrait again. Apparently noticing my expression, Aniliina said bitterly, “Mom always drooled over him the same way you are. I guess he was better than the ass-grabber from last summer though.”

“One of your mom’s boyfriends did that to you?”

“Yeah. I think his last name was Hiltunen. He said I had almost as good an ass as my mom. She saw it and threw him out on his own ass.”

I could imagine. Meritta had definitely liked erotica, but she had also lobbied against sexual harassment and brothels. I had a hard time imagining her socializing with the kind of men who went around pinching underage girls.

“The guys at school do the same thing. They call me princess of porn and think that means they can touch me any way they want. Mom didn’t have a clue about all the stuff that got thrown at me because of the crap she said in the news.”

“Maybe they were just jealous because your mom was famous.”

“Bullshit! Maybe they would have been if Mom had been like Kaisa. A sports star or something. Maybe it would have been better if she only did impressionism. If they couldn’t tell what she was painting, they would have just thought she was strange, not perverted.”

I wondered whether that was what made Aniliina sick, the fear of being different and the need to be accepted. Since she
couldn’t control anything else about her life, maybe she tried to compensate by controlling her weight. If the pressure to fit in was as strong as when I was a kid, I thought I could understand Aniliina a little better. Because she didn’t have a natural rebellious streak like I did, she turned all her anger and anxiety against her own body.

Back at the station, it was quiet, so I ground away at my paperwork for a while. Jussi had left me with quite the backlog of cases from over the winter. A surprising number of criminal indictments were still in their initial stages, and there was plenty of catch-up to do issuing liens for unpaid fines. Maybe he had needed a rest more than he needed a study sabbatical. And here I thought temping for a small-town sheriff was going to be boring.

Koivu called around noon.

“I have news. You probably aren’t going to be happy to hear that one of the sets of prints from that brooch are Matti Virtanen’s.”

“Shit! I never should have handed him that mirror!”

“You don’t really mean that. You’d want to know the truth anyway. I’m going to interview the Virtanens as soon as I can, but things are a little exciting around here at the moment. You heard that those skinheads and Somalis were fighting in the hospital. Some visitors, who weren’t checked properly at the door, brought in weapons. And, of course, both sides are telling completely different stories.”

“What about Anita?”

“I haven’t really seen her. She was on graveyard. Tomorrow is her birthday though. I guess I should try to come up with something.”

“Good luck. Did you already hear what happened at the Flöjts’ last night?”

Koivu hadn’t, so I brought him up to speed, and then we chewed the fat until the duty officer notified him that he had another call.

I called Ella to see if she was free for lunch, but found myself almost relieved when the city switchboard said she had gone to Kuopio for the day for a seminar. So, lacking anything better to do, I stopped by the corner store for some potato salad and a bag of Pirate Doubloons
salmiakki
, and then continued through my pile of paperwork. I’ve always been convinced the ammonium chloride in salty licorice improves your ability to think.

As I was gnawing on one particularly tough piece, a knock came at my door and Mr. Kivinen walked in. Today he was wearing a dull-silver suit with a tie bright as the clear blue sky above the Tower. Quickly I tried to swallow the candy, but it stuck nastily in my throat.

“Could I bother you for a moment?” he asked.

When I nodded, he sat down under President Ahtisaari. “I just wanted to come and thank you for how well you’ve handled this investigation so far. It hasn’t interfered with our operations at all. Quite the opposite. You know how curious people are.”

I nodded.

“And I’m also glad that you’ve kept our discussion at the restaurant that morning just between the two of us. I forgot to mention that my wife doesn’t know about what happened between Meritta and me. The detective who interviewed her—I think his name was Koivu—was very discreet.”

“It’s nice to hear that, even though I’m not actually leading the investigation. Detective Sergeant Järvisalo from the county police unit is.”

“Oh, I know how much the local authorities influence these things. I wanted to try to thank you somehow…Would you ever
be interested in touring the mine tunnels? We weren’t able to show them during the opening. And then perhaps I could offer you lunch in our restaurant.”

“Actually, I’d love to visit the edge of the cave-in. Meritta said the excavations there are amazing.” I was thinking of Meritta’s mine paintings. Was the killer’s motive hiding in them somewhere? Could going to the place where she painted them tell me what it was?

“Unfortunately the cave-in area would be too dangerous, so we can’t go there. But we’ll see. Would tomorrow work, perhaps around eleven thirty? Then I could show you around myself.”