Copper Heart (24 page)

“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 him.”

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 back 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.”

“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.”