Copper Heart (3 page)

As I was walking back to the police station along the main drag, a familiar-looking woman strode toward me. I recognized her and I almost said hi, even though we didn’t know each other. After winning the silver medal in the women’s javelin at the World Championships in Athletics the previous summer, Kaisa Miettinen had become a permanent celebrity. I knew she was Johnny’s cousin, six years younger than me, and an outrageously talented javelin thrower. A lot of people were betting on her taking the gold medal at the European Athletics Championships later in the summer.

To my surprise, Kaisa said hi. Her smile was shy and fast. I smiled back and walked the final few yards to my workplace. The new civil service building, an addition to the old police station, had been built a few years earlier. The sheriff’s office was bright and spacious. On the wall still hung a portrait of Mauno Koivisto, the previous president. I wondered whether I should change the picture. It seemed pretty stupid that the president’s picture was mandated to hang on the wall of every office of every petty bureaucrat in every tiny burg in the country. Was it to serve as a reminder that Big Brother was watching? Maybe back in President Kekkonen’s time during the Cold War that had been true.

I survived the hunting meeting with my self-respect intact. Fortunately the principal of my old high school had been a hunting nut who regularly played hooky on the opening days of the duck and moose seasons. The school looked the other way when students also cut class on those days, so I remembered the dates perfectly. And besides, the hunting club president didn’t even have a real complaint. I got the feeling he only wanted to see what having a woman sitting behind the sheriff’s desk looked like.

After our meeting, the office clerk, Hilkka, the only permanent female employee in the police station, brought in a stack of passports and drivers’ licenses for me to sign. No one in the stack looked familiar; the kids getting licenses now were more than ten years younger than me and complete strangers. Now it was their turn to cruise proudly up and down Main Street, stopping in front of bars to gawk at passersby. Twelve years hadn’t done anything to change how teenagers got their kicks around here.

The phone rang shrilly.

“Hey, it’s me—Koivu. You remember that string of cabin break-ins last month? You had a few too, south of town out near the lake. Well, we nailed the guys. Do you remember who was handling those cases on your end?”

“No, but I could get it in two guesses,” I said. The Arpikylä police department had only eight full-time cops—two detectives and six uniforms. I flipped through my binder of duty logs from the previous month. “Guy by the name of Antikainen. He should be in his office now.”

“Send me over to him in a minute. One other thing first though. Um…well…Do you know what size Anita would be in those British sizes that have numbers like ten and twelve?”

“Koivu, what are you up to?”

Pekka Koivu was my old partner from my days in the Helsinki Police Department Violent Crime Unit. We had kept in touch after I left, and I was sad when he decided to move to Joensuu with his girlfriend, Anita. Koivu was clearly tired of the increasingly chaotic situation at the Helsinki PD and of his alcoholic boss, who for some reason no one could fire. Now that I was in Arpikylä though, we had reconnected; Joensuu was the county seat.

“Anita’s birthday is next week and I want to buy her this nightgown…”

“Why don’t you ask the salesperson?”

Koivu didn’t reply. Gradually, it dawned on me what sort of nightgown he meant. “OK, hold on. Anita is pretty tall but slender…probably a size ten. Are you sure she’ll like something like that?”

“Well, she’s always complaining that she doesn’t have any fancy lingerie like the women on TV.”

“I guess you know what you’re doing. But Koivu—don’t buy black. White is more her style.”

We agreed that Koivu would come over for a sauna the following week. I doubted Anita would be able to make it. She didn’t like me any more than I liked her. Koivu insisted on introducing us, and our hostility was evident the first time we met. Antti and I had visited them at Koivu’s apartment in Helsinki, and Anita had started tut-tutting when we reached just our second round of beers.

“Pekka, you shouldn’t drink any more. You have work tomorrow. And isn’t alcohol even more dangerous for women than for men?”

As Koivu served up meatballs, pasta salad, and coleslaw, Anita nibbled a mixture of carrots and cottage cheese; apparently she didn’t eat meat. I found myself spreading unusually large
amounts of butter on my bread and starting to swear. Anita’s vegetarianism seemed more like fanaticism than healthy living, and she seemed to want to force Koivu to change his lifestyle too. A sharp remark about the cognac that Koivu served with the coffee—of course, Anita just had herbal tea—made me realize she was jealous. I proceeded to talk loudly about my and Antti’s plans for our future and, completely out of character, snuggled up under his arm. But even that didn’t help.

Now I was worried for Koivu. The poor guy was clearly head over heels and completely henpecked. Supposedly a wedding was in the offing sometime in August. Hopefully someone would be with me at the church to keep me in line so I wouldn’t shout, “For God’s sake, don’t marry that nag!”

Detective Antikainen came by my office to announce he was leaving for Joensuu to question the cabin thieves—two Finns and one Russian. Apparently most of the stolen goods were taken across the border. The local papers would have another reason to whip up some good old ethnic hatred for our eastern neighbors. And no doubt the local petty crooks would immediately take advantage of it. Last spring, one convenience-store robber, who had already done two stretches for similar capers, seemed to think no one would suspect him if he left a few rubles on the floor at the scene of the crime. Unfortunately for him, his fingerprints happened to be on them.

As I was leaving work, I drove a little loop around the Old Mine. I hadn’t been up in the Tower in ages; it had been closed for the past few years. Maybe I would get the chance at the opening party on Friday. The hill glowed copper yellow, and the bright color of the sand made the Tower look even more gloomy than usual. Its shadow loomed behind me for a long time as I drove toward my uncle’s farm.

2

I had just run my evening 6K and had managed to change into a nightshirt when I heard the sound of a car in the driveway. It was already eight o’clock, so I hoped whoever was outside wasn’t here on official business. A knock came at the door; before I could respond, Johnny stepped inside.

“Hi. Are you already headed for bed?” Even after fifteen years, that smile still made my legs wobbly, and I had to pinch myself mentally.

“No, I just got back from jogging. Sit down. I was just about to make some tea.”

Johnny sat in Uncle Pena’s rocking chair and started trying to lure Mikko onto his lap. I put the kettle on and then I slipped into my room to put on panties and a sweatshirt that hopefully would conceal my lack of a bra. As I was dressing, I noticed my hands trembling. Nervous dark-green eyes stared back at me from the mirror over the dresser.

“I thought I’d stop by since we didn’t get to chat for very long yesterday,” Johnny said, looking at me searchingly when I returned to the living room. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Look a little closer and you’ll see all my wrinkles. And what’s in my head has changed quite a bit too, thank God.”

“Do you still play music?”

“Mostly by myself. Antti, my boyfriend, plays the piano, and sometimes we jam together. But I haven’t played in a band since my first year of law school. And you? Are the Tigers still together?”

“No, we gave up years ago, but we still get together occasionally. Jaska plays guitar with us sometimes. But we’re getting old, and my voice isn’t that great after all the yelling I do leading aerobics classes at the rec center.”

Johnny was four years older than me, but he didn’t look the slightest bit middle-aged. His movie-star jawline was more prominent than ever, and the ten pounds he had put on seemed to be pure muscle. I wondered how Johnny had never noticed the crush I had on him fifteen years earlier, since even now I was completely useless around him.

I poured the water into the teapot, and we gossiped about our common friends and talked about books and music. Gradually, my nervousness dissipated, and I remembered why I liked being around him so much. I guess that was why I had been so infatuated with Johnny; it had never been only about how handsome he was. Yes, he was beautiful, but he had a brain too. He was just plain nice to hang out with. That was a rare combination in a town the size of Arpikylä.

“Have you and Antti been dating long?”

“A little less than two years.”

“And you aren’t getting tired of him yet?”

“No. I do panic every now and then though. I’m not really the mate-for-life type.”

Johnny didn’t say anything but kept stroking Mikko, who had finally condescended to being petted. The cat purred lazily. The scent of the summer evening wafted in through the open window. A blackbird trilled on the roof of the sauna and the
wind murmured softly through the birch trees in the yard. I didn’t want to say anything. All I could see of Johnny, backlit by the natural light, was his strong-jawed profile and his hands slowly caressing the cat.

The telephone interrupted the silence. I started, and Mikko jumped out of Johnny’s arms onto the floor. It was my sister Eeva.

“I have a guest,” I said after listening to Eeva give a five-minute report on her son Saku’s first words. Eeva’s stories about motherhood always made me vaguely uneasy. I didn’t know anything about little kids. Was there something amazing about a child walking at eleven months and figuring out how to open a tube of toothpaste?

“Oh, a guest? You do sound a little strange. Who?”

“Do you remember Johnny Miettinen?”

“Oh, that kind of guest…” Eeva said, amusement creeping into her voice. “Do you still blush every time he talks to you?”

Flipping Eeva. Of course she had known about my crush; not noticing would have been hard for anyone. Except Johnny.

“Hi, Eeva,” Johnny said loudly just before I placed the receiver back in its cradle.

In my mind’s eye I could see perfectly a summer night just like this one but fifteen years earlier. I had come home clutching a single of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” I had borrowed from Johnny.

Eeva had immediately noticed the name written on one corner of the record sleeve and laughed cruelly to my other sister. “Maria is stuck on Johnny, but he has a girlfriend…”

Over the following three days, I nearly wore that record out and slept with the cover under my pillow; at least I had the sense not to shove the record under there too.

“Does your other sister have kids already too?” Johnny’s question snapped me out of my thoughts.

“In four months she will. It’s good both my sisters are having them so my parents can get off my back about grandkids. How old are yours?”

“Tuomas is seven. He’s starting school this fall. Vilma is five.”

I remembered noticing Tuomas’s baptismal announcement in the local paper, which my old roommate Jaana used to have mailed to our apartment in Helsinki. I had been dating Harri the Birdman at the time, but after seeing the baptismal announcement, Johnny had haunted my dreams more often for a while. Why the hell didn’t I ever dream of my other old crushes or boyfriends? Not Harri or Pete the Bum, who I mooned over for two weeks after we broke up, or even Kristian, who had such a brilliant legal career ahead of him. Reminiscing about them caused only a slight nostalgia, perhaps some mild amusement. But Johnny…

As if he had read my thoughts, Johnny said, “I’ve wondered a lot over the years how you were doing. A couple of years ago when there was that murder and then a cop shot the killer and made her fly through a second-story window, I saw your name in the paper. It seemed like you were really living the fast life. I remember thinking that I hoped I would see you again before some drug runner capped you.”

There was amusement in Johnny’s voice, but his eyes were not laughing.

“I’ll admit that the drunk drivers around here are clearly a safer alternative than chasing murderers in Helsinki.” I drained the rest of my lukewarm tea, wanting something stronger. Go away, Johnny, before I say something stupid.

“We could get together and jam some night, you and me and Jaska at least,” Johnny suggested.

“Sure, maybe. Nothing fast though. I haven’t played in a while.”

“Oh, we suck now. Jaska plays worse every year. He’s been out of work for the last few years. He’s been pretty messed up, drinking and stuff. Hopefully he can pull it together now that he has a job at the Old Mine. He never would have managed even that if Meritta hadn’t lined it up for him.”

“Meritta?”

“His sister, the artist. You must have read about her in the paper.” Johnny’s voice sounded strange. Then he changed the subject, back to his children.

It was almost midnight when Johnny left. I stood, with Mikko in my arms, staring after his rattletrap Nissan. We would see each other two days later at the Old Mine opening and talked about maybe getting together for a jam session the following week.