Wolves and Angels (19 page)

“Of course not.”
She
shook her head and a brief ray of light flashed in her eyes like the twinkle of a shooting star lasting only a thousandth of a second. However, it was extinguished by the next question.

“Why did he run from the police then?”

“I don’t know.”

“There has to be some reason for it.”

“Of course.” She became agitated. “There always has to be some reason for everything.”

She looked at Koskinen through a thin veil of tears. “Mika is a good boy and never went down the wrong path. He worked construction all last winter, saved his money, and in the spring he bought a used motorcycle. That had been his biggest dream since he was a little
boy.”

Her voice gave way to violent sobbing. Riitta Makkonen pressed her face against her son’s left arm. It looked like the only undamaged part of his whole body. The crying came as a choking flood, drowning out all of the ticking and beeping of the machines.

Koskinen let her cry in peace. He spent the time unraveling his own knotted tangle of ideas. He was sure this woman knew more about what her son had been up to. No one runs away from the police without a reason. However, maternal love was keeping her from telling, and that love was so strong that no interrogation tactic was going to break through it.

And Koskinen didn’t want to try anyway.

He quietly turned
toward
the door, but then looked back one more time. It looked as if she had fallen asleep against her son’s arm. Koskinen still had plenty of questions. Mika Makkonen’s possible connection to the wheelchair seen in Hervanta was still just a weak supposition. And no one was ever going to muscle that information out of his mother. Koskinen would make sure of that.

Life had mistreated Riitta Makkonen quite enough already.

Koskinen walked down the hallway, absorbed deep in his gloomy thoughts. A distressed scream, and someone ran from one room to another behind him. Misery and sobbing were part of a hospital’s daily rhythm, as was struggle against death in the ICU. Suddenly Koskinen felt like going running. Had he been in his cycling gear, he would have done it too. The Kauppi Park trails started right next to the hospital.

“Hey, Sakari, are you leaving?”

Koskinen snapped out of his reverie and looked behind him. Pauliina was pushing an IV stand that rolled on wheels. It looked like a metal rack with various bags and tubes hanging from it instead of hats. She left the stand in the hall and walked over to Koskinen.

“What did you find out?”

“Nothing,” Koskinen shook his head. “Nothing significant.”

Pauliina was a tall, slim woman. She didn’t have to bend her neck back to look Koskinen in the eye.

“I heard that Mika Makkonen ran away from the police.”

“So he did.”

“I didn’t think you investigated things like that.”

“Generally I don’t.”

Pauliina took another step closer, making Koskinen wonder at how seductive the smell of disinfectant soap could be. She lowered her voice. “
Was
he mixed up in something illegal?”

“That’s
what
we’ve
been
investigating
night
and day.”

“Night and day?” Pauliina cocked her head. “So, all you still do is work?”

The question chafed Koskinen. He thought about the mother who had just been weeping on her son’s arm, the overworked staff at Wolf House, and all of the residents shocked by
Timonen
’s violent death.

None of them would question his time management.

“What should I
be
doing instead? Tupperware parties?”

An embarrassed flush rose on Pauliina’s cheeks, and she began talking quickly as if to repair her blunder. It just made things worse. “I just meant that a person has to have other things in their life besides work, right? Sometimes people forget their priorities and
...
”

Koskinen didn’t stay for another word, instead turning and hastily walking out. In the elevator he started wondering what on earth Emilia had been saying about him to her girlfriends. Nothing good at least. The thought of his personal priorities being questioned made his indignation nearly boil over.

There was no parking ticket on the window of the Toyota. It would have gone flying through the air in shreds anyway. Koskinen swung the car around the horseshoe-shaped driveway of the hospital back
toward
the city. Tires squealed and puddles splashed. The drizzle had intensified into a downpour again.

He drove with mechanical movements and stared with narrowed eyes at the metronoming wipers. The mystery of Mika Makkonen wouldn’t leave him alone. Why had he run away, and right where the police had seen the wheelchair? An electric wheelchair couldn’t be folded up, so it would be impossible to transport it with a motorcycle. And that thought seemed farfetched anyway. It was more likely that Mika was involved some other way. What if Raimo
Timonen
had been robbed by a gang that Mika ran with? If the
y
only knew whether
Timonen
had had money in his pockets that night. At least according to the rumors he had had a habit of carrying large amounts of cash with him.

Koskinen thought this over all the way to Peltolammi.
He was familiar with the area, and he easily found the correct address. He parked in front of a little pizza place and walked over to look at the two large shipping containers. They had been left at the edge of the parking lot next to a stand of tall pine trees with reddish trunks. The containers were the same kind you saw being
loaded onto ships in harbors.
The two green metal containers had H-A LINE painted on their sides in white letters. Each would have had room for the contents of a medium-sized house.

Koskinen tried to remember the pictures he had received from Forensics on Tuesday morning. The body had been lying between the containers. The space was a little more than three feet wide and probably pitch black at night. It was a good place to dump a body. The neighboring building housed a plumbing supply store and maintenance shop.

The body had been
probably
dropped off at around eleven o’clock. The plumbing supply shop had certainly been closed at that hour, as had the pizzeria at the far end of the strip mall. The entrance to the Peltolammi Saloon was on the other side, so no fear of eyewitnesses from that direction either.

Säästäjän
Street
5 was a three-story, dirty gray building. As Koskinen walked to the entrance, he wondered whether it actually would have been smarter to have Pirkko-Liisa Rinne brought to the station for questioning. She could be anywhere, and Koskinen might be wasting his time driving around town for nothing.

But his fears were unwarranted. Koskinen had barely lifted his finger from the doorbell when he heard movement in the apartment. A few seconds later, the door opened and a cheerful female face poked out. She
had probably been expecting a close friend. The smile vanished
from
her
face
like
the
wind
had
blown
it away.

“Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Koskinen, Violent Crimes Unit.”

Koskinen didn’t miss the shock on her face. She took a step back and tried to close the door. Koskinen nevertheless held it open.

“Are you Pirkko-Liisa Rinne?”

“Yes, I guess.” She looked at Koskinen, eyes wide, and then giggled nervously. “I mean, yes, of course I am. But you can call me Pike.”

Koskinen nodded a
feeble thanks. He got the feeling that Pike was trying to cover her sudden nervousness by being so f
riendly.

“Until this summer you were working at an assisted living center called Wolf House.”

“I was.”

“And you knew the residents of the facility?”

“Of course.”

“Including Raimo
Timonen
?”

“Yes.”

After the third terse reply, Koskinen looked at her appraisingly. He had pulled up her personal information earlier. Pirkko-Liisa Rinne was twenty-eight years old and single. No criminal record, just a couple of citations for public intoxication a decade ago.

Koskinen decided to get straight to the point. “Have you heard what happened to
Timonen
?”

“Yes.”

“From where?”

“From where?” She repeated the question and then thought for a suspiciously long time. “Someone from Wolf House told me.”

“Who?”

“Tapani Harjus.”

Pike’s jet
-
black
hair was
cut short. Both earlobes sported a line of shining gold studs, and there was also one on her left nostril. The shortness of her hair emphasized the angularity of her face, and her mouth looked especially wide. Her full lower lip protruded in a pout.

“I didn’t kill him…”

Koskinen raised his hand to calm her, but she still continued angrily. “Fuck! Of course the police would suspect me, since Raymond’s body was found so close to here.”

“No one suspects you,” Koskinen said calmly. “These things are never that straightforward.”

“So why did you come here?”

“I just want some information about
Timonen
and the other residents at Wolf House.”

Rinne was dressed in a black satin robe. Now she pulled it tighter around herself.

“Weren’t those bitches able to tell you?” she snapped.

“Who?”

“Lea and Anniina.”

“Of course… T
hey told us a lot, in fact,” Koskinen replied patiently. “But in cases like this we try to hear
from as many
involved
parties as possible.”

“In
volved
parties,” she repeated in a mocking tone. “How the fuck am I an
in
volved
party
when they shit-canned me months ago?”

“But you knew
Timonen
, Harjus, and Ketterä?”

“Yes, yes, of course I did! I already said that!”

“I was told that you got along with them extremely well.”

“That isn’t anyone’s fucking business. It isn’t like that’s a crime or anything.”

Koskinen’s patience was finite. He knew that better than anyone, and so he said, with as much composure as possible: “It would be best for us to continue this conversation at the police station. Put something on and let’s go.”

It was a genuine laugh—her
attitude was swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other. “I can answer your questions just as well here. I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Okay,” Koskinen nodded. “Let’s do that.”

She gave him an uncertain look and pulled the front of her dressing gown even tighter.

“I don’t have to let you in, do I?”

“No.” Koskinen shook his head, bored. “Put something on
,
and let’s go outside to chat. Bring an umbrella. It’s raining.”

Pike closed the door, and Koskinen was left alone in the stairwell to think about what might
be i
n
the
apartment that she didn’t want him to see. On the other hand, he thought, sneering at his
own perpetual
suspicion; it was
no wonder that a young woman didn’t let a perfect stranger into her home? He didn’t invite in every salesman and pollster who came around either.

Less than two minutes passed before Pike came out. She wore an ankle-length wool coat, soot black. She gestured to Koskinen at the front door of the building to follow and ran ahead to a log-framed shelter in the yard. It was some sort of combined space for children to play and adults to relax
—a
good place for them to talk. The rain had chased everyone else inside, and no one would be able to hear their conversation, even from the nearest windows.

“Let’s get straight to the point,” Koskinen began. “Who hated
Timonen
enough to want him dead?”

Pike didn’t answer immediately. She dug a pouch of tobacco out of her pocket and rolled a cigarette with deft fingers. Surprisingly, she offered the pouch to Koskinen as well, but he shook his head.

“Everyone hated Raymond,” she said and lit her cigarette. “Everyone but me.”

She inhaled twice, lustily.

“Everyone at Wolf House hated him, for all kinds of reasons. The staff mostly because he was so aggressive and fought all the time. They’re so fucking stupid…they don’t have any idea what it feels like to be crippled. They probably think Raymond should have just smiled gratefully and kept his bitterness bottled up inside. And those goddamn cows think they’re experts in caring for the disabled.”