Wolves and Angels (20 page)

This caustic outburst stunned Koskinen. However, he
didn’t
want
to
interrupt
it;
he
just
let
her
get
it
all out.

“They can’t imagine in their pea-sized brains what
it’d be like not to be able to move your hand
s or feet
properly, especially for a man like Raymond. When he was young he loved to do anything active, anything
where he
move
d
…especially soccer and motorcycles. That’d make anyone bitter. But those old hags c
ouldn’t get it
.”

“Did all of the nurses have the same attitude
toward
their patients?”

“Not all of them,” Pike said, blowing smoke out of her nose. “There was this one two-hundred-pound Marilyn straight from the cover of the
Milkmaid Times
.”

Koskinen remembered the woman. “Anniina Salonen?”

“Yeah, her. I got along fine with Anniina. Raymond and his pals liked her too. Anniina always forgave them for their pranks and didn’t make a fuss even if they did pinch her a little every now and then. She had so many soft places. Kalenius on the other hand was a tight-ass who got bitchy about even the smallest things. Once she went on sick leave for three months because she had a nervous breakdown.”

Koskinen remembered the temp named Kaarina saying something the night before about Lea Kalenius’ sick leave. But still he wanted more specifics.

“
Did Raymond cause the breakdown
?”

“Yeah,” she answered and flipped
the cigarette
butt into the rain. “Lea told me about it herself. She threatened
to
the doctor that she was gon
na
kill Raymond one day, if she didn’t get a
way
for a while.”

That gave Koskinen pause. He remembered the friendly, slender nurse at Wolf House and wondered if her job could really wind her spring that tight.

“I think I can understand their attitude, at least to some extent,” he said in a leisurely manner. “But why did the other residents hate him?”

“Raymond was an asshole to everyone. Sometimes he made noise all night and especially almost drove the older female residents nuts.”

“And Harjus and Ketterä?”

She started to roll a new cigarette, and Koskinen thought he noticed a small smile creep onto her rust-brown lacquered lips.

“They hated Raymond too, but for completely different reasons.”

“Like what?”

“Jealously.”

“Of what?”

Pike dangled her cigarette paper on her lip and shook her head. Koskinen waited patiently until an appropriately-sized mound of tobacco had taken shape in her fingers and she could continue.

“They were jealous about me.”

“You?”

“Yeah. I just said a minute ago that I was the only one who didn’t hate Raymond. I understood him better than the others. Much better in a lot of ways.”

Pike thought while she sucked smoke from her new cigarette, and blew it back out in rings.

“Not very many people think things through enough…and they don’t realize that a man’s feelings and desires don’t disappear even though some parts of his body have stopped working. He still lusts for a woman
just as much. And that’s the worst thing. You dudes with healthy pricks can’t even imagine it.”

Koskinen found himself shocked by the frankness of her statement.

“It can’t be that...”

“Sex is just as important for a disabled man as for a healthy one, if not more so. A lot of them have tools that work better than porn stars’, but others can’t get it up at all. But even for them a woman’s touch and bare skin can ease their torment at least a little. The social worker types just can’t believe it or don’t want to believe it since they can’t get any either. They don’t even want to hear anything about the city hiring people specifically to handle the sexual tension of the disabled. Everything you spent on it you could take right off the mental health department
’s
budget.”

Koskinen considered the idea. The rain drummed on the roof of the shelter with is rhythmic pattering, and the bitter smell of the cigarette mixed with the scent of wet grass.

“Do you mean that social services should pay for sex workers for disabled people?” he asked. “That would be tantamount to prostitution. Finnish law doesn’t exactly allow that.”

Pike shook the ash from her cigarette with a contemptuous gesture. “Say what you like.”

“I heard that Raymond was loaded,” Koskinen said, switching to another subject. “Did he pay you for anything?” he asked rashly.

Pike exploded. “Fuck you! You’re just as big a fucking shithead as all the rest. I’m not a whore! Can’t you understand that I really liked Raymond!”

Koskinen swore to himself over his blunder and quickly tried to explain. “I didn’t mean anything personal by that question. I’m sorry if I offended you. But criminal investigations are just like this…I have to ask all kinds of questions.”

“Whatever,” she snorted, but was appeased. “Raymond didn’t pay me directly, but sometimes he’d give me some cash, like as a present, for buying clothes and stuff. But I wasn’t with him because of that. I liked him…and besides, he was the best looking guy I’ve ever seen.”

Koskinen thought back to the photographs he’d seen of
Timonen
, and wondered once again what
it
was
about men that made them handsome in women’s eyes. But instead, he asked about something else entirely.

“And that was why Ketterä and Harjus hated
Timonen
? They were jealous about you?”

“Yeah, they were,” she said, throwing another half-burned stub onto the grass. “They were constantly threatening each other…with poison and bombs and all sorts of things. At least they didn’t lack imagination. Harjus and Ketterä would scream at Raymond, ‘What right do you have to keep Pike all for yourself,’ and Raymond would shout back, ‘Don’t give me that shit, at least your hands work.’”

Koskinen shook his head. “Was that why you got fired from Wolf House?”

“For whoring you mean?” she said, getting angry again. “Just admit that’s what you meant!”

Koskinen didn’t bother defending himself anymore. He didn’t say anything.
Pike sat on the bench with
a
cold, sulky expression,
resting her face
on her folded
arms on the table.
Her short
-cropped hair left her neck bare.
Her neck
was thin and had a deeper notch than normal. Finally she calmed down enough to continue.

“I wasn’t fired because of that. They didn’t know how close we were. They were just pissed that I spent my free time there and sometimes even spent the night. But the official reason for my termination was that I brought them booze and women.”

“Women?”

“Right. Nothing wrong with your hearing at least! I know some girls from Helsinki, and once I asked them to come up to visit. We had a nice party and everybody had a good time. The gals would come and visit Tappi and Han
nu
every once in a while.”

“Did they help release that sexual tension you were just talking about?” Koskinen asked, even at the risk of offending her again.

Pike didn’t take offense, although her words were dripping with disdain. “Right again. That’s exactly what they did. Tappi and Hannu saved what little money they had to pay for the girls’ taxis and tips, when in reality those were exactly the expenses that should have been paid by Social Security.”

The patter of the rain had let up, and between two apartment buildings they could see the dark cloud mass was starting to break up over the city. It would be good running weather tonight, Koskinen thought. On the way home he should pick up a Gatorade and a couple beers for afterward.

Pike interrupted his train of thought with a shivery voice. “I’m freezing out here. Do you have anything more you want to ask?”

“No, not really,” Koskinen said, but then he remembered one more thing. “Where did Raymond get all the money everyone talks about?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Not even to you?”

“It wasn’t like we were married or anything.” She snorted, obviously bored. “I never bothered prying into things like that.”

“Did you ever see him after you left Wolf House?”

“Not once.”

“That’s all then,” Koskinen said, standing up. His legs had gone numb while seated on the bench, and he started stretching them.

Pike watched him,
amuse
d
. “Are all cops like that?”

“Like what?”

“Always exercising whenever you can?”

Kaatio popped into Koskinen’s head, and he couldn’t hold back the smile. “No.”

To his surprise, Pike smiled back, and for a moment her large mouth looked downright beautiful.

“Well, bye then,” she said, waving and walking away. Koskinen answered the wave and turned to walk
toward
the parking lot. However, after a few steps he remembered one last thing. “Pike, wait!”

She stopped and stood with an expectant expression on her face. Koskinen walked closer before asking his question.

“You must have known Ilmari Laine, right?”

“That crazy cabbie?” Pike sneered. “
’C
ourse I did.”

“How did he get along with Raymond?”

Pike didn’t beat around the bush. “It was all-out fucking war between them…death threats both ways.”

“Are you serious?” Without noticing, Koskinen began to get excited, perhaps a bit too much so. “Why?”

“Once Laine refused to give Raymond a ride when he was drunk. Then Raymond threatened to expose Laine’s scam, and that would have been the end of his taxi license.”

“What scam?”

“He cheats the welfare office with taxi vouchers. Disabled people get a certain number of them every month. But some don’t have time or don’t need them all. Laine trades coffee and cigarettes for their unused vouchers and then milk
s
the welfare office. All in a day’s work…”

13.

Koskinen didn’t even make it to his office before Milla attacked from behind in the hallway. “Where have you been all day? They almost called
in
the bloodhounds to look for you.”

“Me?” Koskinen looked at Milla, dumbfounded.

The antenna of her stocking cap just barely reached the level of his jaw.

“I was working. You know, investigating crime.”

“Was it something so secret that you couldn’t even answer your phone?”

Koskinen pulled out his mobile phone and barked a low curse. He had turned it off at the hospital
,
a
nd then
had
forgotten about it.

The phone rang the second he powered it on.

“It’s Pekki. Where the hell have you been playing hooky?”

“Around.”

Pekki wasn’t about to listen to Koskinen’s explanation, instead just letting rip with his news. “We found the wheelchair.”

“No shit!” Koskinen yelled. “Where?”

“Car 341 was canvassing the area and it didn’t take long before this one chatty retired guy said he had seen a wheelchair in the bike shed behind his apartment building. At first he wondered why someone would store something like that with the bicycles, but then he just th
ought one of his neighbors had left it there while
popp
ing
over for a faith healing at some revival meeting in Nokia.”

“Okay, okay, get to the point,” Koskinen said, interrupting impatiently. “Did you figure out how the wheelchair ended up there?”

“Yeah. Some kids from the building found it in the ditch on their way to school and hid it in the shed.”

“Were they able to explain why?”

“Yeah. They had big plans to use the chair’s control system to build a remote control rig for scaring old
grannies. Clever boys, eh?”

“Where’s the chair now?”

“Here in Forensics. Mäkitalo just started looking it over—”

Koskinen hung up the phone mid-sentence and two minutes later was standing next to Pekki at Forensics. The wheelchair was up on a large work surface and two bright lights were focused on it. The chair was different from the ones Harjus and Ketterä had. Under the seat were two large batteries and an electrical motor. The controls were embedded in the right armrest. It did look like a control pad for a remote-controlled toy, so it was no wonder the boys’ imaginations had run wild.

Of the three Forensics investigators—
Risto P. Jalonen,
Erkki Palo, and
Panu Mäkitalo
—
Mäkitalo
had taken on the task of inspecting the wheelchair.