Wolves and Angels (37 page)

“That’s the million euro question.”

“Exactly,” Koskinen said and ended the call before he could say anything spiteful.

Only a second later he was already wondering why he
had gotten on Pekki’s case. He had just been stating things like they probably were—Ketterä was lying dead somewhere.

It was pointless to believe anything else.

Koskinen closed the car door and started walking. He wanted a few minutes of peace and quiet to think. He walked across a deserted parking lot at the edge of the forest. They were already well into the fall, and the summer cultural season was long since passed, but the Kennonnokka Summer Theater placard was still advertising a performance of Astrid Lindgren’s
Emil & the Great Escape
. Lower down through the trees he could see a glimmer of Lake Vehnusjärvi. The wind was spinning the yellow birch leaves around the beach, and even the water slide seemed to be shivering with cold.

Koskinen sat down on the top step of the long wooden stairway that led down to the beach. What would happen next? Had the killer’s appetite been satiated, or was he already out somewhere stalking his fourth victim? What kind of person was he? A blood-thirsty maniac or the merciful angel of death Pekki had described, a psychopath playing God?

But the world was full of suffering people. And they did not all live in one assisted living center in Tampere, Finland.

So why were all three victims from Wolf House?

Koskinen noticed that all he had was questions and not one single answer. And still he had to make quick, smart decisions. For example, should he place every disabled housing facility in the city under police guard? That felt like a step too far. At a minimum, it would cause a panic, no matter what they said about precautionary measures.

He sat watching a flight of swallows flitting along the surface of the water. Presumably the warm September had messed up their internal clocks so they were congregating for their migration far behind their normal schedule. They had a long journey ahead of them, and Koskinen wondered how many of them would ever make it to the warm shores of Africa. Who would protect them from birds of prey, storms, and hunters’ nets stretched across their path? The world was full of people in need of protection. His mind returned to Riitta Makkonen, left alone in her empty diner.

His phone rang in his breast pocket. Koskinen jumped at the sound, and the flight of swallows swept into the sky as if driven away by it. He dallied over putting his hand in his pocket, thinking that this must be it. Pekki had found the body deeper back in the forest.

Ho
wever, the caller was
Eskola. “I’ve been interrogating Laine for two hours now and nothing new has come up. What should we do with him?”

“Ask him if Ketterä had anything with him when he got off on Sotkan
Street
.”

“He didn’t. I already asked.”

“Not a pillow, for example?”

Koskinen wasn’t even sure what he was getting at with this question. But Eskola replied without hesitation. “No, Laine is positive that Ketterä didn’t have anything with him, not even in the compartment under his wheelchair.”

“You’ve done a thorough job,” Koskinen said and then reported the discovery of Ketterä’s wheelchair. “Looks like we have a third murder to investigate.”

He was surprised by Eskola’s confident response.
“Well, at least Laine isn’t responsible for it. He left Ketterä on Sotkan
Street
and from then on we know every move he made.”

“You’re right,” Koskinen said and then remembered the reprimand from his boss that morning. The police really didn’t have any evidence against Laine. On the other hand, Laine’s arrest may have been the best thing that could have happened to him, because now the suspicions about him had been significantly diminished. At least he couldn’t be blamed for Ketterä’s death. Koskinen’s mind didn’t have room for the concept that the Wolf House homicides had different perpetrators.

“Cut him loose.”

“Understood.”

“What do you think about all this?” Koskinen asked and then sensed Eskola’s confusion. A lieutenant had addressed him as an equal.

“I…
Well…
Finding the pillow seems odd since we know that Ketterä never returned to Wolf House last night. It means that he was smothered somewhere else. I mean that the pillow has to be from somewhere else. Or, then again…”

Eskola fell silent for a moment.

“Yeah?”

“If the pillow turns out to be Ketterä’s, the perpetrator has to be from Wolf House. Someone who had access to Ketterä’s room.”

“That’s sound reasoning,” Koskinen said. “So now our first priority should be identifying the origin of the pillow. Would you be willing to take that on?”

“Affirmative!” Eskola replied, and it sounded to
Koskinen like Eskola had just barely managed to swallow the word “sir” at the last moment.

“The pillow is on its way to Forensics. Tell Mäkitalo or whoever is up in the case rotation that as soon as they get fiber samples from the pillow, they need to compare them to the other bedding. Then go to Wolf House and make sure that no one outside of the investigation goes in Ketterä’s room.”

“Roger that,” Eskola said. “I’ll have Laine released immediately. Following that I’ll go to Forensics and then to Wolf House.”

Koskinen had to smile at Eskola’s enthusiasm. He decided to pour a little more gas on the fire: “You’ve done good work. Keep it up.”

He thought he might have heard a clicking of heels just as he ended the call.

He started back
toward
the parking lot. At the other end of it, a path plunged into thick forest, and he suddenly felt a compulsive desire to go running. Had he brought his running gear, he might have. He sat down sideways in the driver’s seat of the Vectra and stretched his legs outside. Then he looked for his phone and called his secretary.

Milla answered immediately.

“It’s me,” Koskinen grunted absent-mindedly.

“Who?”

“Koskinen.”

“Oh, you! Where are you calling from?”

“Nokia.”

“Are you chasing the killer?”

“In a way.”

“Oh, man! That’s so freaking awesome!”

Koskinen envisioned how the antenna on Milla’s stocking cap would be quivering with excitement. But he wasn’t in a mood for chit-chat. “Have the uniforms brought in Pirkko-Liisa Rinne?”

“No one’s been brought in.”

Koskinen glanced at his watch in concern. It had been several hours already since he had given the order to have her picked up.

But Milla didn’t give him any time to think. “You’re in really good shape, right?”

“What?”

“Oh, it’s just that this officer with a sort of a long face came by.”

“Turpeinen.”

“Yeah, that was probably his name.”

“What did he want?”

“He was taking last-minute bets on tomorrow’s race. I put down ten.”

Koskinen bit his lip. “On who?”

“You!” Milla exclaimed. “I have faith in you.”

“Thanks.”

Koskinen slammed the door of the Vectra with a force that would have given Kuparinen in the garage nightmares for days had he been there to witness it. Then he spun the car around and drove back to the Ketterä house.

22.

A red Lada Samara was sitting in the driveway, so Koskinen concluded that the Ketteräs had returned from their shopping outing. He left his car on the street and walked into the yard. His mood was much heavier and more uncertain than it had been an hour ago, when he hadn’t yet known about the discovery of Hannu Ketterä’s wheelchair.

They must have seen him through the window, since the door opened before he touched the doorbell. An old man with a delicate build stepped out onto the landing. He had hair the color of snow and jerky movements.

Koskinen introduced himself as a police lieutenant, at which the man became visibly agitated. He glanced around nervously and asked Koskinen to come in quickly. Koskinen complied, noticing out of the corner of his eye that the neighbor was still lurking on the other side of the fence with a cigarette in his lips.

Ketterä closed the door behind Koskinen and indicated with a jerk of his thumb that Koskinen should continue on into the house. A quick count said that there were a good dozen plastic bags of apples and a few cardboard boxes of empty glass bottles on the floor of
the sunny, glassed-in porch. It wasn’t hard to guess that the Ketterä
s
’ short-term plans involved a visit to the cider press.

A woman with a short stature but hips that were all the wider for it appeared on the porch. Her face was rosy and burned with a mixture of concern and curiosity. Koskinen decided not to tell them about the wheelchair yet, but wondered at the same time whether withholding
it
was
the
right
thing to do
. The news would probably make the elderly parents frantic with worry. An
yway
it was premature to talk about Hannu’s death
until the body was found.

Koskinen shook both of their hands and told them in vague terms that his visit was just a formality, that the police were just making routine visits in the name of public safety, but it wasn’t that easy to pull the wool over Iiro Ketterä’s eyes. He seemed to know a thing or two about the police organization and asked why a lieutenant was making such a menial house call.

Koskinen mumbled something nebulous about a chronic lack of man power, and then quickly asked when they had last seen their son. Kaija Ketterä unhappily wrung her hands and lamented that Hannu didn’t have much
tim
e for his parents anymore. They hadn’t seen him in months, but a couple of days ago they had talked to him on the phone about Raimo
Timonen
’s death. Since then they hadn’t heard anything from their son.

At this point Iiro brusquely interrupted his wife and noted that obviously the reason for Koskinen’s visit was that their son was missing. Koskinen tried to calm them down—it was still too early to be thinking in terms of a disappearance. Hannu could just be visiting friends and had neglected to tell anyone.

But Iiro Ketterä wasn’t buying what Koskinen was selling. Their son didn’t have any friends like that. Iiro said he knew what was going on. Hannu had disappeared and the police suspected that the same thing had happened to him as to the two other Wolf House residents. In fact, they had guessed it the night before when a concerned call had come from the center asking whether Hannu might have come home for a visit. And upon reading in the morning paper about the elderly woman’s death, their suspicions were confirmed: Hannu was in trouble. Iiro ended his outburst with an accusing question about why the Finnish police didn’t seem better able to protect the citizenry.

Koskinen felt a painful prick of conscience, and Kaija Ketterä’s tearful voice didn’t ease his feelings of remorse in the slightest. “I’m afraid the same thing has happened to our Hannu as happened to Raimo. Their fates have been so similar all along. First Raimo was paralyzed diving, and then Hannu fell skiing.”

“Did you know Raimo
Timonen
well?”

Hannu’s mother looked at Koskinen with her mouth agape as if she hadn’t understood the question.

“Of course we did. Hannu and Raimo were best friends since they were children.”

“Really?” Now this was interesting. “They’ve known each other that long?”

“Practically since they were
in
diapers,” Iiro interjected. “They were like two peas in a pod. They played soccer together and did all kinds of other sports too, everything that young bucks do. They quit school suddenly at the same time too, and went to work for Tampella doing odd jobs in the machine factor
y
. And both bought motorcycles. And that was it from then on,
cruising around town chasing tail.”

Kaija Ketterä threw an angry look at her husband, presumably ashamed of his frank language.

“Raimo was like a second son to us,” she told Koskinen. “That’s why it was such a shock when we heard the news on Wednesday. How could anyone do something like that to someone in Raimo’s condition?”

Koskinen noticed that Iiro Ketterä was constantly glancing through the window of the porch over
toward
the neighbor’s yard. The same man in overalls was staring at them over the fence. A cigarette was still smoldering in the corner of his mouth, and he didn’t seem the least bit ashamed of his curiosity.

“And we’ve got that son of a bitch skulking around. He must’ve guessed it was the police coming.”

Ketterä turned angrily to Koskinen and explained, “Ulpukainen has lived there thirty-two years, just as long as we have here. He knew Hannu and Raimo since they were kids.”

Koskinen could see from Ketterä’s expression that there had been more than a few breaches of neighborly relations since then. And Ketterä wasn’t making any attempt to conceal that there was no love lost between them. “The man is a vulture. Ulpukainen. You’d never guess what he said on Wednesday when he heard about Raimo’s death.”

Koskinen shook his head, obviously interested in what was to follow.

‘‘He came over that evening. Supposedly to offer his condolences for the death of Hannu’s best friend, but then he started running his mouth about how it was probably better that way.
T
he poor
boy’s
out of his
misery.” Ketterä was fuming. “I was this close to socking him in the mouth.”

Koskinen looked at Ketterä thoughtfully. Aggression didn’t fit at all with the impression he was sure that everyone got from the small, white-haired man. More likely he would be taken for a nice old grandfather who passed out candy to kids. But he had experienced plenty of hard knocks over the years.

Suffering was written all over Kaija Ketterä
’s
face as well. Koskinen saw her son in her
:
g
ray
ed hair
, but
a few
individual strands revealed how red it had once been. The earlobes were pointed, and the eyes slightly squinty. Now they were welling with tears, and her voice was almost choked off with swallowing.

“And then that nasty man was saying the same thing in town about our Hannu. That it
was better for him to die so he’
d stop suffering. He didn’t have the nerve to say it straight to our faces, but it got back to us all the same. He’d been singing the same song about Raimo since the poor dear got hurt out at our cabin.”

“Cabin?” Koskinen perked up. “His accident happened at your summer cabin?”

“Yes,” she replied, and, unlike her husband, addressed Koskinen respectfully. “Just imagine
it
, Lieutenant Koskinen! It was the first time the boys were there together. We bou
ght the place in the summer of ’
82, but it wasn’t until four years later that Hannu took his friends out there.”

Iiro Ketterä broke in. “Hannu was like that. He was generally a very social boy, but at the cabin he liked to keep to himself. On this one hillside he built his own little hideout and then slept there all alone during the summer. Hannu loved that place. Up until he took his
friends there for the first time.”

Kaija Ketterä wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron. “Could that outing have ended any worse? Raimo dove into the lake and hit a rock.”

“Where is the cabin?” Koskinen asked, pulling out his notebook.

“In Teisko.”

“Is it possible that Hannu would have gone there now?”

“No.” Iiro Ketterä shook his head. “We sold it the summer after Hannu’s accident. We couldn’t bear to keep it—too many memories.”

From somewhere farther back in the house an old spitz padded out on shaky legs. Its fur was matted and faded, and most of the color was gone from its muzzle as well. The dog sniffed Koskinen’s pant legs, and his curled tail wagged tiredly.

“Lucky, out to your house!” Ketterä opened the entry
door
and
sho
o
ed
the
dog
out
into
the
yard. “Go on!”

Either the dog was deaf or didn’t care much about its master’s commands. It sat down on Koskinen’s left shoe, so he crouched down to scratch the bristly fur on its neck. “Let her be.”

“She’s already sixteen years old.” Kaija Ketterä looked at the dog with her head cocked. This obviously brought back even more memories, because her voice went tight and teary again. “Lucky misses her owner. She’s Hannu’s dog. She understands things much better than most people would think, and Hannu’s paralysis was hard for her too. Just like for all of us.”

Kaija had to swallow before she was able to continue.
“I was especially sorry for Sanni and the children.”

“Sanni and the children?” Koskinen asked as he let the dog lick the back of his hand. “Whos
e
children?”

“Hannu and Sanni’s of course.”

Koskinen sprang up. “Hannu has a wife and children?”

“Had,” Iiro Ketterä corrected. “But not anymore. Hannu divorced Sanni a year after the accident.”

“And the children?”

“They stayed with
her
. The older one was three when Hannu was paralyzed, and the baby had just been born.”

Koskinen felt Lucky nudging him with her nose. But he couldn’t scratch her anymore.

“Where can I find
her
?” he asked impatiently.

“She remarried and lives in Toijala now.”

“Have you had anything to do with her since the divorce?”

“Not enough,” Kaija Ketterä said, sniffling. “Sometimes Sanni used to bring the children to visit us, but not this summer. We still talk over the phone sometimes.”

“The last time was yesterday,” Iiro Ketterä said. “But I get the feeling that
her
new husband doesn’t really like
her
keep
ing
in touch with us.”

“Could I have their address?” Koskinen asked and then turned to a fresh page in his notebook.

Kaija Ketterä turned and walked
toward
the kitchen with waddling steps. Lucky stood up and followed her with a similarly laborious gait, probably thinking she
was going to get something to eat.

“What are you going to do with Sanni’s address?” Iiro Ketterä asked, his brow furrowed. “You won’t find Hannu there. They haven’t had anything to do with each other since the divorce.”

“Just a few routine questions,” Koskinen said dismissively. “It’s just part of the job.”

Ketterä took a step closer and lowered his voice so his wife wouldn’t be able to hear in the kitchen. “You’re thinking that the same thing happened to Hannu as Raimo and that old woman. Right?”

“Nothing points that way,” Koskinen said, feeling another twinge. “We don’t have any information that would make us suspect anything like that.”

Except for
his
wheelchair and pillow we just found in the woods in Hervanta, he thought. But he didn’t have the heart to tell them about that. And he didn’t need to until they found the body.

Mrs. Ketterä returned with a beautifully embroidered, cloth-backed address book. Maybe it had been a gift from her grandchildren. She leafed through the pages to the right spot and then offered it to Koskinen.

“Sanni has such a difficult name these days that I still can’t quite pronounce it.”

The name was Sanni Standerskjöld, and Koskinen had to copy it letter by letter. He added the address and phone number below the name and then put the notepad back in his breast pocket.