Death Spiral (27 page)

Footsteps echoed below. The building manager arrived, with a panting Kauko Nieminen following behind. An entire regiment of police came next.

I grabbed the key. There was no time to stand around figuring out if one of the Helsinki cops outranked me.

“Helmet and vest?” Koivu whispered as I inserted the key in the lock. I shook my head. The less threatening equipment, the better. And a bulletproof vest probably wouldn’t have fit around me anyway.

“Hanna! Put the gun away. We’re coming in!”

Nothing in the entryway looked out of the ordinary.

Hanna and Teräsvuori were in the living room. Teräsvuori sat in an armchair and Hanna stood in front of him swaying a little but with the rifle muzzle held solidly against Teräsvuori’s sternum. Terror had turned Teräsvuori’s face into a carving, and there were tears in his eyes. When he saw us, he barely dared to lift his eyes from the barrel of the gun.

“Hanna! Put the gun away,” I said from the living room door. “Teräsvuori didn’t kill Noora. He has an airtight alibi.”

“That’s a lie,” Hanna cried. “Everyone is on his side, even the police. You’re protecting him, and he’s going to kill all of us soon if I don’t . . . I have to . . .”

The sound of the shot deafened everyone in the apartment and stairwell. Even though the crowd of people muffled the echo, my ears still rang so badly I could barely recognize the sound that followed the bang.

Shrill, inconsolable weeping.

Blue droplets ran from Hanna’s eyes, the rifle slipped from her hands to the floor, and she faltered back away from the body. There was only a small hole in Teräsvuori’s chest, but blood sprayed from his back, and the body slowly slid down the chair. The Creature thrashed inside me as if she had been hit, and Hanna collapsed against me. From behind came the sound of Kauko Nieminen vomiting on his shoes.

I hadn’t heard the ambulance come, but now men in white suits barged in, checking Vesku’s pulse as a matter of routine, as if there were any hope after that butchery. I wrapped one arm around Hanna’s sobbing frame while trying to massage the Creature through my belly.

No one seemed to know what to do except the paramedics, who headed back into the stairwell. They weren’t needed anymore. What was left of Vesku wouldn’t be carried away until the crime scene investigation was complete.

The stench of vomit grew, and instinctively I started breathing through my mouth. Kauko Nieminen’s eyes were frightened, and his bald head sweated as if he had just sprinted a full 5K.

“Hanna?” His voice was a strange thin bleating. “Hanna shot . . .”

Hanna didn’t seem to hear her husband’s voice, but Kauko’s touch made her slowly turn. Her eyes stared ahead, unseeing. We didn’t need a doctor to tell us she was in shock.

It was a relief when my former boss, Lieutenant Nuotio from the Helsinki PD Violent Crime office, showed up and started issuing orders. His pompousness was oddly calming, reminding me of the normal world of police hierarchy within which I usually worked. I asked them to call Hanna a doctor. In the sea of strange male faces in Teräsvuori’s apartment, I searched for Koivu and Pihko but didn’t find them. Maybe they had been sent outside.

I released my grip on Hanna, but that was a mistake. She nearly collapsed to the floor before Kauko managed to grab hold of her. No one else dared to approach Hanna, as if what she had done had released a contagious disease that everyone feared.

I knew I should stay to give my version of events, but I wanted out of there as fast as I could. I felt an insane anxiety that Koivu and Pihko had left me alone in enemy territory. Soon they’d arrest me too. In reality, I was the one who had killed Teräsvuori, my careless mouth, my dithering about the strength of his alibi. I had wanted Teräsvuori to be guilty and that was why he’d received the death penalty for a murder he didn’t commit.

I walked down and out into the yard where the sun actually had torn away a piece of the sky for itself. Everything was still oddly muffled, and the roar of traffic from the West Highway was only the slightest murmuring. The gulls overhead opened their mouths but made no sound.

I felt my heart curling up like a hedgehog threatened by a dog. Inside me, where that heart should have been open, was an enormous empty space, hollow, desolate, and frighteningly black. Only one thing fit there, the knowledge that I had made the greatest mistake of my life, one I could never fix.

In the middle of the yard was an empty playground. The children had probably been taken inside during all the commotion. The first reporters were rushing to the scene, and I crawled up the stairs to the slide to hide, since with my big belly I would be easy to recognize. I sat under the little roof at the top, wrapping my arms around my belly and thinking of the baby smelling of milk who I would comfort in my arms and rock to sleep. I didn’t realize I was rocking too until someone touched my shoulder.

“Maria? Are you OK?”

Pihko. And in the background Koivu with red eyes.

“No,” I said, but I still tried to get up. I had to grab Pihko’s outstretched arm.

“Taskinen just got here. And Nuotio wants to talk to you.”

“But I can’t right now,” I said, hoping I would even be able to cry. “This is all my fault.”

“It’s just as much mine,” Koivu said, and not just because he wanted to calm me down. “I shouldn’t have let her in there!”

“She wouldn’t have come here at all if I hadn’t blabbed about Teräsvuori’s alibi.”

“And you wouldn’t have blabbed about it if I’d handled that job a little more carefully the first time,” Pihko said without any anger.

“But we should have been able to stop her,” I said. “We should have been able to talk her down.”

We stood there helpless under the spring sun, which now felt cruel. There were no comforting words.

“My vacation starts tomorrow, and then I’m not coming back,” Pihko said suddenly. We had been planning to throw a party on Saturday night, but now that probably wouldn’t happen. I wished I could drink myself into a stupor and forget everything for a few hours. One bender wouldn’t hurt the Creature, would it? Immediately I rejected the idea along with an even stronger feeling of guilt.

A uniformed Helsinki officer came to tell us Lieutenant Nuotio wanted to talk to us. I had to force myself to go back inside, even though I wanted to run in the other direction. I could always go on sick leave. I only had three weeks left until my maternity leave started, so I didn’t have to work any more at all. And then after the baby? Maybe I could find a job in a law office again, preferably one that only handled consumer protection cases and other nonviolent things like that.

Officers were restraining a few eager reporters outside Teräsvuori’s apartment, and Nuotio was giving a statement about the incident. Vesku would be famous again for a day. Writing stories about his death would be easy without the main character around to check their accuracy. When the newspapers realized that the King of Karaoke’s killer was Noora Nieminen’s mother, the headlines would get even juicier.

The Nieminens sat in Teräsvuori’s bedroom with Lieutenant Taskinen and a woman who seemed like a doctor. The apartment was in one of the newer residential buildings in this former industrial area, and the layout was standard issue. The bedroom was cramped, with room for little more than a double bed, nightstand, and armchair, which was piled with clothes. The only choice was sitting on the bed. The bed covering must have been expensive, but it was also extraordinarily tacky, black leather and white fur. And to top it all off, there was a mirror on the ceiling. When I glanced up, it reflected Kauko Nieminen’s sweating head. Kauko and Hanna huddled on the edge of the bed, holding each other by the hand. Someone had tried to wipe the blue makeup smears from Hanna’s face but had only made a worse mess. My ears were starting to hear normally again, because I was able to make out the shutter of a camera snapping in the living room. The police photographer had another pretty scene to capture.

Kauko Nieminen pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket with his free hand and wiped his head. The handkerchief left blue streaks. Hanna seemed strangely listless—maybe she had already been given a sedative. Kauko jumped up, apparently done with the silence and waiting.

“The police couldn’t keep Teräsvuori away from us, and this is what happened,” he snapped at Taskinen. “Hanna decided to take matters into her own hands. And you even tried to blame her, you . . . If the police would have done their job and caught Noora’s killer, none of this would have happened!”

I remembered Ulrika Weissenberg saying that Kauko hadn’t wanted Hanna to go to therapy. Rage boiled inside of me. I wanted to find a scapegoat too.

“Are you sure you’re so innocent?” I said. “Couldn’t you see your wife needed help after Noora’s death? You denied her that! Look in the mirror. That’s right, up at the ceiling! Look at yourself and then start pointing fingers!”

“Maria,” Taskinen said in a voice meant to silence me. “Sergeant Kallio is naturally upset about what just happened and doesn’t realize what she’s saying.”

I was just about to give a forced apology when Hanna started screaming again. Lieutenant Nuotio, who had just been walking in, decided to turn back, and Taskinen followed. Fortunately the doctor was there, otherwise calming Hanna down would have fallen to me.

“It would be best to get her out of here as soon as possible,” the doctor said, and Taskinen nodded. Where would they take Hanna? To the psychiatric ward at the hospital? Noora’s funeral was set for next Tuesday. Ulrika would probably have to handle the spectacle she had planned herself.

“Do you know if your wife has been sleeping lately?” the doctor, a thin woman with blond braids, asked Kauko.

“Neither of us has been sleeping! Our daughter died nine days ago, and I haven’t slept for more than half an hour at a time since then. Hanna hasn’t been getting that much!”

That was the first time I felt sympathy for Kauko Nieminen. First a murdered daughter, and now his wife was a killer. Did Kauko have the power to face this situation in any way other than the traditional Finnish male method of two-fisted drinking? And what would happen to Sami?

Hanna’s departure was underway, to the psychiatric ward, as I had guessed. It was better that way; Hanna didn’t belong in prison.
Unless
,
a strange voice whispered in my head,
unless shooting Teräsvuori was part of a plan
. Maybe Hanna had actually killed her own daughter and wanted to cover her tracks.

I almost started laughing at myself. Hanna Nieminen was anything but a calculating killing machine. I had seen how genuine her fear was with my own eyes just the previous night. But that fear would make her awfully easy to manipulate. What if someone had fed her the idea of Teräsvuori’s guilt to draw attention away from them?

Only two real alternatives came to mind: Kauko Nieminen and Ulrika Weissenberg. Ulrika, who had acted as the Nieminen family’s life preserver after Noora’s death. But that idea felt pretty crazy too. In real life people didn’t really play with each other’s minds like they did in psychological thrillers. It was my own guilt that I was trying to escape here.

As Hanna teetered between Kauko and the doctor into the ambulance waiting below, I felt a terrible need to yell after them and apologize.

“Well, that’s that,” Lieutenant Nuotio said sitting on Teräsvuori’s bed. “Lucky the case is pretty simple, right, Taskinen? No doubt about the perpetrator or the motive. The police did what they could, but Mrs. Nieminen had decided to kill Teräsvuori. If anyone had tried to rush Mrs. Nieminen, the results could have been even worse. Bystanders’ lives could have been in danger.”

“But . . .” I stammered, and because the words didn’t want to come, I had to yell. “We should have stopped it. I should have been able to talk the gun away from her!”

“Maria, you tried!” Taskinen had stepped over to me, and now he took me by the shoulders and almost shook me. “Koivu and Pihko said you did your best—”

“But if we hadn’t rushed in like that—”

“Maria! You didn’t pull that trigger. Hanna did,” Taskinen said, pulling me to him. I smelled the ocean scent of his aftershave and felt the rough fabric of his sports coat against my cheek. Taskinen stroked my hair as the tears finally started flowing and sobs rose from my throat.

“We’ll come back to this at a better time, Sergeant Kallio,” I heard Lieutenant Nuotio say, and soon the apartment door shut after him.

When I could finally stop crying, Vesku had already been carried away. Dark-red spots still stained the floor, and a fly that had slipped through the window was feasting at one. Blood had also spattered on the glass table, where a picture of Hanna Nieminen in a heart-shaped frame stood. At least it remained unblemished.

Taskinen told me to take the rest of the day off and offered to drive me straight home, but I wanted to stop by the station. I was afraid that if I went home, I would never come back to work.

I had screwed up before, but no one had ever lost their life because of me—at least not directly. I felt like I owed it to Hanna and Vesku to catch Noora’s murderer.

“I want the lab results before the weekend. They were supposed to come in before noon,” I told Taskinen. “And if anyone has time, Tomi Liikanen needs to be interrogated. Maybe he’ll talk about his relationship with Teräsvuori now that he’s dead.”

“You should try not to think about work now,” Taskinen said, almost angrily. “I’m giving you the next week off in any case, and we’ll arrange for the staff doctor to see you today. You just watched a person die, Maria. You can go ahead and be upset about that for more than a couple hours.”

“And what about you?” I asked. “You’ve known Hanna for years. You aren’t going to be working at one hundred percent either.”

“I’m not actually worried about that,” Taskinen said with a sigh. “But what am I going to say to Silja?”

We drove the rest of the way in silence, Koivu and Pihko driving behind us. When we arrived at the station, Pihko said a little sheepishly that he was hungry and offered to buy me lunch in honor of our last day working together. The others nodded. We had to eat. The thought of food revolted me, but the Creature probably thought differently. So I followed the men to the cafeteria. Thankfully one of the options was a vegetarian soup and potatoes.