Snow Woman (22 page)

“I know the events of the past months have been difficult for Johanna, but they’ve also been difficult for me,” Leevi Säntti finally said. “No matter how hard I try to believe that God knows what he’s doing, I still commit the sin of doubt. The baby Johanna killed was my child too. Why did God want to punish me by killing my child?”

“The baby probably would have died anyway, along with your wife,” I said.

“The Lord has performed greater miracles. Perhaps he would have preserved Johanna and the child if we’d had the humility to bend to his will and put our trust in prayer.”

I looked at Leevi Säntti in disbelief. I realized suddenly what it was about him that reminded me of Kari Hanninen. Both of them turned on their personal charm full blast when they talked about the things they knew their listeners would have the hardest time believing. Säntti was probably a charismatic preacher.

“Why didn’t you take your wife back after the abortion?” I asked.

“Even if this worldly society accepts it, abortion is a very serious sin. Of course the children need their mother, but they’re better off growing up without a mother than under the direction of a godless sinner like that.”

Minna shifted uncomfortably, and her elbow bumped the recorder, sending a stack of papers tumbling to the floor. I was glad for the interruption, which gave me a second to gather my thoughts and calm down. Trying to change Leevi Säntti’s mind wasn’t my job, and I wouldn’t have been able to anyway. But it was hard to stay quiet and just listen.

“Our religion does not condone divorce, but Johanna intends to go through with it anyway,” he continued. “Because of the children, I’ve tried to keep an open heart. I even allowed Johanna to sleep under my roof last week despite my fears that she would poison my children’s minds. Even though she doesn’t have a home to offer them, she wants them for herself. She”—here Säntti spread his arms, and for a moment I thought he was imitating Jesus on the cross—“wants to destroy me and my family.”

“So you aren’t going to give her the children?” I said.

“No, not without a fight. And I have God on my side.”

I couldn’t say whether I believed in God, but I knew I didn’t believe in a vending machine deity who gave you what you wanted as long as you remembered to fold your hands and bow your head at regular intervals. And I really didn’t respect a God who thought the mother of nine small children should die rather than have an abortion to save her life. I realized I was getting angry again. I’d probably be asking Leevi Säntti if he’d ever heard of condoms if we didn’t wrap things up soon.

“You keep hinting that you think it’s possible your wife murdered Elina Rosberg. Do you have any idea what her motivation would have been?”

Leevi Säntti looked at me with extreme sadness. “You just said that Ms. Rosberg encouraged my wife to have an abortion. Perhaps Johanna finally started feeling contrition and decided to kill her tempter.”

I sighed. With that logic Johanna would be skulking around Oulu bumping off the hospital staff that had performed the abortion. But Säntti’s suggestion made me think. Was this the insanity I kept sensing about Elina’s death? Johanna was definitely unbalanced.

“Where were you on the night of the twenty-sixth?” I asked.

“Me? Probably here at home. Or no—actually, I think I was awa
y . . .
Just a minute.” Säntti pulled out an executive day planner.

“There was a revival on Boxing Day in Vihti, and I was asked to speak. I drove there,” he finally said.

“Vihti? That’s not more than twenty miles from Nuuksio. Where did you spend the night?” I asked.

“At the home of a brother in Vihti.”

“Did you happen to stop in Nuuksio?”

“What would I have done there?”

“You could have gone to meet your wif
e . . .
or Elina Rosberg. You called her that night at eleven o’clock. What did you want to talk to her about?”

Säntti glanced toward the heavens, and I wondered whether he was pleading to his God for help.

“I didn’t call her,” he finally said, looking me straight in the eye.

“Doesn’t your religion say that lying is a sin? You did call. Elina Rosberg’s personal phone, not the house phone your wife used.”

“And what if I wanted to talk some sense into that woman? What if I asked her to send my wife back?”

“At eleven o’clock at night on the day after Christmas?” I asked dubiously.

Leevi Säntti returned my gaze but was saved from answering when the door suddenly swung open and a boy of about three toddled in. He stretched carefully to close the door and then ran to his father.

“Daddy, did Mommy come in that car?”

“Simo, I don’t know how many times I’ve told you that you aren’t allowed in Daddy’s office when he’s working. No, Mommy didn’t come in that car, just these nice ladies. Now run back to Auntie Maija-Leena.”

Pretending not to hear his father’s command, Simo stood and stared at us. Minna’s police uniform seemed particularly interesting to him. Leevi Säntti shifted uneasily, and I got the feeling that in the presence of different people he would have ordered his son much more sternly. Finally the boy climbed into my arms, which was a surprise since I’ve never been the type to attract little kids.

“Our mommy don’t live here anymore,” Simo explained. Each
r
came out as a
w
. “She just comes visit. Mommy did sin and that why she not live with us anymore.”

The word “sin” sounded ludicrous coming out of a three-year-old’s mouth. I wanted to tell Simo that his mother missed him, but I didn’t want to confuse the child any more. His breath smelled of rye bread, and the skin on his cheeks was warm and smooth like a nectarine that had been lying in the sun. Leevi Säntti stood up and opened the door, calling for Maija-Leena to come get Simo. The young woman came at a half run, three preschool-aged girls at her heels. All of them looked alarmed.

“Come along, Simo. You can help Johannes and Markus clean your room,” Maija-Leena coaxed. I had a hard time imagining what enticement there could be in an offer like that, but the boy obediently climbed down from my lap and scampered off into the hall.

With Simo gone, Säntti continued. “I admit the time of the call was odd, but I just happened to be near a phone and assumed people like her tended to stay up late.”

“What exactly did you want from Ms. Rosberg?” I asked.

“I wanted her to talk some sense into Johanna so she would either come home or give up her demands about the children. She wants them for herself, but she doesn’t have a home for them, an income, or anything,” he said. “She isn’t going to get the children anyway. She left them, and she’s mentally unbalanced. There’s no point in her demanding them because God is on my side.”

I felt like saying he should probably still hire a lawyer but kept my mouth shut.

“Ms. Rosberg wouldn’t help me,” Säntti said coldly. “When I said that Johanna could come home if she repented and asked for forgiveness from me, our church, and God, she hung up.”

I probably would have too. But
had
Elina hung up? What if despite the ban on men, Leevi Säntti went to Rosberga? What if Elina met him at the gate, and then under the influence of her drugs passed out in Säntti’s car? Säntti had seen an opportunity to get revenge and dragged Elina into the woods to die. The fiber analysis from the material found on Elina’s body—what little there was—had probably come back by now. What if it matched Säntti’s car or clothing?

I asked Säntti for the name of his friend who lived in Vihti. Säntti claimed he’d arrived there around twelve thirty, which would exclude him from the pool of suspects. But we would check.

I also asked for Johanna’s parents’ address. It turned out her mother had died a few years earlier.

“The moment she killed her baby, she was dead to her father and brothers. I doubt they’ll be willing to talk to you,” Säntti said.

“We’ll see. But first I’m going to talk to her sister,” I said.

Säntti’s expression turned even more disapproving. “Maija-Leena won’t be able to tell you anything I can’t. You can just ask me. Then you can leave when I do.”

Getting Säntti to allow us to stay in his house after he left for work took some negotiation. He finally asked that we wait until Maija-Leena put Maria down for her nap and Elisa was home from school to watch the older kids before we interviewed her. This would take some time, so in the end we left when Säntti did, to visit Johanna’s relatives, with the promise that we wouldn’t return for an hour.

“You must really suspect Johanna if you came all the way up here to ask about her,” Minna said as we drove slowly toward the Yli-Koivistos’ farm, where Johanna’s father lived with her oldest brother and his family and her youngest brother, who was still single. The middle brother, named Simo like his nephew, had moved north to Kemi.

“It isn’t just about that,” I answered briefly. I wasn’t really sure what it was about. I just felt the need to know more about Johanna’s life in this tiny religious community.

Johanna’s oldest brother had a brood almost as big as his sister’s, so I expected the Yli-Koivisto home to be full of life. The main house, painted a dark red, harkened back to the 1800s, and a handsome, well-cared-for stone barn sat on the other side of the farmyard. There were no cars outside, but fresh tire tracks led to the three-car garage.

No one came to the door even though we knocked a couple of times and even rang the doorbell—in the countryside a sure sign that a stranger was visiting. After checking that the barn was locked and no lights were on in the house, we left. Maybe the Yli-Koivistos were home, but they clearly didn’t want to talk to the police.

The house Johanna grew up in was a little off the beaten track, and when I glanced at it once more in the rearview mirror, I realized how dreary and withdrawn the dark colors made it look. No wonder Maija-Leena Yli-Koivisto preferred to live in her sister’s more modern home. When we returned, she was bustling about as comfortably as if she were the lady of the house. I remembered Johanna’s comment that Leevi had already chosen Maija-Leena as her successor if she were to die in childbirth. What would happen now that Johanna was filing for divorce? I didn’t know if Conservative Laestadians were like Catholics and didn’t marry divorcées. Would Maija-Leena still serve Leevi then?

The moment Maija-Leena began speaking, I realized she was in love with her sister’s husband. She talked about Leevi Säntti as if he were a demigod. She wouldn’t criticize him in any way. Johanna had known that abortion was a sin. God would have taken care of her and the children. I wondered how Johanna felt knowing that her entire family had been prepared to condemn her to death. It suddenly occurred to me that both Johanna and I had been in mortal danger recently. Johanna had saved herself. I was only alive out of sheer luck.

“The children are better off without Johanna,” Maija-Leena said. “Her visits just confuse them, and even Maria has been restless at night. We can explain to the older ones what’s going on, but the little ones don’t understand.” Maija-Leena was sewing buttons on a dark-blue dress that was about the right size for a six-year-old. A meat loaf was browning in the oven, and bread dough was rising on the counter. Eleven-year-old Elisa was in the other room reading aloud to the younger kids from a book about a little lost lamb.

“Do you like your sister?” I asked.

Maija-Leena glanced up from her sewing, then looked down quickly, as if to conceal what her eyes might say.

“She’s a lot older than I am,” she said slowly. “When I was little, I looked up to her. She was so nice, and she always had time to play with me. Their wedding was so beautiful. The whole village said Johanna was blessed to get such a good man. In high school I was surprised when she suggested I go away to college and complained that she hadn’t been able to. She had a nice house and lots of healthy children! What else could she want? I think she’s been having worldly thoughts for longer than any of us knew. She’s planted them in Anna’s heart too, so Leevi has to banish them with the rod.”

“Does Leevi Säntti hit his children?” Minna asked casually. We didn’t look at each other, but we both knew that evidence of parental violence would be a powerful weapon on Johanna’s side in a custody battle. Maybe in Karhumaa they called it discipline, but fortunately Karhumaa law didn’t hold sway everywhere.

A child started crying somewhere.

“That’s Maria waking up from her nap again,” said Maija-Leena. “I have to calm her down. You should leave. The older children will be home soon. I don’t want them to see the police here asking questions about their mother.”

We had to content ourselves with what we had. I also needed to catch my train. As we pulled out of the Säntti driveway, we saw the school transport taxi stopping on the other side of the road. Out of it climbed a girl of about thirteen whose wild blond curls, pulled back in a ponytail, were unmistakable. Anna Säntti had inherited her mother’s hair.

“Minna, stop!”

I jumped out into a snowbank before the car came to a complete halt and yelled after the girl. “Anna! Wait!”

The girl turned, and I saw hope in her expression. It disappeared when she saw that her mother wasn’t with us. Still, she started over to us, a young lady striding tall in a dark-green coat that looked like it had been her mother’s.

I told her who we were and asked if there was a café in the village where we could talk briefly.

“There isn’t a café here. People drink their coffee at home.” The girl’s eyes were more grown-up than her age of thirteen, and her body was already that of a woman. “We can just drive. If you turn toward Viittakorpi, it makes a loop.”

I moved into the backseat next to Anna. Her face was a mixture of Johanna and Leevi Säntti. Her features were attractive, like her mother’s, but also had the firmness and radiance of her father’s.

“I can’t be long or Maija-Leena will wonder where I’ve run off to. I’ll probably have to say the taxi was late. Is it my mom you want to talk about? Uh-oh, Grandpa!” Anna ducked down as we passed a stooped man coming from the other direction on a kick sled.