Wolves and Angels (10 page)

“And those who can’t?”

“They either get a diaper or a urine bottle, and a nurse cleans them in the morning.”

Koskinen quickly turned back into the room. At the head of the bed was a pull-up bar suspended from the ceiling by two chains to allow
Timonen
to get out of the bed with arm strength alone. On a low nightstand, right next to the bed, was something that looked like a telephone with no handset and a large curl-grained wood picture frame.

Koskinen bent in to get a better look at the photograph—it definitely did not depict any of Raimo
Timonen
’s family or close relatives. In the picture a
squat man with thick legs was running after a ball; his blue-and-white striped jersey bore a black number ten. The name Diego Maradona had been scrawled over the picture. Koskinen wondered whether the autograph was genuine.

The pictures of motorcycles taped to
the walls were also striking—
three large posters and
a
half dozen centerfolds. The makes varied from Triumph and Norton to Harley-Davidson. One of the posters had been pasted to a cardboard backing. It sported a 350cc Royal Enfield. The chrome fuel tank and fishtail exhaust gleamed, and its seat was the wide tractor model. Koskinen remembered the bike well from the old days. Royal Enfield had once been an elite bike, even though they had carried the nickname Royal Oilfield because of how much they leaked.

Anniina Salonen sensed Koskinen’s interest.
“Raymond was a motorcycle freak. He loved them more than anything.”

Suddenly she burst into hysterical laughter. “Sometimes he pretended his wheelchair was a motorcycle. He would buzz from one end of the hallway to the other making engine sounds with his mouth.”

Koskinen turned to look at Salonen—her broad shoulders were shaking with laughter. She would have made a good discus thrower. Her body was well-muscled and full-bosomed, but she still didn’t look a single pound overweight. Her honey yellow hair had a 1960s
-
style perm.

Salonen noticed Koskinen’s sharp gaze and her laugh cut off. She wiped the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

A post-traumatic stress reaction, Koskinen thought.
He had run into it often enough in his twenty-plus years of service.

The talk of
Timonen
’s motorcycle games reminded Koskinen of the missing wheelchair. He had forgotten about the issue that had bothered him so much the previous evening, and decided to throw additional resources at it as soon as he got back to the station. At this point finding the wheelchair might be the best—if not only—way forward.

Salonen looked at Koskinen’s fallen face.

“Is something wrong?” she asked timidly.

“I was just thinking about where
Timonen
’s wheelchair could be.”

Salonen’s mouth dropped open in shock. She covered it with her hand.

“You haven’t found it?” she said, almost unintelligibly.

“No.” Koskinen shook his head. “Could you describe it?”

“An electric Meyra. Raymond’s arms were weak; he wasn’t able to roll on his own.”

Koskinen
looked
around.
“How
long
did
he
live here?”

“He was here ten years ago when I started work.”

“Are residents just left to their own devices at night, since there’s no staff on site?”

“No, of course not. Everyone has a medical alert phone.”

“How does it work?”

Salonen pointed toward the nightstand. “That thingie over there opens a two-way connection to a security company. If no one responds from this end, they send someone to see what’s wrong.”

Koskinen looked at the telephone device next to Maradona’s picture. It didn’t have a handset or any buttons. The
mic
and speaker were built in, and two small indicator lights were blinking on the front.

“What if someone falls in the bathroom, for example, and can’t drag themselves to the phone?”

“They wear bracelets that open the connection. The speaker phone works from pretty far out.”

Koskinen remembered the photographs taken at the crime scene—
Timonen
wasn’t wearing any sort of bracelet, and none of the reports had mentioned one either. He opened the nightstand drawer. There
it was
, a chunk of plastic with a button connected to a wide strap. Koskinen dug a pen out of his breast pocket, used it to turn over the bracelet, and noticed
that the strap was torn. The sequence of events was easy to imagine:
t
he killer had ripped the alarm
from Timonen
’s wrist, thrust it into the nightstand drawer, and then pressed the pillow over his face.

Salonen looked at the device over Koskinen’s shoulder, devastated. At a loss, she fluffed her hair.

“Do you know yet what the killer did to Raymond...
H
ow he died?” she asked in a quiet voice.

Koskinen was just about to appeal to the fact that the investigation was still ongoing when a corpulent woman
dressed
in
a white
cook’s
outfit
appeared at
the door.

“Is there a Lieutenant Koskela here?”

“Koskinen. That’s me.”

The woman pointed behind her with a thumb. “Three men are out there in the lobby. They’re asking for you.”

“I’ll be right there,” Koskinen said and then quickly swept his eyes around the room. He had a strong feeling
that
they weren’t going to find much
in
here. They would have to look somewhere else to find the killer’s trail.

Salonen closed the door. No one would walk through it until Forensics arrived. The lock would be sealed
,
and blue
-
and
-
white plastic tape would be stretched across the door.

They set off toward
the lobby. Koskinen felt strange to walk next to a woman who was only four inches shorter than himself—it made him feel almost small. However, the sweet smell of
her
hairspray ma
d
e even such a large person as Salonen seem feminine.

Kaatio and Eskola were standing in the lobby waiting, with Risto P. Jalonen from Forensics behind them sitting on his metal case. He looked exhausted. No wonder, since his shift had started early the previous night.

Koskinen began cranking out instructions immediately: “Split everyone in the building,
both
residents and staff, into two groups and wring out every possible thing they know about
Timonen
.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kaatio answered impatiently, but Koskinen still had more to say.

“A resident named Taisto Toivakka claims that
Timonen
was picked up from here by a handicap taxi on Monday night. C
onfirm
the time with him one
more time
and look for even the smallest things the other residents
might have noticed around the same time. I’m going to track down the taxi driver and order him down to the station for questioning.”

To Jalonen, Koskinen mentioned the alert phone bracelet. In the best case scenario, the person who had ripped it off would have left his fingerprints on it. Also, all of the bedding would have to be sent to the lab for fiber analysis. Koskinen wanted to know whether the lint found in
Timonen
’s airway was from his own pillowcase.

Finally he turned to the woman standing at his side. “This is M
r
s. Salonen. She’ll show you to
Timonen
’s room and help you with interviewing the residents.”

“Just Miss,” Salonen replied demurely.

Kaatio
and
Eskola
looked
like
little
boys next
to her.

Koskinen retrieved his backpack from the dayroom and walked out. It was getting close to nine o’clock. On the opposite side of the street was a small grove of birch trees. The sun had climbed high enough in the sky that
a golden light shone across the tree tops.

The same two men were still sitting by the front door in their wheelchairs. As he unlocked his bike, Koskinen noticed out of the corner of his eye that one of them was rolling closer. He sensed that the man had something so say, so he waited—it might be something important.

The man stopped six feet away and spat to the side.

“You think you’re some fucking Lance Armstrong riding around on that nut crusher?” he hissed.

Koskinen took off without responding. He was surprised at the man’s sudden hostility and wondered what had caused it.

8.

Koskinen didn’t know how to ride a bicycle slowly—this time he made the mistake of racing a city bus for a good mile and a half until reach
ing
a
bridge
going
over t
rain
tracks and cut onto the side roads
before
finally turn
ing
into the station parking lot.

He succeeded in slipping through the lobby and into the stairway without
being noticed.
He climbed at a half run to the third floor, and his good luck held—not a single person in the hall. The last thing he wanted right now was to get stuck talking to someone while all sweaty. He would fetch a towel from his closet and go down to the gym to shower. After that
it
would be a good time to dig into the reports and other routine tasks waiting on his desk.

He opened the door to his office and saw Milla sitting in front of his computer. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Milla bounced out of the chair and spun around. The fright stretched her face into an even rounder shape, and the antenna on her hat was sticking straight up
toward
the ceiling like an exclamation point.

“Crap, you scared me!”

“And for good reason,” Koskinen snapped and then repeated his previous question. “Why are you on my
computer?”

Milla glanced helplessly at the computer behind her, swallowing twice, and then began explaining: “I was just organizing things a little.”

“Organizing?” Koskinen wasn’t able to keep his voice under control. They could probably hear it all the way downstairs. The sweat that had welled to the surface while he was running up the stairs was coursing down his temples, his sodden undershirt was making his back itch, and all of that just multiplied his indignation.

“What the hell are you doing organizing my computer?”

“Resource management,” Milla explained skittishly. “Your files were all mixed up and—”

“From now on remember to keep you
r
mitts off,” Koskinen said, interrupting her. “The machine works, and that’s enough for me.”

Milla spread her arms, looking hopeless. “I was just trying to help.”

Koskinen raised his finger and pointed at the door. “The best way you can help is by getting out and not coming back until I call for you!”

Milla didn’t need to be told twice. She quickly slipped through the door, slamming it behind her. Koskinen gathered up
the
change of clothes under his arm, threw a towel over his shoulder, and headed downstairs.

It didn’t start to eat at him until he was in the shower. The girl had meant well. And she couldn’t have done anything really bad to his computer. The sensitive files were protected by usernames and passwords, and those
weren’t exactly handed out to interns and temps.

Koskinen stood for a long time under the steaming shower thinking about what had gotten into him. He lost his temper more and more easily nowadays, and over less and less important things. And that was nothing but worrying.

He turned off the shower and started drying his body with vigorous, scrubbing strokes, as if to punish himself. But that didn’t help either. He was regretting flying off the handle, and his skin wasn’t dry yet before he pulled on his change of clothes. He didn’t bother to rake down his hair until he was in front of the mirror in the elevator—a few strokes with his hands sufficed.

The elevator had barely gained any speed after leaving the basement level before it was already braking, and the doors parted with a hiss. Tanse stepped into the elevator, and Koskinen
cursed his bad luck.
His boss was dressed in a chalk
-
gray suit, white shirt, and a blue silk tie. First he stared at the towel and the bundle of clothing under Koskinen’s arm, then he raised his eyes to the wet hair, and only then did he look at his watch.