Wolves and Angels (25 page)

Koskinen looked at the ashen-faced man thoughtfully. Surely the system served its purpose. However, this time it was no help. Probably nothing would have been able to save Rauha
Salmi
from the hands of her killer.

Koskinen stood up and motioned to Pekki to
follow.

“Let’s take a look at the body.”

Pekki led the way down the hall. The room was the second to last on the street side. The door was being guarded by Rummy’s partner, a youngish officer with a flattop whose name Koskinen couldn’t remember. The next door down still had police tape stretched in an X from one corner to another. That room had belonged to Raimo
Timonen
, and the grizzly idea crossed Koskinen’s mind that the killer could be working his way through the building room
by
room.

The officer stepped aside, and Koskinen stepped into the room with Pekki. The room was similar to
Timonen
’s, simple and mostly unfurnished. There were no chairs around the table and no pots or pans in the kitchenette. But where her neighbor had decorated his walls with motorcycle posters, Rauha
Salmi
’s room was full of angels. They were everywhere, from small stickers to icons and framed prints.

Koskinen and Pekki stood in the middle of the floor, not touching anything.

“Is someone coming from Forensics?”

“I just called Mäkitalo,” Pekki answered, smirking tensely. “He’s like a Boy Scout. He promised to be here right away, even though it’s five in the morning.”

Koskinen nodded and took a step closer to the bed. He had seen Rauha
Salmi
before. She was the one Lea Kalenius had been feeding when Koskinen had visited Wolf House the first time. Now her mouth was frozen open, and white fuzz was visible against the dark inside of her mouth. Her eyes were open as well. Despite their lifelessness, they still told of all those decades of agony which an outsider could only imagine. Her frail body was concealed under a blue and white blanket, and her wizened arms were crossed on top of it like two dried willow branches. The security bracelet had stopped measuring vital signs and looked like a disproportionately large soap container on her wire-thin wrist.

An electric wheelchair stood next to the bed. Rauha
Salmi
wouldn’t be needing it anymore. She had been freed from its chains for all eternity. If life continued somewhere on the other side, at least it couldn’t be any harder than hers had been here.

Koskinen raised his head and his eyes landed on one of the angel pictures. Its place on the wall seemed to have been specially chosen. In the picture there was a rickety bridge running over a swift-moving stream. In the background was a dark forest and in the upper-left corner was a piece of sky filled with lightning. Two children were walking on the bridge: a girl in braids carrying a flower basket and a little boy holding onto her arm. However, the dominant figure in the picture was a white-winged angel with golden locks. It floated behind the children, holding its arms over them protectively.

The picture had to be old. The gold paint on the
wooden frame had deteriorated, and it also looked like the angel’s incandescent halo had become dim from so much viewing. Koskinen wondered what would happen to the picture now. Would it be thrown in the trash, or would it end up on the junk-filled tables at some flea market?

He spun around, almost knocking down Pekki on his way to the door. He walked briskly down the hallway, dispensing orders as he did.

“Let’s have a meeting at the station at eight. You have two hours to prepare.”

“Me?” Pekki loped alongside him. “What do you mean me?”

“You’re the lead investigator on this case.”

“But
...
”

“Tell Niininen
to call the whole group so they’ll be
at the station at eight o’clock on the dot. He’ll need to notify Tanse too. Then call Lea Kalenius and tell her what happened. Try to do it tactfully and don’t just say whatever pops into your head.”

“Sure, I know how to do that,” Pekki began, but Koskinen wasn’t ready to give him his turn to speak yet. “Tell Kalenius we’re going to be coming back with a larger group during the course of the morning to interview everyone.”

The building was still completely silent. But under all of that calmness, Koskinen could sense fear. Suddenly Koskinen found that he was afraid as well, but not for his own safety. He was afraid about not being able to lead the investigation in the right direction so something like this would not happen again.

It was the fear of failure and defeat.

He continued in a strained tone: “No reason to wake up the residents this early. And we should be avoiding giving even the slightest reason for panic. No one leaves the building for anything. And tell Kalenius that the entire staff needs to be present when we start the interviews.”

“Um,” Pekki said with exaggerated caution. “Can I ask one question?”

“Yeah?”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“I’m going to go think.”

Pekki looked after Koskinen glumly. On his way, he stopped by the men sitting on the couches in the lobby. “Rummy, you and your partner stay here to guard the crime scene. No one gets into the building except for the staff. Mäkitalo is on his way, and no one gets into the victim’s room before he gets here. You only call the m
eat wagon once Mäkitalo is done.
”

Rantanen didn’t
respo
nd, just
nodded reticently
.
Koskinen turned to the safety assistant, who had now taken off his leather jacket.

“You need to stick around for a while. A forensic investigator is going to be showing up soon, and he
may have some questions for you. What you touched and things like that…”

For some reason the paramedics were still there
.

“
D
oubt we’ll need you guys anymore,” Koskinen said. “Any chance I could get a ride
downtown
?”

“Sure.”

The younger paramedic sat in the back of the ambulance to make room for Koskinen in the passenger
seat
in the front. Neither of them were in a talking mood, and they drove along the silent, gray streets through the morning fog in silence. The sky was already brightening, the lights switching off on their poles, and people were starting to collect at the bus stops. The city was waking up to its same mundane rhythm as if nothing had happened.

The driver avoided the main roads and cut off a mile of backtracking. The cab of the ambulance was feeling more and more oppressive. They were just passing the cemetery when Koskinen suddenly opened his mouth.

“Drop me off here.”

The driver glanced at him in surprise, but still lifted his foot off the gas.

“I thought I’d walk for a while,” Koskinen explained. “After what I just saw I need to get some fresh air.”

The driver nodded. “Sounds familiar. I get the same feeling all the time in this job.”

Koskinen hopped out onto the sidewalk and slammed the door shut behind him. He crossed the street and walked between the massive granite pillars that bordered the gates of the cemetery. There was no danger of running into a single living soul here. At least not this early in the morning.

A black flock of jackdaws took flight from a stand of fir trees behind the chapel.

He walked leisurely past the military graves and climbed up the highest hill in the area. From there he could see out over the city. He turned up the collar of his sport coat and pulled the lapels together. Luckily he had
bought the jacket back during his heavier days, so it overlapped easily in front. Even so, he could feel the damp morning wind through all of his clothing.

But the cold didn’t drive Koskinen away. He looked out over the scenery, Lake Iidesjärvi and the Viinikka rail yard to the left, the tower blocks of Kaleva and the cruciform concrete bell tower of the church on the right. Farther away the smokestack at the Naistenlahti Power Plant belched its steam into the sky
,
and construction cranes were swinging into motion here and there.

The biting wind made his eyes water, and his shoulders began to tremble. Koskinen realized that it wasn’t just the chill anymore. His body shook with rage. He had been a cop for
more than
twenty years and confronted hundreds of brutal acts—murder, manslaughter, rape—but in some way this surpassed them all in its barbarity.

16.

The meeting was in the second floor conference room. They had all assembled at three minutes before eight. The only person missing was the head of the Violent Crimes Unit, Tanse Niiranen. Pekki paced back and forth in front of the group, glancing at his watch every now and again. He did not want to start before Tanse arrived.

In addition to Ulla, Kaatio, and Eskola, there were
detectives from
other VCU teams—
Kaija Palonen was sitting between Lehmus and Meisalmi, and Riipinen was sucking on his inhaler over by the wall. He had stopped smoking
over
his summer vacation and was using every possible method to get rid of his withdrawal symptoms. His jaw was constantly worrying his nicotine gum, and patches covered part of his neck. When he encountered a situation in which all th
at
was not enough, Riipinen
grabbed
his inhaler
to
calm his nerves.

The meeting room was reminiscent of a school classroom. One of its walls was dominated by a ten-foot-wide whiteboard. The chairs were arranged in front of it in three rows. Koskinen was sitting
i
n the back row. He still wanted to be in his own little world and watch the others’ undertakings from the sidelines. The
tense and expectant
mood was easy to sense from the
nervous
buzz of conversation, jittery laughs, and the occasional hissing of the inhaler.

Ulla sat
i
n the front row between Kaatio and Eskola. She stretched and yawned loudly. The yawn was so complete that the others immediately caught it. Eskola tried to cover his with his hand, but failed.

Pekki stopped his restless strutting and looked at Eskola with concern.
“You look like the death
. Where have you been spending your nights? You aren’t moonlighting for the competition, are you?”

Eskola sat up straighter against the back of his chair and swallowed the rest of his yawn. However, it was too late, because half of those present joined in on Pekki’s commentary.

Koskinen was amazed at how right Emilia had been
—e
veryone was unloading their tension on the weakest member of the group. All in the name of banter,
of course, but still. They had always done it, and Koskinen had never even thought about it. And again he felt completely powerless to intervene in the situation. What could he say? Let him be! Now that would cause a real storm.

Ulla poked Eskola in the ribs good-naturedly and grinned. “Taru’s keeping her little Antti up at night. I know these young bucks.”

And now even that sounded like bullying to Koskinen’s ear.

Tanse entered the room, said good morning to everyone, and sat down next to Koskinen. Pekki began the meeting immediately.

“Everyone knows why we’re here, but let’s go over it one more time. Last night a homicide occurred in an assisted living center
called
Wolf House.”

He flipped on the overhead projector and put up a grainy photograph.

“This was snapped with a Polaroid so it isn’t very sharp. Mäkitalo is taking more with his Pentax, and we’ll have them by mid-morning.”

Kaatio already had a comment: “That’s the same lady who thought I was coming to take her dancing.”

Pekki replied to the interruption with irritation.
“What are you talking about?”

“I was at Wolf House the other day interviewing residents about the
previous
case. That old lady right there had this really bad speech impediment. All she could do was moan two words: no dance, no dance.”

Koskinen’s ears perked up. He remembered Kaatio mentioning this on Wednesday. Then they had just
written it off as senility. Now that she was dead, it took on a completely different significance. Had she been trying to tell them something? What if dancing had some other meaning among the disabled residents?

Pekki didn’t get bogged down.
“The woman in the picture is Rauha
Salmi
. She was most likely suffocated with her own pillow. The autopsy will give us the final confirmation, but Mäkitalo was almost one hundred percent sure already.”

Silence fell over the room. Kaija Palonen covered her face with her hands
;
Riipinen’s inhaler fell silent, and even Tanse’s breath caught.

Pekki broke the silence.
“We don’t have the slightest bit of evidence about the perpetrator’s identity, but everything points to a serious sicko. He’s already struck twice this week.”

Tanse shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “That’s a pretty bold claim.”

Pekki stepped to the dry
-
erase board dramatically and scribbled three dates side-by-side. Under them he wrote three names and then turned toward his listeners.

“The first victim was found on Monday in Peltolammi with a confirmed cause of death by asphyxiation. The second was found barely
clinging to life ear
ly on Wednesday morning in Ikuri. He was found in his front yard, hit over the head with an unidentified blunt object.
”

Pekki tapped the whiteboard with his marker between each sentence.
“And I already told you about last night’s incident.”

Tanse still wanted clarification.

“The first and third victims are connected by place of residence, disability, and of course the cause of death. But the middle one differs from those other two on all three counts. What makes you suspect we’re looking at the same perpetrator?”

Pekki turned and wrote a word on the board in pretentiously large letters: MOTIVE.

“A lot of times we say that a lunatic doesn’t need a reason to kill, but this time we have one anyway.”

He raised his marker up vertically like an exclamation point.
“Throughout history there have been people who have tried to play God, and this murderer of ours seems to fit just that type of nutjob. He’s trying to free ailing people of their suffering.”

Koskinen heard how Tanse clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, obviously in a sort of expression of disbelief. The theory seemed pretty farfetched to Koskinen too. Even though he had already heard Pekki talk about it in regard to the assault on the cancer patient in Ikuri.

“And there isn’t any shortage of fellow sufferers for this good Samaritan of ours,” Pekki said, continuing his aggrandizing. “
Timonen
and
Salmi
languished for years in their wheelchairs, and Kantola was suffering from a painful liver cancer.”

Tanse lifted his rear end a few petulant millimeters off his chair. “Aren’t you taking this speculation a little far?”

Pekki dropped his hands to hang at his sides. “Well, this is only one line of investigation. But it’s the one I believe in myself.”

Koskinen disagreed. “The M
O argues against your
theory. The suffocations match, sure, but Kantola’s assault is another kettle of fish.”

“It is true that the methods are different,” Pekki said, sighing loudly. “In the cases of
Timonen
and
Salmi
, a pillow happened to be the closest possible weapon, whereas there weren’t any pillows to be found in Kantola’s yard. But there are plenty of rocks.”

Tanse ran his fingers through his almost
-
white, graying hair. “When a perpetrator grabs the nearest available weapon, we’re usually talking about voluntary manslaughter, not the premeditated murder this angel of mercy theory of yours represents.”

It was difficult for Pekki to conceal his disappointment. Apparently he had been expecting to run the meeting as a one
-
man show. Now both of his superiors were ruining everything. And that wasn’t even enough—Ulla had the temerity to open her mouth as well.

“I can understand if some wacko is lurking around people’s yards in the middle of the night, but how did this liberator of suffering souls get into Rauha
Salmi
’s room at Wolf House without anyone knowing?”

Pekki scratched his neck, leaving his hair sticking up like a dog that had been harassed by a flock of magpies.

“Insanity isn’t always visible on the outside. Sometimes the worst schizoids seem like completely normal people. That’s what makes them so dangerous. They can blend in.”

A whisper meant to be audible came from the end of the second row. “There could be more than one in this very room.”

This caused an amused tittering. Tanse was not
entertained and glanced at Koskinen as if the lack of discipline were his fault.

“Let’s stay on topic,” he boomed, silencing the room. “Of course it’s important to start profiling the perpetrator, but it’s even more important to come up with some sort of plan of action.”

“In fact, I was just coming to that.” Pekki raised his finger. “I would start with the keys. Everyone who has access to Wolf House should be considered a suspect, especially the ones who can get into residents’ rooms.”

He turned to the board and opened the felt-tip marker with his teeth. He kept the cap between his lips, turning his speech into a slurred mumbling.

“I’ll list here everyone we know has a key card to the building.”

At the top edge of the board he wrote a large letter A and then a B.

“The first group includes everyone who can only open the front door, and the second group
are
the ones who can access the entire building.”

The others watched as Pekki wrote the two lists on the board. In addition to the residents, the first list included the kitchen staff, the janitor, and the two cleaners. The second list was longer: the safety assistant, the taxi driver Ilmari Laine, and the nurses Lea Kalenius, Anniina Salonen, and Kaarina Kauppila. Pekki underlined one of the names and turned back
toward
his audience.

“I’d make this Laine guy our number one suspect.”

“Why?”

Tanse’s pointed question disoriented Pekki. He
started quickly recounting the sighting of Laine’s vehicle on Monday night and the death threats he had made against
Timonen
. Apparently Pekki noticed his own uncertainty and quickly moved on to another topic. He glanced at his notes and continued.

“In addition to those already listed, there are a couple of more women who fill in once in a while. I’ll be getting their information later today.”

He was just turning back to the board when Ulla dropped a bomb.

“It’s not a woman.”

Pekki glowered at Ulla as if she were rebelling from the clan.

“What isn’t a woman?”

“The perp
etrator
,” Ulla snapped. “This isn’t a woman’s work.”

“Well, ain’t that just sweet,” Pekki said, rocking his head. “Anyone could use a pillow to suffocate a completely defenseless person, and it’s just as easy to knock an old cancer victim over the head with a rock in a dark back yard.”

Ulla threw her arms up, exploding angrily. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

They stared each other in the eye, and had the room been a little darker the flashes of lightning might well have been visible.

Tanse rose out of his chair, and if he would have had a whistle, he surely would have blown it.

“At this point it’s useless wrangling over the perpetrator’s sex. Now we need to focus all of our
resources on tracking him
or
her down. We’re undoubtedly up against a dangerous criminal, even if Pekki’s theory does sound like a bit of a shot in the dark.”

Pekki stood before the whiteboard, defeated. His expression said it all.

Nevertheless, it soon brightened when Tanse continued. “But nothing is impossible. I’m sure we’ve all learned that in this job. Pekki might be right. However, we shouldn’t talk about it out loud to anyone yet. It would set off a panic and tomorrow’s tabloid headlines would be screaming about a serial killer in Tampere.”

Tanse paused briefly to think and then turned to Koskinen. “You don’t have anything against me handling the press on this one, do you?”

Koskinen sighed with relief. “Not at all.”