Wolves and Angels (38 page)

“Thank you, I
have to go
now,
plenty of work at the office,
” he said
.
A
nd then, against his better judgment, said, “I’m sure he’ll turn up soon…maybe he’s already
back at Wolf House.”

But when he saw a dim glimmer of hope in the Ketteräs eyes, he had to
leave
.
O
nce he got outside he remembered something he had planned to ask. He walked back to the door and scratched his neck uneasily.

“Um, I just meant to ask…do you have any idea about who stretched that rope across the ski track?”

The hope in Iiro Ketterä’s eyes died and the corners of his mouth turned down in a bitter frown. “The police are asking us? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”

However, his wife was more conciliatory: “The police investigated it for a long time, but never found anything beyond two footprints in the snow.”

“And when the snow melted, the little investigating they were actually doing ended there,”
Iiro
snapped.

“It was just a prank,” his wife said more equably. “Some kids just played a joke without any idea what the consequences might be.”

As Koskinen walked to his car, he glanced back one last time. Iiro and Kaija Ketterä were standing on the steps of their house watching him go. Lucky, the dog, was sitting between them with h
er
pale pink tongue hanging out. On the other side of the fence, the neighbor was pushing a wheelbarrow with his head down, and on the railroad tracks a murder of crows was having a cawing free-for-all. Apparently some animal had been hit by the train.

Koskinen drove south slowly. His mind was busy with all the facts that had just come to light. How was it possible that Hannu Ketterä’s family status hadn’t come out earlier? Why hadn’t he told them about his ex-wife
and children himself? It was strange.

He turned
i
nto the parking lot of the Neste gas station. He turned off the engine, and searched his notebook for the Wolf House number. It took a while before anyone answered. The nurses had been complaining constantly about how short-handed they were, and Koskinen worried that they wouldn’t be able to make it to the phone at all. He was just about to give up when he heard, “Wolf House, Lea Kalenius speaking.”

Koskinen went straight to the point: “Didn’t you ever think to mention that Hannu Ketterä was married and has two children?” Koskinen realized that his voice was unnecessarily crabby. But he doubted that the silence that fell on the other side of the line had anything to do with that. Koskinen heard Kalenius’ astonished intake of breath and guessed what was going on. “You didn’t know either?”

“No, I didn’t have a clue.”

“How is that possible?”

“The people here are just residents. We don’t know anything more about their pasts than what they tell us.”

“Did Ketterä ever have visitors?”

“Just his parents, and lately even they were coming less and less.”

“What might be the reason for the secrecy?”

“Not a clue,” Kalenius replied bruskly. “Frankly, him lying like that makes me pretty angry.”

“Lying?”

“What else would you call it! I had all sorts of
intimate conversations with him. At least I thought he was confiding in me. We talked about his accident pretty often, and Hannu always had this habit of commenting on how lucky he was that he didn’t have a wife or kids and how horrible it would have been to be a burden like that.”

Koskinen found it odd to
o
. After becoming paralyzed, family support should be irreplaceable. Why didn’t he even want to keep in contact with his children?

“I’m sorry, but I’m in a terrible rush,” Kalenius broke in.

“Of course,” Koskinen said, snapping back to reality. “I won’t bother you anymore. There is a police guard there, right?”

“Yes. He’s lounging on the lobby sofa as we speak.”

Koskinen wished Kalenius a good day and ended the call. He sat and stared at the service station’s blue and green sign pillar. Why had Hannu Ketterä wanted to conceal the existence of his ex-wife and children? He wasn’t going to figure it out just by sitting and thinking, but there was one person who might be able to tell him. Koskinen punched the number Kaija Ketterä had given him into his phone.

A girl’s bright voice answered immediately. “Hello, this is Katri.”

“Hello, could I please speak with Sanni Standerskjöld?”

Koskinen almost ended up with his tongue tied in a knot trying to say the name. However, he got his point across, because the girl answered happily, “Mom isn’t home. She went to the store.”

“When will she be back?”

“In about an hour.”

Koskinen thanked the girl and hung up. He tapped on the steering wheel of the Vectra, deep in thought, and looked at the candy cane-striped apartment buildings on the other side of the street. He was thirty miles from Toijala. He could drive there, and even back, in an hour.

He started the car, turned onto the highway, and started driving. But his determination didn’t last long. Three miles later he was already having doubts. Did the head of the investigation have time for a trip that might turn out to be a wild goose chase? But on the other hand, the information he had just received from the Ketteräs was forcing h
im to reevaluate his thoughts.
He knew from experience that driving alone would be the best place for that.

He chose the
quickest way over to Highway 3
. His phone rang as he was passing the Tampere Exhibition Center, but he decided not to answer it. They had found Ketterä’s body. He would have plenty of time to hear that news later.

In his mind he saw Hannu’s parents, the slumped, white-haired man and the plump, red-faced woman, and Lucky with his eyes shut enjoying a good scratching. He reversed his decision and dug his phone out.

The caller was one of the patrol officers. “This morning we got a pick-up job from
Sergeant
Pekki in Violent Crime. We were supposed to bring some lady named Pirkko-Liisa Rinne down to the station.”

“Yes,
I
know,”
Koskinen
said.
“Have you done
it yet?”

“No,” the officer replied blandly. “Looks like she’s
disappeared off the face of the planet.”

23.

The police had rung Pirkko-Liisa Rinne’s doorbell for a while and then called the building superintendent to open the door.
Upon entering
the apartment, they
had
determined that Rinne had left in a panic
: d
rawers were pulled out and clothes were scattered all over the floor. The lights were still on, cheese and sausage sat out on the kitchen table, and a wet towel lay in the doorway of the bathroom.

Koskinen spent the whole drive to
Sanni’s
house in Toijala digesting this news. Where could Pike have gone? And what did it all mean? She didn’t fit the profile of the previous victims, and she probably wouldn’t have run away from a killer anyway. But then this ra
ised an entirely new question: w
hat reason would Pike have for leaving in such a hurry then?

Koskinen was just as much bothered by the behavior of the policemen
,
who had gone to pick her up. They had clearly overstepped their authority. They had not had any right to barge into her apartment, and they should have known it. Unless there had been a misunderstanding. What if the patrol officers had thought they were looking for someone suspected of a monstrous crime? Had Pekki’s instructions been that vague? But Koskinen had
a hard time believing that. Of course
the
crimes were serious, but they didn’t have any evidence against Pirkko-Liisa Rinne.

Koskinen ran out of time to think. A sign on the roadside announced that he had reached the Toijala city limits, and he suddenly found a large hole in his local knowledge—he had no idea where he was going.

A gang of boys on mopeds were buzzing around in the parking lot of an old wallpaper factory. Koskinen swerved across the road, but couldn’t make it out of the car before the boys opened up their throttles. They must have thought he was the police. The whole crew, leaning over their handlebars, shot down the walking path along the river, and disappeared behind the decrepit red brick factory.

A sign affixed to the wall of the building had been shot full
of
holes with BBs, and Koskinen had a hard time reading it. Something about unauthorized trespassing. One of the mopeds had died just below the sign. A boy, not more than fifteen, was desperately trying to get his precious ride to restart, but the engine wouldn’t turn over.

Koskinen walked over calmly. He pulled Sanni Standerskjöld’s address out of his pocket and asked for directions. The boy practically collapsed in relief. The shiny black, visored helmet looked disproportionately large on his narrow shoulders, and his voice creaked like an out-of-tune violin.

The directions turned out to be simple:
l
eft at the supermarket, then about half a mile past the library
.
A
bout there
,
Koskinen saw the mustard-yellow group of row houses on the left side.

He parked in the visitor spot and walked the rest of
the way to the building. The red-haired girl who opened the door was eight at the most, and she had slightly squinty eyes. Even her earlobes had the familiar taper, and Koskinen marveled at the unfailing transmission of genes, how they could travel two generations down from grandparent to grandchild.

“Is Mrs. Standrstkye…” His attempt was doomed to failure, and Koskinen quickly corrected himself. “Is Sanni home?”

The girl’s red braids swung as she spun around and yelled, “Mo-om!”

A tall, slender woman of about thirty appeared at the door. She looked curiously at the stranger standing on the doorstep, and her narrow face paled when he introduced himself as a police lieutenant. She asked Koskinen in with a small gesture of her hand. The girl with the braids was already back in front of the TV. She sat cross-legged on the floor, and next to her a boy a few years younger was playing.

Standerskjöld led Koskinen into the kitchen. She had obviously just made it home.
An unpacked shop
ping bag still
lay
on the table. She was still wearing a fleece headband, pushing her blond hair up in a frizzy pouf. Before Koskinen could say anything, a sharp male voice came from somewhere. “Who’s here?”

“Nobody,” she yelled back, and Koskinen noticed a sudden downcast look in her eyes.

A corpulent man wearing glasses came into the kitchen. He had on a dark blue suit and all
-
black silk tie. Except for the small tufts of hair above his ears he was entirely bald. Koskinen wondered if this
was
Sanni Standerskjöld’s new husband. He was at least as old as Koskinen, possibly even a few years older.

Koskinen repeated his name and title.

The man didn’t respond, instead looking peevishly at Sanni, who was leaning against the sink. “What business could the police have with us?”

She shrugged and stared at the floor with her brow furrowed. The man’s aggressive behavior immediately irritated Koskinen.

“Actually, my business is only with your wife.”

The man opened his mouth crossly, but Koskinen raised his hand and turned to the woman. “Did you know that your ex-husband, Hannu Ketterä, has disappeared?”

She nodded quickly, but still didn’t raise her eyes. “Yes, I know. His mother called late last night and told me that one of the nurses had called earlier.”

The man took an angry step in from the doorway. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” she whimpered and turned to look at Koskinen. “Hannu has gone off on his own before. It’s not like it’s a closed facility.”

Koskinen wondered where the skittishness was coming from. Was she timid because of her husband, or was she afraid of something else? The color had completely drained from her face, and even her thin lips looked bloodless.

Koskinen didn’t give her any time to calm down. “We wouldn’t be looking for him otherwise, but this time there are some potential concerns. The assisted living center has already had two homicides this week.”

Sanni closed her eyes again, and her head dropped as if she were expecting to be hit in the face. “Hannu’s mother said that too.”

Her husband’s hands clenched into fists. “And you didn’t even tell me that!”

S
he
shifted along the counter, farther away from her husband. She was a couple of inches taller than him, as had been the case with her ex-husband. Koskinen thought that was about right, even though he had never seen Hannu Ketterä standing.