Wolves and Angels (40 page)

“Hi, I’m the police lieutenant investigating the Tapani Harjus case,” Koskinen said and pointed at the door. “How is he doing?”

The doctor stared at him through her thick-rimmed glasses. “I assume you know that he was already paralyzed?”

“Yes.”

“Considering that, he’s doing relatively well.”

Relieved, Koskinen exhaled all the air out of his lungs. “He’ll live?”

“At least through this bump.”

“Is he conscious?”

“He wasn’t actually unconscious that long.” The doctor glanced at the chart in her hands. “I suspect he has a mild concussion, but we’re going to do a complete brain scan just in case.”

Koskinen remembered the call he had received in the car. Pekki had said that Harjus was lying in the hospital with his head split open. He had probably been getting his information second-hand, so someone somewhere had significantly exaggerated. But Koskinen wasn’t the slightest bit upset. If Harjus had seen his attacker, then the Wolf House cases might be solved before they read the lottery numbers that night.

The doctor looked at her watch to make a point—Saturday nights at a metro hospital weren’t the time for long hallway chats.

Koskinen cocked his thumb at the door. “Can I talk to him?”

Irritation flashed behind her glasses. “Can’t it wait?”

“No, it might save someone else’s life.”

“Fine. But only a few minutes. The nurses will be picking him up for his CT soon.”

The doctor walked off, hips swaying, and Koskinen stepped into room number three. A strong smell of disinfectants washed over him. Tapani Harjus was the only patient in the room, lying with his eyes closed on a wheeled hospital bed. Both of his hands were in casts up past his wrists, and his head was wrapped in gauze.

Koskinen walked to the side of the bed. Closer up he could see a bloody contusion on his jaw, and his lower lip was a clotted blue mess. Harjus suddenly opened his eyes, and Koskinen jumped. Even though the doctor had just told him a moment ago that the patient was doing well under the circumstances.

It felt like Harjus was waking from the dead.

Harjus looked at the man standing next to him. “Did you come by bike?” he asked with some effort. His memory seemed to be working well.

“Naah,” Koskinen said, shaking his head. “I brought a company car.”

“I came by ambulance.”

“I know,” Koskinen said. “How are you doing?”

“Can’t complain. Feel like an angel, just with broken wings and blood on my robe. I could use a stiff drink though. Got anything on you?”

Koskinen shook his head.

“On TV the cops always have a flask in their pocket,” he said, slurring through swollen lips.

“They haven’t made a TV series about me yet,”
Koskinen replied and then decided to get down to business. He bent in closer to Harjus. “Who pushed you down the stairs?” he asked with tension in his voice.

Harjus closed his eyes and whispered, “The devil himself.”

Koskinen considered what that might mean. He could see a mass of compresses under the gauze on his head. Some of them had soaked through with blood, and Koskinen surmised that the wound on the crown of his head was deep. Whoever did the stitches had had an easy job—his head was already shaved, as appropriate for a real biker.

“Who do you mean by the devil?”

Harjus snapped his eyes open. “Myself.”

Koskinen was dumbfounded. “You don’t mean…”

“Exactly! No one pushed me. I got a rolling start from the end of the hallway and aimed my chair right at the stairs. I tried to dive head first at the concrete wall of the weight room.” His grimace revealed bumpy gums. “But I can’t do anything right.”

Koskinen was both relieved and disappointed. The residents of Wolf House could breathe a sigh of relief, at least for a moment. The investigators, though, were still looking at the same amorphous unknown. Koskinen hid his emotions, asking instead, “Why?”

Harjus breathed heavily for a moment and then replied with a question: “Would you rather be suffocated with a pillow?”

“So you were afraid?”

“Raymond and Hannu are both gone, and I’m the only Fallen Angel left.”

“Do you know what happened to Hannu?”

“It ain’t hard to guess.”

“Where can we find him?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything more about his fate than you do.”

Koskinen wasn’t convinced. Harjus’ face was contorted and sweat ran down both sides of his thick eyebrows. He was in a lot of pain, and Koskinen knew that any questioning he did under these conditions was more than a little dubious.

He continued anyway. “But why Rauha
Salmi
? She wasn’t part of your gang.”

“Poor Rauha,” Harjus groaned. “She had to die so he could show what an animal he is.”

“He who?”

“The killer.”

Koskinen sat and thought about Harjus’ answer—he had never thought about it from that perspective. Was the killer’s sick narcissism the reason for
Salmi
’s death? Did he decide to commit one murder just to deviate from the pattern? If that was true, they were up against an even more dangerous psychopath than they had imagined.

Koskinen bent even closer to Harjus’ ear and whispered, “You know who it is, don’t you?”

“No.” Harjus tried to shake his head, but all he managed was an agonizing moan. Apparently he had pulled his neck muscles in the fall.

Koskinen forged on. “You were so afraid that you tried to kill yourself before anyone else could beat you to
it?”

“Yes,” Harjus groaned. “And I botched it again. What a loser, right?”

Koskinen didn’t voice his opinion, instead asking with feigned nonchalance, “Why did you attempt suicide nine years ago?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

Harjus stared at the ceiling with blank eyes. “I totaled my car drunk driving.”

Koskinen looked at him in disbelief. Surely no one would try to end his life over something like that.

“You probably think I’m lying,” Harjus said, his eyes narrowing. “It wasn’t just any car. It was a
’
64 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, literally the finest specimen in all of Finland. It had a V-8 and a top speed of 120. The seats were upholstered with blue leather, and all of the metal parts down to the dashboard were chrome. I had been restoring it for five years and the valves were tuned more precise than my grandpa’s pacemaker.”

Koskinen listened in astonishment. Harjus spoke about his car tenderly and with the sort of love generally reserved for the woman you adore.

“Ville was a gas hog, eleven miles per gallon, but on the other hand he also did a good job paying for his oats. Sometimes I made pretty good money with him. One Midsummer I had this wedding gig. I drove the bridal couple in my Caddy from the church to the reception center near Lake Lavajärvi. It was a real swank wedding, and obviously neither family was short on cash. I even billed ’em for the tin cans behind the car. There was
sahti
by the keg. They half forced it on me, and nobody asked if I was still driving.”

Speaking was difficult with his sore mouth, but he still soldiered on. “I headed back after midnight with the pedal to the metal. I didn’t even make ten miles before I lost control. Ville was totaled all to shit down to the oil drain bolt.”

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing. Drunk’s luck I guess.”

Harjus licked his swollen lower lip and grimaced with pain. “Then I lost my job. See, I was a church youth leader. And when my girlfriend returned her engagement ring by second-class mail, that was about all I could take.”

“So you climbed up on the roof of the Olympia?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t jump from high enough and lived. The doctors said I was lucky. Only my fourth vertebra broke. Just think about it—those bastards were congratulating me!”

Koskinen wasn’t surprised at Harjus’ bitterness anymore. Of course he was responsible for his own fate, but he had also had bucket-loads of bad luck. And one misfortune had followed another: disappointment in the Paralympic tryouts, the HGH bust, and then losing his second car a year ago to cover his debts. No wonder it all had just strengthened his self-destructive tendencies.

As if
he
had read Koskinen’s thoughts and want
ed to disprove them, Harjus said.
“If I make it through this, I’m going to walk again someday.”

Harjus wasn’t able to move his lower lip anymore and his speech was growing more and more unclear.
“Some French doctors have gotten some paraplegics to walk. They install microchip implants in the spinal cord and use that to make the nervous system work. As soon as I get the money
,
I’m moving there.”

Koskinen couldn’t understand why a man who had tried to commit suicide two hours earlier was suddenly full of hope for the future. He placed his hand on the edge of the bed and asked, “What money are you talking about?”

Harjus replied with a barely noticeabl
e
shake of his head. Koskinen didn’t get a chance to repeat the question—two large male nurses entered the room, their white coattails flapping.

“We’re taking Tapani Harjus for his CT scan now.”

They grabbed both sides of the bed and pushed it out of the room. Koskinen walked a little way alongside Harjus, and before they made it to the end of the hallway, he bent over and asked one more time, “Who killed Raymond and Rauha?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know…”

The whisper was lost in a painful intake of breath, and Koskinen could see that Harjus was deathly afraid.

The nurses disappeared with the wheeled bed into the next ward, and Koskinen was left staring at the closed glass doors. Something told him Harjus wasn’t telling the truth. He knew more than he dared to say.

But how could anyone be so afraid that he’d rather smash his skull into a concrete wall than reveal the basis of his fear to the police?

Koskinen walked out into the courtyard, lost in thought. Someone was vomiting just outside the doors.
A young woman was running from the bus stop with a bundle in her arms wrapped in a thick wool blanket. Another ambulance was approaching from the direction of downtown. It was Saturday, and the hospital had a busy night ahead.

A decent-sized crowd of weekend revelers had already assembled on Hämeen
Street
. The rain had let up, and the evening was warm. The sidewalks were bustling merrily as Koskinen cut through the city center on his way to Wolf House. The farther away he got from downtown, the quieter the roads became, and by the time he was on
Susi Street, there was no
one around.

In front of Wolf House stood a Saab patrol car, the Forensics
’
VW van, and Pekki’s old Corolla. A small, red Fiat was parked right in front of the entrance. Koskinen wondered if that was the car of the officer who had been left on guard duty, and for some reason the thought irritated him. He glanced into the Fiat as he passed. The back seat was laid flat, and the car was full of stuff, two cloth bags stuffed full, a case of beer, and a yellow propane tank. Probably not a police officer’s car. Koskinen started wondering what he was doing—was he really looking to vent his anger on the car of the cop who had failed at his guard job?

Lea Kalenius opened the door immediately after his first ring of the bell.

“I’m glad you came,” she said familiarly. “This is just terrible!”

Her pale face was as white as chalk, and the dark bags under her eyes emphasized the height of her cheekbones. It looked like she hadn’t slept in ages. She let Koskinen in ahead of her and then asked from behind, “Are you going to stay the night?”

“Why?”

Koskinen turned and Kalenius ran into his side. They looked at each other, embarrassed for a moment, until she explained, “We’re too afraid to stay here. Now that someone tried to kill Tapani too.”

Koskinen understood the woman’s fear. They still didn’t know what had really happened, that Harjus’ fall down the stairs hadn’t in fact been an attempt on his life. He chose not to explain it all to Kalenius right then and there. Instead he looked for Pekki and the other detectives. Apparently they were still inspecting Ketterä and Harjus’ rooms. The only person in the lobby was a uniformed officer sitting on the sofa group.

Kalenius guessed what Koskinen was looking for. “If you’re wondering where your
colleagues
are, at least one of them is down at the bottom of the stairs doing something. He’s a sort of tall young man, and he told us that no one could go down there.”

Koskinen asked Kalenius to assemble her staff in the lobby and also to ask all of the police officers to come. He would be holding a short briefing in a moment.

Kalenius obeyed his instructions without a word, and Koskinen turned to the other side of the lobby. He started down the stairs and saw a man in a white protective suit at the bottom.