Lucifer's Tears

26

We follow the sounds of sporadic gunfire. Big booms that I’m pretty sure are from a high-caliber, short-barreled pistol. The noise takes us to Ebeneser School. A small crowd on the sidewalk peeks into the schoolyard from behind the ivy-covered fence that I smashed a man’s face off of two days ago. Helsinki residents aren’t used to Arctic cold. They shiver and stamp their feet in the snow. We show our police cards. A woman tells me the shooting is coming from inside the school. I call it in, request backup.

This is a nightmare scenario. Finland has suffered three school shootings. The first in 1989, in Rauma. A fourteen-year-old shot two fellow students. The second in November 2007, at Jokela High School, near Tuusula. A sixteen-year-old gunman killed eight and wounded twelve before turning the gun on himself. It rocked the nation. Then, not long after, in September 2008, it happened again in Kauhajoki. Ten people murdered before the shooter blew his own head off. Finland seems to be following the U.S. schoolshooting trend. Parents are terrorized. And now, here we are again.

Not long ago, such situations fell under the province of Karhuryhma-the Bear Team-or, as they’re nicknamed, the Beagle Boys. They have SWAT units, handle riots, special ops and counterterrorism. In the past, in a case such as this, normal police would have waited on the Beagle Boys to bring in snipers and hostage negotiators. The Finnish National Police, however, made a recent decision-because schoolkids can’t wait while they’re being shot to pieces-that the first officers on the scene must respond in the event of a school shooting. The responsibility falls to me and Milo.

We enter the gate and scurry to the front door. My heart pounds and blood roars in my ears.

Milo looks calm enough. His face doesn’t betray how he feels inside. “How do you want to handle it?” he asks.

“Have you tried out your modified pistol?” I ask.

“Not yet.”

“Then don’t. If it misfires, you or someone else could die.”

“It works.”

Adrenaline makes my hands shake. I draw my Glock. “You haven’t talked down anyone with a gun. I have. If possible, let me handle it.”

I don’t say, but I’m certain he knows, that I tried such a thing once, not long ago. I failed, and my friend blew his brains out before I could stop him.

I open the front door. Milo crouches and darts through it. I don’t crouch. My bad knee won’t allow it. There’s no point anyway. Thirty feet down a hall decorated with crayon artwork by students sits Vesa Legion Korhonen with a boy of about eight clutched in one arm. He has a chrome snub-nosed. 357 Magnum pressed to the child’s head. A bottle of Finlandia vodka rests on the floor beside him.

I level my Glock at his head and walk forward.

“You,” he says. “Dis is pwovidenthial.”

“Vesa,” I ask, “what are you doing, and why are you doing it?”

“I am saving souws,” he says. “Da childwen’s and my own. And now youahs.”

With peripheral vision, I see Milo to my right and behind me. He circles farther to the right, close to the wall of the hall, trying to keep Legion’s attention on me and away from him.

“You made me dwink da whoe bottle. You hewt me,” Legion says.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

The boy is motionless and quiet. A dark stain spreads around his crotch. My own bladder wants to let go. I tell the child to stay calm and not to move.

“Put yooah gun down,” Legion says.

“No.”

“I wiah shoot dis boy.”

I lower the Glock to my side, but inch closer. With my bad knee, I can’t move fast. I have to get within arm’s reach of Legion if I’m to have any chance of restraining him. Given his. 357, though, I can’t imagine how I might accomplish that.

“Have you hurt anyone?” I ask.

“Oh, yeth. Many.” He chugs vodka.

Milo continues to slink along the wall. He’s almost at a right angle to Legion now.

“What would it take to get you to let the boy go?” I ask.

“Hmm,” he says. “Wet me think. I know. Shoot youahthelf.”

“Why?”

“You toad me, ‘Bottaw to wips and dwink.’ I’m tewing you, gun to head and puu twigger.”

Fuck. I don’t know what to do. I put the Glock to my temple. It pounds from the migraine. I’m still inching forward, just a little more than three feet away from him now.

Legion jams the Magnum harder against the boy’s head. The child whimpers. “Shoot youahthelf,” Legion says again.

I’m at a loss. I might consider shooting myself, if it would save the boy’s life, but there’s no reason to think my suicide would change anything. I wait, terrified.

“Do it,” Legion says and drinks again.

The boy squirms. Legion holds him tighter. Legion turns his face toward him. The back of Legion’s head faces Milo.

A piercing sharp crack. For a brief instant, I think I accidentally shot myself, or Legion shot the child. But Legion’s head jerks and slumps. His gun arm drops, his hold on the boy releases. I kneel down and gesture to the boy. He gets up and falls into my arms.

Legion slumps to the floor. Blood from his head trickles onto the tiles, much as it trickled onto the ice after I gave him a beating. I look at Milo. He smiles at me and winks, then blows imaginary smoke from the barrel of his Glock.

“Jesus, Milo.” It’s all I can say.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

I still shake, but now from relief. I still feel like I might piss myself. “I guess you had to.”

“Well,” he says, “it’s like this. One of us had to shoot him. First: you weren’t in much of a position to do it. Second: a shot that will paralyze and render a killer incapable of pulling a trigger must be placed at the junction of the brain and the brain stem. A target about the size of an apricot. I didn’t know if you knew that. Third: if you did know it, I didn’t know if you were capable of doing it. So I did it myself.”

I realize the bullet didn’t exit Legion’s head because the crosshatched round split into four chunks and didn’t have much punch left. “Hurry,” I say, “other cops will be here in a second. Swap clips with me and get that dum-dum out of the chamber.”

We make the switch fast. Beagle Boys come through the front door. They run past us to clear rooms and search for victims.

“Congratulations,” I say to Milo. “I guess your hobbies and weapons enthusiasm paid off. You’re the first Finnish cop in modern history to gun down a suspect without being fired upon first.”

“You criticizing me?”

“No. You did the right thing. You enjoyed it though. That, I am criticizing.”

He spins his Glock on his index finger, gunfighter-style, re-holsters it fast. “We’re the only partners in the Finnish police to have both killed perps. We’re going to be famous, like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.”

The Beagle Boys lead teachers and children into the hall and out of the building. They found no murdered children, no casualties at all. Legion just walked around, screamed weird religious gibberish, swilled vodka and shot holes in the walls and ceiling. Commander Beagle asks Milo and me for our accounts. I explain that Milo had no choice, killing Legion was warranted. Commander Beagle shakes our hands, thanks and congratulates us for saving the boy. He doesn’t request Milo’s weapon.

Legion didn’t come here to hurt anyone, probably wouldn’t even have let me shoot myself. He came here to die. Torsten was right. He sought punishment, but for what crimes I can’t imagine.

Milo finds the idea glamorous and I loathe it, but he’s also right. I killed an armed robber in self-defense many years ago. Because I was with Milo today, that old bad business will be resurrected. We’re going to be famous as killer partners, particularly among our colleagues, stuck with the label for the rest of our lives. Worse, because the children in the school lived, we’ll be celebrated in the media. Legion dies. We live. Legion vilified. Milo and me lauded for bravery. Some fucking heroes.