Lucifer's Tears

36

My theratist, Torsten Holmqvist, has on his outdoorsy look this morning, like L.L. Bean laid out his clothes for him. Brown brushed-twill pants, a houndstooth shirt with a lamb’s-wool cardigan, moccasins on his feet. The rugged Torsten, a man of contrasts. His various facades still amuse me, but the enmity I felt toward him is gone.

He’s in a good humor, and mine is better today. We sit in his big leather chairs. He offers me coffee. His morning tea of choice is chamomile. We smoke, relax. He looks out the window toward the sea. I follow his gaze. Snow is thick on the ground. The ice in the harbor is solid. The sun is rising, the sky is clear. “It’s a beautiful day,” he says.

I agree.

“I saw you on the news,” he says, “stopping a school shooter at Ebeneser School. It’s quite a coincidence that you assaulted a man and saved a child at the same location only days apart.”

“It was no coincidence. They were the same man.”

He raises his eyebrows, sucks his pipe. “Do you think those incidents are related?”

I wish he wouldn’t treat me like an idiot. “Of course they’re related. My beating him sparked his attack.” I haven’t said this aloud before, haven’t wanted to think about it.

“Do you believe you caused his death?”

“Yes.”

He crosses his legs and tugs at the perfect crease in his trousers, strokes his chin-psychiatrist cliche-style-with his fingers. “It’s reasonable to think that your bad judgment played a part in his actions, but in my professional opinion, he was a time bomb and would have gone off sooner or later. Don’t take too much upon yourself. Could you tell me about the incident?”

I give him a brief account. Tell him I think Legion had no intention of hurting anyone, just went there to die. Describe putting a gun to my own head. Describe Milo’s cowboy behavior.

“Your fellow detective seems to admire you,” Torsten says, “to the point that he’s proud of killing a man so he can be like you.”

I hadn’t thought of this. “Are you saying I turned Milo into a killer?”

“Milo probably did the right thing, but his false bravado speaks of an unhealthy relationship between you. But like Vesa Korhonen, he was more than likely a time bomb, and your influence upon him lit his fuse.”

I light another cigarette, say nothing.

“Kari,” he says, “if you had to choose one word to describe the emotion that has predominantly defined your life thus far, what would it be?”

The use of my name to create false intimacy. I let it go and consider the question. “Remorse.”

He jots in his notebook.

“Would you care to explore that?”

“No.”

Torsten is smart enough to understand that I need time and distance from the school shooting in order to contextualize it. He changes the subject, asks how my head is, and if I saw Jari.

“Yeah,” I say. “He wants me to have tests to rule out tumors, disease and nerve damage in my face. I’m in the unusual position of hoping your theory is correct, and I’m only suffering from sublimated panic attacks.”

“How do you feel now?”

“He gave me narcotic painkillers, and I took one before I left the house. They work. I’m pain-free at the moment. I had a bad experience, though. I passed out while conducting an interview.”

I tell him about Arvid and the implications about Ukki.

“You seem to want to protect the memory of your grandfather,” he says.

I picture Ukki beating the hell out of a starving prisoner, tied to a chair, with a fire hose sap. It splits open and buckshot flies. I shudder. “Wouldn’t you?”

He shrugs. “Perhaps not. It would depend on the situation. Tell me about your grandparents on both sides.”

“I called Mom’s parents Ukki and Mummo. We didn’t go there often, but I loved being at their house. They were sweet to me, and my brothers and sister, too. After Suvi died, they doted on me, I guess because I was the youngest after she passed away. I didn’t get to know them that well, though, because they died when I was eleven and twelve, respectively. Ukki smoked like a train, and lung cancer killed him. I think Mummo died of loneliness. The only thing I remember odd about them was their intense hatred of Russians. Just the word ‘Russia’ could send them into tirades.”

“Because of the war?”

I nod.

“You told me your father’s parents were cruel.”

“Mean-spirited in the extreme. Really shitty people.”

“So you have no desire to protect their memories in a positive light, as you do your mother’s parents.”

“They were mean to kids. He was drunk on Midsummer’s Eve, stood up in a boat to take a piss, fell into the lake and drowned. Their sauna burned down. She died in the fire. Fitting deaths for both of them.”

“That’s serious acrimony.”

I shrug. “So.” I remember something. “They hated Germans like the plague, as much as Ukki and Mummo hated Russians.”

“The war affected people in deep ways,” he says. “Do you want to talk about the ways in which they were cruel?”

“Not at present.”

I light yet another cigarette. Just thinking about them makes me uncomfortable.

He switches gears. “How is the visit from your wife’s brother and sister going?”

“Not well. Mary seems to have a good heart, but she’s a religious fanatic and a right-wing political nut. Likewise, John seems like a decent sort, but he’s a drunk and drug abuser.”

I tell Torsten about the fiascos with John.

“This week,” he says, “you assaulted a mentally ill person to protect children. You became so intent on protecting your grandfather that you suffered some kind of episode, and you lied to your wife to protect her from her own family. Your desire to protect seems to have no bounds.”

“Is that a criticism?” I ask.

“No. An observation.” He asks, “Whom have you loved in your life?”

I’m afraid this is going in a silly boo-hoo-hoo direction, but I promised myself I’d try to work with Torsten. I think about it. “My parents, Ukki and Mummo, my brothers and sister, my ex-wife, when we were young, and Kate.”

“No one else?”

“No people, but I loved a cat, named Katt.” I laugh aloud at the maudlin idea of it. “The dumb bastard choked to death on a rubber band.”

He appears thoughtful, fills his pipe again and lights it. “May I offer a conjecture?” he asks.

“Be my guest.”

“Your father beat you when you were a child, but you say you bear him no ill will. Yet you have little contact with your immediate family. Is it possible that you don’t see them now, because you were the youngest, and none of them did anything to protect you from your father?”

“They were afraid of him, too.”

“Failure to protect is a form of betrayal. Your sister died. She left you. Another form of betrayal. Your ex-wife betrayed you in the literal sense and abandoned you. Even Katt died and left you. Your Ukki has turned out to have been a war criminal and this tarnishes your image of him. A betrayal. Is it possible that you’re overprotective of Kate because she’s the only person in your life who has loved you without betrayal, and that, deep down, you fear that if you lose her, you’ll never know love again?”

“I have to think about it,” I say.

“You told me that during the Sufia Elmi investigation you felt that a suspect threatened Kate. You developed symptoms similar to a heart attack, pulled your car to the side of the road, put a gun to his head and threatened to kill him.”

“I’m not proud of it.”

“That’s immaterial. The point is that your symptoms and responses are consistent with those of severe panic attacks. This lends credence to my suggestion.”

He’s right.

He leans forward. “Has it occurred to you that Katt and Kate are almost the same name? A curious coincidence.”

I’ve had enough, can’t take such ridiculous Freudian bullshit, and resist the urge to mock him. “Let’s call it a day,” I say.

Torsten is professional and means well, but I doubt I’ll see him again. I realize that if I’m ever really going to open up to anyone, it can only be Kate.