Snow Angels

21

I’mgetting ready for bed. My cell phone rings. I look at the clock: eleven forty-five P.M. It’s Valtteri. I answer and hear him crying. He’s trying to talk but I can’t make out what he’s saying. He sobs in big heaving gasps.

“Valtteri, I can’t understand you. Try to calm down.”

“I can’t help him,” he says. “He’s gone.”

“Who?”

“He’s cold, and I can’t help him.”

Now I’m scared. “Valtteri, what’s happened?”

“My boy, Heikki, he hanged himself.”

He wails so hard that he chokes.

Valtteri loves his family beyond all things. He’s living a nightmare. “Shit. I’ll be right there.”

He forces out words. “What do I do? Can I take him down?”

“No. Is Maria with you?”

“Uh-huh. She… she found him.”

“Just stay with her and wait for me.”

“Thank you,” he says, “I’m sorry.” We click off.

I wake Kate up. “There’s an emergency. Valtteri’s boy, Heikki, killed himself. I’d like you to come with me, to be with his wife, Maria, while I sort out what happened.”

We bundle up and go out into the cold. When we get to Valtteri’s house, he’s barefoot, sitting on his front porch steps in a T-shirt and sweatpants. It’s minus twelve out. I help Kate out of the car and onto her crutches. They slip and slide on the ice and she has a hard time staying on her feet. I help her to the porch and sit next to Valtteri.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

He turns and puts his arms around me. He bursts into tears. He cries and cries, and I hold him until he gets it out.

The three of us go inside. Maria is sitting on the couch, weeping. Her long gray hair is matted to her face from tears. Kate hobbles over to her side and embraces her. Maria sobs on her shoulder. They’ve never met.

“Where is Heikki?” I ask.

Valtteri wipes his face. “In the cellar. Maria found him when she went to put clothes in the dryer.”

“Where are your other kids?”

“I sent them to the neighbors.”

“You stay here, and I’ll go down and take care of Heikki. Would that be all right?”

“No,” he says. “No no no. You can’t take him down by yourself. I have to help you. He’s my boy.”

He bursts into tears again. He’s getting hysterical, starting to hyperventilate. Maria’s not much better.

“Okay,” I say.

I put my arm around him and we go down to the cellar together. It’s a combination laundry and junk room, dank and lit overhead with a single bare bulb. Heikki used a section of laundry line and hangs from a rafter in the center of the room. His feet dangle over an overturned stool. His face is black, his tongue protrudes from his mouth. The cellar smells like feces. Heikki voided himself when he died.

Valtteri stares at him, sits down on the floor, rocks back and forth and cries.

Heikki is a big boy, but I don’t need any help. I set the stool upright and stand on it, lift Heikki enough to take the weight off the cord and cut it with a pocket knife. I lay him down on the floor, cross his arms and close his eyes, then drape him with a clean sheet from a laundry basket. When I do, I notice a half sheet of paper on the floor and pick it up: Han sai minut tekemaan sen. The Finnish language has no gender marker, so Heikki’s suicide note reads either “He made me do it” or “She made me do it.”

Further, it could mean that someone drove him to kill himself, or that he committed an act so terrible that he felt only his death could atone for it. His religion guarantees an eternity in hell for the sin of suicide. What could have been so heinous as to cause him such guilt? An internal alarm goes off. Out of gut instinct, I wonder if he was involved in Sufia’s murder.

I form a mental picture of Heikki crying over Sufia’s corpse. He was in my house, alone with Kate. I suppress an irrational surge of anger toward Valtteri for sending him there.

I sit down on the floor beside him. “Did you see this?”

He nods.

“Do you know what it could mean?”

He shakes his head.

“Valtteri, I’m sorry. This may be an admission of murder.”

He nods, he thought of it too, and that reinforces my suspicion.

When Valtteri called me, he said he was sorry. A possible reading of the note is that one of his parents drove him to kill himself after finding out he was a murderer. Valtteri and Maria love their kids more than life, but still, I can’t discount the possibility.

“I’m going to have to investigate,” I say.

He looks at me and his upper lip quivers. “Does that mean me and Maria have to go?”

“No. With your kids coming and going all day, there’s no reason to treat the house as a potential crime scene. But I’m going to have to look in his room, take some of his things.”

“I know,” he says.

I take Valtteri upstairs and call for an ambulance. EMTs take Heikki to the morgue. Before they leave, they give Valtteri and Maria tranquilizers. Kate sits with them. Nothing she can say will soothe them, but her presence forces them to be strong.

Heikki shared a room with a younger brother. I quickly process it, take some clothes and his computer. I go back down to the cellar and look through boxes of junk, hoping I won’t find Sufia’s missing clothes or a murder weapon. I don’t.

It’s three thirty A.M. when we leave. Valtteri and Maria are on the living room couch, asleep in each other’s arms. We put on our coats, and I help Kate across the ice to the car. I start it but can’t drive yet. Kate and I look at each other for a long moment. We don’t speak. There aren’t any words. I think Kate has just discovered the meaning of Finnish silence.