Snow Angels

23

My phone rings at nine A.M. “Where are you and Valtteri?” Jussi asks.

I tell him about Heikki’s suicide, the note and my suspicions.

“Fuck,” he says.

“He and Maria are torn to pieces.”

“Do you really think the suicide note was a confession?” he asks.

“Maybe. Probably.”

“Why would he do it?”

“It doesn’t pay to speculate. Let’s wait and see if DNA places him at the crime scene. What have you and Antti turned up?”

“Antti processed Eklund’s car and found blood and semen. He sent them to Helsinki for testing. Eklund’s alibi checks out, but I’m not convinced. If he slipped out of Hullu Poro for a little while, killed Sufia and then came back, I’m not sure anybody would have noticed.”

The case is entering day five and I haven’t had a decent night’s rest since it started. “Listen, I’ve only slept for two hours. We’re all tired. Let’s take the morning off and get together this evening, after the DNA reports come back.”

“Should I check on Valtteri and Maria? I don’t know what to say to them.”

He means it’s hard to console your boss about his son’s suicide, especially when the boy may have killed himself in the aftermath of a sick murder.

“No. I’ll stop by and check on them later.”

We hang up. Heikki’s suicide and my conversation with Kate take turns whirling through my head. It’s hard to get back to sleep, but the next time I look at the clock, it’s three P.M. Kate is propped up on the bed beside me, reading a book. “I made coffee,” she says.

I go to the kitchen, get a cup for myself and sit on the bed beside her. She puts a hand on my knee. “I’m sorry I made you feel bad,” she says.

“This is a hard time for both of us. The whole world seems turned upside down.”

“Yeah, it does.”

I put my coffee down on the floor and hug her. “I want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy with you,” she says.

“Just let me get this case finished, then we can figure out what we can do to make things better for you.”

She nods and kisses me.

In the far corner of the room, I’ve got a little table set up with my home computer. I connect my monitor to Heikki’s computer and power it up.

When I was a kid, there was a myth that Laestadians aren’t allowed to own washing machines with windows in the doors, because you can see underwear through it while it’s spinning. Strict Laestadianism forbids dancing and music, movies, television and video games, sports, most of the entertainment content average users clutter up their computers with. Plus, Heikki had no Internet connection at home, so I’m guessing going through his machine won’t take long.

It’s an old computer loaded with only a few basic programs and no encryption software. I sift through the folders and files, mostly school stuff. I open a folder titled BIBLE INTERPRETATION. There are four files in it-the first is labeled SONG.

Heikki has typed out the Song of Solomon, all one hundred and seventeen verses of it. I can tell by the spelling mistakes that he didn’t copy and paste it from somewhere. Another file is called MY SONG. He’s rearranged fragments of lines from the Song of Solomon to make a poem of his own: upon the mountains of Bether the young stag feeds among the lilies the scent of your perfumes spreads its fragrance your lips drip with honey your breasts are like towers lovesick, my hand is by the latch set about with lilies my head is covered with dew I have drunk of the honey and milk under your tongue Do not stir nor awaken love until it pleases

The poem is a curious mixture of religious fervor and sexual desire. To have written it, Heikki must have been a very sensitive young man-and very much in love with someone. The next file is titled THE ACCURSED. It reads: Must we hear now that you too are doing all this terrible wickedness and are being unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women? Nehemiah 13:26-27 For we have disregarded the commands you gave when you said: The land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the corruption of these peoples. Their detestable practices have filled it with their impurity. Therefore do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Ezra 9:10-12 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan. Genesis 9:21-25 Ham=nigger Jumala vihaa neekereita, God hates niggers. Niggers should die.

My stomach churns, and I consider again if Valtteri knew how disturbed Heikki was. Valtteri will be destroyed when I tell him what Heikki thought, what he did. He’ll blame himself, maybe even blame God. Maybe he already does. Part of me wants to delete the folder, let the case go unsolved. I ask myself if exposing the truth will serve any purpose, if it will bring Sufia justice. The answer is yes, and it makes me sick. I open the last file, called BABYLON: And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. Revelation 17:5 If she profanes herself by harlotry, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. Leviticus 21:9 The men of her city shall stone her to death because she has committed an act of folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house, thus you shall purge the evil from among you. Deuteronomy 22:21 Jumala vihaa huoria, God hates whores. Whores should die.

The words shock me. My mind is a blur of questions. Where did he get these ideas? He expressed love in his poem. Who did he focus it on? He expressed hatred. Why, other than the color of her skin, did he focus it on Sufia? How could he have known about her promiscuity? Given the quotations in the BABYLON file, it seems he would have chosen burning or stoning as the method of Sufia’s execution. Why did he murder her in the manner that he did? I browse through the computer and look for answers.

I find a downloaded folder from a true-crime website titled “The Black Dahlia: the True Story of the Murder of Elizabeth Short.” I don’t know a lot about the case beyond what Jaakko mentioned, so I read through it. It’s a thorough treatment, offers theories about the murder and discusses the crime in great detail.

I hook my own computer back up and visit the website. It’s massive, with articles on dozens of serial killers and notorious murders, but I focus on just the Black Dahlia case. Sufia’s murder seems to be a clumsy attempt at a copycat crime with some personalizations.

Short was killed, cut in half and her body washed before the killer dumped it. Sufia was killed on-site, and it appears that an inept effort to cut her in half failed. Short had three-inch gashes cut into both corners of her mouth, giving her a death smile reminiscent of a demented clown. Sufia didn’t, but her eyes were gouged out. Seppo talked about her gorgeous eyes to both me and a friend. This seems an improbable coincidence.

Short and Sufia were left in the same positions after their murders: arms raised at forty-five-degree angles and legs spread. Both had a superficial section of skin removed from the right breast. It remains an unsubstantiated rumor that Short had the letters “BK” carved into her torso and that grass had been inserted into her vagina. Sufia had “nigger whore” carved into her torso and a broken bottle inserted into her vagina.

Most striking to me, as Jaakko pointed out, is that both Elizabeth Short and Sufia had genital deformities. In order for Heikki to have known about Sufia’s genital mutilation, either he’d seen her vagina himself or someone told him about it. The latter is about a thousand times more likely.

Heikki could have chosen to emulate Albert DeSalvo, Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, someone famous. The Elizabeth Short murder was never solved, and the number of vicious details makes it unwieldy and complicated in comparison to a normal homicide. I can think of no other reason to copy it, other than being inspired by their common genital abnormalities.

Heikki had no Internet access at home. How could he have imported the Web files into his computer? He either downloaded them using someone else’s computer or someone gave them to him. I go through his floppy discs and CD-ROMs. They don’t contain any true-crime files.

My cell phone rings. The display reads DAD. He never calls unless he’s in a drunken rage or Mom is sick. I’m afraid it’s the latter, so I answer. “Hi Dad.”

“Hello son. I think you’d better come over here.”

“Is something wrong with Mom?”

“No. It looks like Pirkko Virtanen just couldn’t take it anymore. She’s killed Urpo.”

I can’t picture it and don’t trust him. “Are you drunk?”

“I wish I was.”

I hang up. A crime-scene photo of Elizabeth Short shows on the monitor. I remember Sufia in the dark snowfield, then think of Heikki crying, splashing tears on her face. Pirkko can’t speak, can barely get out of her chair. How could she kill Urpo? There must be something in the water. Our whole community has gone insane.