Snow Angels

24

I drive between high, looming snowbanks, down the narrow lane into Marjakyla. The sixteen houses that comprise the village sit on plots identical in size and shape: longer than they are wide, big enough for a house, an outbuilding or two and a sizeable garden. The homes are all wooden A-frames painted barn-red. They were built on land given to war veterans made homeless by the Germans.

Near the end of World War II, the Germans adopted a scorched-earth policy as they retreated through Lapland. They burned down Kittila almost entirely, only the church was left standing. Our grandparents cleared away the charred remains and rubble, dug into frozen earth and granite, rebuilt the town.

The houses line a single dirt road, eight to a side. My parents occupy the last house on the right. The mother and daughter, alcoholic Raila and anorexic Tiina, live across from them. Big Paavo lives next to my parents, and the Virtanens live on the other side.

Big Paavo is the neighborhood entrepreneur. He owns five of the houses in Marjakyla, including my parents’ place. He converted the house across the road from him into a general store, which his wife runs. He also owns the bar downtown that Dad works in.

A crowd of about twenty has gathered outside the Virtanen house. I catch Eero in my headlights. He’s dapper as always, holding his dog Sulo, wearing a coat with a fur collar. A silk dressing gown sticks out beneath the coat, and below that, long thermal underwear pants are tucked into unlaced boots.

I park in my folks’ driveway. Big Paavo is in his shed with Dad. They’re leaning against a worktable, smoking cigarettes.

“Tell me,” I say.

“I was out here working,” Big Paavo says. He motions toward a bicycle frame leaning against the table and a few piles of sprockets and gear parts. “Urpo was yelling at her so loud, I could hear him all the way out here. He wanted her to get up and make him dinner. He kept on for a long time, then he kind of shrieked and went quiet. I figured I’d better go check on them.”

Big Paavo is also the Virtanens’ landlord. “I knocked and nobody answered, so I went inside. He’s dead on the floor. She stabbed him in the neck. I went over to your dad’s place and told him to call you.”

For us, the Christmas season isn’t just dark because of the lack of daylight. It’s also the dark time in regards to domestic violence. If I hadn’t grown up a couple doors down from Urpo and Pirkko, I would be almost glad to investigate this killing. After the bizarre events of late, it would seem like a normal December workday.

“Where is Pirkko?” I ask.

“When I left, she was sitting in her chair like always, except she had a butcher knife in her lap. She didn’t say anything. As far as I know, she hasn’t spoken in a long time.”

“What are all those people doing outside?”

“A couple people came over because of the screaming and I told them what I saw. I guess they spread the word. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I was shaken up. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “Both of you come with me and keep everyone outside while I check things out.”

We walk over. They stand guard and I open the door. Pirkko is in her armchair. She doesn’t look up. Her dress and face are spattered with blood. Urpo is on the floor beside an overturned coffee table, still clutching his neck. She missed his windpipe but hit the artery. Blood spray is all over the floor and walls.

I kneel down beside Pirkko, take the knife out of her hand and set it on the floor beside me. “Can you talk to me?” I ask.

She offers no sign of recognition.

“It’s going to be okay. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

She doesn’t move, but tears run down her cheeks.

I open the front door and hand Dad my car keys. “Would you bring the tackle boxes out of the trunk for me?”

When he comes back, I bag the knife and take a few pictures of Pirkko, but not many, because I don’t want to embarrass her more than I have to. I call emergency services and request two vehicles. While I wait, I sit beside Pirkko and hold her hand to comfort her.

I’ve seen a lot of these situations, deal with them at least a couple times a year. I have a good idea of what happened. She was in her chair, he stood over her, screaming in her face. I’m not sure how she came to have the knife. Maybe she went to the kitchen, got it and sat back down, maybe she already had it hidden under the seat cushion. I’m sure she was afraid of him. I would have been. Who knows, she might have had the knife hidden there for years, just in case.

He screams at her until she can’t take it anymore, then she holds up the knife. He might have been so drunk that he didn’t even notice. She has so little strength, she couldn’t have done more than poke it up at him, but it was sharp and went through his neck, severed the left carotid artery.

From the blood spray pattern, I can see that he spun in a circle, fell across the coffee table onto the floor, bled out and died. It couldn’t have taken long.

The EMTs arrive. I tell them to sedate her and take her to the hospital. She’s fat. With effort, they lift her up and put her in a wheelchair. Her empty chair is wet and the smell makes me gag. Pirkko had been pissing in it for a long time. She couldn’t take care of herself, but nobody cared.

After she’s gone, I walk around and take more photos. The whole house smells like a mass grave. Bootleg Russian medical alcohol bottles stand empty on the kitchen counter. His brand of choice was Royal American Spirit. A bootlegger brought thousands of liters of the stuff into the country and was bold enough to make his own label. I take some close-ups of Urpo. He’s malnourished, has been living on booze and not eating much all winter. His corpse reminds me of a plucked dead chicken.

When I’m done, emergency workers take his body away on a gurney. I walk out with them. Mikko’s work lamps give us enough light to see by. The crowd is still out in the yard, milling around in the snow, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands together to stay warm.

Raila, alcohol psychosis in full sway, sees the body and begins shrieking. She points at the Virtanens’ front window and screams over and over, “They couldn’t even iron the curtains! They couldn’t even iron the curtains!” She starts clapping her gloved hands in time.

Tiina has a droopy mouth and eyes, an upper lip thin as a razor, and no groove between her nose and lips: typical characteristics of fetal alcohol syndrome. She takes her doll out of its carriage and coos at it. “Be quiet Mom, you’ll wake the baby,” she says.

Raila keeps shouting about curtains. Tiina keeps telling her to shut up. Tiina walks over to Big Paavo’s shed, comes back with a plastic bicycle pump and hits Raila on the head with it.

Blood runs down Raila’s face, she starts to cry. She has thin gray hair. Tiina reaches over and pulls out a clump of it, throws a bloody wad of hair and scalp onto the hard-packed snow.

I grab Tiina, the EMTs leave Urpo on the gurney and tend to Raila. When Tiina is calm, I tell her to go home. She pushes the baby carriage in front of her and trudges back to her house. It strikes me that what I just witnessed doesn’t surprise me in the least. Psychosis has become run of the mill. Maybe the cold and dark have driven us all crazy.

Dad and Big Paavo walk over to me. We all light cigarettes.

“Strange day,” Dad says.

“You have no idea.” I look up at Big Paavo. “Did you know Pirkko and Urpo were living like that?” I ask.

“Urpo’s been drunk and Pirkko’s been miserable in that house for thirty years,” he says. “What was I supposed to do about it?”

A lot of people drink bootleg medical alcohol because it’s cheap, but it’s nearly a hundred percent pure, makes people crazy and mean, especially during kaamos. Urpo didn’t need booze to be an asshole though, he was crazy and mean when he was sober too. I shake my head. A woman had to kill her husband to get some help.

A car pulls up and Jaakko gets out. “I heard about it over the scanner,” he says. “What happened?”

I don’t want to deal with Jaakko right now, but he’s a reporter and this is a crime scene, so I don’t have much choice. “Urpo Virtanen is dead. His wife killed him.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll file a police report in the morning.”

“Give me something, an official statement.”

“Honestly Jaakko, I just don’t have the strength right now.”

“Mind if I take a few pictures?”

“Do what you want outside, but stay out of the house.”

He looks pissed off. “I understand your sergeant’s son committed suicide yesterday.”

“Yes, he did. The past couple days have been sad ones for this community.”

“Finally,” he says, “something quotable. Do you have any reason why?”

“Do we ever really know why people kill themselves?”

“Fair enough. Care to comment on your ex-wife’s marriage?”

He catches me by surprise, as I’m sure he intended. “What marriage?”

“She and Seppo Niemi were married today at the magistrate’s office. You arrested him for murder, released him and he married Heli the next day. I find that intriguing.”

I do too. I need time to process the information and consider the motivations behind their marriage.

“She called me this afternoon to make a statement,” he says. “She says Seppo has been asking her to marry him for many years, and that she finally did so today as a show of support in light of his wrongful arrest.”

“That’s noble of her.”

“She also says that when you arrested him, you pulled the car over to the side of the road and put a gun to his head. Is that true?”

Seppo just couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut. “You should ask Seppo.”

“I did.”

“What did he say?”

He pauses, takes a minute to try to think of a way to trap me, but he can’t. “He says it never happened.”

“Then why ask me about it?”

He reminds me of a dog trying to dig a rabbit out of its hole. “Because I think it’s true. I think there’s a lot going on here. I think the investigation of Sufia Elmi’s murder is compromised by personal feelings and old hatreds.”

“You’re welcome to your thoughts, but be careful what you print. A lot will become clear to you in the next day or two.”

“You’re being circumspect. What are you hiding?”

My cell phone rings. I turn away from Jaakko and answer it. “The DNA tests just came back from Valtteri’s house,” Antti says. “They place Heikki at the murder scene, and also inside Seppo’s home.”

For the second time in as many minutes, I’m caught off guard. “Inside the house.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll call you later.”

“What do you think… ”

I cut him off. “I can’t talk right now.”

The EMTs drive Urpo’s body away in an ambulance. Raila stands by herself, looking miserable. Maybe she’s afraid to go home.

I turn to Dad and Big Paavo. “Thank you both.”

Jaakko starts in again, but I cut him off too. I walk Raila home and make sure Tiina is calm, then head to my car. I’ve got to see Valtteri and tell my friend that his dead son is a murderer.