Snow Woman (30 page)

Mrs. El-Ashram was wearing a full burka and answered my questions in muffled monosyllables. Talking to a woman while barely able to see her eyes was odd. I’d just been accusing Ström of racism, and now I found myself wondering about Mrs. El-Ashram. Did she really want her daughters walking around fully veiled too?

The sudden urge to drop all the routine questions about the attack on their home and satisfy my real curiosity about these “foreigners” was disconcerting. Even more disconcerting was how much Mrs. El-Ashram reminded me of the way I’d felt reading Johanna’s autobiography. I liked to think of myself as tolerant and open-minded, but I drew the line at wife beating, burkas, and female circumcision. Early the previous fall I had been assigned a difficult case. A school nurse and elementary school teacher had filed a criminal complaint about the abuse of an eight-year-old Somali girl. The girl was out of school for a week without any explanation and then started bleeding in the middle of class. It turned out the girl’s mother and aunt had circumcised her in the family bathroom.

I spent weeks going around and around with the district attorney, the refugee authorities, and social services about whether to press charges. Two weeks later the tabloid headlines were all about anti-immigrant riots in Joensuu and a psychotic Somali killing a Finnish schoolgirl in Tampere. After that, we quietly shuffled the case off to Child Protective Services. I had often wondered if it was the right thing to do and if I would have intervened more aggressively had it been Finnish parents abusing their children that way.

Somberly I resumed questioning Mrs. El-Ashram and listened patiently to her answers before bringing her back to her husband. Then I returned to my office and made a call to Milla’s mother.

I had spent a lot of time thinking about how to approach Ritva Marttila since it didn’t seem appropriate to ask her over the phone whether her daughter was really hers, and if not, why the adoption wasn’t recorded anywhere.

Ritva Marttila’s manner of speaking was brusque, like Milla’s. But were their voices similar? I wasn’t sure. “Milla? Yes, we have a daughter by that name, although she hasn’t shown her face at home for years. What’s she done now?”

I intentionally left her question unanswered. “Is Milla Marttila your biological daughter?” So much for tact.

“Biologica
l . . .
What do you mean?”

“Is she your and your husband’s daughter, or was she adopted?”

“What the hell are you talking about? Of course she is. What kind of lies has she been telling you? What else has she been lying about? I can show you her birth certificate if I have to.”

“Does Milla have a habit of lying?” I asked.

In answer I received a confused account of what a horrible brat Milla had been, always accusing her father of terrible things. Although Ritva Marttila had just confirmed the population registry’s information that she was Milla’s mother, I wasn’t ready to believe that everything Milla had told me was a lie. But it wasn’t my job to go digging into the Marttilas’ family past any more than I already had. Unfortunately, wives tended to believe their husbands more than their children when accusations of incest came up—no matter what the truth was.

“What has she done now?” Ritva Marttila asked again.

“She’s mixed up in an unexplained death,” I replied.

“So she’s moved on to murder now? One of our neighbors said he saw her working in a strip club. Is that true?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself? I can give you her number,” I offered.

Ritva Marttila replied by slamming the phone down in my ear. That was motherly love for you. I remembered one of my friends who also had a difficult childhood once saying that all children hate their parents. She said there wasn’t a parent living that hadn’t screwed up something, even if they meant well. What was the little critter floating around in my belly going to think of me and Antti in twenty years? Would he or she remember parents who lived for their work and never had any time for their child? I was starting to get afraid again, so I moved on to searching the computer databases for information on everyone I thought might have any connection to Elina Rosberg’s death.

In theory, I was thinking that Milla could be Elina’s child—the ages lined up, but Joona Kirstilä couldn’t be her father. There were other possibilities, although the whole thing could just be about money. Elina was extremely wealthy, and Aira was her only heir. What if Aira had had a chil
d . . . 
?

I had already been through Aira’s records once, but I went back to them now. There wasn’t any mention of a child, but at a rough guess of their ages, she could have been the mother of any of the suspects, other than perhaps Milla. I could probably rule out both Sänttis, since they had spent their whole lives living in the same tiny village. Aira would have been forty-five when Niina Kuusinen was born, so she could just barely be Aira’s daughter. But Niina bore such a strong resemblance to her father when he was younger that I had a hard time believing she wasn’t her parents’ offspring. However, Tarja Kivimäki, Joona Kirstilä, and Kari Hanninen still all fit the time frame.

Of course, none of their records showed any indication of an adoption, but it was possible that the adoption was handled under the table. I had heard of such cases. Tarja Kivimäki’s parents must have been over forty when she was born. I tried to picture Tarja and Aira side by side on my mental overhead projector. Was there any similarity in their features? Had Elina and Tarja gotten along so well because they were actually cousins? Or was it Elina and Joona?

Or was the truth even more complicated—what if Elina was Aira’s daughter? O
r . . .
maybe I had just read too many mystery novels. Still, it would have been interesting to know whether Aira had ever given birth. Who was her doctor? I found myself dialing the familiar number for the ICU. But when a nurse answered, she informed me that they had moved Aira to another ward because she no longer required special monitoring.

Theoretically that was good news. In practice though, it meant increased danger: in the ICU, Aira had been under constant watch. Getting onto a floor of the hospital that was less vigilantly monitored was significantly easier for an outsider. Was Taskinen still in his office? I’d have to stop by and ask about getting another guard assigned to Aira since my authority hadn’t been enough to keep someone there past the first forty-eight hours.

My boss’s door had lights outside to indicate whether he was busy, but unless they were red, we all knew we could just walk in. Now the lights were off, but I knocked anyway. At the muffled “come in,” I entered and found Taskinen at his desk with the phone receiver in his hand, the dead line beeping audibly. His face looked wilted like an old potato. There were more creases than ever around his eyes.

“Bad news?” I asked cautiously. Taskinen didn’t talk much about his private life, so I didn’t know if he had a seriously ill mother or something.

“I was just talking to Palo’s wife. The first one,” Taskinen added. His attempt at a smile was like a remnant from the time when Palo’s three wives and numerous children from his different marriages had been a common topic of banter around the unit. “Palo’s oldest daughter is expecting—or
was
expecting—a baby. She was three months along. She lost it over the weekend, and they’re saying the shock of her dad dying was part of the reason.”

“Jesus.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Taskinen continued, as if to himself, “I couldn’t think of anything to say either. There just aren’t words for this. I’m supposed to give a eulogy at the funeral tomorrow. All I can think of are clichés. Do you know what keeps going through my head?”

“What?” I asked, wary of the agitated tone of Taskinen’s voice.

“Jokes. Bad jokes. Like I’m the best man doing a wedding toast.”

I knew what Taskinen meant. Our brains did the strangest tricks in the effort to fight off sorrow.

“How did your interview go on Friday?” I asked.

Taskinen shook his head as if snapping himself back to reality. He finally hung up the phone. We compared our experiences with Internal Affairs. It was obvious we both wanted to talk. Trying to predict the outcome of the Internal Affairs investigation was as good a topic as any. Both of us were willing to put money on Koskivuori being the administration’s scapegoat this time.

“That might be hard,” Taskinen replied when I asked him to arrange another guard for Aira now that she was out of the ICU, but he promised to try. “Oh yeah, Pihko said you might have a recommendation for filling Palo’s position. It opens up the first of March.”

I told Taskinen about my old colleague, Pekka Koivu, who was just finishing his NCO course and didn’t want to go back to the Joensuu race wars.

And I was just about to tell Taskinen that I was also going to need a stand-in for about a year in the not-too-distant future when the door opened without a knock and a very beautiful young woman poked her head in. Actually, Silja Taskinen was just a girl of seventeen, but figure skating had given her a poise and femininity rare for someone her age. Just before Christmas I had been to an ice show where Silja played Sleeping Beauty. She was widely considered one of Finland’s most promising skaters, and I knew Taskinen stretched his paltry police salary in order to send her to Canada several times a year for training.

Taskinen was taking Silja to a skate shop, so we agreed to see each other the next day at church. I was happy Silja had interrupted our conversation. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to tell Taskinen about my pregnancy yet.

Before leaving for home I dropped by the lab to look again at the robe and nightgown Elina had been found in. It seemed the scrap of satin fabric I’d discovered on the path was from the hem of her robe. So Elina had left the house by walking along that longer route rather than across the field. But we still didn’t know whether she’d been walking or was being dragged when the fabric ripped; the alternating snow and rain had frozen everything too solid.

Pulling on latex gloves, I took the clothes out of their plastic evidence bags. Was that still a hint of rose I smelled? No, I was just imagining things because I’d seen a bottle of rose talc in Elina’s bathroom. Both the robe and nightgown were ripped on the upper back and the bottom, matching the abrasions on Elina’s body. But whether they had been caused by someone dragging Elina on her back or because she fell downhill and slid on the snow wasn’t clear.

The robe and nightgown had been such pathetic protection against fifteen-degree weather. The synthetic fabric actually would have made her colder. Why would anyone go out dressed like that? And without any shoes on?

And why was Elina under the spruce tree? Had the killer expected snowdrifts to cover the body so that no one would notice her? Or was it Elina herself who had decided to become a snow woman?

17

With my office blinds drawn, I pulled on my tight black dress. Palo’s funeral was starting in half an hour. Ström and Pihko were waiting outside for me, both looking strange in their dark suits and ties. My phone rang just as I was shoving my work jeans and sweater into the closet. I briefly considered whether to answer, but then couldn’t stop myself from grabbing the handset.

Aira Rosberg’s voice still sounded old and frail, but she was obviously well enough to use the phone.

“You didn’t tell me Elina was dead,” she said accusingly.

“I didn’t want to wake your memories before you were ready. Do you remember now?”

“I remember Elina died. But I don’t really remember how I ended up here.”

“You don’t remember who hit you?”

“No. But I’m ready to answer your questions. The doctor gave permission too.”

“You mean today?” I wasn’t sure how long Palo’s memorial and burial service would run. I thought quickly. “I can come by this evening, if that works for you.”

Ström shoved his head through the doorway just then, completely ignoring the fact that I was on the phone. “What is it with women always making everybody wait!” he yelled.

Pulling a face at him, I said good-bye to Aira and grabbed my heels before rushing out the door. We couldn’t be late. The funeral was starting at twelve, and every police station in Finland would be observing a minute of silence in memory of our fallen comrade.

The chief of police was just shoehorning himself into his car when we entered the motor pool garage. Fat chance he would’ve bothered coming to Palo’s service if Palo had just died of a heart attack at home. But today all the big police muckety-mucks and even a few reporters would be in attendance, so he’d been forced to make the effort.

As we drove off, I stared out the window. The weather was a hopeless slush again, the fresh snow that had brightened the landscape for a couple of days now splashed to the side of the roads in an ugly gray glop. My shoes were wet because I’d broken through the ice over a puddle while walking to the obstetrician’s office.

Early that morning I’d woken up from a nightmare about blood flowing between my legs and Madman Malmberg’s eyes covered in ice. After that I’d tossed and turned, nuzzling against Antti and listening to Einstein jumping around the house, apparently hunting the moles wintering under the floorboards. Palo’s funeral and my first real pregnancy checkup had me in knots.

Although my friends all had nightmarish stories about Nurse Ratched types doing their exams, my own nurse turned out to be a perky young woman who seemed to think pregnancy was the most natural thing in the world. She didn’t lecture me about anything, not my job or even that I’d admitted drinking the occasional glass of wine on the intake questionnaire. Everything was normal and the fetus and I were doing fine. It still felt a little unreal holding the blue-and-white accordion paper that would record all of the changes in my body from month to month.

Ström, who had taken the driver’s seat as if he owned it, fiddled with the radio, scrolling past Radio Finland and a classical station. On RadioMafia, they were playing “Stairway to Heaven,” which felt at once corny and touching. The parking lot in front of the church was jam-packed, and Ström had to park half in the snow.

Tapiola Church usually looked like a gloomy concrete bunker. Not exactly the most inviting house of worship. But now candles illuminated the crude walls, and the mass of humanity crammed inside radiated warmth. Everyone from the department was sitting in the front of the chapel. Squeezing between Taskinen and Ström, I looked curiously at Palo’s relatives sitting in the first row on the other side of the center aisle. Which of the women were his wives? Palo’s youngest child wasn’t even in school yet. She was probably the little girl wiggling in the pew looking like she wanted to go and see if Daddy really was in the coffin up by the altar.

The organ started playing the chorale from Bach’s
St. Matthew Passion
. Looking at my hands, I felt empty and insubstantial. If I hadn’t been wedged between two men, I probably would have floated off the bench toward the ceiling of the church, rising through the concrete blocks, past the tops of the pine trees ringing the building, to somewhere far away, where Palo had gone. The hymn was the most formal one they could have chosen, “Bless and Keep Us, Lord,” also known as “The Finnish Prayer.” I sang loudly and a little off-key.

Next to me, Taskinen had a beautiful, soft baritone, and even Ström growled something resembling the song. It would have been easier if the pomposity of the music had continued in the sermon, if Palo’s funeral had passed easily as an extravagant official ceremony we could all observe as outsiders, maybe even cracking a smile at Palo’s unintentional elevation to hero status. But the pastor’s remarks were thoughtful and emotional, addressed to Palo, his family, and his coworkers.

“Juhani Palo became a victim because he did his job well. It feels senseless. It feels unjust. And yet many of Juhani Palo’s colleagues have probably had moments of guilty gratitude that this violence didn’t land on their doorsteps. And why wouldn’t we think that? Why shouldn’t we thank God we’re still alive?”

Folds of skin stood above the collar of the county police officer sitting in front of me, and the back of his hair was cut unevenly. I tried not to listen to any more of the priest’s sermon, because the tears were flowing. One had already reached the tip of my nose. No one was stopping me from crying. Of course you could cry at a funeral. It was part of the deal. Taskinen fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, and for a second I was afraid he would hand it to me, but he used it to blow his own nose. None of us wanted to even glance at each other. It was as though we were ashamed of our grief and our fear that it might be our turn next to lie in a coffin, deaf to our comrades’ sobs masked as coughs.

There were so many mourners that the presentation of wreaths took a long time. Six children—Palo’s ex-wives each brought their kids separately to the casket. The young woman scarcely more than a girl crying inconsolably must have been Palo’s eldest daughter, the one who miscarried after hearing of his death.

Flanked by his adjutants, the chief laid the department’s official wreath. His words of condolence were almost presidential. I’d tried to wriggle out of our unit’s wreath detachment, but the guys had demanded I accompany Taskinen and Pihko. I didn’t even hear the tribute Taskinen read—I was just trying to hold it together. As we left the casket, we nodded to Palo’s tearful family in the front rows. Standing before them, I found myself wracked by guilt.

Other than the protracted presentation of the wreaths, the funeral was simple. The organist only played the two chorales, and the hymns were impersonal. I didn’t know whether Palo even believed in God. We didn’t talk about things like that.

The memorial luncheon was held in a banquet hall in a hotel next to the church barely big enough for the funeral guests. Taskinen was nervously rehearsing his eulogy while Pihko, Puupponen, and a couple other guys from the unit headed for the hotel bar. I said I didn’t really feel like drinking when they invited me to come along. Ström and I ended up together at a table in the corner, staring out the window at the frozen fountain outside and not saying anything.

“Which of those are Palo’s kids?” I finally asked, nodding toward a table in the middle of the banquet hall where at least one of Palo’s wives was sitting surrounded by a group of young people dressed in mourning. Ström’s silence felt too heavy, strangely connecting us. I wanted to get him talking because I knew he would say something irritating before too long that would break the odd feeling of camaraderie that had formed between us.

“Wai
t . . .
The two little ones are from his current marriage. And the woman in her twenties is his oldest daughter. The guy with the beard must be her husband. No! What the hell?”

As we watched, the chief of police pushed his way through the crowd into the middle of the room, obviously intending to deliver a speech. Ström didn’t like people in general and was as disgusted by the chief as I was.

“The other guys had the right idea going for a beer,” he growled.

The chief would be retiring in just over a year, and the competition to succeed him was already fierce. Taskinen was one of the possible names that had come up, but his lack of interest in politics would probably hamper his advancement.

“Policing is a profession with greater than normal risks,” the chief proclaimed as if announcing something groundbreaking. “Sometimes the job even demands a life. The situation Juhani Palo ended up in was difficult, and we have no way of saying whether it could have been handled differently. Each and every one of us recognizes the enormity of Palo’s sacrific
e . . .
”

Clichés, clichés, clichés. I grimaced at Ström and he grimaced back. Fortunately the chief didn’t go on for long. After he finished, one of the county police commissioners got up and repeated basically the same stuff, just with more tact than the chief. I wondered how the family felt, having their grief stolen from them and turned into public property. Palo was no longer someone’s spouse, father, or friend, just a name on the memorial to police officers fallen in the line of duty.

Next a young boy introduced himself as Palo’s son. In a voice trembling with anxiety he thanked us for coming and invited us to help ourselves to the buffet. As he spoke I saw the bigwigs slipping off to the coatracks; apparently the official part of the funeral was done. Palo’s youngest daughter dragged her mother toward the smorgasbord, announcing in a ringing voice that she wanted juice and cake.

Just then I remembered that I hadn’t heard back from the gynecologist who examined Elina’s body the day before.

“Do you have your phone with you?” I asked Ström. I’d left mine at work, afraid I’d screw up the settings and it would start ringing in the middle of the service.

Ström handed me his, strangely without a single question, and I ducked out to the lobby. No luck. After thinking for a few seconds, I left two numbers, Ström’s cell phone and my office phone at the station. I had to go back there before heading to the hospital anyway.

Returning to the banquet hall, I found that the family had already taken their turn at the buffet table and it was time for the rest of us to eat. Pihko and Puupponen were already helping themselves, but I wasn’t the slightest bit hungry.

As I passed Palo’s family, his youngest widow stopped me with her gaze. I was still searching for something appropriate to say when she blurted, “So you were the other officer Malmberg was hunting?”

I nodded, forcing myself to meet the sorrow and accusation in her eyes.

“Hopefully you stay lucky.” The woman’s voice was flat but loud, and another woman, Palo’s first wife, sitting at a table nearby, stood up and approached us.

“Don’t worry, Eila. I’m not going to make a scene,” Palo’s third wife said to her. “But I’m not going to pretend either. Of course I wish Malmberg had grabbed her instead.”

What could I say to that? I nodded lamely and choked back my tears until I could get a few yards away. Fortunately Taskinen appeared at my side asking if his tie was OK because it was his turn to speak. Straightening his already irreproachable knot gave me an excuse for the momentary human contact I needed apparently as badly as he did. Then I slipped back into the chair next to Ström and returned the phone.

“My name is Lieutenant Jyrki Taskinen, and I was Sergeant Juhani Palo’s supervisor in the Violent Crime and Repeat Offender Unit. Up until last week we never worried about coming to work even if we happened to be a little under the weather. Whether it was a cold coming on, a self-inflicted headache, or a sore shoulder from the firing range, there was always someone who had the right medicine.”

Taskinen’s introduction was such a stark contrast to the previous speeches that complete silence fell over the room.

“We all poked fun at Palo for the pharmacy he seemed to be running out of his office. But just yesterday I could have used something for a headache. And then I realized that my head hurt because the person who always gave me medicine was gone. It’s easier to talk about needing a pill than the man I worked with for more than ten years.”

Taskinen told more stories about Palo, stories that made us cry and laugh at the same time. Listening to him speak, I found myself thinking about Palo but also about how I’d never realized before just how much I liked my boss. If the circumstances were different, I think I would’ve been in danger of getting mixed up in my first workplace romance.

After he finished, Taskinen went to shake hands with the family.

“Is that blond kid Palo’s son too?” I asked Ström, who had been uncommonly quiet all through Taskinen’s speech.

“Let me thin
k . . .
Yeah, Toni’s last name is Palo, but if I remember right, he’s from Hannele’s—Palo’s second wife’s—first marriage. Or, actually, I don’t know whether she was married before.”

Just then Ström’s cell phone started ringing. Luckily the general hubbub was loud enough that no one noticed.