Copper Heart (11 page)

“He’s coming, but I hear that Kaisa Miettinen is with Aniliina right now. I imagine Kaisa and Meritta were good friends, which is odd, since they seemed so different on the outside,” I said.

“They were both serious about what they did though,” said my father. “Hopefully this won’t get in the way of Kaisa’s training for the European Championships.”

“Doesn’t Kaisa have pretty strong nerves?” I asked. “Last summer at the World Championships she was in second. Then in the final round, that German threw a couple of centimeters past her. So for her final throw, Kaisa threw ten centimeters even farther out and took home the silver. I’ve always thought she was so calm, except during interviews.”

Kaisa’s calm, reticent nature seemed to intrigue reporters. She never talked about her private life, and answered questions about whether she had a boyfriend with a cool smile. Apparently at the Presidential Ball on Independence Day she had basically run away from all the cadets eager to dance with her. But sometimes in competition you could catch a glimpse of a different Kaisa, of a woman who sent her javelin flying through the air with the focused expression of a hunter. That was the woman who let loose the widest grin you’ve ever seen after winning that silver medal. I also remembered the intensity in Kaisa’s voice when she had demanded to know whether Johnny and Meritta were in a relationship. Why had Johnny lied?

Was Kaisa in love with her cousin? The thought just popped into my head all of a sudden, and just as fast it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. Was that why Kaisa was training out here in the middle of nowhere instead of near a beach somewhere warm? To be near Johnny?

“Kaisa studied sports psychology. Maybe that helps with Aniliina,” my mother suggested before ordering us all to bed.
Saku would be waking us up early, she reminded us. Sneaking into the spare bedroom, Eeva and I found Saku snoring quietly with a teddy bear under his arm and his blanket balled up under his belly. My parents’ low voices and the rattling of dishes from the main room sounded strangely familiar—memories coming back to life.

I still didn’t know how to start getting to know my parents as an adult. I didn’t even know whether I really wanted to know them other than as the people who had controlled my life for those first nineteen years. What good would it do anyone to unload my childhood traumas onto them since no one could change the past? I guess I had thought that if I knew my parents better, I could learn to understand Maria Kallio’s wants and needs better too. But I wasn’t sure whether I dared anymore to take the plunge into myself.

6

In the morning, I awoke to something small and smelling of milk crawling on me and yelling “Antee-tee-tee!” and “Upuh-upuh!” Then it grabbed my hair and started pulling. Opening my eyes, I saw Saku’s grinning, slobbery face hovering above my head.

I swam for fifteen minutes and ate about three times more breakfast than usual before departing for town. I had decided to stop by Ella’s house before going to work. I had to be the one to ask Ella directly about the brooch. Hopefully Koivu was coming from Joensuu again to help with the interviews, because I wanted someone to bounce ideas off of.

Ella’s family lived in a slightly run-down wooden house right on the edge of the sinkhole zone. The house was originally one of the homes the mining company built for its workers, and was intended for two families. Ella’s husband, Matti, had turned half of it into an art studio by pulling down some of the interior walls. The yard with its unmowed grass was a permanent art exhibit for a group of steel sculptures created during a period when Matti was obsessed with “giving material form.” This was a departure from the standard themes of his paintings—triangles and cubes. Typically, he painted these shapes in distinctive
three-dimensional arrangements that made recognizing his work fairly easy. I had received one of his paintings as a present on my thirtieth birthday.

After knocking, I walked in without waiting for a reply. The children, Ville and Viivi, were sitting in the living room watching
The Moomins
cartoons. Ella was busy with something in the kitchen, and Matti was nowhere in sight.

“Morning! Tea?” Judging by her bedhead and the wrinkles in her nightgown, Ella had just woken up.

“Sure. Is Matti still asleep?”

“No, he’s been in the studio since eight. I don’t know whether he slept at all given this whole Meritta thing…” Ella crossed the kitchen to close the door. “He’s barely done anything but cry since he heard.”

“Were they that close?”

“They’ve known each other for at least fifteen years. They studied together at the Ateneum.” Ella poured me a cup. Her tea was usually much stronger than I preferred, so I mixed in a good amount of milk.

I always forgot that Matti was ten years older than Ella and me. He was so childlike somehow. Ella and Matti met at the Workers’ Academy, where Ella had been studying to become an arts administrator and Matti was teaching painting. Ella, who had never been the type to fall head-over-heels for anyone, would have accepted a marriage proposal from Matti the very next week.

Matti was a nice guy. He could be a bit frivolous, but I got the impression that was just an artistic role he was playing. He was a talker, and sometimes even I had a hard time getting a word in edgewise. Usually he was brimming with enthusiasm for some scheme or another. Although he was a respected artist,
he was still eager to teach and help out at the Finnish Artists’ Association. The young students at the local art school and the community center painting circle were lucky to have such a qualified teacher. And Matti enjoyed teaching and organizing art camps, which were a good counterbalance to the solitude of painting.

Ella drank her tea silently while I sipped mine and wondered desperately how to start the conversation about the brooch. I was sure Ella had been wearing it when I was joking about pouring punch on Johnny’s head. And at that point, the Tower had been locked.

“Hey, Ella, the night before last you were wearing a Kalevala brooch on your folk costume. My sister’s birthday is in a few weeks, and I was thinking she might like something similar. Could you show it to me?”

Ella looked at me as if she didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, but then she stood up and went to go look for the piece of jewelry. From the living room I could hear Little My laughing hysterically on the television and Ville and Viivi joining in. I hated the sugary-pastel Japanese animation of
The Moomins
, which were so ubiquitous nowadays I was surprised they weren’t being printed on toilet paper. Identifying the wistful optimism of Tove Jansson’s original characters in these bubble-gum versions was difficult.

Ella came back empty-handed. “I can’t find it. Last night I washed the blouse that goes with the outfit, so the brooch might be in the washing machine.” Ella nodded toward the bathroom, where I could hear the rumbling of the machine. “I’ve been so upset myself that I dumped the kids’ leftover cereal in the laundry basket instead of the trash this morning.” Ella’s voice was pleading, as if begging me not to ask about the brooch.

“Won’t it get ruined in the wash?”

“It won’t hurt silver. I use a natural soap,” she said before shoving a big piece of bread in her mouth. Stirring my tea, I hoped Ella’s brooch really was in the washing machine and not at the Joensuu police station. You couldn’t buy Kalevala jewelry in town—you had to go somewhere bigger like Joensuu, to a real jewelry shop. Eventually during an interview someone would remember Ella wearing it. I would have to keep an eye on the family’s travel and watch for the brooch to reappear in Ella’s wardrobe.

“Your friend Pekka Koivu stopped by yesterday. He’s nice. He asked when we left the party.”

“He probably didn’t press you very hard after you said you left with me.”

“No, he didn’t. Having friends in the police is good.” Ella laughed, but the pleading was still there in her voice.

“Thanks for the tea. I should get to work. Tell Matti to take care.”

I walked through the living room, past the TV where the Snork Maiden was sniffling and Little My was still laughing. Out in the yard, violets and daisies were blooming in pleasant disarray, a chipped porcelain plate lay on the ground with a few drops of milk left in it, perhaps put out for the hedgehogs. I felt like going back in and asking Ella to open the washing machine. If she was lying, why?

Because the direct route was closed due to the unstable ground around the cave-in, I had to drive around the Tower to get to the police station. The parking lot at the Old Mine was full, including several charter buses. Maybe news of the murder in the county paper that morning had attracted extra tourists. Had Sergeant Järvisalo given permission to reopen the Tower
already? I slowed down enough to be able to glance up, but all I could see was the sunlight reflecting off the Tower windows.

Hopponen was lounging in the break room at the station and reading the sports pages. This was his idea of playing duty officer.

“That guy from the county is in your office. Everybody else is out doing interviews,” he said. Over his shoulder, I glanced at the soccer results and the quarter-page ad under them with Kaisa Miettinen launching a javelin into the distance. That spring Kaisa had landed a hefty sponsorship contract—for a female athlete—with one of the long-distance phone companies. I wondered why a phone company would choose Kaisa, since she didn’t seem like the type to spend time chatting on the phone.

“Ave Maria,” Koivu said, looking concerned as I stepped into the office. “It’s good you came. Um…Did you go home with a man named Jarmo Miettinen Friday night?”

“I did.” I hoped Koivu didn’t notice me blushing.

“And this Miettinen is an old flame of yours?” When I nodded, now even redder, Koivu continued. “When I went to question him yesterday, he said he went to his parents’ house for the night and that you were together most of the way. He even mentioned being relieved to have such a reliable witness. Then just a few minutes ago, I happened to talk to one of the last people to leave the party, at two thirty, who said that he saw Miettinen on his way back toward the Old Mine around that time. Three people were leaving right around then, and they all report seeing Miettinen.”

“Bloody hell!”

“And that’s not all. I started looking through the notes your boys have been compiling, and I saw that Järvi interviewed Miettinen’s estranged wife. She says she saw Miettinen at their
house at about three fifteen, apparently picking up his mountain bike. Mrs. Miettinen heard noise outside and got up to check on things, at which point she saw her husband and went back to sleep.”

My head roaring, I sat down on my green sofa under President Ahtisaari’s portrait. I felt like an idiot. I hadn’t even been a substitute for Meritta, just an alibi.

“Johnny…I mean, Miettinen, paid me a visit here yesterday. He had some bruises and claimed he fell off the little Jopo he had ridden earlier in the night. Let’s bring him in. Arrest him. Put him in handcuffs and lock him up.”

“Maria…”

“I can’t stand being taken advantage of like that! OK, fine, let’s go talk to him. I want to hear why he lied. Can you drive?”

Only once my hands had stopped shaking and Koivu and I were sitting in one of the station’s two Saab blue-and-whites, did I notice how tired Koivu looked.

“Were you up late last night with all these interviews?”

“No. I was home by eight, but then Anita and I had a huge fight.” Koivu sighed, trying not to look miserable. “It was actually over something pretty big. At first, she was angry because I have to work over the weekend again, but then she started talking about those skinheads we arrested Friday night. The one who got hurt the worst, the real monster Nazi of the bunch, is Anita’s patient. I’m still having a hard time believing this”—Koivu paused to look me in the eyes before turning his head toward the windy back road that leads to the lake—“but Anita defended him. Apparently he’s a ‘nice guy,’ a health nut just like she is, who doesn’t drink or smoke and only eats food grown in Finland. He doesn’t want to pollute his body with anything foreign. Anita thinks the skinheads are right and that we don’t need any refugees here. She thinks
the Finnish police should be on the Finns’ side.” Koivu’s voice was shaking.

“Anita’s always been proud of you being a police officer, hasn’t she?”

“Yeah, she’s always had a thing for cops. We protect people from the bad guys. But now I’m the wrong kind of cop. Can you understand how that feels?”

I nodded. “My first real boyfriend dumped me because I was a cop and therefore represented the organized society he was trying to rebel against. Slightly different reasoning, but basically the same thing.”

“So things are going pretty well for us,” Koivu said as we parked in the Miettinens’ yard. “For both of us,” he added, smiling dejectedly. I smiled back, glad that I had Koivu—and not anyone else—sitting next to me at that moment.

“You’re the lead interrogator. I’m just here as a witness,” I reminded him as we climbed out of the car.

The day was already hot, especially in my jeans, and the sun was blinding. At first, I couldn’t see clearly what was making all the clattering up on the roof.