Jarkko Sipila - Nothing but the Truth

Suhonen nodded and rustled a thermos out of Salmela’s rucksack. He filled the cup only halfway because of the pitching of the boat.

Within half an hour, Salmela had managed to pilot the boat to the outer islands west of Helsinki. She was planing smoothly now in the shallow chop. On a few occasions, the boat hit the swells at just the right angle to shower Suhonen with water. It felt good. He had never been an avid boater. Cars and motorcycles were more his style. But this wasn’t so bad.

The GPS unit beeped, signaling that they had arrived at the first spot. Salmela eased up on the throttle to a couple of knots and switched on the fish finder. Suhonen watched as Salmela dug a planer board out from beneath a bench, tossed it into the water and rigged it to the boat with some plastic line.

“We’ll rig the line to the leader on the planer with these clips…” Salmela muttered as Suhonen looked on. The idea was for the planer board to keep the lines far enough apart that they wouldn’t get tangled as they trolled along. “You take the wheel. Just hold the course.”

Salmela took the first rod and dropped the lure into the water. It fluttered along easily next to the boat. He let out the line about fifty feet, made a small loop and clamped it with a spring-loaded clip that had a ring for the planer leader. Salmela let out the line till the ring reached almost to the planer, then he propped the rod up in the holder.

Within five minutes, all four lines were in the water. “Once you get a hit, the fish will jerk the clip off the line and you just reel him in. That’s it. You take the first hit, I’ll take the next. Just remember to brace yourself when you take the rod out of the holder.”

Suhonen began to suspect that this wasn’t a friend’s boat after all. Salmela seemed to know his way around it well enough. Or maybe he had more than borrowed it.

“What’s next?” Suhonen asked as Salmela took the helm.

“We troll around for a few hours and hope for

a bite.”

“You brought a knife, right? If we catch something?”

“Figured you could do the honors with your Glock. You brought it, right?”

Suhonen smiled. The boat was cruising along smoothly at a couple of knots, the planer keeping the lines neatly spaced outboard of the gunwales.

“Heh,” Suhonen began. “So this one time one of our detectives ends up in a foot chase with this guy who must have been some kinda track star or something, and slowly but surely he starts losing the guy. You know, it’s really embarrassing if the bad guys get away on foot, so he starts cursing the fact that there’s never a dog around when you need one. So he barks real loud a few times and hollers, ‘Stop! Police K-9! Stop or I’ll release the dog!’”

“He barks?”

“Ruff! Ruff!”

“You’re shitting me.”

“He really did. So the runner stops in his tracks and lays face down on the pavement in the X-position, all on his own. Detective comes up, slaps on the cuffs and hauls the guy up. He goes, ‘Where’s the dog?’ The detective says, ‘They already took him back to the wagon…he’s got a mean streak.’”

“Ohhh. That’s rough,” said Salmela with a laugh. “I like dog stories. I ever tell you about the time I was lifting stuff from this grocery store about ten years back? Might have been earlier, but anyhow this security guard almost busted me. I managed to split just in time, but he spots me heading into the woods on the other side of a little field. So I dive under a tree and hide. Just then this squad car pulls up and they start talking to the security guard. The guard opens the hatch on his wagon and out pops this huge fucking dog. I still remember its name because the guard kept going, ‘Search, Nemo, search!’ So the dog takes off straight towards me, just jerking at his leash. The cops come slogging through the mud after them and I think one of them lost a shoe in the muck. I’m pretty much scared stiff and about to give myself up when the dog stops about thirty feet off and takes a shit. Once he finished up, he just wanted back in the wagon. The slack-jawed cops just watched the whole show and finally headed back to the road cursing up a storm. So then the security guard’s petting the dog and one of the cops asks him, ‘So…you train him all by yourself?’”

Both men laughed.

Salmela dug a small silver flask out of his breast pocket and offered it to Suhonen, “French cognac.”

“No, thanks.”

Salmela took a swig.

“So how you been?” asked Suhonen. Already at the dock it had been obvious that Salmela had set up the fishing trip so they could have a little privacy to talk. Suhonen also knew Salmela wasn’t going to bring up his son’s death himself. He would have to be the one to ask.

Salmela took another swig and sighed. “Like shit. I spent all day yesterday trying to play detective… With Korpi and all, but then last night it hit me hard. That’s why I…”

“I know.” Suhonen nodded as he looked his friend in the eyes. Salmela thumbed away a tear.

“Just got to thinking about all the shit I should have done. What I could’ve done to keep this from happening. How I could’ve been a better dad. Not that I had much choice with the ex and me always going at it. But I could’ve tried harder. Or should have, at least.”

Suhonen had encountered many people grappling with the death of a loved one. For some, the grief spiraled into overwhelming emotional problems. Salmela seemed ashamed of neither having been the kind of father he would have wanted to be nor having taught his son the ways of the criminal world. But the past was gone.

Suhonen thought for a moment. Salmela had spent time in prison, had seen the darker side of life. Maybe it was best to just be straight with him. That was Suhonen’s style anyway.

“Yeah, grief ain’t easy,” he said. “Some struggle with it their whole lives. For you it’s just starting. But there’s one thing you need to keep in mind: letting go of grief is hard because you can’t help but think it’s an insult to the dead. You shouldn’t stop grieving today or tomorrow, but soon. And that doesn’t mean you have to forget your boy. Those memories will always be with you.”

“They were pretty good times,” said Salmela, wiping tears openly now. “Damn, this fucking wind…” he said with a sad smile.

Suhonen nodded.

“But the more you get to thinking, the more you start to regret,” said Salmela. “I’ve made a lotta dumb decisions.”

“And that’s what they’ll always be,” said Suhonen, as he put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You can’t think like that…in hindsight. Life is pretty random-some days are good, some bad.”

“Feels like the bad have been coming outta my ears lately.”

Suhonen kept his hand on Salmela’s shoulder. “Well, then they are. That just makes the good that much better…like this fishing trip.”

Salmela laughed. “Yeah, right. But tell me this…”

“What?”

“You say it’s all random…”

“Right, and nothing you can do about it. No point blaming yourself for what happened to Tomi. You didn’t get drunk and drive him off a bridge. You didn’t bounce his head off the pavement. Nyberg came to the door and shot him.”

Salmela looked Suhonen sharply in the eyes. “I know all that. I’m talking about something else. Back when we did that attic job in Lahti. I got busted and you didn’t, ’cause you were sick at home. How you make sense of that?”

“Pure chance. Had I gone with you guys, I doubt I’d be alive right now. It would’ve changed the course of my life. No doubt about it.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I wonder how you’re still kicking, being a cop and all.”

“I’m not so sure I’m better off for it, either. At least you got the memories of your son. All I got are a bunch of random women and motorcycles.”