James Thompson - Lucifer's tears

“Thanks,” I say. “Your English is good, too.”

Under the table, Kate kicks my shin to get my attention. Her look asks me to stop.

My earlier feelings of goodwill toward John and Mary are gone. My fears about John and Mary being here for so long, during such a special time for Kate and me, are renewed. It’s too late now, though, and I resolve to try and make the best of it.

“Anybody up for dessert, coffee and cognac?” John asks.

We manage to make it through the rest of the evening without further incident.

The four of us go home. Both John and Mary remove their shoes in the foyer without being asked. That they know we don’t wear shoes in our houses speaks well of them. They made it a point to learn something about Finnish culture before coming here.

We make up the spare bed for Mary and the couch for John. His pick-me-up has worn off, and he and Mary are both exhausted from the long journey across the Atlantic. I’m dead in my tracks, too. I brush my teeth. John is waiting for me outside the bathroom.

“Hey, Kari,” he says. “Got a joint?”

“Excuse me?”

“A little pot would help me sleep.”

John just doesn’t know when to quit. “No, I don’t have a joint.”

“Oh, come on, everybody knows cops have the best dope.”

“Good night, John,” I say, and push past him.

Kate is waiting for me in bed. I turn out the lights. She lays her head on my shoulder. “I don’t know what to think about John and Mary,” she says.

I stroke her round belly. “Me, neither. I guess so much time has passed that all three of you have changed. Maybe you have to get to know them again.”

“You don’t like them, do you?” she asks.

There’s no point in lying. “I’m trying to like them, for your sake.”

“Mary never laughs,” she says. “And for John, everything is one big joke. When we were kids, it was the opposite. I don’t know what happened.”

She doesn’t mention how much John drank. I don’t mention his drug use.

“You were a little tough on them,” she says.

“I had a hard day.”

I tell Kate about Vesa Legion Korhonen, that I was a jerk to Torsten, that Filippov seems thrilled his wife was murdered. “My tolerance level for people is zero right now,” I say, “and I’m overreacting to things.”

She snuggles her face deeper into the crook of my neck. “I’m worried about you. Being short-tempered with people is something that happens, but making a boy drink a bottle of vodka is mean.”

“I know.”

“It’s not like you. Is it because of the headaches?”

“That’s part of it anyway. My nerves are bad.”

“You’re moodier than you used to be. You’re always sweet to me, but with other people, you can be short-tempered. You’re more unpredictable than before.”

She pauses. I wait.

“I don’t know why you wouldn’t have the scar on your face fixed. Police department insurance would have paid for plastic surgery. It’s not that it bothers me as far as your appearance goes, I just can’t help but feel that all these things are related.”

“It’s just the headaches. I’ll see Jari. Everything will be fine.”

I wait for her to say more, but within a minute or two, her breathing goes deep and regular. She’s asleep. My mind turns circles. I think about the skin sliding off Rauha Anttila’s corpse. Baby wasps swarming out of her mouth. Blood spray from Iisa Filippov’s riding-crop beating. But mostly about Ukki. About eating ice cream and sitting in his lap. He tickled me and made me laugh. He taught me children’s rhymes. He taught me to dum-dum bullets. The last time I look at the clock, it’s five thirty. It occurs to me that my behavior is unpredictable because I haven’t really slept in months now.

After being awake for better than thirty hours, I manage some fitful slumber and wake up early. The others are still asleep, for which I’m grateful. At eight thirty, I wake Kate up enough to kiss her good-bye and head off for work. It’s warmed up to around ten below. The snow has stopped. Helsinki is white. I couldn’t ask for more.

I find Milo in his office. Forensics sent him the crime-scene photos and the report of initial findings. They’re spread out on his desk. He peruses them, intent. Only a brief nod acknowledges my presence. I look over his shoulder.

“You see anything we didn’t notice before?” I ask.

“No. These only confirm my previous conclusions. Cause of death was asphyxiation.”

I note his choice of pronoun. My. He appears to think I play little part in the investigation. “Let’s take this stuff and show it to Saska,” I say.

He bridles. “You don’t trust my assessment?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. This boy’s ego is bigger than the planet Jupiter. “Blood spatter will play a key role when this case goes to trial,” I say. “Saska is usually called upon as an expert witness in these situations. It makes sense to get his opinion now rather than later.”

Milo shoves the papers and photos into a messy pile and scoops it up. “Fine,” he says.

We find Saska in his office. Trophies and awards attest to his achievements, but unlike Milo, whose office bears none of these things, his ego seems in check. A radio plays low. He whistles along to iskelma -Finnish tango-and types on his keyboard. “Hi, guys, what’s up?”

I joke. “Murder most foul.”

He chuckles. “As opposed to murder most virtuous?”

“It’s a blood-spatter case,” I say. “Mind looking at some evidence for us?”

“Sure.”

Milo flops the documentation onto Saska’s desk. I spell out the background. “A wealthy married woman had an affair with her riding instructor. He claims she waited for him in his apartment, that he arrived and was struck with a blunt instrument. A bloody iron skillet corroborates this. He never saw the attacker. The woman was restrained in his bed, also beaten with the pan, beaten with a riding crop, burned with cigarettes and suffocated. He says he woke up beside her and found her dead. The question is whether she hit him with the pan and then he killed her, or if he’s telling the truth.”

Saska skims the report and examines the photos. Milo stands near the door and glowers. I sit and wait.

Saska turns to me. “They haven’t fed the blood-spatter patterns into a computer to determine flight paths, angles and velocities yet?”

“We’re still waiting on it,” I say.

“Offhand, I’d say this was a torture scene. The killer hit her more than a hundred times, whipped her in the same spots again and again to inflict maximum pain.”

“Milo thought a hundred and twenty-six lashes. Anything you can add?”

He flips through the photos again and thinks about it. “This riding instructor had on a white shirt with a collar. If he did the whipping, when he swung the riding crop, the top of the swing arc was behind him, and blood droplets would have flown from the riding crop’s tip in that direction. Check the shoulders and collar of the shirt at the back of the neck. You should find blood spatter there.”

Milo forces out a curt thank-you and exits Saska’s office.

“What’s his problem?” Saska asks.

“He’s a smart kid, but not as smart as he thinks he is. Whenever someone questions the greatness that is his, he gets a vitutus ”-a dick grows out of his forehead.

Saska laughs.

“I have to work with him,” I say. “How do you think I should handle him?”

“You’re right, he overestimates himself. For instance, it’s not possible to determine if the victim was struck exactly a hundred and twenty-six times. If I were you, I’d just wait. Sooner or later he’ll make a king-sized fuckup. When he does, he’ll feel his big big brain deflate. He might be a good cop after that.”