James Thompson - Lucifer's tears

Milo finds the idea glamorous and I loathe it, but he’s also right. I killed an armed robber in self-defense many years ago. Because I was with Milo today, that old bad business will be resurrected. We’re going to be famous as killer partners, particularly among our colleagues, stuck with the label for the rest of our lives. Worse, because the children in the school lived, we’ll be celebrated in the media. Legion dies. We live. Legion vilified. Milo and me lauded for bravery. Some fucking heroes.

Milo and I exit the school together. A large crowd has formed, despite the freezing cold. Police cars and officers ring the building. The press got here fast. Their camera lights and flashes break the darkness. Reporters beg for statements.

I point at a cruiser and turn to Milo. “Fuck this, let’s get out of here.”

We push through the crowd. People shout at us. We hop in the back of the squad car. Two uniforms are in the front keeping warm. They congratulate us. I ask them to take us to the Pasila police station. The car pulls out.

“I know that guy I shot,” Milo says.

I’m more than a little surprised. “From where?”

“He’s in Mensa. I’ve run into him at meetings. He’s a freelance software engineer.”

This floors me, I’m not sure why. Maniacs are all around us, but we usually don’t recognize them for what they are. “What kind of person was he?” I ask.

“Timid. Soft-spoken. Like he was ashamed of his speech impediment. I got the idea that he attended the meetings so he could be around people who wouldn’t make fun of him.”

“Then why didn’t you talk to him before you shot him?”

Milo shrugs. “Seemed pointless. Better to get it over with.”

I’m not much of a talker. Maybe because Dad beat me for any show of emotion, I tend to regard anything less than total selfcontainment as a weakness. I like people, but from a distance. I feel that most other people just don’t have much to offer me, and I don’t have anything to offer them either, and so I prefer to observe more than interact with others.

I have a low bullshit threshold, and, since for me, most chat is mind-numbing drivel, I don’t often engage in it. I can count the people I enjoy talking to on my fingers, including Kate. She’s not just my wife, she’s my best friend. Before I met her, I had only ever really opened up to one person in my life, my ex-wife, Heli, and she betrayed me. For the better part of the next dozen years, my best friend was a cat named Katt. And even that dumb bastard died on me.

At this moment, though, I feel an urge for some mind-numbing drivel. “So what do you geniuses do at Mensa meetings?”

Milo shifts in his seat to face me. “They’re fun. We get together maybe once a month, get drunk and have dinner. We might have a speaker, or we might play poker or Go or maybe just hang around and yack. High-IQ geeks have more interesting hobbies than you might think. Scuba diving. UFOs. Witchcraft.”

The requirement for entrance into Mensa is a measured IQ in the top two percentile of the population. As such, I could join, too. I’ll pass on it.

“Later,” Milo says, “I need to tell you the rest of the story about Linda’s apartment.”

“There’s more?”

He grins. “Much more. But I don’t want to talk about it in the station.”

Apparently, Milo enjoys nothing more than dragging his stories out forever. They go something like: God made the heavens and the earth. God gave Adam and Eve the boot out of Eden. God said to Abraham, kill me a son. Moses parted the Red Sea. Now let’s talk about the Filippov murder.

We arrive at the station and step out of the cruiser into a media frenzy. More lights and flashes blind us. We push our way up the stairs. Journalists scream for interviews. I start to open the front door. Milo asks me to wait. He puts an arm around my shoulder and raises his other hand to hush the crowd. They go silent, expectant.

Milo wipes away an imaginary tear. “I have little to say on this sorrowful day,” his voice fake-cracks, “but I’ll make a brief statement. Praise God the children were saved. Let’s all pray for the soul of the poor man who had to die as a result of his sad mental illness. I wish that the burden of taking his life hadn’t fallen upon Kari and myself.”

We go through the door. Once inside, we look at each other and burst into simultaneous laughter. It’s just a stress reaction, but we laugh harder, can’t stop, and soon we’re howling. We find ourselves hugging each other. Two hours ago, I could never have imagined such a thing. “You’re too fucking much,” I say.

“Aren’t I, though,” he says, and we laugh even more.

Cops stare at us, bewildered. We calm down, and a parade of cops congratulate us, shake our hands. We make our way to my office. Our boss, Arto, greets us. “Detectives, well done.”

We thank him. He tells us the background info for Vesa Korhonen is already in. He attended Ebeneser School as a child, has no priors, has dysphasia but no history of mental illness, lived a quiet life with his parents, ran his own business out of their home. Where he got the pistol remains unknown. Legion just came out of nowhere. It happens.

Milo and I sit in my office. To avoid departmental conflict of interest, Arto brings in a detective from Vantaa to interview us and write the report. Our phones keep ringing, interrupting us and slowing us down. Most are media, and we don’t answer unless our phones display the names of callers we know. Mom calls. Then my brother Jari. Then Timo, another brother. I don’t hear from my oldest brother, Juha, but he’s working in the Norwegian oil fields and probably hasn’t heard about the shooting. Kate might see me on TV and worry. I call her, tell her a brief and edited version of what happened, let her know everything is fine. Her voice shakes. She asks me to come home as soon as I can.

Jyri Ivalo calls. “Nice work,” he says. “I got you a slot in Helsinki homicide, and you make me look better and better all the time. Keep it up.”

“I’ll kill as many school shooters as possible,” I say.

“Good. You haven’t filed a murder charge against Rein Saar. Why?”

“It’s complicated, and I’m a little too busy to explain right now.”

“Just get it done.” He rings off.

The Vantaa cop gets the report written and leaves. I check my e-mail. Pasi Tervomaa has e-mailed me scans of documents containing testimony stating that Arvid was an executioner at Stalag 309. I forward them to Jyri and the interior minister.

I stretch out in my chair and turn to Milo. “I need to get home to Kate.”

“You need to hear the rest of my story,” he says.

“Just fucking tell it.”

He shakes his head. “No way. Not here.”

Moses led his people to the Promised Land. The Jews were exiled to Babylon. I sigh. “Where, then? Anywhere we go, we’ll be mobbed.”

“My house,” he says. “It’s on Flemari, just a ten-minute walk from your place.”

Legion’s death brings back bad memories of other people I’ve watched die. I want to go home. “Okay, but let’s make it quick.”

Two cops give us a ride to Milo’s apartment in a patrol car. We step inside a one-room dump, kneel and take off our boots. I look around. Newspapers, books and mail are scattered everywhere. A sink full of dirty dishes is in a dirtier kitchen. Dirty laundry is in a pile beside an unmade bed. The place smells of must and mildew. Milo shoves a pile of papers off a chair by a big computer table onto the floor. “Make yourself at home,” he says.

He goes to the fridge, brings two beers and a bottle of kossu. He sits on the edge of the table, unscrews the cap from the bottle and hands it to me. “Sorry, I don’t have any clean glasses.”