Her Enemy (27 page)

“I don’t get you two!” I burst out. “Why have you been in such a damn hurry to settle down? OK, fine, maybe that’s your thing, but it doesn’t mean it has to be mine.”

“Oh, you’ve always known exactly how other people should live their lives,” Helena countered. “Always commenting on what we do and bossing us around, and then getting mad if we don’t do exactly what you recommended. The know-it-all big sister. Being a lawyer is probably perfect for you since you get to argue with people for a living.”

I stared at Helena in amazement. In my mind, I was the one in our family who always had to conform to everyone else’s expectations. “Maria, don’t tease your sisters. They’re smaller than you!” “Give the doll to Eeva, Maria; you’re too old for that now.” “Take those rugs out now since you’re so big and strong.” “No guitar practice now—Eeva and Helena are still doing their homework. They just aren’t as fast as you.”

Something I’d overheard my mother saying to one of her friends one day always stuck in my mind. I was never sure whether she meant for me to hear it: “Eeva and Helena need me. Maria never has; she’s always been so strong and independent.” I guess that was it—mothers loved the children who needed them most.

Still, I wondered what my sisters were supposed to need my mother for so much. They were the ones who were so good and
obedient, while I tripped through my teenage years full of angst. But my parents took my leather jacket and rakish tomboy image seriously, without any attempt to look under the surface. They just assumed they knew me without knowing me at all. All they saw in me was what they wanted to see. But was I acting the same way, stubbornly believing that Eki was a libertine who meddled with young women and then murdered them?

“What do you two really think of me?” I asked defiantly. Perhaps finally letting out all the bitterness I harbored against my parents and sisters for ignoring me and shutting me out of their lives was best.

“Don’t get upset, Maria. Helena and I have just been talking about this stuff a lot lately, about when we were kids. I guess these things just come to the surface when you’re pregnant. You start worrying about whether you’re going to make the same mistakes your parents made,” Eeva said calmly.

“We both had a Maria complex growing up. You were so good in school, and you could stand up for yourself. You never came in crying from the playground because the boys were teasing you—”

“Oh, I would have, but I wasn’t allowed,” I said, cutting in. “I envied you—especially you, Helena, because you were always the tiny one who needed taking care of. They just pushed me out the door and told me to fend for myself.”

“You always interrupt me! Let me talk for once! Do you think learning to be independent has been easy for me after always being the baby? You think I’m brainless, and Eeva thinks I’m a helpless glamour girl who doesn’t even know how to boil water. And then everyone was surprised when I didn’t fail my exams after all and actually got into college. Shocking! I have a brain!”

On the verge of tears, Helena’s mascaraed eyelashes fluttered violently, as did mine.

“I was relieved when you went to the police academy and not to medical school or something,” Eeva said. “You weren’t as special as everybody thought after all. I remember how disappointed Mom and Dad sounded when people asked where you were studying and they had to say you were there. Don’t say anything, Maria. I don’t think parents should get to set expectations like that for their children either, but it was still a relief for Helena and me. My test scores weren’t all that great, but I got into the university on the first try anyway, so they had someone to be proud of—and then Helena got in the next year.”

“But then you had to go to law school, and that’s almost as fancy as medical school,” Helena said, picking up the thread. “A degree in Germanic languages or English isn’t anything compared to that.”

Had it really been like that? I had no idea. “I never wanted to give anyone a complex,” I said. “Don’t I have a right to live my own life? All I want is to be left alone!”

“Do you even want to see us, ever?” Helena asked, growing shrill. “Does having sisters mean anything at all to you?”

I looked past them out onto the bay where a duck, out abnormally late, swam toward the reed beds along the shore now painted the color of plums by the setting sun. The image began to cloud, the reeds becoming a blurry violet mass.

“Why would you ask something like that? You can’t just erase your family. It’s always there, even if you try to forget. I don’t have anything against you. I’ve just always thought that…that you never had any conflict with Mom and Dad. That
I
was always the cause of the conflict. Because I dressed wrong. Because I had the wrong friends. Because I wasn’t a boy—”

The door opened, and the three men came clomping in. In a moment, the mood changed to one of restrained bonhomie. I started bustling around, getting beds ready, trying to figure out at the same time whether I was irritated or relieved about the interruption of our conversation. What had just come out would take me plenty of sleepless nights to digest.

“I’ll be in and out of the bathroom all night. Hopefully it won’t bother you,” Eeva said from the bedroom door.

“Don’t worry. We can’t hear much from our room. Good thick walls. How is Saku?”

“He’s doing his bedtime gymnastics.”

Suddenly I felt like hugging Eeva. My sister looked so beautiful with her huge belly and swollen nose.

“Can I touch again?” I put my hand on Eeva’s stomach, after a moment feeling a strong churning and bulging.

“Hi, baby. It’s Aunt Maria,” I found myself saying. “Remember to let your mommy sleep a little.”

“I don’t know what you were all uptight about. Your relatives are fine,” Antti said as I flopped down next to him in bed. “Did you gals have a nice time together?”

“Nice isn’t exactly the word. I’d say ‘enlightening.’ Too tired. Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” I said, turning off the lamp.

The room was still bright though, the diffuse summer evening light penetrating the thin curtains and illuminating Einstein as he hopped up onto the foot of the bed below my feet and began preening his coat. He began at his left-rear paw. I pushed my foot down next to his tail and concentrated on listening to the steady lapping sound of his tongue and Antti’s quiet breathing at the base of my left ear. I tried not to think of my sisters, instead concentrating on Armi, Sanna, and Kimmo.
Kimmo would be free soon. How had he felt when his sister died? A mixture of sorrow and relief? Did he miss her? Perhaps relating to a brother would have been easier than sisters; perhaps a brother wouldn’t be such a mirror. Or would I have been even more jealous of a younger brother? Probably. Did siblings ever hate each other enough to kill each other?

I thought of Mallu—could I become that obsessed with Helena or Eeva…?

Before falling asleep, I tried desperately to imagine how having a baby rolling around in my own belly would feel.

By morning, no traces of the previous night’s emotional storms remained. We were all hurried and reserved but not shouting at each other. It reminded me of those mornings before school when we all lined up for the only bathroom in the house.

“Come see Saku when he comes!” Eeva had called from the taxi window. We promised to come in the middle of July, when I would have a week of summer vacation.

Since my sisters hadn’t caught their taxi until just after nine, I was so late to work I didn’t even try to make up time. As I leisurely biked past the shopping center, I noticed that the door of Makke’s store was open, so I decided to drop in. No one was around, just the radio blasting Mauno Kuusisto’s Finnish rendition of “Just Say I Love Her.”

All of a sudden, Sanna was in my head again. She had been there the one and only time I worked up the courage to sneak into a bar as a teenager; in that case, a seedy dive in our hometown where the management didn’t care how old we were. The rest of the group was already old enough to drink legally, and I just slipped in with them. Sanna had played this same song over and over on the jukebox, which surprised me. I had imagined her more as a heavy-metal or maybe a Dylan type. In my mind’s
eye, I could see Sanna’s mocking smile, the glass of beer in her hand, the hair hanging down in front of her beautiful eyes.

Why had Sanna liked this song?

“What can I do you for?” Makke came out of some back room with an armload of soccer shoes. “We’ve got good cleats on sale right now.”

“I haven’t joined the powder-puff league yet, although maybe I should.”

Makke froze, possibly recognizing the song.

“Wasn’t this one of Sanna’s favorites?” I asked. When Makke nodded, I continued. “This is the last time, and then I promise I’ll never talk to you about Sanna again unless you want to: What drugs was Sanna using? Weed? Something stronger? Prescription stuff? Where did she get it?”

Makke brushed his bangs back off his brow. His cheeks were tight, his fingers nervously exploring the spikes on the bottom of the soccer shoes.

“She didn’t use drugs anymore when we started dating. She drank plenty and took some sedatives—Valium, I think. I don’t know where she got them. But all you have to do is go into a doctor’s office and tell them you are achy, or a little depressed, or can’t quite sleep—they don’t care.”

“Can you get that sort of thing at the gym? I know stuff moves through there.”

“Gosh, no one has ever offered me any,” Makke said testily.

“And Sanna didn’t get the Valium from Armi?”

Makke looked at me as if I were a half-wit.

“From Armi? No way was Armi pushing pills. She wasn’t the type.”

“I’m not sure of anything anymore,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound too dramatic, and then left.

What if Armi’s and Sanna’s deaths really were two separate crimes and Mallu’s car accident had absolutely nothing to do with either of them?

Maybe I was imagining things again.

When I arrived at work, Eki was sitting in the conference room eating a chocolate jellyroll. I kicked myself in the mental ass.

That was the man I suspected of killing two people?

“The police called. The Hänninen case is going before the judge again today. New witnesses have come forward, and, in the light of their testimony, it looks unlikely that Hänninen was at Mäenpää’s house at the time of the murder,” Eki rattled off like a man who had never thought anything else.

“So Teemu Laaksonen has been in touch with Detective Sergeant Ström already. Good. What time is the hearing?”

“Three. How about I go, since I’m a friend of the family and the head of the firm? I’ll need you to bring me up to speed a little, though.”

Dumbstruck, I stared at Eki. Are you kidding me? I was the one who did all the work, and now this old man was going to swoop in and take the glory for himself! After kicking myself yet again to keep from exploding, I then told Eki the bare facts, and the bare facts only. No one else was going to get anything more out of me until I was completely certain of what it all meant.

Still, losing this opportunity was a distressing setback. I had already played through the scene, how I would free Kimmo and then we would walk out of the courthouse arm in arm. How stupid I had been! Eki hadn’t even believed Kimmo was innocent. Maybe I should check the dates of that Kenya trip after all…

Fortunately, one of my clients called, forcing me to move my mind onto other matters. The case was about the division of an estate involving an illegal concealment of property. I wondered whether my sisters and I would be at such loggerheads divvying up our parents’ effects.

Which gave me an idea.

“Hi, it’s Maria Kallio.”

Mallu’s response to my greeting was less than enthusiastic.

“Listen, I have to ask you a weird question. Did you ever get any sedatives from Armi without a prescription; maybe she gave you a sample pack or something like that?”

“Sedatives? Maybe once or twice when I couldn’t sleep. I had a prescription though, and it was just for small amounts. Why would you ask me something like that?”

“I just thought—”

“And why did you talk to Teemu about me? What on earth have you been telling him? I never wanted to see him again, and here he showed up today at my door thinking he was some knight in shining armor. I told him to go to hell!”

“Did Teemu tell you that Kimmo is being released today because of his testimony?”

“I don’t have time for this bullshit! I have to be at Dr. Hellström’s office in half an hour for a checkup. I’m really looking forward to him telling me—yet again—that I can never, ever have children,” she said sarcastically.

“Mallu, we have to talk! How about if I come see you later, like around five?”

“Why? What could we possibly have left to discuss? Oh, yes, because now that Kimmo is getting out, you need someone else to blame for my sister’s murder. Come on over. Having someone accuse me of murder is about all my life is missing right now.”

Mallu slammed the phone in my ear.

For the next two hours, I worked like a madwoman, and decided to burn off some excess anger and energy by spending my lunch hour at the gym. Grimacing at the reflection of my legs in the mirror whipping a seventy-five pound stack of weights up and down on the leg abductor, I cursed in rage. Let Eki take all the glory for freeing Kimmo! Let Ström solve the murder case on his own! I would have to come up with some excuse to see Ström so I could gloat over his embarrassment after arresting the wrong person. Although, I had to be careful. I could see where he might turn his sights on me next because I was the first one who had arrived at the scene of the crime. Had the police ever found Armi’s dishwashing gloves or confirmed that the murderer was indeed wearing rubber gloves?