Snow Angels (3 page)

“Where?”

I point out three small streaks. “By her nose, on her cheek.”

“I don’t know,” Esko says.

“Think he spit on her?”

“It doesn’t look viscous enough for saliva.”

“It wouldn’t even be noticeable if she was white. Hard to see it as it is. Make sure you get a sample for testing. Anything else?”

Esko shakes his head no. He takes her hands, careful to keep from disturbing the snow lodged under her manicured fingernails, looks them over and puts plastic bags around them. He takes blood samples from various areas in the snow around the body, and a sample of the liquid on her face. “Listen,” he says, “I’m out of my depth, I’ve never handled anything like this. This is going to be international news and I’m afraid I’ll fuck it up.”

I appreciate his feelings. It’s been a long time since I conducted a difficult murder investigation. Plus, it’s near Christmas and four officers from our force of eight are on vacation. We don’t even have an evening shift-we’re taking turns being on call at night. Even our dispatcher is on vacation. It’s an ideal time to commit a murder. A local would know this, and it bothers me.

“We have tire tracks,” I say, “and the body will yield a lot of evidence. We’ll solve this.”

We kneel in the snow and look at each other for a few seconds, both at a loss for words. From the pen outside the barn, a pregnant reindeer looks on with indifference. Aslak stands not far away, rolling a cigarette. I want this not to have happened. I want to be at home with Kate, to lay my hand on her belly and imagine our child growing inside it. I look across the snowfield. Aslak’s house is a shadow in the distance. Almost a year and a half ago, Kate and I met in his backyard.

The
Saame
people, Laplanders, suffer a lot of prejudice here, like Eskimos in Alaska. Every year on midsummer, Aslak throws a lavish party, invites friends, neighbors and the more prominent members of the community. Maybe it’s a way of proving to himself and everybody else how much he’s achieved despite the odds against him. Maybe it’s his way of saying, “Fuck you, I’m
Saame
and I’m richer than you are.” He has his own midsummer tradition: roasting a whole reindeer on a spit like other people roast wild boar. I’ve never seen anyone else do that.

Kate and I met at Aslak’s party. It was getting late, but this is the land of the midnight sun and in summer, especially after a few drinks, it’s easy to lose track of time because of the constant daylight. It feels like early evening all night long. I heard a voice speaking English and saw it belonged to a tall redhead across the lawn. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Kate was standing in a crowd, talking to a girl named Liisa, an assistant manager at Levi Center. Liisa and I had gone out a couple times a while back, but it never amounted to anything. I walked over. They were drunk and giddy.

“Kari, this is Kate Hodges,” Liisa said. “She’s in Finland interviewing to be the new general manager of Levi Center. Kate, this is Kari Vaara. He’s the chief of police here. His name means Rock Danger.”

Kate burst out laughing. “Rock Danger, like a name in a bad movie?”

I had never thought about it. The idea made me laugh too. “It could mean that. Kari means rock, scar, shoal or reef. Vaara means hill, danger, risk or pitfall. So my name could be Reef Hill or Scar Pitfall. However you look at it, it sounds stupid in English. I promise it sounds better in Finnish.”

“You speak excellent English,” Kate said.

“Kari is a smart guy,” Liisa said. “He speaks Swedish and Russian too.”

“My Russian is weak,” I said.

“I was just telling Kate about midsummer,” Liisa said. “I explained that midsummer marks the summer solstice and is also Finnish Flag Day, that we have a tradition of going to sauna and having a big bonfire at midnight. Care to add anything?”

“Midsummer is the longest day of the year and a pagan festival of light,” I said. “It was Christianized into a celebration of the nativity of St. John the Baptist. That’s why in Finnish it’s called
Juhannus
. For pagans, it was a potent magical night, mostly for young women seeking men or wanting children or both. The burning of the bonfire is associated with beliefs concerning fertility, cleansing of the soul and the banishing of evil spirits.”

“Rock Danger,” Kate said, “you sound like an educated man.”

I smiled. “I’m a font of useless information.”

Kate pulled Liisa away a few steps. They whispered back and forth. I stood in the middle of a group of drunk people munching roasted reindeer and potato salad off paper plates, watched Kate and thought again how beautiful she was. She and Liisa finished their palaver and came back. “So this pagan thing,” Kate said. “Does it mean women can ask men out on midsummer?”

“I’m certain it does,” I said.

Alcohol had worked Kate’s courage up and, during their chat, Liisa had tried to teach her to speak a sentence in Finnish.
“Komea mies,”
she said,
“lähtisitkö ulos ja pane minua syömään?”

Her pronunciation was strange, but what she said was clear enough. People around us burst out laughing. I felt my face turn red. She meant to say, “Handsome man, would you like to go out to dinner with me?” but what came out was something like, “Handsome man, would you like to go out and fuck me for dinner?”

Kate’s face turned red too. “What did I say wrong?” she asked.

Liisa whispered it to her.

Kate’s eyes fluttered like she was going to cry. She walked away from the people still laughing at her.

I went after her. She turned and looked at me, humiliated.

“I’d love to take you to dinner,” I said.

Then she saw the humor, managed a smile.

“They’re going to light the bonfire soon,” I said. “Want to go watch it with me?”

“That would be nice,” she said.

She took my hand, it surprised me. We started walking. “You limp,” she said. “How come?”

“Somebody shot me. How come you limp?”

“I fell.”

We held hands and watched the bonfire in silence. Afterward, I asked Kate if she would like to come over to my house for a drink.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“About a
poronkusema from here.”

“How far is that?”

“A
poronkusema
is a Laplander measure of distance that means ‘reindeer piss.’ A reindeer can’t urinate when it pulls a sled, and it gets a clogged urinary tract if you don’t stop and let it pee once in a while. A
poronkusema
is about ten miles, around thirty minutes of riding on a sled.”

“You really are a font of useless information,” she said.

We went to my place. Six weeks later we were engaged. Nine months later we were married.

It’s hard to believe that this place, the site of an event that led to such happiness for me, is now the scene of such tragedy. I look down again at Sufia’s mangled corpse. “Esko… ”

“Yeah?”

I need to ask the question but I’m afraid to hear the answer. “How much of what happened do you think she was conscious for?”

“She’s such a mess that I can’t say without an autopsy. I’ve been wondering the same thing. Still, it could have been worse.”

“How?”

He stands up and brushes the snow off his pants. “She could have lived through it.”

I look down at Sufia the snow angel. Her face changes and I imagine Kate naked and slaughtered, dead in a snowfield. The wave of sadness I felt earlier renews itself, and for the first time in my life I’m sorry that Finland has no death penalty.

THE CRIME SCENE HAS been processed. Sufia Elmi’s body has been taken away. We’ve been going inside Aslak’s house once in a while to warm up, but still I’m frozen to the bone. I’m the last one to leave and I stand alone shivering. I look up. Wind has chased the clouds away and the night is starry. There’s enough light to see without my flashlight and I flick it off.

The black-and-yellow crime-scene tape looks out of place on a reindeer farm. The spot where Sufia’s body lay is a bloody hole gouged in the snow, like an empty eye socket. The scene will be torn to bits soon, when forest animals smell the blood and come looking. It doesn’t matter. It will be buried in fresh snow before long anyway.

Years ago, when I was working on my master’s thesis, I went to New York for a semester as an exchange student. What struck me most was the sky. On that side of the world, so far away from the North Pole, the sky is flat and gray, a one-dimensional universe. Here, the sky is arched, and there’s almost no pollution. In spring and fall the sky is dark blue or violet, and sunsets last for hours. The sun turns into a dim orange ball that transforms clouds into silver-rimmed red and violet towers. In winter, twenty-four hours a day, uncountable stars outline the vaulted ceiling of the great cathedral we live in. Finnish skies are the reason I believe in God.

It’s just before ten P.M. Hours spent in the cold have left me so numb that it’s hard to move. My bad knee has gone so stiff that I’m dragging my left leg more than walking on it. I limp to the top of the drive.

On the other side of the road and down a narrow lane is a neighborhood of sixteen houses called Marjakylä, Berry -Village. I walk the two hundred yards, as I have so many times, down the unpaved road. Snow banked up from plowing makes walls on both sides of me and they funnel me into the village. The people that live here seldom come or go. They exist in their own little world, year after year, in little wooden homes. The only thing that changes is their ages.

I go from house to house and explain that there’s been a murder. People raise their eyebrows and say
“oho,”
our language’s expression of surprise, then tell me they’ve seen nothing. Canvassing brings me closer to my parents and their neighbors, the people of my childhood.

Big Paavo’s yard is lit up by work lamps that reflect off the snow and negate the effect of strings of Christmas lights scattered around. He’s in a shed with a kerosene heater, and, as usual, he’s building something. A two-stroke engine with a bad gasket stinks from burning oil and clunks, because one of the pistons isn’t firing. I ask what he’s working on. A clothes press, so his wife won’t have to iron sheets. He’s seen nothing.

I knock on the Virtanens’ door. Through the front window, I see Kimmo and Esa’s mother, Pirkko, sitting in an armchair. She doesn’t move. I test the door and it’s open, the place smells of must and urine. Both of them are incommunicado, Pirkko from her stroke, her husband Urpo because he’s passed out on the kitchen floor. I say hello to Pirkko. Her eyes flicker recognition but she doesn’t answer, so I leave. I’ll have to speak to their sons about them.

Next I try Eero and Martta. They aren’t home and if true to form are out walking.

Christmas candles burn in a front window. Tiina and Raila invite me in, but I know better than to accept. Tiina is forty-two years old and anorexic. All her teeth have fallen out as a result, and she can’t afford dentures, but she’s learned to smile in such a way that you can’t tell. She walks around the village pushing a baby stroller with a doll inside it, and has since she was a teenager.

Raila, Tiina’s mother, is an alcoholic. She was sober for twenty years, until her fortieth birthday party, when she decided to have just one drink. For the past thirty years, she’s lived in a nightmare of alcohol psychosis coupled with religious fervor. When I was a kid, she would stand outside our house, point in the front window and shriek. Mom would tell me to pay no attention and pretend like it wasn’t happening. I ask if they’ve seen unfamiliar cars today.

“This is a day of desolation,” Raila says. “My life is a vale of tears.”

Tiina smiles her funny smile. “We’ve been watching TV all day.”

I save my parents for last. Their house is the same as it was twenty-five years ago, except for the addition of indoor plumbing. No more freezing trips to the outhouse in the morning. No more cold showers in an underheated outbuilding shared with the neighbors. Mom and Dad fought about it for years. He refused because of the expense, although he always had booze money, but she finally wore him down.

As a little kid, because it was so cold in the outbuilding, I would go two weeks without washing if they let me, and sometimes I accidentally peed on myself because opening my pants in the freezing outhouse hurt so much that I would hold it for too long.

There must be fifteen clocks hanging on the walls. I don’t know why my parents are so concerned with marking the time. The syncopated drumming of all those second hands makes me crazy. They haven’t put up any Christmas decorations yet. They always wait until the last minute. We sit in the kitchen, and I explain about the murder.

“Mom, did you see or hear anything unusual today?” I ask.

Mom doesn’t work, Dad never would let her. She still calls me by my pet name from childhood.
“Ei Pikkuinen”-No, Little One-he says.

“What the hell did you expect your mother to hear?” Dad asks.

“I didn’t expect anything. This is a normal part of a murder investigation.”

Dad isn’t bad when he’s sober, but when he’s drunk, he goes one of two ways, either euphoric or mean. “You think your mother has nothing better to do all day than sit by the window and watch what goes on outside?”

“I don’t think that.”

“So you think your mother killed a nigger woman on Aslak’s farm?”

I wonder if he’s going to take off his belt, like when I was a boy. “No, I don’t think that either.”

Dad pulls out one of his favorite expressions.
“Haista vittu,”
sniff cunt. A colorful way of telling me to go fuck myself. His sodden mind veers off in another direction. “You heard from your brothers?”

My three brothers all moved away as soon as they were old enough. “Not for a while.”

“You’d think they’d at least call, after all we went through raising them. And you.”