Russia has a few serial killers at large, but crime details don’t suggest connections. I check Germany and Japan, countries known for breeding sexual deviance with a murderous bent. Again, a few are at large, but the crimes don’t fit the profile.
I save the United States for last, because the list is so long. Around eighty-five percent of the world’s serial killers are Americans, and the rate in the U.S. has risen nine hundred and forty percent over the past thirty years. Of course, this may also reflect increased accuracy of crime statistics.
The most conservative estimates claim there are around thirty serial killers active in the U.S. at any given time. Some analysts claim as many as five hundred roam free. They base this on an average of ten to twelve murders per killer, five thousand unsolved murders per year, and they figure that a fair percentage of the hundreds or thousands of women and children that go missing every year are victims of serial killers.
I try to keyword-search and connect American crimes to Sufia, but there are so many murdered women in the States with their eyes gouged out or broken bottles stuffed into their vaginas that it’s a waste of time. It occurs to me that the U.S. has a tradition of this. The actor Fatty Arbuckle was accused of killing a woman by raping her with a Coca-Cola bottle in 1921. If any American tourists have crime sheets, I’ll search again by geographic location to narrow down the field.
Sufia’s cell phone and banking records for the past year arrive by fax. Antti comes in and lays them on my desk. Same-day service. This is the way an investigation is supposed to go. I take my time and sift through them. Sufia was well-connected. I find the numbers of Finland’s foreign minister, a high-ranking member of kokoomus, the Finnish Conservative Party, some other politicos and movie stars and, the biggest surprise of all, the phone number of Jyri Ivalo, the national chief of police. He failed to mention that he knew Sufia when we spoke this morning. I wonder why.
I keep looking through her records. Sufia received many calls from a particular cell phone while making few calls to the same number in return. She did, however, send a quantity of text messages to the number, and this suggests to me that she wasn’t supposed to call it directly.
She made only eighteen hundred euros from The Unexpected III, her last film, and she had no other source of earned income, no permanent residence. She’d been receiving injections of cash into her account for the past couple months from a private source, and hasn’t been paying the rent on her vacation cottage herself. Sufia Elmi was a kept woman.
I call Pine Woods Cottages and get the credit card number used for payment. I run checks on the credit card, bank account and cell phone. One name comes up. Seppo Niemi.
My ex-wife left me for Seppo thirteen years ago. Seppo is from Helsinki. He’s rich and owns an expensive winter cottage here, bought it before he intruded on my life. He doesn’t visit Levi often. We’ve seen each other in Hullu Poro a few times since then. We never speak, but when we make eye contact, he cowers. I suppose keeping the cottage is a way of trying to convince himself he’s not intimidated by me.
I check his vehicle registration myself. He owns a BMW 330i. I’m shaken. The irony is so great that I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
I call Jyri. “I have a suspect,” I say. “His name is Seppo Niemi. He funneled money into her bank account and paid her rent. Odds are good the car used in the crime was a BMW 330i, and he owns one. How do you want me to handle it?”
“You mean the rich guy from Helsinki?”
“Yeah.”
He considers it for a minute.
“Another thing,” I say. “She knew a lot of important people, including you.”
“So what? I have an active social life.”
“I just thought I should mention it.”
“I’ve heard a few things about Seppo Niemi,” Jyri says. “By all accounts, he’s an ignorant piece of shit. Bring him in, treat him as a dangerous suspect.”
“No interview first?”
“Nope. Fuck him. Arrest him first. And there’s no reason to mention Sufia’s more important friends to the press.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Let me know what happens.” He hangs up.
Given the nature of the crime, it’s within the boundaries of the law to drag Seppo’s ass to jail without checking his alibi first, but Jyri’s reaction makes me think maybe he has reasons of his own for handling the arrest like this. I apply for arrest and search warrants, and request subpoenas for Seppo’s phone records and financial information.
I go back out to the common room where Jussi and Antti are still hard at it. “Go home,” I say, “get some sleep and be back here at eight in the morning. We’re going to make an arrest.”
Antti brightens. “Who?”
My cell phone rings. “Vaara.”
“This is Dr. Jukka Tikkanen from Kittila Health Center Emergency Services. Your wife has had an accident.”
My heart pounds and the phone trembles in my hand. “What kind of accident?”
“She took a fall while skiing and fractured her left femur.”
“Is she all right?”
“All things considered.”
“I’m on my way.”
Jussi and Antti are staring at me, wondering what bad news I’ve received. “Kate broke her leg, I’ve got to go.”
I run to get my coat and then remember Antti’s question as I button it. “Oh yeah, we’re going to arrest a guy named Seppo Niemi.”
I pull up to the emergency room entrance and leave the Saab in a no-parking zone. An old man sits outside smoking a cigarette. I bump into his wheelchair and apologize. The automatic doors slide open too slow and pushing them doesn’t help. The admissions desk has a line. I’m supposed to take a number and wait my turn. I go to the window and flash my police card. “Kate Vaara. Where is she?”
The receptionist pretends like I’m not there and keeps talking to her current client. I slap my hand on the desk. “Now.”
She starts to get angry, then puts on a bureaucratic face and checks her computer. “Katherine Vaara is in room 207. Officer.”
I find Kate in a hospital bed, her left leg in a cast that goes from the bottom of her foot to high up on her hip. Her already pale skin is waxen, her lips are pursed tight. She holds out her arms for me to hug her. When I do, her mouth presses against my ear and I hear her suppress a whimper. “I want to go home,” she says.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Later.”
I can’t ask the next question, but she reads my thoughts and lets go of me. “They did an ultrasound.” She pauses, manages a demure smile. “There’s not just one baby, there are two.”
“Two?”
“We’re having twins, and they’re both fine.”
I lay a hand on her belly, overwhelmed by joy and relief. “Kate, that’s wonderful.”
She doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell if she thinks it’s wonderful or not.
I ask a stupid question. “Are you okay?”
Kate’s trying hard to keep herself under control. “No.”
“Are you in a lot of pain?”
She shakes her head. “Not now.”
“Are they going to let you go home?”
“I don’t know.”
I find her doctor. “She’s lucky,” he says. “She fractured her femur, but it’s not that bad. If it were closer to the hip or a deeper fracture, she’d have to stay here in traction for the next couple months. She already has a pin in that hip. If she’d broken it again, she might have been permanently disabled. I’m putting her on sick leave.”
“Can I take her home?”
He shrugs. “Sure.”
They give Kate crutches and we get her checked out of the hospital. She has a hard time fitting into the back of the Saab with the cast. I try to talk to her on the way home, but she’s not ready.
When we pull up to the house, she won’t let me help her, says she has to learn to get around by herself. She pushes herself out of the car. I put an arm around her, but she shrugs it off and manages to hobble inside. Because of the cast, she can’t negotiate the couch and starts to tip over. I scoop her up and lay her down, take off her shoe.