He helps me up onto shaking feet, hugs me and starts crying. I promise him I’m okay, tell him to calm down.
He pulls away from me and nods. A few feet away, Seppo is still on his knees. Valtteri walks over to him and draws his pistol, presses the muzzle to Seppo’s forehead.
I’m confused, don’t know what to do. “Valtteri,” I say, “please stop. Talk to me.”
Seppo doesn’t move, his mouth opens and closes like he’s searching for words but can’t find them.
“I’ve got to kill him,” Valtteri says. “Like you said, this ends today.”
He keeps the pistol pressed to Seppo’s forehead, bends down on one knee to look in his eyes. “Because of you,” Valtteri says, “two women are dead. Because of you, my son committed murder and suicide and burns in hell. You’re as guilty of his death as if you’d hung him yourself.”
Seppo stammers. “I didn’t kill anybody. I barely knew your son. Please don’t shoot me, I’m not guilty of anything.”
I try to talk Valtteri down. “This isn’t the way and you know it. Give me your gun before you do something you can’t take back.”
He screams at me. “This is the way! This stupid bastard didn’t kill anybody, but they’re all dead because of his lechery, his selfishness and stupidity. His affair with Sufia Elmi, his sins, set all this in motion. His sins resulted in all this death and misery.”
“Valtteri, what you say is true, but setting a series of events in motion isn’t the same as being guilty of murder.”
I step toward him and hold out my hand. “Please give it to me.”
He looks indecisive, then frantic, and swings the pistol toward me, I guess trying to keep me away from him.
I start to speak. “Give me the…”
The pistol goes off. My head recoils. I feel a burning in my face, put my hand to my right cheek. Something is very wrong. When I pull my hand away, it’s bloody. I roll my tongue around. There are hard things in my mouth. I spit out chunks of teeth.
I can talk, but it’s hard. “Valtteri, what have you done?”
He looks at me and goes to pieces, screaming and crying and saying he’s sorry and he raised Heikki wrong and now he’s hurt me and everything is his fault. He goes on and on and I want to console him but I’m dizzy and pain is starting to spread through my head. I roll my tongue around some more and come to the realization that I opened my mouth to speak and he accidentally fired the pistol. The bullet passed through my mouth, blew out my back teeth and exited through my cheek. I think I’m going to vomit.
Valtteri keeps talking, rambling something incomprehensible and saying he’s sorry, waving the gun around. He’s so upset I’m afraid he’ll shoot me by mistake again. Seppo stands up and starts apologizing to Valtteri for his part in events. I manage to punch him in the face to shut him up, knock him off his feet onto the ice.
All of a sudden, Valtteri lowers the pistol to his side. His face sags and he goes calm. “It was me,” he says.
Gunshot trauma has caused endorphin release, and my body’s natural painkillers are protecting me for the moment, but the agony will start soon. I’ve got to get Valtteri under control before it begins. “What do you mean?”
“I killed Heli.”
This is more than I can take in. “What?”
“That night, after Heli and Heikki killed Sufia, he came to me and told me what they had done. It was just like you thought. Heli seduced him and made him fall in love with her. She told him the girl was a sinner, not even a human being, and she had to die. She said it was God’s will, like missionary work, and told him what to do. He said she talked about it all the time, and after a while, he thought it wouldn’t be any harder than gutting a deer. Heli sat in the car and watched while he murdered Sufia. He said when he did it, at first it didn’t seem real, like a dream. When he was cutting her belly she woke up and screamed. It scared him so he cut her throat and it was like he woke up. When he understood he’d killed another human being for no reason, he started to cry. He told Heli they’d done wrong and she laughed and told him she never wanted to see him again.”
Valtteri starts to sob. “Heikki cried and cried and begged me to forgive him. He wanted to confess, for me to arrest him. I wouldn’t let him and told him I would protect him. He was a good boy who made a mistake. He promised to never do it again.”
“For God’s sake Valtteri.”
“It’s your fault. You’re the detective. You were supposed to fix everything and prove Seppo innocent. The murder could go unsolved. No one else would be hurt and Heikki could pretend like it never happened. But you didn’t. And then Heikki hanged himself. He died because of that bitch Heli, and she was going to get away with it. She was going to go on with her life and be rich and happy. I couldn’t let that happen. Could you have? My boy is burning in hell and she needed to burn in hell too. Heikki suffered the torments of hell before he died, out of guilt. I wanted her to taste the flames of hell on earth before she spent eternity there, so I burned her alive. It was justice as the Bible teaches. ‘If she profanes herself by harlotry, she shall be burned with fire.’ ”
The words Heikki wrote in his computer. Now that I know most of the truth, I want all of it. “Where did you get the idea to use a burning tire?”
“I read about it years ago in a magazine. Aristide’s death squads did it in Haiti, and they used to do it in South Africa and Rwanda and Somalia. The article had pictures and they reminded me of hell. Then because Sufia was a Somali, I remembered the story. It seemed fitting and just, like God’s wrath. I didn’t do it to frame Sufia’s father. I never thought you’d make the connection.”
“What about the lake? Why did you pick this place?”
“I knew about your sister and did it to hurt you, because you didn’t fix everything like you were supposed to. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter. Where are Sufia’s clothes and the murder weapon?”
“Heikki gave her clothes to me. I burned them, and the clothes he had on too.”
He takes a knife out of his pocket and hands it to me. It’s a folding survival knife with a rounded serrated blade.
“I gave him this for his twelfth birthday,” he says. “He used it to do what you saw to that girl, unspeakable things. I thought my pocket would be the last place you would look for the murder weapon.”
He was right.
“I kept it so I would have a constant reminder of my failure as a father and my sin of pride. I couldn’t bear to see my son go to prison. His shame would have fallen on the whole family. If I had let Heikki confess, to go to prison and atone for his sin, he would still be alive. He couldn’t bear the guilt and killed himself because of me, because I wouldn’t let him. I killed him.”
“That’s not true, he killed himself.”
“We all killed him.” He looks at Seppo. “That worthless bastard there. Me. You. That bitch Heli. We’re all going to hell.” He points at Abdi’s still-flaming body. “I almost let him kill you. To save myself, because I’m weak. I’m going to be with my boy now.”
He puts the gun to his temple. “I’m sorry.”
“Please Valtteri, don’t do this.”
He says the prayer that every Laestadian child says before going to sleep. “Jeesuksen nimessa ja veressa kaikki synnit anteeksi.” In the name and blood of Jesus forgive us all our sins.
I try to stop him, to grab his hand, but my knee won’t work and I’m sick and too slow.
Valtteri pulls the trigger. His blood and brains spray across the ice. The shot echoes around the lake. He looks at me with dead eyes for a second, then he falls.
I slump down beside him on my hands and knees. I pull off his wool cap and run my fingers through his bloody gray hair. I hear myself moan and say, “Oh God, oh God Valtteri. Get up, get up.”
I realize I’m going into traumatic shock from my wound. I look around. Abdi is still burning. Even with cold dampening my sense of smell, the stench of gasoline and his scorched flesh is sickening. I threatened him and brought him here and he died for nothing. Valtteri is dead beside me. His blood stains the pearl-gray ice and looks black in the murky light. Seppo sits on his haunches, stares at me, hands still cuffed in front of him.