LITMIR.BIZ

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like cars.”

      Eero always had a memory like no one else I’ve ever met. I check to make sure it’s still true. “Eero, can you remember May sixteenth, 1974?”

      “Oh yes.”

      “What happened?”

      “Nothing special. It was a Thursday, warm. Two catalogues came in the mail. Your father got drunk and wrecked his bicycle.”

      I remember that. I’m impressed. “What color was the BMW?”

      “I was talking, not paying attention. Dark-colored.”

      “And it was new?”

      “Pretty new anyway.”

      “Did you see who was driving?”

      “Too dark. Didn’t see, didn’t see.”

      “Okay. Thank you very much.” I reach down and give Sulo a pet. “Do you mind if I come back to ask you about it again?”

      “Not at all,” Eero says, “glad for the company.”

      Martta takes his hand. “You’re always welcome in our home.”

      It’s a good lead. I tramp off down the icy lane, shaking my head, picturing Eero taking the stand.

      Chapter 4

      I HAVEN’T SHOVELED my driveway for a few days, and when I get home I have to shove the car door hard through the snow to get it open. I pop open the hood of the Saab and take out the battery. If I don’t, the car won’t start in the morning. I go inside, set the battery on the floor of the foyer, then shut the door behind me and lock out the world.

      Like every good Finn, I take off my shoes before doing anything else. Kate still sometimes forgets to take hers off when she comes in, and I have to ask her. Wearing shoes in the home is a habit that I find barbaric. Christmas tree lights blink at me from across the room. Most Finns trim the tree closer to Christmas Eve, but Kate wanted to do things the American way, so ours is already up. I have to admit it’s cheery.

      I was married once before. After my divorce, I was single for thirteen years, made pretty good money and had nothing to spend it on, so I bought this house and surrounded myself with nice things. Expensive Danish blond-wood furniture, a thirty-two-inch flat-screen television I hardly ever watch, loads of books and CDs, the new Saab out in the driveway. I thought I was happy, but I was only content. I didn’t know what happiness meant until I met Kate. Or maybe I’d forgotten. After seeing Sufia Elmi’s slaughtered corpse, my happiness seems wrong.

      I peel off my coveralls, dump my pistol and wallet on the coffee table, get a beer out of the fridge and flop down on the couch. Kate pads down the stairs in panties and an oversized T-shirt. She’s almost as tall as me and a sinewy one hundred and twenty pounds. She’s twenty-nine years old and despite her limp moves with grace and elegance. I’m forty, going gray at the temples and built like the hockey player I used to be. I feel bearish by comparison.

      “Did I wake you?” I ask.

      “I wasn’t sleeping. I wanted to wait up for you.”

      She sits down next to me, gives me a kiss, grasps my stubby fingers with her slender ones. Her eyes are red and swollen.

      “You okay?” I ask.

      “I’ve been reading.”

      I don’t press it. Kaamos is hard on everyone. We all get depressed this time of year. Plus, she’s pregnant and the hormonal change can’t help.

      “What about you?” she asks.

      I don’t know where to begin. “Sufia Elmi—the Somali girl in those bad movies—was murdered.”

      “You don’t look good,” she says.

      I rub my face, try to smooth away the tension. “Somebody mutilated her, carved ‘nigger whore’ in her stomach.”

      She pulls her legs up under her and puts an arm around me. “I’ve seen her in Hullu Poro. She was so beautiful.” Kate’s pronunciation of Finnish words is soft and strange, as if a sparrow tried to caw like a crow.

      “I’ve seen murders before, bad car wrecks, nothing like this.”

      “Do you have any idea who or why?”

      I take a swallow of beer. “Sex crime, race crime, maybe both. It’s hard to say yet.”

      She looks at me, reads my pain. I don’t want her to see it but don’t know how to hide it. “I just don’t get how one human being could do something like that to another.”

      She snuggles up closer. “Want to talk about it?”

      We sit in silence for a minute.

      “Was it really where we met?” she asks.

      “It was in the snowfield about a hundred yards in front of Aslak’s house, across from Marjakylä. After we processed the crime scene, I had to canvass my parents’ neighborhood. That was a fucking thrill. Dad acted like I accused Mom of murder.”

      “He’s always so polite when I’m around.”

      “You’re a foreigner. He’s afraid of what he doesn’t understand. You intimidate him, and when you’re around he stays on his best behavior to hide it.”

      She takes this in. “Something about him scares me too. How drunk was he?”

      “Pretty drunk.”

      She looks pissed off on my behalf. Kate’s father is dead now, but he was a drunk, so I don’t need to say more. Kate had a tough childhood. She grew up in Aspen, Colorado. Her mother died of cancer when Kate was thirteen. Her brother and sister were seven and eight at the time.

      The death broke her father’s spirit, and although he wasn’t mean like my dad, he wasn’t home much, spent his evenings in bars. Kate had to raise her brother and sister, cook, clean, beg her father for grocery money to keep them fed.

      Her father managed to do one good thing for her. He was a mechanic, worked at a ski resort maintaining the lifts, and he got her free skiing lessons and lift passes. She became a fantastic downhill skier. She won several key events over the years and dreamed of competing in the Olympics.

      When she was seventeen, she was in a race and going nearly a hundred miles an hour. She took a fall, broke her hip and spent weeks in traction. End of dream. She couldn’t compete anymore and lost the only thing she loved. Still, she toughed it out, got a scholarship and an education, made herself into a successful career woman in the ski resort management industry.

      Thinking about Kate’s family makes me remember Suvi again. I’ve never told Kate about her. Maybe I’m afraid she’ll blame me for Suvi’s death too.

      “Want me to make you something to eat?” Kate asks.

      “Mom fed me.”

      She wraps her arms around me, kisses my eyes. “Let’s go upstairs then.”

      Kate takes my hand and guides me to the bed. She crawls naked on top of me. Long white limbs tangle around me, long red hair hangs in my face. Despite today, I can’t help but want her. I always want her. Maybe witnessing the aftermath of Sufia’s death makes me want to celebrate life.

      Kate’s not showing yet, but kissing her belly reminds me of our child growing inside her. She presses her mouth to mine, runs her tongue along my lips. I feel myself stiffen and hear her breath go ragged.

      We make love, and I fall asleep. The next thing I know Kate is shaking me awake. “You were having a bad dream.”

      The image is still lingering behind my eyes. I was nine years old, in the bedroom I shared with my brother. Sufia Elmi sat in a chair by my bed. My sister Suvi stood beside her. My father pulled my pants down and beat me with a belt. Sufia and Suvi held hands and looked on. Sufia, naked and mangled,

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