“At the dining room table, on the living room sofa.” She looks into my eyes, probing. “What are you getting at?”

“We found his pubic hair in your upstairs bathroom and on your bed. I was wondering how they got there.”

Her eyes go dull like a snake’s, then they start to dance and she sits back and laughs at me. “Kari, are you suggesting I had an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy?”

She keeps laughing until tears roll down her cheeks. I wait for her to stop. “I’m not suggesting anything, why would you think that?”

“It seems to be your implication.”

“I asked you a simple question. How do you think his pubic hair made its way into your bedroom and bathroom?”

She gives me the look she gave me when I interviewed her in my office. The one that says I’m stupid. “Let’s use our imaginations, shall we? He has to pee, a couple pubes come loose. One stays in the bathroom, the other sticks to my or Seppo’s feet and gets tracked into the bed.”

“You have a bathroom downstairs. Why would he go upstairs?”

“I don’t know, but which story sounds more plausible, a hair tracked into a bed, or me fucking the boy? Think about it.”

“I didn’t accuse you of fucking the boy. He used your car to commit the crime. Now it’s your turn to think about it. Tell me what conclusions you draw.”

She rests her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands. Time goes by. The idea hits her like it hit me. She sits bolt upright. “No fucking way,” she says.

“You’ve got a dirty mouth for a churchgoing girl.”

“Old habits die hard.” She starts laughing again. “You can’t seriously believe Seppo had a homosexual relationship with that boy.”

I don’t say anything, stare at her and wait.

“It’s impossible,” she says.

“Why?”

She has no answer. We stare at each other. I let her win and speak first. “Have you ever known Seppo to be involved in a gay relationship?”

She gulps down the rest of her coffee. Her lack of an answer is an answer.

“Heli, if you know something, you should tell me. You could end up being an accessory, which would mean jail time. I’m not threatening you, I’m trying to help you.”

She stands up, winds her scarf around her neck, puts on her coat. “I know you’re concerned about me, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. You’re a good guy, you always were. I’d forgotten.”

We step out into the dark together. The diner door has a bell on it that makes a friendly ring. The cold takes my breath for a second. “Thanks for the coffee,” I say, and head for my car.

She calls after me, “Kari.”

I turn toward her. She opens the door of the BMW, looks at me. “I’m sorry I hurt you when I left you. I loved you once.”

I’m not sure why, but I’m glad she said it. I nod at her but don’t know what I mean by it. Maybe it’s thanks-maybe it’s simple acknowledgment.

Heli starts the BMW. I have to test something out. I walk over, she rolls down the passenger-side window and I stick my head in while I talk to her.

“A couple days ago,” I say, “this crazy idea occurred to me that you learned about Seppo’s affair and decided to get rid of Sufia. You and Seppo were unmarried. If Seppo left you for Sufia, by Finnish law, you’d get nothing. You seduced Heikki and played on his religious beliefs, convinced him that Sufia was a nigger whore, a sinner that deserved to die, then you and he colluded in Sufia’s murder.”

I pause. Heli’s face registers nothing. I continue.

“You and Heikki used Seppo’s car and framed him, then you convinced Seppo to marry you, fed him some song and dance about how your solidarity would speak of his innocence. Marriage would assure your financial well-being. You drove Heikki to suicide by telling him the truth, that you used him and intended to discard him. Of course, I can see now that all this couldn’t be true. Seems like a stupid idea, looking back.”

Her expression doesn’t change. “You have a wild imagination.”

“Yeah, I do. A homosexual love affair between Seppo and Heikki is a far more economical solution. It’s all there. Motive. Opportunity. Still, you can see how all the pieces fit in the scenario with you and Heikki as well, it’s just more complicated that way.”

Heli smirks and starts to close her window.

Something hits me. “Hey, wait a second,” I say. “How do you spell lasi, glass, in English?”

“Why?”

“I have to send my wife a text message and can’t remember.”

“G-R-A-S-S.”

She rolls up her window and drives away. I light a cigarette. The cold makes my eyes run and blur. Her taillights streak red and fade away. Heli’s English always sucked. Could Sufia really have had a broken bottle stuffed into her vagina because Heli read a website wrong and mistook “grass” for “glass”? I stand under a streetlight, smoke and think for a while.

27

I BRUSH THE SNOW OFF my shoes and leave them in the foyer, then walk into the living room. Kate is sitting up in the bed reading, wearing only black panties. Modern Finnish homes are so well insulated that no matter how cold it is outside, you can always hang around the house in your underwear in comfort. She holds up her book, Finnish for Foreigners. “Mitä kuuluu?” she asks.

I kneel down on the floor beside her. Her skin is white, as colorless as snow. The veins under her skin cast bluish shadows on its surface. I touch her breast, trace the azure map with my index finger. “Rakastele kanssani,” I say.

“I tried to ask how you are,” she says.

“And I said make love to me.”

She giggles. “How do we do it with my cast in the way?”

I start peeling off my clothes. “We’ll figure it out.”

We figure it out. After the third time, I lay my head in her arm-pit and nuzzle her breast.

“If this was a scene in a romance novel,” Kate says, “they’d write that you were furious with desire.”

My mouth is full of her breast, I have to turn my head to answer. “I’ve been around so much ugliness lately, I needed something beautiful.”

She kisses my lips. “Minä rakastan sinua,” I love you, she says. Her accent makes her sound like a child learning to speak. It makes me grin.

“I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had,” I say. “What if, instead of going to live in the States, we moved to Helsinki? It has a big international community, a lot of people speak English there. You might not feel so isolated.”

“Would they let you transfer back there?”

“I think so.”

“Would you be happy there?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know if you would be happy there either. We might be. But the big ski resorts are in the north. You’d have to manage another kind of business. It’s just an idea.”

She frowns. “I think you were right before,” she says. “Let’s figure it out after you solve Sufia Elmi’s murder.”

“The case should be closed soon.”

I tell Kate about everything that’s happened since I left the house earlier today. About how Pirkko murdered Urpo, about the chaos at the murder scene, Tiina attacking Raila. How I had to tell Valtteri and Maria their son was a killer and that I realized Heikki may have had a homosexual love affair with Seppo. About talking to Heli.

“That’s a nightmare of a day,” she says.

“Yeah. The good part is that if Seppo admits to an affair with Heikki, I can close the investigation. The Lone Gunman theory.”

“Why do you think Heli wanted to talk to you?”

“All that talk about making amends was bullshit. She tried to pump me for information about the case. She’s scared of something.”

“Do you really think she and Heikki might have murdered Sufia together?”

“I believe she knows more than she’s telling. I wanted to see her reaction when she realized she could be a suspect. The woman I knew had emotional problems but didn’t fit into a sociopath-murderer profile. But that was a long time ago. I don’t know her anymore. Her confusion about spelling ‘glass’ and ‘grass,’ and the glass and grass in Sufia’s and Elizabeth Short’s vaginas, if it’s a coincidence, is just plain weird. When you think about it, this whole case is just plain fucking weird.”