Snow Angels

18

I UNLOCK SEPPO’S CELL DOOR and lie to him. “Your alibi checks out, I’m considering setting you free. You should have told me about the phone call earlier-you could have been out yesterday.”

“Considering?” he asks.

“Your buddy says Sufia had just left when you called him. Besides her killer, that makes you the last person to see her alive. You’re a material witness in this investigation. I want you to cooperate with me. I can still hold you for another day.”

“I still think I should have a lawyer present.”

“For what? You’re no longer a suspect.”

“I don’t want certain things to get out,” he says.

“Heli knows about your affair.”

“She does? Fuck.”

“So you don’t have anything to lose,” I say.

We go to my office. I give him coffee and cigarettes. Seppo’s smiling, happy. “About what happened yesterday,” he says, “I understand that you were upset. You thought a murderer threatened your wife. I’m not going to tell anyone about it. What Heli and I did to you was terrible. Maybe we can just call it even.”

I scared him. He played a hand in destroying my marriage. He can’t be stupid enough to consider those things equitable. He probably just doesn’t want anyone to know he pissed on himself.

“That sounds fair,” I say. “Let’s forget the past and start over. Who knows, if we met under different circumstances, we might have been friends.”

This gratifies him. He offers his hand and we shake.

“Are you comfortable?” I ask. “Want anything?”

“Thanks, I’m fine.”

“Are you ready to talk about the case?”

“Anything to help. I guess you know Sufia and I were close.”

“Tell me about you and Sufia.” I start a tape recorder.

“Do we need that?”

“Yeah, we do. Is it a problem?”

He processes the ramifications of being taped. It takes him a while. “I guess not.”

“Good. Tell me about you and Sufia.”

Seppo’s pause tells me he’s thinking about how to present himself in the best possible light. “Sufia was different.”

“How so?”

“I met her at a cocktail party about three months ago. She had the most gorgeous eyes I had ever seen. We talked for hours. She was interested in me, she listened to me.”

“Did she talk about herself?”

“Not much, she liked to talk about me. It seemed like she really cared if I was happy, like I was important to her.”

“Had you been unhappy?”

“Not exactly.”

“It sounds like she gave you something you felt you were missing.”

He thinks about this. “You know Heli. She can be charming when she wants to. She hasn’t wanted to for a while.”

I don’t know her anymore, so I don’t say anything.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t love her,” he says.

“Of course not.”

“It’s just that some other companionship was nice.”

“Sufia was young and beautiful. That must have been nice too.”

His voice intimates that we’re talking buddy to buddy. “You have no idea.”

I mimic his tone. “I bet the sex was pretty good.”

He looks proud of himself. “The best I’ve ever had. She loved doing it with me. The girl came like a rocket.”

“Let’s talk about Tuesday, the day she was killed,” I say.

“She came to the hotel at about twelve thirty. We didn’t talk much. You know.”

“I can only imagine.”

“She left around two, said she had things to do.”

Maybe to see Peter. “Why did you rent a room at Hullu Poro instead of going to her cabin? After all, you were paying for it.”

“She said it was a mess. She was too embarrassed to let the maid clean it and wanted to do it herself, but kept putting it off. Sufia wasn’t exactly domestically inclined.”

I give him a just-us-guys smile. “I guess she had other talents that made up for it.”

“Yeah.” He snickers. “Besides, I stay at Hullu Poro when I’ve had too much to drink in the bar there, so I don’t get behind the wheel.”

“You’re a good citizen. When was the last time you were in Sufia’s room?”

“About a week ago, I suppose.”

“Where was your car while she was in your room that day?”

“Outside in the parking lot.”

“Does anybody else have access to it? Do you ever loan it to your friends?”

“Just Heli. She has her own set of car keys.”

“Did you ever let Sufia borrow your car?”

“No.”

“I found your semen and her blood in the backseat. You had other places available to have sex. Why in the car, and why the blood?”

He smiles. “Did you ever see Sufia? I fucked her anywhere and everywhere I could, as often as I could. One look in those gorgeous eyes of hers made my dick hard. Maybe she’d started her period when we did it in the car.”

“It seems like your feelings for Sufia were genuine. Was there any future in the relationship?”

“She told me she loved me and would like to have something more permanent. I told her things could stay the way they were. Permanently.”

“Meaning she could be your mistress indefinitely. Do you think Heli knew about your affair?”

“I was careful to make sure she didn’t find out.”

It’s hard to picture Seppo being careful about anything. “But you talked to other people about Sufia.”

“Just a few close friends.”

“I’ll need their names and contact information.”

He nods.

“Because, the thing is, you called Sufia a ‘nigger whore’ during a phone conversation, just about a half an hour after somebody carved ‘nigger whore’ on her abdomen. That strikes me as more than coincidental.”

“He told you what I said?”

“Yeah.”

He looks down at the desk, starts to fidget. “What are you getting at?”

“You pretended like you cared about Sufia, but you called her a ‘nigger whore’ behind her back. You bragged about coming on her face and fucking her in the ass. Some people might take that to mean you were using her. If you talked about her, using that exact phrase, to various people, one of them could have used that information to set you up. Or somebody could have overheard a conversation and used it to frame you. That’s what I’m getting at.”

He looks relieved. “I see what you mean-I’ll make a list.”

“There’s another option,” I say. “The phone call was later than you said and doesn’t entirely clear you. There was enough time after the murder for you to get back to your room and call a friend to give yourself an alibi.”

He scratches his head, thinks about it. “If I did that, why would I call her a ‘nigger whore’ and mess up my alibi?”

“That’s a good question. A better one is why you ever called her that at all.”

“If somebody tried to frame me,” he says, “like you think they are, it wouldn’t have been too hard. Somebody could have borrowed my car for a while and put it back. Everybody knows I don’t get out of bed till four when I’ve been drinking the night before.”

“What time do you get out of bed when you haven’t been drinking?”

He hesitates. “Four.”

So he’s drunk every night and sleeps through his hangovers. I change gears. “Did you realize that Sufia’s clitoris had been removed?”

“I knew there was something strange down there but didn’t ask her about it. Why would someone do that?”

I don’t bother to explain. “She didn’t enjoy sex with you as much as you think, maybe not at all.”

He looks unbelieving.

“Peter Eklund was having an affair with Sufia,” I say. “That’s why she wouldn’t let you go to her room. Peter’s liquor bottles were all over it.”

I gauge his reaction. He looks injured, as if the idea of Sufia betraying him is both hurtful and mystifying. I wonder how good an actor he is. “No shit?” he asks.

“No shit. I think she wasn’t satisfied being your mistress, I think she used you.”

“That ungrateful bitch,” he says.

“Some people don’t know how good they have it,” I say, then cut him off. “That’s enough for now.”

I thank Seppo for his cooperation and apologize for the inconvenience. I give him his car keys and walk him out to the garage. “Anything you need,” he says. “Anything. You just ask.”