I imagine it the other way around. Heikki and Seppo are in the car together, but Heikki commits the brunt of the crimes. I see the same things over again, except Peter Eklund replaces Seppo. This scenario seems implausible. A Laestadian like Heikki and hedonistic scum like Peter would likely detest each other and everything the other stood for.

Then I picture Heli orchestrating the murder. She could have met Heikki at church. She could have been behind the wheel and relied on Heikki’s size and strength for the abduction and murder. She could have motivated him in some way, given him the keys to Seppo’s BMW and been absent during the commission of the crime. I consider the sexual forms her encouragements may have taken. If he had been true to his faith, Heikki was inexperienced, vulnerable.

These visualizations make me shudder. Whatever Heli may have done to me, I once loved her and want to think of her as good. The idea that she might be capable of such evil hurts me in deep places, makes me remember the way I felt about her when we were young. My gut reaction is that it’s not possible, but then I remember what I said not long ago: I can’t picture anyone committing such a murder, but someone did. I could never have imagined the way she betrayed me either, and I ask myself if, on a subconscious level, I’m skewing the investigation to punish her for that betrayal.

I don’t think so. Seppo’s affair with Sufia gave Heli motive. Valtteri was right. Overexercising combined with dieting have left Heli a skinny bag of bones, too small and weak to have carried out the murder by herself. The addition of Heikki to the picture gives her means and opportunity. Maybe Kate was right, maybe I should cite conflict of interest and recuse myself from the case. I can’t though, and I’m not sure why.

By the time we get home, it’s five thirty in the morning. I take Heikki’s computer from the trunk of the car, then bring it and the car battery inside. Kate sits down on the couch, throws her crutches on the floor. She hasn’t taken her shoe off. Snow melts on the rug. I don’t say anything, sit down beside her. She stares straight ahead. A few minutes go by, then she buries her face in her hands and starts sobbing. I wonder if I should hold her and comfort her, but I have the feeling she doesn’t want me to, so I wait.

“I can’t do this,” she says without looking up.

This night has been hard on her, maybe harder than I realize. I put an arm around her. “What?”

“Did you see that boy?” she asks.

She had seen him on a gurney as the EMTs took him out. I cut him down. “I saw him.”

“I spent the night comforting a woman I had never met before. We don’t even speak a common language. I’m glad I was there for her, but where were her family, her friends?”

I can’t explain the Finnish concept of privacy. When we grieve, often we can’t talk about it. Maria may have been more comfortable with a stranger. “You’re the best friend she could have had.”

“That boy, Heikki, I told you he was creepy, and now he’s dead. I feel so awful that I said those things about him.”

“You don’t need to.”

“The note he left. He killed Sufia Elmi, didn’t he?”

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced of the likelihood. If he murdered Sufia, I ask myself again if Valtteri and Maria knew. He might have confessed to them. Talk of the Bible and deserving punishment, of fire and brimstone, could have driven him to suicide. My hands start to shake. He was alone in the house with Kate, and I brought him here. “Probably.”

“Even I noticed he was strange. How could his parents not have known there was something wrong with him?”

“They have eight kids. In a family that size, children don’t get much individual attention. Things go unnoticed.”

She starts to cry harder. “I want to leave this place. I want to go home.”

I equate “leaving this place” with leaving me. I don’t fear much, but this scares me. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to live here anymore.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Back to the States, to Aspen.”

In my mind’s eye, I see Kate every moment of the day. Her cinnamon hair, dove-gray eyes so light they’re almost without color. Since we met, our relationship has been something self-contained, both a beginning and an end, like I picture death must be. I thought nothing could ever come between us. I get the same feeling I had when Seppo threatened her. My heart pounds, my ears ring, my vision goes blurry.

“In the States,” she says, “I never met anyone who committed suicide, never even knew anyone who had a suicide in their family. In this little country, it seems like someone does it every day. Finns are like lemmings rushing off a cliff.”

It’s true. Most years, Finland has the world’s highest suicide rate. Last year, it was twenty-seven out of a hundred thousand citizens. If I lost Kate and the twins, I would feel like joining the statistics.

Kate looks at me and reads the panic in my face. “Oh God. Kari, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I want you to come with me. I would never leave you.”

I start to calm down. She puts her arms around me and kisses me. “We could leave here,” she says. “You speak and write almost perfect English. You’re educated and a decorated officer. Any police department in the U.S. would be privileged to have you on its force.”

Her opinion of me is higher than my own. “Why do you want to leave?” I ask.

The sadness in her face tells me she’s going to speak from the heart. “When I first arrived here, my picture of Finland was different. Nature and the environment seemed wild and beautiful, life seemed orderly. I thought people were happy.”

“You were mostly right,” I say.

“No, I was wrong. This is an ugly place. The silence, the misery, the months of darkness. It’s too extreme, like living in a desert made of snow instead of sand.”

Sometimes I think this too.

“When I talk to people,” she says, “they hardly ever laugh or even smile unless they’re drunk. Finns are inscrutable. I have no idea what they’re thinking or feeling. Sometimes I feel like people hate me for being a foreigner, like the nurses at the hospital when I broke my leg. I’m uncomfortable. Worse, I’m terrified because I’m pregnant. I’m at the mercy of people I don’t and can’t understand.”

I didn’t know how deep her cultural alienation had become. I try to explain. “What you perceive as silence, we view as peaceful solitude. Most of us aren’t miserable, but our approach toward life is serious, maybe because of our extreme environment. People don’t hate you, they respect you because you’re successful. Finns are afraid of making mistakes. If we can’t do something perfectly, it’s hard for us to try to do it at all. The people that work for you speak fluent English and are proud of it, but a lot of people are too scared to try.”

“That’s no excuse for the way they treated me at the hospital.”

“You were in pain. Sometimes, people here ignore suffering so the sufferers can maintain their dignity. When you give birth, your medical care will be excellent, for the same reason the nurses wouldn’t speak to you. Health care professionals expect themselves to excel at their work. Our educational system is one of the best in the world. There’s no better place for our children to grow up.”

I’ve given a speech that sounds like an advertisement selling the Finnish way of life. Hearing the words come out of my mouth, even I don’t buy it.

She looks frustrated. “Are we living in the same country? We just watched a teenage boy, probably turned psychotic murderer, be carted off to the morgue after hanging himself. I run places that sell booze. Do you think I don’t see how rampant alcoholism is here? People are drunk because they’re depressed. They get so depressed that they become mentally ill and kill themselves. You say this place is safe? You want our kids to grow up in this environment?”